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

in this alarming surprise; and took his way home, thoughtfully and slowly.

While these things were being said and done, and long before they were concluded, the omnibus had disgorged Miss La Creevy and her escort, and they had arrived at her own door. Now, the good-nature of the little miniature painter would by no means allow of Smike’s walking back again, until he had been previously refreshed with just a sip of something comfortable and a mixed biscuit or so; and Smike, entertaining no objection either to the sip of something comfortable, or the mixed biscuit, but, considering on the contrary that they would be a very pleasant preparation for a walk to Bow, it fell out that he delayed much longer than he originally intended, and that it was some half-hour after dusk when he set forth on his journey home.

There was no likelihood of his losing his way, for it lay quite straight before him, and he had walked into town with Nicholas, and back alone, almost every day. So, Miss La Creevy and he shook hands with mutual confidence, and, being charged with more kind remembrances to Mrs and Miss Nickleby, Smike started off.

At the foot of Ludgate Hill, he turned a little out of the road to satisfy his curiosity by having a look at Newgate. After staring up at the sombre walls, from the opposite side of the way, with great care and dread for some minutes, he turned back again into the old track, and walked briskly through the city; stopping now and then to gaze in at the window of some particularly attractive shop, then running for a little way, then stopping again, and so on, as any other country lad might do.

He had been gazing for a long time through a jeweller’s window, wishing he could take some of the beautiful trinkets home as a present, and imagining what delight they would afford if he could, when the clocks struck three-quarters past eight; roused by the sound, he hurried on at a very quick pace, and was crossing the corner of a by-street when he felt himself violently brought to, with a jerk so sudden that he was obliged to cling to a lamp-post to save himself from falling. At the same moment, a small boy clung tight round his leg, and a shrill cry of ‘Here he is, father! Hooray!’ vibrated in his ears.

Smike knew that voice too well. He cast his despairing eyes downward towards the form from which it had proceeded, and, shuddering from head to foot, looked round. Mr Squeers had hooked him in the coat collar with the handle of his umbrella, and was hanging on at the other end with all his might and main. The cry of triumph proceeded from Master Wackford, who, regardless of all his kicks and struggles, clung to him with the tenacity of a bull-dog!

One glance showed him this; and in that one glance the terrified creature became utterly powerless and unable to utter a sound.

‘Here’s a go!’ cried Mr Squeers, gradually coming hand-over-hand down the umbrella, and only unhooking it when he had got tight hold of the victim’s collar. ‘Here’s a delicious go! Wackford, my boy, call up one of them coaches.’

‘A coach, father!’ cried little Wackford.

‘Yes, a coach, sir,’ replied Squeers, feasting his eyes upon the countenance of Smike. ‘Damn the expense. Let’s have him in a coach.’

‘What’s he been a doing of?’ asked a labourer with a hod of bricks, against whom and a fellow-labourer Mr Squeers had backed, on the first jerk of the umbrella.

‘Everything!’ replied Mr Squeers, looking fixedly at his old pupil in a sort of rapturous trance. ‘Everything—running away, sir— joining in bloodthirsty attacks upon his master—there’s nothing that’s bad that he hasn’t done. Oh, what a delicious go is this here, good Lord!’

The man looked from Squeers to Smike; but such mental faculties as the poor fellow possessed, had utterly deserted him. The coach came up; Master Wackford entered; Squeers pushed in his prize, and following close at his heels, pulled up the glasses. The coachman mounted his box and drove slowly off, leaving the two bricklayers, and an old apple-woman, and a town-made little boy returning from an evening school, who had been the only witnesses of the scene, to meditate upon it at their leisure.

Mr Squeers sat himself down on the opposite seat to the unfortunate Smike, and, planting his hands firmly on his knees, looked at him for some five minutes, when, seeming to recover from his trance, he uttered a loud laugh, and slapped his old pupil’s face several times—taking the right and left sides alternately.

‘It isn’t a dream!’ said Squeers. ‘That’s real flesh and blood! I know the feel of it!’ and being quite assured of his good fortune by these experiments, Mr Squeers administered a few boxes on the ear, lest the entertainments should seem to partake of sameness, and laughed louder and longer at every one.

‘Your mother will be fit to jump out of her skin, my boy, when she hears of this,’ said Squeers to his son.

‘Oh, won’t she though, father?’ replied Master Wackford.

‘To think,’ said Squeers, ‘that you and me should be turning out of a street, and come upon him at the very nick; and that I should have him tight, at only one cast of the umbrella, as if I had hooked him with a grappling-iron! Ha, ha!’

‘Didn’t I catch hold of his leg, neither, father?’ said little Wackford.

‘You did; like a good ‘un, my boy,’ said Mr Squeers, patting his son’s head, ‘and you shall have the best button-over jacket and waistcoat that the next new boy brings down, as a reward of merit. Mind that. You always keep on in the same path, and do them things that you see your father do, and when you die you’ll go right slap to Heaven and no questions asked.’

Improving the occasion in these words, Mr Squeers patted his son’s head again, and then patted Smike’s—but harder; and inquired in a bantering tone how he found himself by this time.

