Nicholas Nickleby
which Ralph displayed to make everything tell against him, and by his
stern unyielding manner, ‘in a measure it was.’
‘What does that mean?’ said Ralph.
‘Why, in a measure means,’ returned Squeers, ‘as it may be, that it
wasn’t all on my account, because you had some old grudge to satisfy,
too.’
‘If I had not had,’ said Ralph, in no way abashed by the reminder, ‘do
you think I should have helped you?’
‘Why no, I don’t suppose you would,’ Squeers replied. ‘I only wanted
that point to be all square and straight between us.’
‘How can it ever be otherwise?’ retorted Ralph. ‘Except that the account
is against me, for I spend money to gratify my hatred, and you pocket
it, and gratify yours at the same time. You are, at least, as avaricious
as you are revengeful. So am I. Which is best off? You, who win money
and revenge, at the same time and by the same process, and who are, at
all events, sure of money, if not of revenge; or I, who am only sure of
spending money in any case, and can but win bare revenge at last?’
As Mr. Squeers could only answer this proposition by shrugs and smiles,
Ralph bade him be silent, and thankful that he was so well off; and
then, fixing his eyes steadily upon him, proceeded to say:
First, that Nicholas had thwarted him in a plan he had formed for the
disposal in marriage of a certain young lady, and had, in the confusion
attendant on her father’s sudden death, secured that lady himself, and
borne her off in triumph.
Secondly, that by some will or settlement--certainly by some instrument
in writing, which must contain the young lady’s name, and could be,
therefore, easily selected from others, if access to the place where it
was deposited were once secured--she was entitled to property which,
if the existence of this deed ever became known to her, would make her
husband (and Ralph represented that Nicholas was certain to marry her) a
rich and prosperous man, and most formidable enemy.
Thirdly, that this deed had been, with others, stolen from one who had
himself obtained or concealed it fraudulently, and who feared to take
any steps for its recovery; and that he (Ralph) knew the thief.
To all this Mr. Squeers listened, with greedy ears that devoured every
syllable, and with his one eye and his mouth wide open: marvelling for
what special reason he was honoured with so much of Ralph’s confidence,
and to what it all tended.
‘Now,’ said Ralph, leaning forward, and placing his hand on Squeers’s
arm, ‘hear the design which I have conceived, and which I must--I say,
must, if I can ripen it--have carried into execution. No advantage can
be reaped from this deed, whatever it is, save by the girl herself, or
her husband; and the possession of this deed by one or other of them
is indispensable to any advantage being gained. THAT I have discovered
beyond the possibility of doubt. I want that deed brought here, that
I may give the man who brings it fifty pounds in gold, and burn it to
ashes before his face.’
Mr. Squeers, after following with his eye the action of Ralph’s hand
towards the fire-place as if he were at that moment consuming the paper,
drew a long breath, and said:
‘Yes; but who’s to bring it?’
‘Nobody, perhaps, for much is to be done before it can be got at,’ said
Ralph. ‘But if anybody--you!’
Mr. Squeers’s first tokens of consternation, and his flat relinquishment
of the task, would have staggered most men, if they had not immediately
occasioned an utter abandonment of the proposition. On Ralph they
produced not the slightest effect. Resuming, when the schoolmaster had
quite talked himself out of breath, as coolly as if he had never been
interrupted, Ralph proceeded to expatiate on such features of the case
as he deemed it most advisable to lay the greatest stress on.
These were, the age, decrepitude, and weakness of Mrs. Sliderskew; the
great improbability of her having any accomplice or even acquaintance:
taking into account her secluded habits, and her long residence in such
a house as Gride’s; the strong reason there was to suppose that the
robbery was not the result of a concerted plan: otherwise she would have
watched an opportunity of carrying off a sum of money; the difficulty
she would be placed in when she began to think on what she had done, and
found herself encumbered with documents of whose nature she was utterly
ignorant; and the comparative ease with which somebody, with a full
knowledge of her position, obtaining access to her, and working on her
fears, if necessary, might worm himself into her confidence and obtain,
under one pretence or another, free possession of the deed. To these
were added such considerations as the constant residence of Mr. Squeers
at a long distance from London, which rendered his association with Mrs
Sliderskew a mere masquerading frolic, in which nobody was likely to
recognise him, either at the time or afterwards; the impossibility of
Ralph’s undertaking the task himself, he being already known to her by
sight; and various comments on the uncommon tact and experience of Mr
Squeers: which would make his overreaching one old woman a mere matter
of child’s play and amusement. In addition to these influences and
persuasions, Ralph drew, with his utmost skill and power, a vivid
picture of the defeat which Nicholas would sustain, should they
succeed, in linking himself to a beggar, where he expected to wed an
heiress--glanced at the immeasurable importance it must be to a man
situated as Squeers, to preserve such a friend as himself--dwelt on a
long train of benefits, conferred since their first acquaintance, when
he had reported favourably of his treatment of a sickly boy who had died
under his hands (and whose death was very convenient to Ralph and his
clients, but this he did NOT say), and finally hinted that the fifty
pounds might be increased to seventy-five, or, in the event of very
great success, even to a hundred.
