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

the most charming eccentricity; insolence took the guise of an easy absence of reserve, attainable only by those who had had the good fortune to mix with high folks.

If the mistress put such a construction upon the behaviour of her new friends, what could the companion urge against them? If they accustomed themselves to very little restraint before the lady of the house, with how much more freedom could they address her paid dependent! Nor was even this the worst. As the odious Sir Mulberry Hawk attached himself to Kate with less and less of disguise, Mrs Wititterly began to grow jealous of the superior attractions of Miss Nickleby. If this feeling had led to her banishment from the drawing-room when such company was there, Kate would have been only too happy and willing that it should have existed, but unfortunately for her she possessed that native grace and true gentility of manner, and those thousand nameless accomplishments which give to female society its greatest charm; if these be valuable anywhere, they were especially so where the lady of the house was a mere animated doll. The consequence was, that Kate had the double mortification of being an indispensable part of the circle when Sir Mulberry and his friends were there, and of being exposed, on that very account, to all Mrs Wititterly’s ill-humours and caprices when they were gone. She became utterly and completely miserable.

Mrs Wititterly had never thrown off the mask with regard to Sir Mulberry, but when she was more than usually out of temper, attributed the circumstance, as ladies sometimes do, to nervous indisposition. However, as the dreadful idea that Lord Verisopht also was somewhat taken with Kate, and that she, Mrs Wititterly, was quite a secondary person, dawned upon that lady’s mind and gradually developed itself, she became possessed with a large quantity of highly proper and most virtuous indignation, and felt it her duty, as a married lady and a moral member of society, to mention the circumstance to ‘the young person’ without delay.

Accordingly Mrs Wititterly broke ground next morning, during a pause in the novel-reading.

‘Miss Nickleby,’ said Mrs Wititterly, ‘I wish to speak to you very gravely. I am sorry to have to do it, upon my word I am very sorry, but you leave me no alternative, Miss Nickleby.’ Here Mrs Wititterly tossed her head—not passionately, only virtuously—and remarked, with some appearance of excitement, that she feared that palpitation of the heart was coming on again.

‘Your behaviour, Miss Nickleby,’ resumed the lady, ‘is very far from pleasing me—very far. I am very anxious indeed that you should do well, but you may depend upon it, Miss Nickleby, you will not, if you go on as you do.’

‘Ma’am!’ exclaimed Kate, proudly.

‘Don’t agitate me by speaking in that way, Miss Nickleby, don’t,’ said Mrs Wititterly, with some violence, ‘or you’ll compel me to ring the bell.’

Kate looked at her, but said nothing.

‘You needn’t suppose,’ resumed Mrs Wititterly, ‘that your looking at me in that way, Miss Nickleby, will prevent my saying what I am going to say, which I feel to be a religious duty. You needn’t direct your glances towards me,’ said Mrs Wititterly, with a sudden burst of spite; ‘I am not Sir Mulberry, no, nor Lord Frederick Verisopht, Miss Nickleby, nor am I Mr Pyke, nor Mr Pluck either.’

Kate looked at her again, but less steadily than before; and resting her elbow on the table, covered her eyes with her hand.

‘If such things had been done when I was a young girl,’ said Mrs Wititterly (this, by the way, must have been some little time before), ‘I don’t suppose anybody would have believed it.’

‘I don’t think they would,’ murmured Kate. ‘I do not think anybody would believe, without actually knowing it, what I seem doomed to undergo!’

‘Don’t talk to me of being doomed to undergo, Miss Nickleby, if you please,’ said Mrs Wititterly, with a shrillness of tone quite surprising in so great an invalid. ‘I will not be answered, Miss Nickleby. I am not accustomed to be answered, nor will I permit it for an instant. Do you hear?’ she added, waiting with some apparent inconsistency FOR an answer.

‘I do hear you, ma’am,’ replied Kate, ‘with surprise—with greater surprise than I can express.’

‘I have always considered you a particularly well-behaved young person for your station in life,’ said Mrs Wititterly; ‘and as you are a person of healthy appearance, and neat in your dress and so forth, I have taken an interest in you, as I do still, considering that I owe a sort of duty to that respectable old female, your mother. For these reasons, Miss Nickleby, I must tell you once for all, and begging you to mind what I say, that I must insist upon your immediately altering your very forward behaviour to the gentleman who visit at this house. It really is not becoming,’ said Mrs Wititterly, closing her chaste eyes as she spoke; ‘it is improper—quite improper.”

‘Oh!’ cried Kate, looking upwards and clasping her hands; ‘is not this, is not this, too cruel, too hard to bear! Is it not enough that I should have suffered as I have, night and day; that I should almost have sunk in my own estimation from very shame of having been brought into contact with such people; but must I also be exposed to this unjust and most unfounded charge!’

‘You will have the goodness to recollect, Miss Nickleby,’ said Mrs Wititterly, ‘that when you use such terms as “unjust”, and “unfounded”, you charge me, in effect, with stating that which is untrue.’

