Mr. Nickleby closed an account-book which lay on his desk, and, throwing himself back in his chair, gazed with an air of abstraction through the dirty window. Some London houses have a melancholy little plot of ground behind them, usually fenced in by four high whitewashed walls, and frowned upon by stacks of chimneys: in which there withers on, from year to year, a crippled tree, that makes a show of putting forth a few leaves late in autumn when other trees shed theirs, and, drooping in the effort, lingers on, all crackled and smoke-dried, till the following season, when it repeats the same process, and perhaps, if the weather be particularly genial, even tempts some rheumatic sparrow to chirrup in its branches. People sometimes call these dark yards ‘gardens’; it is not supposed that they were ever planted, but rather that they are pieces of unreclaimed land, with the withered vegetation of the original brick-field. No man thinks of walking in this desolate place, or of turning it to any account. A few hampers, half-a-dozen broken bottles, and such-like rubbish, may be thrown there, when the tenant first moves in, but nothing more; and there they remain until he goes away again: the damp straw taking just as long to moulder as it thinks proper: and mingling with the scanty box, and stunted everbrowns, and broken flower-pots, that are scattered mournfully about – a prey to ‘blacks’ and dirt.
It was into a place of this kind that Mr. Ralph Nickleby gazed, as he sat with his hands in his pockets looking out of the window. He had fixed his eyes upon a distorted fir tree, planted by some former tenant in a tub that had once been green, and left there, years before, to rot away piecemeal. There was nothing very inviting in the object, but Mr. Nickleby was wrapt in a brown study, and sat contemplating it with far greater attention than, in a more conscious mood, he would have deigned to bestow upon the rarest exotic. At length, his eyes wandered to a little dirty window on the left, through which the face of the clerk was dimly visible; that worthy chancing to look up, he beckoned him to attend.
In obedience to this summons the clerk got off the high stool (to which he had communicated a high polish by countless gettings off and on), and presented himself in Mr. Nickleby’s room. He was a tall man of middle age, with two goggle eyes whereof one was a fixture, a rubicund nose, a cadaverous face, and a suit of clothes (if the term be allowable when they suited him not at all) much the worse for wear, very much too small, and placed upon such a short allowance of buttons that it was marvellous how he contrived to keep them on.
‘Was that half-past twelve, Noggs?’ said Mr. Nickleby, in a sharp and grating voice.
‘Not more than five-and-twenty minutes by the – ’ Noggs was going to add public-house clock, but recollecting himself, substituted ‘regular time.’
‘My watch has stopped,’ said Mr. Nickleby; ‘I don’t know from what cause.’
‘Not wound up,’ said Noggs.
‘Yes it is,’ said Mr. Nickleby.
‘Over-wound then,’ rejoined Noggs.
‘That can’t very well be,’ observed Mr. Nickleby.
‘Must be,’ said Noggs.
‘Well!’ said Mr. Nickleby, putting the repeater back in his pocket; ‘perhaps it is.’
Noggs gave a peculiar grunt, as was his custom at the end of all disputes with his master, to imply that he (Noggs) triumphed; and (as he rarely spoke to anybody unless somebody spoke to him) fell into a grim silence, and rubbed his hands slowly over each other: cracking the joints of his fingers, and squeezing them into all possible distortions. The incessant performance of this routine on every occasion, and the communication of a fixed and rigid look to his unaffected eye, so as to make it uniform with the other, and to render it impossible for anybody to determine where or at what he was looking, were two among the numerous peculiarities of Mr Noggs, which struck an inexperienced observer at first sight.
‘I am going to the London Tavern this morning,’ said Mr. Nickleby.
‘Public meeting?’ inquired Noggs.
Mr. Nickleby nodded. ‘I expect a letter from the solicitor respecting that mortgage of Ruddle’s. If it comes at all, it will be here by the two o’clock delivery. I shall leave the city about that time and walk to Charing Cross on the left-hand side of the way; if there are any letters, come and meet me, and bring them with you.’
Noggs nodded; and as he nodded, there came a ring at the office bell. The master looked up from his papers, and the clerk calmly remained in a stationary position.
‘The bell,’ said Noggs, as though in explanation. ‘At home?’
‘Yes.’
‘To anybody?’
‘Yes.’
‘To the tax-gatherer?’
‘No! Let him call again.’
Noggs gave vent to his usual grunt, as much as to say ‘I thought so!’ and, the ring being repeated, went to the door, whence he presently returned, ushering in, by the name of Mr. Bonney, a pale gentleman in a violent hurry, who, with his hair standing up in great disorder all over his head, and a very narrow white cravat tied loosely round his throat, looked as if he had been knocked up in the night and had not dressed himself since.
‘My dear Nickleby,’ said the gentleman, taking off a white hat which was so full of papers that it would scarcely stick upon his head, ‘there’s not a moment to lose; I have a cab at the door. Sir Matthew Pupker takes the chair, and three members of Parliament are positively coming. I have seen two of them safely out of bed. The third, who was at Crockford’s all night, has just gone home to put a clean shirt on, and take a bottle or two of soda water, and will certainly be with us, in time to address the meeting. He is a little excited by last night, but never mind that; he always speaks the stronger for it.’
‘It seems to promise pretty well,’ said Mr. Ralph Nickleby, whose deliberate manner was strongly opposed to the vivacity of the other man of business.
‘Pretty well!’ echoed Mr. Bonney. ‘It’s the finest idea that was ever started. “United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company. Capital, five millions, in five hundred thousand shares of ten pounds each.” Why the very name will get the shares up to a premium in ten days.’
‘And when they are at a premium,’ said Mr. Ralph Nickleby, smiling.
‘When they are, you know what to do with them as well as any man alive, and how to back quietly out at the right time,’ said Mr. Bonney, slapping the capitalist familiarly on the shoulder. ‘By-the-bye, what a very remarkable man that clerk of yours is.’
‘Yes, poor devil!’ replied Ralph, drawing on his gloves. ‘Though Newman Noggs kept his horses and hounds once.’
‘Ay, ay?’ said the other carelessly.
‘Yes,’ continued Ralph, ‘and not many years ago either; but he squandered his money, invested it anyhow, borrowed at interest, and in short made first a thorough fool of himself, and then a beggar. He took to drinking, and had a touch of paralysis, and then came here to borrow a pound, as in his better days I had – ’
‘Done business with him,’ said Mr. Bonney with a meaning look.
‘Just so,’ replied Ralph; ‘I couldn’t lend it, you know.’
‘Oh, of course not.’
‘But as I wanted a clerk just then, to open the door and so forth, I took him out of charity, and he has remained with me ever since. He is a little mad, I think,’ said Mr. Nickleby, calling up a charitable look, ‘but he is useful enough, poor creature – useful enough.’
The kind-hearted gentleman omitted to add that Newman Noggs, being utterly destitute, served him for rather less than the usual wages of a boy of thirteen; and likewise failed to mention in his hasty chronicle, that his eccentric taciturnity rendered him an especially valuable person