Nicholas Nickleby
two hundred and fifty miles, in that particular angle of the vehicle
from which the lady’s snores now proceeded, presented an appearance
sufficiently ludicrous to have moved less risible muscles than those of
John Browdie’s ruddy face.
‘Hollo!’ cried John, twitching one end of the dragged veil. ‘Coom,
wakken oop, will ‘ee?’
After several burrowings into the old corner, and many exclamations of
impatience and fatigue, the figure struggled into a sitting posture; and
there, under a mass of crumpled beaver, and surrounded by a semicircle
of blue curl-papers, were the delicate features of Miss Fanny Squeers.
‘Oh, ‘Tilda!’ cried Miss Squeers, ‘how you have been kicking of me
through this blessed night!’
‘Well, I do like that,’ replied her friend, laughing, ‘when you have had
nearly the whole coach to yourself.’
‘Don’t deny it, ‘Tilda,’ said Miss Squeers, impressively, ‘because you
have, and it’s no use to go attempting to say you haven’t. You mightn’t
have known it in your sleep, ‘Tilda, but I haven’t closed my eyes for a
single wink, and so I THINK I am to be believed.’
With which reply, Miss Squeers adjusted the bonnet and veil, which
nothing but supernatural interference and an utter suspension of
nature’s laws could have reduced to any shape or form; and evidently
flattering herself that it looked uncommonly neat, brushed off the
sandwich-crumbs and bits of biscuit which had accumulated in her lap,
and availing herself of John Browdie’s proffered arm, descended from the
coach.
‘Noo,’ said John, when a hackney coach had been called, and the ladies
and the luggage hurried in, ‘gang to the Sarah’s Head, mun.’
‘To the VERE?’ cried the coachman.
‘Lawk, Mr. Browdie!’ interrupted Miss Squeers. ‘The idea! Saracen’s
Head.’
‘Sure-ly,’ said John, ‘I know’d it was something aboot Sarah’s Son’s
Head. Dost thou know thot?’
‘Oh, ah! I know that,’ replied the coachman gruffly, as he banged the
door.
‘’Tilda, dear, really,’ remonstrated Miss Squeers, ‘we shall be taken
for I don’t know what.’
‘Let them tak’ us as they foind us,’ said John Browdie; ‘we dean’t come
to Lunnun to do nought but ‘joy oursel, do we?’
‘I hope not, Mr. Browdie,’ replied Miss Squeers, looking singularly
dismal.
‘Well, then,’ said John, ‘it’s no matther. I’ve only been a married man
fower days, ‘account of poor old feyther deein, and puttin’ it off. Here
be a weddin’ party--broide and broide’s-maid, and the groom--if a mun
dean’t ‘joy himsel noo, when ought he, hey? Drat it all, thot’s what I
want to know.’
So, in order that he might begin to enjoy himself at once, and lose no
time, Mr. Browdie gave his wife a hearty kiss, and succeeded in wresting
another from Miss Squeers, after a maidenly resistance of scratching and
struggling on the part of that young lady, which was not quite over when
they reached the Saracen’s Head.
Here, the party straightway retired to rest; the refreshment of sleep
being necessary after so long a journey; and here they met again
about noon, to a substantial breakfast, spread by direction of Mr. John
Browdie, in a small private room upstairs commanding an uninterrupted
view of the stables.
To have seen Miss Squeers now, divested of the brown beaver, the green
veil, and the blue curl-papers, and arrayed in all the virgin splendour
of a white frock and spencer, with a white muslin bonnet, and an
imitative damask rose in full bloom on the inside thereof--her luxuriant
crop of hair arranged in curls so tight that it was impossible they
could come out by any accident, and her bonnet-cap trimmed with little
damask roses, which might be supposed to be so many promising scions of
the big rose--to have seen all this, and to have seen the broad
damask belt, matching both the family rose and the little roses, which
encircled her slender waist, and by a happy ingenuity took off from the
shortness of the spencer behind,--to have beheld all this, and to have
taken further into account the coral bracelets (rather short of beads,
and with a very visible black string) which clasped her wrists, and the
coral necklace which rested on her neck, supporting, outside her frock,
a lonely cornelian heart, typical of her own disengaged affections--to
have contemplated all these mute but expressive appeals to the purest
feelings of our nature, might have thawed the frost of age, and added
new and inextinguishable fuel to the fire of youth.
