Wherein Mr Ralph Nickleby is visited by persons with whom the
reader has been already made acquainted
`WHAT a demnition long time you have kept me ringing at this confounded old
cracked tea-kettle of a bell, every tinkle of which is enough to throw a strong
man into blue convulsions, upon my life and soul, oh demmit,'--said Mr Mantalini
to Newman Noggs, scraping his boots, as he spoke, on Ralph Nickleby's scraper.
`I didn't hear the bell more than once,' replied Newman.
`Then you are most immensely and outrigeously deaf,' said Mr Mantalini, `as
deaf as a demnition post.'
Mr Mantalini had got by this time into the passage, and was making his way to
the door of Ralph's office with very little ceremony, when Newman interposed his
body; and hinting that Mr Nickleby was unwilling to be disturbed, inquired
whether the client's business was of a pressing nature.
`It is most demnebly particular,' said Mr Mantalini. `It is to melt some
scraps of dirty paper into bright, shining, chinking, tinkling, demd mint
sauce.'
Newman uttered a significant grunt, and taking Mr Mantalini's proffered card,
limped with it into his master's office. As he thrust his head in at the door,
he saw that Ralph had resumed the thoughtful posture into which he had fallen
after perusing his nephew's letter, and that he seemed to have been reading it
again, as he once more held it open in his hand. The glance was but momentary,
for Ralph, being disturbed, turned to demand the cause of the interruption.
As Newman stated it, the cause himself swaggered into the room, and grasping
Ralph's horny hand with uncommon affection, vowed that he had never seen him
looking so well in all his life.
`There is quite a bloom upon your demd countenance,' said Mr Mantalini,
seating himself unbidden, and arranging his hair and whiskers. `You look quite
juvenile and jolly, demmit!'
`We are alone,' returned Ralph, tartly. `What do you want with me?'
`Good!' cried Mr Mantalini, displaying his teeth. `What did I want! Yes. Ha,
ha! Very good. What did I want. Ha, ha. Oh dem!'
`What do you want, man?' demanded Ralph, sternly.
`Demnition discount,' returned Mr Mantalini, with a grin, and shaking his
head waggishly.
`Money is scarce,' said Ralph.
`Demd scarce, or I shouldn't want it,' interrupted Mr Mantalini.
`The times are bad, and one scarcely knows whom to trust,' continued Ralph.
`I don't want to do business just now, in fact I would rather not; but as you
are a friend--how many bills have you there?'
`Two,' returned Mr Mantalini.
`What is the gross amount?'
`Demd trifling--five-and-seventy.'
`And the dates?'
`Two months, and four.'
`I'll do them for you--mind, for you; I wouldn't for many people--for
five-and-twenty pounds,' said Ralph, deliberately.
`Oh demmit!' cried Mr Mantalini, whose face lengthened considerably at this
handsome proposal.
`Why, that leaves you fifty,' retorted Ralph. `What would you have? Let me
see the names.'
`You are so demd hard, Nickleby,' remonstrated Mr Mantalini.
`Let me see the names,' replied Ralph, impatiently extending his hand for the
bills. `Well! They are not sure, but they are safe enough. Do you consent to the
terms, and will you take the money? I don't want you to do so. I would rather
you didn't.'
`Demmit, Nickleby, can't you--' began Mr Mantalini.
`No,' replied Ralph, interrupting him. `I can't. Will you take the
money--down, mind; no delay, no going into the City and pretending to negotiate
with some other party who has no existence, and never had. Is it a bargain, or
is it not?'
Ralph pushed some papers from him as he spoke, and carelessly rattled his
cash-box, as though by mere accident. The sound was too much for Mr Mantalini.
He closed the bargain directly it reached his ears, and Ralph told the money out
upon the table.
He had scarcely done so, and Mr Mantalini had not yet gathered it all up,
when a ring was heard at the bell, and immediately afterwards Newman ushered in
no less a person than Madame Mantalini, at sight of whom Mr Mantalini evinced
considerable discomposure, and swept the cash into his pocket with remarkable
alacrity.
`Oh, you are here,' said Madame Mantalini, tossing her head.
`Yes, my life and soul, I am,' replied her husband, dropping on his knees,
and pouncing with kitten-like playfulness upon a stray sovereign. `I am here, my
soul's delight, upon Tom Tidler's ground, picking up the demnition gold and
silver.'
`I am ashamed of you,' said Madame Mantalini, with much indignation.
