Nicholas Nickleby
known it, if they hadn’t charged us a shilling an hour extra for having
it open, which it seems is the law, or was then, and a most shameful law
it appears to be--I don’t understand the subject, but I should say the
Corn Laws could be nothing to THAT act of Parliament.’
Having pretty well run herself out by this time, Mrs. Nickleby stopped as
suddenly as she had started off; and repeated that Kate was quite well.
‘Indeed,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, ‘I don’t think she ever was better, since
she had the hooping-cough, scarlet-fever, and measles, all at the same
time, and that’s the fact.’
‘Is that letter for me?’ growled Ralph, pointing to the little packet
Mrs. Nickleby held in her hand.
‘For you, brother-in-law,’ replied Mrs. Nickleby, ‘and I walked all the
way up here on purpose to give it you.’
‘All the way up here!’ cried Sir Mulberry, seizing upon the chance
of discovering where Mrs. Nickleby had come from. ‘What a confounded
distance! How far do you call it now?’
‘How far do I call it?’ said Mrs. Nickleby. ‘Let me see. It’s just a mile
from our door to the Old Bailey.’
‘No, no. Not so much as that,’ urged Sir Mulberry.
‘Oh! It is indeed,’ said Mrs. Nickleby. ‘I appeal to his lordship.’
‘I should decidedly say it was a mile,’ remarked Lord Frederick, with a
solemn aspect.
‘It must be; it can’t be a yard less,’ said Mrs. Nickleby. ‘All down
Newgate Street, all down Cheapside, all up Lombard Street, down
Gracechurch Street, and along Thames Street, as far as Spigwiffin’s
Wharf. Oh! It’s a mile.’
‘Yes, on second thoughts I should say it was,’ replied Sir Mulberry.
‘But you don’t surely mean to walk all the way back?’
‘Oh, no,’ rejoined Mrs. Nickleby. ‘I shall go back in an omnibus. I
didn’t travel about in omnibuses, when my poor dear Nicholas was alive,
brother-in-law. But as it is, you know--’
‘Yes, yes,’ replied Ralph impatiently, ‘and you had better get back
before dark.’
‘Thank you, brother-in-law, so I had,’ returned Mrs. Nickleby. ‘I think I
had better say goodbye, at once.’
‘Not stop and--rest?’ said Ralph, who seldom offered refreshments unless
something was to be got by it.
‘Oh dear me no,’ returned Mrs. Nickleby, glancing at the dial.
‘Lord Frederick,’ said Sir Mulberry, ‘we are going Mrs. Nickleby’s way.
We’ll see her safe to the omnibus?’
‘By all means. Ye-es.’
‘Oh! I really couldn’t think of it!’ said Mrs. Nickleby.
But Sir Mulberry Hawk and Lord Verisopht were peremptory in their
politeness, and leaving Ralph, who seemed to think, not unwisely, that
he looked less ridiculous as a mere spectator, than he would have done
if he had taken any part in these proceedings, they quitted the house
with Mrs. Nickleby between them; that good lady in a perfect ecstasy
of satisfaction, no less with the attentions shown her by two titled
gentlemen, than with the conviction that Kate might now pick and choose,
at least between two large fortunes, and most unexceptionable husbands.
As she was carried away for the moment by an irresistible train of
thought, all connected with her daughter’s future greatness, Sir
Mulberry Hawk and his friend exchanged glances over the top of the
bonnet which the poor lady so much regretted not having left at home,
and proceeded to dilate with great rapture, but much respect on the
manifold perfections of Miss Nickleby.
‘What a delight, what a comfort, what a happiness, this amiable
creature must be to you,’ said Sir Mulberry, throwing into his voice an
indication of the warmest feeling.
‘She is indeed, sir,’ replied Mrs. Nickleby; ‘she is the
sweetest-tempered, kindest-hearted creature--and so clever!’
‘She looks clayver,’ said Lord Verisopht, with the air of a judge of
cleverness.
‘I assure you she is, my lord,’ returned Mrs. Nickleby. ‘When she was
at school in Devonshire, she was universally allowed to be beyond all
exception the very cleverest girl there, and there were a great many
very clever ones too, and that’s the truth--twenty-five young ladies,
fifty guineas a year without the et-ceteras, both the Miss Dowdles the
most accomplished, elegant, fascinating creatures--Oh dear me!’ said Mrs
Nickleby, ‘I never shall forget what pleasure she used to give me
and her poor dear papa, when she was at that school, never--such a
delightful letter every half-year, telling us that she was the first
pupil in the whole establishment, and had made more progress than
anybody else! I can scarcely bear to think of it even now. The girls
wrote all the letters themselves,’ added Mrs. Nickleby, ‘and the
writing-master touched them up afterwards with a magnifying glass and
a silver pen; at least I think they wrote them, though Kate was never
quite certain about that, because she didn’t know the handwriting of
hers again; but anyway, I know it was a circular which they all copied,
and of course it was a very gratifying thing--very gratifying.’
With similar recollections Mrs. Nickleby beguiled the tediousness of the
way, until they reached the omnibus, which the extreme politeness of
her new friends would not allow them to leave until it actually started,
when they took their hats, as Mrs. Nickleby solemnly assured her hearers
on many subsequent occasions, ‘completely off,’ and kissed their
straw-coloured kid gloves till they were no longer visible.
