Ralph makes one last appointment--and keeps it
CREEPING from the house, and slinking off like a thief; groping with his
hands, when first he got into the street, as if he were a blind man; and looking
often over his shoulder while he hurried away, as though he were followed in
imagination or reality by someone anxious to question or detain him; Ralph
Nickleby left the City behind him, and took the road to his own home.
The night was dark, and a cold wind blew, driving the clouds, furiously and
fast, before it. There was one black, gloomy mass that seemed to follow him: not
hurrying in the wild chase with the others, but lingering sullenly behind, and
gliding darkly and stealthily on. He often looked back at this, and, more than
once, stopped to let it pass over; but, somehow, when he went forward again, it
was still behind him, coming mournfully and slowly up, like a shadowy funeral
train.
He had to pass a poor, mean burial-ground--a dismal place, raised a few feet
above the level of the street, and parted from it by a low parapet-wall and an
iron railing; a rank, unwholesome, rotten spot, where the very grass and weeds
seemed, in their frouzy growth, to tell that they had sprung from paupers'
bodies, and had struck their roots in the graves of men, sodden, while alive, in
steaming courts and drunken hungry dens. And here, in truth, they lay, parted
from the living by a little earth and a board or two--lay thick and
close--corrupting in body as they had in mind--a dense and squalid crowd. Here
they lay, cheek by jowl with life: no deeper down than the feet of the throng
that passed there every day, and piled high as their throats. Here they lay, a
grisly family, all these dear departed brothers and sisters of the ruddy
clergyman who did his task so speedily when they were hidden in the ground!
As he passed here, Ralph called to mind that he had been one of a jury, long
before, on the body of a man who had cut his throat; and that he was buried in
this place. He could not tell how he came to recollect it now, when he had so
often passed and never thought about him, or how it was that he felt an interest
in the circumstance; but he did both; and stopping, and clasping the iron
railings with his hands, looked eagerly in, wondering which might be his grave.
While he was thus engaged, there came towards him, with noise of shouts and
singing, some fellows full of drink, followed by others, who were remonstrating
with them and urging them to go home in quiet. They were in high good-humour;
and one of them, a little, weazen, hump-backed man, began to dance. He was a
grotesque, fantastic figure, and the few bystanders laughed. Ralph himself was
moved to mirth, and echoed the laugh of one who stood near and who looked round
in his face. When they had passed on, and he was left alone again, he resumed
his speculation with a new kind of interest; for he recollected that the last
person who had seen the suicide alive, had left him very merry, and he
remembered how strange he and the other jurors had thought that at the time.
He could not fix upon the spot among such a heap of graves, but he conjured
up a strong and vivid idea of the man himself, and how he looked, and what had
led him to do it; all of which he recalled with ease. By dint of dwelling upon
this theme, he carried the impression with him when he went away: as he
remembered, when a child, to have had frequently before him the figure of some
goblin he had once seen chalked upon a door. But as he drew nearer and nearer
home he forgot it again, and began to think how very dull and solitary the house
would be inside.
This feeling became so strong at last, that when he reached his own door, he
could hardly make up his mind to turn the key and open it. When he had done
that, and gone into the passage, he felt as though to shut it again would be to
shut out the world. But he let it go, and it closed with a loud noise. There was
no light. How very dreary, cold, and still it was!
Shivering from head to foot, he made his way upstairs into the room where he
had been last disturbed. He had made a kind of compact with himself that he
would not think of what had happened until he got home. He was at home now, and
suffered himself to consider it.
His own child--his own child! He never doubted the tale; he felt it was true;
knew it as well, now, as if he had been privy to it all along. His own child!
And dead too. Dying beside Nicholas--loving him, and looking upon him as
something like an angel. That was the worst!
They had all turned from him and deserted him in his very first need. Even
money could not buy them now; everything must come out, and everybody must know
all. Here was the young lord dead, his companion abroad and beyond his reach,
ten thousand pounds gone at one blow, his plot with Gride overset at the very
moment of triumph, his after-schemes discovered, himself in danger, the object
of his persecution and Nicholas's love, his own wretched boy; everything
crumbled and fallen upon him, and he beaten down beneath the ruins and
grovelling in the dust.
If he had known his child to be alive; if no deceit had been ever practised,
and he had grown up beneath his eye; he might have been a careless, indifferent,
rough, harsh father--like enough--he felt that; but the thought would come that
he might have been otherwise, and that his son might have been a comfort to him,
and they two happy together. He began to think now, that his supposed death and
his wife's flight had had some share in making him the morose, hard man he was.
He seemed to remember a time when he was not quite so rough and obdurate; and
almost thought that he had first hated Nicholas because he was young and
gallant, and perhaps like the stripling who had brought dishonour and loss of
fortune on his head.
But one tender thought, or one of natural regret, in his whirlwind of passion
and remorse, was as a drop of calm water in a stormy maddened sea. His hatred of
Nicholas had been fed upon his own defeat, nourished on his interference with
his schemes, fattened upon his old defiance and success. There were reasons for
its increase; it had grown and strengthened gradually. Now it attained a height
which was sheer wild lunacy. That his, of all others, should have been the hands
to rescue his miserable child; that he should have been his protector and
faithful friend; that he should have shown him that love and tenderness which,
from the wretched moment of his birth, he had never known; that he should have
taught him to hate his own parent and execrate his very name; that he should now
know and feel all this, and triumph in the recollection; was gall and madness to
the usurer's heart. The dead boy's love for Nicholas, and the attachment of
Nicholas to him, was insupportable agony. The picture of his death-bed, with
Nicholas at his side, tending and supporting him, and he breathing out his
thanks, and expiring in his arms, when he would have had them mortal enemies and
hating each other to the last, drove him frantic. He gnashed his teeth and smote
the air, and looking wildly round, with eyes which gleamed through the darkness,
cried aloud:
`I am trampled down and ruined. The wretch told me true. The night has come!
