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

seem so by contrast,’ returned Ralph. ‘I don’t know but that yours may answer better, but I want the patience for it.’

‘You were born a genius, Mr Nickleby,’ said old Arthur. ‘Deep, deep, deep. Ah!’

‘Deep enough,’ retorted Ralph, ‘to know that I shall need all the depth I have, when men like you begin to compliment. You know I have stood by when you fawned and flattered other people, and I remember pretty well what THAT always led to.’

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ rejoined Arthur, rubbing his hands. ‘So you do, so you do, no doubt. Not a man knows it better. Well, it’s a pleasant thing now to think that you remember old times. Oh dear!’

‘Now then,’ said Ralph, composedly; ‘what’s in the wind, I ask again? What is it?’

‘See that now!’ cried the other. ‘He can’t even keep from business while we’re chatting over bygones. Oh dear, dear, what a man it is!’

‘WHICH of the bygones do you want to revive?’ said Ralph. ‘One of them, I know, or you wouldn’t talk about them.’

‘He suspects even me!’ cried old Arthur, holding up his hands. ‘Even me! Oh dear, even me. What a man it is! Ha, ha, ha! What a man it is! Mr Nickleby against all the world. There’s nobody like him. A giant among pigmies, a giant, a giant!’

Ralph looked at the old dog with a quiet smile as he chuckled on in this strain, and Newman Noggs in the closet felt his heart sink within him as the prospect of dinner grew fainter and fainter.

‘I must humour him though,’ cried old Arthur; ‘he must have his way —a wilful man, as the Scotch say—well, well, they’re a wise people, the Scotch. He will talk about business, and won’t give away his time for nothing. He’s very right. Time is money, time is money.’

‘He was one of us who made that saying, I should think,’ said Ralph. ‘Time is money, and very good money too, to those who reckon interest by it. Time IS money! Yes, and time costs money; it’s rather an expensive article to some people we could name, or I forget my trade.’

In rejoinder to this sally, old Arthur again raised his hands, again chuckled, and again ejaculated ‘What a man it is!’ which done, he dragged the low chair a little nearer to Ralph’s high stool, and looking upwards into his immovable face, said,

‘What would you say to me, if I was to tell you that I was—that I was—going to be married?’

‘I should tell you,’ replied Ralph, looking coldly down upon him, ‘that for some purpose of your own you told a lie, and that it wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last; that I wasn’t surprised and wasn’t to be taken in.’

‘Then I tell you seriously that I am,’ said old Arthur.

‘And I tell you seriously,’ rejoined Ralph, ‘what I told you this minute. Stay. Let me look at you. There’s a liquorish devilry in your face. What is this?’

‘I wouldn’t deceive YOU, you know,’ whined Arthur Gride; ‘I couldn’t do it, I should be mad to try. I, I, to deceive Mr Nickleby! The pigmy to impose upon the giant. I ask again—he, he, he!—what should you say to me if I was to tell you that I was going to be married?’

‘To some old hag?’ said Ralph.

‘No, No,’ cried Arthur, interrupting him, and rubbing his hands in an ecstasy. ‘Wrong, wrong again. Mr Nickleby for once at fault; out, quite out! To a young and beautiful girl; fresh, lovely, bewitching, and not nineteen. Dark eyes, long eyelashes, ripe and ruddy lips that to look at is to long to kiss, beautiful clustering hair that one’s fingers itch to play with, such a waist as might make a man clasp the air involuntarily, thinking of twining his arm about it, little feet that tread so lightly they hardly seem to walk upon the ground—to marry all this, sir, this—hey, hey!’

‘This is something more than common drivelling,’ said Ralph, after listening with a curled lip to the old sinner’s raptures. ‘The girl’s name?’

‘Oh deep, deep! See now how deep that is!’ exclaimed old Arthur. ‘He knows I want his help, he knows he can give it me, he knows it must all turn to his advantage, he sees the thing already. Her name—is there nobody within hearing?’

‘Why, who the devil should there be?’ retorted Ralph, testily.

‘I didn’t know but that perhaps somebody might be passing up or down the stairs,’ said Arthur Gride, after looking out at the door and carefully reclosing it; ‘or but that your man might have come back and might have been listening outside. Clerks and servants have a trick of listening, and I should have been very uncomfortable if Mr Noggs—’

‘Curse Mr Noggs,’ said Ralph, sharply, ‘and go on with what you have to say.’

‘Curse Mr Noggs, by all means,’ rejoined old Arthur; ‘I am sure I have not the least objection to that. Her name is—’

‘Well,’ said Ralph, rendered very irritable by old Arthur’s pausing again ‘what is it?’

‘Madeline Bray.’

Whatever reasons there might have been—and Arthur Gride appeared to have anticipated some—for the mention of this name producing an effect upon Ralph, or whatever effect it really did produce upon him, he permitted none to manifest itself, but calmly repeated the name several times, as if reflecting when and where he had heard it before.

‘Bray,’ said Ralph. ‘Bray—there was young Bray of—,no, he never had a daughter.’

‘You remember Bray?’ rejoined Arthur Gride.

