Nicholas Nickleby
‘To know us,’ said the first gentleman. ‘The loss has been ours, Mrs
Nickleby. Has the loss been ours, Pyke?’
‘It has, Pluck,’ answered the other gentleman.
‘We have regretted it very often, I believe, Pyke?’ said the first
gentleman.
‘Very often, Pluck,’ answered the second.
‘But now,’ said the first gentleman, ‘now we have the happiness we
have pined and languished for. Have we pined and languished for this
happiness, Pyke, or have we not?’
‘You know we have, Pluck,’ said Pyke, reproachfully.
‘You hear him, ma’am?’ said Mr. Pluck, looking round; ‘you hear
the unimpeachable testimony of my friend Pyke--that reminds
me,--formalities, formalities, must not be neglected in civilised
society. Pyke--Mrs. Nickleby.’
Mr. Pyke laid his hand upon his heart, and bowed low.
‘Whether I shall introduce myself with the same formality,’ said Mr
Pluck--‘whether I shall say myself that my name is Pluck, or whether
I shall ask my friend Pyke (who being now regularly introduced, is
competent to the office) to state for me, Mrs. Nickleby, that my name is
Pluck; whether I shall claim your acquaintance on the plain ground of
the strong interest I take in your welfare, or whether I shall make
myself known to you as the friend of Sir Mulberry Hawk--these, Mrs
Nickleby, are considerations which I leave to you to determine.’
‘Any friend of Sir Mulberry Hawk’s requires no better introduction to
me,’ observed Mrs. Nickleby, graciously.
‘It is delightful to hear you say so,’ said Mr. Pluck, drawing a chair
close to Mrs. Nickleby, and sitting himself down. ‘It is refreshing
to know that you hold my excellent friend, Sir Mulberry, in such high
esteem. A word in your ear, Mrs. Nickleby. When Sir Mulberry knows it, he
will be a happy man--I say, Mrs. Nickleby, a happy man. Pyke, be seated.’
‘MY good opinion,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, and the poor lady exulted in the
idea that she was marvellously sly,--‘my good opinion can be of very
little consequence to a gentleman like Sir Mulberry.’
‘Of little consequence!’ exclaimed Mr. Pluck. ‘Pyke, of what consequence
to our friend, Sir Mulberry, is the good opinion of Mrs. Nickleby?’
‘Of what consequence?’ echoed Pyke.
‘Ay,’ repeated Pluck; ‘is it of the greatest consequence?’
‘Of the very greatest consequence,’ replied Pyke.
‘Mrs. Nickleby cannot be ignorant,’ said Mr. Pluck, ‘of the immense
impression which that sweet girl has--’
‘Pluck!’ said his friend, ‘beware!’
‘Pyke is right,’ muttered Mr. Pluck, after a short pause; ‘I was not to
mention it. Pyke is very right. Thank you, Pyke.’
‘Well now, really,’ thought Mrs. Nickleby within herself. ‘Such delicacy
as that, I never saw!’
Mr. Pluck, after feigning to be in a condition of great embarrassment
for some minutes, resumed the conversation by entreating Mrs. Nickleby
to take no heed of what he had inadvertently said--to consider him
imprudent, rash, injudicious. The only stipulation he would make in his
own favour was, that she should give him credit for the best intentions.
‘But when,’ said Mr. Pluck, ‘when I see so much sweetness and beauty on
the one hand, and so much ardour and devotion on the other, I--pardon
me, Pyke, I didn’t intend to resume that theme. Change the subject,
Pyke.’
‘We promised Sir Mulberry and Lord Frederick,’ said Pyke, ‘that we’d
call this morning and inquire whether you took any cold last night.’
