The dangers thicken, and the worst is told.
INSTEAD of going home, Ralph threw himself into the first street cabriolet he
could find, and, directing the driver towards the police-office of the district
in which Mr Squeers's misfortunes had occurred, alighted at a short distance
from it, and, discharging the man, went the rest of his way thither on foot.
Inquiring for the object of his solicitude, he learnt that he had timed his
visit well; for Mr Squeers was, in fact, at that moment waiting for a hackney
coach he had ordered, and in which he purposed proceeding to his week's
retirement like a gentleman.
Demanding speech with the prisoner, he was ushered into a kind of
waiting-room in which, by reason of his scholastic profession and superior
respectability, Mr Squeers had been permitted to pass the day. Here, by the
light of a guttering and blackened candle, he could barely discern the
schoolmaster, fast asleep on a bench in a remote corner. An empty glass stood on
a table before him, which, with his somnolent condition and a very strong smell
of brandy-and-water, forewarned the visitor that Mr Squeers had been seeking, in
creature comforts, a temporary forgetfulness of his unpleasant situation.
It was not a very easy matter to rouse him: so lethargic and heavy were his
slumbers. Regaining his faculties by slow and faint glimmerings, he at length
sat upright; and, displaying a very yellow face, a very red nose, and a very
bristly beard: the joint effect of which was considerably heightened by a dirty
white handkerchief, spotted with blood, drawn over the crown of his head and
tied under his chin: stared ruefully at Ralph in silence, until his feelings
found a vent in this pithy sentence:
`I say, young fellow, you've been and done it now; you have!'
`What's the matter with your head?' asked Ralph.
`Why, your man, your informing kidnapping man, has been and broke it,'
rejoined Squeers sulkily; `that's what's the matter with it. You've come at
last, have you?'
`Why have you not sent to me?' said Ralph. `How could I come till I knew what
had befallen you?'
`My family!' hiccuped Mr Squeers, raising his eye to the ceiling: `my
daughter, as is at that age when all the sensibilities is a-coming out strong in
blow--my son as is the young Norval of private life, and the pride and ornament
of a doting willage--here's a shock for my family! The coat-of-arms of the
Squeerses is tore, and their sun is gone down into the ocean wave!'
`You have been drinking,' said Ralph, `and have not yet slept yourself
sober.'
`I haven't been drinking your health, my codger,' replied Mr Squeers; `so you
have nothing to do with that.'
Ralph suppressed the indignation which the schoolmaster's altered and
insolent manner awakened, and asked again why he had not sent to him.
`What should I get by sending to you?' returned Squeers. `To be known to be
in with you wouldn't do me a deal of good, and they won't take bail till they
know something more of the case, so here am I hard and fast: and there are you,
loose and comfortable.'
`And so must you be in a few days,' retorted Ralph, with affected
good-humour. `They can't hurt you, man.'
`Why, I suppose they can't do much to me, if I explain how it was that I got
into the good company of that there ca-daverous old Slider,' replied Squeers
viciously, `who I wish was dead and buried, and resurrected and dissected, and
hung upon wires in a anatomical museum, before ever I'd had anything to do with
her. This is what him with the powdered head says this morning, in so many
words--"Prisoner! As you have been found in company with this woman; as you were
detected in possession of this document; as you were engaged with her in
fraudulently destroying others, and can give no satisfactory account of
yourself; I shall remand you for a week, in order that inquiries may be made,
and evidence got--and meanwhile I can't take any bail for your appearance." Well
then, what I say now is, that I can give a satisfactory account of myself; I can
hand in the card of my establishment and say, "I am the Wackford Squeers as is
therein named, sir. I am the man as is guaranteed, by unimpeachable references,
to be a out-and-outer in morals and uprightness of principle. Whatever is wrong
in this business is no fault of mine. I had no evil design in it, sir. I was not
aware that anything was wrong. I was merely employed by a friend--my friend Mr
Ralph Nickleby, of Golden Square. Send for him, sir, and ask him what he has to
say--he's the man; not me!"'
`What document was it that you had?' asked Ralph, evading, for the moment,
the point just raised.
`What document? Why, the document,' replied Squeers. `The Madeline
What's-her-name one. It was a will; that's what it was.'
`Of what nature, whose will, when dated, how benefiting her, to what extent?'
asked Ralph hurriedly.
`A will in her favour; that's all I know,' rejoined Squeers, `and that's more
than you'd have known, if you'd had them bellows on your head. It's all owing to
your precious caution that they got hold of it. If you had let me burn it, and
taken my word that it was gone, it would have been a heap of ashes behind the
fire, instead of being whole and sound, inside of my greatcoat.'
