Nicholas Nickleby

‘Don’t go away, Mortimer,’ said Miss Knag as they entered the shop. ‘It’s only one of our young ladies and her mother. Mrs. and Miss Nickleby.’

‘Oh, indeed!’ said Mr. Mortimer Knag. ‘Ah!’

Having given utterance to these ejaculations with a very profound and thoughtful air, Mr. Knag slowly snuffed two kitchen candles on the counter, and two more in the window, and then snuffed himself from a box in his waistcoat pocket.

There was something very impressive in the ghostly air with which all this was done; and as Mr. Knag was a tall lank gentleman of solemn features, wearing spectacles, and garnished with much less hair than a gentleman bordering on forty, or thereabouts, usually boasts, Mrs. Nickleby whispered her daughter that she thought he must be literary.

‘Past ten,’ said Mr. Knag, consulting his watch. ‘Thomas, close the warehouse.’

Thomas was a boy nearly half as tall as a shutter, and the warehouse was a shop about the size of three hackney coaches.

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Knag once more, heaving a deep sigh as he restored to its parent shelf the book he had been reading. ‘Well – yes – I believe supper is ready, sister.’

With another sigh Mr. Knag took up the kitchen candles from the counter, and preceded the ladies with mournful steps to a back-parlour, where a charwoman, employed in the absence of the sick servant, and remunerated with certain eighteenpences to be deducted from her wages due, was putting the supper out.

‘Mrs. Blockson,’ said Miss Knag, reproachfully, ‘how very often I have begged you not to come into the room with your bonnet on!’

‘I can’t help it, Miss Knag,’ said the charwoman, bridling up on the shortest notice. ‘There’s been a deal o’cleaning to do in this house, and if you don’t like it, I must trouble you to look out for somebody else, for it don’t hardly pay me, and that’s the truth, if I was to be hung this minute.’

‘I don’t want any remarks if you please,’ said Miss Knag, with a strong emphasis on the personal pronoun. ‘Is there any fire downstairs for some hot water presently?’

‘No there is not, indeed, Miss Knag,’ replied the substitute; ‘and so I won’t tell you no stories about it.’

‘Then why isn’t there?’ said Miss Knag.

‘Because there arn’t no coals left out, and if I could make coals I would, but as I can’t I won’t, and so I make bold to tell you, Mem,’ replied Mrs Blockson.

‘Will you hold your tongue – female?’ said Mr. Mortimer Knag, plunging violently into this dialogue.

‘By your leave, Mr. Knag,’ retorted the charwoman, turning sharp round. ‘I’m only too glad not to speak in this house, excepting when and where I’m spoke to, sir; and with regard to being a female, sir, I should wish to know what you considered yourself?’

‘A miserable wretch,’ exclaimed Mr. Knag, striking his forehead. ‘A miserable wretch.’

‘I’m very glad to find that you don’t call yourself out of your name, sir,’ said Mrs. Blockson; ‘and as I had two twin children the day before yesterday was only seven weeks, and my little Charley fell down a airy and put his elber out, last Monday, I shall take it as a favour if you’ll send nine shillings, for one week’s work, to my house, afore the clock strikes ten tomorrow.’

With these parting words, the good woman quitted the room with great ease of manner, leaving the door wide open; Mr. Knag, at the same moment, flung himself into the ‘warehouse,’ and groaned aloud.

‘What is the matter with that gentleman, pray?’ inquired Mrs. Nickleby, greatly disturbed by the sound.

‘Is he ill?’ inquired Kate, really alarmed.

‘Hush!’ replied Miss Knag; ‘a most melancholy history. He was once most devotedly attached to – hem – to Madame Mantalini.’

‘Bless me!’ exclaimed Mrs. Nickleby.

‘Yes,’ continued Miss Knag, ‘and received great encouragement too, and confidently hoped to marry her. He has a most romantic heart, Mrs Nickleby, as indeed – hem – as indeed all our family have, and the disappointment was a dreadful blow. He is a wonderfully accomplished man – most extraordinarily accomplished – reads – hem – reads every novel that comes out; I mean every novel that – hem – that has any fashion in it, of course. The fact is, that he did find so much in the books he read, applicable to his own misfortunes, and did find himself in every respect so much like the heroes – because of course he is conscious of his own superiority, as we all are, and very naturally – that he took to scorning everything, and became a genius; and I am quite sure that he is, at this very present moment, writing another book.’

‘Another book!’ repeated Kate, finding that a pause was left for somebody to say something.