‘Not the least in the world last night, sir,’ replied Mrs. Nickleby,
‘with many thanks to his lordship and Sir Mulberry for doing me the
honour to inquire; not the least--which is the more singular, as I
really am very subject to colds, indeed--very subject. I had a cold
once,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, ‘I think it was in the year eighteen hundred
and seventeen; let me see, four and five are nine, and--yes, eighteen
hundred and seventeen, that I thought I never should get rid of;
actually and seriously, that I thought I never should get rid of. I
was only cured at last by a remedy that I don’t know whether you ever
happened to hear of, Mr. Pluck. You have a gallon of water as hot as
you can possibly bear it, with a pound of salt, and sixpen’orth of the
finest bran, and sit with your head in it for twenty minutes every night
just before going to bed; at least, I don’t mean your head--your feet.
It’s a most extraordinary cure--a most extraordinary cure. I used it
for the first time, I recollect, the day after Christmas Day, and by the
middle of April following the cold was gone. It seems quite a miracle
when you come to think of it, for I had it ever since the beginning of
September.’
‘What an afflicting calamity!’ said Mr. Pyke.
‘Perfectly horrid!’ exclaimed Mr. Pluck.
‘But it’s worth the pain of hearing, only to know that Mrs. Nickleby
recovered it, isn’t it, Pluck?’ cried Mr. Pyke.
‘That is the circumstance which gives it such a thrilling interest,’
replied Mr. Pluck.
‘But come,’ said Pyke, as if suddenly recollecting himself; ‘we must
not forget our mission in the pleasure of this interview. We come on a
mission, Mrs. Nickleby.’
‘On a mission,’ exclaimed that good lady, to whose mind a definite
proposal of marriage for Kate at once presented itself in lively
colours.
‘From Sir Mulberry,’ replied Pyke. ‘You must be very dull here.’
‘Rather dull, I confess,’ said Mrs. Nickleby.
‘We bring the compliments of Sir Mulberry Hawk, and a thousand
entreaties that you’ll take a seat in a private box at the play
tonight,’ said Mr. Pluck.
‘Oh dear!’ said Mrs. Nickleby, ‘I never go out at all, never.’
‘And that is the very reason, my dear Mrs. Nickleby, why you should go
out tonight,’ retorted Mr. Pluck. ‘Pyke, entreat Mrs. Nickleby.’
‘Oh, pray do,’ said Pyke.
‘You positively must,’ urged Pluck.
‘You are very kind,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, hesitating; ‘but--’
‘There’s not a but in the case, my dear Mrs. Nickleby,’ remonstrated Mr
Pluck; ‘not such a word in the vocabulary. Your brother-in-law joins us,
Lord Frederick joins us, Sir Mulberry joins us, Pyke joins us--a refusal
is out of the question. Sir Mulberry sends a carriage for you--twenty
minutes before seven to the moment--you’ll not be so cruel as to
disappoint the whole party, Mrs. Nickleby?’
‘You are so very pressing, that I scarcely know what to say,’ replied
the worthy lady.
‘Say nothing; not a word, not a word, my dearest madam,’ urged Mr. Pluck.
‘Mrs. Nickleby,’ said that excellent gentleman, lowering his voice,
‘there is the most trifling, the most excusable breach of confidence
in what I am about to say; and yet if my friend Pyke there overheard
it--such is that man’s delicate sense of honour, Mrs. Nickleby--he’d have
me out before dinner-time.’
Mrs. Nickleby cast an apprehensive glance at the warlike Pyke, who had
walked to the window; and Mr. Pluck, squeezing her hand, went on:
‘Your daughter has made a conquest--a conquest on which I may
congratulate you. Sir Mulberry, my dear ma’am, Sir Mulberry is her
devoted slave. Hem!’
‘Hah!’ cried Mr. Pyke at this juncture, snatching something from the
chimney-piece with a theatrical air. ‘What is this! what do I behold!’
‘What DO you behold, my dear fellow?’ asked Mr. Pluck.
‘It is the face, the countenance, the expression,’ cried Mr. Pyke,
falling into his chair with a miniature in his hand; ‘feebly
portrayed, imperfectly caught, but still THE face, THE countenance, THE
expression.’