`Beaten at every point!' muttered Ralph.
`Ah!' sighed Squeers, who, between the brandy-and-water and his broken head,
wandered strangely, `at the delightful village of Dotheboys near Greta Bridge in
Yorkshire, youth are boarded, clothed, booked, washed, furnished with
pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living
and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry--this is a
altered state of trigonomics, this is! A double!--all, everything--a cobbler's
weapon. U-p--up, adjective, not down. S-q-u- double e-r-s--Squeers, noun
substantive, a educator of youth. Total, all up with Squeers!'
His running on in this way had afforded Ralph an opportunity of recovering
his presence of mind, which at once suggested to him the necessity of removing,
as far as possible, the schoolmaster's misgivings, and leading him to believe
that his safety and best policy lay in the preservation of a rigid silence.
`I tell you, once again,' he said, `they can't hurt you. You shall have an
action for false imprisonment, and make a profit of this, yet. We will devise a
story for you that should carry you through twenty times such a trivial scrape
as this; and if they want security in a thousand pounds for your reappearance in
case you should be called upon, you shall have it. All you have to do is, to
keep back the truth. You're a little fuddled tonight, and may not be able to see
this as clearly as you would at another time; but this is what you must do, and
you'll need all your senses about you; for a slip might be awkward.'
`Oh!' said Squeers, who had looked cunningly at him, with his head stuck on
one side, like an old raven. `That's what I'm to do, is it? Now then, just you
hear a word or two from me. I an't a-going to have any stories made for me, and
I an't a-going to stick to any. If I find matters going again me, I shall expect
you to take your share, and I'll take care you do. You never said anything about
danger. I never bargained for being brought into such a plight as this, and I
don't mean to take it as quiet as you think. I let you lead me on, from one
thing to another, because we had been mixed up together in a certain sort of a
way, and if you had liked to be ill-natured you might perhaps have hurt the
business, and if you liked to be good-natured you might throw a good deal in my
way. Well; if all goes right now, that's quite correct, and I don't mind it; but
if anything goes wrong, then times are altered, and I shall just say and do
whatever I think may serve me most, and take advice from nobody. My moral
influence with them lads,' added Mr Squeers, with deeper gravity, `is a
tottering to its basis. The images of Mrs Squeers, my daughter, and my son
Wackford, all short of vittles, is perpetually before me; every other
consideration melts away and vanishes, in front of these; the only number in all
arithmetic that I know of, as a husband and a father, is number one, under this
here most fatal go!'
How long Mr Squeers might have declaimed, or how stormy a discussion his
declamation might have led to, nobody knows. Being interrupted, at this point,
by the arrival of the coach and an attendant who was to bear him company, he
perched his hat with great dignity on the top of the handkerchief that bound his
head; and, thrusting one hand in his pocket, and taking the attendant's arm with
the other, suffered himself to be led forth.
`As I supposed from his not sending!' thought Ralph. `This fellow, I plainly
see through all his tipsy fooling, has made up his mind to turn upon me. I am so
beset and hemmed in, that they are not only all struck with fear, but, like the
beasts in the fable, have their fling at me now, though time was, and no longer
ago than yesterday too, when they were all civility and compliance. But they
shall not move me. I'll not give way. I will not budge one inch!'
He went home, and was glad to find his housekeeper complaining of illness,
that he might have an excuse for being alone and sending her away to where she
lived: which was hard by. Then, he sat down by the light of a single candle, and
began to think, for the first time, on all that had taken place that day.
He had neither eaten nor drunk since last night, and, in addition to the
anxiety of mind he had undergone, had been travelling about, from place to place
almost incessantly, for many hours. He felt sick and exhausted, but could taste
nothing save a glass of water, and continued to sit with his head upon his hand
-- not resting nor thinking, but laboriously trying to do both, and feeling that
every sense but one of weariness and desolation, was for the time benumbed.
It was nearly ten o'clock when he heard a knocking at the door, and still sat
quiet as before, as if he could not even bring his thoughts to bear upon that.
It had been often repeated, and he had, several times, heard a voice outside,
saying there was a light in the window (meaning, as he knew, his own candle),
before he could rouse himself and go downstairs.
`Mr Nickleby, there is terrible news for you, and I am sent to beg you will
come with me directly,' said a voice he seemed to recognise. He held his hand
above his eyes, and, looking out, saw Tim Linkinwater on the steps.
