Nicholas Nickleby

Nicholas was considerably startled by these very economical arrangements; but he had no time to reflect upon them, for the little boys had to be got up to the top of the coach, and their boxes had to be brought out and put in, and Mr. Squeers’s luggage was to be seen carefully deposited in the boot, and all these offices were in his department. He was in the full heat and bustle of concluding these operations, when his uncle, Mr. Ralph Nickleby, accosted him.

‘Oh! here you are, sir!’ said Ralph. ‘Here are your mother and sister, sir.’

‘Where?’ cried Nicholas, looking hastily round.

‘Here!’ replied his uncle. ‘Having too much money and nothing at all to do with it, they were paying a hackney coach as I came up, sir.’

‘We were afraid of being too late to see him before he went away from us,’ said Mrs. Nickleby, embracing her son, heedless of the unconcerned lookers-on in the coach-yard.

‘Very good, ma’am,’ returned Ralph, ‘you’re the best judge of course. I merely said that you were paying a hackney coach. I never pay a hackney coach, ma’am; I never hire one. I haven’t been in a hackney coach of my own hiring, for thirty years, and I hope I shan’t be for thirty more, if I live as long.’

‘I should never have forgiven myself if I had not seen him,’ said Mrs Nickleby. ‘Poor dear boy – going away without his breakfast too, because he feared to distress us!’

‘Mighty fine certainly,’ said Ralph, with great testiness. ‘When I first went to business, ma’am, I took a penny loaf and a ha’porth of milk for my breakfast as I walked to the city every morning; what do you say to that, ma’am? Breakfast! Bah!’

‘Now, Nickleby,’ said Squeers, coming up at the moment buttoning his greatcoat; ‘I think you’d better get up behind. I’m afraid of one of them boys falling off and then there’s twenty pound a year gone.’

‘Dear Nicholas,’ whispered Kate, touching her brother’s arm, ‘who is that vulgar man?’

‘Eh!’ growled Ralph, whose quick ears had caught the inquiry. ‘Do you wish to be introduced to Mr. Squeers, my dear?’

‘That the schoolmaster! No, uncle. Oh no!’ replied Kate, shrinking back.

‘I’m sure I heard you say as much, my dear,’ retorted Ralph in his cold sarcastic manner. ‘Mr. Squeers, here’s my niece: Nicholas’s sister!’

‘Very glad to make your acquaintance, miss,’ said Squeers, raising his hat an inch or two. ‘I wish Mrs. Squeers took gals, and we had you for a teacher. I don’t know, though, whether she mightn’t grow jealous if we had. Ha! ha! ha!’

If the proprietor of Dotheboys Hall could have known what was passing in his assistant’s breast at that moment, he would have discovered, with some surprise, that he was as near being soundly pummelled as he had ever been in his life. Kate Nickleby, having a quicker perception of her brother’s emotions, led him gently aside, and thus prevented Mr. Squeers from being impressed with the fact in a peculiarly disagreeable manner.

‘My dear Nicholas,’ said the young lady, ‘who is this man? What kind of place can it be that you are going to?’

‘I hardly know, Kate,’ replied Nicholas, pressing his sister’s hand. ‘I suppose the Yorkshire folks are rather rough and uncultivated; that’s all.’

‘But this person,’ urged Kate.

‘Is my employer, or master, or whatever the proper name may be,’ replied Nicholas quickly; ‘and I was an ass to take his coarseness ill. They are looking this way, and it is time I was in my place. Bless you, love, and goodbye! Mother, look forward to our meeting again someday! Uncle, farewell! Thank you heartily for all you have done and all you mean to do. Quite ready, sir!’

With these hasty adieux, Nicholas mounted nimbly to his seat, and waved his hand as gallantly as if his heart went with it.

At this moment, when the coachman and guard were comparing notes for the last time before starting, on the subject of the way-bill; when porters were screwing out the last reluctant sixpences, itinerant newsmen making the last offer of a morning paper, and the horses giving the last impatient rattle to their harness; Nicholas felt somebody pulling softly at his leg. He looked down, and there stood Newman Noggs, who pushed up into his hand a dirty letter.

‘What’s this?’ inquired Nicholas.

