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

The Crisis of the Project and its Result

There are not many men who lie abed too late, or oversleep themselves, on their wedding morning. A legend there is of somebody remarkable for absence of mind, who opened his eyes upon the day which was to give him a young wife, and forgetting all about the matter, rated his servants for providing him with such fine clothes as had been prepared for the festival. There is also a legend of a young gentleman, who, not having before his eyes the fear of the canons of the church for such cases made and provided, conceived a passion for his grandmother. Both cases are of a singular and special kind and it is very doubtful whether either can be considered as a precedent likely to be extensively followed by succeeding generations.

Arthur Gride had enrobed himself in his marriage garments of bottle-green, a full hour before Mrs Sliderskew, shaking off her more heavy slumbers, knocked at his chamber door; and he had hobbled downstairs in full array and smacked his lips over a scanty taste of his favourite cordial, ere that delicate piece of antiquity enlightened the kitchen with her presence.

‘Faugh!’ said Peg, grubbing, in the discharge of her domestic functions, among a scanty heap of ashes in the rusty grate. ‘Wedding indeed! A precious wedding! He wants somebody better than his old Peg to take care of him, does he? And what has he said to me, many and many a time, to keep me content with short food, small wages, and little fire? “My will, Peg! my will!” says he: “I’m a bachelor—no friends—no relations, Peg.” Lies! And now he’s to bring home a new mistress, a baby-faced chit of a girl! If he wanted a wife, the fool, why couldn’t he have one suitable to his age, and that knew his ways? She won’t come in MY way, he says. No, that she won’t, but you little think why, Arthur boy!’

While Mrs Sliderskew, influenced possibly by some lingering feelings of disappointment and personal slight, occasioned by her old master’s preference for another, was giving loose to these grumblings below stairs, Arthur Gride was cogitating in the parlour upon what had taken place last night.

‘I can’t think how he can have picked up what he knows,’ said Arthur, ‘unless I have committed myself—let something drop at Bray’s, for instance—which has been overheard. Perhaps I may. I shouldn’t be surprised if that was it. Mr Nickleby was often angry at my talking to him before we got outside the door. I mustn’t tell him that part of the business, or he’ll put me out of sorts, and make me nervous for the day.’

Ralph was universally looked up to, and recognised among his fellows as a superior genius, but upon Arthur Gride his stern unyielding character and consummate art had made so deep an impression, that he was actually afraid of him. Cringing and cowardly to the core by nature, Arthur Gride humbled himself in the dust before Ralph Nickleby, and, even when they had not this stake in common, would have licked his shoes and crawled upon the ground before him rather than venture to return him word for word, or retort upon him in any other spirit than one of the most slavish and abject sycophancy.

To Ralph Nickleby’s, Arthur Gride now betook himself according to appointment; and to Ralph Nickleby he related how, last night, some young blustering blade, whom he had never seen, forced his way into his house, and tried to frighten him from the proposed nuptials. Told, in short, what Nicholas had said and done, with the slight reservation upon which he had determined.

‘Well, and what then?’ said Ralph.

‘Oh! nothing more,’ rejoined Gride.

‘He tried to frighten you,’ said Ralph, ‘and you WERE frightened I suppose; is that it?’

‘I frightened HIM by crying thieves and murder,’ replied Gride. ‘Once I was in earnest, I tell you that, for I had more than half a mind to swear he uttered threats, and demanded my life or my money.’

‘Oho!’ said Ralph, eyeing him askew. ‘Jealous too!’

‘Dear now, see that!’ cried Arthur, rubbing his hands and affecting to laugh.

‘Why do you make those grimaces, man?’ said Ralph; ‘you ARE jealous —and with good cause I think.’

‘No, no, no; not with good cause, hey? You don’t think with good cause, do you?’ cried Arthur, faltering. ‘Do you though, hey?’

‘Why, how stands the fact?’ returned Ralph. ‘Here is an old man about to be forced in marriage upon a girl; and to this old man there comes a handsome young fellow—you said he was handsome, didn’t you?’

‘No!’ snarled Arthur Gride.

‘Oh!’ rejoined Ralph, ‘I thought you did. Well! Handsome or not handsome, to this old man there comes a young fellow who casts all manner of fierce defiances in his teeth—gums I should rather say— and tells him in plain terms that his mistress hates him. What does he do that for? Philanthropy’s sake?’

‘Not for love of the lady,’ replied Gride, ‘for he said that no word of love—his very words—had ever passed between ‘em.’

‘He said!’ repeated Ralph, contemptuously. ‘But I like him for one thing, and that is, his giving you this fair warning to keep your— what is it?—Tit-tit or dainty chick—which?—under lock and key. Be careful, Gride, be careful. It’s a triumph, too, to tear her away from a gallant young rival: a great triumph for an old man! It only remains to keep her safe when you have her—that’s all.’