Mrs. Nickleby leant back in the furthest corner of the conveyance,
and, closing her eyes, resigned herself to a host of most pleasing
meditations. Kate had never said a word about having met either of
these gentlemen; ‘that,’ she thought, ‘argues that she is strongly
prepossessed in favour of one of them.’ Then the question arose, which
one could it be. The lord was the youngest, and his title was certainly
the grandest; still Kate was not the girl to be swayed by such
considerations as these. ‘I will never put any constraint upon her
inclinations,’ said Mrs. Nickleby to herself; ‘but upon my word I
think there’s no comparison between his lordship and Sir Mulberry--Sir
Mulberry is such an attentive gentlemanly creature, so much manner,
such a fine man, and has so much to say for himself. I hope it’s Sir
Mulberry--I think it must be Sir Mulberry!’ And then her thoughts flew
back to her old predictions, and the number of times she had said, that
Kate with no fortune would marry better than other people’s daughters
with thousands; and, as she pictured with the brightness of a mother’s
fancy all the beauty and grace of the poor girl who had struggled so
cheerfully with her new life of hardship and trial, her heart grew too
full, and the tears trickled down her face.
Meanwhile, Ralph walked to and fro in his little back-office, troubled
in mind by what had just occurred. To say that Ralph loved or cared
for--in the most ordinary acceptation of those terms--any one of God’s
creatures, would be the wildest fiction. Still, there had somehow stolen
upon him from time to time a thought of his niece which was tinged
with compassion and pity; breaking through the dull cloud of dislike or
indifference which darkened men and women in his eyes, there was, in her
case, the faintest gleam of light--a most feeble and sickly ray at the
best of times--but there it was, and it showed the poor girl in a better
and purer aspect than any in which he had looked on human nature yet.
‘I wish,’ thought Ralph, ‘I had never done this. And yet it will
keep this boy to me, while there is money to be made. Selling a
girl--throwing her in the way of temptation, and insult, and coarse
speech. Nearly two thousand pounds profit from him already though.
Pshaw! match-making mothers do the same thing every day.’
He sat down, and told the chances, for and against, on his fingers.
‘If I had not put them in the right track today,’ thought Ralph, ‘this
foolish woman would have done so. Well. If her daughter is as true to
herself as she should be from what I have seen, what harm ensues? A
little teasing, a little humbling, a few tears. Yes,’ said Ralph, aloud,
as he locked his iron safe. ‘She must take her chance. She must take her
chance.’
CHAPTER 27
Mrs. Nickleby becomes acquainted with Messrs Pyke and Pluck, whose
Affection and Interest are beyond all Bounds
Mrs. Nickleby had not felt so proud and important for many a day, as
when, on reaching home, she gave herself wholly up to the pleasant
visions which had accompanied her on her way thither. Lady Mulberry
Hawk--that was the prevalent idea. Lady Mulberry Hawk!--On Tuesday last,
at St George’s, Hanover Square, by the Right Reverend the Bishop
of Llandaff, Sir Mulberry Hawk, of Mulberry Castle, North Wales, to
Catherine, only daughter of the late Nicholas Nickleby, Esquire, of
Devonshire. ‘Upon my word!’ cried Mrs. Nicholas Nickleby, ‘it sounds very
well.’
Having dispatched the ceremony, with its attendant festivities, to the
perfect satisfaction of her own mind, the sanguine mother pictured to
her imagination a long train of honours and distinctions which could
not fail to accompany Kate in her new and brilliant sphere. She would be
presented at court, of course. On the anniversary of her birthday, which
was upon the nineteenth of July [‘at ten minutes past three o’clock in
the morning,’ thought Mrs. Nickleby in a parenthesis, ‘for I recollect
asking what o’clock it was’), Sir Mulberry would give a great feast to
all his tenants, and would return them three and a half per cent on the
amount of their last half-year’s rent, as would be fully described and
recorded in the fashionable intelligence, to the immeasurable delight
and admiration of all the readers thereof. Kate’s picture, too, would be
in at least half-a-dozen of the annuals, and on the opposite page would
appear, in delicate type, ‘Lines on contemplating the Portrait of Lady
Mulberry Hawk. By Sir Dingleby Dabber.’ Perhaps some one annual, of more
comprehensive design than its fellows, might even contain a portrait
of the mother of Lady Mulberry Hawk, with lines by the father of Sir
Dingleby Dabber. More unlikely things had come to pass. Less interesting
portraits had appeared. As this thought occurred to the good lady, her
countenance unconsciously assumed that compound expression of simpering
and sleepiness which, being common to all such portraits, is perhaps one
reason why they are always so charming and agreeable.
With such triumphs of aerial architecture did Mrs. Nickleby occupy
the whole evening after her accidental introduction to Ralph’s titled
friends; and dreams, no less prophetic and equally promising, haunted
her sleep that night. She was preparing for her frugal dinner next day,
still occupied with the same ideas--a little softened down perhaps by
sleep and daylight--when the girl who attended her, partly for company,
and partly to assist in the household affairs, rushed into the room in
unwonted agitation, and announced that two gentlemen were waiting in the
passage for permission to walk upstairs.
‘Bless my heart!’ cried Mrs. Nickleby, hastily arranging her cap and
front, ‘if it should be--dear me, standing in the passage all this
time--why don’t you go and ask them to walk up, you stupid thing?’
While the girl was gone on this errand, Mrs. Nickleby hastily swept into
a cupboard all vestiges of eating and drinking; which she had scarcely
done, and seated herself with looks as collected as she could assume,
when two gentlemen, both perfect strangers, presented themselves.
‘How do you DO?’ said one gentleman, laying great stress on the last
word of the inquiry.
‘HOW do you do?’ said the other gentleman, altering the emphasis, as if
to give variety to the salutation.
Mrs. Nickleby curtseyed and smiled, and curtseyed again, and remarked,
rubbing her hands as she did so, that she hadn’t the--really--the honour
to--