Nicholas Nickleby
The result proved her to be perfectly correct for, while they were all
sitting in Mr. Snawley’s parlour that night, and just as it was beginning
to get dusk, John Browdie was taken so ill, and seized with such an
alarming dizziness in the head, that the whole company were thrown into
the utmost consternation. His good lady, indeed, was the only person
present, who retained presence of mind enough to observe that if he
were allowed to lie down on Mr. Squeers’s bed for an hour or so, and left
entirely to himself, he would be sure to recover again almost as quickly
as he had been taken ill. Nobody could refuse to try the effect of so
reasonable a proposal, before sending for a surgeon. Accordingly, John
was supported upstairs, with great difficulty; being a monstrous weight,
and regularly tumbling down two steps every time they hoisted him up
three; and, being laid on the bed, was left in charge of his wife, who,
after a short interval, reappeared in the parlour, with the gratifying
intelligence that he had fallen fast asleep.
Now, the fact was, that at that particular moment, John Browdie was
sitting on the bed with the reddest face ever seen, cramming the corner
of the pillow into his mouth, to prevent his roaring out loud with
laughter. He had no sooner succeeded in suppressing this emotion, than
he slipped off his shoes, and creeping to the adjoining room where the
prisoner was confined, turned the key, which was on the outside, and
darting in, covered Smike’s mouth with his huge hand before he could
utter a sound.
‘Ods-bobs, dost thee not know me, mun?’ whispered the Yorkshireman to
the bewildered lad. ‘Browdie. Chap as met thee efther schoolmeasther was
banged?’
‘Yes, yes,’ cried Smike. ‘Oh! help me.’
‘Help thee!’ replied John, stopping his mouth again, the instant he
had said this much. ‘Thee didn’t need help, if thee warn’t as silly
yoongster as ever draw’d breath. Wa’at did ‘ee come here for, then?’
‘He brought me; oh! he brought me,’ cried Smike.
‘Brout thee!’ replied John. ‘Why didn’t ‘ee punch his head, or lay
theeself doon and kick, and squeal out for the pollis? I’d ha’ licked
a doozen such as him when I was yoong as thee. But thee be’est a poor
broken-doon chap,’ said John, sadly, ‘and God forgi’ me for bragging
ower yan o’ his weakest creeturs!’
Smike opened his mouth to speak, but John Browdie stopped him.
‘Stan’ still,’ said the Yorkshireman, ‘and doant’ee speak a morsel o’
talk till I tell’ee.’
With this caution, John Browdie shook his head significantly, and
drawing a screwdriver from his pocket, took off the box of the lock in
a very deliberate and workmanlike manner, and laid it, together with the
implement, on the floor.
‘See thot?’ said John ‘Thot be thy doin’. Noo, coot awa’!’
Smike looked vacantly at him, as if unable to comprehend his meaning.
‘I say, coot awa’,’ repeated John, hastily. ‘Dost thee know where thee
livest? Thee dost? Weel. Are yon thy clothes, or schoolmeasther’s?’
‘Mine,’ replied Smike, as the Yorkshireman hurried him to the adjoining
room, and pointed out a pair of shoes and a coat which were lying on a
chair.
‘On wi’ ‘em,’ said John, forcing the wrong arm into the wrong sleeve,
and winding the tails of the coat round the fugitive’s neck. ‘Noo,
foller me, and when thee get’st ootside door, turn to the right, and
they wean’t see thee pass.’
‘But--but--he’ll hear me shut the door,’ replied Smike, trembling from
head to foot.
‘Then dean’t shut it at all,’ retorted John Browdie. ‘Dang it, thee
bean’t afeard o’ schoolmeasther’s takkin cold, I hope?’
‘N-no,’ said Smike, his teeth chattering in his head. ‘But he brought me
back before, and will again. He will, he will indeed.’
‘He wull, he wull!’ replied John impatiently. ‘He wean’t, he wean’t.
Look’ee! I wont to do this neighbourly loike, and let them think thee’s
gotten awa’ o’ theeself, but if he cooms oot o’ thot parlour awhiles
theer’t clearing off, he mun’ have mercy on his oun boans, for I wean’t.
If he foinds it oot, soon efther, I’ll put ‘un on a wrong scent, I
warrant ‘ee. But if thee keep’st a good hart, thee’lt be at whoam afore
they know thee’st gotten off. Coom!’
Smike, who comprehended just enough of this to know it was intended
as encouragement, prepared to follow with tottering steps, when John
whispered in his ear.
‘Thee’lt just tell yoong Measther that I’m sploiced to ‘Tilly Price, and
to be heerd on at the Saracen by latther, and that I bean’t jealous of
‘un--dang it, I’m loike to boost when I think o’ that neight! ‘Cod, I
think I see ‘un now, a powderin’ awa’ at the thin bread an’ butther!’
It was rather a ticklish recollection for John just then, for he was
within an ace of breaking out into a loud guffaw. Restraining himself,
however, just in time, by a great effort, he glided downstairs, hauling
Smike behind him; and placing himself close to the parlour door, to
confront the first person that might come out, signed to him to make
off.
Having got so far, Smike needed no second bidding. Opening the
house-door gently, and casting a look of mingled gratitude and terror
at his deliverer, he took the direction which had been indicated to him,
and sped away like the wind.
The Yorkshireman remained on his post for a few minutes, but, finding
that there was no pause in the conversation inside, crept back again
unheard, and stood, listening over the stair-rail, for a full hour.
