Nicholas Nickleby
moment,’ replied Nicholas, ‘a refuge and a home. If the near prospect
of such a husband as you have provided will not prevail upon her, I hope
she may be moved by the prayers and entreaties of one of her own sex.
At all events they shall be tried. I myself, avowing to her father from
whom I come and by whom I am commissioned, will render it an act of
greater baseness, meanness, and cruelty in him if he still dares to
force this marriage on. Here I wait to see him and his daughter. For
this I came and brought my sister even into your presence. Our purpose
is not to see or speak with you; therefore to you we stoop to say no
more.’
‘Indeed!’ said Ralph. ‘You persist in remaining here, ma’am, do you?’
His niece’s bosom heaved with the indignant excitement into which he had
lashed her, but she gave him no reply.
‘Now, Gride, see here,’ said Ralph. ‘This fellow--I grieve to say my
brother’s son: a reprobate and profligate, stained with every mean
and selfish crime--this fellow, coming here today to disturb a solemn
ceremony, and knowing that the consequence of his presenting himself in
another man’s house at such a time, and persisting in remaining there,
must be his being kicked into the streets and dragged through them like
the vagabond he is--this fellow, mark you, brings with him his sister
as a protection, thinking we would not expose a silly girl to the
degradation and indignity which is no novelty to him; and, even after
I have warned her of what must ensue, he still keeps her by him, as
you see, and clings to her apron-strings like a cowardly boy to his
mother’s. Is not this a pretty fellow to talk as big as you have heard
him now?’
‘And as I heard him last night,’ said Arthur Gride; ‘as I heard him last
night when he sneaked into my house, and--he! he! he!--very soon sneaked
out again, when I nearly frightened him to death. And HE wanting to
marry Miss Madeline too! Oh dear! Is there anything else he’d like?
Anything else we can do for him, besides giving her up? Would he like
his debts paid and his house furnished, and a few bank notes for shaving
paper if he shaves at all? He! he! he!’
‘You will remain, girl, will you?’ said Ralph, turning upon Kate again,
‘to be hauled downstairs like a drunken drab, as I swear you shall if
you stop here? No answer! Thank your brother for what follows. Gride,
call down Bray--and not his daughter. Let them keep her above.’
‘If you value your head,’ said Nicholas, taking up a position before the
door, and speaking in the same low voice in which he had spoken before,
and with no more outward passion than he had before displayed; ‘stay
where you are!’
‘Mind me, and not him, and call down Bray,’ said Ralph.
‘Mind yourself rather than either of us, and stay where you are!’ said
Nicholas.
‘Will you call down Bray?’ cried Ralph.
‘Remember that you come near me at your peril,’ said Nicholas.
Gride hesitated. Ralph being, by this time, as furious as a baffled
tiger, made for the door, and, attempting to pass Kate, clasped her arm
roughly with his hand. Nicholas, with his eyes darting fire, seized him
by the collar. At that moment, a heavy body fell with great violence
on the floor above, and, in an instant afterwards, was heard a most
appalling and terrific scream.
They all stood still, and gazed upon each other. Scream succeeded
scream; a heavy pattering of feet succeeded; and many shrill voices
clamouring together were heard to cry, ‘He is dead!’
‘Stand off!’ cried Nicholas, letting loose all the passion he had
restrained till now; ‘if this is what I scarcely dare to hope it is, you
are caught, villains, in your own toils.’
He burst from the room, and, darting upstairs to the quarter from whence
the noise proceeded, forced his way through a crowd of persons who quite
filled a small bed-chamber, and found Bray lying on the floor quite
dead; his daughter clinging to the body.
‘How did this happen?’ he cried, looking wildly about him.
Several voices answered together, that he had been observed, through
the half-opened door, reclining in a strange and uneasy position upon a
chair; that he had been spoken to several times, and not answering, was
supposed to be asleep, until some person going in and shaking him by the
arm, he fell heavily to the ground and was discovered to be dead.
‘Who is the owner of this house?’ said Nicholas, hastily.
An elderly woman was pointed out to him; and to her he said, as he knelt
down and gently unwound Madeline’s arms from the lifeless mass round
which they were entwined: ‘I represent this lady’s nearest friends, as
her servant here knows, and must remove her from this dreadful scene.
This is my sister to whose charge you confide her. My name and address
are upon that card, and you shall receive from me all necessary
directions for the arrangements that must be made. Stand aside, every
one of you, and give me room and air for God’s sake!’
The people fell back, scarce wondering more at what had just occurred,
than at the excitement and impetuosity of him who spoke. Nicholas,
taking the insensible girl in his arms, bore her from the chamber and
downstairs into the room he had just quitted, followed by his sister and
the faithful servant, whom he charged to procure a coach directly, while
he and Kate bent over their beautiful charge and endeavoured, but in
vain, to restore her to animation. The girl performed her office with
such expedition, that in a very few minutes the coach was ready.
Ralph Nickleby and Gride, stunned and paralysed by the awful event
which had so suddenly overthrown their schemes (it would not otherwise,
perhaps, have made much impression on them), and carried away by the
extraordinary energy and precipitation of Nicholas, which bore down
all before him, looked on at these proceedings like men in a dream
or trance. It was not until every preparation was made for Madeline’s
immediate removal that Ralph broke silence by declaring she should not
be taken away.
