Nicholas Nickleby
In the same way, everybody who was on the stage beheld no audience but
one individual; everybody played to the London manager. When Mr. Lenville
in a sudden burst of passion called the emperor a miscreant, and then
biting his glove, said, ‘But I must dissemble,’ instead of looking
gloomily at the boards and so waiting for his cue, as is proper in such
cases, he kept his eye fixed upon the London manager. When Miss Bravassa
sang her song at her lover, who according to custom stood ready to shake
hands with her between the verses, they looked, not at each other, but
at the London manager. Mr. Crummles died point blank at him; and when the
two guards came in to take the body off after a very hard death, it was
seen to open its eyes and glance at the London manager. At length the
London manager was discovered to be asleep, and shortly after that
he woke up and went away, whereupon all the company fell foul of the
unhappy comic countryman, declaring that his buffoonery was the sole
cause; and Mr. Crummles said, that he had put up with it a long time, but
that he really couldn’t stand it any longer, and therefore would feel
obliged by his looking out for another engagement.
All this was the occasion of much amusement to Nicholas, whose only
feeling upon the subject was one of sincere satisfaction that the great
man went away before he appeared. He went through his part in the
two last pieces as briskly as he could, and having been received with
unbounded favour and unprecedented applause--so said the bills for next
day, which had been printed an hour or two before--he took Smike’s arm
and walked home to bed.
With the post next morning came a letter from Newman Noggs, very inky,
very short, very dirty, very small, and very mysterious, urging Nicholas
to return to London instantly; not to lose an instant; to be there that
night if possible.
‘I will,’ said Nicholas. ‘Heaven knows I have remained here for the
best, and sorely against my own will; but even now I may have dallied
too long. What can have happened? Smike, my good fellow, here--take my
purse. Put our things together, and pay what little debts we owe--quick,
and we shall be in time for the morning coach. I will only tell them
that we are going, and will return to you immediately.’
So saying, he took his hat, and hurrying away to the lodgings of Mr
Crummles, applied his hand to the knocker with such hearty good-will,
that he awakened that gentleman, who was still in bed, and caused Mr
Bulph the pilot to take his morning’s pipe very nearly out of his mouth
in the extremity of his surprise.
The door being opened, Nicholas ran upstairs without any ceremony, and
bursting into the darkened sitting-room on the one-pair front, found
that the two Master Crummleses had sprung out of the sofa-bedstead and
were putting on their clothes with great rapidity, under the impression
that it was the middle of the night, and the next house was on fire.
Before he could undeceive them, Mr. Crummles came down in a flannel gown
and nightcap; and to him Nicholas briefly explained that circumstances
had occurred which rendered it necessary for him to repair to London
immediately.
‘So goodbye,’ said Nicholas; ‘goodbye, goodbye.’
He was half-way downstairs before Mr. Crummles had sufficiently recovered
his surprise to gasp out something about the posters.
‘I can’t help it,’ replied Nicholas. ‘Set whatever I may have earned
this week against them, or if that will not repay you, say at once what
will. Quick, quick.’
‘We’ll cry quits about that,’ returned Crummles. ‘But can’t we have one
last night more?’
‘Not an hour--not a minute,’ replied Nicholas, impatiently.
‘Won’t you stop to say something to Mrs. Crummles?’ asked the manager,
following him down to the door.
‘I couldn’t stop if it were to prolong my life a score of years,’
rejoined Nicholas. ‘Here, take my hand, and with it my hearty
thanks.--Oh! that I should have been fooling here!’
Accompanying these words with an impatient stamp upon the ground, he
tore himself from the manager’s detaining grasp, and darting rapidly
down the street was out of sight in an instant.
‘Dear me, dear me,’ said Mr. Crummles, looking wistfully towards the
point at which he had just disappeared; ‘if he only acted like that,
what a deal of money he’d draw! He should have kept upon this circuit;
he’d have been very useful to me. But he don’t know what’s good for him.
He is an impetuous youth. Young men are rash, very rash.’
Mr. Crummles being in a moralising mood, might possibly have moralised
for some minutes longer if he had not mechanically put his hand towards
his waistcoat pocket, where he was accustomed to keep his snuff. The
absence of any pocket at all in the usual direction, suddenly recalled
to his recollection the fact that he had no waistcoat on; and this
leading him to a contemplation of the extreme scantiness of his
attire, he shut the door abruptly, and retired upstairs with great
precipitation.
Smike had made good speed while Nicholas was absent, and with his help
everything was soon ready for their departure. They scarcely stopped to
take a morsel of breakfast, and in less than half an hour arrived at the
coach-office: quite out of breath with the haste they had made to reach
it in time. There were yet a few minutes to spare, so, having secured
the places, Nicholas hurried into a slopseller’s hard by, and bought
Smike a great-coat. It would have been rather large for a substantial
yeoman, but the shopman averring (and with considerable truth) that
it was a most uncommon fit, Nicholas would have purchased it in his
impatience if it had been twice the size.
As they hurried up to the coach, which was now in the open street and
all ready for starting, Nicholas was not a little astonished to find
himself suddenly clutched in a close and violent embrace, which nearly
took him off his legs; nor was his amazement at all lessened by hearing
the voice of Mr. Crummles exclaim, ‘It is he--my friend, my friend!’