‘Yes,’ said Miss Knag, nodding in great triumph; ‘another book, in three volumes post octavo. Of course it’s a great advantage to him, in all his little fashionable descriptions, to have the benefit of my – hem – of my experience, because, of course, few authors who write about such things can have such opportunities of knowing them as I have. He’s so wrapped up in high life, that the least allusion to business or worldly matters – like that woman just now, for instance – quite distracts him; but, as I often say, I think his disappointment a great thing for him, because if he hadn’t been disappointed he couldn’t have written about blighted hopes and all that; and the fact is, if it hadn’t happened as it has, I don’t believe his genius would ever have come out at all.’

How much more communicative Miss Knag might have become under more favourable circumstances, it is impossible to divine, but as the gloomy one was within ear-shot, and the fire wanted making up, her disclosures stopped here. To judge from all appearances, and the difficulty of making the water warm, the last servant could not have been much accustomed to any other fire than St Anthony’s; but a little brandy and water was made at last, and the guests, having been previously regaled with cold leg of mutton and bread and cheese, soon afterwards took leave; Kate amusing herself, all the way home, with the recollection of her last glimpse of Mr Mortimer Knag deeply abstracted in the shop; and Mrs. Nickleby by debating within herself whether the dressmaking firm would ultimately become ‘Mantalini, Knag, and Nickleby’, or ‘Mantalini, Nickleby, and Knag’.

At this high point, Miss Knag’s friendship remained for three whole days, much to the wonderment of Madame Mantalini’s young ladies who had never beheld such constancy in that quarter, before; but on the fourth, it received a check no less violent than sudden, which thus occurred.

It happened that an old lord of great family, who was going to marry a young lady of no family in particular, came with the young lady, and the young lady’s sister, to witness the ceremony of trying on two nuptial bonnets which had been ordered the day before, and Madame Mantalini announcing the fact, in a shrill treble, through the speaking-pipe, which communicated with the workroom, Miss Knag darted hastily upstairs with a bonnet in each hand, and presented herself in the show-room, in a charming state of palpitation, intended to demonstrate her enthusiasm in the cause. The bonnets were no sooner fairly on, than Miss Knag and Madame Mantalini fell into convulsions of admiration.

‘A most elegant appearance,’ said Madame Mantalini.

‘I never saw anything so exquisite in all my life,’ said Miss Knag.

Now, the old lord, who was a very old lord, said nothing, but mumbled and chuckled in a state of great delight, no less with the nuptial bonnets and their wearers, than with his own address in getting such a fine woman for his wife; and the young lady, who was a very lively young lady, seeing the old lord in this rapturous condition, chased the old lord behind a cheval-glass, and then and there kissed him, while Madame Mantalini and the other young lady looked, discreetly, another way.

But, pending the salutation, Miss Knag, who was tinged with curiosity, stepped accidentally behind the glass, and encountered the lively young lady’s eye just at the very moment when she kissed the old lord; upon which the young lady, in a pouting manner, murmured something about ‘an old thing,’ and ‘great impertinence,’ and finished by darting a look of displeasure at Miss Knag, and smiling contemptuously.

‘Madame Mantalini,’ said the young lady.

‘Ma’am,’ said Madame Mantalini.

‘Pray have up that pretty young creature we saw yesterday.’

‘Oh yes, do,’ said the sister.

‘Of all things in the world, Madame Mantalini,’ said the lord’s intended, throwing herself languidly on a sofa, ‘I hate being waited upon by frights or elderly persons. Let me always see that young creature, I beg, whenever I come.’

‘By all means,’ said the old lord; ‘the lovely young creature, by all means.’

‘Everybody is talking about her,’ said the young lady, in the same careless manner; ‘and my lord, being a great admirer of beauty, must positively see her.’

‘She is universally admired,’ replied Madame Mantalini. ‘Miss Knag, send up Miss Nickleby. You needn’t return.’

‘I beg your pardon, Madame Mantalini, what did you say last?’ asked Miss Knag, trembling.

‘You needn’t return,’ repeated the superior, sharply. Miss Knag vanished without another word, and in all reasonable time was replaced by Kate, who took off the new bonnets and put on the old ones: blushing very much to find that the old lord and the two young ladies were staring her out of countenance all the time.

‘Why, how you colour, child!’ said the lord’s chosen bride.

‘She is not quite so accustomed to her business, as she will be in a week or two,’ interposed Madame Mantalini with a gracious smile.

‘I am afraid you have been giving her some of your wicked looks, my lord,’ said the intended.

‘No, no, no,’ replied the old lord, ‘no, no, I’m going to be married, and lead a new life. Ha, ha, ha! a new life, a new life! ha, ha, ha!’