‘I must go home,’ replied Smike, looking wildly round.

‘To be sure you must. You’re about right there,’ replied Mr Squeers. ‘You’ll go home very soon, you will. You’ll find yourself at the peaceful village of Dotheboys, in Yorkshire, in something under a week’s time, my young friend; and the next time you get away from there, I give you leave to keep away. Where’s the clothes you run off in, you ungrateful robber?’ said Mr Squeers, in a severe voice.

Smike glanced at the neat attire which the care of Nicholas had provided for him; and wrung his hands.

‘Do you know that I could hang you up, outside of the Old Bailey, for making away with them articles of property?’ said Squeers. ‘Do you know that it’s a hanging matter—and I an’t quite certain whether it an’t an anatomy one besides—to walk off with up’ards of the valley of five pound from a dwelling-house? Eh? Do you know that? What do you suppose was the worth of them clothes you had? Do you know that that Wellington boot you wore, cost eight-and-twenty shillings when it was a pair, and the shoe seven-and- six? But you came to the right shop for mercy when you came to me, and thank your stars that it IS me as has got to serve you with the article.’

Anybody not in Mr Squeers’s confidence would have supposed that he was quite out of the article in question, instead of having a large stock on hand ready for all comers; nor would the opinion of sceptical persons have undergone much alteration when he followed up the remark by poking Smike in the chest with the ferrule of his umbrella, and dealing a smart shower of blows, with the ribs of the same instrument, upon his head and shoulders.

‘I never threshed a boy in a hackney coach before,’ said Mr Squeers, when he stopped to rest. ‘There’s inconveniency in it, but the novelty gives it a sort of relish, too!’

Poor Smike! He warded off the blows, as well as he could, and now shrunk into a corner of the coach, with his head resting on his hands, and his elbows on his knees; he was stunned and stupefied, and had no more idea that any act of his, would enable him to escape from the all-powerful Squeers, now that he had no friend to speak to or to advise with, than he had had in all the weary years of his Yorkshire life which preceded the arrival of Nicholas.

The journey seemed endless; street after street was entered and left behind; and still they went jolting on. At last Mr Squeers began to thrust his head out of the widow every half-minute, and to bawl a variety of directions to the coachman; and after passing, with some difficulty, through several mean streets which the appearance of the houses and the bad state of the road denoted to have been recently built, Mr Squeers suddenly tugged at the check string with all his might, and cried, ‘Stop!’

‘What are you pulling a man’s arm off for?’ said the coachman looking angrily down.

‘That’s the house,’ replied Squeers. ‘The second of them four little houses, one story high, with the green shutters. There’s brass plate on the door, with the name of Snawley.’

‘Couldn’t you say that without wrenching a man’s limbs off his body?’ inquired the coachman.

‘No!’ bawled Mr Squeers. ‘Say another word, and I’ll summons you for having a broken winder. Stop!’

Obedient to this direction, the coach stopped at Mr Snawley’s door. Mr Snawley may be remembered as the sleek and sanctified gentleman who confided two sons (in law) to the parental care of Mr Squeers, as narrated in the fourth chapter of this history. Mr Snawley’s house was on the extreme borders of some new settlements adjoining Somers Town, and Mr Squeers had taken lodgings therein for a short time, as his stay was longer than usual, and the Saracen, having experience of Master Wackford’s appetite, had declined to receive him on any other terms than as a full-grown customer.

‘Here we are!’ said Squeers, hurrying Smike into the little parlour, where Mr Snawley and his wife were taking a lobster supper. ‘Here’s the vagrant—the felon—the rebel—the monster of unthankfulness.’

‘What! The boy that run away!’ cried Snawley, resting his knife and fork upright on the table, and opening his eyes to their full width.

‘The very boy’, said Squeers, putting his fist close to Smike’s nose, and drawing it away again, and repeating the process several times, with a vicious aspect. ‘If there wasn’t a lady present, I’d fetch him such a—: never mind, I’ll owe it him.’

And here Mr Squeers related how, and in what manner, and when and where, he had picked up the runaway.

‘It’s clear that there has been a Providence in it, sir,’ said Mr Snawley, casting down his eyes with an air of humility, and elevating his fork, with a bit of lobster on the top of it, towards the ceiling.

‘Providence is against him, no doubt,’ replied Mr Squeers, scratching his nose. ‘Of course; that was to be expected. Anybody might have known that.’

‘Hard-heartedness and evil-doing will never prosper, sir,’ said Mr Snawley.

‘Never was such a thing known,’ rejoined Squeers, taking a little roll of notes from his pocketbook, to see that they were all safe.

‘I have been, Mr Snawley,’ said Mr Squeers, when he had satisfied himself upon this point, ‘I have been that chap’s benefactor, feeder, teacher, and clother. I have been that chap’s classical, commercial, mathematical, philosophical, and trigonomical friend. My son—my only son, Wackford—has been his brother; Mrs Squeers has been his mother, grandmother, aunt,—ah!