Nicholas Nickleby
‘Unhand me, sir, this instant,’ cried Kate.
‘Not for the world,’ rejoined Sir Mulberry. Thus speaking, he leaned
over, as if to replace her in her chair; but the young lady, making a
violent effort to disengage herself, he lost his balance, and measured
his length upon the ground. As Kate sprung forward to leave the room, Mr
Ralph Nickleby appeared in the doorway, and confronted her.
‘What is this?’ said Ralph.
‘It is this, sir,’ replied Kate, violently agitated: ‘that beneath the
roof where I, a helpless girl, your dead brother’s child, should most
have found protection, I have been exposed to insult which should make
you shrink to look upon me. Let me pass you.’
Ralph DID shrink, as the indignant girl fixed her kindling eye upon him;
but he did not comply with her injunction, nevertheless: for he led her
to a distant seat, and returning, and approaching Sir Mulberry Hawk, who
had by this time risen, motioned towards the door.
‘Your way lies there, sir,’ said Ralph, in a suppressed voice, that some
devil might have owned with pride.
‘What do you mean by that?’ demanded his friend, fiercely.
The swoln veins stood out like sinews on Ralph’s wrinkled forehead, and
the nerves about his mouth worked as though some unendurable emotion
wrung them; but he smiled disdainfully, and again pointed to the door.
‘Do you know me, you old madman?’ asked Sir Mulberry.
‘Well,’ said Ralph. The fashionable vagabond for the moment quite
quailed under the steady look of the older sinner, and walked towards
the door, muttering as he went.
‘You wanted the lord, did you?’ he said, stopping short when he reached
the door, as if a new light had broken in upon him, and confronting
Ralph again. ‘Damme, I was in the way, was I?’
Ralph smiled again, but made no answer.
‘Who brought him to you first?’ pursued Sir Mulberry; ‘and how, without
me, could you ever have wound him in your net as you have?’
‘The net is a large one, and rather full,’ said Ralph. ‘Take care that
it chokes nobody in the meshes.’
‘You would sell your flesh and blood for money; yourself, if you have
not already made a bargain with the devil,’ retorted the other. ‘Do you
mean to tell me that your pretty niece was not brought here as a decoy
for the drunken boy downstairs?’
Although this hurried dialogue was carried on in a suppressed tone on
both sides, Ralph looked involuntarily round to ascertain that Kate had
not moved her position so as to be within hearing. His adversary saw the
advantage he had gained, and followed it up.
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ he asked again, ‘that it is not so? Do you
mean to say that if he had found his way up here instead of me, you
wouldn’t have been a little more blind, and a little more deaf, and a
little less flourishing, than you have been? Come, Nickleby, answer me
that.’
‘I tell you this,’ replied Ralph, ‘that if I brought her here, as a
matter of business--’
‘Ay, that’s the word,’ interposed Sir Mulberry, with a laugh. ‘You’re
coming to yourself again now.’
‘--As a matter of business,’ pursued Ralph, speaking slowly and firmly,
as a man who has made up his mind to say no more, ‘because I thought she
might make some impression on the silly youth you have taken in hand
and are lending good help to ruin, I knew--knowing him--that it would be
long before he outraged her girl’s feelings, and that unless he offended
by mere puppyism and emptiness, he would, with a little management,
respect the sex and conduct even of his usurer’s niece. But if I thought
to draw him on more gently by this device, I did not think of subjecting
the girl to the licentiousness and brutality of so old a hand as you.
And now we understand each other.’
‘Especially as there was nothing to be got by it--eh?’ sneered Sir
Mulberry.
‘Exactly so,’ said Ralph. He had turned away, and looked over his
shoulder to make this last reply. The eyes of the two worthies met,
with an expression as if each rascal felt that there was no disguising
himself from the other; and Sir Mulberry Hawk shrugged his shoulders and
walked slowly out.
His friend closed the door, and looked restlessly towards the spot where
his niece still remained in the attitude in which he had left her. She
had flung herself heavily upon the couch, and with her head drooping
over the cushion, and her face hidden in her hands, seemed to be still
weeping in an agony of shame and grief.
Ralph would have walked into any poverty-stricken debtor’s house, and
pointed him out to a bailiff, though in attendance upon a young child’s
death-bed, without the smallest concern, because it would have been a
matter quite in the ordinary course of business, and the man would have
been an offender against his only code of morality. But, here was a
young girl, who had done no wrong save that of coming into the world
alive; who had patiently yielded to all his wishes; who had tried hard
to please him--above all, who didn’t owe him money--and he felt awkward
and nervous.
Ralph took a chair at some distance; then, another chair a little
nearer; then, moved a little nearer still; then, nearer again, and
finally sat himself on the same sofa, and laid his hand on Kate’s arm.
‘Hush, my dear!’ he said, as she drew it back, and her sobs burst out
afresh. ‘Hush, hush! Don’t mind it, now; don’t think of it.’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake, let me go home,’ cried Kate. ‘Let me leave this
house, and go home.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Ralph. ‘You shall. But you must dry your eyes first,
and compose yourself. Let me raise your head. There--there.’