‘Who says so?’ cried Nicholas, rising from his knee and confronting
them, but still retaining Madeline’s lifeless hand in his.
‘I!’ answered Ralph, hoarsely.
‘Hush, hush!’ cried the terrified Gride, catching him by the arm again.
‘Hear what he says.’
‘Ay!’ said Nicholas, extending his disengaged hand in the air, ‘hear
what he says. That both your debts are paid in the one great debt of
nature. That the bond, due today at twelve, is now waste paper. That
your contemplated fraud shall be discovered yet. That your schemes are
known to man, and overthrown by Heaven. Wretches, that he defies you
both to do your worst.’
‘This man,’ said Ralph, in a voice scarcely intelligible, ‘this man
claims his wife, and he shall have her.’
‘That man claims what is not his, and he should not have her if he were
fifty men, with fifty more to back him,’ said Nicholas.
‘Who shall prevent him?’
‘I will.’
‘By what right I should like to know,’ said Ralph. ‘By what right I
ask?’
‘By this right. That, knowing what I do, you dare not tempt me further,’
said Nicholas, ‘and by this better right; that those I serve, and with
whom you would have done me base wrong and injury, are her nearest and
her dearest friends. In their name I bear her hence. Give way!’
‘One word!’ cried Ralph, foaming at the mouth.
‘Not one,’ replied Nicholas, ‘I will not hear of one--save this. Look to
yourself, and heed this warning that I give you! Your day is past, and
night is comin’ on.’
‘My curse, my bitter, deadly curse, upon you, boy!’
‘Whence will curses come at your command? Or what avails a curse or
blessing from a man like you? I tell you, that misfortune and discovery
are thickening about your head; that the structures you have raised,
through all your ill-spent life, are crumbling into dust; that your path
is beset with spies; that this very day, ten thousand pounds of your
hoarded wealth have gone in one great crash!’
‘’Tis false!’ cried Ralph, shrinking back.
‘’Tis true, and you shall find it so. I have no more words to waste.
Stand from the door. Kate, do you go first. Lay not a hand on her, or on
that woman, or on me, or so much a brush their garments as they pass you
by!--You let them pass, and he blocks the door again!’
Arthur Gride happened to be in the doorway, but whether intentionally
or from confusion was not quite apparent. Nicholas swung him away, with
such violence as to cause him to spin round the room until he was caught
by a sharp angle of the wall, and there knocked down; and then taking
his beautiful burden in his arms rushed out. No one cared to stop him,
if any were so disposed. Making his way through a mob of people, whom a
report of the circumstances had attracted round the house, and carrying
Madeline, in his excitement, as easily as if she were an infant, he
reached the coach in which Kate and the girl were already waiting, and,
confiding his charge to them, jumped up beside the coachman and bade him
drive away.
CHAPTER 55
Of Family Matters, Cares, Hopes, Disappointments, and Sorrows
Although Mrs. Nickleby had been made acquainted by her son and daughter
with every circumstance of Madeline Bray’s history which was known to
them; although the responsible situation in which Nicholas stood had
been carefully explained to her, and she had been prepared, even for
the possible contingency of having to receive the young lady in her
own house, improbable as such a result had appeared only a few minutes
before it came about, still, Mrs. Nickleby, from the moment when this
confidence was first reposed in her, late on the previous evening, had
remained in an unsatisfactory and profoundly mystified state, from which
no explanations or arguments could relieve her, and which every fresh
soliloquy and reflection only aggravated more and more.
‘Bless my heart, Kate!’ so the good lady argued; ‘if the Mr. Cheerybles
don’t want this young lady to be married, why don’t they file a bill
against the Lord Chancellor, make her a Chancery ward, and shut her
up in the Fleet prison for safety?--I have read of such things in the
newspapers a hundred times. Or, if they are so very fond of her as
Nicholas says they are, why don’t they marry her themselves--one of them
I mean? And even supposing they don’t want her to be married, and don’t
want to marry her themselves, why in the name of wonder should Nicholas
go about the world, forbidding people’s banns?’
‘I don’t think you quite understand,’ said Kate, gently.
‘Well I am sure, Kate, my dear, you’re very polite!’ replied Mrs
Nickleby. ‘I have been married myself I hope, and I have seen other
people married. Not understand, indeed!’
‘I know you have had great experience, dear mama,’ said Kate; ‘I mean
that perhaps you don’t quite understand all the circumstances in this
instance. We have stated them awkwardly, I dare say.’
‘That I dare say you have,’ retorted her mother, briskly. ‘That’s very
likely. I am not to be held accountable for that; though, at the same
time, as the circumstances speak for themselves, I shall take the
liberty, my love, of saying that I do understand them, and perfectly
well too; whatever you and Nicholas may choose to think to the contrary.
Why is such a great fuss made because this Miss Magdalen is going to
marry somebody who is older than herself? Your poor papa was older than
I was, four years and a half older. Jane Dibabs--the Dibabses lived in
the beautiful little thatched white house one story high, covered all
over with ivy and creeping plants, with an exquisite little porch with
twining honysuckles and all sorts of things: where the earwigs used
to fall into one’s tea on a summer evening, and always fell upon their
backs and kicked dreadfully, and where the frogs used to get into the