Nicholas Nickleby
‘Why, how you colour, child!’ said the lord’s chosen bride.
‘She is not quite so accustomed to her business, as she will be in a
week or two,’ interposed Madame Mantalini with a gracious smile.
‘I am afraid you have been giving her some of your wicked looks, my
lord,’ said the intended.
‘No, no, no,’ replied the old lord, ‘no, no, I’m going to be married,
and lead a new life. Ha, ha, ha! a new life, a new life! ha, ha, ha!’
It was a satisfactory thing to hear that the old gentleman was going to
lead a new life, for it was pretty evident that his old one would not
last him much longer. The mere exertion of protracted chuckling reduced
him to a fearful ebb of coughing and gasping; it was some minutes
before he could find breath to remark that the girl was too pretty for a
milliner.
‘I hope you don’t think good looks a disqualification for the business,
my lord,’ said Madame Mantalini, simpering.
‘Not by any means,’ replied the old lord, ‘or you would have left it
long ago.’
‘You naughty creature,’ said the lively lady, poking the peer with her
parasol; ‘I won’t have you talk so. How dare you?’
This playful inquiry was accompanied with another poke, and another,
and then the old lord caught the parasol, and wouldn’t give it up again,
which induced the other lady to come to the rescue, and some very pretty
sportiveness ensued.
‘You will see that those little alterations are made, Madame Mantalini,’
said the lady. ‘Nay, you bad man, you positively shall go first; I
wouldn’t leave you behind with that pretty girl, not for half a second.
I know you too well. Jane, my dear, let him go first, and we shall be
quite sure of him.’
The old lord, evidently much flattered by this suspicion, bestowed a
grotesque leer upon Kate as he passed; and, receiving another tap with
the parasol for his wickedness, tottered downstairs to the door, where
his sprightly body was hoisted into the carriage by two stout footmen.
‘Foh!’ said Madame Mantalini, ‘how he ever gets into a carriage without
thinking of a hearse, I can’t think. There, take the things away, my
dear, take them away.’
Kate, who had remained during the whole scene with her eyes modestly
fixed upon the ground, was only too happy to avail herself of the
permission to retire, and hasten joyfully downstairs to Miss Knag’s
dominion.
The circumstances of the little kingdom had greatly changed, however,
during the short period of her absence. In place of Miss Knag being
stationed in her accustomed seat, preserving all the dignity and
greatness of Madame Mantalini’s representative, that worthy soul was
reposing on a large box, bathed in tears, while three or four of the
young ladies in close attendance upon her, together with the presence
of hartshorn, vinegar, and other restoratives, would have borne ample
testimony, even without the derangement of the head-dress and front row
of curls, to her having fainted desperately.
‘Bless me!’ said Kate, stepping hastily forward, ‘what is the matter?’
This inquiry produced in Miss Knag violent symptoms of a relapse; and
several young ladies, darting angry looks at Kate, applied more vinegar
and hartshorn, and said it was ‘a shame.’
‘What is a shame?’ demanded Kate. ‘What is the matter? What has
happened? tell me.’
‘Matter!’ cried Miss Knag, coming, all at once, bolt upright, to the
great consternation of the assembled maidens; ‘matter! Fie upon you, you
nasty creature!’
‘Gracious!’ cried Kate, almost paralysed by the violence with which the
adjective had been jerked out from between Miss Knag’s closed teeth;
‘have I offended you?’
‘YOU offended me!’ retorted Miss Knag, ‘YOU! a chit, a child, an upstart
nobody! Oh, indeed! Ha, ha!’
Now, it was evident, as Miss Knag laughed, that something struck her as
being exceedingly funny; and as the young ladies took their tone from
Miss Knag--she being the chief--they all got up a laugh without
a moment’s delay, and nodded their heads a little, and smiled
sarcastically to each other, as much as to say how very good that was!
‘Here she is,’ continued Miss Knag, getting off the box, and introducing
Kate with much ceremony and many low curtseys to the delighted throng;
‘here she is--everybody is talking about her--the belle, ladies--the
beauty, the--oh, you bold-faced thing!’
At this crisis, Miss Knag was unable to repress a virtuous shudder,
which immediately communicated itself to all the young ladies; after
which, Miss Knag laughed, and after that, cried.
‘For fifteen years,’ exclaimed Miss Knag, sobbing in a most affecting
manner, ‘for fifteen years have I been the credit and ornament of this
room and the one upstairs. Thank God,’ said Miss Knag, stamping first
her right foot and then her left with remarkable energy, ‘I have never
in all that time, till now, been exposed to the arts, the vile arts, of
a creature, who disgraces us with all her proceedings, and makes proper
people blush for themselves. But I feel it, I do feel it, although I am
disgusted.’
Miss Knag here relapsed into softness, and the young ladies renewing
their attentions, murmured that she ought to be superior to such things,
and that for their part they despised them, and considered them beneath
their notice; in witness whereof, they called out, more emphatically
than before, that it was a shame, and that they felt so angry, they did,
they hardly knew what to do with themselves.
‘Have I lived to this day to be called a fright!’ cried Miss Knag,
suddenly becoming convulsive, and making an effort to tear her front
off.
‘Oh no, no,’ replied the chorus, ‘pray don’t say so; don’t now!’
‘Have I deserved to be called an elderly person?’ screamed Miss Knag,
wrestling with the supernumeraries.
‘Don’t think of such things, dear,’ answered the chorus.