These arguments at length concluded, Mr. Squeers crossed his legs,
uncrossed them, scratched his head, rubbed his eye, examined the palms
of his hands, and bit his nails, and after exhibiting many other signs
of restlessness and indecision, asked ‘whether one hundred pound was the
highest that Mr. Nickleby could go.’ Being answered in the affirmative,
he became restless again, and, after some thought, and an unsuccessful
inquiry ‘whether he couldn’t go another fifty,’ said he supposed he must
try and do the most he could for a friend: which was always his maxim,
and therefore he undertook the job.
‘But how are you to get at the woman?’ he said; ‘that’s what it is as
puzzles me.’
‘I may not get at her at all,’ replied Ralph, ‘but I’ll try. I have
hunted people in this city, before now, who have been better hid than
she; and I know quarters in which a guinea or two, carefully spent, will
often solve darker riddles than this. Ay, and keep them close too, if
need be! I hear my man ringing at the door. We may as well part. You had
better not come to and fro, but wait till you hear from me.’
‘Good!’ returned Squeers. ‘I say! If you shouldn’t find her out, you’ll
pay expenses at the Saracen, and something for loss of time?’
‘Well,’ said Ralph, testily; ‘yes! You have nothing more to say?’
Squeers shaking his head, Ralph accompanied him to the streetdoor, and
audibly wondering, for the edification of Newman, why it was fastened
as if it were night, let him in and Squeers out, and returned to his own
room.
‘Now!’ he muttered, ‘come what come may, for the present I am firm and
unshaken. Let me but retrieve this one small portion of my loss and
disgrace; let me but defeat him in this one hope, dear to his heart as
I know it must be; let me but do this; and it shall be the first link in
such a chain which I will wind about him, as never man forged yet.’
CHAPTER 57
How Ralph Nickleby’s Auxiliary went about his Work, and how he prospered
with it
It was a dark, wet, gloomy night in autumn, when in an upper room of a
mean house situated in an obscure street, or rather court, near Lambeth,
there sat, all alone, a one-eyed man grotesquely habited, either
for lack of better garments or for purposes of disguise, in a loose
greatcoat, with arms half as long again as his own, and a capacity of
breadth and length which would have admitted of his winding himself
in it, head and all, with the utmost ease, and without any risk of
straining the old and greasy material of which it was composed.
So attired, and in a place so far removed from his usual haunts and
occupations, and so very poor and wretched in its character, perhaps Mrs
Squeers herself would have had some difficulty in recognising her lord:
quickened though her natural sagacity doubtless would have been by the
affectionate yearnings and impulses of a tender wife. But Mrs. Squeers’s
lord it was; and in a tolerably disconsolate mood Mrs. Squeers’s lord
appeared to be, as, helping himself from a black bottle which stood on
the table beside him, he cast round the chamber a look, in which very
slight regard for the objects within view was plainly mingled with some
regretful and impatient recollection of distant scenes and persons.
There were, certainly, no particular attractions, either in the room
over which the glance of Mr. Squeers so discontentedly wandered, or in
the narrow street into which it might have penetrated, if he had thought
fit to approach the window. The attic chamber in which he sat was
bare and mean; the bedstead, and such few other articles of necessary
furniture as it contained, were of the commonest description, in a most
crazy state, and of a most uninviting appearance. The street was muddy,
dirty, and deserted. Having but one outlet, it was traversed by few but
the inhabitants at any time; and the night being one of those on which
most people are glad to be within doors, it now presented no other signs
of life than the dull glimmering of poor candles from the dirty windows,
and few sounds but the pattering of the rain, and occasionally the heavy
closing of some creaking door.
Mr. Squeers continued to look disconsolately about him, and to listen
to these noises in profound silence, broken only by the rustling of his
large coat, as he now and then moved his arm to raise his glass to
his lips. Mr. Squeers continued to do this for some time, until the
increasing gloom warned him to snuff the candle. Seeming to be slightly
roused by this exertion, he raised his eye to the ceiling, and fixing it
upon some uncouth and fantastic figures, traced upon it by the wet and
damp which had penetrated through the roof, broke into the following
soliloquy:
‘Well, this is a pretty go, is this here! An uncommon pretty go! Here
have I been, a matter of how many weeks--hard upon six--a follering up
this here blessed old dowager petty larcenerer,’--Mr. Squeers delivered
himself of this epithet with great difficulty and effort,--‘and
Dotheboys Hall a-running itself regularly to seed the while! That’s the
worst of ever being in with a owdacious chap like that old Nickleby. You
never know when he’s done with you, and if you’re in for a penny, you’re
in for a pound.’
This remark, perhaps, reminded Mr. Squeers that he was in for a hundred
pound at any rate. His countenance relaxed, and he raised his glass to
his mouth with an air of greater enjoyment of its contents than he had
before evinced.
‘I never see,’ soliloquised Mr. Squeers in continuation, ‘I never see
nor come across such a file as that old Nickleby. Never! He’s out of
everybody’s depth, he is. He’s what you may call a rasper, is Nickleby.
To see how sly and cunning he grubbed on, day after day, a-worming and
plodding and tracing and turning and twining of hisself about, till he
found out where this precious Mrs. Peg was hid, and cleared the ground