`Ashamed--of me, my joy? It knows it is talking demd charming sweetness, but
naughty fibs,' returned Mr Mantalini. `It knows it is not ashamed of its own
popolorum tibby.'
Whatever were the circumstances which had led to such a result, it certainly
appeared as though the popolorum tibby had rather miscalculated, for the nonce,
the extent of his lady's affection. Madame Mantalini only looked scornful in
reply; and, turning to Ralph, begged him to excuse her intrusion.
`Which is entirely attributable,' said Madame, `to the gross misconduct and
most improper behaviour of Mr Mantalini.'
`Of me, my essential juice of pineapple!'
`Of you,' returned his wife. `But I will not allow it. I will not submit to
be ruined by the extravagance and profligacy of any man. I call Mr Nickleby to
witness the course I intend to pursue with you.'
`Pray don't call me to witness anything, ma'am,' said Ralph. `Settle it
between yourselves, settle it between yourselves.'
`No, but I must beg you as a favour,' said Madame Mantalini, `to hear me give
him notice of what it is my fixed intention to do--my fixed intention, sir,'
repeated Madame Mantalini, darting an angry look at her husband.
`Will she call me "Sir"?' cried Mantalini. `Me who dote upon her with the
demdest ardour! She, who coils her fascinations round me like a pure angelic
rattlesnake! It will be all up with my feelings; she will throw me into a demd
state.'
`Don't talk of feelings, sir,' rejoined Madame Mantalini, seating herself,
and turning her back upon him. `You don't consider mine.'
`I do not consider yours, my soul!' exclaimed Mr Mantalini.
`No,' replied his wife.
And notwithstanding various blandishments on the part of Mr Mantalini, Madame
Mantalini still said no, and said it too with such determined and resolute
ill-temper, that Mr Mantalini was clearly taken aback.
`His extravagance, Mr Nickleby,' said Madame Mantalini, addressing herself to
Ralph, who leant against his easy-chair with his hands behind him, and regarded
the amiable couple with a smile of the supremest and most unmitigated
contempt,--`his extravagance is beyond all bounds.'
`I should scarcely have supposed it,' answered Ralph, sarcastically.
`I assure you, Mr Nickleby, however, that it is,' returned Madame Mantalini.
`It makes me miserable! I am under constant apprehensions, and in constant
difficulty. And even this,' said Madame Mantalini, wiping her eyes, `is not the
worst. He took some papers of value out of my desk this morning without asking
my permission.'
Mr Mantalini groaned slightly, and buttoned his trousers pocket.
`I am obliged,' continued Madame Mantalini, `since our late misfortunes, to
pay Miss Knag a great deal of money for having her name in the business, and I
really cannot afford to encourage him in all his wastefulness. As I have no
doubt that he came straight here, Mr Nickleby, to convert the papers I have
spoken of, into money, and as you have assisted us very often before, and are
very much connected with us in this kind of matters, I wish you to know the
determination at which his conduct has compelled me to arrive.'
Mr Mantalini groaned once more from behind his wife's bonnet, and fitting a
sovereign into one of his eyes, winked with the other at Ralph. Having achieved
this performance with great dexterity, he whipped the coin into his pocket, and
groaned again with increased penitence.
`I have made up my mind,' said Madame Mantalini, as tokens of impatience
manifested themselves in Ralph's countenance, `to allowance him.'
`To do that, my joy?' inquired Mr Mantalini, who did not seem to have caught
the words.
`To put him,' said Madame Mantalini, looking at Ralph, and prudently
abstaining from the slightest glance at her husband, lest his many graces should
induce her to falter in her resolution, `to put him upon a fixed allowance; and
I say that if he has a hundred and twenty pounds a year for his clothes and
pocket-money, he may consider himself a very fortunate man.'
Mr Mantalini waited, with much decorum, to hear the amount of the proposed
stipend, but when it reached his ears, he cast his hat and cane upon the floor,
and drawing out his pocket-handkerchief, gave vent to his feelings in a dismal
moan.
`Demnition!' cried Mr Mantalini, suddenly skipping out of his chair, and as
suddenly skipping into it again, to the great discomposure of his lady's nerves.
`But no. It is a demd horrid dream. It is not reality. No!'
Comforting himself with this assurance, Mr Mantalini closed his eyes and
waited patiently till such time as he should wake up.
`A very judicious arrangement,' observed Ralph with a sneer, `if your husband
will keep within it, ma'am--as no doubt he will.'