‘Bless my heart,’ cried Nicholas, struggling in the manager’s arms,
‘what are you about?’
The manager made no reply, but strained him to his breast again,
exclaiming as he did so, ‘Farewell, my noble, my lion-hearted boy!’
In fact, Mr. Crummles, who could never lose any opportunity for
professional display, had turned out for the express purpose of taking a
public farewell of Nicholas; and to render it the more imposing, he was
now, to that young gentleman’s most profound annoyance, inflicting upon
him a rapid succession of stage embraces, which, as everybody knows, are
performed by the embracer’s laying his or her chin on the shoulder of
the object of affection, and looking over it. This Mr. Crummles did in
the highest style of melodrama, pouring forth at the same time all
the most dismal forms of farewell he could think of, out of the stock
pieces. Nor was this all, for the elder Master Crummles was going
through a similar ceremony with Smike; while Master Percy Crummles, with
a very little second-hand camlet cloak, worn theatrically over his left
shoulder, stood by, in the attitude of an attendant officer, waiting to
convey the two victims to the scaffold.
The lookers-on laughed very heartily, and as it was as well to put a
good face upon the matter, Nicholas laughed too when he had succeeded
in disengaging himself; and rescuing the astonished Smike, climbed up
to the coach roof after him, and kissed his hand in honour of the absent
Mrs. Crummles as they rolled away.
CHAPTER 31
Of Ralph Nickleby and Newman Noggs, and some wise Precautions, the
success or failure of which will appear in the Sequel
In blissful unconsciousness that his nephew was hastening at the utmost
speed of four good horses towards his sphere of action, and that every
passing minute diminished the distance between them, Ralph Nickleby sat
that morning occupied in his customary avocations, and yet unable to
prevent his thoughts wandering from time to time back to the interview
which had taken place between himself and his niece on the previous
day. At such intervals, after a few moments of abstraction, Ralph
would mutter some peevish interjection, and apply himself with renewed
steadiness of purpose to the ledger before him, but again and again the
same train of thought came back despite all his efforts to prevent it,
confusing him in his calculations, and utterly distracting his attention
from the figures over which he bent. At length Ralph laid down his pen,
and threw himself back in his chair as though he had made up his mind to
allow the obtrusive current of reflection to take its own course, and,
by giving it full scope, to rid himself of it effectually.
‘I am not a man to be moved by a pretty face,’ muttered Ralph sternly.
‘There is a grinning skull beneath it, and men like me who look and work
below the surface see that, and not its delicate covering. And yet
I almost like the girl, or should if she had been less proudly and
squeamishly brought up. If the boy were drowned or hanged, and the
mother dead, this house should be her home. I wish they were, with all
my soul.’
Notwithstanding the deadly hatred which Ralph felt towards Nicholas,
and the bitter contempt with which he sneered at poor Mrs
Nickleby--notwithstanding the baseness with which he had behaved, and
was then behaving, and would behave again if his interest prompted
him, towards Kate herself--still there was, strange though it may seem,
something humanising and even gentle in his thoughts at that moment. He
thought of what his home might be if Kate were there; he placed her in
the empty chair, looked upon her, heard her speak; he felt again upon
his arm the gentle pressure of the trembling hand; he strewed his
costly rooms with the hundred silent tokens of feminine presence and
occupation; he came back again to the cold fireside and the silent
dreary splendour; and in that one glimpse of a better nature, born as
it was in selfish thoughts, the rich man felt himself friendless,
childless, and alone. Gold, for the instant, lost its lustre in his
eyes, for there were countless treasures of the heart which it could
never purchase.
A very slight circumstance was sufficient to banish such reflections
from the mind of such a man. As Ralph looked vacantly out across the
yard towards the window of the other office, he became suddenly aware of
the earnest observation of Newman Noggs, who, with his red nose almost
touching the glass, feigned to be mending a pen with a rusty fragment of
a knife, but was in reality staring at his employer with a countenance
of the closest and most eager scrutiny.
Ralph exchanged his dreamy posture for his accustomed business attitude:
the face of Newman disappeared, and the train of thought took to flight,
all simultaneously, and in an instant.
After a few minutes, Ralph rang his bell. Newman answered the summons,
and Ralph raised his eyes stealthily to his face, as if he almost feared
to read there, a knowledge of his recent thoughts.
There was not the smallest speculation, however, in the countenance of
Newman Noggs. If it be possible to imagine a man, with two eyes in his
head, and both wide open, looking in no direction whatever, and seeing
nothing, Newman appeared to be that man while Ralph Nickleby regarded
him.
‘How now?’ growled Ralph.
‘Oh!’ said Newman, throwing some intelligence into his eyes all at
once, and dropping them on his master, ‘I thought you rang.’ With which
laconic remark Newman turned round and hobbled away.
‘Stop!’ said Ralph.
Newman stopped; not at all disconcerted.
‘I did ring.’
‘I knew you did.’
‘Then why do you offer to go if you know that?’
‘I thought you rang to say you didn’t ring,’ replied Newman. ‘You often
do.’