The waiter was touched. Waiter as he was, he had human passions and
feelings, and he looked very hard at Miss Squeers as he handed the
muffins.
‘Is my pa in, do you know?’ asked Miss Squeers with dignity.
‘Beg your pardon, miss?’
‘My pa,’ repeated Miss Squeers; ‘is he in?’
‘In where, miss?’
‘In here--in the house!’ replied Miss Squeers. ‘My pa--Mr. Wackford
Squeers--he’s stopping here. Is he at home?’
‘I didn’t know there was any gen’l’man of that name in the house, miss’
replied the waiter. ‘There may be, in the coffee-room.’
MAY BE. Very pretty this, indeed! Here was Miss Squeers, who had been
depending, all the way to London, upon showing her friends how much
at home she would be, and how much respectful notice her name and
connections would excite, told that her father MIGHT be there! ‘As if he
was a feller!’ observed Miss Squeers, with emphatic indignation.
‘Ye’d betther inquire, mun,’ said John Browdie. ‘An’ hond up another
pigeon-pie, will ‘ee? Dang the chap,’ muttered John, looking into the
empty dish as the waiter retired; ‘does he ca’ this a pie--three yoong
pigeons and a troifling matther o’ steak, and a crust so loight that you
doant know when it’s in your mooth and when it’s gane? I wonder hoo many
pies goes to a breakfast!’
After a short interval, which John Browdie employed upon the ham and
a cold round of beef, the waiter returned with another pie, and the
information that Mr. Squeers was not stopping in the house, but that he
came there every day and that directly he arrived, he should be shown
upstairs. With this, he retired; and he had not retired two minutes,
when he returned with Mr. Squeers and his hopeful son.
‘Why, who’d have thought of this?’ said Mr. Squeers, when he had saluted
the party and received some private family intelligence from his
daughter.
‘Who, indeed, pa!’ replied that young lady, spitefully. ‘But you see
‘Tilda IS married at last.’
‘And I stond threat for a soight o’ Lunnun, schoolmeasther,’ said John,
vigorously attacking the pie.
‘One of them things that young men do when they get married,’ returned
Squeers; ‘and as runs through with their money like nothing at all! How
much better wouldn’t it be now, to save it up for the eddication of
any little boys, for instance! They come on you,’ said Mr. Squeers in a
moralising way, ‘before you’re aware of it; mine did upon me.’
‘Will ‘ee pick a bit?’ said John.
‘I won’t myself,’ returned Squeers; ‘but if you’ll just let little
Wackford tuck into something fat, I’ll be obliged to you. Give it him in
his fingers, else the waiter charges it on, and there’s lot of profit on
this sort of vittles without that. If you hear the waiter coming, sir,
shove it in your pocket and look out of the window, d’ye hear?’
‘I’m awake, father,’ replied the dutiful Wackford.
‘Well,’ said Squeers, turning to his daughter, ‘it’s your turn to be
married next. You must make haste.’
‘Oh, I’m in no hurry,’ said Miss Squeers, very sharply.
‘No, Fanny?’ cried her old friend with some archness.
‘No, ‘Tilda,’ replied Miss Squeers, shaking her head vehemently. ‘I can
wait.’
‘So can the young men, it seems, Fanny,’ observed Mrs. Browdie.
‘They an’t draw’d into it by ME, ‘Tilda,’ retorted Miss Squeers.
‘No,’ returned her friend; ‘that’s exceedingly true.’
