Nicholas Nickleby
I’ll make him a true prophet, for it shall surely come.’
‘Are you at home?’ asked Newman, suddenly popping in his head.
‘No,’ replied Ralph, with equal abruptness.
Newman withdrew his head, but thrust it in again.
‘You’re quite sure you’re not at home, are you?’ said Newman.
‘What does the idiot mean?’ cried Ralph, testily.
‘He has been waiting nearly ever since they first came in, and may have
heard your voice--that’s all,’ said Newman, rubbing his hands.
‘Who has?’ demanded Ralph, wrought by the intelligence he had just
heard, and his clerk’s provoking coolness, to an intense pitch of
irritation.
The necessity of a reply was superseded by the unlooked-for entrance
of a third party--the individual in question--who, bringing his one
eye (for he had but one) to bear on Ralph Nickleby, made a great many
shambling bows, and sat himself down in an armchair, with his hands on
his knees, and his short black trousers drawn up so high in the legs by
the exertion of seating himself, that they scarcely reached below the
tops of his Wellington boots.
‘Why, this IS a surprise!’ said Ralph, bending his gaze upon the
visitor, and half smiling as he scrutinised him attentively; ‘I should
know your face, Mr. Squeers.’
‘Ah!’ replied that worthy, ‘and you’d have know’d it better, sir, if
it hadn’t been for all that I’ve been a-going through. Just lift that
little boy off the tall stool in the back-office, and tell him to come
in here, will you, my man?’ said Squeers, addressing himself to Newman.
‘Oh, he’s lifted his-self off. My son, sir, little Wackford. What do you
think of him, sir, for a specimen of the Dotheboys Hall feeding? Ain’t
he fit to bust out of his clothes, and start the seams, and make the
very buttons fly off with his fatness? Here’s flesh!’ cried Squeers,
turning the boy about, and indenting the plumpest parts of his figure
with divers pokes and punches, to the great discomposure of his son
and heir. ‘Here’s firmness, here’s solidness! Why you can hardly get up
enough of him between your finger and thumb to pinch him anywheres.’
In however good condition Master Squeers might have been, he certainly
did not present this remarkable compactness of person, for on his
father’s closing his finger and thumb in illustration of his remark,
he uttered a sharp cry, and rubbed the place in the most natural manner
possible.
‘Well,’ remarked Squeers, a little disconcerted, ‘I had him there; but
that’s because we breakfasted early this morning, and he hasn’t had his
lunch yet. Why you couldn’t shut a bit of him in a door, when he’s had
his dinner. Look at them tears, sir,’ said Squeers, with a triumphant
air, as Master Wackford wiped his eyes with the cuff of his jacket,
‘there’s oiliness!’
‘He looks well, indeed,’ returned Ralph, who, for some purposes of his
own, seemed desirous to conciliate the schoolmaster. ‘But how is Mrs
Squeers, and how are you?’
‘Mrs. Squeers, sir,’ replied the proprietor of Dotheboys, ‘is as she
always is--a mother to them lads, and a blessing, and a comfort, and
a joy to all them as knows her. One of our boys--gorging his-self with
vittles, and then turning in; that’s their way--got a abscess on him
last week. To see how she operated upon him with a pen-knife! Oh Lor!’
said Squeers, heaving a sigh, and nodding his head a great many times,
‘what a member of society that woman is!’
Mr. Squeers indulged in a retrospective look, for some quarter of a
minute, as if this allusion to his lady’s excellences had naturally
led his mind to the peaceful village of Dotheboys near Greta Bridge
in Yorkshire; and then looked at Ralph, as if waiting for him to say
something.
‘Have you quite recovered that scoundrel’s attack?’ asked Ralph.