`Come where?' demanded Ralph.
`To our house -- where you came this morning. I have a coach here.'
`Why should I go there?' said Ralph.
`Don't ask me why, but pray come with me.'
`Another edition of today!' returned Ralph, making as though he would shut
the door.
`No, no!' cried Tim, catching him by the arm and speaking most earnestly; `it
is only that you may hear something that has occurred -- something very
dreadful, Mr Nickleby, which concerns you nearly. Do you think I would tell you
so or come to you like this, if it were not the case?'
Ralph looked at him more closely. Seeing that he was indeed greatly excited,
he faltered, and could not tell what to say or think.
`You had better hear this now, than at any other time,' said Tim; `it may
have some influence with you. For Heaven's sake come!'
Perhaps, at, another time, Ralph's obstinacy and dislike would have been
proof against any appeal from such a quarter, however emphatically urged; but
now, after a moment's hesitation, he went into the hall for his hat, and
returning, got into the coach without speaking a word.
Tim well remembered afterwards, and often said, that as Ralph Nickleby went
into the house for this purpose, he saw him, by the light of the candle which he
had set down upon a chair, reel and stagger like a drunken man. He well
remembered, too, that when he had placed his foot upon the coach-steps, he
turned round and looked upon him with a face so ashy pale and so very wild and
vacant that it made him shudder, and for the moment almost afraid to follow.
People were fond of saying that he had some dark presentiment upon him then, but
his emotion might, perhaps, with greater show of reason, be referred to what he
had undergone that day.
A profound silence was observed during the ride. Arrived at their place of
destination, Ralph followed his conductor into the house, and into a room where
the two brothers were. He was so astounded, not to say awed, by something of a
mute compassion for himself which was visible in their manner and in that of the
old clerk, that he could scarcely speak.
Having taken a seat, however, he contrived to say, though in broken words,
`What -- what have you to say to me -- more than has been said already?'
The room was old and large, very imperfectly lighted, and terminated in a bay
window, about which hung some heavy drapery. Casting his eyes in this direction
as he spoke, he thought he made out the dusky figure of a man. He was confirmed
in this impression by seeing that the object moved, as if uneasy under his
scrutiny.
`Who's that yonder?' he said.
`One who has conveyed to us, within these two hours, the intelligence which
caused our sending to you,' replied brother Charles. `Let him be, sir, let him
be for the present.'
`More riddles!' said Ralph, faintly. `Well, sir?'
In turning his face towards the brothers he was obliged to avert it from the
window; but, before either of them could speak, he had looked round again. It
was evident that he was rendered restless and uncomfortable by the presence of
the unseen person; for he repeated this action several times, and at length, as
if in a nervous state which rendered him positively unable to turn away from the
place, sat so as to have it opposite him, muttering as an excuse that he could
not bear the light.
The brothers conferred apart for a short time: their manner showing that they
were agitated. Ralph glanced at them twice or thrice, and ultimately said, with
a great effort to recover his self-possession, `Now, what is this? If I am
brought from home at this time of night, let it be for something. What have you
got to tell me?' After a short pause, he added, `Is my niece dead?'
He had struck upon a key which rendered the task of commencement an easier
one. Brother Charles turned, and said that it was a death of which they had to
tell him, but that his niece was well.
`You don't mean to tell me,' said Ralph, as his eyes brightened, `that her
brother's dead? No, that's too good. I'd not believe it, if you told me so. It
would be too welcome news to be true.'
`Shame on you, you hardened and unnatural man,' cried the other brother,
warmly. `Prepare yourself for intelligence which, if you have any human feeling
in your breast, will make even you shrink and tremble. What if we tell you that
a poor unfortunate boy: a child in everything but never having known one of
those tender endearments, or one of those lightsome hours which make our
childhood a time to be remembered like a happy dream through all our after life:
a warm-hearted, harmless, affectionate creature, who never offended you, or did
you wrong, but on whom you have vented the malice and hatred you have conceived
for your nephew, and whom you have made an instrument for wreaking your bad
passions upon him: what if we tell you that, sinking under your persecution,
sir, and the misery and ill-usage of a life short in years but long in
suffering, this poor creature has gone to tell his sad tale where, for your part
in it, you must surely answer?'
`If you tell me,' said Ralph; `if you tell me that he is dead, I forgive you
all else. If you tell me that he is dead, I am in your debt and bound to you for
life. He is! I see it in your faces. Who triumphs now? Is this your dreadful
news; this your terrible intelligence? You see how it moves me. You did well to
send. I would have travelled a hundred miles afoot, through mud, mire, and
darkness, to hear this news just at this time.'