‘I recognise it at this distance!’ exclaimed Mr. Pluck in a fit of
enthusiasm. ‘Is it not, my dear madam, the faint similitude of--’
‘It is my daughter’s portrait,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, with great pride. And
so it was. And little Miss La Creevy had brought it home for inspection
only two nights before.
Mr. Pyke no sooner ascertained that he was quite right in his conjecture,
than he launched into the most extravagant encomiums of the divine
original; and in the warmth of his enthusiasm kissed the picture a
thousand times, while Mr. Pluck pressed Mrs. Nickleby’s hand to his heart,
and congratulated her on the possession of such a daughter, with so much
earnestness and affection, that the tears stood, or seemed to stand,
in his eyes. Poor Mrs. Nickleby, who had listened in a state of enviable
complacency at first, became at length quite overpowered by these tokens
of regard for, and attachment to, the family; and even the servant
girl, who had peeped in at the door, remained rooted to the spot in
astonishment at the ecstasies of the two friendly visitors.
By degrees these raptures subsided, and Mrs. Nickleby went on to
entertain her guests with a lament over her fallen fortunes, and a
picturesque account of her old house in the country: comprising a full
description of the different apartments, not forgetting the little
store-room, and a lively recollection of how many steps you went down to
get into the garden, and which way you turned when you came out at the
parlour door, and what capital fixtures there were in the kitchen. This
last reflection naturally conducted her into the wash-house, where she
stumbled upon the brewing utensils, among which she might have wandered
for an hour, if the mere mention of those implements had not, by an
association of ideas, instantly reminded Mr. Pyke that he was ‘amazing
thirsty.’
‘And I’ll tell you what,’ said Mr. Pyke; ‘if you’ll send round to the
public-house for a pot of milk half-and-half, positively and actually
I’ll drink it.’
And positively and actually Mr. Pyke DID drink it, and Mr. Pluck
helped him, while Mrs. Nickleby looked on in divided admiration of the
condescension of the two, and the aptitude with which they accommodated
themselves to the pewter-pot; in explanation of which seeming marvel it
may be here observed, that gentlemen who, like Messrs Pyke and Pluck,
live upon their wits (or not so much, perhaps, upon the presence
of their own wits as upon the absence of wits in other people) are
occasionally reduced to very narrow shifts and straits, and are at such
periods accustomed to regale themselves in a very simple and primitive
manner.
‘At twenty minutes before seven, then,’ said Mr. Pyke, rising, ‘the coach
will be here. One more look--one little look--at that sweet face. Ah!
here it is. Unmoved, unchanged!’ This, by the way, was a very
remarkable circumstance, miniatures being liable to so many changes of
expression--‘Oh, Pluck! Pluck!’
Mr. Pluck made no other reply than kissing Mrs. Nickleby’s hand with a
great show of feeling and attachment; Mr. Pyke having done the same, both
gentlemen hastily withdrew.
Mrs. Nickleby was commonly in the habit of giving herself credit for a
pretty tolerable share of penetration and acuteness, but she had never
felt so satisfied with her own sharp-sightedness as she did that day.
She had found it all out the night before. She had never seen Sir
Mulberry and Kate together--never even heard Sir Mulberry’s name--and
yet hadn’t she said to herself from the very first, that she saw how the
case stood? and what a triumph it was, for there was now no doubt
about it. If these flattering attentions to herself were not sufficient
proofs, Sir Mulberry’s confidential friend had suffered the secret
to escape him in so many words. ‘I am quite in love with that dear Mr
Pluck, I declare I am,’ said Mrs. Nickleby.
There was one great source of uneasiness in the midst of this good
fortune, and that was the having nobody by, to whom she could confide
it. Once or twice she almost resolved to walk straight to Miss La
Creevy’s and tell it all to her. ‘But I don’t know,’ thought Mrs
Nickleby; ‘she is a very worthy person, but I am afraid too much beneath
Sir Mulberry’s station for us to make a companion of. Poor thing!’
Acting upon this grave consideration she rejected the idea of taking the
little portrait painter into her confidence, and contented herself