‘I’ve only just done it, if I’ve done it now,’ replied Squeers. ‘I was
one blessed bruise, sir,’ said Squeers, touching first the roots of his
hair, and then the toes of his boots, ‘from HERE to THERE. Vinegar and
brown paper, vinegar and brown paper, from morning to night. I suppose
there was a matter of half a ream of brown paper stuck upon me, from
first to last. As I laid all of a heap in our kitchen, plastered all
over, you might have thought I was a large brown-paper parcel, chock
full of nothing but groans. Did I groan loud, Wackford, or did I groan
soft?’ asked Mr. Squeers, appealing to his son.
‘Loud,’ replied Wackford.
‘Was the boys sorry to see me in such a dreadful condition, Wackford, or
was they glad?’ asked Mr. Squeers, in a sentimental manner.
‘Gl--’
‘Eh?’ cried Squeers, turning sharp round.
‘Sorry,’ rejoined his son.
‘Oh!’ said Squeers, catching him a smart box on the ear. ‘Then take
your hands out of your pockets, and don’t stammer when you’re asked a
question. Hold your noise, sir, in a gentleman’s office, or I’ll run
away from my family and never come back any more; and then what would
become of all them precious and forlorn lads as would be let loose on
the world, without their best friend at their elbers?’
‘Were you obliged to have medical attendance?’ inquired Ralph.
‘Ay, was I,’ rejoined Squeers, ‘and a precious bill the medical
attendant brought in too; but I paid it though.’
Ralph elevated his eyebrows in a manner which might be expressive of
either sympathy or astonishment--just as the beholder was pleased to
take it.
‘Yes, I paid it, every farthing,’ replied Squeers, who seemed to know
the man he had to deal with, too well to suppose that any blinking of
the question would induce him to subscribe towards the expenses; ‘I
wasn’t out of pocket by it after all, either.’
‘No!’ said Ralph.
‘Not a halfpenny,’ replied Squeers. ‘The fact is, we have only one extra
with our boys, and that is for doctors when required--and not then,
unless we’re sure of our customers. Do you see?’
‘I understand,’ said Ralph.
‘Very good,’ rejoined Squeers. ‘Then, after my bill was run up, we
picked out five little boys (sons of small tradesmen, as was sure pay)
that had never had the scarlet fever, and we sent one to a cottage where
they’d got it, and he took it, and then we put the four others to sleep
with him, and THEY took it, and then the doctor came and attended ‘em
once all round, and we divided my total among ‘em, and added it on to
their little bills, and the parents paid it. Ha! ha! ha!’
‘And a good plan too,’ said Ralph, eyeing the schoolmaster stealthily.
‘I believe you,’ rejoined Squeers. ‘We always do it. Why, when Mrs
Squeers was brought to bed with little Wackford here, we ran the
hooping-cough through half-a-dozen boys, and charged her expenses among
‘em, monthly nurse included. Ha! ha! ha!’
Ralph never laughed, but on this occasion he produced the nearest
approach to it that he could, and waiting until Mr. Squeers had enjoyed
the professional joke to his heart’s content, inquired what had brought
him to town.
‘Some bothering law business,’ replied Squeers, scratching his head,
‘connected with an action, for what they call neglect of a boy. I don’t
know what they would have. He had as good grazing, that boy had, as
there is about us.’
Ralph looked as if he did not quite understand the observation.
‘Grazing,’ said Squeers, raising his voice, under the impression that as
Ralph failed to comprehend him, he must be deaf. ‘When a boy gets weak
and ill and don’t relish his meals, we give him a change of diet--turn
him out, for an hour or so every day, into a neighbour’s turnip field,
or sometimes, if it’s a delicate case, a turnip field and a piece of
carrots alternately, and let him eat as many as he likes. There an’t
better land in the country than this perwerse lad grazed on, and yet he
goes and catches cold and indigestion and what not, and then his friends
brings a lawsuit against ME! Now, you’d hardly suppose,’ added Squeers,
moving in his chair with the impatience of an ill-used man, ‘that
people’s ingratitude would carry them quite as far as that; would you?’