`Demmit!' exclaimed Mr Mantalini, opening his eyes at the sound of Ralph's
voice, `it is a horrid reality. She is sitting there before me. There is the
graceful outline of her form; it cannot be mistaken--there is nothing like it.
The two countesses had no outlines at all, and the dowager's was a demd outline.
Why is she so excruciatingly beautiful that I cannot be angry with her, even
now?'
`You have brought it upon yourself, Alfred,' returned Madame Mantalini--still
reproachfully, but in a softened tone.
`I am a demd villain!' cried Mr Mantalini, smiting himself on the head. `I
will fill my pockets with change for a sovereign in halfpence and drown myself
in the Thames; but I will not be angry with her, even then, for I will put a
note in the twopenny-post as I go along, to tell her where the body is. She will
be a lovely widow. I shall be a body. Some handsome women will cry; she will
laugh demnebly.'
`Alfred, you cruel, cruel creature,' said Madame Mantalini, sobbing at the
dreadful picture.
`She calls me cruel--me--me--who for her sake will become a demd, damp,
moist, unpleasant body!' exclaimed Mr Mantalini.
`You know it almost breaks my heart, even to hear you talk of such a thing,'
replied Madame Mantalini.
`Can I live to be mistrusted?' cried her husband. `Have I cut my heart into a
demd extraordinary number of little pieces, and given them all away, one after
another, to the same little engrossing demnition captivater, and can I live to
be suspected by her? Demmit, no I can't.'
`Ask Mr Nickleby whether the sum I have mentioned is not a proper one,'
reasoned Madame Mantalini.
`I don't want any sum,' replied her disconsolate husband; `I shall require no
demd allowance. I will be a body.'
On this repetition of Mr Mantalini's fatal threat, Madame Mantalini wrung her
hands, and implored the interference of Ralph Nickleby; and after a great
quantity of tears and talking, and several attempts on the part of Mr Mantalini
to reach the door, preparatory to straightway committing violence upon himself,
that gentleman was prevailed upon, with difficulty, to promise that he wouldn't
be a body. This great point attained, Madame Mantalini argued the question of
the allowance, and Mr Mantalini did the same, taking occasion to show that he
could live with uncommon satisfaction upon bread and water, and go clad in rags,
but that he could not support existence with the additional burden of being
mistrusted by the object of his most devoted and disinterested affection. This
brought fresh tears into Madame Mantalini's eyes, which having just begun to
open to some few of the demerits of Mr Mantalini, were only open a very little
way, and could be easily closed again. The result was, that without quite giving
up the allowance question, Madame Mantalini, postponed its further
consideration; and Ralph saw, clearly enough, that Mr Mantalini had gained a
fresh lease of his easy life, and that, for some time longer at all events, his
degradation and downfall were postponed.
`But it will come soon enough,' thought Ralph; `all love--bah! that I should
use the cant of boys and girls--is fleeting enough; though that which has its
sole root in the admiration of a whiskered face like that of younder baboon,
perhaps lasts the longest, as it originates in the greater blindness and is fed
by vanity. Meantime the fools bring grist to my mill, so let them live out their
day, and the longer it is, the better.'
These agreeable reflections occurred to Ralph Nickleby, as sundry small
caresses and endearments, supposed to be unseen, were exchanged between the
objects of his thoughts.
`If you have nothing more to say, my dear, to Mr Nickleby,' said Madame
Mantalini, `we will take our leaves. I am sure we have detained him much too
long already.'
Mr Mantalini answered, in the first instance, by tapping Madame Mantalini
several times on the nose, and then, by remarking in words that he had nothing
more to say.
`Demmit! I have, though,' he added almost immediately, drawing Ralph into a
corner. `Here's an affair about your friend Sir Mulberry. Such a demd
extraordinary out-of-the-way kind of thing as never was--eh?'
`What do you mean?' asked Ralph.
`Don't you know, demmit?' asked Mr Mantalini.
`I see by the paper that he was thrown from his cabriolet last night, and
severely injured, and that his life is in some danger,' answered Ralph with
great composure; `but I see nothing extraordinary in that--accidents are not
miraculous events, when men live hard, and drive after dinner.'
`Whew!' cried Mr Mantalini in a long shrill whistle. `Then don't you know how
it was?'
`Not unless it was as I have just supposed,' replied Ralph, shrugging his
shoulders carelessly, as if to give his questioner to understand that he had no
curiosity upon the subject.
`Demmit, you amaze me,' cried Mantalini.