‘Hush!’ rejoined Noggs, pointing to Mr. Ralph Nickleby, who was saying a few earnest words to Squeers, a short distance off: ‘Take it. Read it. Nobody knows. That’s all.’

‘Stop!’ cried Nicholas.

‘No,’ replied Noggs.

Nicholas cried stop, again, but Newman Noggs was gone.

A minute’s bustle, a banging of the coach doors, a swaying of the vehicle to one side, as the heavy coachman, and still heavier guard, climbed into their seats; a cry of all right, a few notes from the horn, a hasty glance of two sorrowful faces below, and the hard features of Mr. Ralph Nickleby – and the coach was gone too, and rattling over the stones of Smithfield.

The little boys’ legs being too short to admit of their feet resting upon anything as they sat, and the little boys’ bodies being consequently in imminent hazard of being jerked off the coach, Nicholas had enough to do over the stones to hold them on. Between the manual exertion and the mental anxiety attendant upon this task, he was not a little relieved when the coach stopped at the Peacock at Islington. He was still more relieved when a hearty-looking gentleman, with a very good-humoured face, and a very fresh colour, got up behind, and proposed to take the other corner of the seat.

‘If we put some of these youngsters in the middle,’ said the new-comer, ‘they’ll be safer in case of their going to sleep; eh?’

‘If you’ll have the goodness, sir,’ replied Squeers, ‘that’ll be the very thing. Mr. Nickleby, take three of them boys between you and the gentleman. Belling and the youngest Snawley can sit between me and the guard. Three children,’ said Squeers, explaining to the stranger, ‘books as two.’

‘I have not the least objection I am sure,’ said the fresh-coloured gentleman; ‘I have a brother who wouldn’t object to book his six children as two at any butcher’s or baker’s in the kingdom, I dare say. Far from it.’

‘Six children, sir?’ exclaimed Squeers.

‘Yes, and all boys,’ replied the stranger.

‘Mr. Nickleby,’ said Squeers, in great haste, ‘catch hold of that basket. Let me give you a card, sir, of an establishment where those six boys can be brought up in an enlightened, liberal, and moral manner, with no mistake at all about it, for twenty guineas a year each – twenty guineas, sir – or I’d take all the boys together upon a average right through, and say a hundred pound a year for the lot.’

‘Oh!’ said the gentleman, glancing at the card, ‘you are the Mr. Squeers mentioned here, I presume?’

‘Yes, I am, sir,’ replied the worthy pedagogue; ‘Mr. Wackford Squeers is my name, and I’m very far from being ashamed of it. These are some of my boys, sir; that’s one of my assistants, sir – Mr. Nickleby, a gentleman’s son, and a good scholar, mathematical, classical, and commercial. We don’t do things by halves at our shop. All manner of learning my boys take down, sir; the expense is never thought of; and they get paternal treatment and washing in.’

‘Upon my word,’ said the gentleman, glancing at Nicholas with a half-smile, and a more than half expression of surprise, ‘these are advantages indeed.’

‘You may say that, sir,’ rejoined Squeers, thrusting his hands into his great-coat pockets. ‘The most unexceptionable references are given and required. I wouldn’t take a reference with any boy, that wasn’t responsible for the payment of five pound five a quarter, no, not if you went down on your knees, and asked me, with the tears running down your face, to do it.’

‘Highly considerate,’ said the passenger.

‘It’s my great aim and end to be considerate, sir,’ rejoined Squeers. ‘Snawley, junior, if you don’t leave off chattering your teeth, and shaking with the cold, I’ll warm you with a severe thrashing in about half a minute’s time.’

‘Sit fast here, genelmen,’ said the guard as he clambered up.

‘All right behind there, Dick?’ cried the coachman.

‘All right,’ was the reply. ‘Off she goes!’ And off she did go – if coaches be feminine – amidst a loud flourish from the guard’s horn, and the calm approval of all the judges of coaches and coach-horses congregated at the Peacock, but more especially of the helpers, who stood, with the cloths over their arms, watching the coach till it disappeared, and then lounged admiringly stablewards, bestowing various gruff encomiums on the beauty of the turn-out.