Everything remaining perfectly quiet, he got into Mr. Squeers’s bed, once
more, and drawing the clothes over his head, laughed till he was nearly
smothered.
If there could only have been somebody by, to see how the bedclothes
shook, and to see the Yorkshireman’s great red face and round head
appear above the sheets, every now and then, like some jovial monster
coming to the surface to breathe, and once more dive down convulsed with
the laughter which came bursting forth afresh--that somebody would have
been scarcely less amused than John Browdie himself.
CHAPTER 40
In which Nicholas falls in Love. He employs a Mediator, whose
Proceedings are crowned with unexpected Success, excepting in one
solitary Particular
Once more out of the clutches of his old persecutor, it needed no fresh
stimulation to call forth the utmost energy and exertion that Smike was
capable of summoning to his aid. Without pausing for a moment to reflect
upon the course he was taking, or the probability of its leading him
homewards or the reverse, he fled away with surprising swiftness and
constancy of purpose, borne upon such wings as only Fear can wear, and
impelled by imaginary shouts in the well remembered voice of Squeers,
who, with a host of pursuers, seemed to the poor fellow’s disordered
senses to press hard upon his track; now left at a greater distance
in the rear, and now gaining faster and faster upon him, as the
alternations of hope and terror agitated him by turns. Long after he had
become assured that these sounds were but the creation of his excited
brain, he still held on, at a pace which even weakness and exhaustion
could scarcely retard. It was not until the darkness and quiet of a
country road, recalled him to a sense of external objects, and the
starry sky, above, warned him of the rapid flight of time, that, covered
with dust and panting for breath, he stopped to listen and look about
him.
All was still and silent. A glare of light in the distance, casting a
warm glow upon the sky, marked where the huge city lay. Solitary fields,
divided by hedges and ditches, through many of which he had crashed and
scrambled in his flight, skirted the road, both by the way he had come
and upon the opposite side. It was late now. They could scarcely trace
him by such paths as he had taken, and if he could hope to regain his
own dwelling, it must surely be at such a time as that, and under cover
of the darkness. This, by degrees, became pretty plain, even to the mind
of Smike. He had, at first, entertained some vague and childish idea of
travelling into the country for ten or a dozen miles, and then returning
homewards by a wide circuit, which should keep him clear of London--so
great was his apprehension of traversing the streets alone, lest
he should again encounter his dreaded enemy--but, yielding to the
conviction which these thoughts inspired, he turned back, and taking the
open road, though not without many fears and misgivings, made for London
again, with scarcely less speed of foot than that with which he had left
the temporary abode of Mr. Squeers.
By the time he re-entered it, at the western extremity, the greater part
of the shops were closed. Of the throngs of people who had been tempted
abroad after the heat of the day, but few remained in the streets, and
they were lounging home. But of these he asked his way from time to
time, and by dint of repeated inquiries, he at length reached the
dwelling of Newman Noggs.
All that evening, Newman had been hunting and searching in byways and
corners for the very person who now knocked at his door, while Nicholas
had been pursuing the same inquiry in other directions. He was sitting,
with a melancholy air, at his poor supper, when Smike’s timorous and
uncertain knock reached his ears. Alive to every sound, in his anxious
and expectant state, Newman hurried downstairs, and, uttering a cry of
joyful surprise, dragged the welcome visitor into the passage and up the
stairs, and said not a word until he had him safe in his own garret
and the door was shut behind them, when he mixed a great mug-full of
gin-and-water, and holding it to Smike’s mouth, as one might hold a bowl
of medicine to the lips of a refractory child, commanded him to drain it
to the last drop.
Newman looked uncommonly blank when he found that Smike did little more
than put his lips to the precious mixture; he was in the act of raising
the mug to his own mouth with a deep sigh of compassion for his poor
friend’s weakness, when Smike, beginning to relate the adventures which
had befallen him, arrested him half-way, and he stood listening, with
the mug in his hand.
It was odd enough to see the change that came over Newman as Smike
proceeded. At first he stood, rubbing his lips with the back of his
hand, as a preparatory ceremony towards composing himself for a draught;
then, at the mention of Squeers, he took the mug under his arm, and
opening his eyes very wide, looked on, in the utmost astonishment. When
Smike came to the assault upon himself in the hackney coach, he hastily
deposited the mug upon the table, and limped up and down the room in a
state of the greatest excitement, stopping himself with a jerk, every
now and then, as if to listen more attentively. When John Browdie came
to be spoken of, he dropped, by slow and gradual degrees, into a chair,
and rubbing his hands upon his knees--quicker and quicker as the story
reached its climax--burst, at last, into a laugh composed of one
loud sonorous ‘Ha! ha!’ having given vent to which, his countenance
immediately fell again as he inquired, with the utmost anxiety, whether
it was probable that John Browdie and Squeers had come to blows.
‘No! I think not,’ replied Smike. ‘I don’t think he could have missed me
till I had got quite away.’
Newman scratched his head with a shout of great disappointment, and
once more lifting up the mug, applied himself to the contents; smiling
meanwhile, over the rim, with a grim and ghastly smile at Smike.
‘You shall stay here,’ said Newman; ‘you’re tired--fagged. I’ll tell
them you’re come back. They have been half mad about you. Mr. Nicholas--’
‘God bless him!’ cried Smike.
‘Amen!’ returned Newman. ‘He hasn’t had a minute’s rest or peace; no
more has the old lady, nor Miss Nickleby.’
‘No, no. Has SHE thought about me?’ said Smike. ‘Has she though? oh, has