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

As they shook each other by the hand: the face of each lighted up by beaming looks of affection, which would have been most delightful to behold in infants, and which, in men so old, was inexpressibly touching: Nicholas could observe that the last old gentleman was something stouter than his brother; this, and a slight additional shade of clumsiness in his gait and stature, formed the only perceptible difference between them. Nobody could have doubted their being twin brothers.

‘Brother Ned,’ said Nicholas’s friend, closing the room-door, ‘here is a young friend of mine whom we must assist. We must make proper inquiries into his statements, in justice to him as well as to ourselves, and if they are confirmed—as I feel assured they will be—we must assist him, we must assist him, brother Ned.’

‘It is enough, my dear brother, that you say we should,’ returned the other. ‘When you say that, no further inquiries are needed. He SHALL be assisted. What are his necessities, and what does he require? Where is Tim Linkinwater? Let us have him here.’

Both the brothers, it may be here remarked, had a very emphatic and earnest delivery; both had lost nearly the same teeth, which imparted the same peculiarity to their speech; and both spoke as if, besides possessing the utmost serenity of mind that the kindliest and most unsuspecting nature could bestow, they had, in collecting the plums from Fortune’s choicest pudding, retained a few for present use, and kept them in their mouths.

‘Where is Tim Linkinwater?’ said brother Ned.

‘Stop, stop, stop!’ said brother Charles, taking the other aside. ‘I’ve a plan, my dear brother, I’ve a plan. Tim is getting old, and Tim has been a faithful servant, brother Ned; and I don’t think pensioning Tim’s mother and sister, and buying a little tomb for the family when his poor brother died, was a sufficient recompense for his faithful services.’

‘No, no, no,’ replied the other. ‘Certainly not. Not half enough, not half.’

‘If we could lighten Tim’s duties,’ said the old gentleman, ‘and prevail upon him to go into the country, now and then, and sleep in the fresh air, besides, two or three times a week (which he could, if he began business an hour later in the morning), old Tim Linkinwater would grow young again in time; and he’s three good years our senior now. Old Tim Linkinwater young again! Eh, brother Ned, eh? Why, I recollect old Tim Linkinwater quite a little boy, don’t you? Ha, ha, ha! Poor Tim, poor Tim!’

And the fine old fellows laughed pleasantly together: each with a tear of regard for old Tim Linkinwater standing in his eye.

‘But hear this first—hear this first, brother Ned,’ said the old man, hastily, placing two chairs, one on each side of Nicholas: ‘I’ll tell it you myself, brother Ned, because the young gentleman is modest, and is a scholar, Ned, and I shouldn’t feel it right that he should tell us his story over and over again as if he was a beggar, or as if we doubted him. No, no no.’

‘No, no, no,’ returned the other, nodding his head gravely. ‘Very right, my dear brother, very right.’

‘He will tell me I’m wrong, if I make a mistake,’ said Nicholas’s friend. ‘But whether I do or not, you’ll be very much affected, brother Ned, remembering the time when we were two friendless lads, and earned our first shilling in this great city.’

The twins pressed each other’s hands in silence; and in his own homely manner, brother Charles related the particulars he had heard from Nicholas. The conversation which ensued was a long one, and when it was over, a secret conference of almost equal duration took place between brother Ned and Tim Linkinwater in another room. It is no disparagement to Nicholas to say, that before he had been closeted with the two brothers ten minutes, he could only wave his hand at every fresh expression of kindness and sympathy, and sob like a little child.

At length brother Ned and Tim Linkinwater came back together, when Tim instantly walked up to Nicholas and whispered in his ear in a very brief sentence (for Tim was ordinarily a man of few words), that he had taken down the address in the Strand, and would call upon him that evening, at eight. Having done which, Tim wiped his spectacles and put them on, preparatory to hearing what more the brothers Cheeryble had got to say.

‘Tim,’ said brother Charles, ‘you understand that we have an intention of taking this young gentleman into the counting-house?’

Brother Ned remarked that Tim was aware of that intention, and quite approved of it; and Tim having nodded, and said he did, drew himself up and looked particularly fat, and very important. After which, there was a profound silence.

‘I’m not coming an hour later in the morning, you know,’ said Tim, breaking out all at once, and looking very resolute. ‘I’m not going to sleep in the fresh air; no, nor I’m not going into the country either. A pretty thing at this time of day, certainly. Pho!’

‘Damn your obstinacy, Tim Linkinwater,’ said brother Charles, looking at him without the faintest spark of anger, and with a countenance radiant with attachment to the old clerk. ‘Damn your obstinacy, Tim Linkinwater, what do you mean, sir?’

