Nicholas Nickleby
Hawk, who now began to feel his character, even in the estimation of his
two dependants, involved in the successful reduction of her pride--that
she had no intervals of peace or rest, except at those hours when she
could sit in her solitary room, and weep over the trials of the day--all
these were consequences naturally flowing from the well-laid plans of
Sir Mulberry, and their able execution by the auxiliaries, Pyke and
Pluck.
And thus for a fortnight matters went on. That any but the weakest and
silliest of people could have seen in one interview that Lord Verisopht,
though he was a lord, and Sir Mulberry Hawk, though he was a baronet,
were not persons accustomed to be the best possible companions, and were
certainly not calculated by habits, manners, tastes, or conversation, to
shine with any very great lustre in the society of ladies, need scarcely
be remarked. But with Mrs. Wititterly the two titles were all sufficient;
coarseness became humour, vulgarity softened itself down into the most
charming eccentricity; insolence took the guise of an easy absence of
reserve, attainable only by those who had had the good fortune to mix
with high folks.
If the mistress put such a construction upon the behaviour of her new
friends, what could the companion urge against them? If they accustomed
themselves to very little restraint before the lady of the house, with
how much more freedom could they address her paid dependent! Nor was
even this the worst. As the odious Sir Mulberry Hawk attached himself
to Kate with less and less of disguise, Mrs. Wititterly began to grow
jealous of the superior attractions of Miss Nickleby. If this feeling
had led to her banishment from the drawing-room when such company was
there, Kate would have been only too happy and willing that it should
have existed, but unfortunately for her she possessed that native
grace and true gentility of manner, and those thousand nameless
accomplishments which give to female society its greatest charm; if
these be valuable anywhere, they were especially so where the lady of
the house was a mere animated doll. The consequence was, that Kate had
the double mortification of being an indispensable part of the circle
when Sir Mulberry and his friends were there, and of being exposed, on
that very account, to all Mrs. Wititterly’s ill-humours and caprices when
they were gone. She became utterly and completely miserable.
Mrs. Wititterly had never thrown off the mask with regard to Sir
Mulberry, but when she was more than usually out of temper, attributed
the circumstance, as ladies sometimes do, to nervous indisposition.
However, as the dreadful idea that Lord Verisopht also was somewhat
taken with Kate, and that she, Mrs. Wititterly, was quite a secondary
person, dawned upon that lady’s mind and gradually developed itself,
she became possessed with a large quantity of highly proper and most
virtuous indignation, and felt it her duty, as a married lady and a
moral member of society, to mention the circumstance to ‘the young
person’ without delay.
Accordingly Mrs. Wititterly broke ground next morning, during a pause in
the novel-reading.
‘Miss Nickleby,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, ‘I wish to speak to you very
gravely. I am sorry to have to do it, upon my word I am very sorry, but
you leave me no alternative, Miss Nickleby.’ Here Mrs. Wititterly tossed
her head--not passionately, only virtuously--and remarked, with some
appearance of excitement, that she feared that palpitation of the heart
was coming on again.
‘Your behaviour, Miss Nickleby,’ resumed the lady, ‘is very far from
pleasing me--very far. I am very anxious indeed that you should do well,
but you may depend upon it, Miss Nickleby, you will not, if you go on as
you do.’
‘Ma’am!’ exclaimed Kate, proudly.
‘Don’t agitate me by speaking in that way, Miss Nickleby, don’t,’ said
Mrs. Wititterly, with some violence, ‘or you’ll compel me to ring the
bell.’
Kate looked at her, but said nothing.
‘You needn’t suppose,’ resumed Mrs. Wititterly, ‘that your looking at me
in that way, Miss Nickleby, will prevent my saying what I am going
to say, which I feel to be a religious duty. You needn’t direct your
glances towards me,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, with a sudden burst of spite;
‘I am not Sir Mulberry, no, nor Lord Frederick Verisopht, Miss Nickleby,
nor am I Mr. Pyke, nor Mr. Pluck either.’
Kate looked at her again, but less steadily than before; and resting her
elbow on the table, covered her eyes with her hand.
‘If such things had been done when I was a young girl,’ said Mrs
Wititterly (this, by the way, must have been some little time before),
‘I don’t suppose anybody would have believed it.’
‘I don’t think they would,’ murmured Kate. ‘I do not think anybody would
believe, without actually knowing it, what I seem doomed to undergo!’
‘Don’t talk to me of being doomed to undergo, Miss Nickleby, if you
please,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, with a shrillness of tone quite surprising
in so great an invalid. ‘I will not be answered, Miss Nickleby. I am not
accustomed to be answered, nor will I permit it for an instant. Do
you hear?’ she added, waiting with some apparent inconsistency FOR an
answer.
‘I do hear you, ma’am,’ replied Kate, ‘with surprise--with greater
surprise than I can express.’
‘I have always considered you a particularly well-behaved young person
for your station in life,’ said Mrs. Wititterly; ‘and as you are a person
of healthy appearance, and neat in your dress and so forth, I have taken
an interest in you, as I do still, considering that I owe a sort of duty
to that respectable old female, your mother. For these reasons, Miss
Nickleby, I must tell you once for all, and begging you to mind what I
say, that I must insist upon your immediately altering your very forward
behaviour to the gentlemen who visit at this house. It really is not
becoming,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, closing her chaste eyes as she spoke;
‘it is improper--quite improper.’