It was a satisfactory thing to hear that the old gentleman was going to lead a new life, for it was pretty evident that his old one would not last him much longer. The mere exertion of protracted chuckling reduced him to a fearful ebb of coughing and gasping; it was some minutes before he could find breath to remark that the girl was too pretty for a milliner.

‘I hope you don’t think good looks a disqualification for the business, my lord,’ said Madame Mantalini, simpering.

‘Not by any means,’ replied the old lord, ‘or you would have left it long ago.’

‘You naughty creature,’ said the lively lady, poking the peer with her parasol; ‘I won’t have you talk so. How dare you?’

This playful inquiry was accompanied with another poke, and another, and then the old lord caught the parasol, and wouldn’t give it up again, which induced the other lady to come to the rescue, and some very pretty sportiveness ensued.

‘You will see that those little alterations are made, Madame Mantalini,’ said the lady. ‘Nay, you bad man, you positively shall go first; I wouldn’t leave you behind with that pretty girl, not for half a second. I know you too well. Jane, my dear, let him go first, and we shall be quite sure of him.’

The old lord, evidently much flattered by this suspicion, bestowed a grotesque leer upon Kate as he passed; and, receiving another tap with the parasol for his wickedness, tottered downstairs to the door, where his sprightly body was hoisted into the carriage by two stout footmen.

‘Foh!’ said Madame Mantalini, ‘how he ever gets into a carriage without thinking of a hearse, I can’t think. There, take the things away, my dear, take them away.’

Kate, who had remained during the whole scene with her eyes modestly fixed upon the ground, was only too happy to avail herself of the permission to retire, and hasten joyfully downstairs to Miss Knag’s dominion.

The circumstances of the little kingdom had greatly changed, however, during the short period of her absence. In place of Miss Knag being stationed in her accustomed seat, preserving all the dignity and greatness of Madame Mantalini’s representative, that worthy soul was reposing on a large box, bathed in tears, while three or four of the young ladies in close attendance upon her, together with the presence of hartshorn, vinegar, and other restoratives, would have borne ample testimony, even without the derangement of the head-dress and front row of curls, to her having fainted desperately.

‘Bless me!’ said Kate, stepping hastily forward, ‘what is the matter?’

This inquiry produced in Miss Knag violent symptoms of a relapse; and several young ladies, darting angry looks at Kate, applied more vinegar and hartshorn, and said it was ‘a shame.’

‘What is a shame?’ demanded Kate. ‘What is the matter? What has happened? tell me.’

‘Matter!’ cried Miss Knag, coming, all at once, bolt upright, to the great consternation of the assembled maidens; ‘matter! Fie upon you, you nasty creature!’

‘Gracious!’ cried Kate, almost paralysed by the violence with which the adjective had been jerked out from between Miss Knag’s closed teeth; ‘have I offended you?’

‘You offended me!’ retorted Miss Knag, ‘you! a chit, a child, an upstart nobody! Oh, indeed! Ha, ha!’

Now, it was evident, as Miss Knag laughed, that something struck her as being exceedingly funny; and as the young ladies took their tone from Miss Knag – she being the chief – they all got up a laugh without a moment’s delay, and nodded their heads a little, and smiled sarcastically to each other, as much as to say how very good that was!

‘Here she is,’ continued Miss Knag, getting off the box, and introducing Kate with much ceremony and many low curtseys to the delighted throng; ‘here she is – everybody is talking about her – the belle, ladies – the beauty, the – oh, you bold-faced thing!’

At this crisis, Miss Knag was unable to repress a virtuous shudder, which immediately communicated itself to all the young ladies; after which, Miss Knag laughed, and after that, cried.

‘For fifteen years,’ exclaimed Miss Knag, sobbing in a most affecting manner, ‘for fifteen years have I been the credit and ornament of this room and the one upstairs. Thank God,’ said Miss Knag, stamping first her right foot and then her left with remarkable energy, ‘I have never in all that time, till now, been exposed to the arts, the vile arts, of a creature, who disgraces us with all her proceedings, and makes proper people blush for themselves. But I feel it, I do feel it, although I am disgusted.’

Miss Knag here relapsed into softness, and the young ladies renewing their attentions, murmured that she ought to be superior to such things, and that for their part they despised them, and considered them beneath their notice; in witness whereof, they called out, more emphatically than before, that it was a shame, and that they felt so angry, they did, they hardly knew what to do with themselves.

‘Have I lived to this day to be called a fright!’ cried Miss Knag, suddenly becoming convulsive, and making an effort to tear her front off.

‘Oh no, no,’ replied the chorus, ‘pray don’t say so; don’t now!’

‘Have I deserved to be called an elderly person?’ screamed Miss Knag, wrestling with the supernumeraries.