The sarcastic tone of this reply might have provoked a rather
acrimonious retort from Miss Squeers, who, besides being of a
constitutionally vicious temper--aggravated, just now, by travel and
recent jolting--was somewhat irritated by old recollections and the
failure of her own designs upon Mr. Browdie; and the acrimonious retort
might have led to a great many other retorts, which might have led to
Heaven knows what, if the subject of conversation had not been, at that
precise moment, accidentally changed by Mr. Squeers himself
‘What do you think?’ said that gentleman; ‘who do you suppose we have
laid hands on, Wackford and me?’
‘Pa! not Mr--?’ Miss Squeers was unable to finish the sentence, but Mrs
Browdie did it for her, and added, ‘Nickleby?’
‘No,’ said Squeers. ‘But next door to him though.’
‘You can’t mean Smike?’ cried Miss Squeers, clapping her hands.
‘Yes, I can though,’ rejoined her father. ‘I’ve got him, hard and fast.’
‘Wa’at!’ exclaimed John Browdie, pushing away his plate. ‘Got that
poor--dom’d scoondrel? Where?’
‘Why, in the top back room, at my lodging,’ replied Squeers, ‘with him
on one side, and the key on the other.’
‘At thy loodgin’! Thee’st gotten him at thy loodgin’? Ho! ho! The
schoolmeasther agin all England. Give us thee hond, mun; I’m darned but
I must shak thee by the hond for thot.--Gotten him at thy loodgin’?’
‘Yes,’ replied Squeers, staggering in his chair under the congratulatory
blow on the chest which the stout Yorkshireman dealt him; ‘thankee.
Don’t do it again. You mean it kindly, I know, but it hurts rather. Yes,
there he is. That’s not so bad, is it?’
‘Ba’ad!’ repeated John Browdie. ‘It’s eneaf to scare a mun to hear tell
on.’
‘I thought it would surprise you a bit,’ said Squeers, rubbing his
hands. ‘It was pretty neatly done, and pretty quick too.’
‘Hoo wor it?’ inquired John, sitting down close to him. ‘Tell us all
aboot it, mun; coom, quick!’
Although he could not keep pace with John Browdie’s impatience, Mr
Squeers related the lucky chance by which Smike had fallen into his
hands, as quickly as he could, and, except when he was interrupted by
the admiring remarks of his auditors, paused not in the recital until he
had brought it to an end.
‘For fear he should give me the slip, by any chance,’ observed Squeers,
when he had finished, looking very cunning, ‘I’ve taken three outsides
for tomorrow morning--for Wackford and him and me--and have arranged to
leave the accounts and the new boys to the agent, don’t you see? So it’s
very lucky you come today, or you’d have missed us; and as it is, unless
you could come and tea with me tonight, we shan’t see anything more of
you before we go away.’
‘Dean’t say anoother wurd,’ returned the Yorkshireman, shaking him by
the hand. ‘We’d coom, if it was twonty mile.’
‘No, would you though?’ returned Mr. Squeers, who had not expected quite
such a ready acceptance of his invitation, or he would have considered
twice before he gave it.
John Browdie’s only reply was another squeeze of the hand, and an
assurance that they would not begin to see London till tomorrow, so that
they might be at Mr. Snawley’s at six o’clock without fail; and after
some further conversation, Mr. Squeers and his son departed.
During the remainder of the day, Mr. Browdie was in a very odd and
excitable state; bursting occasionally into an explosion of laughter,
and then taking up his hat and running into the coach-yard to have it
out by himself. He was very restless too, constantly walking in and out,
and snapping his fingers, and dancing scraps of uncouth country dances,
and, in short, conducting himself in such a very extraordinary manner,
that Miss Squeers opined he was going mad, and, begging her dear ‘Tilda
not to distress herself, communicated her suspicions in so many words.
Mrs. Browdie, however, without discovering any great alarm, observed that
she had seen him so once before, and that although he was almost sure to
be ill after it, it would not be anything very serious, and therefore he
was better left alone.