Even then, moved as he was by this savage joy, Ralph could see in the faces
of the two brothers, mingling with their look of disgust and horror, something
of that indefinable compassion for himself which he had noticed before.
`And he brought you the intelligence, did he?' said Ralph, pointing with his
finger towards the recess already mentioned; `and sat there, no doubt, to see me
prostrated and overwhelmed by it! Ha, ha, ha! But I tell him that I'll be a
sharp thorn in his side for many a long day to come; and I tell you two, again,
that you don't know him yet; and that you'll rue the day you took compassion on
the vagabond.'
`You take me for your nephew,' said a hollow voice; `it would be better for
you, and for me too, if I were he indeed.'
The figure that he had seen so dimly, rose, and came slowly down. He started
back, for he found that he confronted -- not Nicholas, as he had supposed, but
Brooker.
Ralph had no reason, that he knew, to fear this man; he had never feared him
before; but the pallor which had been observed in his face when he issued forth
that night, came upon him again. He was seen to tremble, and his voice changed
as he said, keeping his eyes upon him,
`What does this fellow here? Do you know he is a convict -- a felon -- a
common thief?'
`Hear what he has to tell you -- oh, Mr Nickleby, hear what he has to tell
you, be he what he may!' cried the brothers, with such emphatic earnestness,
that Ralph turned to them in wonder. They pointed to Brooker. Ralph again gazed
at him: as it seemed mechanically.
`That boy,' said the man, `that these gentlemen have been talking of --'
`That boy,' repeated Ralph, looking vacantly at him.
`-- Whom I saw, stretched dead and cold upon his bed, and who is now in his
grave --'
`Who is now in his grave,' echoed Ralph, like one who talks in his sleep.
The man raised his eyes, and clasped his hands solemnly together:
`-- Was your only son, so help me God in heaven!'
In the midst of a dead silence, Ralph sat down, pressing his two hands upon
his temples. He removed them, after a minute, and never was there seen, part of
a living man undisfigured by any wound, such a ghastly face as he then
disclosed. He looked at Brooker, who was by this time standing at a short
distance from him; but did not say one word, or make the slightest sound or
gesture.
`Gentlemen,' said the man, `I offer no excuses for myself. I am long past
that. If, in telling you how this has happened, I tell you that I was harshly
used, and perhaps driven out of my real nature, I do it only as a necessary part
of my story, and not to shield myself. I am a guilty man.'
He stopped, as if to recollect, and looking away from Ralph, and addressing
himself to the brothers, proceeded in a subdued and humble tone:
`Among those who once had dealings with this man, gentlemen -- that's from
twenty to five-and-twenty years ago -- there was one, a rough fox-hunting,
hard-drinking gentleman, who had run through his own fortune, and wanted to
squander away that of his sister: they were both orphans, and she lived with him
and managed his house. I don't know whether it was, originally, to back his
influence and try to over-persuade the young woman or not, but he,' pointing, to
Ralph, `used to go down to the house in Leicestershire pretty often, and stop
there many days at a time. They had had a great many dealings together, and he
may have gone on some of those, or to patch up his client's affairs, which were
in a ruinous state -- of course he went for profit. The gentlewoman was not a
girl, but she was, I have heard say, handsome, and entitled to a pretty large
property. In course of time, he married her. The same love of gain which led him
to contract this marriage, led to its being kept strictly private; for a clause
in her father's will declared that if she married without her brother's consent,
the property, in which she had only some life interest while she remained
single, should pass away altogether to another branch of the family. The brother
would give no consent that the sister didn't buy, and pay for handsomely; Mr
Nickleby would consent to no such sacrifice; and so they went on, keeping their
marriage secret, and waiting for him to break his neck or die of a fever. He did
neither, and meanwhile the result of this private marriage was a son. The child
was put out to nurse, a long way off; his mother never saw him but once or
twice, and then by stealth; and his father -- so eagerly did he thirst after the
money which seemed to come almost within his grasp now, for his brother-in-law
was very ill, and breaking more and more every day -- never went near him, to
avoid raising any suspicion. The brother lingered on; Mr Nickleby's wife
constantly urged him to avow their marriage; he peremptorily refused. She
remained alone in a dull country house: seeing little or no company but riotous,
drunken sportsmen. He lived in London and clung to his business. Angry quarrels
and recriminations took place, and when they had been married nearly seven
years, and were within a few weeks of the time when the brother's death would
have adjusted all, she eloped with a younger man, and left him.'
