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

In which another old Friend encounters Smike, very opportunely and to some Purpose

The night, fraught with so much bitterness to one poor soul, had given place to a bright and cloudless summer morning, when a north-country mail-coach traversed, with cheerful noise, the yet silent streets of Islington, and, giving brisk note of its approach with the lively winding of the guard’s horn, clattered onward to its halting-place hard by the Post Office.

The only outside passenger was a burly, honest-looking countryman on the box, who, with his eyes fixed upon the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, appeared so wrapt in admiring wonder, as to be quite insensible to all the bustle of getting out the bags and parcels, until one of the coach windows being let sharply down, he looked round, and encountered a pretty female face which was just then thrust out.

‘See there, lass!’ bawled the countryman, pointing towards the object of his admiration. ‘There be Paul’s Church. ‘Ecod, he be a soizable ‘un, he be.’

‘Goodness, John! I shouldn’t have thought it could have been half the size. What a monster!’

‘Monsther!—Ye’re aboot right theer, I reckon, Mrs Browdie,’ said the countryman good-humouredly, as he came slowly down in his huge top-coat; ‘and wa’at dost thee tak yon place to be noo—thot’un owor the wa’? Ye’d never coom near it ‘gin you thried for twolve moonths. It’s na’ but a Poast Office! Ho! ho! They need to charge for dooble-latthers. A Poast Office! Wa’at dost thee think o’ thot? ‘Ecod, if thot’s on’y a Poast Office, I’d loike to see where the Lord Mayor o’ Lunnun lives.’

So saying, John Browdie—for he it was—opened the coach-door, and tapping Mrs Browdie, late Miss Price, on the cheek as he looked in, burst into a boisterous fit of laughter.

‘Weel!’ said John. ‘Dang my bootuns if she bean’t asleep agean!’

‘She’s been asleep all night, and was, all yesterday, except for a minute or two now and then,’ replied John Browdie’s choice, ‘and I was very sorry when she woke, for she has been SO cross!’

The subject of these remarks was a slumbering figure, so muffled in shawl and cloak, that it would have been matter of impossibility to guess at its sex but for a brown beaver bonnet and green veil which ornamented the head, and which, having been crushed and flattened, for two hundred and fifty miles, in that particular angle of the vehicle from which the lady’s snores now proceeded, presented an appearance sufficiently ludicrous to have moved less risible muscles than those of John Browdie’s ruddy face.

‘Hollo!’ cried John, twitching one end of the dragged veil. ‘Coom, wakken oop, will ‘ee?’

After several burrowings into the old corner, and many exclamations of impatience and fatigue, the figure struggled into a sitting posture; and there, under a mass of crumpled beaver, and surrounded by a semicircle of blue curl-papers, were the delicate features of Miss Fanny Squeers.

‘Oh, ‘Tilda!’ cried Miss Squeers, ‘how you have been kicking of me through this blessed night!’

‘Well, I do like that,’ replied her friend, laughing, ‘when you have had nearly the whole coach to yourself.’

‘Don’t deny it, ‘Tilda,’ said Miss Squeers, impressively, ‘because you have, and it’s no use to go attempting to say you haven’t. You mightn’t have known it in your sleep, ‘Tilda, but I haven’t closed my eyes for a single wink, and so I THINK I am to be believed.’

With which reply, Miss Squeers adjusted the bonnet and veil, which nothing but supernatural interference and an utter suspension of nature’s laws could have reduced to any shape or form; and evidently flattering herself that it looked uncommonly neat, brushed off the sandwich-crumbs and bits of biscuit which had accumulated in her lap, and availing herself of John Browdie’s proffered arm, descended from the coach.

‘Noo,’ said John, when a hackney coach had been called, and the ladies and the luggage hurried in, ‘gang to the Sarah’s Head, mun.’

‘To the VERE?’ cried the coachman.

‘Lawk, Mr Browdie!’ interrupted Miss Squeers. ‘The idea! Saracen’s Head.’

‘Sure-ly,’ said John, ‘I know’d it was something aboot Sarah’s Son’s Head. Dost thou know thot?’

‘Oh, ah! I know that,’ replied the coachman gruffly, as he banged the door.

