Nicholas Nickleby
any interruption which promised to engage the attention of his daughter.
He bent his eyes involuntarily upon the father as he spoke, and marked
his uneasiness; for he coloured and turned his head away.
The device, however, so far as it was a device for causing Madeline
to interfere, was successful. She rose, and advancing towards Nicholas
paused half-way, and stretched out her hand as expecting a letter.
‘Madeline,’ said her father impatiently, ‘my love, what are you doing?’
‘Miss Bray expects an inclosure perhaps,’ said Nicholas, speaking very
distinctly, and with an emphasis she could scarcely misunderstand. ‘My
employer is absent from England, or I should have brought a letter with
me. I hope she will give me time--a little time. I ask a very little
time.’
‘If that is all you come about, sir,’ said Mr. Bray, ‘you may make
yourself easy on that head. Madeline, my dear, I didn’t know this person
was in your debt?’
‘A--a trifle, I believe,’ returned Madeline, faintly.
‘I suppose you think now,’ said Bray, wheeling his chair round and
confronting Nicholas, ‘that, but for such pitiful sums as you bring
here, because my daughter has chosen to employ her time as she has, we
should starve?’
‘I have not thought about it,’ returned Nicholas.
‘You have not thought about it!’ sneered the invalid. ‘You know you HAVE
thought about it, and have thought that, and think so every time you
come here. Do you suppose, young man, that I don’t know what little
purse-proud tradesmen are, when, through some fortunate circumstances,
they get the upper hand for a brief day--or think they get the upper
hand--of a gentleman?’
‘My business,’ said Nicholas respectfully, ‘is with a lady.’
‘With a gentleman’s daughter, sir,’ returned the sick man, ‘and the
pettifogging spirit is the same. But perhaps you bring ORDERS, eh? Have
you any fresh ORDERS for my daughter, sir?’
Nicholas understood the tone of triumph in which this interrogatory was
put; but remembering the necessity of supporting his assumed character,
produced a scrap of paper purporting to contain a list of some subjects
for drawings which his employer desired to have executed; and with which
he had prepared himself in case of any such contingency.
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Bray. ‘These are the orders, are they?’
‘Since you insist upon the term, sir, yes,’ replied Nicholas.
‘Then you may tell your master,’ said Bray, tossing the paper back
again, with an exulting smile, ‘that my daughter, Miss Madeline Bray,
condescends to employ herself no longer in such labours as these; that
she is not at his beck and call, as he supposes her to be; that we don’t
live upon his money, as he flatters himself we do; that he may give
whatever he owes us, to the first beggar that passes his shop, or add it
to his own profits next time he calculates them; and that he may go to
the devil for me. That’s my acknowledgment of his orders, sir!’
‘And this is the independence of a man who sells his daughter as he has
sold that weeping girl!’ thought Nicholas.
The father was too much absorbed with his own exultation to mark the
look of scorn which, for an instant, Nicholas could not have suppressed
had he been upon the rack. ‘There,’ he continued, after a short
silence, ‘you have your message and can retire--unless you have any
further--ha!--any further orders.’
‘I have none,’ said Nicholas; ‘nor, in the consideration of the station
you once held, have I used that or any other word which, however
harmless in itself, could be supposed to imply authority on my part or
dependence on yours. I have no orders, but I have fears--fears that I
will express, chafe as you may--fears that you may be consigning that
young lady to something worse than supporting you by the labour of her
hands, had she worked herself dead. These are my fears, and these fears
I found upon your own demeanour. Your conscience will tell you, sir,
whether I construe it well or not.’
‘For Heaven’s sake!’ cried Madeline, interposing in alarm between them.
‘Remember, sir, he is ill.’
‘Ill!’ cried the invalid, gasping and catching for breath. ‘Ill! Ill! I
am bearded and bullied by a shop-boy, and she beseeches him to pity me
and remember I am ill!’
He fell into a paroxysm of his disorder, so violent that for a few
moments Nicholas was alarmed for his life; but finding that he began to
recover, he withdrew, after signifying by a gesture to the young lady
that he had something important to communicate, and would wait for her
outside the room. He could hear that the sick man came gradually, but
slowly, to himself, and that without any reference to what had just
occurred, as though he had no distinct recollection of it as yet, he
requested to be left alone.
‘Oh!’ thought Nicholas, ‘that this slender chance might not be lost,
and that I might prevail, if it were but for one week’s time and
reconsideration!’
‘You are charged with some commission to me, sir,’ said Madeline,
presenting herself in great agitation. ‘Do not press it now, I beg and
pray you. The day after tomorrow; come here then.’
‘It will be too late--too late for what I have to say,’ rejoined
Nicholas, ‘and you will not be here. Oh, madam, if you have but one
thought of him who sent me here, but one last lingering care for your
own peace of mind and heart, I do for God’s sake urge you to give me a
hearing.’
She attempted to pass him, but Nicholas gently detained her.
‘A hearing,’ said Nicholas. ‘I ask you but to hear me: not me alone, but
him for whom I speak, who is far away and does not know your danger. In
the name of Heaven hear me!’
The poor attendant, with her eyes swollen and red with weeping, stood
by; and to her Nicholas appealed in such passionate terms that she
opened a side-door, and, supporting her mistress into an adjoining room,
beckoned Nicholas to follow them.