‘Don’t think of such things, dear,’ answered the chorus.

‘I hate her,’ cried Miss Knag; ‘I detest and hate her. Never let her speak to me again; never let anybody who is a friend of mine speak to her; a slut, a hussy, an impudent artful hussy!’ Having denounced the object of her wrath, in these terms, Miss Knag screamed once, hiccuped thrice, gurgled in her throat several times, slumbered, shivered, woke, came to, composed her head-dress, and declared herself quite well again.

Poor Kate had regarded these proceedings, at first, in perfect bewilderment. She had then turned red and pale by turns, and once or twice essayed to speak; but, as the true motives of this altered behaviour developed themselves, she retired a few paces, and looked calmly on without deigning a reply. Nevertheless, although she walked proudly to her seat, and turned her back upon the group of little satellites who clustered round their ruling planet in the remotest corner of the room, she gave way, in secret, to some such bitter tears as would have gladdened Miss Knag’s inmost soul, if she could have seen them fall.

CHAPTER 19

Descriptive of a Dinner at Mr. Ralph Nickleby’s, and of the Manner in which the Company entertained themselves, before Dinner, at Dinner, and after Dinner.

The bile and rancour of the worthy Miss Knag undergoing no diminution during the remainder of the week, but rather augmenting with every successive hour; and the honest ire of all the young ladies rising, or seeming to rise, in exact proportion to the good spinster’s indignation, and both waxing very hot every time Miss Nickleby was called upstairs; it will be readily imagined that that young lady’s daily life was none of the most cheerful or enviable kind. She hailed the arrival of Saturday night, as a prisoner would a few delicious hours’ respite from slow and wearing torture, and felt that the poor pittance for her first week’s labour would have been dearly and hardly earned, had its amount been trebled.

When she joined her mother, as usual, at the street corner, she was not a little surprised to find her in conversation with Mr. Ralph Nickleby; but her surprise was soon redoubled, no less by the matter of their conversation, than by the smoothed and altered manner of Mr. Nickleby himself.

‘Ah! my dear!’ said Ralph; ‘we were at that moment talking about you.’

‘Indeed!’ replied Kate, shrinking, though she scarce knew why, from her uncle’s cold glistening eye.

‘That instant,’ said Ralph. ‘I was coming to call for you, making sure to catch you before you left; but your mother and I have been talking over family affairs, and the time has slipped away so rapidly – ’

‘Well, now, hasn’t it?’ interposed Mrs. Nickleby, quite insensible to the sarcastic tone of Ralph’s last remark. ‘Upon my word, I couldn’t have believed it possible, that such a – Kate, my dear, you’re to dine with your uncle at half-past six o’clock tomorrow.’

Triumphing in having been the first to communicate this extraordinary intelligence, Mrs. Nickleby nodded and smiled a great many times, to impress its full magnificence on Kate’s wondering mind, and then flew off, at an acute angle, to a committee of ways and means.

‘Let me see,’ said the good lady. ‘Your black silk frock will be quite dress enough, my dear, with that pretty little scarf, and a plain band in your hair, and a pair of black silk stock – Dear, dear,’ cried Mrs Nickleby, flying off at another angle, ‘if I had but those unfortunate amethysts of mine – you recollect them, Kate, my love – how they used to sparkle, you know – but your papa, your poor dear papa – ah! there never was anything so cruelly sacrificed as those jewels were, never!’ Overpowered by this agonising thought, Mrs. Nickleby shook her head, in a melancholy manner, and applied her handkerchief to her eyes.

I don’t want them, mama, indeed,’ said Kate. ‘Forget that you ever had them.’

‘Lord, Kate, my dear,’ rejoined Mrs. Nickleby, pettishly, ‘how like a child you talk! Four-and-twenty silver tea-spoons, brother-in-law, two gravies, four salts, all the amethysts – necklace, brooch, and ear-rings – all made away with, at the same time, and I saying, almost on my bended knees, to that poor good soul, “Why don’t you do something, Nicholas? Why don’t you make some arrangement?” I am sure that anybody who was about us at that time, will do me the justice to own, that if I said that once, I said it fifty times a day. Didn’t I, Kate, my dear? Did I ever lose an opportunity of impressing it on your poor papa?’

‘No, no, mama, never,’ replied Kate. And to do Mrs. Nickleby justice, she never had lost – and to do married ladies as a body justice, they seldom do lose – any occasion of inculcating similar golden percepts, whose only blemish is, the slight degree of vagueness and uncertainty in which they are usually enveloped.

‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Nickleby, with great fervour, ‘if my advice had been taken at the beginning – Well, I have always done my duty, and that’s some comfort.’