‘Oh, uncle!’ exclaimed Kate, clasping her hands. ‘What have I done--what
have I done--that you should subject me to this? If I had wronged you in
thought, or word, or deed, it would have been most cruel to me, and the
memory of one you must have loved in some old time; but--’
‘Only listen to me for a moment,’ interrupted Ralph, seriously alarmed
by the violence of her emotions. ‘I didn’t know it would be so; it was
impossible for me to foresee it. I did all I could.--Come, let us walk
about. You are faint with the closeness of the room, and the heat of
these lamps. You will be better now, if you make the slightest effort.’
‘I will do anything,’ replied Kate, ‘if you will only send me home.’
‘Well, well, I will,’ said Ralph; ‘but you must get back your own looks;
for those you have, will frighten them, and nobody must know of this but
you and I. Now let us walk the other way. There. You look better even
now.’
With such encouragements as these, Ralph Nickleby walked to and fro,
with his niece leaning on his arm; actually trembling beneath her touch.
In the same manner, when he judged it prudent to allow her to depart, he
supported her downstairs, after adjusting her shawl and performing such
little offices, most probably for the first time in his life. Across
the hall, and down the steps, Ralph led her too; nor did he withdraw his
hand until she was seated in the coach.
As the door of the vehicle was roughly closed, a comb fell from Kate’s
hair, close at her uncle’s feet; and as he picked it up, and returned it
into her hand, the light from a neighbouring lamp shone upon her face.
The lock of hair that had escaped and curled loosely over her brow, the
traces of tears yet scarcely dry, the flushed cheek, the look of sorrow,
all fired some dormant train of recollection in the old man’s breast;
and the face of his dead brother seemed present before him, with the
very look it bore on some occasion of boyish grief, of which every
minutest circumstance flashed upon his mind, with the distinctness of a
scene of yesterday.
Ralph Nickleby, who was proof against all appeals of blood
and kindred--who was steeled against every tale of sorrow and
distress--staggered while he looked, and went back into his house, as a
man who had seen a spirit from some world beyond the grave.
CHAPTER 20
Wherein Nicholas at length encounters his Uncle, to whom he expresses
his Sentiments with much Candour. His Resolution.
Little Miss La Creevy trotted briskly through divers streets at the
west end of the town, early on Monday morning--the day after the
dinner--charged with the important commission of acquainting Madame
Mantalini that Miss Nickleby was too unwell to attend that day, but
hoped to be enabled to resume her duties on the morrow. And as Miss La
Creevy walked along, revolving in her mind various genteel forms and
elegant turns of expression, with a view to the selection of the very
best in which to couch her communication, she cogitated a good deal upon
the probable causes of her young friend’s indisposition.
‘I don’t know what to make of it,’ said Miss La Creevy. ‘Her eyes were
decidedly red last night. She said she had a headache; headaches don’t
occasion red eyes. She must have been crying.’
Arriving at this conclusion, which, indeed, she had established to her
perfect satisfaction on the previous evening, Miss La Creevy went on
to consider--as she had done nearly all night--what new cause of
unhappiness her young friend could possibly have had.
‘I can’t think of anything,’ said the little portrait painter. ‘Nothing
at all, unless it was the behaviour of that old bear. Cross to her, I
suppose? Unpleasant brute!’
Relieved by this expression of opinion, albeit it was vented upon empty
air, Miss La Creevy trotted on to Madame Mantalini’s; and being informed
that the governing power was not yet out of bed, requested an interview
with the second in command; whereupon Miss Knag appeared.
‘So far as I am concerned,’ said Miss Knag, when the message had been
delivered, with many ornaments of speech; ‘I could spare Miss Nickleby
for evermore.’
‘Oh, indeed, ma’am!’ rejoined Miss La Creevy, highly offended. ‘But,
you see, you are not mistress of the business, and therefore it’s of no
great consequence.’
‘Very good, ma’am,’ said Miss Knag. ‘Have you any further commands for
me?’
‘No, I have not, ma’am,’ rejoined Miss La Creevy.
‘Then good-morning, ma’am,’ said Miss Knag.
‘Good-morning to you, ma’am; and many obligations for your extreme
politeness and good breeding,’ rejoined Miss La Creevy.
Thus terminating the interview, during which both ladies had trembled
very much, and been marvellously polite--certain indications that they
were within an inch of a very desperate quarrel--Miss La Creevy bounced
out of the room, and into the street.
‘I wonder who that is,’ said the queer little soul. ‘A nice person
to know, I should think! I wish I had the painting of her: I’D do her
justice.’ So, feeling quite satisfied that she had said a very cutting
thing at Miss Knag’s expense, Miss La Creevy had a hearty laugh, and
went home to breakfast in great good humour.
Here was one of the advantages of having lived alone so long! The little
bustling, active, cheerful creature existed entirely within herself,
talked to herself, made a confidante of herself, was as sarcastic as she
could be, on people who offended her, by herself; pleased herself, and
did no harm. If she indulged in scandal, nobody’s reputation suffered;
and if she enjoyed a little bit of revenge, no living soul was one atom
the worse. One of the many to whom, from straitened circumstances, a
consequent inability to form the associations they would wish, and a
disinclination to mix with the society they could obtain, London is
as complete a solitude as the plains of Syria, the humble artist had
pursued her lonely, but contented way for many years; and, until the
peculiar misfortunes of the Nickleby family attracted her attention,
had made no friends, though brimful of the friendliest feelings to all
mankind. There are many warm hearts in the same solitary guise as poor
little Miss La Creevy’s.
However, that’s neither here nor there, just now. She went home to