The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (classic novels txt) 📖

there,’ cried Nicholas, burning with fury, ‘looking so calmly upon those who know his black and dastardly heart, he’ll drive me mad.’

To all these exclamations John Browdie answered not a word, but he retained his hold upon Nicholas; and when he was silent again, spoke.

‘There’s more to say and hear than thou think’st for,’ said John. ‘I tell’ee I ha’ gotten scent o’ thot already. Wa’at be that shadow ootside door there? Noo, schoolmeasther, show thyself, mun; dinnot be sheame-feaced. Noo, auld gen’l’man, let’s have schoolmeasther, coom.’

Hearing this adjuration, Mr Squeers, who had been lingering in the passage until such time as it should be expedient for him to enter and he could appear with effect, was fain to present himself in a somewhat undignified and sneaking way; at which John Browdie laughed with such keen and heartfelt delight, that even Kate, in all the pain, anxiety, and surprise of the scene, and though the tears were in her eyes, felt a disposition to join him.

‘Have you done enjoying yourself, sir?’ said Ralph, at length.

‘Pratty nigh for the prasant time, sir,’ replied John.

‘I can wait,’ said Ralph. ‘Take your own time, pray.’

Ralph waited until there was a perfect silence, and then turning to Mrs Nickleby, but directing an eager glance at Kate, as if more anxious to watch his effect upon her, said:

‘Now, ma’am, listen to me. I don’t imagine that you were a party to a very fine tirade of words sent me by that boy of yours, because I don’t believe that under his control, you have the slightest will of your own, or that your advice, your opinion, your wants, your wishes, anything which in nature and reason (or of what use is your great experience?) ought to weigh with him, has the slightest influence or weight whatever, or is taken for a moment into account.’

Mrs Nickleby shook her head and sighed, as if there were a good deal in that, certainly.

‘For this reason,’ resumed Ralph, ‘I address myself to you, ma’am. For this reason, partly, and partly because I do not wish to be disgraced by the acts of a vicious stripling whom I was obliged to disown, and who, afterwards, in his boyish majesty, feigns to—ha! ha!—to disown ME, I present myself here tonight. I have another motive in coming: a motive of humanity. I come here,’ said Ralph, looking round with a biting and triumphant smile, and gloating and dwelling upon the words as if he were loath to lose the pleasure of saying them, ‘to restore a parent his child. Ay, sir,’ he continued, bending eagerly forward, and addressing Nicholas, as he marked the change of his countenance, ‘to restore a parent his child; his son, sir; trepanned, waylaid, and guarded at every turn by you, with the base design of robbing him some day of any little wretched pittance of which he might become possessed.’

‘In that, you know you lie,’ said Nicholas, proudly.

‘In this, I know I speak the truth. I have his father here,’ retorted Ralph.

‘Here!’ sneered Squeers, stepping forward. ‘Do you hear that? Here! Didn’t I tell you to be careful that his father didn’t turn up and send him back to me? Why, his father’s my friend; he’s to come back to me directly, he is. Now, what do you say—eh!—now— come—what do you say to that—an’t you sorry you took so much trouble for nothing? an’t you? an’t you?’

‘You bear upon your body certain marks I gave you,’ said Nicholas, looking quietly away, ‘and may talk in acknowledgment of them as much as you please. You’ll talk a long time before you rub them out, Mr Squeers.’

The estimable gentleman last named cast a hasty look at the table, as if he were prompted by this retort to throw a jug or bottle at the head of Nicholas, but he was interrupted in this design (if such design he had) by Ralph, who, touching him on the elbow, bade him tell the father that he might now appear and claim his son.

This being purely a labour of love, Mr Squeers readily complied, and leaving the room for the purpose, almost immediately returned, supporting a sleek personage with an oily face, who, bursting from him, and giving to view the form and face of Mr Snawley, made straight up to Smike, and tucking that poor fellow’s head under his arm in a most uncouth and awkward embrace, elevated his broad-brimmed hat at arm’s length in the air as a token of devout thanksgiving, exclaiming, meanwhile, ‘How little did I think of this here joyful meeting, when I saw him last! Oh, how little did I think it!’

‘Be composed, sir,’ said Ralph, with a gruff expression of sympathy, ‘you have got him now.’

‘Got him! Oh, haven’t I got him! Have I got him, though?’ cried Mr Snawley, scarcely able to believe it. ‘Yes, here he is, flesh and blood, flesh and blood.’

‘Vary little flesh,’ said John Browdie.

Mr Snawley was too much occupied by his parental feelings to notice this remark; and, to assure himself more completely of the restoration of his child, tucked his head under his arm again, and kept it there.

‘What was it,’ said Snawley, ‘that made me take such a strong interest in him, when that worthy instructor of youth brought him to my house? What was it that made me burn all over with a wish to chastise him severely for cutting away from his best friends, his pastors and masters?’

‘It was parental instinct, sir,’ observed Squeers.

‘That’s what it was, sir,’ rejoined Snawley; ‘the elevated feeling, the feeling of the ancient Romans and Grecians, and of the beasts of the field and birds of the air, with the exception of rabbits and tom-cats, which sometimes devour their offspring. My heart yearned towards him. I could have—I don’t know what I couldn’t have done to him in the anger of a father.’

