The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (books to read this summer txt) 📕

‘Oh yes,’ rejoined Mrs Browdie. ‘John ha’ done. John fixed tonight, because she had settled that she would go and drink tea with her father. And to make quite sure of there being nothing amiss, and of your being quite alone with us, he settled to go out there and fetch her home.’

‘That was a very good arrangement,’ said Nicholas, ‘though I am sorry to be the occasion of so much trouble.’

‘Not the least in the world,’ returned Mrs Browdie; ‘for we have looked forward to see you—John and I have—with the greatest possible pleasure. Do you know, Mr Nickleby,’ said Mrs Browdie, with her archest smile, ‘that I really think Fanny Squeers was very fond of you?’

‘I am very much obliged to her,’ said Nicholas; ‘but upon my word, I never aspired to making any impression upon her virgin heart.’

‘How you talk!’ tittered Mrs Browdie. ‘No, but do you know that really—seriously now and without any joking—I was given to understand by Fanny herself, that you had made an offer to her, and that you two were going to be engaged quite solemn and regular.’

‘Was you, ma’am—was you?’ cried a shrill female voice, ‘was you given to understand that I—I—was going to be engaged to an assassinating thief that shed the gore of my pa? Do you—do you think, ma’am—that I was very fond of such dirt beneath my feet, as I couldn’t condescend to touch with kitchen tongs, without blacking and crocking myself by the contract? Do you, ma’am—do you? Oh! base and degrading ‘Tilda!’

With these reproaches Miss Squeers flung the door wide open, and disclosed to the eyes of the astonished Browdies and Nicholas, not only her own symmetrical form, arrayed in the chaste white garments before described (a little dirtier), but the form of her brother and father, the pair of Wackfords.

‘This is the hend, is it?’ continued Miss Squeers, who, being excited, aspirated her h’s strongly; ‘this is the hend, is it, of all my forbearance and friendship for that double-faced thing—that viper, that—that—mermaid?’ (Miss Squeers hesitated a long time for this last epithet, and brought it out triumphantly as last, as if it quite clinched the business.) ‘This is the hend, is it, of all my bearing with her deceitfulness, her lowness, her falseness, her laying herself out to catch the admiration of vulgar minds, in a way which made me blush for my—for my—’

‘Gender,’ suggested Mr Squeers, regarding the spectators with a malevolent eye—literally A malevolent eye.

‘Yes,’ said Miss Squeers; ‘but I thank my stars that my ma is of the same—’

‘Hear, hear!’ remarked Mr Squeers; ‘and I wish she was here to have a scratch at this company.’

‘This is the hend, is it,’ said Miss Squeers, tossing her head, and looking contemptuously at the floor, ‘of my taking notice of that rubbishing creature, and demeaning myself to patronise her?’

‘Oh, come,’ rejoined Mrs Browdie, disregarding all the endeavours of her spouse to restrain her, and forcing herself into a front row, ‘don’t talk such nonsense as that.’

‘Have I not patronised you, ma’am?’ demanded Miss Squeers.

‘No,’ returned Mrs Browdie.

‘I will not look for blushes in such a quarter,’ said Miss Squeers, haughtily, ‘for that countenance is a stranger to everything but hignominiousness and red-faced boldness.’

‘I say,’ interposed John Browdie, nettled by these accumulated attacks on his wife, ‘dra’ it mild, dra’ it mild.’

‘You, Mr Browdie,’ said Miss Squeers, taking him up very quickly, ‘I pity. I have no feeling for you, sir, but one of unliquidated pity.’

‘Oh!’ said John.

‘No,’ said Miss Squeers, looking sideways at her parent, ‘although I AM a queer bridesmaid, and SHAN’T be a bride in a hurry, and although my husband WILL be in luck, I entertain no sentiments towards you, sir, but sentiments of pity.’

Here Miss Squeers looked sideways at her father again, who looked sideways at her, as much as to say, ‘There you had him.’

‘I know what you’ve got to go through,’ said Miss Squeers, shaking her curls violently. ‘I know what life is before you, and if you was my bitterest and deadliest enemy, I could wish you nothing worse.’

‘Couldn’t you wish to be married to him yourself, if that was the case?’ inquired Mrs Browdie, with great suavity of manner.

‘Oh, ma’am, how witty you are,’ retorted Miss Squeers with a low curtsy, ‘almost as witty, ma’am, as you are clever. How very clever it was in you, ma’am, to choose a time when I had gone to tea with my pa, and was sure not to come back without being fetched! What a pity you never thought that other people might be as clever as yourself and spoil your plans!’

‘You won’t vex me, child, with such airs as these,’ said the late Miss Price, assuming the matron.

‘Don’t MISSIS me, ma’am, if you please,’ returned Miss Squeers, sharply. ‘I’ll not bear it. Is THIS the hend—’

‘Dang it a’,’ cried John Browdie, impatiently. ‘Say thee say out, Fanny, and mak’ sure it’s the end, and dinnot ask nobody whether it is or not.’

‘Thanking you for your advice which was not required, Mr Browdie,’ returned Miss Squeers, with laborious politeness, ‘have the goodness not to presume to meddle with my Christian name. Even my pity shall never make me forget what’s due to myself, Mr Browdie. ‘Tilda,’ said Miss Squeers, with such a sudden accession of violence that John started in his boots, ‘I throw you off for ever, miss. I abandon you. I renounce you. I wouldn’t,’ cried Miss Squeers in a solemn voice, ‘have a child named ‘Tilda, not to save it from its grave.’

‘As for the matther o’ that,’ observed John, ‘it’ll be time eneaf to think aboot neaming of it when it cooms.’