‘It’s forty-four year,’ said Tim, making a calculation in the air with his pen, and drawing an imaginary line before he cast it up, ‘forty-four year, next May, since I first kept the books of Cheeryble, Brothers. I’ve opened the safe every morning all that time (Sundays excepted) as the clock struck nine, and gone over the house every night at half-past ten (except on Foreign Post nights, and then twenty minutes before twelve) to see the doors fastened, and the fires out. I’ve never slept out of the back-attic one single night. There’s the same mignonette box in the middle of the window, and the same four flower-pots, two on each side, that I brought with me when I first came. There an’t—I’ve said it again and again, and I’ll maintain it—there an’t such a square as this in the world. I KNOW there an’t,’ said Tim, with sudden energy, and looking sternly about him. ‘Not one. For business or pleasure, in summertime or winter—I don’t care which—there’s nothing like it. There’s not such a spring in England as the pump under the archway. There’s not such a view in England as the view out of my window; I’ve seen it every morning before I shaved, and I ought to know something about it. I have slept in that room,’ added Tim, sinking his voice a little, ‘for four-and-forty year; and if it wasn’t inconvenient, and didn’t interfere with business, I should request leave to die there.’

‘Damn you, Tim Linkinwater, how dare you talk about dying?’ roared the twins by one impulse, and blowing their old noses violently.

‘That’s what I’ve got to say, Mr Edwin and Mr Charles,’ said Tim, squaring his shoulders again. ‘This isn’t the first time you’ve talked about superannuating me; but, if you please, we’ll make it the last, and drop the subject for evermore.’

With these words, Tim Linkinwater stalked out, and shut himself up in his glass case, with the air of a man who had had his say, and was thoroughly resolved not to be put down.

The brothers interchanged looks, and coughed some half-dozen times without speaking.

‘He must be done something with, brother Ned,’ said the other, warmly; ‘we must disregard his old scruples; they can’t be tolerated, or borne. He must be made a partner, brother Ned; and if he won’t submit to it peaceably, we must have recourse to violence.’

‘Quite right,’ replied brother Ned, nodding his head as a man thoroughly determined; ‘quite right, my dear brother. If he won’t listen to reason, we must do it against his will, and show him that we are determined to exert our authority. We must quarrel with him, brother Charles.’

‘We must. We certainly must have a quarrel with Tim Linkinwater,’ said the other. ‘But in the meantime, my dear brother, we are keeping our young friend; and the poor lady and her daughter will be anxious for his return. So let us say goodbye for the present, and —there, there—take care of that box, my dear sir—and—no, no, not a word now; but be careful of the crossings and—’

And with any disjointed and unconnected words which would prevent Nicholas from pouring forth his thanks, the brothers hurried him out: shaking hands with him all the way, and affecting very unsuccessfully—they were poor hands at deception!—to be wholly unconscious of the feelings that completely mastered him.

Nicholas’s heart was too full to allow of his turning into the street until he had recovered some composure. When he at last glided out of the dark doorway corner in which he had been compelled to halt, he caught a glimpse of the twins stealthily peeping in at one corner of the glass case, evidently undecided whether they should follow up their late attack without delay, or for the present postpone laying further siege to the inflexible Tim Linkinwater.

To recount all the delight and wonder which the circumstances just detailed awakened at Miss La Creevy’s, and all the things that were done, said, thought, expected, hoped, and prophesied in consequence, is beside the present course and purpose of these adventures. It is sufficient to state, in brief, that Mr Timothy Linkinwater arrived, punctual to his appointment; that, oddity as he was, and jealous, as he was bound to be, of the proper exercise of his employers’ most comprehensive liberality, he reported strongly and warmly in favour of Nicholas; and that, next day, he was appointed to the vacant stool in the counting-house of Cheeryble, Brothers, with a present salary of one hundred and twenty pounds a year.

‘And I think, my dear brother,’ said Nicholas’s first friend, ‘that if we were to let them that little cottage at Bow which is empty, at something under the usual rent, now? Eh, brother Ned?’

‘For nothing at all,’ said brother Ned. ‘We are rich, and should be ashamed to touch the rent under such circumstances as these. Where is Tim Linkinwater?—for nothing at all, my dear brother, for nothing at all.’

‘Perhaps it would be better to say something, brother Ned,’ suggested the other, mildly; ‘it would help to preserve habits of frugality, you know, and remove any painful sense of overwhelming obligations. We might say fifteen pound, or twenty pound, and if it was punctually paid, make it up to them in some other way. And I might secretly advance a small loan towards a little furniture, and you might secretly advance another small loan, brother Ned; and if we find them doing well—as we shall; there’s no fear, no fear—we can change the loans into gifts. Carefully, brother Ned, and by degrees, and without pressing upon them too much; what do you say now, brother?’

Brother Ned gave his hand upon it, and not only said it should be done, but had it done too; and, in one short week, Nicholas took possession of the stool, and Mrs Nickleby and Kate took possession of the house, and all was hope, bustle, and light-heartedness.

There surely never was such a week of discoveries and surprises as the first week of that cottage. Every night when Nicholas came home, something new had been found out. One day it was a grapevine, and another day it was a boiler, and another day it was the key of the front-parlour closet at the bottom of the water-butt, and so on through a hundred items. Then, this room was embellished with a muslin