‘I see by the paper that he was thrown from his cabriolet last night, and severely injured, and that his life is in some danger,’ answered Ralph with great composure; ‘but I see nothing extraordinary in that—accidents are not miraculous events, when men live hard, and drive after dinner.’
‘Whew!’ cried Mr. Mantalini in a long shrill whistle. ‘Then don’t you know how it was?’
‘Not unless it was as I have just supposed,’ replied Ralph, shrugging his shoulders carelessly, as if to give his questioner to understand that he had no curiosity upon the subject.
‘Demmit, you amaze me,’ cried Mantalini.
Ralph shrugged his shoulders again, as if it were no great feat to amaze Mr. Mantalini, and cast a wistful glance at the face of Newman Noggs, which had several times appeared behind a couple of panes of glass in the room door; it being a part of Newman’s duty, when unimportant people called, to make various feints of supposing that the bell had rung for him to show them out: by way of a gentle hint to such visitors that it was time to go.
‘Don’t you know,’ said Mr. Mantalini, taking Ralph by the button, ‘that it wasn’t an accident at all, but a demd, furious, manslaughtering attack made upon him by your nephew?’
‘What!’ snarled Ralph, clenching his fists and turning a livid white.
‘Demmit, Nickleby, you’re as great a tiger as he is,’ said Mantalini, alarmed at these demonstrations.
‘Go on,’ cried Ralph. ‘Tell me what you mean. What is this story? Who told you? Speak,’ growled Ralph. ‘Do you hear me?’
‘’Gad, Nickleby,’ said Mr. Mantalini, retreating towards his wife, ‘what a demneble fierce old evil genius you are! You’re enough to frighten the life and soul out of her little delicious wits—flying all at once into such a blazing, ravaging, raging passion as never was, demmit!’
‘Pshaw,’ rejoined Ralph, forcing a smile. ‘It is but manner.’
‘It is a demd uncomfortable, private-madhouse-sort of a manner,’ said Mr Mantalini, picking up his cane.
Ralph affected to smile, and once more inquired from whom Mr. Mantalini had derived his information.
‘From Pyke; and a demd, fine, pleasant, gentlemanly dog it is,’ replied Mantalini. ‘Demnition pleasant, and a tip-top sawyer.’
‘And what said he?’ asked Ralph, knitting his brows.
‘That it happened this way—that your nephew met him at a coffeehouse, fell upon him with the most demneble ferocity, followed him to his cab, swore he would ride home with him, if he rode upon the horse’s back or hooked himself on to the horse’s tail; smashed his countenance, which is a demd fine countenance in its natural state; frightened the horse, pitched out Sir Mulberry and himself, and—’
‘And was killed?’ interposed Ralph with gleaming eyes. ‘Was he? Is he dead?’
Mantalini shook his head.
‘Ugh,’ said Ralph, turning away. ‘Then he has done nothing. Stay,’ he added, looking round again. ‘He broke a leg or an arm, or put his shoulder out, or fractured his collar-bone, or ground a rib or two? His neck was saved for the halter, but he got some painful and slow-healing injury for his trouble? Did he? You must have heard that, at least.’
‘No,’ rejoined Mantalini, shaking his head again. ‘Unless he was dashed into such little pieces that they blew away, he wasn’t hurt, for he went off as quiet and comfortable as—as—as demnition,’ said Mr Mantalini, rather at a loss for a simile.
‘And what,’ said Ralph, hesitating a little, ‘what was the cause of quarrel?’
‘You are the demdest, knowing hand,’ replied Mr. Mantalini, in an admiring tone, ‘the cunningest, rummest, superlativest old fox—oh dem!—to pretend now not to know that it was the little bright-eyed niece—the softest, sweetest, prettiest—’
‘Alfred!’ interposed Madame Mantalini.
‘She is always right,’ rejoined Mr. Mantalini soothingly, ‘and when she says it is time to go, it is time, and go she shall; and when she walks along the streets with her own tulip, the women shall say, with envy, she has got a demd fine husband; and the men shall say with rapture, he has got a demd fine wife; and they shall both be right and neither wrong, upon my life and soul—oh demmit!’
With which remarks, and many more, no less intellectual and to the purpose, Mr. Mantalini kissed the fingers of his gloves to Ralph Nickleby, and drawing his lady’s arm through his, led her mincingly away.
‘So, so,’ muttered Ralph, dropping into his chair; ‘this devil is loose again, and thwarting me, as he was born to do, at every turn. He told me once there should be a day of reckoning between us, sooner or later. I’ll make him a true prophet, for it shall surely come.’
‘Are you at home?’ asked Newman, suddenly popping in his head.
‘No,’ replied Ralph, with equal abruptness.
Newman withdrew his head, but thrust it in again.
‘You’re quite sure you’re not at home, are you?’ said Newman.
‘What does the idiot mean?’ cried Ralph, testily.
‘He has been waiting nearly ever since they first came in, and may have heard your voice—that’s all,’ said Newman, rubbing his hands.
‘Who has?’ demanded Ralph, wrought by the intelligence he had just heard, and his clerk’s provoking coolness, to an intense pitch of irritation.
The necessity of a reply was superseded by the unlooked-for entrance of a third party—the individual in question—who, bringing his one eye (for he had but one) to bear on Ralph Nickleby, made a great many shambling bows, and sat himself down in an armchair, with his hands on his knees, and his short black trousers drawn up so high in the legs by the exertion of seating himself, that they scarcely reached below the tops of his Wellington boots.
‘Why, this is a surprise!’ said Ralph, bending his gaze upon the visitor, and half smiling as he scrutinised him attentively; ‘I should know your face, Mr. Squeers.’
‘Ah!’ replied that worthy, ‘and you’d have know’d it better, sir, if it hadn’t been for all that I’ve been a-going through. Just lift that little boy off the tall stool in the back-office, and tell him to come in here, will you, my man?’ said Squeers, addressing himself to Newman. ‘Oh, he’s lifted his-self off. My son, sir, little Wackford. What do you think of him, sir, for a specimen of the Dotheboys Hall feeding? Ain’t he fit to bust out of his clothes, and start the seams, and make the very buttons fly off with his fatness? Here’s flesh!’ cried Squeers, turning the boy about, and indenting the plumpest parts of his figure with divers pokes and punches, to the great discomposure of his son and heir. ‘Here’s firmness, here’s solidness! Why you can hardly get up enough of him between your finger and thumb to pinch him anywheres.’
In however good condition Master Squeers might have been, he certainly did not present this remarkable compactness of person, for on his father’s closing his finger and thumb in illustration of his remark, he uttered a sharp cry, and rubbed the place in the most natural manner possible.
‘Well,’ remarked Squeers, a little disconcerted, ‘I had him there; but that’s because we breakfasted early this morning, and he hasn’t had his lunch yet. Why you couldn’t shut a bit of him in a door, when he’s had his dinner. Look at them tears, sir,’ said Squeers, with a triumphant air, as Master Wackford wiped his eyes with the cuff of his jacket, ‘there’s oiliness!’
‘He looks well, indeed,’ returned Ralph, who, for some purposes of his own,