Ralph shrugged his shoulders again, as if it were no great feat to amaze Mr
Mantalini, and cast a wistful glance at the face of Newman Noggs, which had
several times appeared behind a couple of panes of glass in the room-door; it
being a part of Newman's duty, when unimportant people called, to make various
feints of supposing that the bell had rung for him to show them out: by way of a
gentle hint to such visitors that it was time to go.
`Don't you know,' said Mr Mantalini, taking Ralph by the button, `that it
wasn't an accident at all, but a demd, furious, manslaughtering attack made upon
him by your nephew?'
`What!' snarled Ralph, clenching his fists and turning a livid white.
`Demmit, Nickleby, you're as great a tiger as he is,' said Mantalini, alarmed
at these demonstrations.
`Go on,' cried Ralph. `Tell me what you mean. What is this story? Who told
you? Speak,' growled Ralph. `Do you hear me?'
`'Gad, Nickleby,' said Mr Mantalini, retreating towards his wife, `what a
demneble fierce old evil genius you are! You're enough to frighten the life and
soul out of her little delicious wits--flying all at once into such a blazing,
ravaging, raging passion as never was, demmit!'
`Pshaw,' rejoined Ralph, forcing a smile. `It is but manner.'
`It is a demd uncomfortable, private-madhouse sort of a manner,' said Mr
Mantalini, picking up his cane.
Ralph affected to smile, and once more inquired from whom Mr Mantalini had
derived his information.
`From Pyke; and a demd, fine, pleasant, gentlemanly dog it is,' replied
Mantalini. `Demnition pleasant, and a tip-top sawyer.'
`And what said he?' asked Ralph, knitting his brows.
`That it happened this way--that your nephew met him at a coffeehouse, fell
upon him with the most demneble ferocity, followed him to his cab, swore he
would ride home with him, if he rode upon the horse's back or hooked himself on
to the horse's tail; smashed his countenance, which is a demd fine countenance
in its natural state; frightened the horse, pitched out Sir Mulberry and
himself, and--'
`And was killed?' interposed Ralph with gleaming eyes. `Was he? Is he dead?'
Mantalini shook his head.
`Ugh,' said Ralph, turning away. `Then he has done nothing--stay,' he added,
looking round again. `He broke a leg or an arm, or put his shoulder out, or
fractured his collar-bone, or ground a rib or two? His neck was saved for the
halter, but he got some painful and slow-healing injury for his trouble--did he?
You must have heard that, at least.'
`No,' rejoined Mantalini, shaking his head again. `Unless he was dashed into
such little pieces that they blew away, he wasn't hurt, for he went off as quiet
and comfortable as--as--as demnition,' said Mr Mantalini, rather at a loss for a
simile.
`And what,' said Ralph, hesitating a little, `what was the cause of quarrel?'
`You are the demdest, knowing hand,' replied Mr Mantalini, in an admiring
tone, `the cunningest, rummest, superlativest old fox--oh dem!--to pretend now
not to know that it was the little bright-eyed niece--the softest, sweetest,
prettiest--'
`Alfred!' interposed Madame Mantalini.
`She is always right,' rejoined Mr Mantalini soothingly, `and when she says
it is time to go, it is time, and go she shall; and when she walks along the
streets with her own tulip, the women shall say, with envy, she has got a demd
fine husband; and the men shall say with rapture, he has got a demd fine wife;
and they shall both be right and neither wrong, upon my life and soul--oh
demmit!'
With which remarks, and many more, no less intellectual and to the purpose,
Mr Mantalini kissed the fingers of his gloves to Ralph Nickleby, and drawing his
lady's arm through his, led her mincingly away.
`So, so,' muttered Ralph, dropping into his chair; `this devil is loose
again, and thwarting me, as he was born to do, at every turn. He told me once
there should be a day of reckoning between us, sooner or later. 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 hisself
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 penknife! 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 ago, and
that you had not the faintest clue or trace to tell you who he was. Is that the
truth?'
`It is, worse luck!' replied Squeers, becoming more and more easy and
familiar in his manner, as Ralph pursued his inquiries with the less reserve.
`It's fourteen years ago, by the entry in my book, since a strange man brought
him to my place, one autumn night, and left him there; paying five pound five,
for his first quarter in advance. He might have been five or six year old at
that time--not more.'
`What more do you know about him?' demanded Ralph.
`Devilish little, I'm sorry to say,' replied Squeers. `The money was paid for
some six or eight year, and then it stopped. He had given an address in London,
had this chap; but when it came to the point, of course nobody knowed anything
about him. So I kept the lad out of--out of--'
`Charity?' suggested Ralph drily.
