Nicholas Nickleby
taken these lodgings for?’
‘Only from week to week,’ replied Miss La Creevy. ‘Mrs. Nickleby paid the
first week in advance.’
‘Then you had better get them out at the end of it,’ said Ralph.
‘They can’t do better than go back to the country, ma’am; they are in
everybody’s way here.’
‘Certainly,’ said Miss La Creevy, rubbing her hands, ‘if Mrs. Nickleby
took the apartments without the means of paying for them, it was very
unbecoming a lady.’
‘Of course it was, ma’am,’ said Ralph.
‘And naturally,’ continued Miss La Creevy, ‘I who am, AT
PRESENT--hem--an unprotected female, cannot afford to lose by the
apartments.’
‘Of course you can’t, ma’am,’ replied Ralph.
‘Though at the same time,’ added Miss La Creevy, who was plainly
wavering between her good-nature and her interest, ‘I have nothing
whatever to say against the lady, who is extremely pleasant and affable,
though, poor thing, she seems terribly low in her spirits; nor against
the young people either, for nicer, or better-behaved young people
cannot be.’
‘Very well, ma’am,’ said Ralph, turning to the door, for these encomiums
on poverty irritated him; ‘I have done my duty, and perhaps more than I
ought: of course nobody will thank me for saying what I have.’
‘I am sure I am very much obliged to you at least, sir,’ said Miss La
Creevy in a gracious manner. ‘Would you do me the favour to look at a
few specimens of my portrait painting?’
‘You’re very good, ma’am,’ said Mr. Nickleby, making off with great
speed; ‘but as I have a visit to pay upstairs, and my time is precious,
I really can’t.’
‘At any other time when you are passing, I shall be most happy,’ said
Miss La Creevy. ‘Perhaps you will have the kindness to take a card of
terms with you? Thank you--good-morning!’
‘Good-morning, ma’am,’ said Ralph, shutting the door abruptly after him
to prevent any further conversation. ‘Now for my sister-in-law. Bah!’
Climbing up another perpendicular flight, composed with great mechanical
ingenuity of nothing but corner stairs, Mr. Ralph Nickleby stopped to
take breath on the landing, when he was overtaken by the handmaid, whom
the politeness of Miss La Creevy had dispatched to announce him, and
who had apparently been making a variety of unsuccessful attempts, since
their last interview, to wipe her dirty face clean, upon an apron much
dirtier.
‘What name?’ said the girl.
‘Nickleby,’ replied Ralph.
‘Oh! Mrs. Nickleby,’ said the girl, throwing open the door, ‘here’s Mr
Nickleby.’
A lady in deep mourning rose as Mr. Ralph Nickleby entered, but appeared
incapable of advancing to meet him, and leant upon the arm of a slight
but very beautiful girl of about seventeen, who had been sitting by her.
A youth, who appeared a year or two older, stepped forward and saluted
Ralph as his uncle.
‘Oh,’ growled Ralph, with an ill-favoured frown, ‘you are Nicholas, I
suppose?’
‘That is my name, sir,’ replied the youth.
‘Put my hat down,’ said Ralph, imperiously. ‘Well, ma’am, how do you do?
You must bear up against sorrow, ma’am; I always do.’
‘Mine was no common loss!’ said Mrs. Nickleby, applying her handkerchief
to her eyes.
‘It was no UNcommon loss, ma’am,’ returned Ralph, as he coolly
unbuttoned his spencer. ‘Husbands die every day, ma’am, and wives too.’
‘And brothers also, sir,’ said Nicholas, with a glance of indignation.
‘Yes, sir, and puppies, and pug-dogs likewise,’ replied his uncle,
taking a chair. ‘You didn’t mention in your letter what my brother’s
complaint was, ma’am.’
‘The doctors could attribute it to no particular disease,’ said Mrs
Nickleby; shedding tears. ‘We have too much reason to fear that he died
of a broken heart.’
‘Pooh!’ said Ralph, ‘there’s no such thing. I can understand a man’s
dying of a broken neck, or suffering from a broken arm, or a broken
head, or a broken leg, or a broken nose; but a broken heart!--nonsense,
it’s the cant of the day. If a man can’t pay his debts, he dies of a
broken heart, and his widow’s a martyr.’
‘Some people, I believe, have no hearts to break,’ observed Nicholas,
quietly.
‘How old is this boy, for God’s sake?’ inquired Ralph, wheeling back his
chair, and surveying his nephew from head to foot with intense scorn.
‘Nicholas is very nearly nineteen,’ replied the widow.
‘Nineteen, eh!’ said Ralph; ‘and what do you mean to do for your bread,
sir?’
‘Not to live upon my mother,’ replied Nicholas, his heart swelling as he
spoke.
‘You’d have little enough to live upon, if you did,’ retorted the uncle,
eyeing him contemptuously.
‘Whatever it be,’ said Nicholas, flushed with anger, ‘I shall not look
to you to make it more.’
‘Nicholas, my dear, recollect yourself,’ remonstrated Mrs. Nickleby.
‘Dear Nicholas, pray,’ urged the young lady.
‘Hold your tongue, sir,’ said Ralph. ‘Upon my word! Fine beginnings, Mrs
Nickleby--fine beginnings!’
Mrs. Nickleby made no other reply than entreating Nicholas by a gesture
to keep silent; and the uncle and nephew looked at each other for
some seconds without speaking. The face of the old man was stern,
hard-featured, and forbidding; that of the young one, open, handsome,
and ingenuous. The old man’s eye was keen with the twinklings of avarice
and cunning; the young man’s bright with the light of intelligence and
spirit. His figure was somewhat slight, but manly and well formed; and,
apart from all the grace of youth and comeliness, there was an emanation
from the warm young heart in his look and bearing which kept the old man
down.
