NICHOLAS NICKLEBY (Illustrated). Charles Dickens

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      Mrs. Nickleby made no other reply than entreating Nicholas by a gesture to keep silent; and the uncle and nephew looked at each other for some seconds without speaking. The face of the old man was stern, hard-featured, and forbidding; that of the young one, open, handsome, and ingenuous. The old man’s eye was keen with the twinklings of avarice and cunning; the young man’s bright with the light of intelligence and spirit. His figure was somewhat slight, but manly and well formed; and, apart from all the grace of youth and comeliness, there was an emanation from the warm young heart in his look and bearing which kept the old man down.

      However striking such a contrast as this may be to lookers-on, none ever feel it with half the keenness or acuteness of perfection with which it strikes to the very soul of him whose inferiority it marks. It galled Ralph to the heart’s core, and he hated Nicholas from that hour.

      The mutual inspection was at length brought to a close by Ralph withdrawing his eyes, with a great show of disdain, and calling Nicholas ‘a boy.’ This word is much used as a term of reproach by elderly gentlemen towards their juniors: probably with the view of deluding society into the belief that if they could be young again, they wouldn’t on any account.

      ‘Well, ma’am,’ said Ralph, impatiently, ‘the creditors have administered, you tell me, and there’s nothing left for you?’

      ‘Nothing,’ replied Mrs. Nickleby.

      ‘And you spent what little money you had, in coming all the way to London, to see what I could do for you?’ pursued Ralph.

      ‘I hoped,’ faltered Mrs. Nickleby, ‘that you might have an opportunity of doing something for your brother’s children. It was his dying wish that I should appeal to you in their behalf.’

      ‘I don’t know how it is,’ muttered Ralph, walking up and down the room, ‘but whenever a man dies without any property of his own, he always seems to think he has a right to dispose of other people’s. What is your daughter fit for, ma’am?’

      ‘Kate has been well educated,’ sobbed Mrs. Nickleby. ‘Tell your uncle, my dear, how far you went in French and extras.’

      The poor girl was about to murmur something, when her uncle stopped her, very unceremoniously.

      ‘We must try and get you apprenticed at some boarding-school,’ said Ralph. ‘You have not been brought up too delicately for that, I hope?’

      ‘No, indeed, uncle,’ replied the weeping girl. ‘I will try to do anything that will gain me a home and bread.’

      ‘Well, well,’ said Ralph, a little softened, either by his niece’s beauty or her distress (stretch a point, and say the latter). ‘You must try it, and if the life is too hard, perhaps dressmaking or tambour-work will come lighter. Have you ever done anything, sir?’ (turning to his nephew.)

      ‘No,’ replied Nicholas, bluntly.

      ‘No, I thought not!’ said Ralph. ‘This is the way my brother brought up his children, ma’am.’

      ‘Nicholas has not long completed such education as his poor father could give him,’ rejoined Mrs. Nickleby, ‘and he was thinking of—’

      ‘Of making something of him someday,’ said Ralph. ‘The old story; always thinking, and never doing. If my brother had been a man of activity and prudence, he might have left you a rich woman, ma’am: and if he had turned his son into the world, as my father turned me, when I wasn’t as old as that boy by a year and a half, he would have been in a situation to help you, instead of being a burden upon you, and increasing your distress. My brother was a thoughtless, inconsiderate man, Mrs. Nickleby, and nobody, I am sure, can have better reason to feel that, than you.’

      This appeal set the widow upon thinking that perhaps she might have made a more successful venture with her one thousand pounds, and then she began to reflect what a comfortable sum it would have been just then; which dismal thoughts made her tears flow faster, and in the excess of these griefs she (being a well-meaning woman enough, but weak withal) fell first to deploring her hard fate, and then to remarking, with many sobs, that to be sure she had been a slave to poor Nicholas, and had often told him she might have married better (as indeed she had, very often), and that she never knew in his lifetime how the money went, but that if he had confided in her they might all have been better off that day; with other bitter recollections common to most married ladies, either during their coverture, or afterwards, or at both periods. Mrs. Nickleby concluded by lamenting that the dear departed had never deigned to profit by her advice, save on one occasion; which was a strictly veracious statement, inasmuch as he had only acted upon it once, and had ruined himself in consequence.

      Mr. Ralph Nickleby heard all this with a half-smile; and when the widow had finished, quietly took up the subject where it had been left before the above outbreak.

      ‘Are you willing to work, sir?’ he inquired, frowning on his nephew.

      ‘Of course I am,’ replied Nicholas haughtily.

      ‘Then see here, sir,’ said his uncle. ‘This caught my eye this morning, and you may thank your stars for it.’

      With this exordium, Mr. Ralph Nickleby took a newspaper from his pocket, and after unfolding it, and looking for a short time among the advertisements, read as follows:

      ‘“Education.—At Mr. Wackford Squeers’s Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge in Yorkshire, Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of the globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of classical literature. Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled. Mr. Squeers is in town, and attends daily, from one till four, at the Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill. N.B. An able assistant wanted. Annual salary 5 pounds. A Master of Arts would be preferred.”

      ‘There!’ said Ralph, folding the paper again. ‘Let him get that situation, and his fortune is made.’

      ‘But he is not a Master of Arts,’ said Mrs. Nickleby.

      ‘That,’ replied Ralph, ‘that, I think, can be got over.’

      ‘But the salary is so small, and it is such a long way off, uncle!’ faltered Kate.

      ‘Hush, Kate my dear,’ interposed Mrs. Nickleby; ‘your uncle must know best.’

      ‘I say,’ repeated Ralph, tartly, ‘let him get that situation, and his fortune is made. If he don’t like that, let him get one for himself. Without friends, money, recommendation, or knowledge of business of any kind, let him find honest employment in London, which will keep him in shoe leather, and I’ll give him a thousand pounds. At least,’ said Mr Ralph Nickleby, checking himself, ‘I would if I had it.’

      ‘Poor fellow!’ said the young lady. ‘Oh! uncle, must we be separated so soon!’

      ‘Don’t tease your uncle with questions when he is thinking only for our good, my love,’ said Mrs. Nickleby. ‘Nicholas, my dear, I wish you would say something.’

      ‘Yes, mother, yes,’ said Nicholas, who had hitherto remained silent and СКАЧАТЬ