Nicholas Nickleby
from London. That part of Devonshire in which Nicholas had been
himself bred was named as the most favourable spot; but this advice was
cautiously coupled with the information, that whoever accompanied
him thither must be prepared for the worst; for every token of rapid
consumption had appeared, and he might never return alive.
The kind brothers, who were acquainted with the poor creature’s sad
history, dispatched old Tim to be present at this consultation. That
same morning, Nicholas was summoned by brother Charles into his private
room, and thus addressed:
‘My dear sir, no time must be lost. This lad shall not die, if such
human means as we can use can save his life; neither shall he die alone,
and in a strange place. Remove him tomorrow morning, see that he has
every comfort that his situation requires, and don’t leave him; don’t
leave him, my dear sir, until you know that there is no longer any
immediate danger. It would be hard, indeed, to part you now. No, no, no!
Tim shall wait upon you tonight, sir; Tim shall wait upon you tonight
with a parting word or two. Brother Ned, my dear fellow, Mr. Nickleby
waits to shake hands and say goodbye; Mr. Nickleby won’t be long gone;
this poor chap will soon get better, very soon get better; and then
he’ll find out some nice homely country-people to leave him with, and
will go backwards and forwards sometimes--backwards and forwards you
know, Ned. And there’s no cause to be downhearted, for he’ll very soon
get better, very soon. Won’t he, won’t he, Ned?’
What Tim Linkinwater said, or what he brought with him that night, needs
not to be told. Next morning Nicholas and his feeble companion began
their journey.
And who but one--and that one he who, but for those who crowded
round him then, had never met a look of kindness, or known a word
of pity--could tell what agony of mind, what blighted thoughts, what
unavailing sorrow, were involved in that sad parting?
‘See,’ cried Nicholas eagerly, as he looked from the coach window, ‘they
are at the corner of the lane still! And now there’s Kate, poor
Kate, whom you said you couldn’t bear to say goodbye to, waving her
handkerchief. Don’t go without one gesture of farewell to Kate!’
‘I cannot make it!’ cried his trembling companion, falling back in his
seat and covering his eyes. ‘Do you see her now? Is she there still?’
‘Yes, yes!’ said Nicholas earnestly. ‘There! She waves her hand again! I
have answered it for you--and now they are out of sight. Do not give way
so bitterly, dear friend, don’t. You will meet them all again.’
He whom he thus encouraged, raised his withered hands and clasped them
fervently together.
‘In heaven. I humbly pray to God in heaven.’
It sounded like the prayer of a broken heart.
CHAPTER 56
Ralph Nickleby, baffled by his Nephew in his late Design, hatches a
Scheme of Retaliation which Accident suggests to him, and takes into his
Counsels a tried Auxiliary
The course which these adventures shape out for themselves, and
imperatively call upon the historian to observe, now demands that they
should revert to the point they attained previously to the commencement
of the last chapter, when Ralph Nickleby and Arthur Gride were left
together in the house where death had so suddenly reared his dark and
heavy banner.
With clenched hands, and teeth ground together so firm and tight that
no locking of the jaws could have fixed and riveted them more securely,
Ralph stood, for some minutes, in the attitude in which he had last
addressed his nephew: breathing heavily, but as rigid and motionless
in other respects as if he had been a brazen statue. After a time, he
began, by slow degrees, as a man rousing himself from heavy slumber, to
relax. For a moment he shook his clasped fist towards the door by which
Nicholas had disappeared; and then thrusting it into his breast, as
if to repress by force even this show of passion, turned round and
confronted the less hardy usurer, who had not yet risen from the ground.
The cowering wretch, who still shook in every limb, and whose few grey
hairs trembled and quivered on his head with abject dismay, tottered to
his feet as he met Ralph’s eye, and, shielding his face with both hands,
protested, while he crept towards the door, that it was no fault of his.
‘Who said it was, man?’ returned Ralph, in a suppressed voice. ‘Who said
it was?’
‘You looked as if you thought I was to blame,’ said Gride, timidly.
‘Pshaw!’ Ralph muttered, forcing a laugh. ‘I blame him for not living an
hour longer. One hour longer would have been long enough. I blame no one
else.’
‘N--n--no one else?’ said Gride.
‘Not for this mischance,’ replied Ralph. ‘I have an old score to clear
with that young fellow who has carried off your mistress; but that has
nothing to do with his blustering just now, for we should soon have been
quit of him, but for this cursed accident.’
There was something so unnatural in the calmness with which Ralph
Nickleby spoke, when coupled with his face, the expression of the
features, to which every nerve and muscle, as it twitched and throbbed
with a spasm whose workings no effort could conceal, gave, every
instant, some new and frightful aspect--there was something so unnatural
and ghastly in the contrast between his harsh, slow, steady voice (only
altered by a certain halting of the breath which made him pause between
almost every word like a drunken man bent upon speaking plainly),
and these evidences of the most intense and violent passion, and the
struggle he made to keep them under; that if the dead body which lay
above had stood, instead of him, before the cowering Gride, it could
scarcely have presented a spectacle which would have terrified him more.
‘The coach,’ said Ralph after a time, during which he had struggled like
some strong man against a fit. ‘We came in a coach. Is it waiting?’
