Nicholas Nickleby
for me to work upon. Creeping and crawling and gliding, like a ugly,
old, bright-eyed, stagnation-blooded adder! Ah! He’d have made a good
‘un in our line, but it would have been too limited for him; his genius
would have busted all bonds, and coming over every obstacle, broke down
all before it, till it erected itself into a monneyment of--Well, I’ll
think of the rest, and say it when conwenient.’
Making a halt in his reflections at this place, Mr. Squeers again put his
glass to his lips, and drawing a dirty letter from his pocket, proceeded
to con over its contents with the air of a man who had read it very
often, and now refreshed his memory rather in the absence of better
amusement than for any specific information.
‘The pigs is well,’ said Mr. Squeers, ‘the cows is well, and the boys is
bobbish. Young Sprouter has been a-winking, has he? I’ll wink him when
I get back. “Cobbey would persist in sniffing while he was a-eating his
dinner, and said that the beef was so strong it made him.”--Very good,
Cobbey, we’ll see if we can’t make you sniff a little without beef.
“Pitcher was took with another fever,”--of course he was--“and being
fetched by his friends, died the day after he got home,”--of course he
did, and out of aggravation; it’s part of a deep-laid system. There an’t
another chap in the school but that boy as would have died exactly at
the end of the quarter: taking it out of me to the very last, and then
carrying his spite to the utmost extremity. “The juniorest Palmer said
he wished he was in Heaven.” I really don’t know, I do NOT know what’s
to be done with that young fellow; he’s always a-wishing something
horrid. He said once, he wished he was a donkey, because then he
wouldn’t have a father as didn’t love him! Pretty wicious that for a
child of six!’
Mr. Squeers was so much moved by the contemplation of this hardened
nature in one so young, that he angrily put up the letter, and sought,
in a new train of ideas, a subject of consolation.
‘It’s a long time to have been a-lingering in London,’ he said; ‘and
this is a precious hole to come and live in, even if it has been only
for a week or so. Still, one hundred pound is five boys, and five boys
takes a whole year to pay one hundred pounds, and there’s their keep to
be substracted, besides. There’s nothing lost, neither, by one’s being
here; because the boys’ money comes in just the same as if I was at
home, and Mrs. Squeers she keeps them in order. There’ll be some lost
time to make up, of course. There’ll be an arrear of flogging as’ll have
to be gone through: still, a couple of days makes that all right, and
one don’t mind a little extra work for one hundred pound. It’s pretty
nigh the time to wait upon the old woman. From what she said last night,
I suspect that if I’m to succeed at all, I shall succeed tonight; so
I’ll have half a glass more, to wish myself success, and put myself in
spirits. Mrs. Squeers, my dear, your health!’
Leering with his one eye as if the lady to whom he drank had been
actually present, Mr. Squeers--in his enthusiasm, no doubt--poured out
a full glass, and emptied it; and as the liquor was raw spirits, and he
had applied himself to the same bottle more than once already, it is not
surprising that he found himself, by this time, in an extremely cheerful
state, and quite enough excited for his purpose.
What this purpose was soon appeared; for, after a few turns about the
room to steady himself, he took the bottle under his arm and the glass
in his hand, and blowing out the candle as if he purposed being gone
some time, stole out upon the staircase, and creeping softly to a door
opposite his own, tapped gently at it.
‘But what’s the use of tapping?’ he said, ‘She’ll never hear. I suppose
she isn’t doing anything very particular; and if she is, it don’t much
matter, that I see.’
With this brief preface, Mr. Squeers applied his hand to the latch of the
door, and thrusting his head into a garret far more deplorable than
that he had just left, and seeing that there was nobody there but an old
woman, who was bending over a wretched fire (for although the weather
was still warm, the evening was chilly), walked in, and tapped her on
the shoulder.
‘Well, my Slider,’ said Mr. Squeers, jocularly.
‘Is that you?’ inquired Peg.
‘Ah! it’s me, and me’s the first person singular, nominative case,
agreeing with the verb “it’s”, and governed by Squeers understood, as a
acorn, a hour; but when the h is sounded, the a only is to be used, as
a and, a art, a ighway,’ replied Mr. Squeers, quoting at random from the
grammar. ‘At least, if it isn’t, you don’t know any better, and if it
is, I’ve done it accidentally.’
Delivering this reply in his accustomed tone of voice, in which of
course it was inaudible to Peg, Mr. Squeers drew a stool to the fire, and
placing himself over against her, and the bottle and glass on the floor
between them, roared out again, very loud,
‘Well, my Slider!’
‘I hear you,’ said Peg, receiving him very graciously.
‘I’ve come according to promise,’ roared Squeers.
‘So they used to say in that part of the country I come from,’ observed
Peg, complacently, ‘but I think oil’s better.’
‘Better than what?’ roared Squeers, adding some rather strong language
in an undertone.
‘No,’ said Peg, ‘of course not.’
‘I never saw such a monster as you are!’ muttered Squeers, looking as
amiable as he possibly could the while; for Peg’s eye was upon him,
and she was chuckling fearfully, as though in delight at having made a
choice repartee, ‘Do you see this? This is a bottle.’
‘I see it,’ answered Peg.
‘Well, and do you see THIS?’ bawled Squeers. ‘This is a glass.’ Peg saw
that too.
‘See here, then,’ said Squeers, accompanying his remarks with
appropriate action, ‘I fill the glass from the bottle, and I say “Your
health, Slider,” and empty it; then I rinse it genteelly with a little
drop, which I’m forced to throw into the fire--hallo! we shall have the
chimbley alight next--fill it again, and hand it over to you.’
