Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (classic novels txt) 📖
- Author: Charles Dickens
- Performer: 0140435123
Book online «The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (classic novels txt) 📖». Author Charles Dickens
Mr Bray rested his elbow on the arm of his chair, and shaded his face with his hand.
‘I speak plainly,’ said Ralph, sitting down beside him, ‘because I feel strongly. It’s my interest that you should marry your daughter to my friend Gride, because then he sees me paid—in part, that is. I don’t disguise it. I acknowledge it openly. But what interest have you in recommending her to such a step? Keep that in view. She might object, remonstrate, shed tears, talk of his being too old, and plead that her life would be rendered miserable. But what is it now?’
Several slight gestures on the part of the invalid showed that these arguments were no more lost upon him, than the smallest iota of his demeanour was upon Ralph.
‘What is it now, I say,’ pursued the wily usurer, ‘or what has it a chance of being? If you died, indeed, the people you hate would make her happy. But can you bear the thought of that?’
‘No!’ returned Bray, urged by a vindictive impulse he could not repress.
‘I should imagine not, indeed!’ said Ralph, quietly. ‘If she profits by anybody’s death,’ this was said in a lower tone, ‘let it be by her husband’s. Don’t let her have to look back to yours, as the event from which to date a happier life. Where is the objection? Let me hear it stated. What is it? That her suitor is an old man? Why, how often do men of family and fortune, who haven’t your excuse, but have all the means and superfluities of life within their reach, how often do they marry their daughters to old men, or (worse still) to young men without heads or hearts, to tickle some idle vanity, strengthen some family interest, or secure some seat in Parliament! Judge for her, sir, judge for her. You must know best, and she will live to thank you.’
‘Hush! hush!’ cried Mr Bray, suddenly starting up, and covering Ralph’s mouth with his trembling hand. ‘I hear her at the door!’
There was a gleam of conscience in the shame and terror of this hasty action, which, in one short moment, tore the thin covering of sophistry from the cruel design, and laid it bare in all its meanness and heartless deformity. The father fell into his chair pale and trembling; Arthur Gride plucked and fumbled at his hat, and durst not raise his eyes from the floor; even Ralph crouched for the moment like a beaten hound, cowed by the presence of one young innocent girl!
The effect was almost as brief as sudden. Ralph was the first to recover himself, and observing Madeline’s looks of alarm, entreated the poor girl to be composed, assuring her that there was no cause for fear.
‘A sudden spasm,’ said Ralph, glancing at Mr Bray. ‘He is quite well now.’
It might have moved a very hard and worldly heart to see the young and beautiful creature, whose certain misery they had been contriving but a minute before, throw her arms about her father’s neck, and pour forth words of tender sympathy and love, the sweetest a father’s ear can know, or child’s lips form. But Ralph looked coldly on; and Arthur Gride, whose bleared eyes gloated only over the outward beauties, and were blind to the spirit which reigned within, evinced—a fantastic kind of warmth certainly, but not exactly that kind of warmth of feeling which the contemplation of virtue usually inspires.
‘Madeline,’ said her father, gently disengaging himself, ‘it was nothing.’
‘But you had that spasm yesterday, and it is terrible to see you in such pain. Can I do nothing for you?’
‘Nothing just now. Here are two gentlemen, Madeline, one of whom you have seen before. She used to say,’ added Mr Bray, addressing Arthur Gride, ‘that the sight of you always made me worse. That was natural, knowing what she did, and only what she did, of our connection and its results. Well, well. Perhaps she may change her mind on that point; girls have leave to change their minds, you know. You are very tired, my dear.’
‘I am not, indeed.’
‘Indeed you are. You do too much.’
‘I wish I could do more.’
‘I know you do, but you overtask your strength. This wretched life, my love, of daily labour and fatigue, is more than you can bear, I am sure it is. Poor Madeline!’
With these and many more kind words, Mr Bray drew his daughter to him and kissed her cheek affectionately. Ralph, watching him sharply and closely in the meantime, made his way towards the door, and signed to Gride to follow him.
‘You will communicate with us again?’ said Ralph.
‘Yes, yes,’ returned Mr Bray, hastily thrusting his daughter aside. ‘In a week. Give me a week.’
‘One week,’ said Ralph, turning to his companion, ‘from today. Good-morning. Miss Madeline, I kiss your hand.’
‘We will shake hands, Gride,’ said Mr Bray, extending his, as old Arthur bowed. ‘You mean well, no doubt. I an bound to say so now. If I owed you money, that was not your fault. Madeline, my love, your hand here.’
‘Oh dear! If the young lady would condescent! Only the tips of her fingers,’ said Arthur, hesitating and half retreating.
Madeline shrunk involuntarily from the goblin figure, but she placed the tips of her fingers in his hand and instantly withdrew them. After an ineffectual clutch, intended to detain and carry them to his lips, old Arthur gave his own fingers a mumbling kiss, and with many amorous distortions of visage went in pursuit of his friend, who was by this time in the street.