Gride gladly availed himself of the pretext for going to the window to
see. Ralph, keeping his face steadily the other way, tore at his shirt
with the hand which he had thrust into his breast, and muttered in a
hoarse whisper:
‘Ten thousand pounds! He said ten thousand! The precise sum paid in but
yesterday for the two mortgages, and which would have gone out again, at
heavy interest, tomorrow. If that house has failed, and he the first to
bring the news!--Is the coach there?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Gride, startled by the fierce tone of the inquiry.
‘It’s here. Dear, dear, what a fiery man you are!’
‘Come here,’ said Ralph, beckoning to him. ‘We mustn’t make a show of
being disturbed. We’ll go down arm in arm.’
‘But you pinch me black and blue,’ urged Gride.
Ralph let him go impatiently, and descending the stairs with his usual
firm and heavy tread, got into the coach. Arthur Gride followed. After
looking doubtfully at Ralph when the man asked where he was to drive,
and finding that he remained silent, and expressed no wish upon the
subject, Arthur mentioned his own house, and thither they proceeded.
On their way, Ralph sat in the furthest corner with folded arms, and
uttered not a word. With his chin sunk upon his breast, and his downcast
eyes quite hidden by the contraction of his knotted brows, he might
have been asleep for any sign of consciousness he gave until the coach
stopped, when he raised his head, and glancing through the window,
inquired what place that was.
‘My house,’ answered the disconsolate Gride, affected perhaps by its
loneliness. ‘Oh dear! my house.’
‘True,’ said Ralph ‘I have not observed the way we came. I should like a
glass of water. You have that in the house, I suppose?’
‘You shall have a glass of--of anything you like,’ answered Gride, with
a groan. ‘It’s no use knocking, coachman. Ring the bell!’
The man rang, and rang, and rang again; then, knocked until the street
re-echoed with the sounds; then, listened at the keyhole of the door.
Nobody came. The house was silent as the grave.
‘How’s this?’ said Ralph impatiently.
‘Peg is so very deaf,’ answered Gride with a look of anxiety and alarm.
‘Oh dear! Ring again, coachman. She SEES the bell.’
Again the man rang and knocked, and knocked and rang again. Some of the
neighbours threw up their windows, and called across the street to each
other that old Gride’s housekeeper must have dropped down dead. Others
collected round the coach, and gave vent to various surmises; some held
that she had fallen asleep; some, that she had burnt herself to death;
some, that she had got drunk; and one very fat man that she had seen
something to eat which had frightened her so much (not being used to
it) that she had fallen into a fit. This last suggestion particularly
delighted the bystanders, who cheered it rather uproariously, and were,
with some difficulty, deterred from dropping down the area and breaking
open the kitchen door to ascertain the fact. Nor was this all. Rumours
having gone abroad that Arthur was to be married that morning, very
particular inquiries were made after the bride, who was held by the
majority to be disguised in the person of Mr. Ralph Nickleby, which gave
rise to much jocose indignation at the public appearance of a bride in
boots and pantaloons, and called forth a great many hoots and groans.
At length, the two money-lenders obtained shelter in a house next door,
and, being accommodated with a ladder, clambered over the wall of the
back-yard--which was not a high one--and descended in safety on the
other side.
‘I am almost afraid to go in, I declare,’ said Arthur, turning to Ralph
when they were alone. ‘Suppose she should be murdered. Lying with her
brains knocked out by a poker, eh?’
‘Suppose she were,’ said Ralph. ‘I tell you, I wish such things were
more common than they are, and more easily done. You may stare and
shiver. I do!’
He applied himself to a pump in the yard; and, having taken a deep
draught of water and flung a quantity on his head and face, regained his
accustomed manner and led the way into the house: Gride following close
at his heels.
It was the same dark place as ever: every room dismal and silent as it
was wont to be, and every ghostly article of furniture in its customary
place. The iron heart of the grim old clock, undisturbed by all the
noise without, still beat heavily within its dusty case; the tottering
presses slunk from the sight, as usual, in their melancholy corners;
the echoes of footsteps returned the same dreary sound; the long-legged
spider paused in his nimble run, and, scared by the sight of men in that
his dull domain, hung motionless on the wall, counterfeiting death until
they should have passed him by.
From cellar to garret went the two usurers, opening every creaking door
and looking into every deserted room. But no Peg was there. At
last, they sat them down in the apartment which Arthur Gride usually
inhabited, to rest after their search.
‘The hag is out, on some preparation for your wedding festivities, I
suppose,’ said Ralph, preparing to depart. ‘See here! I destroy the
bond; we shall never need it now.’
Gride, who had been peering narrowly about the room, fell, at that
moment, upon his knees before a large chest, and uttered a terrible
yell.
‘How now?’ said Ralph, looking sternly round.
‘Robbed! robbed!’ screamed Arthur Gride.
‘Robbed! of money?’
‘No, no, no. Worse! far worse!’
‘Of what then?’ demanded Ralph.
‘Worse than money, worse than money!’ cried the old man, casting the
papers out of the chest, like some beast tearing up the earth. ‘She had
better have stolen money--all my money--I haven’t much! She had better
have made me a beggar than have done this!’
‘Done what?’ said Ralph. ‘Done what, you devil’s dotard?’
Still Gride made no answer, but tore and scratched among the papers, and
yelled and screeched like a fiend in torment.