Nicholas Nickleby
and it’s an excellent lesson for her, an excellent lesson.’
‘What is the matter?’ asked Ralph, drawing a chair opposite, and sitting
down.
He was rather taken aback by the sudden firmness with which Kate looked
up and answered him.
‘The matter which brings me to you, sir,’ she said, ‘is one which should
call the blood up into your cheeks, and make you burn to hear, as it
does me to tell. I have been wronged; my feelings have been outraged,
insulted, wounded past all healing, and by your friends.’
‘Friends!’ cried Ralph, sternly. ‘I have no friends, girl.’
‘By the men I saw here, then,’ returned Kate, quickly. ‘If they were no
friends of yours, and you knew what they were,--oh, the more shame on
you, uncle, for bringing me among them. To have subjected me to what
I was exposed to here, through any misplaced confidence or imperfect
knowledge of your guests, would have required some strong excuse; but
if you did it--as I now believe you did--knowing them well, it was most
dastardly and cruel.’
Ralph drew back in utter amazement at this plain speaking, and regarded
Kate with the sternest look. But she met his gaze proudly and firmly,
and although her face was very pale, it looked more noble and handsome,
lighted up as it was, than it had ever appeared before.
‘There is some of that boy’s blood in you, I see,’ said Ralph, speaking
in his harshest tones, as something in the flashing eye reminded him of
Nicholas at their last meeting.
‘I hope there is!’ replied Kate. ‘I should be proud to know it. I am
young, uncle, and all the difficulties and miseries of my situation have
kept it down, but I have been roused today beyond all endurance, and
come what may, I WILL NOT, as I am your brother’s child, bear these
insults longer.’
‘What insults, girl?’ demanded Ralph, sharply.
‘Remember what took place here, and ask yourself,’ replied Kate,
colouring deeply. ‘Uncle, you must--I am sure you will--release me from
such vile and degrading companionship as I am exposed to now. I do not
mean,’ said Kate, hurrying to the old man, and laying her arm upon his
shoulder; ‘I do not mean to be angry and violent--I beg your pardon if
I have seemed so, dear uncle,--but you do not know what I have suffered,
you do not indeed. You cannot tell what the heart of a young girl
is--I have no right to expect you should; but when I tell you that I am
wretched, and that my heart is breaking, I am sure you will help me. I
am sure, I am sure you will!’
Ralph looked at her for an instant; then turned away his head, and beat
his foot nervously upon the ground.
‘I have gone on day after day,’ said Kate, bending over him, and timidly
placing her little hand in his, ‘in the hope that this persecution would
cease; I have gone on day after day, compelled to assume the appearance
of cheerfulness, when I was most unhappy. I have had no counsellor, no
adviser, no one to protect me. Mama supposes that these are honourable
men, rich and distinguished, and how CAN I--how can I undeceive
her--when she is so happy in these little delusions, which are the only
happiness she has? The lady with whom you placed me, is not the person
to whom I could confide matters of so much delicacy, and I have come at
last to you, the only friend I have at hand--almost the only friend I
have at all--to entreat and implore you to assist me.’
‘How can I assist you, child?’ said Ralph, rising from his chair, and
pacing up and down the room in his old attitude.
‘You have influence with one of these men, I KNOW,’ rejoined Kate,
emphatically. ‘Would not a word from you induce them to desist from this
unmanly course?’
‘No,’ said Ralph, suddenly turning; ‘at least--that--I can’t say it, if
it would.’
‘Can’t say it!’
‘No,’ said Ralph, coming to a dead stop, and clasping his hands more
tightly behind him. ‘I can’t say it.’
Kate fell back a step or two, and looked at him, as if in doubt whether
she had heard aright.
‘We are connected in business,’ said Ralph, poising himself alternately
on his toes and heels, and looking coolly in his niece’s face, ‘in
business, and I can’t afford to offend them. What is it after all? We
have all our trials, and this is one of yours. Some girls would be proud
to have such gallants at their feet.’
‘Proud!’ cried Kate.
‘I don’t say,’ rejoined Ralph, raising his forefinger, ‘but that you do
right to despise them; no, you show your good sense in that, as indeed
I knew from the first you would. Well. In all other respects you are
comfortably bestowed. It’s not much to bear. If this young lord does dog
your footsteps, and whisper his drivelling inanities in your ears, what
of it? It’s a dishonourable passion. So be it; it won’t last long. Some
other novelty will spring up one day, and you will be released. In the
mean time--’
‘In the mean time,’ interrupted Kate, with becoming pride and
indignation, ‘I am to be the scorn of my own sex, and the toy of the
other; justly condemned by all women of right feeling, and despised by
all honest and honourable men; sunken in my own esteem, and degraded in
every eye that looks upon me. No, not if I work my fingers to the bone,
not if I am driven to the roughest and hardest labour. Do not mistake
me. I will not disgrace your recommendation. I will remain in the house
in which it placed me, until I am entitled to leave it by the terms of
my engagement; though, mind, I see these men no more. When I quit it, I
will hide myself from them and you, and, striving to support my mother
by hard service, I will live, at least, in peace, and trust in God to
help me.’
With these words, she waved her hand, and quitted the room, leaving
Ralph Nickleby motionless as a statue.
The surprise with which Kate, as she closed the room-door, beheld, close
beside it, Newman Noggs standing bolt upright in a little niche in the
wall like some scarecrow or Guy Faux laid up in winter quarters, almost
occasioned her to call aloud. But, Newman laying his finger upon his
lips, she had the presence of mind to refrain.
