Nicholas Nickleby
precipitately hastening.
‘There is no retreat,’ said Nicholas, in an agony of supplication; ‘no
withdrawing! All regret will be unavailing, and deep and bitter it must
be. What can I say, that will induce you to pause at this last moment?
What can I do to save you?’
‘Nothing,’ she incoherently replied. ‘This is the hardest trial I have
had. Have mercy on me, sir, I beseech, and do not pierce my heart with
such appeals as these. I--I hear him calling. I--I--must not, will not,
remain here for another instant.’
‘If this were a plot,’ said Nicholas, with the same violent rapidity
with which she spoke, ‘a plot, not yet laid bare by me, but which, with
time, I might unravel; if you were (not knowing it) entitled to fortune
of your own, which, being recovered, would do all that this marriage can
accomplish, would you not retract?’
‘No, no, no! It is impossible; it is a child’s tale. Time would bring
his death. He is calling again!’
‘It may be the last time we shall ever meet on earth,’ said Nicholas,
‘it may be better for me that we should never meet more.’
‘For both, for both,’ replied Madeline, not heeding what she said. ‘The
time will come when to recall the memory of this one interview might
drive me mad. Be sure to tell them, that you left me calm and happy. And
God be with you, sir, and my grateful heart and blessing!’
She was gone. Nicholas, staggering from the house, thought of the
hurried scene which had just closed upon him, as if it were the phantom
of some wild, unquiet dream. The day wore on; at night, having been
enabled in some measure to collect his thoughts, he issued forth again.
That night, being the last of Arthur Gride’s bachelorship, found him in
tiptop spirits and great glee. The bottle-green suit had been brushed,
ready for the morrow. Peg Sliderskew had rendered the accounts of her
past housekeeping; the eighteen-pence had been rigidly accounted for
(she was never trusted with a larger sum at once, and the accounts were
not usually balanced more than twice a day); every preparation had
been made for the coming festival; and Arthur might have sat down and
contemplated his approaching happiness, but that he preferred sitting
down and contemplating the entries in a dirty old vellum-book with rusty
clasps.
‘Well-a-day!’ he chuckled, as sinking on his knees before a strong
chest screwed down to the floor, he thrust in his arm nearly up to the
shoulder, and slowly drew forth this greasy volume. ‘Well-a-day now,
this is all my library, but it’s one of the most entertaining books that
were ever written! It’s a delightful book, and all true and real--that’s
the best of it--true as the Bank of England, and real as its gold and
silver. Written by Arthur Gride. He, he, he! None of your storybook
writers will ever make as good a book as this, I warrant me. It’s
composed for private circulation, for my own particular reading, and
nobody else’s. He, he, he!’
Muttering this soliloquy, Arthur carried his precious volume to the
table, and, adjusting it upon a dusty desk, put on his spectacles, and
began to pore among the leaves.
‘It’s a large sum to Mr. Nickleby,’ he said, in a dolorous voice.
‘Debt to be paid in full, nine hundred and seventy-five, four, three.
Additional sum as per bond, five hundred pound. One thousand, four
hundred and seventy-five pounds, four shillings, and threepence,
tomorrow at twelve o’clock. On the other side, though, there’s the PER
CONTRA, by means of this pretty chick. But, again, there’s the question
whether I mightn’t have brought all this about, myself. “Faint heart
never won fair lady.” Why was my heart so faint? Why didn’t I boldly
open it to Bray myself, and save one thousand four hundred and
seventy-five, four, three?’
These reflections depressed the old usurer so much, as to wring a feeble
groan or two from his breast, and cause him to declare, with uplifted
hands, that he would die in a workhouse. Remembering on further
cogitation, however, that under any circumstances he must have paid, or
handsomely compounded for, Ralph’s debt, and being by no means confident
that he would have succeeded had he undertaken his enterprise alone, he
regained his equanimity, and chattered and mowed over more satisfactory
items, until the entrance of Peg Sliderskew interrupted him.
‘Aha, Peg!’ said Arthur, ‘what is it? What is it now, Peg?’
‘It’s the fowl,’ replied Peg, holding up a plate containing a little, a
very little one. Quite a phenomenon of a fowl. So very small and skinny.
‘A beautiful bird!’ said Arthur, after inquiring the price, and finding
it proportionate to the size. ‘With a rasher of ham, and an egg made
into sauce, and potatoes, and greens, and an apple pudding, Peg, and a
little bit of cheese, we shall have a dinner for an emperor. There’ll
only be she and me--and you, Peg, when we’ve done.’
‘Don’t you complain of the expense afterwards,’ said Mrs. Sliderskew,
sulkily.
‘I am afraid we must live expensively for the first week,’ returned
Arthur, with a groan, ‘and then we must make up for it. I won’t eat more
than I can help, and I know you love your old master too much to eat
more than YOU can help, don’t you, Peg?’
‘Don’t I what?’ said Peg.
‘Love your old master too much--’
‘No, not a bit too much,’ said Peg.
‘Oh, dear, I wish the devil had this woman!’ cried Arthur: ‘love him too
much to eat more than you can help at his expense.’
‘At his what?’ said Peg.
‘Oh dear! she can never hear the most important word, and hears all the
others!’ whined Gride. ‘At his expense--you catamaran!’
The last-mentioned tribute to the charms of Mrs. Sliderskew being uttered
in a whisper, that lady assented to the general proposition by a harsh
growl, which was accompanied by a ring at the street-door.