When she had arrived at this reflection, Mrs. Nickleby sighed, rubbed her hands, cast up her eyes, and finally assumed a look of meek composure; thus importing that she was a persecuted saint, but that she wouldn’t trouble her hearers by mentioning a circumstance which must be so obvious to everybody.

‘Now,’ said Ralph, with a smile, which, in common with all other tokens of emotion, seemed to skulk under his face, rather than play boldly over it – ‘to return to the point from which we have strayed. I have a little party of – of – gentlemen with whom I am connected in business just now, at my house tomorrow; and your mother has promised that you shall keep house for me. I am not much used to parties; but this is one of business, and such fooleries are an important part of it sometimes. You don’t mind obliging me?’

‘Mind!’ cried Mrs. Nickleby. ‘My dear Kate, why – ’

‘Pray,’ interrupted Ralph, motioning her to be silent. ‘I spoke to my niece.’

‘I shall be very glad, of course, uncle,’ replied Kate; ‘but I am afraid you will find me awkward and embarrassed.’

‘Oh no,’ said Ralph; ‘come when you like, in a hackney coach – I’ll pay for it. Good-night – a – a – God bless you.’

The blessing seemed to stick in Mr. Ralph Nickleby’s throat, as if it were not used to the thoroughfare, and didn’t know the way out. But it got out somehow, though awkwardly enough; and having disposed of it, he shook hands with his two relatives, and abruptly left them.

‘What a very strongly marked countenance your uncle has!’ said Mrs Nickleby, quite struck with his parting look. ‘I don’t see the slightest resemblance to his poor brother.’

‘Mama!’ said Kate reprovingly. ‘To think of such a thing!’

‘No,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, musing. ‘There certainly is none. But it’s a very honest face.’

The worthy matron made this remark with great emphasis and elocution, as if it comprised no small quantity of ingenuity and research; and, in truth, it was not unworthy of being classed among the extraordinary discoveries of the age. Kate looked up hastily, and as hastily looked down again.

‘What has come over you, my dear, in the name of goodness?’ asked Mrs Nickleby, when they had walked on, for some time, in silence.

‘I was only thinking, mama,’ answered Kate.

‘Thinking!’ repeated Mrs. Nickleby. ‘Ay, and indeed plenty to think about, too. Your uncle has taken a strong fancy to you, that’s quite clear; and if some extraordinary good fortune doesn’t come to you, after this, I shall be a little surprised, that’s all.’

With this she launched out into sundry anecdotes of young ladies, who had had thousand-pound notes given them in reticules, by eccentric uncles; and of young ladies who had accidentally met amiable gentlemen of enormous wealth at their uncles’ houses, and married them, after short but ardent courtships; and Kate, listening first in apathy, and afterwards in amusement, felt, as they walked home, something of her mother’s sanguine complexion gradually awakening in her own bosom, and began to think that her prospects might be brightening, and that better days might be dawning upon them. Such is hope, Heaven’s own gift to struggling mortals; pervading, like some subtle essence from the skies, all things, both good and bad; as universal as death, and more infectious than disease!

The feeble winter’s sun – and winter’s suns in the city are very feeble indeed – might have brightened up, as he shone through the dim windows of the large old house, on witnessing the unusual sight which one half-furnished room displayed. In a gloomy corner, where, for years, had stood a silent dusty pile of merchandise, sheltering its colony of mice, and frowning, a dull and lifeless mass, upon the panelled room, save when, responding to the roll of heavy waggons in the street without, it quaked with sturdy tremblings and caused the bright eyes of its tiny citizens to grow brighter still with fear, and struck them motionless, with attentive ear and palpitating heart, until the alarm had passed away – in this dark corner, was arranged, with scrupulous care, all Kate’s little finery for the day; each article of dress partaking of that indescribable air of jauntiness and individuality which empty garments – whether by association, or that they become moulded, as it were, to the owner’s form – will take, in eyes accustomed to, or picturing, the wearer’s smartness. In place of a bale of musty goods, there lay the black silk dress: the neatest possible figure in itself. The small shoes, with toes delicately turned out, stood upon the very pressure of some old iron weight; and a pile of harsh discoloured leather had unconsciously given place to the very same little pair of black silk stockings, which had been the objects of Mrs. Nickleby’s peculiar care. Rats and mice, and such small gear, had long ago been starved, or had emigrated to better quarters: and, in their stead, appeared gloves, bands, scarfs, hair-pins, and many other little devices, almost as ingenious in their way as rats and mice themselves, for the tantalisation of mankind. About and among them all, moved Kate herself, not the least beautiful or unwonted relief to the stern, old, gloomy building.