‘What a man it is!’ cried Arthur Gride, affecting, in the extremity of his torture, to be highly amused. And then he added, anxiously, ‘Yes; to keep her safe, that’s all. And that isn’t much, is it?’

‘Much!’ said Ralph, with a sneer. ‘Why, everybody knows what easy things to understand and to control, women are. But come, it’s very nearly time for you to be made happy. You’ll pay the bond now, I suppose, to save us trouble afterwards.’

‘Oh what a man you are!’ croaked Arthur.

‘Why not?’ said Ralph. ‘Nobody will pay you interest for the money, I suppose, between this and twelve o’clock; will they?’

‘But nobody would pay you interest for it either, you know,’ returned Arthur, leering at Ralph with all the cunning and slyness he could throw into his face.

‘Besides which,’ said Ralph, suffering his lip to curl into a smile, ‘you haven’t the money about you, and you weren’t prepared for this, or you’d have brought it with you; and there’s nobody you’d so much like to accommodate as me. I see. We trust each other in about an equal degree. Are you ready?’

Gride, who had done nothing but grin, and nod, and chatter, during this last speech of Ralph’s, answered in the affirmative; and, producing from his hat a couple of large white favours, pinned one on his breast, and with considerable difficulty induced his friend to do the like. Thus accoutred, they got into a hired coach which Ralph had in waiting, and drove to the residence of the fair and most wretched bride.

Gride, whose spirits and courage had gradually failed him more and more as they approached nearer and nearer to the house, was utterly dismayed and cowed by the mournful silence which pervaded it. The face of the poor servant girl, the only person they saw, was disfigured with tears and want of sleep. There was nobody to receive or welcome them; and they stole upstairs into the usual sitting-room, more like two burglars than the bridegroom and his friend.

‘One would think,’ said Ralph, speaking, in spite of himself, in a low and subdued voice, ‘that there was a funeral going on here, and not a wedding.’

‘He, he!’ tittered his friend, ‘you are so—so very funny!’

‘I need be,’ remarked Ralph, drily, ‘for this is rather dull and chilling. Look a little brisker, man, and not so hangdog like!’

‘Yes, yes, I will,’ said Gride. ‘But—but—you don’t think she’s coming just yet, do you?’

‘Why, I suppose she’ll not come till she is obliged,’ returned Ralph, looking at his watch, ‘and she has a good half-hour to spare yet. Curb your impatience.’

‘I—I—am not impatient,’ stammered Arthur. ‘I wouldn’t be hard with her for the world. Oh dear, dear, not on any account. Let her take her time—her own time. Her time shall be ours by all means.’

While Ralph bent upon his trembling friend a keen look, which showed that he perfectly understood the reason of this great consideration and regard, a footstep was heard upon the stairs, and Bray himself came into the room on tiptoe, and holding up his hand with a cautious gesture, as if there were some sick person near, who must not be disturbed.

‘Hush!’ he said, in a low voice. ‘She was very ill last night. I thought she would have broken her heart. She is dressed, and crying bitterly in her own room; but she’s better, and quite quiet. That’s everything!’

‘She is ready, is she?’ said Ralph.

‘Quite ready,’ returned the father.

‘And not likely to delay us by any young-lady weaknesses—fainting, or so forth?’ said Ralph.

‘She may be safely trusted now,’ returned Bray. ‘I have been talking to her this morning. Here! Come a little this way.’

He drew Ralph Nickleby to the further end of the room, and pointed towards Gride, who sat huddled together in a corner, fumbling nervously with the buttons of his coat, and exhibiting a face, of which every skulking and base expression was sharpened and aggravated to the utmost by his anxiety and trepidation.

‘Look at that man,’ whispered Bray, emphatically. ‘This seems a cruel thing, after all.’

‘What seems a cruel thing?’ inquired Ralph, with as much stolidity of face, as if he really were in utter ignorance of the other’s meaning.

‘This marriage,’ answered Bray. ‘Don’t ask me what. You know as well as I do.’

Ralph shrugged his shoulders, in silent deprecation of Bray’s impatience, and elevated his eyebrows, and pursed his lips, as men do when they are prepared with a sufficient answer to some remark, but wait for a more favourable opportunity of advancing it, or think it scarcely worth while to answer their adversary at all.

‘Look at him. Does it not seem cruel?’ said Bray.

‘No!’ replied Ralph, boldly.

‘I say it does,’ retorted Bray, with a show of much irritation. ‘It is a cruel thing, by all that’s bad and treacherous!’

When men are about to commit, or to sanction the