‘There’s the bell,’ said Arthur.
‘Ay, ay; I know that,’ rejoined Peg.
‘Then why don’t you go?’ bawled Arthur.
‘Go where?’ retorted Peg. ‘I ain’t doing any harm here, am I?’
Arthur Gride in reply repeated the word ‘bell’ as loud as he could roar;
and, his meaning being rendered further intelligible to Mrs. Sliderskew’s
dull sense of hearing by pantomime expressive of ringing at a
street-door, Peg hobbled out, after sharply demanding why he hadn’t said
there was a ring before, instead of talking about all manner of things
that had nothing to do with it, and keeping her half-pint of beer
waiting on the steps.
‘There’s a change come over you, Mrs. Peg,’ said Arthur, following her
out with his eyes. ‘What it means I don’t quite know; but, if it lasts,
we shan’t agree together long I see. You are turning crazy, I think. If
you are, you must take yourself off, Mrs. Peg--or be taken off. All’s one
to me.’ Turning over the leaves of his book as he muttered this, he soon
lighted upon something which attracted his attention, and forgot Peg
Sliderskew and everything else in the engrossing interest of its pages.
The room had no other light than that which it derived from a dim and
dirt-clogged lamp, whose lazy wick, being still further obscured by a
dark shade, cast its feeble rays over a very little space, and left all
beyond in heavy shadow. This lamp the money-lender had drawn so close to
him, that there was only room between it and himself for the book over
which he bent; and as he sat, with his elbows on the desk, and his sharp
cheek-bones resting on his hands, it only served to bring out his ugly
features in strong relief, together with the little table at which he
sat, and to shroud all the rest of the chamber in a deep sullen gloom.
Raising his eyes, and looking vacantly into this gloom as he made some
mental calculation, Arthur Gride suddenly met the fixed gaze of a man.
‘Thieves! thieves!’ shrieked the usurer, starting up and folding his
book to his breast. ‘Robbers! Murder!’
‘What is the matter?’ said the form, advancing.
‘Keep off!’ cried the trembling wretch. ‘Is it a man or a--a--’
‘For what do you take me, if not for a man?’ was the inquiry.
‘Yes, yes,’ cried Arthur Gride, shading his eyes with his hand, ‘it is a
man, and not a spirit. It is a man. Robbers! robbers!’
‘For what are these cries raised? Unless indeed you know me, and have
some purpose in your brain?’ said the stranger, coming close up to him.
‘I am no thief.’
‘What then, and how come you here?’ cried Gride, somewhat reassured, but
still retreating from his visitor: ‘what is your name, and what do you
want?’
‘My name you need not know,’ was the reply. ‘I came here, because I was
shown the way by your servant. I have addressed you twice or thrice, but
you were too profoundly engaged with your book to hear me, and I have
been silently waiting until you should be less abstracted. What I want
I will tell you, when you can summon up courage enough to hear and
understand me.’
Arthur Gride, venturing to regard his visitor more attentively, and
perceiving that he was a young man of good mien and bearing, returned to
his seat, and muttering that there were bad characters about, and
that this, with former attempts upon his house, had made him nervous,
requested his visitor to sit down. This, however, he declined.
‘Good God! I don’t stand up to have you at an advantage,’ said Nicholas
(for Nicholas it was), as he observed a gesture of alarm on the part of
Gride. ‘Listen to me. You are to be married tomorrow morning.’
‘N--n--no,’ rejoined Gride. ‘Who said I was? How do you know that?’
‘No matter how,’ replied Nicholas, ‘I know it. The young lady who is
to give you her hand hates and despises you. Her blood runs cold at the
mention of your name; the vulture and the lamb, the rat and the dove,
could not be worse matched than you and she. You see I know her.’
Gride looked at him as if he were petrified with astonishment, but did
not speak; perhaps lacking the power.
‘You and another man, Ralph Nickleby by name, have hatched this plot
between you,’ pursued Nicholas. ‘You pay him for his share in bringing
about this sale of Madeline Bray. You do. A lie is trembling on your
lips, I see.’
He paused; but, Arthur making no reply, resumed again.
‘You pay yourself by defrauding her. How or by what means--for I scorn
to sully her cause by falsehood or deceit--I do not know; at present I
do not know, but I am not alone or single-handed in this business. If
the energy of man can compass the discovery of your fraud and treachery
before your death; if wealth, revenge, and just hatred, can hunt and
track you through your windings; you will yet be called to a dear
account for this. We are on the scent already; judge you, who know what
we do not, when we shall have you down!’
He paused again, and still Arthur Gride glared upon him in silence.
‘If you were a man to whom I could appeal with any hope of touching
his compassion or humanity,’ said Nicholas, ‘I would urge upon you to
remember the helplessness, the innocence, the youth, of this lady; her
worth and beauty, her filial excellence, and last, and more than all,
as concerning you more nearly, the appeal she has made to your mercy and
your manly feeling. But, I take the only ground that can be taken with
men like you, and ask what money will buy you off. Remember the danger
to which you are exposed. You see I know enough to know much more with
very little help. Bate some expected gain for the risk you save, and say
what is your price.’
Old Arthur Gride moved his lips, but they only formed an ugly smile and
were motionless again.
‘You think,’ said Nicholas, ‘that the price would not be paid. Miss Bray
has wealthy friends who would coin their very hearts to save her in such
a strait as this. Name your price, defer these nuptials for but a few
days, and see whether those I speak of, shrink from the payment. Do you
hear me?’