‘Oh!’ cried Kate, looking upwards and clasping her hands; ‘is not this,
is not this, too cruel, too hard to bear! Is it not enough that I should
have suffered as I have, night and day; that I should almost have sunk
in my own estimation from very shame of having been brought into contact
with such people; but must I also be exposed to this unjust and most
unfounded charge!’
‘You will have the goodness to recollect, Miss Nickleby,’ said Mrs
Wititterly, ‘that when you use such terms as “unjust”, and “unfounded”,
you charge me, in effect, with stating that which is untrue.’
‘I do,’ said Kate with honest indignation. ‘Whether you make this
accusation of yourself, or at the prompting of others, is alike to me. I
say it IS vilely, grossly, wilfully untrue. Is it possible!’ cried Kate,
‘that anyone of my own sex can have sat by, and not have seen the misery
these men have caused me? Is it possible that you, ma’am, can have been
present, and failed to mark the insulting freedom that their every look
bespoke? Is it possible that you can have avoided seeing, that these
libertines, in their utter disrespect for you, and utter disregard
of all gentlemanly behaviour, and almost of decency, have had but one
object in introducing themselves here, and that the furtherance of their
designs upon a friendless, helpless girl, who, without this humiliating
confession, might have hoped to receive from one so much her senior
something like womanly aid and sympathy? I do not--I cannot believe it!’
If poor Kate had possessed the slightest knowledge of the world, she
certainly would not have ventured, even in the excitement into which she
had been lashed, upon such an injudicious speech as this. Its effect
was precisely what a more experienced observer would have foreseen.
Mrs. Wititterly received the attack upon her veracity with exemplary
calmness, and listened with the most heroic fortitude to Kate’s account
of her own sufferings. But allusion being made to her being held in
disregard by the gentlemen, she evinced violent emotion, and this blow
was no sooner followed up by the remark concerning her seniority, than
she fell back upon the sofa, uttering dismal screams.
‘What is the matter?’ cried Mr. Wititterly, bouncing into the room.
‘Heavens, what do I see? Julia! Julia! look up, my life, look up!’
But Julia looked down most perseveringly, and screamed still louder; so
Mr. Wititterly rang the bell, and danced in a frenzied manner round
the sofa on which Mrs. Wititterly lay; uttering perpetual cries for Sir
Tumley Snuffim, and never once leaving off to ask for any explanation of
the scene before him.
‘Run for Sir Tumley,’ cried Mr. Wititterly, menacing the page with both
fists. ‘I knew it, Miss Nickleby,’ he said, looking round with an air of
melancholy triumph, ‘that society has been too much for her. This is all
soul, you know, every bit of it.’ With this assurance Mr. Wititterly took
up the prostrate form of Mrs. Wititterly, and carried her bodily off to
bed.
Kate waited until Sir Tumley Snuffim had paid his visit and looked in
with a report, that, through the special interposition of a merciful
Providence (thus spake Sir Tumley), Mrs. Wititterly had gone to sleep.
She then hastily attired herself for walking, and leaving word that she
should return within a couple of hours, hurried away towards her uncle’s
house.
It had been a good day with Ralph Nickleby--quite a lucky day; and as he
walked to and fro in his little back-room with his hands clasped behind
him, adding up in his own mind all the sums that had been, or would be,
netted from the business done since morning, his mouth was drawn into a
hard stern smile; while the firmness of the lines and curves that made
it up, as well as the cunning glance of his cold, bright eye, seemed to
tell, that if any resolution or cunning would increase the profits, they
would not fail to be excited for the purpose.
‘Very good!’ said Ralph, in allusion, no doubt, to some proceeding of
the day. ‘He defies the usurer, does he? Well, we shall see. “Honesty is
the best policy,” is it? We’ll try that too.’
He stopped, and then walked on again.
‘He is content,’ said Ralph, relaxing into a smile, ‘to set his known
character and conduct against the power of money--dross, as he calls it.
Why, what a dull blockhead this fellow must be! Dross to, dross! Who’s
that?’
‘Me,’ said Newman Noggs, looking in. ‘Your niece.’
‘What of her?’ asked Ralph sharply.
‘She’s here.’
‘Here!’
Newman jerked his head towards his little room, to signify that she was
waiting there.
‘What does she want?’ asked Ralph.
‘I don’t know,’ rejoined Newman. ‘Shall I ask?’ he added quickly.
‘No,’ replied Ralph. ‘Show her in! Stay.’ He hastily put away a
padlocked cash-box that was on the table, and substituted in its stead
an empty purse. ‘There,’ said Ralph. ‘NOW she may come in.’
Newman, with a grim smile at this manoeuvre, beckoned the young lady to
advance, and having placed a chair for her, retired; looking stealthily
over his shoulder at Ralph as he limped slowly out.
‘Well,’ said Ralph, roughly enough; but still with something more of
kindness in his manner than he would have exhibited towards anybody
else. ‘Well, my--dear. What now?’
Kate raised her eyes, which were filled with tears; and with an effort
to master her emotion strove to speak, but in vain. So drooping her head
again, she remained silent. Her face was hidden from his view, but Ralph
could see that she was weeping.
‘I can guess the cause of this!’ thought Ralph, after looking at her
for some time in silence. ‘I can--I can--guess the cause. Well! Well!’
thought Ralph--for the moment quite disconcerted, as he watched the
anguish of his beautiful niece. ‘Where is the harm? only a few tears;