`Charity, to be sure,' returned Squeers, rubbing his knees, `and when he
begins to be useful in a certain sort of way, this young scoundrel of a Nickleby
comes and carries him off. But the most vexatious and aggeravating part of the
whole affair is,' said Squeers, dropping his voice, and drawing his chair still
closer to Ralph, `that some questions have been asked about him at last--not of
me, but, in a roundabout kind of way, of people in our village. So, that just
when I might have had all arrears paid up, perhaps, and perhaps--who knows? such
things have happened in our business before--a present besides for putting him
out to a farmer, or sending him to sea, so that he might never turn up to
disgrace his parents, supposing him to be a natural boy, as many of our boys
are--damme, if that villain of a Nickleby don't collar him in open day, and
commit as good as highway robbery upon my pocket.'
`We will both cry quits with him before long,' said Ralph, laying his hand on
the arm of the Yorkshire schoolmaster.
`Quits!' echoed Squeers. `Ah! and I should like to leave a small balance in
his favour, to be settled when he can. I only wish Mrs Squeers could catch hold
of him. Bless her heart! She'd murder him, Mr Nickleby--she would, as soon as
eat her dinner.'
`We will talk of this again,' said Ralph. `I must have time to think of it.
To wound him through his own affections and fancies--If I could strike him
through this boy--'
`Strike him how you like, sir,' interrupted Squeers, `only hit him hard
enough, that's all--and with that, I'll say good-morning. Here!--just chuck that
little boy's hat off that corner peg, and lift him off the stool will you?'
Bawling these requests to Newman Noggs, Mr Squeers betook himself to the
little back-office, and fitted on his child's hat with parental anxiety, while
Newman, with his pen behind his ear, sat, stiff and immovable, on his stool,
regarding the father and son by turns with a broad stare.
`He's a fine boy, an't he?' said Squeers, throwing his head a little on one
side, and falling back to the desk, the better to estimate the proportions of
little Wackford.
`Very,' said Newman.
`Pretty well swelled out, an't he?' pursued Squeers. `He has the fatness of
twenty boys, he has.'
`Ah!' replied Newman, suddenly thrusting his face into that of Squeers, `he
has;--the fatness of twenty!--more! He's got it all. God help that others. Ha!
ha! Oh Lord!'
Having uttered these fragmentary observations, Newman dropped upon his desk
and began to write with most marvellous rapidity.
`Why, what does the man mean?' cried Squeers, colouring. `Is he drunk?'
Newman made no reply.
`Is he mad?' said Squeers.
But, still Newman betrayed no consciousness of any presence save his own; so,
Mr Squeers comforted himself by saying that he was both drunk and mad; and, with
this parting observation, he led his hopeful son away.
In exact proportion as Ralph Nickleby became conscious of a struggling and
lingering regard for Kate, had his detestation of Nicholas augmented. It might
be, that to atone for the weakness of inclining to any one person, he held it
necessary to hate some other more intensely than before; but such had been the
course of his feelings. And now, to be defied and spurned, to be held up to her
in the worst and most repulsive colours, to know that she was taught to hate and
despise him: to feel that there was infection in his touch, and taint in his
companionship--to know all this, and to know that the mover of it all was that
same boyish poor relation who had twitted him in their very first interview, and
openly bearded and braved him since, wrought his quiet and stealthy malignity to
such a pitch, that there was scarcely anything he would not have hazarded to
gratify it, if he could have seen his way to some immediate retaliation.
But, fortunately for Nicholas, Ralph Nickleby did not; and although he cast
about all that day, and kept a corner of his brain working on the one anxious
subject through all the round of schemes and business that came with it, night
found him at last, still harping on the same theme, and still pursuing the same
unprofitable reflections.
`When my brother was such as he,' said Ralph, `the first comparisons were
drawn between us--always in my disfavour. He was open, liberal, gallant, gay; I
a crafty hunks of cold and stagnant blood, with no passion but love of saving,
and no spirit beyond a thirst for gain. I recollected it well when I first saw
this whipster; but I remember it better now.'
He had been occupied in tearing Nicholas's letter into atoms; and as he
spoke, he scattered it in a tiny shower about him.
`Recollections like these,' pursued Ralph, with a bitter smile, `flock upon
me--when I resign myself to them--in crowds, and from countless quarters. As a
portion of the world affect to despise the power of money, I must try and show
them what it is.'
And being, by this time, in a pleasant frame of mind for slumber, Ralph
Nickleby went to bed.
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