How Ralph Nickleby’s Auxiliary went about hisWork, and how he prospered with it.
It was a dark, wet, gloomy night in autumn, when in an upperroom of a mean house situated in an obscure street, or rathercourt, near Lambeth, there sat, all alone, a one-eyed mangrotesquely habited, either for lack of better garments or forpurposes of disguise, in a loose greatcoat, with arms half as longagain as his own, and a capacity of breadth and length whichwould have admitted of his winding himself in it, head and all,with the utmost ease, and without any risk of straining the old andgreasy material of which it was composed.
So attired, and in a place so far removed from his usual hauntsand occupations, and so very poor and wretched in its character,perhaps Mrs Squeers herself would have had some difficulty inrecognising her lord: quickened though her natural sagacitydoubtless would have been by the affectionate yearnings andimpulses of a tender wife. But Mrs Squeers’s lord it was; and in atolerably disconsolate mood Mrs Squeers’s lord appeared to be, as,helping himself from a black bottle which stood on the tablebeside him, he cast round the chamber a look, in which very slightregard for the objects within view was plainly mingled with someregretful and impatient recollection of distant scenes and persons.
There were, certainly, no particular attractions, either in theroom over which the glance of Mr Squeers so discontentedlywandered, or in the narrow street into which it might have 1048penetrated, if he had thought fit to approach the window. The atticchamber in which he sat was bare and mean; the bedstead, andsuch few other articles of necessary furniture as it contained, wereof the commonest description, in a most crazy state, and of a mostuninviting appearance. The street was muddy, dirty, and deserted.
Having but one outlet, it was traversed by few but the inhabitantsat any time; and the night being one of those on which mostpeople are glad to be within doors, it now presented no other signsof life than the dull glimmering of poor candles from the dirtywindows, and few sounds but the pattering of the rain, andoccasionally the heavy closing of some creaking door.
Mr Squeers continued to look disconsolately about him, and tolisten to these noises in profound silence, broken only by therustling of his large coat, as he now and then moved his arm toraise his glass to his lips. Mr Squeers continued to do this for sometime, until the increasing gloom warned him to snuff the candle.
Seeming to be slightly roused by this exertion, he raised his eye tothe ceiling, and fixing it upon some uncouth and fantastic figures,traced upon it by the wet and damp which had penetrated throughthe roof, broke into the following soliloquy:
‘Well, this is a pretty go, is this here! An uncommon pretty go!
Here have I been, a matter of how many weeks—hard upon six—afollering up this here blessed old dowager petty larcenerer,’—MrSqueers delivered himself of this epithet with great difficulty andeffort,—‘and Dotheboys Hall a-running itself regularly to seed thewhile! That’s the worst of ever being in with a owdacious chap likethat old Nickleby. You never know when he’s done with you, and ifyou’re in for a penny, you’re in for a pound.’
This remark, perhaps, reminded Mr Squeers that he was in for 1049a hundred pound at any rate. His countenance relaxed, and heraised his glass to his mouth with an air of greater enjoyment of itscontents than he had before evinced.
‘I never see,’ soliloquised Mr Squeers in continuation, ‘I neversee nor come across such a file as that old Nickleby. Never! He’sout of everybody’s depth, he is. He’s what you may call a rasper, isNickleby. To see how sly and cunning he grubbed on, day afterday, a-worming and plodding and tracing and turning and twiningof hisself about, till he found out where this precious Mrs Peg washid, and cleared the ground for me to work upon. Creeping andcrawling and gliding, like a ugly, old, bright-eyed, stagnation-blooded adder! Ah! He’d have made a good ’un in our line, but itwould have been too limited for him; his genius would have bustedall bonds, and coming over every obstacle, broke down all beforeit, till it erected itself into a monneyment of—Well, I’ll think of therest, and say it when conwenient.’
Making a halt in his reflections at this place, Mr Squeers againput his glass to his lips, and drawing a dirty letter from his pocket,proceeded to con over its contents with the air of a man who hadread it very often, and now refreshed his memory rather in theabsence of better amusement than for any specific information.
‘The pigs is well,’ said Mr Squeers, ‘the cows is well, and theboys is bobbish. Young Sprouter has been a-winking, has he? I’llwink him when I get back. “Cobbey would persist in sniffing whilehe was a-eating his dinner, and said that the beef was so strong itmade him.”—Very good, Cobbey, we’ll see if we can’t make yousniff a little without beef. “Pitcher was took with another fever,”—of course he was—“and being fetched by his friends, died the dayafter he got home,”—of course he did, and out of aggravation; it’s 1050part of a deep-laid system. There an’t another chap in the schoolbut that boy as would have died exactly at the end of the quarter:
taking it out of me to the very last, and then carrying his spite tothe utmost extremity. “The juniorest Palmer said he wished hewas in Heaven.” I really don’t know, I do not know what’s to bedone with that young fellow; he’s always a-wishing somethinghorrid. He said once, he wished he was a donkey, because then hewouldn’t have a father as didn’t love him! Pretty wicious that for achild of six!’
Mr Squeers was so much moved by the contemplation of thishardened nature in one so young, that he angrily put up the letter,and sought, in a new train of ideas, a subject of consolation.
‘It’s a long time to have been a-lingering in London,’ he said;‘and this is a precious hole to come and live in, even if it has beenonly for a week or so. Still, one hundred pound is five boys, andfive boys takes a whole year to pay one hundred pounds, andthere’s their keep to be substracted, besides. There’s nothing lost,neither, by one’s being here; because the boys’ money comes injust the same as if I was at home, and Mrs Squeers she keeps themin order. There’ll be some lost time to make up, of course. There’llbe an arrear of flogging as’ll have to be gone through: still, acouple of days makes that all right, and one don’t mind a littleextra work for one hundred pound. It’s pretty nigh the time to waitupon the old woman. From what she said last night, I suspect thatif I’m to succeed at all, I shall succeed tonight; so I’ll have half aglass more, to wish myself success, and put myself in spirits. MrsSqueers, my dear, your health!’