‘John!’ interposed his wife, ‘don’t tease her.’

‘Oh! Tease, indeed!’ cried Miss Squeers, bridling up. ‘Tease, indeed! He, he! Tease, too! No, don’t tease her. Consider her feelings, pray!’

‘If it’s fated that listeners are never to hear any good of themselves,’ said Mrs Browdie, ‘I can’t help it, and I am very sorry for it. But I will say, Fanny, that times out of number I have spoken so kindly of you behind your back, that even you could have found no fault with what I said.’

‘Oh, I dare say not, ma’am!’ cried Miss Squeers, with another curtsy. ‘Best thanks to you for your goodness, and begging and praying you not to be hard upon me another time!’

‘I don’t know,’ resumed Mrs Browdie, ‘that I have said anything very bad of you, even now. At all events, what I did say was quite true; but if I have, I am very sorry for it, and I beg your pardon. You have said much worse of me, scores of times, Fanny; but I have never borne any malice to you, and I hope you’ll not bear any to me.’

Miss Squeers made no more direct reply than surveying her former friend from top to toe, and elevating her nose in the air with ineffable disdain. But some indistinct allusions to a ‘puss,’ and a ‘minx,’ and a ‘contemptible creature,’ escaped her; and this, together with a severe biting of the lips, great difficulty in swallowing, and very frequent comings and goings of breath, seemed to imply that feelings were swelling in Miss Squeers’s bosom too great for utterance.

While the foregoing conversation was proceeding, Master Wackford, finding himself unnoticed, and feeling his preponderating inclinations strong upon him, had by little and little sidled up to the table and attacked the food with such slight skirmishing as drawing his fingers round and round the inside of the plates, and afterwards sucking them with infinite relish; picking the bread, and dragging the pieces over the surface of the butter; pocketing lumps of sugar, pretending all the time to be absorbed in thought; and so forth. Finding that no interference was attempted with these small liberties, he gradually mounted to greater, and, after helping himself to a moderately good cold collation, was, by this time, deep in the pie.

Nothing of this had been unobserved by Mr Squeers, who, so long as the attention of the company was fixed upon other objects, hugged himself to think that his son and heir should be fattening at the enemy’s expense. But there being now an appearance of a temporary calm, in which the proceedings of little Wackford could scarcely fail to be observed, he feigned to be aware of the circumstance for the first time, and inflicted upon the face of that young gentleman a slap that made the very tea-cups ring.

‘Eating!’ cried Mr Squeers, ‘of what his father’s enemies has left! It’s fit to go and poison you, you unnat’ral boy.’

‘It wean’t hurt him,’ said John, apparently very much relieved by the prospect of having a man in the quarrel; ‘let’ un eat. I wish the whole school was here. I’d give’em soom’at to stay their unfort’nate stomachs wi’, if I spent the last penny I had!’

Squeers scowled at him with the worst and most malicious expression of which his face was capable—it was a face of remarkable capability, too, in that way—and shook his fist stealthily.

‘Coom, coom, schoolmeasther,’ said John, ‘dinnot make a fool o’ thyself; for if I was to sheake mine—only once—thou’d fa’ doon wi’ the wind o’ it.’

‘It was you, was it,’ returned Squeers, ‘that helped off my runaway boy? It was you, was it?’

‘Me!’ returned John, in a loud tone. ‘Yes, it wa’ me, coom; wa’at o’ that? It wa’ me. Noo then!’

‘You hear him say he did it, my child!’ said Squeers, appealing to his daughter. ‘You hear him say he did it!’

‘Did it!’ cried John. ‘I’ll tell ‘ee more; hear this, too. If thou’d got another roonaway boy, I’d do it agean. If thou’d got twonty roonaway boys, I’d do it twonty times ower, and twonty more to thot; and I tell thee more,’ said John, ‘noo my blood is oop, that thou’rt an old ra’ascal; and that it’s weel for thou, thou be’est an old ‘un, or I’d ha’ poonded thee to flour when thou told an honest mun hoo thou’d licked that poor chap in t’ coorch.’

‘An honest man!’ cried Squeers, with a sneer.

‘Ah! an honest man,’ replied John; ‘honest in ought but ever putting legs under seame table wi’ such as thou.’

‘Scandal!’ said Squeers, exultingly. ‘Two witnesses to it; Wackford knows the nature of an oath, he does; we shall have you there, sir. Rascal, eh?’ Mr Squeers took out his pocketbook and made a note of it. ‘Very good. I should say that was worth full twenty pound at the next assizes, without the honesty, sir.’

”Soizes,’ cried John, ‘thou’d betther not talk to me o’ ‘Soizes. Yorkshire schools have been shown up at ‘Soizes afore noo, mun, and it’s a ticklish soobjact to revive, I can tell ye.’

Mr Squeers shook his head in a threatening manner, looking very white with passion; and taking his daughter’s arm, and dragging little Wackford by the hand, retreated towards the door.

‘As for you,’ said Squeers, turning round and addressing Nicholas, who, as he had caused him to smart pretty soundly on a former occasion, purposely abstained from taking any part in the discussion, ‘see if I ain’t down upon you before long. You’ll go a kidnapping of boys, will you? Take care their fathers don’t turn up—mark that—take care their fathers don’t turn up, and send ‘em back to me to do as I like with, in spite of you.’

‘I am not afraid of that,’ replied Nicholas, shrugging his shoulders contemptuously, and turning away.

‘Ain’t you!’ retorted Squeers, with a diabolical look. ‘Now then, come along.’

‘I leave such society, with my pa, for