‘What does he say, what does he say? What does the giant say to the pigmy?’ inquired Arthur Gride, hobbling up to Ralph.
‘What does the pigmy say to the giant?’ rejoined Ralph, elevating his eyebrows and looking down upon his questioner.
‘He doesn’t know what to say,’ replied Arthur Gride. ‘He hopes and fears. But is she not a dainty morsel?’
‘I have no great taste for beauty,’ growled Ralph.
‘But I have,’ rejoined Arthur, rubbing his hands. ‘Oh dear! How handsome her eyes looked when she was stooping over him! Such long lashes, such delicate fringe! She—she—looked at me so soft.’
‘Not over-lovingly, I think,’ said Ralph. ‘Did she?’
‘No, you think not?’ replied old Arthur. ‘But don’t you think it can be brought about? Don’t you think it can?’
Ralph looked at him with a contemptuous frown, and replied with a sneer, and between his teeth:
‘Did you mark his telling her she was tired and did too much, and overtasked her strength?’
‘Ay, ay. What of it?’
‘When do you think he ever told her that before? The life is more than she can bear. Yes, yes. He’ll change it for her.’
‘D’ye think it’s done?’ inquired old Arthur, peering into his companion’s face with half-closed eyes.
‘I am sure it’s done,’ said Ralph. ‘He is trying to deceive himself, even before our eyes, already. He is making believe that he thinks of her good and not his own. He is acting a virtuous part, and so considerate and affectionate, sir, that the daughter scarcely knew him. I saw a tear of surprise in her eye. There’ll be a few more tears of surprise there before long, though of a different kind. Oh! we may wait with confidence for this day week.’
Being for the Benefit of Mr Vincent Crummles, and positively his last Appearance on this Stage
It was with a very sad and heavy heart, oppressed by many painful ideas, that Nicholas retraced his steps eastward and betook himself to the counting-house of Cheeryble Brothers. Whatever the idle hopes he had suffered himself to entertain, whatever the pleasant visions which had sprung up in his mind and grouped themselves round the fair image of Madeline Bray, they were now dispelled, and not a vestige of their gaiety and brightness remained.
It would be a poor compliment to Nicholas’s better nature, and one which he was very far from deserving, to insinuate that the solution, and such a solution, of the mystery which had seemed to surround Madeline Bray, when he was ignorant even of her name, had damped his ardour or cooled the fervour of his admiration. If he had regarded her before, with such a passion as young men attracted by mere beauty and elegance may entertain, he was now conscious of much deeper and stronger feelings. But, reverence for the truth and purity of her heart, respect for the helplessness and loneliness of her situation, sympathy with the trials of one so young and fair and admiration of her great and noble spirit, all seemed to raise her far above his reach, and, while they imparted new depth and dignity to his love, to whisper that it was hopeless.
‘I will keep my word, as I have pledged it to her,’ said Nicholas, manfully. ‘This is no common trust that I have to discharge, and I will perform the double duty that is imposed upon me most scrupulously and strictly. My secret feelings deserve no consideration in such a case as this, and they shall have none.’
Still, there were the secret feelings in existence just the same, and in secret Nicholas rather encouraged them than otherwise; reasoning (if he reasoned at all) that there they could do no harm to anybody but himself, and that if he kept them to himself from a sense of duty, he had an additional right to entertain himself with them as a reward for his heroism.
All these thoughts, coupled with what he had seen that morning and the anticipation of his next visit, rendered him a very dull and abstracted companion; so much so, indeed, that Tim Linkinwater suspected he must have made the mistake of a figure somewhere, which was preying upon his mind, and seriously conjured him, if such were the case, to make a clean breast and scratch it out, rather than have his whole life embittered by the tortures of remorse.
But in reply to these considerate representations, and many others both from Tim and Mr Frank, Nicholas could only be brought to state that he was never merrier in his life; and so went on all day, and so went towards home at night, still turning over and over again the same subjects, thinking over and over again the same things, and arriving over and over again at the same conclusions.
In this pensive, wayward, and uncertain state, people are apt to lounge and loiter without knowing why, to read placards on the walls with great attention and without the smallest idea of one word of their contents, and to stare most earnestly through shop-windows at things which they don’t see. It was thus that Nicholas found himself poring with the utmost interest over a large play-bill hanging outside a Minor Theatre which he had to pass on his way home, and reading a list of the actors and actresses who had promised to do honour to some approaching benefit, with as much gravity as if it had been a catalogue of the names of those ladies and gentlemen who stood highest upon the Book of Fate, and he had been looking anxiously for his own. He glanced at the top of the bill, with a smile at his own dulness, as he prepared to resume his walk, and there saw announced, in large letters with a large space between each of them, ‘Positively the last appearance of Mr Vincent Crummles of Provincial Celebrity!!!’
‘Nonsense!’ said Nicholas, turning back again. ‘It can’t be.’
But
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