When the guard (who was a stout old Yorkshireman) had blown himself quite out of breath, he put the horn into a little tunnel of a basket fastened to the coach-side for the purpose, and giving himself a plentiful shower of blows on the chest and shoulders, observed it was uncommon cold; after which, he demanded of every person separately whether he was going right through, and if not, where he was going. Satisfactory replies being made to these queries, he surmised that the roads were pretty heavy arter that fall last night, and took the liberty of asking whether any of them gentlemen carried a snuff-box. It happening that nobody did, he remarked with a mysterious air that he had heard a medical gentleman as went down to Grantham last week, say how that snuff-taking was bad for the eyes; but for his part he had never found it so, and what he said was, that everybody should speak as they found. Nobody attempting to controvert this position, he took a small brown-paper parcel out of his hat, and putting on a pair of horn spectacles (the writing being crabbed) read the direction half-a-dozen times over; having done which, he consigned the parcel to its old place, put up his spectacles again, and stared at everybody in turn. After this, he took another blow at the horn by way of refreshment; and, having now exhausted his usual topics of conversation, folded his arms as well as he could in so many coats, and falling into a solemn silence, looked carelessly at the familiar objects which met his eye on every side as the coach rolled on; the only things he seemed to care for, being horses and droves of cattle, which he scrutinised with a critical air as they were passed upon the road.

The weather was intensely and bitterly cold; a great deal of snow fell from time to time; and the wind was intolerably keen. Mr. Squeers got down at almost every stage – to stretch his legs as he said – and as he always came back from such excursions with a very red nose, and composed himself to sleep directly, there is reason to suppose that he derived great benefit from the process. The little pupils having been stimulated with the remains of their breakfast, and further invigorated by sundry small cups of a curious cordial carried by Mr. Squeers, which tasted very like toast-and-water put into a brandy bottle by mistake, went to sleep, woke, shivered, and cried, as their feelings prompted. Nicholas and the good-tempered man found so many things to talk about, that between conversing together, and cheering up the boys, the time passed with them as rapidly as it could, under such adverse circumstances.

So the day wore on. At Eton Slocomb there was a good coach dinner, of which the box, the four front outsides, the one inside, Nicholas, the good-tempered man, and Mr. Squeers, partook; while the five little boys were put to thaw by the fire, and regaled with sandwiches. A stage or two further on, the lamps were lighted, and a great to-do occasioned by the taking up, at a roadside inn, of a very fastidious lady with an infinite variety of cloaks and small parcels, who loudly lamented, for the behoof of the outsides, the non-arrival of her own carriage which was to have taken her on, and made the guard solemnly promise to stop every green chariot he saw coming; which, as it was a dark night and he was sitting with his face the other way, that officer undertook, with many fervent asseverations, to do. Lastly, the fastidious lady, finding there was a solitary gentleman inside, had a small lamp lighted which she carried in reticule, and being after much trouble shut in, the horses were put into a brisk canter and the coach was once more in rapid motion.

The night and the snow came on together, and dismal enough they were. There was no sound to be heard but the howling of the wind; for the noise of the wheels, and the tread of the horses’ feet, were rendered inaudible by the thick coating of snow which covered the ground, and was fast increasing every moment. The streets of Stamford were deserted as they passed through the town; and its old churches rose, frowning and dark, from the whitened ground. Twenty miles further on, two of the front outside passengers, wisely availing themselves of their arrival at one of the best inns in England, turned in, for the night, at the George at Grantham. The remainder wrapped themselves more closely in their coats and cloaks, and leaving the light and warmth of the town behind them, pillowed themselves against the luggage, and prepared, with many half-suppressed moans, again to encounter the piercing blast which swept across the open country.

They were little more than a stage out of Grantham, or about halfway between it and Newark, when Nicholas, who had been asleep for a short time, was suddenly roused by a violent jerk which nearly threw him from his seat. Grasping the rail, he found that the coach had sunk greatly on one side, though it was still dragged forward by the horses; and while – confused by their plunging and the loud screams of the lady inside – he hesitated, for an instant, whether to jump off or not, the vehicle turned easily over, and relieved him from all further uncertainty by flinging him into the road.

CHAPTER 6

In which the Occurrence of the Accident mentioned in the last Chapter, affords an Opportunity to a couple of Gentlemen to tell Stories against each other