Nicholas Nickleby
speak. Don’t say anything to me. Don’t think the worse of me for these
tears. You don’t know what I feel today; you can’t, and never will!’
They walked in to dinner arm-in-arm, and sat down side by side.
Never was such a dinner as that, since the world began. There was the
superannuated bank clerk, Tim Linkinwater’s friend; and there was
the chubby old lady, Tim Linkinwater’s sister; and there was so much
attention from Tim Linkinwater’s sister to Miss La Creevy, and
there were so many jokes from the superannuated bank clerk, and Tim
Linkinwater himself was in such tiptop spirits, and little Miss La
Creevy was in such a comical state, that of themselves they would
have composed the pleasantest party conceivable. Then, there was Mrs
Nickleby, so grand and complacent; Madeline and Kate, so blushing and
beautiful; Nicholas and Frank, so devoted and proud; and all four so
silently and tremblingly happy; there was Newman so subdued yet
so overjoyed, and there were the twin brothers so delighted and
interchanging such looks, that the old servant stood transfixed behind
his master’s chair, and felt his eyes grow dim as they wandered round
the table.
When the first novelty of the meeting had worn off, and they began truly
to feel how happy they were, the conversation became more general, and
the harmony and pleasure if possible increased. The brothers were in a
perfect ecstasy; and their insisting on saluting the ladies all
round, before they would permit them to retire, gave occasion to the
superannuated bank clerk to say so many good things, that he quite
outshone himself, and was looked upon as a prodigy of humour.
‘Kate, my dear,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, taking her daughter aside, as soon
as they got upstairs, ‘you don’t really mean to tell me that this is
actually true about Miss La Creevy and Mr. Linkinwater?’
‘Indeed it is, mama.’
‘Why, I never heard such a thing in my life!’ exclaimed Mrs. Nickleby.
‘Mr. Linkinwater is a most excellent creature,’ reasoned Kate, ‘and, for
his age, quite young still.’
‘For HIS age, my dear!’ returned Mrs. Nickleby, ‘yes; nobody says
anything against him, except that I think he is the weakest and most
foolish man I ever knew. It’s HER age I speak of. That he should have
gone and offered himself to a woman who must be--ah, half as old again
as I am--and that she should have dared to accept him! It don’t signify,
Kate; I’m disgusted with her!’
Shaking her head very emphatically indeed, Mrs. Nickleby swept away;
and all the evening, in the midst of the merriment and enjoyment that
ensued, and in which with that exception she freely participated,
conducted herself towards Miss La Creevy in a stately and distant
manner, designed to mark her sense of the impropriety of her
conduct, and to signify her extreme and cutting disapprobation of the
misdemeanour she had so flagrantly committed.
CHAPTER 64
An old Acquaintance is recognised under melancholy Circumstances, and
Dotheboys Hall breaks up for ever
Nicholas was one of those whose joy is incomplete unless it is shared
by the friends of adverse and less fortunate days. Surrounded by every
fascination of love and hope, his warm heart yearned towards plain
John Browdie. He remembered their first meeting with a smile, and their
second with a tear; saw poor Smike once again with the bundle on
his shoulder trudging patiently by his side; and heard the honest
Yorkshireman’s rough words of encouragement as he left them on their
road to London.
Madeline and he sat down, very many times, jointly to produce a letter
which should acquaint John at full length with his altered fortunes,
and assure him of his friendship and gratitude. It so happened, however,
that the letter could never be written. Although they applied themselves
to it with the best intentions in the world, it chanced that they always
fell to talking about something else, and when Nicholas tried it by
himself, he found it impossible to write one-half of what he wished to
say, or to pen anything, indeed, which on reperusal did not appear cold
and unsatisfactory compared with what he had in his mind. At last, after
going on thus from day to day, and reproaching himself more and more,
he resolved (the more readily as Madeline strongly urged him) to make a
hasty trip into Yorkshire, and present himself before Mr. and Mrs. Browdie
without a word of notice.
Thus it was that between seven and eight o’clock one evening, he and
Kate found themselves in the Saracen’s Head booking-office, securing
a place to Greta Bridge by the next morning’s coach. They had to go
westward, to procure some little necessaries for his journey, and, as it
was a fine night, they agreed to walk there, and ride home.
The place they had just been in called up so many recollections, and
Kate had so many anecdotes of Madeline, and Nicholas so many anecdotes
of Frank, and each was so interested in what the other said, and both
were so happy and confiding, and had so much to talk about, that it was
not until they had plunged for a full half-hour into that labyrinth of
streets which lies between Seven Dials and Soho, without emerging into
any large thoroughfare, that Nicholas began to think it just possible
they might have lost their way.
The possibility was soon converted into a certainty; for, on looking
about, and walking first to one end of the street and then to the other,
he could find no landmark he could recognise, and was fain to turn back
again in quest of some place at which he could seek a direction.
It was a by-street, and there was nobody about, or in the few wretched
shops they passed. Making towards a faint gleam of light which streamed
across the pavement from a cellar, Nicholas was about to descend two or
three steps so as to render himself visible to those below and make his
inquiry, when he was arrested by a loud noise of scolding in a woman’s
voice.
‘Oh come away!’ said Kate, ‘they are quarrelling. You’ll be hurt.’
‘Wait one instant, Kate. Let us hear if there’s anything the matter,’
returned her brother. ‘Hush!’