‘A hard case, indeed,’ observed Ralph.
‘You don’t say more than the truth when you say that,’ replied Squeers.
‘I don’t suppose there’s a man going, as possesses the fondness for
youth that I do. There’s youth to the amount of eight hundred pound a
year at Dotheboys Hall at this present time. I’d take sixteen hundred
pound worth if I could get ‘em, and be as fond of every individual
twenty pound among ‘em as nothing should equal it!’
‘Are you stopping at your old quarters?’ asked Ralph.
‘Yes, we are at the Saracen,’ replied Squeers, ‘and as it don’t want
very long to the end of the half-year, we shall continney to stop there
till I’ve collected the money, and some new boys too, I hope. I’ve
brought little Wackford up, on purpose to show to parents and
guardians. I shall put him in the advertisement, this time. Look at that
boy--himself a pupil. Why he’s a miracle of high feeding, that boy is!’
‘I should like to have a word with you,’ said Ralph, who had both
spoken and listened mechanically for some time, and seemed to have been
thinking.
‘As many words as you like, sir,’ rejoined Squeers. ‘Wackford, you go
and play in the back office, and don’t move about too much or you’ll get
thin, and that won’t do. You haven’t got such a thing as twopence, Mr
Nickleby, have you?’ said Squeers, rattling a bunch of keys in his coat
pocket, and muttering something about its being all silver.
‘I--think I have,’ said Ralph, very slowly, and producing, after much
rummaging in an old drawer, a penny, a halfpenny, and two farthings.
‘Thankee,’ said Squeers, bestowing it upon his son. ‘Here! You go and
buy a tart--Mr. Nickleby’s man will show you where--and mind you buy a
rich one. Pastry,’ added Squeers, closing the door on Master Wackford,
‘makes his flesh shine a good deal, and parents thinks that a healthy
sign.’
With this explanation, and a peculiarly knowing look to eke it out,
Mr. Squeers moved his chair so as to bring himself opposite to Ralph
Nickleby at no great distance off; and having planted it to his entire
satisfaction, sat down.
‘Attend to me,’ said Ralph, bending forward a little.
Squeers nodded.
‘I am not to suppose,’ said Ralph, ‘that you are dolt enough to forgive
or forget, very readily, the violence that was committed upon you, or
the exposure which accompanied it?’
‘Devil a bit,’ replied Squeers, tartly.
‘Or to lose an opportunity of repaying it with interest, if you could
get one?’ said Ralph.
‘Show me one, and try,’ rejoined Squeers.
‘Some such object it was, that induced you to call on me?’ said Ralph,
raising his eyes to the schoolmaster’s face.
‘N-n-no, I don’t know that,’ replied Squeers. ‘I thought that if it
was in your power to make me, besides the trifle of money you sent, any
compensation--’
‘Ah!’ cried Ralph, interrupting him. ‘You needn’t go on.’
After a long pause, during which Ralph appeared absorbed in
contemplation, he again broke silence by asking:
‘Who is this boy that he took with him?’
Squeers stated his name.
‘Was he young or old, healthy or sickly, tractable or rebellious? Speak
out, man,’ retorted Ralph.
‘Why, he wasn’t young,’ answered Squeers; ‘that is, not young for a boy,
you know.’
‘That is, he was not a boy at all, I suppose?’ interrupted Ralph.
‘Well,’ returned Squeers, briskly, as if he felt relieved by the
suggestion, ‘he might have been nigh twenty. He wouldn’t seem so old,
though, to them as didn’t know him, for he was a little wanting here,’
touching his forehead; ‘nobody at home, you know, if you knocked ever so
often.’
‘And you DID knock pretty often, I dare say?’ muttered Ralph.
‘Pretty well,’ returned Squeers with a grin.
‘When you wrote to acknowledge the receipt of this trifle of money as
you call it,’ said Ralph, ‘you told me his friends had deserted him long