However striking such a contrast as this may be to lookers-on, none ever
feel it with half the keenness or acuteness of perfection with which it
strikes to the very soul of him whose inferiority it marks. It galled
Ralph to the heart’s core, and he hated Nicholas from that hour.
The mutual inspection was at length brought to a close by Ralph
withdrawing his eyes, with a great show of disdain, and calling Nicholas
‘a boy.’ This word is much used as a term of reproach by elderly
gentlemen towards their juniors: probably with the view of deluding
society into the belief that if they could be young again, they wouldn’t
on any account.
‘Well, ma’am,’ said Ralph, impatiently, ‘the creditors have
administered, you tell me, and there’s nothing left for you?’
‘Nothing,’ replied Mrs. Nickleby.
‘And you spent what little money you had, in coming all the way to
London, to see what I could do for you?’ pursued Ralph.
‘I hoped,’ faltered Mrs. Nickleby, ‘that you might have an opportunity of
doing something for your brother’s children. It was his dying wish that
I should appeal to you in their behalf.’
‘I don’t know how it is,’ muttered Ralph, walking up and down the room,
‘but whenever a man dies without any property of his own, he always
seems to think he has a right to dispose of other people’s. What is your
daughter fit for, ma’am?’
‘Kate has been well educated,’ sobbed Mrs. Nickleby. ‘Tell your uncle, my
dear, how far you went in French and extras.’
The poor girl was about to murmur something, when her uncle stopped her,
very unceremoniously.
‘We must try and get you apprenticed at some boarding-school,’ said
Ralph. ‘You have not been brought up too delicately for that, I hope?’
‘No, indeed, uncle,’ replied the weeping girl. ‘I will try to do
anything that will gain me a home and bread.’
‘Well, well,’ said Ralph, a little softened, either by his niece’s
beauty or her distress (stretch a point, and say the latter). ‘You must
try it, and if the life is too hard, perhaps dressmaking or tambour-work
will come lighter. Have YOU ever done anything, sir?’ (turning to his
nephew.)
‘No,’ replied Nicholas, bluntly.
‘No, I thought not!’ said Ralph. ‘This is the way my brother brought up
his children, ma’am.’
‘Nicholas has not long completed such education as his poor father could
give him,’ rejoined Mrs. Nickleby, ‘and he was thinking of--’
‘Of making something of him someday,’ said Ralph. ‘The old story; always
thinking, and never doing. If my brother had been a man of activity
and prudence, he might have left you a rich woman, ma’am: and if he had
turned his son into the world, as my father turned me, when I wasn’t as
old as that boy by a year and a half, he would have been in a situation
to help you, instead of being a burden upon you, and increasing your
distress. My brother was a thoughtless, inconsiderate man, Mrs. Nickleby,
and nobody, I am sure, can have better reason to feel that, than you.’
This appeal set the widow upon thinking that perhaps she might have made
a more successful venture with her one thousand pounds, and then she
began to reflect what a comfortable sum it would have been just then;
which dismal thoughts made her tears flow faster, and in the excess of
these griefs she (being a well-meaning woman enough, but weak withal)
fell first to deploring her hard fate, and then to remarking, with many
sobs, that to be sure she had been a slave to poor Nicholas, and had
often told him she might have married better (as indeed she had, very
often), and that she never knew in his lifetime how the money went, but
that if he had confided in her they might all have been better off that
day; with other bitter recollections common to most married ladies,
either during their coverture, or afterwards, or at both periods. Mrs
Nickleby concluded by lamenting that the dear departed had never deigned
to profit by her advice, save on one occasion; which was a strictly
veracious statement, inasmuch as he had only acted upon it once, and had
ruined himself in consequence.
Mr. Ralph Nickleby heard all this with a half-smile; and when the widow
had finished, quietly took up the subject where it had been left before
the above outbreak.
‘Are you willing to work, sir?’ he inquired, frowning on his nephew.
‘Of course I am,’ replied Nicholas haughtily.
‘Then see here, sir,’ said his uncle. ‘This caught my eye this morning,
and you may thank your stars for it.’
With this exordium, Mr. Ralph Nickleby took a newspaper from his
pocket, and after unfolding it, and looking for a short time among the
advertisements, read as follows:
‘“EDUCATION.--At Mr. Wackford Squeers’s Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the
delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, Youth
are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided
with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead,
mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of
the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic,
fortification, and every other branch of classical literature.
Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet
unparalleled. Mr. Squeers is in town, and attends daily, from one till
four, at the Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill. N.B. An able assistant wanted.
Annual salary 5 pounds. A Master of Arts would be preferred.”
‘There!’ said Ralph, folding the paper again. ‘Let him get that
situation, and his fortune is made.’
‘But he is not a Master of Arts,’ said Mrs. Nickleby.
‘That,’ replied Ralph, ‘that, I think, can be got over.’
‘But the salary is so small, and it is such a long way off, uncle!’
faltered Kate.
‘Hush, Kate my dear,’ interposed Mrs. Nickleby; ‘your uncle must know
best.’
‘I say,’ repeated Ralph, tartly, ‘let him get that situation, and his
fortune is made. If he don’t like that, let him get one for himself.
Without friends, money, recommendation, or knowledge of business of any
kind, let him find honest employment in London, which will keep him in
shoe leather, and I’ll give him a thousand pounds. At least,’ said Mr
Ralph Nickleby, checking himself, ‘I would if I had it.’
‘Poor fellow!’ said the young lady. ‘Oh! uncle, must we be separated so
soon!’