‘Who is this boy that he took with him?’
Squeers stated his name.
‘Was he young or old, healthy or sickly, tractable or rebellious? Speak out, man,’ retorted Ralph.
‘Why, he wasn’t young,’ answered Squeers; ‘that is, not young for a boy, you know.’
‘That is, he was not a boy at all, I suppose?’ interrupted Ralph.
‘Well,’ returned Squeers, briskly, as if he felt relieved by the suggestion, ‘he might have been nigh twenty. He wouldn’t seem so old, though, to them as didn’t know him, for he was a little wanting here,’ touching his forehead; ‘nobody at home, you know, if you knocked ever so often.’
‘And you did knock pretty often, I dare say?’ muttered Ralph.
‘Pretty well,’ returned Squeers with a grin.
‘When you wrote to acknowledge the receipt of this trifle of money as you call it,’ said Ralph, ‘you told me his friends had deserted him long ago, and that you had not the faintest clue or trace to tell you who he was. Is that the truth?’
‘It is, worse luck!’ replied Squeers, becoming more and more easy and familiar in his manner, as Ralph pursued his inquiries with the less reserve. ‘It’s fourteen years ago, by the entry in my book, since a strange man brought him to my place, one autumn night, and left him there; paying five pound five, for his first quarter in advance. He might have been five or six year old at that time—not more.’
‘What more do you know about him?’ demanded Ralph.
‘Devilish little, I’m sorry to say,’ replied Squeers. ‘The money was paid for some six or eight year, and then it stopped. He had given an address in London, had this chap; but when it came to the point, of course nobody knowed anything about him. So I kept the lad out of—out of—’
‘Charity?’ suggested Ralph drily.
‘Charity, to be sure,’ returned Squeers, rubbing his knees, ‘and when he begins to be useful in a certain sort of way, this young scoundrel of a Nickleby comes and carries him off. But the most vexatious and aggeravating part of the whole affair is,’ said Squeers, dropping his voice, and drawing his chair still closer to Ralph, ‘that some questions have been asked about him at last—not of me, but, in a roundabout kind of way, of people in our village. So, that just when I might have had all arrears paid up, perhaps, and perhaps—who knows? such things have happened in our business before—a present besides for putting him out to a farmer, or sending him to sea, so that he might never turn up to disgrace his parents, supposing him to be a natural boy, as many of our boys are—damme, if that villain of a Nickleby don’t collar him in open day, and commit as good as highway robbery upon my pocket.’
‘We will both cry quits with him before long,’ said Ralph, laying his hand on the arm of the Yorkshire schoolmaster.
‘Quits!’ echoed Squeers. ‘Ah! and I should like to leave a small balance in his favour, to be settled when he can. I only wish Mrs. Squeers could catch hold of him. Bless her heart! She’d murder him, Mr. Nickleby—she would, as soon as eat her dinner.’
‘We will talk of this again,’ said Ralph. ‘I must have time to think of it. To wound him through his own affections and fancies—. If I could strike him through this boy—’
‘Strike him how you like, sir,’ interrupted Squeers, ‘only hit him hard enough, that’s all—and with that, I’ll say good-morning. Here!—just chuck that little boy’s hat off that corner peg, and lift him off the stool will you?’
Bawling these requests to Newman Noggs, Mr. Squeers betook himself to the little back-office, and fitted on his child’s hat with parental anxiety, while Newman, with his pen behind his ear, sat, stiff and immovable, on his stool, regarding the father and son by turns with a broad stare.
‘He’s a fine boy, an’t he?’ said Squeers, throwing his head a little on one side, and falling back to the desk, the better to estimate the proportions of little Wackford.
‘Very,’ said Newman.
‘Pretty well swelled out, an’t he?’ pursued Squeers. ‘He has the fatness of twenty boys, he has.’
‘Ah!’ replied Newman, suddenly thrusting his face into that of Squeers, ‘he has;—the fatness of twenty!—more! He’s got it all. God help that others. Ha! ha! Oh Lord!’
Having uttered these fragmentary observations, Newman dropped upon his desk and began to write with most marvellous rapidity.
‘Why, what does the man mean?’ cried Squeers, colouring. ‘Is he drunk?’
Newman made no reply.
‘Is he mad?’ said Squeers.
But, still Newman betrayed no consciousness of any presence save his own; so, Mr. Squeers comforted himself by saying that he was both drunk and mad; and, with this parting observation, he led his hopeful son away.
In exact proportion as Ralph Nickleby became conscious of a struggling and lingering regard for Kate, had his detestation of Nicholas augmented. It might be, that to atone for the weakness of inclining to any one person, he held it necessary to hate some other more intensely than before; but such had been the course of his feelings. And now, to be defied and spurned, to be held up to her in the worst and most repulsive colours, to know that she was taught to hate and despise him: to feel that there was infection in his touch, and taint in his companionship—to know all this, and to know that the mover of it all was that same boyish poor relation who had twitted him in their very first interview, and openly bearded and braved him since, wrought his quiet and stealthy malignity to such a pitch, that there was scarcely anything he would not have hazarded to gratify it, if he could have seen his way to some immediate retaliation.
But, fortunately for Nicholas, Ralph Nickleby did not; and although he cast about all that day, and kept a corner of his brain working on the one anxious subject through all the round of schemes and business that came with it, night found him at last, still harping on the same theme, and still pursuing the same unprofitable reflections.
‘When my brother was such as he,’ said Ralph, ‘the first comparisons were drawn between us—always in my disfavour. he was open, liberal, gallant, gay; I a crafty hunks of cold and stagnant blood, with no passion but love of saving, and no spirit beyond a thirst for gain. I recollected it well when I first saw this whipster; but I remember it better now.’
He had been occupied in tearing Nicholas’s letter into atoms; and as he spoke, he scattered it in a tiny shower about him.
‘Recollections like these,’ pursued Ralph, with a bitter smile, ‘flock upon me—when I resign myself to them—in crowds, and from countless quarters. As a portion of the world affect to despise the power of money, I must try and show them what it is.’
And being, by this time, in a pleasant frame of mind for slumber, Ralph Nickleby went to bed.
Chapter 35.
Smike becomes known to Mrs. Nickleby and Kate. Nicholas also meets with new Acquaintances. Brighter Days seem to dawn upon the Family
Having established his mother and sister in the apartments of the kind-hearted miniature painter, and ascertained that Sir Mulberry Hawk was in no danger of losing his life, Nicholas turned his thoughts to poor Smike, who, after breakfasting with Newman Noggs, had remained, in a disconsolate state, at that worthy creature’s lodgings, waiting, with much anxiety, for further intelligence of his protector.