‘Don’t,’ said Newman, gliding out of his recess, and accompanying
her across the hall. ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry.’ Two very large tears,
by-the-bye, were running down Newman’s face as he spoke.
‘I see how it is,’ said poor Noggs, drawing from his pocket what seemed
to be a very old duster, and wiping Kate’s eyes with it, as gently as if
she were an infant. ‘You’re giving way now. Yes, yes, very good; that’s
right, I like that. It was right not to give way before him. Yes, yes!
Ha, ha, ha! Oh, yes. Poor thing!’
With these disjointed exclamations, Newman wiped his own eyes with the
afore-mentioned duster, and, limping to the street-door, opened it to
let her out.
‘Don’t cry any more,’ whispered Newman. ‘I shall see you soon. Ha! ha!
ha! And so shall somebody else too. Yes, yes. Ho! ho!’
‘God bless you,’ answered Kate, hurrying out, ‘God bless you.’
‘Same to you,’ rejoined Newman, opening the door again a little way to
say so. ‘Ha, ha, ha! Ho! ho! ho!’
And Newman Noggs opened the door once again to nod cheerfully, and
laugh--and shut it, to shake his head mournfully, and cry.
Ralph remained in the same attitude till he heard the noise of the
closing door, when he shrugged his shoulders, and after a few turns
about the room--hasty at first, but gradually becoming slower, as he
relapsed into himself--sat down before his desk.
It is one of those problems of human nature, which may be noted down,
but not solved;--although Ralph felt no remorse at that moment for his
conduct towards the innocent, true-hearted girl; although his libertine
clients had done precisely what he had expected, precisely what he most
wished, and precisely what would tend most to his advantage, still he
hated them for doing it, from the very bottom of his soul.
‘Ugh!’ said Ralph, scowling round, and shaking his clenched hand as the
faces of the two profligates rose up before his mind; ‘you shall pay for
this. Oh! you shall pay for this!’
As the usurer turned for consolation to his books and papers, a
performance was going on outside his office door, which would have
occasioned him no small surprise, if he could by any means have become
acquainted with it.
Newman Noggs was the sole actor. He stood at a little distance from the
door, with his face towards it; and with the sleeves of his coat
turned back at the wrists, was occupied in bestowing the most vigorous,
scientific, and straightforward blows upon the empty air.
At first sight, this would have appeared merely a wise precaution in
a man of sedentary habits, with the view of opening the chest and
strengthening the muscles of the arms. But the intense eagerness and
joy depicted in the face of Newman Noggs, which was suffused with
perspiration; the surprising energy with which he directed a constant
succession of blows towards a particular panel about five feet eight
from the ground, and still worked away in the most untiring and
persevering manner, would have sufficiently explained to the attentive
observer, that his imagination was thrashing, to within an inch of his
life, his body’s most active employer, Mr. Ralph Nickleby.
CHAPTER 29
Of the Proceedings of Nicholas, and certain Internal Divisions in the
Company of Mr. Vincent Crummles
The unexpected success and favour with which his experiment at
Portsmouth had been received, induced Mr. Crummles to prolong his stay in
that town for a fortnight beyond the period he had originally assigned
for the duration of his visit, during which time Nicholas personated a
vast variety of characters with undiminished success, and attracted so
many people to the theatre who had never been seen there before, that
a benefit was considered by the manager a very promising speculation.
Nicholas assenting to the terms proposed, the benefit was had, and by it
he realised no less a sum than twenty pounds.
Possessed of this unexpected wealth, his first act was to enclose
to honest John Browdie the amount of his friendly loan, which he
accompanied with many expressions of gratitude and esteem, and many
cordial wishes for his matrimonial happiness. To Newman Noggs he
forwarded one half of the sum he had realised, entreating him to take
an opportunity of handing it to Kate in secret, and conveying to her the
warmest assurances of his love and affection. He made no mention of the
way in which he had employed himself; merely informing Newman that
a letter addressed to him under his assumed name at the Post Office,
Portsmouth, would readily find him, and entreating that worthy friend to
write full particulars of the situation of his mother and sister, and
an account of all the grand things that Ralph Nickleby had done for them
since his departure from London.
‘You are out of spirits,’ said Smike, on the night after the letter had
been dispatched.
‘Not I!’ rejoined Nicholas, with assumed gaiety, for the confession
would have made the boy miserable all night; ‘I was thinking about my
sister, Smike.’
‘Sister!’
‘Ay.’
‘Is she like you?’ inquired Smike.
‘Why, so they say,’ replied Nicholas, laughing, ‘only a great deal
handsomer.’
‘She must be VERY beautiful,’ said Smike, after thinking a little while
with his hands folded together, and his eyes bent upon his friend.
‘Anybody who didn’t know you as well as I do, my dear fellow, would say
you were an accomplished courtier,’ said Nicholas.
‘I don’t even know what that is,’ replied Smike, shaking his head.
‘Shall I ever see your sister?’
‘To be sure,’ cried Nicholas; ‘we shall all be together one of these
days--when we are rich, Smike.’
‘How is it that you, who are so kind and good to me, have nobody to be
kind to you?’ asked Smike. ‘I cannot make that out.’
‘Why, it is a long story,’ replied Nicholas, ‘and one you would