‘Leave me, sir, pray,’ said the young lady.
‘I cannot, will not leave you thus,’ returned Nicholas. ‘I have a duty
to discharge; and, either here, or in the room from which we have just
now come, at whatever risk or hazard to Mr. Bray, I must beseech you to
contemplate again the fearful course to which you have been impelled.’
‘What course is this you speak of, and impelled by whom, sir?’ demanded
the young lady, with an effort to speak proudly.
‘I speak of this marriage,’ returned Nicholas, ‘of this marriage, fixed
for tomorrow, by one who never faltered in a bad purpose, or lent his
aid to any good design; of this marriage, the history of which is known
to me, better, far better, than it is to you. I know what web is wound
about you. I know what men they are from whom these schemes have come.
You are betrayed and sold for money; for gold, whose every coin is
rusted with tears, if not red with the blood of ruined men, who have
fallen desperately by their own mad hands.’
‘You say you have a duty to discharge,’ said Madeline, ‘and so have I.
And with the help of Heaven I will perform it.’
‘Say rather with the help of devils,’ replied Nicholas, ‘with the help
of men, one of them your destined husband, who are--’
‘I must not hear this,’ cried the young lady, striving to repress a
shudder, occasioned, as it seemed, even by this slight allusion to
Arthur Gride. ‘This evil, if evil it be, has been of my own seeking. I
am impelled to this course by no one, but follow it of my own free will.
You see I am not constrained or forced. Report this,’ said Madeline,
‘to my dear friend and benefactor, and, taking with you my prayers and
thanks for him and for yourself, leave me for ever!’
‘Not until I have besought you, with all the earnestness and fervour by
which I am animated,’ cried Nicholas, ‘to postpone this marriage for one
short week. Not until I have besought you to think more deeply than you
can have done, influenced as you are, upon the step you are about to
take. Although you cannot be fully conscious of the villainy of this man
to whom you are about to give your hand, some of his deeds you know. You
have heard him speak, and have looked upon his face. Reflect, reflect,
before it is too late, on the mockery of plighting to him at the altar,
faith in which your heart can have no share--of uttering solemn words,
against which nature and reason must rebel--of the degradation of
yourself in your own esteem, which must ensue, and must be aggravated
every day, as his detested character opens upon you more and more.
Shrink from the loathsome companionship of this wretch as you would from
corruption and disease. Suffer toil and labour if you will, but shun
him, shun him, and be happy. For, believe me, I speak the truth; the
most abject poverty, the most wretched condition of human life, with a
pure and upright mind, would be happiness to that which you must undergo
as the wife of such a man as this!’
Long before Nicholas ceased to speak, the young lady buried her face in
her hands, and gave her tears free way. In a voice at first inarticulate
with emotion, but gradually recovering strength as she proceeded, she
answered him:
‘I will not disguise from you, sir--though perhaps I ought--that I have
undergone great pain of mind, and have been nearly broken-hearted since
I saw you last. I do NOT love this gentleman. The difference between our
ages, tastes, and habits, forbids it. This he knows, and knowing, still
offers me his hand. By accepting it, and by that step alone, I can
release my father who is dying in this place; prolong his life, perhaps,
for many years; restore him to comfort--I may almost call it affluence;
and relieve a generous man from the burden of assisting one, by whom,
I grieve to say, his noble heart is little understood. Do not think so
poorly of me as to believe that I feign a love I do not feel. Do not
report so ill of me, for THAT I could not bear. If I cannot, in reason
or in nature, love the man who pays this price for my poor hand, I can
discharge the duties of a wife: I can be all he seeks in me, and will.
He is content to take me as I am. I have passed my word, and should
rejoice, not weep, that it is so. I do. The interest you take in one so
friendless and forlorn as I, the delicacy with which you have discharged
your trust, the faith you have kept with me, have my warmest thanks:
and, while I make this last feeble acknowledgment, move me to tears,
as you see. But I do not repent, nor am I unhappy. I am happy in the
prospect of all I can achieve so easily. I shall be more so when I look
back upon it, and all is done, I know.’
‘Your tears fall faster as you talk of happiness,’ said Nicholas, ‘and
you shun the contemplation of that dark future which must be laden
with so much misery to you. Defer this marriage for a week. For but one
week!’
‘He was talking, when you came upon us just now, with such smiles as I
remember to have seen of old, and have not seen for many and many a day,
of the freedom that was to come tomorrow,’ said Madeline, with momentary
firmness, ‘of the welcome change, the fresh air: all the new scenes and
objects that would bring fresh life to his exhausted frame. His eye grew
bright, and his face lightened at the thought. I will not defer it for
an hour.’
‘These are but tricks and wiles to urge you on,’ cried Nicholas.
‘I’ll hear no more,’ said Madeline, hurriedly; ‘I have heard too
much--more than I should--already. What I have said to you, sir, I have
said as to that dear friend to whom I trust in you honourably to repeat
it. Some time hence, when I am more composed and reconciled to my new
mode of life, if I should live so long, I will write to him. Meantime,
all holy angels shower blessings on his head, and prosper and preserve
him.’
She was hurrying past Nicholas, when he threw himself before her, and
implored her to think, but once again, upon the fate to which she was