Here he paused, but Ralph did not stir, and the brothers signed to him to
proceed.
`It was then that I became acquainted with these circumstances from his own
lips. They were no secrets then; for the brother, and others, knew them; but
they were communicated to me -- not on this account, but because I was wanted.
He followed the fugitives -- some said to make money of his wife's shame, but, I
believe, to take some violent revenge, for that was as much his character as the
other -- perhaps more. He didn't find them, and she died not long after. I don't
know whether he began to think he might like the child, or whether he wished to
make sure that it should never fall into its mother's hands; but, before he
went, he intrusted me with the charge of bringing it home. And I did so.'
He went on, from this point, in a still more humble tone, and spoke in a very
low voice: pointing to Ralph as he resumed.
`He had used me ill -- cruelly -- I reminded him in what, not long ago when I
met him in the street -- and I hated him. I brought the child home to his own
house, and lodged him in the front garret. Neglect had made him very sickly, and
I was obliged to call in a doctor, who said he must be removed for change of
air, or he would die. I think that first put in my head. I did it then. He was
gone six weeks, and when he came back, I told him -- with every circumstance
well planned and proved; nobody could have suspected me -- that the child was
dead and buried. He might have been disappointed in some intention he had
formed, or he might have had some natural affection, but he was grieved at that,
and I was confirmed in my design of opening up the secret one day, and making it
a means of getting money from him. I had heard, like most other men, of
Yorkshire schools. I took the child to one kept by a man named Squeers, and left
it there. I gave him the name of Smike. Year by year, I paid twenty pounds a
year for him for six years: never breathing the secret all the time: for I had
left his father's service after more hard usage, and quarrelled with him again.
I was sent away from this country. I have been away nearly eight years. Directly
I came home again, I travelled down into Yorkshire, and, skulking in the village
of an evening-time, made inquiries about the boys at the school, and found that
this one, whom I had placed there, had run away with a young man bearing the
name of his own father. I sought his father out in London, and hinting at what I
could tell him, tried for a little money to support life; but he repulsed me
with threats. I then found out his clerk, and, going on from little to little,
and showing him that there were good reasons for communicating with me, learnt
what was going on; and it was I who told him that the boy was no son of the man
who claimed to be his father. All this time I had never seen the boy. At length,
I heard from this same source that he was very ill, and where he was. I
travelled down there, that might recall myself, if possible, to his recollection
and confirm my story. I came upon him unexpectedly; but before I could speak he
knew me -- he had good cause to remember me, poor lad! -- and I would have sworn
to him if I had met him in the Indies. I knew the piteous face I had seen in the
little child. After a few days' indecision, I applied to the young gentleman in
whose care he was, and I found that he was dead. He knows how quickly he
recognised me again, how often he had described me and my leaving him at the
school, and how he told him of a garret he recollected: which is the one I have
spoken of, and in his father's house to this day. This is my story. I demand to
be brought face to face with the schoolmaster, and put to any possible proof of
any part of it, and I will show that it's too true, and that I have this guilt
upon my soul.'
`Unhappy man!' said the brothers. `What reparation can you make for this?'
`None, gentlemen, none! I have none to make, and nothing to hope now. I am
old in years, and older still in misery and care. This confession can bring
nothing upon me but new suffering and punishment; but I make it, and will abide
by it whatever comes. I have been made the instrument of working out this
dreadful retribution upon the head of a man who, in the hot pursuit of his bad
ends, has persecuted and hunted down his own child to death. It must descend
upon me too. I know it must fall. My reparation comes too late; and, neither in
this world nor in the next, can I have hope again!'
He had hardly spoken, when the lamp, which stood upon the table close to
where Ralph was seated, and which was the only one in the room, was thrown to
the ground, and left them in darkness. There was some trifling confusion in
obtaining another light; the interval was a mere nothing; but when the light
appeared, Ralph Nickleby was gone.
The good brothers and Tim Linkinwater occupied some time in discussing the
probability of his return; and, when it became apparent that he would not come
back, they hesitated whether or no to send after him. At length, remembering how
strangely and silently he had sat in one immovable position during the
interview, and thinking he might possibly be ill, they determined, although it
was now very late, to send to his house on some pretence. Finding an excuse in
the presence of Brooker, whom they knew not how to dispose of without consulting
his wishes, they concluded to act upon this resolution before going to bed.
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