Leering with his one eye as if the lady to whom he drank hadbeen actually present, Mr Squeers—in his enthusiasm, no doubt— 1051poured out a full glass, and emptied it; and as the liquor was rawspirits, and he had applied himself to the same bottle more thanonce already, it is not surprising that he found himself, by thistime, in an extremely cheerful state, and quite enough excited forhis purpose.
What this purpose was soon appeared; for, after a few turnsabout the room to steady himself, he took the bottle under his armand the glass in his hand, and blowing out the candle as if hepurposed being gone some time, stole out upon the staircase, andcreeping softly to a door opposite his own, tapped gently at it.
‘But what’s the use of tapping?’ he said, ‘She’ll never hear. Isuppose she isn’t doing anything very particular; and if she is, itdon’t much matter, that I see.’
With this brief preface, Mr Squeers applied his hand to thelatch of the door, and thrusting his head into a garret far moredeplorable than that he had just left, and seeing that there wasnobody there but an old woman, who was bending over awretched fire (for although the weather was still warm, theevening was chilly), walked in, and tapped her on the shoulder.
‘Well, my Slider,’ said Mr Squeers, jocularly.
‘Is that you?’ inquired Peg.
‘Ah! it’s me, and me’s the first person singular, nominative case,agreeing with the verb “it’s”, and governed by Squeersunderstood, as a acorn, a hour; but when the h is sounded, the aonly is to be used, as a and, a art, a ighway,’ replied Mr Squeers,quoting at random from the grammar. ‘At least, if it isn’t, you don’tknow any better, and if it is, I’ve done it accidentally.’
Delivering this reply in his accustomed tone of voice, in whichof course it was inaudible to Peg, Mr Squeers drew a stool to the 1052fire, and placing himself over against her, and the bottle and glasson the floor between them, roared out again, very loud,‘Well, my Slider!’
‘I hear you,’ said Peg, receiving him very graciously.
‘I’ve come according to promise,’ roared Squeers.
‘So they used to say in that part of the country I come from,’
observed Peg, complacently, ‘but I think oil’s better.’
‘Better than what?’ roared Squeers, adding some rather stronglanguage in an undertone.
‘No,’ said Peg, ‘of course not.’
‘I never saw such a monster as you are!’ muttered Squeers,looking as amiable as he possibly could the while; for Peg’s eyewas upon him, and she was chuckling fearfully, as though indelight at having made a choice repartee, ‘Do you see this? This isa bottle.’
‘I see it,’ answered Peg.
‘Well, and do you see this?’ bawled Squeers. ‘This is a glass.’
Peg saw that too.
‘See here, then,’ said Squeers, accompanying his remarks withappropriate action, ‘I fill the glass from the bottle, and I say “Yourhealth, Slider,” and empty it; then I rinse it genteelly with a littledrop, which I’m forced to throw into the fire—hallo! we shall havethe chimbley alight next—fill it again, and hand it over to you.’
‘Your health,’ said Peg.
‘She understands that, anyways,’ muttered Squeers, watchingMrs Sliderskew as she dispatched her portion, and choked andgasped in a most awful manner after so doing. ‘Now then, let’shave a talk. How’s the rheumatics?’
Mrs Sliderskew, with much blinking and chuckling, and with 1053looks expressive of her strong admiration of Mr Squeers, hisperson, manners, and conversation, replied that the rheumaticswere better.
‘What’s the reason,’ said Mr Squeers, deriving freshfacetiousness from the bottle; ‘what’s the reason of rheumatics?
What do they mean? What do people have’em for—eh?’
Mrs Sliderskew didn’t know, but suggested that it was possiblybecause they couldn’t help it.
‘Measles, rheumatics, hooping-cough, fevers, agers, andlumbagers,’ said Mr Squeers, ‘is all philosophy together; that’swhat it is. The heavenly bodies is philosophy, and the earthlybodies is philosophy. If there’s a screw loose in a heavenly body,that’s philosophy; and if there’s screw loose in a earthly body,that’s philosophy too; or it may be that sometimes there’s a littlemetaphysics in it, but that’s not often. Philosophy’s the chap forme. If a parent asks a question in the classical, commercial, ormathematical line, says I, gravely, “Why, sir, in the first place, areyou a philosopher?”—“No, Mr Squeers,” he says, “I an’t.” “Then,sir,” says I, “I am sorry for you, for I shan’t be able to explain it.”
Naturally, the parent goes away and wishes he was a philosopher,and, equally naturally, thinks I’m one.’
Saying this, and a great deal more, with tipsy profundity and aserio-comic air, and keeping his eye all the time on MrsSliderskew, who was unable to hear one word, Mr Squeersconcluded by helping himself and passing the bottle: to which Pegdid becoming reverence.
‘That’s the time of day!’ said Mr Squeers. ‘You look twentypound ten better than you did.’
Again Mrs Sliderskew chuckled, but modesty forbade her 1054assenting verbally to the compliment.
‘Twenty pound ten better,’ repeated Mr Squeers, ‘than you didthat day when I first introduced myself. Don’t you know?’
‘Ah!’ said Peg, shaking her head, ‘but you frightened me thatday.’
‘Did I?’ said Squeers; ‘well, it was rather a startling thing for astranger to come and recommend himself by saying that he knewall about you, and what your name............