Nicholas Nickleby
breakfast, and had scarcely caught the full flavour of her first sip of
tea, when the servant announced a gentleman, whereat Miss La Creevy, at
once imagining a new sitter transfixed by admiration at the street-door
case, was in unspeakable consternation at the presence of the
tea-things.
‘Here, take ‘em away; run with ‘em into the bedroom; anywhere,’ said
Miss La Creevy. ‘Dear, dear; to think that I should be late on this
particular morning, of all others, after being ready for three weeks by
half-past eight o’clock, and not a soul coming near the place!’
‘Don’t let me put you out of the way,’ said a voice Miss La Creevy knew.
‘I told the servant not to mention my name, because I wished to surprise
you.’
‘Mr. Nicholas!’ cried Miss La Creevy, starting in great astonishment.
‘You have not forgotten me, I see,’ replied Nicholas, extending his
hand.
‘Why, I think I should even have known you if I had met you in the
street,’ said Miss La Creevy, with a smile. ‘Hannah, another cup and
saucer. Now, I’ll tell you what, young man; I’ll trouble you not to
repeat the impertinence you were guilty of, on the morning you went
away.’
‘You would not be very angry, would you?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Wouldn’t I!’ said Miss La Creevy. ‘You had better try; that’s all!’
Nicholas, with becoming gallantry, immediately took Miss La Creevy at
her word, who uttered a faint scream and slapped his face; but it was
not a very hard slap, and that’s the truth.
‘I never saw such a rude creature!’ exclaimed Miss La Creevy.
‘You told me to try,’ said Nicholas.
‘Well; but I was speaking ironically,’ rejoined Miss La Creevy.
‘Oh! that’s another thing,’ said Nicholas; ‘you should have told me
that, too.’
‘I dare say you didn’t know, indeed!’ retorted Miss La Creevy. ‘But, now
I look at you again, you seem thinner than when I saw you last, and your
face is haggard and pale. And how come you to have left Yorkshire?’
She stopped here; for there was so much heart in her altered tone and
manner, that Nicholas was quite moved.
‘I need look somewhat changed,’ he said, after a short silence; ‘for
I have undergone some suffering, both of mind and body, since I left
London. I have been very poor, too, and have even suffered from want.’
‘Good Heaven, Mr. Nicholas!’ exclaimed Miss La Creevy, ‘what are you
telling me?’
‘Nothing which need distress you quite so much,’ answered Nicholas, with
a more sprightly air; ‘neither did I come here to bewail my lot, but
on matter more to the purpose. I wish to meet my uncle face to face. I
should tell you that first.’
‘Then all I have to say about that is,’ interposed Miss La Creevy, ‘that
I don’t envy you your taste; and that sitting in the same room with his
very boots, would put me out of humour for a fortnight.’
‘In the main,’ said Nicholas, ‘there may be no great difference of
opinion between you and me, so far; but you will understand, that I
desire to confront him, to justify myself, and to cast his duplicity and
malice in his throat.’
‘That’s quite another matter,’ rejoined Miss La Creevy. ‘Heaven forgive
me; but I shouldn’t cry my eyes quite out of my head, if they choked
him. Well?’
‘To this end, I called upon him this morning,’ said Nicholas. ‘He only
returned to town on Saturday, and I knew nothing of his arrival until
late last night.’
‘And did you see him?’ asked Miss La Creevy.
‘No,’ replied Nicholas. ‘He had gone out.’
‘Hah!’ said Miss La Creevy; ‘on some kind, charitable business, I dare
say.’
‘I have reason to believe,’ pursued Nicholas, ‘from what has been told
me, by a friend of mine who is acquainted with his movements, that he
intends seeing my mother and sister today, and giving them his version
of the occurrences that have befallen me. I will meet him there.’
‘That’s right,’ said Miss La Creevy, rubbing her hands. ‘And yet, I
don’t know,’ she added, ‘there is much to be thought of--others to be
considered.’
‘I have considered others,’ rejoined Nicholas; ‘but as honesty and
honour are both at issue, nothing shall deter me.’
‘You should know best,’ said Miss La Creevy.
‘In this case I hope so,’ answered Nicholas. ‘And all I want you to do
for me, is, to prepare them for my coming. They think me a long way
off, and if I went wholly unexpected, I should frighten them. If you can
spare time to tell them that you have seen me, and that I shall be
with them in a quarter of an hour afterwards, you will do me a great
service.’
‘I wish I could do you, or any of you, a greater,’ said Miss La Creevy;
‘but the power to serve, is as seldom joined with the will, as the will
is with the power, I think.’
Talking on very fast and very much, Miss La Creevy finished her
breakfast with great expedition, put away the tea-caddy and hid the
key under the fender, resumed her bonnet, and, taking Nicholas’s arm,
sallied forth at once to the city. Nicholas left her near the door of
his mother’s house, and promised to return within a quarter of an hour.
It so chanced that Ralph Nickleby, at length seeing fit, for his own
purposes, to communicate the atrocities of which Nicholas had been
guilty, had (instead of first proceeding to another quarter of the town
on business, as Newman Noggs supposed he would) gone straight to his
sister-in-law. Hence, when Miss La Creevy, admitted by a girl who was
cleaning the house, made her way to the sitting-room, she found Mrs
Nickleby and Kate in tears, and Ralph just concluding his statement of
his nephew’s misdemeanours. Kate beckoned her not to retire, and Miss La
Creevy took a seat in silence.
‘You are here already, are you, my gentleman?’ thought the little woman.
‘Then he shall announce himself, and see what effect that has on you.’