‘I do,’ said Kate with honest indignation. ‘Whether you make this accusation of yourself, or at the prompting of others, is alike to me. I say it IS vilely, grossly, wilfully untrue. Is it possible!’ cried Kate, ‘that anyone of my own sex can have sat by, and not have seen the misery these men have caused me? Is it possible that you, ma’am, can have been present, and failed to mark the insulting freedom that their every look bespoke? Is it possible that you can have avoided seeing, that these libertines, in their utter disrespect for you, and utter disregard of all gentlemanly behaviour, and almost of decency, have had but one object in introducing themselves here, and that the furtherance of their designs upon a friendless, helpless girl, who, without this humiliating confession, might have hoped to receive from one so much her senior something like womanly aid and sympathy? I do not—I cannot believe it!’

If poor Kate had possessed the slightest knowledge of the world, she certainly would not have ventured, even in the excitement into which she had been lashed, upon such an injudicious speech as this. Its effect was precisely what a more experienced observer would have foreseen. Mrs Wititterly received the attack upon her veracity with exemplary calmness, and listened with the most heroic fortitude to Kate’s account of her own sufferings. But allusion being made to her being held in disregard by the gentlemen, she evinced violent emotion, and this blow was no sooner followed up by the remark concerning her seniority, than she fell back upon the sofa, uttering dismal screams.

‘What is the matter?’ cried Mr Wititterly, bouncing into the room. ‘Heavens, what do I see? Julia! Julia! look up, my life, look up!’

But Julia looked down most perseveringly, and screamed still louder; so Mr Wititterly rang the bell, and danced in a frenzied manner round the sofa on which Mrs Wititterly lay; uttering perpetual cries for Sir Tumley Snuffim, and never once leaving off to ask for any explanation of the scene before him.

‘Run for Sir Tumley,’ cried Mr Wititterly, menacing the page with both fists. ‘I knew it, Miss Nickleby,’ he said, looking round with an air of melancholy triumph, ‘that society has been too much for her. This is all soul, you know, every bit of it.’ With this assurance Mr Wititterly took up the prostrate form of Mrs Wititterly, and carried her bodily off to bed.

Kate waited until Sir Tumley Snuffim had paid his visit and looked in with a report, that, through the special interposition of a merciful Providence (thus spake Sir Tumley), Mrs Wititterly had gone to sleep. She then hastily attired herself for walking, and leaving word that she should return within a couple of hours, hurried away towards her uncle’s house.

It had been a good day with Ralph Nickleby—quite a lucky day; and as he walked to and fro in his little back-room with his hands clasped behind him, adding up in his own mind all the sums that had been, or would be, netted from the business done since morning, his mouth was drawn into a hard stern smile; while the firmness of the lines and curves that made it up, as well as the cunning glance of his cold, bright eye, seemed to tell, that if any resolution or cunning would increase the profits, they would not fail to be excited for the purpose.

‘Very good!’ said Ralph, in allusion, no doubt, to some proceeding of the day. ‘He defies the usurer, does he? Well, we shall see. “Honesty is the best policy,” is it? We’ll try that too.’

He stopped, and then walked on again.

‘He is content,’ said Ralph, relaxing into a smile, ‘to set his known character and conduct against the power of money—dross, as he calls it. Why, what a dull blockhead this fellow must be! Dross to, dross! Who’s that?’

‘Me,’ said Newman Noggs, looking in. ‘Your niece.’

‘What of her?’ asked Ralph sharply.

‘She’s here.’

‘Here!’

Newman jerked his head towards his little room, to signify that she was waiting there.

‘What does she want?’ asked Ralph.

‘I don’t know,’ rejoined Newman. ‘Shall I ask?’ he added quickly.

‘No,’ replied Ralph. ‘Show her in! Stay.’ He hastily put away a padlocked cash-box that was on the table, and substituted in its stead an empty purse. ‘There,’ said Ralph. ‘NOW she may come in.’

Newman, with a grim smile at this manoeuvre, beckoned the young lady to advance, and having placed a chair for her, retired; looking stealthily over his shoulder at Ralph as he limped slowly out.

‘Well,’ said Ralph, roughly enough; but still with something more of kindness in his manner than he would have exhibited towards anybody else. ‘Well, my—dear. What now?’

Kate raised her eyes, which were filled with tears; and with an effort to master her emotion strove to speak, but in vain. So drooping her head again, she remained silent. Her face was hidden from his view, but Ralph could see that she was weeping.

‘I can guess the cause of this!’ thought Ralph, after looking at her for some time in silence. ‘I can—I can—guess the cause. Well! Well!’ thought Ralph—for the moment quite disconcerted, as he watched the anguish of his beautiful niece. ‘Where is the harm? only a few tears; and it’s an excellent lesson for her, an excellent lesson.’

‘What is the matter?’ asked Ralph, drawing a chair opposite, and sitting down.

He was rather taken aback by the sudden firmness with which Kate looked up and answered him.

‘The matter which brings me to you, sir,’ she said, ‘is one which should call the blood up into your cheeks, and make you burn to hear, as it does me to tell. I have been wronged; my feelings have been outraged, insulted, wounded past all healing, and by your friends.’

‘Friends!’ cried Ralph, sternly. ‘I have no friends, girl.’

‘By the men I saw here, then,’ returned Kate, quickly. ‘If they were no friends of yours, and you knew what they were,—oh, the more shame on you, uncle, for bringing me among them. To have subjected me to what I was exposed to here, through any misplaced confidence or imperfect