Is there no way to rob them of further triumph, and spurn their mercy and
compassion? Is there no devil to help me?'
Swiftly, there glided again into his brain the figure he had raised that
night. It seemed to lie before him. The head was covered now. So it was when he
first saw it. The rigid, upturned, marble feet too, he remembered well. Then
came before him the pale and trembling relatives who had told their tale upon
the inquest--the shrieks of women--the silent dread of man--the consternation
and disquiet--the victory achieved by that heap of clay, which, with one motion
of its hand, had let out the life and made this stir among them--
He spoke no more; but, after a pause, softly groped his way out of the room,
and up the echoing stairs--up to the top--to the front garret--where he closed
the door behind him, and remained.
It was a mere lumber-room now, but it yet contained an old dismantled
bedstead; the one on which his son had slept; for no other had ever been there.
He avoided it hastily, and sat down as far from it as he could.
The weakened glare of the lights in the street below, shining through the
window which had no blind or curtain to intercept it, was enough to show the
character of the room, though not sufficient fully to reveal the various
articles of lumber, old corded trunks and broken furniture, which were scattered
about. It had a shelving roof; high in one part, and at another descending
almost to the floor. It was towards the highest part that Ralph directed his
eyes; and upon it he kept them fixed steadily for some minutes, when he rose,
and dragging thither an old chest upon which he had been seated, mounted on it,
and felt along the wall above his head with both hands. At length, they touched
a large iron hook, firmly driven into one of the beams.
At that moment, he was interrupted by a loud knocking at the door below.
After a little hesitation he opened the window, and demanded who it was.
`I want Mr Nickleby,' replied a voice.
`What with him?'
`That's not Mr Nickleby's voice, surely?' was the rejoinder.
It was not like it; but it was Ralph who spoke, and so he said.
The voice made answer that the twin brothers wished to know whether the man
whom he had seen that night was to he detained; and that although it was now
midnight they had sent, in their anxiety to do right.
`Yes,' cried Ralph, `detain him till tomorrow; then let them bring him
here--him and my nephew--and come themselves, and be sure that I will be ready
to receive them.'
`At what hour?' asked the voice.
`At any hour,' replied Ralph fiercely. `In the afternoon, tell them. At any
hour--at any minute--all times will be alike to me.'
He listened to the man's retreating footsteps until the sound had passed, and
then, gazing up into the sky, saw, or thought he saw, the same black cloud that
had seemed to follow him home, and which now appeared to hover directly above
the house.
`I know its meaning now,' he muttered, `and the restless nights, the dreams,
and why I have quailed of late--all pointed to this. Oh! if men by selling their
own souls could ride rampant for a term, for how short a term would I barter
mine tonight!'
The sound of a deep bell came along the wind. One.
`Lie on!' cried the usurer, `with your iron tongue! Ring merrily for births
that make expectants writhe, and marriages that are made in hell, and toll
ruefully for the dead whose shoes are worn already! Call men to prayers who are
godly because not found out, and ring chimes for the coming in of every year
that brings this cursed world nearer to its end. No bell or book for me! Throw
me on a dunghill, and let me rot there, to infect the air!'
With a wild look around, in which frenzy, hatred, and despair were horribly
mingled, he shook his clenched hand at the sky above him, which was still dark
and threatening, and closed the window.
The rain and hail pattered against the glass; the chimneys quaked and rocked;
the crazy casement rattled with the wind, as though an impatient hand inside
were striving to burst it open. But no hand was there, and it opened no more.
`How's this?' cried one. `The gentleman say they can't make anybody hear, and
have been trying these two hours.'
`And yet he came home last night,' said another; `for he spoke to somebody
out of that window upstairs.'
They were a little knot of men, and, the window being mentioned, went out
into the road to look up at it. This occasioned their observing that the house
was still close shut, as the housekeeper had said she had left it on the
previous night, and led to a great many suggestions: which terminated in two or
three of the boldest getting round to the back, and so entering by a window,
while the others remained outside, in impatient expectation.
They looked into all the rooms below: opening the shutters as they went, to
admit the fading light: and still finding nobody, and everything quiet and in
its place, doubted whether they should go farther. One man, however, remarking
that they had not yet been into the garret, and that it was there he had been
last seen, they agreed to look there too, and went up softly; for the mystery
and silence made them timid.
After they had stood for an instant, on the landing, eyeing each other, he
who had proposed their carrying the search so far, turned the handle of the
door, and, pushing it open, looked through the chink, and fell back directly.
`It's very odd,' he whispered, `he's hiding behind the door! Look!'
They pressed forward to see; but one among them thrusting the others aside
with a loud exclamation, drew a clasp-knife from his pocket, and dashing into
the room, cut down the body.
He had torn a rope from one of the old trunks, and hung himself on an iron
hook immediately below the trap-door in the ceiling--in the very place to which
the eyes of his son, a lonely, desolate, little creature, had so often been
directed in childish terror, fourteen years before.
|