‘I hate her,’ cried Miss Knag; ‘I detest and hate her. Never let her
speak to me again; never let anybody who is a friend of mine speak to
her; a slut, a hussy, an impudent artful hussy!’ Having denounced the
object of her wrath, in these terms, Miss Knag screamed once, hiccuped
thrice, gurgled in her throat several times, slumbered, shivered, woke,
came to, composed her head-dress, and declared herself quite well again.
Poor Kate had regarded these proceedings, at first, in perfect
bewilderment. She had then turned red and pale by turns, and once
or twice essayed to speak; but, as the true motives of this altered
behaviour developed themselves, she retired a few paces, and looked
calmly on without deigning a reply. Nevertheless, although she walked
proudly to her seat, and turned her back upon the group of little
satellites who clustered round their ruling planet in the remotest
corner of the room, she gave way, in secret, to some such bitter tears
as would have gladdened Miss Knag’s inmost soul, if she could have seen
them fall.
CHAPTER 19
Descriptive of a Dinner at Mr. Ralph Nickleby’s, and of the Manner in
which the Company entertained themselves, before Dinner, at Dinner, and
after Dinner.
The bile and rancour of the worthy Miss Knag undergoing no diminution
during the remainder of the week, but rather augmenting with every
successive hour; and the honest ire of all the young ladies rising, or
seeming to rise, in exact proportion to the good spinster’s indignation,
and both waxing very hot every time Miss Nickleby was called upstairs;
it will be readily imagined that that young lady’s daily life was
none of the most cheerful or enviable kind. She hailed the arrival of
Saturday night, as a prisoner would a few delicious hours’ respite from
slow and wearing torture, and felt that the poor pittance for her first
week’s labour would have been dearly and hardly earned, had its amount
been trebled.
When she joined her mother, as usual, at the street corner, she was not
a little surprised to find her in conversation with Mr. Ralph Nickleby;
but her surprise was soon redoubled, no less by the matter of their
conversation, than by the smoothed and altered manner of Mr. Nickleby
himself.
‘Ah! my dear!’ said Ralph; ‘we were at that moment talking about you.’
‘Indeed!’ replied Kate, shrinking, though she scarce knew why, from her
uncle’s cold glistening eye.
‘That instant,’ said Ralph. ‘I was coming to call for you, making sure
to catch you before you left; but your mother and I have been talking
over family affairs, and the time has slipped away so rapidly--’
‘Well, now, hasn’t it?’ interposed Mrs. Nickleby, quite insensible to the
sarcastic tone of Ralph’s last remark. ‘Upon my word, I couldn’t have
believed it possible, that such a--Kate, my dear, you’re to dine with
your uncle at half-past six o’clock tomorrow.’
Triumphing in having been the first to communicate this extraordinary
intelligence, Mrs. Nickleby nodded and smiled a great many times, to
impress its full magnificence on Kate’s wondering mind, and then flew
off, at an acute angle, to a committee of ways and means.
‘Let me see,’ said the good lady. ‘Your black silk frock will be quite
dress enough, my dear, with that pretty little scarf, and a plain band
in your hair, and a pair of black silk stock--Dear, dear,’ cried Mrs
Nickleby, flying off at another angle, ‘if I had but those unfortunate
amethysts of mine--you recollect them, Kate, my love--how they used to
sparkle, you know--but your papa, your poor dear papa--ah! there
never was anything so cruelly sacrificed as those jewels were, never!’
Overpowered by this agonising thought, Mrs. Nickleby shook her head, in a
melancholy manner, and applied her handkerchief to her eyes.
I don’t want them, mama, indeed,’ said Kate. ‘Forget that you ever had
them.’
‘Lord, Kate, my dear,’ rejoined Mrs. Nickleby, pettishly, ‘how like a
child you talk! Four-and-twenty silver tea-spoons, brother-in-law,
two gravies, four salts, all the amethysts--necklace, brooch, and
ear-rings--all made away with, at the same time, and I saying, almost
on my bended knees, to that poor good soul, “Why don’t you do something,
Nicholas? Why don’t you make some arrangement?” I am sure that anybody
who was about us at that time, will do me the justice to own, that if
I said that once, I said it fifty times a day. Didn’t I, Kate, my dear?
Did I ever lose an opportunity of impressing it on your poor papa?’
‘No, no, mama, never,’ replied Kate. And to do Mrs. Nickleby justice, she
never had lost--and to do married ladies as a body justice, they seldom
do lose--any occasion of inculcating similar golden percepts, whose only
blemish is, the slight degree of vagueness and uncertainty in which they
are usually enveloped.
‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Nickleby, with great fervour, ‘if my advice had been
taken at the beginning--Well, I have always done MY duty, and that’s
some comfort.’
When she had arrived at this reflection, Mrs. Nickleby sighed, rubbed her
hands, cast up her eyes, and finally assumed a look of meek composure;
thus importing that she was a persecuted saint, but that she wouldn’t
trouble her hearers by mentioning a circumstance which must be so
obvious to everybody.
‘Now,’ said Ralph, with a smile, which, in common with all other tokens
of emotion, seemed to skulk under his face, rather than play boldly over
it--‘to return to the point from which we have strayed. I have a little
party of--of--gentlemen with whom I am connected in business just now,
at my house tomorrow; and your mother has promised that you shall
keep house for me. I am not much used to parties; but this is one of
business, and such fooleries are an important part of it sometimes. You
don’t mind obliging me?’
‘Mind!’ cried Mrs. Nickleby. ‘My dear Kate, why--’
‘Pray,’ interrupted Ralph, motioning her to be silent. ‘I spoke to my
niece.’
‘I shall be very glad, of course, uncle,’ replied Kate; ‘but I am afraid