‘This is pretty,’ said Ralph, folding up Miss Squeers’s note; ‘very
pretty. I recommend him--against all my previous conviction, for I
knew he would never do any good--to a man with whom, behaving himself
properly, he might have remained, in comfort, for years. What is the
result? Conduct for which he might hold up his hand at the Old Bailey.’
‘I never will believe it,’ said Kate, indignantly; ‘never. It is some
base conspiracy, which carries its own falsehood with it.’
‘My dear,’ said Ralph, ‘you wrong the worthy man. These are not
inventions. The man is assaulted, your brother is not to be found; this
boy, of whom they speak, goes with him--remember, remember.’
‘It is impossible,’ said Kate. ‘Nicholas!--and a thief too! Mama, how
can you sit and hear such statements?’
Poor Mrs. Nickleby, who had, at no time, been remarkable for the
possession of a very clear understanding, and who had been reduced
by the late changes in her affairs to a most complicated state of
perplexity, made no other reply to this earnest remonstrance than
exclaiming from behind a mass of pocket-handkerchief, that she never
could have believed it--thereby most ingeniously leaving her hearers to
suppose that she did believe it.
‘It would be my duty, if he came in my way, to deliver him up to
justice,’ said Ralph, ‘my bounden duty; I should have no other course,
as a man of the world and a man of business, to pursue. And yet,’ said
Ralph, speaking in a very marked manner, and looking furtively, but
fixedly, at Kate, ‘and yet I would not. I would spare the feelings of
his--of his sister. And his mother of course,’ added Ralph, as though by
an afterthought, and with far less emphasis.
Kate very well understood that this was held out as an additional
inducement to her to preserve the strictest silence regarding the events
of the preceding night. She looked involuntarily towards Ralph as he
ceased to speak, but he had turned his eyes another way, and seemed for
the moment quite unconscious of her presence.
‘Everything,’ said Ralph, after a long silence, broken only by Mrs
Nickleby’s sobs, ‘everything combines to prove the truth of this letter,
if indeed there were any possibility of disputing it. Do innocent men
steal away from the sight of honest folks, and skulk in hiding-places,
like outlaws? Do innocent men inveigle nameless vagabonds, and prowl
with them about the country as idle robbers do? Assault, riot, theft,
what do you call these?’
‘A lie!’ cried a voice, as the door was dashed open, and Nicholas came
into the room.
In the first moment of surprise, and possibly of alarm, Ralph rose from
his seat, and fell back a few paces, quite taken off his guard by this
unexpected apparition. In another moment, he stood, fixed and immovable
with folded arms, regarding his nephew with a scowl; while Kate and
Miss La Creevy threw themselves between the two, to prevent the personal
violence which the fierce excitement of Nicholas appeared to threaten.
‘Dear Nicholas,’ cried his sister, clinging to him. ‘Be calm,
consider--’
‘Consider, Kate!’ cried Nicholas, clasping her hand so tight in the
tumult of his anger, that she could scarcely bear the pain. ‘When I
consider all, and think of what has passed, I need be made of iron to
stand before him.’
‘Or bronze,’ said Ralph, quietly; ‘there is not hardihood enough in
flesh and blood to face it out.’
‘Oh dear, dear!’ cried Mrs. Nickleby, ‘that things should have come to
such a pass as this!’
‘Who speaks in a tone, as if I had done wrong, and brought disgrace on
them?’ said Nicholas, looking round.
‘Your mother, sir,’ replied Ralph, motioning towards her.
‘Whose ears have been poisoned by you,’ said Nicholas; ‘by you--who,
under pretence of deserving the thanks she poured upon you, heaped every
insult, wrong, and indignity upon my head. You, who sent me to a den
where sordid cruelty, worthy of yourself, runs wanton, and youthful
misery stalks precocious; where the lightness of childhood shrinks into
the heaviness of age, and its every promise blights, and withers as it
grows. I call Heaven to witness,’ said Nicholas, looking eagerly round,
‘that I have seen all this, and that he knows it.’
‘Refute these calumnies,’ said Kate, ‘and be more patient, so that you
may give them no advantage. Tell us what you really did, and show that
they are untrue.’
‘Of what do they--or of what does he--accuse me?’ said Nicholas.
‘First, of attacking your master, and being within an ace of qualifying
yourself to be tried for murder,’ interposed Ralph. ‘I speak plainly,
young man, bluster as you will.’
‘I interfered,’ said Nicholas, ‘to save a miserable creature from the
vilest cruelty. In so doing, I inflicted such punishment upon a wretch
as he will not readily forget, though far less than he deserved from
me. If the same scene were renewed before me now, I would take the same
part; but I would strike harder and heavier, and brand him with such
marks as he should carry to his grave, go to it when he would.’
‘You hear?’ said Ralph, turning to Mrs. Nickleby. ‘Penitence, this!’
‘Oh dear me!’ cried Mrs. Nickleby, ‘I don’t know what to think, I really
don’t.’
‘Do not speak just now, mama, I entreat you,’ said Kate. ‘Dear Nicholas,
I only tell you, that you may know what wickedness can prompt, but they
accuse you of--a ring is missing, and they dare to say that--’
‘The woman,’ said Nicholas, haughtily, ‘the wife of the fellow from whom
these charges come, dropped--as I suppose--a worthless ring among some
clothes of mine, early in the morning on which I left the house. At
least, I know that she was in the bedroom where they lay, struggling
with an unhappy child, and that I found it when I opened my bundle on
the road. I returned it, at once, by coach, and they have it now.’
‘I knew, I knew,’ said Kate, looking towards her uncle. ‘About this boy,
love, in whose company they say you left?’
‘The boy, a silly, helpless creature, from brutality and hard usage, is
with me now,’ rejoined Nicholas.