‘YOUR health,’ said Peg.
‘She understands that, anyways,’ muttered Squeers, watching Mrs
Sliderskew as she dispatched her portion, and choked and gasped in a
most awful manner after so doing. ‘Now then, let’s have a talk. How’s
the rheumatics?’
Mrs. Sliderskew, with much blinking and chuckling, and with looks
expressive of her strong admiration of Mr. Squeers, his person, manners,
and conversation, replied that the rheumatics were better.
‘What’s the reason,’ said Mr. Squeers, deriving fresh facetiousness from
the bottle; ‘what’s the reason of rheumatics? What do they mean? What do
people have’em for--eh?’
Mrs. Sliderskew didn’t know, but suggested that it was possibly because
they couldn’t help it.
‘Measles, rheumatics, hooping-cough, fevers, agers, and lumbagers,’ said
Mr. Squeers, ‘is all philosophy together; that’s what it is. The heavenly
bodies is philosophy, and the earthly bodies is philosophy. If there’s a
screw loose in a heavenly body, that’s philosophy; and if there’s
screw loose in a earthly body, that’s philosophy too; or it may be that
sometimes there’s a little metaphysics in it, but that’s not often.
Philosophy’s the chap for me. If a parent asks a question in the
classical, commercial, or mathematical line, says I, gravely, “Why, sir,
in the first place, are you a philosopher?”--“No, Mr. Squeers,” he says,
“I an’t.” “Then, sir,” says I, “I am sorry for you, for I shan’t be
able to explain it.” Naturally, the parent goes away and wishes he was a
philosopher, and, equally naturally, thinks I’m one.’
Saying this, and a great deal more, with tipsy profundity and a
serio-comic air, and keeping his eye all the time on Mrs. Sliderskew, who
was unable to hear one word, Mr. Squeers concluded by helping himself and
passing the bottle: to which Peg did becoming reverence.
‘That’s the time of day!’ said Mr. Squeers. ‘You look twenty pound ten
better than you did.’
Again Mrs. Sliderskew chuckled, but modesty forbade her assenting
verbally to the compliment.
‘Twenty pound ten better,’ repeated Mr. Squeers, ‘than you did that day
when I first introduced myself. Don’t you know?’
‘Ah!’ said Peg, shaking her head, ‘but you frightened me that day.’
‘Did I?’ said Squeers; ‘well, it was rather a startling thing for a
stranger to come and recommend himself by saying that he knew all about
you, and what your name was, and why you were living so quiet here, and
what you had boned, and who you boned it from, wasn’t it?’
Peg nodded her head in strong assent.
‘But I know everything that happens in that way, you see,’ continued
Squeers. ‘Nothing takes place, of that kind, that I an’t up to
entirely. I’m a sort of a lawyer, Slider, of first-rate standing, and
understanding too; I’m the intimate friend and confidential adwiser
of pretty nigh every man, woman, and child that gets themselves into
difficulties by being too nimble with their fingers, I’m--’
Mr. Squeers’s catalogue of his own merits and accomplishments, which
was partly the result of a concerted plan between himself and Ralph
Nickleby, and flowed, in part, from the black bottle, was here
interrupted by Mrs. Sliderskew.
‘Ha, ha, ha!’ she cried, folding her arms and wagging her head; ‘and so
he wasn’t married after all, wasn’t he. Not married after all?’
‘No,’ replied Squeers, ‘that he wasn’t!’
‘And a young lover come and carried off the bride, eh?’ said Peg.
‘From under his very nose,’ replied Squeers; ‘and I’m told the young
chap cut up rough besides, and broke the winders, and forced him to
swaller his wedding favour which nearly choked him.’
‘Tell me all about it again,’ cried Peg, with a malicious relish of her
old master’s defeat, which made her natural hideousness something quite
fearful; ‘let’s hear it all again, beginning at the beginning now, as
if you’d never told me. Let’s have it every word--now--now--beginning at
the very first, you know, when he went to the house that morning!’
Mr. Squeers, plying Mrs. Sliderskew freely with the liquor, and sustaining
himself under the exertion of speaking so loud by frequent applications
to it himself, complied with this request by describing the discomfiture
of Arthur Gride, with such improvements on the truth as happened to
occur to him, and the ingenious invention and application of which
had been very instrumental in recommending him to her notice in the
beginning of their acquaintance. Mrs. Sliderskew was in an ecstasy of
delight, rolling her head about, drawing up her skinny shoulders, and
wrinkling her cadaverous face into so many and such complicated forms of
ugliness, as awakened the unbounded astonishment and disgust even of Mr
Squeers.
‘He’s a treacherous old goat,’ said Peg, ‘and cozened me with cunning
tricks and lying promises, but never mind. I’m even with him. I’m even
with him.’
‘More than even, Slider,’ returned Squeers; ‘you’d have been even with
him if he’d got married; but with the disappointment besides, you’re
a long way ahead. Out of sight, Slider, quite out of sight. And that
reminds me,’ he added, handing her the glass, ‘if you want me to give
you my opinion of them deeds, and tell you what you’d better keep and
what you’d better burn, why, now’s your time, Slider.’
‘There an’t no hurry for that,’ said Peg, with several knowing looks and
winks.
‘Oh! very well!’ observed Squeers, ‘it don’t matter to me; you asked
me, you know. I shouldn’t charge you nothing, being a friend. You’re the
best judge of course. But you’re a bold woman, Slider.’
‘How do you mean, bold?’ said Peg.
‘Why, I only mean that if it was me, I wouldn’t keep papers as might
hang me, littering about when they might be turned into money--them as
wasn’t useful made away with, and them as was, laid by somewheres, safe;