‘You nasty, idle, vicious, good-for-nothing brute,’ cried the woman,
stamping on the ground, ‘why don’t you turn the mangle?’
‘So I am, my life and soul!’ replied the man’s voice. ‘I am always
turning. I am perpetually turning, like a demd old horse in a demnition
mill. My life is one demd horrid grind!’
‘Then why don’t you go and list for a soldier?’ retorted the woman;
‘you’re welcome to.’
‘For a soldier!’ cried the man. ‘For a soldier! Would his joy and
gladness see him in a coarse red coat with a little tail? Would she hear
of his being slapped and beat by drummers demnebly? Would she have him
fire off real guns, and have his hair cut, and his whiskers shaved, and
his eyes turned right and left, and his trousers pipeclayed?’
‘Dear Nicholas,’ whispered Kate, ‘you don’t know who that is. It’s Mr
Mantalini I am confident.’
‘Do make sure! Peep at him while I ask the way,’ said Nicholas. ‘Come
down a step or two. Come!’
Drawing her after him, Nicholas crept down the steps and looked into
a small boarded cellar. There, amidst clothes-baskets and clothes,
stripped up to his shirt-sleeves, but wearing still an old patched
pair of pantaloons of superlative make, a once brilliant waistcoat,
and moustache and whiskers as of yore, but lacking their lustrous
dye--there, endeavouring to mollify the wrath of a buxom female--not
the lawful Madame Mantalini, but the proprietress of the concern--and
grinding meanwhile as if for very life at the mangle, whose creaking
noise, mingled with her shrill tones, appeared almost to deafen
him--there was the graceful, elegant, fascinating, and once dashing
Mantalini.
‘Oh you false traitor!’ cried the lady, threatening personal violence on
Mr. Mantalini’s face.
‘False! Oh dem! Now my soul, my gentle, captivating, bewitching, and
most demnebly enslaving chick-a-biddy, be calm,’ said Mr. Mantalini,
humbly.
‘I won’t!’ screamed the woman. ‘I’ll tear your eyes out!’
‘Oh! What a demd savage lamb!’ cried Mr. Mantalini.
‘You’re never to be trusted,’ screamed the woman; ‘you were out all day
yesterday, and gallivanting somewhere I know. You know you were! Isn’t
it enough that I paid two pound fourteen for you, and took you out of
prison and let you live here like a gentleman, but must you go on like
this: breaking my heart besides?’
‘I will never break its heart, I will be a good boy, and never do so any
more; I will never be naughty again; I beg its little pardon,’ said
Mr. Mantalini, dropping the handle of the mangle, and folding his palms
together; ‘it is all up with its handsome friend! He has gone to the
demnition bow-wows. It will have pity? It will not scratch and claw, but
pet and comfort? Oh, demmit!’
Very little affected, to judge from her action, by this tender appeal,
the lady was on the point of returning some angry reply, when Nicholas,
raising his voice, asked his way to Piccadilly.
Mr. Mantalini turned round, caught sight of Kate, and, without another
word, leapt at one bound into a bed which stood behind the door, and
drew the counterpane over his face: kicking meanwhile convulsively.
‘Demmit,’ he cried, in a suffocating voice, ‘it’s little Nickleby! Shut
the door, put out the candle, turn me up in the bedstead! Oh, dem, dem,
dem!’
The woman looked, first at Nicholas, and then at Mr. Mantalini, as
if uncertain on whom to visit this extraordinary behaviour; but Mr
Mantalini happening by ill-luck to thrust his nose from under the
bedclothes, in his anxiety to ascertain whether the visitors were gone,
she suddenly, and with a dexterity which could only have been acquired
by long practice, flung a pretty heavy clothes-basket at him, with so
good an aim that he kicked more violently than before, though without
venturing to make any effort to disengage his head, which was quite
extinguished. Thinking this a favourable opportunity for departing
before any of the torrent of her wrath discharged itself upon him,
Nicholas hurried Kate off, and left the unfortunate subject of this
unexpected recognition to explain his conduct as he best could.
The next morning he began his journey. It was now cold, winter weather:
forcibly recalling to his mind under what circumstances he had first
travelled that road, and how many vicissitudes and changes he had
since undergone. He was alone inside the greater part of the way, and
sometimes, when he had fallen into a doze, and, rousing himself, looked
out of the window, and recognised some place which he well remembered as
having passed, either on his journey down, or in the long walk back
with poor Smike, he could hardly believe but that all which had since
happened had been a dream, and that they were still plodding wearily on
towards London, with the world before them.
To render these recollections the more vivid, it came on to snow as
night set in; and, passing through Stamford and Grantham, and by the
little alehouse where he had heard the story of the bold Baron of
Grogzwig, everything looked as if he had seen it but yesterday, and
not even a flake of the white crust on the roofs had melted away.
Encouraging the train of ideas which flocked upon him, he could almost
persuade himself that he sat again outside the coach, with Squeers and
the boys; that he heard their voices in the air; and that he felt again,
but with a mingled sensation of pain and pleasure now, that old sinking
of the heart, and longing after home. While he was yet yielding himself
up to these fancies he fell asleep, and, dreaming of Madeline, forgot
them.
He slept at the inn at Greta Bridge on the night of his arrival, and,
rising at a very early hour next morning, walked to the market town, and