”Tilda, dear, really,’ remonstrated Miss Squeers, ‘we shall be taken for I don’t know what.’

‘Let them tak’ us as they foind us,’ said John Browdie; ‘we dean’t come to Lunnun to do nought but ‘joy oursel, do we?’

‘I hope not, Mr Browdie,’ replied Miss Squeers, looking singularly dismal.

‘Well, then,’ said John, ‘it’s no matther. I’ve only been a married man fower days, ‘account of poor old feyther deein, and puttin’ it off. Here be a weddin’ party—broide and broide’s-maid, and the groom—if a mun dean’t ‘joy himsel noo, when ought he, hey? Drat it all, thot’s what I want to know.’

So, in order that he might begin to enjoy himself at once, and lose no time, Mr Browdie gave his wife a hearty kiss, and succeeded in wresting another from Miss Squeers, after a maidenly resistance of scratching and struggling on the part of that young lady, which was not quite over when they reached the Saracen’s Head.

Here, the party straightway retired to rest; the refreshment of sleep being necessary after so long a journey; and here they met again about noon, to a substantial breakfast, spread by direction of Mr John Browdie, in a small private room upstairs commanding an uninterrupted view of the stables.

To have seen Miss Squeers now, divested of the brown beaver, the green veil, and the blue curl-papers, and arrayed in all the virgin splendour of a white frock and spencer, with a white muslin bonnet, and an imitative damask rose in full bloom on the inside thereof— her luxuriant crop of hair arranged in curls so tight that it was impossible they could come out by any accident, and her bonnet-cap trimmed with little damask roses, which might be supposed to be so many promising scions of the big rose—to have seen all this, and to have seen the broad damask belt, matching both the family rose and the little roses, which encircled her slender waist, and by a happy ingenuity took off from the shortness of the spencer behind,—to have beheld all this, and to have taken further into account the coral bracelets (rather short of beads, and with a very visible black string) which clasped her wrists, and the coral necklace which rested on her neck, supporting, outside her frock, a lonely cornelian heart, typical of her own disengaged affections—to have contemplated all these mute but expressive appeals to the purest feelings of our nature, might have thawed the frost of age, and added new and inextinguishable fuel to the fire of youth.

The waiter was touched. Waiter as he was, he had human passions and feelings, and he looked very hard at Miss Squeers as he handed the muffins.

‘Is my pa in, do you know?’ asked Miss Squeers with dignity.

‘Beg your pardon, miss?’

‘My pa,’ repeated Miss Squeers; ‘is he in?’

‘In where, miss?’

‘In here—in the house!’ replied Miss Squeers. ‘My pa—Mr Wackford Squeers—he’s stopping here. Is he at home?’

‘I didn’t know there was any gen’l’man of that name in the house, miss’ replied the waiter. ‘There may be, in the coffee-room.’

MAY BE. Very pretty this, indeed! Here was Miss Squeers, who had been depending, all the way to London, upon showing her friends how much at home she would be, and how much respectful notice her name and connections would excite, told that her father MIGHT be there! ‘As if he was a feller!’ observed Miss Squeers, with emphatic indignation.

‘Ye’d betther inquire, mun,’ said John Browdie. ‘An’ hond up another pigeon-pie, will ‘ee? Dang the chap,’ muttered John, looking into the empty dish as the waiter retired; ‘does he ca’ this a pie—three yoong pigeons and a troifling matther o’ steak, and a crust so loight that you doant know when it’s in your mooth and when it’s gane? I wonder hoo many pies goes to a breakfast!’

After a short interval, which John Browdie employed upon the ham and a cold round of beef, the waiter returned with another pie, and the information that Mr Squeers was not stopping in the house, but that he came there every day and that directly he arrived, he should be shown upstairs. With this, he retired; and he had not retired two minutes, when he returned with Mr Squeers and his hopeful son.

‘Why, who’d have thought of this?’ said Mr Squeers, when he had saluted the party and received some private family intelligence from his daughter.

‘Who, indeed, pa!’ replied that young lady, spitefully. ‘But you see ‘Tilda IS married at last.’

‘And I stond threat for a soight o’ Lunnun, schoolmeasther,’ said John, vigorously attacking the pie.

‘One of them things that