‘No,’ said Ralph, looking vacantly at him.

‘Not Walter Bray! The dashing man, who used his handsome wife so ill?’

‘If you seek to recall any particular dashing man to my recollection by such a trait as that,’ said Ralph, shrugging his shoulders, ‘I shall confound him with nine-tenths of the dashing men I have ever known.’

‘Tut, tut. That Bray who is now in the Rules of the Bench,’ said old Arthur. ‘You can’t have forgotten Bray. Both of us did business with him. Why, he owes you money!’

‘Oh HIM!’ rejoined Ralph. ‘Ay, ay. Now you speak. Oh! It’s HIS daughter, is it?’

Naturally as this was said, it was not said so naturally but that a kindred spirit like old Arthur Gride might have discerned a design upon the part of Ralph to lead him on to much more explicit statements and explanations than he would have volunteered, or that Ralph could in all likelihood have obtained by any other means. Old Arthur, however, was so intent upon his own designs, that he suffered himself to be overreached, and had no suspicion but that his good friend was in earnest.

‘I knew you couldn’t forget him, when you came to think for a moment,’ he said.

‘You were right,’ answered Ralph. ‘But old Arthur Gride and matrimony is a most anomalous conjunction of words; old Arthur Gride and dark eyes and eyelashes, and lips that to look at is to long to kiss, and clustering hair that he wants to play with, and waists that he wants to span, and little feet that don’t tread upon anything—old Arthur Gride and such things as these is more monstrous still; but old Arthur Gride marrying the daughter of a ruined “dashing man” in the Rules of the Bench, is the most monstrous and incredible of all. Plainly, friend Arthur Gride, if you want any help from me in this business (which of course you do, or you would not be here), speak out, and to the purpose. And, above all, don’t talk to me of its turning to my advantage, for I know it must turn to yours also, and to a good round tune too, or you would have no finger in such a pie as this.’

There was enough acerbity and sarcasm not only in the matter of Ralph’s speech, but in the tone of voice in which he uttered it, and the looks with which he eked it out, to have fired even the ancient usurer’s cold blood and flushed even his withered cheek. But he gave vent to no demonstration of anger, contenting himself with exclaiming as before, ‘What a man it is!’ and rolling his head from side to side, as if in unrestrained enjoyment of his freedom and drollery. Clearly observing, however, from the expression in Ralph’s features, that he had best come to the point as speedily as might be, he composed himself for more serious business, and entered upon the pith and marrow of his negotiation.

First, he dwelt upon the fact that Madeline Bray was devoted to the support and maintenance, and was a slave to every wish, of her only parent, who had no other friend on earth; to which Ralph rejoined that he had heard something of the kind before, and that if she had known a little more of the world, she wouldn’t have been such a fool.

Secondly, he enlarged upon the character of her father, arguing, that even taking it for granted that he loved her in return with the utmost affection of which he was capable, yet he loved himself a great deal better; which Ralph said it was quite unnecessary to say anything more about, as that was very natural, and probable enough.

And, thirdly, old Arthur premised that the girl was a delicate and beautiful creature, and that he had really a hankering to have her for his wife. To this Ralph deigned no other rejoinder than a harsh smile, and a glance at the shrivelled old creature before him, which were, however, sufficiently expressive.

‘Now,’ said Gride, ‘for the little plan I have in my mind to bring this about; because, I haven’t offered myself even to the father yet, I should have told you. But that you have gathered already? Ah! oh dear, oh dear, what an edged tool you are!’

‘Don’t play with me then,’ said Ralph impatiently. ‘You know the proverb.’

‘A reply always on the tip of his tongue!’ cried old Arthur, raising his hands and eyes in admiration. ‘He is always prepared! Oh dear, what a blessing to have such a ready wit, and so much ready money to back it!’ Then, suddenly changing his tone, he went on: ‘I have been backwards and forwards to Bray’s lodgings several times within the last six months. It is just half a year since I first saw this delicate morsel, and, oh dear, what a delicate morsel it is! But that is neither here nor there. I am his detaining creditor for seventeen hundred pounds!’

‘You talk as if you were the only detaining creditor,’ said Ralph, pulling out his pocketbook. ‘I am another for nine hundred and seventy-five pounds four and threepence.’

‘The only other, Mr Nickleby,’ said old Arthur, eagerly. ‘The only other. Nobody else went to the expense of lodging a detainer, trusting to our holding him fast enough, I warrant you. We both fell into the same snare; oh dear, what a pitfall it was; it almost ruined me! And lent him our money upon bills, with only one name besides his own, which to be sure everybody supposed to be a good one, and was as negotiable as money, but which turned out you know how. Just as we should have come upon him, he died insolvent. Ah! it went very nigh to ruin me, that loss did!’

‘Go on with your scheme,’ said Ralph. ‘It’s of no use raising the cry of our trade just now; there’s nobody to hear us!’

‘It’s always as well to talk that way,’ returned old Arthur, with a chuckle, ‘whether there’s anybody to hear us or not. Practice makes perfect, you know. Now, if I offer myself to Bray as his son-in- law, upon one simple condition that the