‘It only shows what Natur is, sir,’ said Mr Squeers. ‘She’s rum ‘un, is Natur.’

‘She is a holy thing, sir,’ remarked Snawley.

‘I believe you,’ added Mr Squeers, with a moral sigh. ‘I should like to know how we should ever get on without her. Natur,’ said Mr Squeers, solemnly, ‘is more easier conceived than described. Oh what a blessed thing, sir, to be in a state of natur!’

Pending this philosophical discourse, the bystanders had been quite stupefied with amazement, while Nicholas had looked keenly from Snawley to Squeers, and from Squeers to Ralph, divided between his feelings of disgust, doubt, and surprise. At this juncture, Smike escaping from his father fled to Nicholas, and implored him, in most moving terms, never to give him up, but to let him live and die beside him.

‘If you are this boy’s father,’ said Nicholas, ‘look at the wreck he is, and tell me that you purpose to send him back to that loathsome den from which I brought him.’

‘Scandal again!’ cried Squeers. ‘Recollect, you an’t worth powder and shot, but I’ll be even with you one way or another.’

‘Stop,’ interposed Ralph, as Snawley was about to speak. ‘Let us cut this matter short, and not bandy words here with hare-brained profligates. This is your son, as you can prove. And you, Mr Squeers, you know this boy to be the same that was with you for so many years under the name of Smike. Do you?’

‘Do I!’ returned Squeers. ‘Don’t I?’

‘Good,’ said Ralph; ‘a very few words will be sufficient here. You had a son by your first wife, Mr Snawley?’

‘I had,’ replied that person, ‘and there he stands.’

‘We’ll show that presently,’ said Ralph. ‘You and your wife were separated, and she had the boy to live with her, when he was a year old. You received a communication from her, when you had lived apart a year or two, that the boy was dead; and you believed it?’

‘Of course I did!’ returned Snawley. ‘Oh the joy of—’

‘Be rational, sir, pray,’ said Ralph. ‘This is business, and transports interfere with it. This wife died a year and a half ago, or thereabouts—not more—in some obscure place, where she was housekeeper in a family. Is that the case?’

‘That’s the case,’ replied Snawley.

‘Having written on her deathbed a letter or confession to you, about this very boy, which, as it was not directed otherwise than in your name, only reached you, and that by a circuitous course, a few days since?’

‘Just so,’ said Snawley. ‘Correct in every particular, sir.’

‘And this confession,’ resumed Ralph, ‘is to the effect that his death was an invention of hers to wound you—was a part of a system of annoyance, in short, which you seem to have adopted towards each other—that the boy lived, but was of weak and imperfect intellect— that she sent him by a trusty hand to a cheap school in Yorkshire— that she had paid for his education for some years, and then, being poor, and going a long way off, gradually deserted him, for which she prayed forgiveness?’

Snawley nodded his head, and wiped his eyes; the first slightly, the last violently.

‘The school was Mr Squeers’s,’ continued Ralph; ‘the boy was left there in the name of Smike; every description was fully given, dates tally exactly with Mr Squeers’s books, Mr Squeers is lodging with you at this time; you have two other boys at his school: you communicated the whole discovery to him, he brought you to me as the person who had recommended to him the kidnapper of his child; and I brought you here. Is that so?’

‘You talk like a good book, sir, that’s got nothing in its inside but what’s the truth,’ replied Snawley.

‘This is your pocketbook,’ said Ralph, producing one from his coat; ‘the certificates of your first marriage and of the boy’s birth, and your wife’s two letters, and every other paper that can support these statements directly or by implication, are here, are they?’

‘Every one of ‘em, sir.’

‘And you don’t object to their being looked at here, so that these people may be convinced of your power to substantiate your claim at once in law and reason, and you may resume your control over your own son without more delay. Do I understand you?’

‘I couldn’t have understood myself better, sir.’

‘There, then,’ said Ralph, tossing the pocketbook upon the table. ‘Let them see them if they like; and as those are the original papers, I should recommend you to stand near while they are being examined, or you may chance to lose some.’

With these words Ralph sat down unbidden, and compressing his lips, which were for the moment slightly parted by a smile, folded his arms, and looked for the first time at his nephew.

Nicholas, stung by the concluding taunt, darted an indignant glance at him; but commanding himself as well as he could, entered upon a close examination of the documents, at which John Browdie assisted. There was nothing about them which could be called in question. The certificates were regularly signed as extracts from the parish books, the first letter had a genuine appearance of having been written and preserved for some years, the handwriting of the second tallied with it exactly, (making proper allowance for its having been written by a person in extremity,) and there were several other corroboratory scraps of entries and memoranda which it was equally difficult to question.

‘Dear Nicholas,’ whispered Kate, who had been looking anxiously over his shoulder, ‘can this be really the case? Is this statement true?’

‘I fear it is,’ answered Nicholas. ‘What say you, John?’

‘John scratched his head and shook it, but said nothing at all.

‘You will observe, ma’am,’ said Ralph, addressing himself to Mrs Nickleby, ‘that this boy being a minor and