How Ralph Nickleby’s Auxiliary went about his Work, and how he prospered
with it
It was a dark, wet, gloomy night in autumn, when in an upper room of a
mean house situated in an obscure street, or rather court, near Lambeth,
there sat, all alone, a one-eyed man grotesquely habited, either
for lack of better garments or for purposes of disguise, in a loose
greatcoat, with arms half as long again as his own, and a capacity of
breadth and length which would have admitted of his winding himself
in it, head and all, with the utmost ease, and without any risk of
straining the old and greasy material of which it was composed.
So attired, and in a place so far removed from his usual haunts and
occupations, and so very poor and wretched in its character, perhaps Mrs
Squeers herself would have had some difficulty in recognising her lord:
quickened though her natural sagacity doubtless would have been by the
affectionate yearnings and impulses of a tender wife. But Mrs. Squeers’s
lord it was; and in a tolerably disconsolate mood Mrs. Squeers’s lord
appeared to be, as, helping himself from a black bottle which stood on
the table beside him, he cast round the chamber a look, in which very
slight regard for the objects within view was plainly mingled with some
regretful and impatient recollection of distant scenes and persons.
There were, certainly, no particular attractions, either in the room
over which the glance of Mr. Squeers so discontentedly wandered, or in
the narrow street into which it might have penetrated, if he had thought
fit to approach the window. The attic chamber in which he sat was
bare and mean; the bedstead, and such few other articles of necessary
furniture as it contained, were of the commonest description, in a most
crazy state, and of a most uninviting appearance. The street was muddy,
dirty, and deserted. Having but one outlet, it was traversed by few but
the inhabitants at any time; and the night being one of those on which
most people are glad to be within doors, it now presented no other signs
of life than the dull glimmering of poor candles from the dirty windows,
and few sounds but the pattering of the rain, and occasionally the heavy
closing of some creaking door.
Mr. Squeers continued to look disconsolately about him, and to listen
to these noises in profound silence, broken only by the rustling of his
large coat, as he now and then moved his arm to raise his glass to
his lips. Mr. Squeers continued to do this for some time, until the
increasing gloom warned him to snuff the candle. Seeming to be slightly
roused by this exertion, he raised his eye to the ceiling, and fixing it
upon some uncouth and fantastic figures, traced upon it by the wet and
damp which had penetrated through the 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--a follering up
this here blessed old dowager petty larcenerer,’--Mr. Squeers delivered
himself of this epithet with great difficulty and effort,--‘and
Dotheboys Hall a-running itself regularly to seed the while! That’s the
worst of ever being in with a owdacious chap like that old Nickleby. You
never know when he’s done with you, and if you’re in for a penny, you’re
in for a pound.’
This remark, perhaps, reminded Mr. Squeers that he was in for a hundred
pound at any rate. His countenance relaxed, and he raised his glass to
his mouth with an air of greater enjoyment of its contents than he had
before evinced.
‘I never see,’ soliloquised Mr. Squeers in continuation, ‘I never see
nor come across such a file as that old Nickleby. Never! He’s out of
everybody’s depth, he is. He’s what you may call a rasper, is Nickleby.
To see how sly and cunning he grubbed on, day after day, a-worming and
plodding and tracing and turning and twining of hisself about, till he
found out where this precious Mrs. Peg was hid, and cleared the ground
for me to work upon. Creeping and crawling and gliding, like a ugly,
old, bright-eyed, stagnation-blooded adder! Ah! He’d have made a good
‘un in our line, but it would have been too limited for him; his genius
would have busted all bonds, and coming over every obstacle, broke down
all before it, till it erected itself into a monneyment of--Well, I’ll
think of the rest, and say it when conwenient.’
Making a halt in his reflections at this place, Mr. Squeers again put 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 had read it very
often, and now refreshed his memory rather in the absence of better
amusement than for any specific information.
‘The pigs is well,’ said Mr. Squeers, ‘the cows is well, and the boys is
bobbish. Young Sprouter has been a-winking, has he? I’ll wink him when
I get back. “Cobbey would persist in sniffing while he was a-eating his
dinner, and said that the beef was so strong it made him.”--Very good,
Cobbey, we’ll see if we can’t make you sniff a little without beef.
“Pitcher was took with another fever,”--of course he was--“and being
fetched by his friends, died the day after he got home,”--of course he
did, and out of aggravation; it’s part of a deep-laid system. There an’t
another chap in the school but 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 to the utmost extremity. “The juniorest Palmer said
he wished he was in Heaven.” I really don’t know, I do NOT know what’s
to be done with that young fellow; he’s always a-wishing something
horrid. He said once, he wished he was a donkey, because then he
wouldn’t have a father as didn’t love him! Pretty wicious that for a
child of six!’
Mr. Squeers was so much moved by the contemplation of this hardened
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 been only
for a week or so. Still, one hundred pound is five boys, and five boys
takes a whole year to pay one hundred pounds, and there’s their keep to
be substracted, besides. There’s nothing lost, neither, by one’s being
here; because the boys’ money comes in just the same as if I was at
home, and Mrs. Squeers she keeps them in order. There’ll be some lost
time to make up, of course. There’ll be an arrear of flogging as’ll have
to be gone through: still, a couple of days makes that all right, and
one don’t mind a little extra work for one hundred pound. It’s pretty
nigh the time to wait upon the old woman. From what she said last night,
I suspect that if I’m to succeed at all, I shall succeed tonight; so
I’ll have half a glass more, to wish myself success, and put myself in
spirits. Mrs. Squeers, my dear, your health!’
Leering with his one eye as if the lady to whom he drank had been
actually present, Mr. Squeers--in his enthusiasm, no doubt--poured out
a full glass, and emptied it; and as the liquor was raw spirits, and he
had applied himself to the same bottle more than once already, it is not
surprising that he found himself, by this time, in an extremely cheerful
state, and quite enough excited for his purpose.
What this purpose was soon appeared; for, after a few turns about the
room to steady himself, he took the bottle under his arm and the glass
in his hand, and blowing out the candle as if he purposed being gone
some time, stole out upon the staircase, and creeping softly to a door
opposite his own, tapped gently at it.
‘But what’s the use of tapping?’ he said, ‘She’ll never hear. I suppose
she isn’t doing anything very particular; and if she is, it don’t much
matter, that I see.’
With this brief preface, Mr. Squeers applied his hand to the latch of the
door, and thrusting his head into a garret far more deplorable than
that he had just left, and seeing that there was nobody there but an old
woman, who was bending over a wretched fire (for although the weather
was still warm, the evening 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 Squeers understood, as a
acorn, a hour; but when the h is sounded, the a only 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’t know any better, and if it
is, I’ve done it accidentally.’
Delivering this reply in his accustomed tone of voice, in which of
course it was inaudible to Peg, Mr. Squeers drew a stool to the fire, and
placing himself over against her, and the bottle and glass on 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 strong language
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 eye was upon him,
and she was chuckling fearfully, as though in delight at having made a
choice repartee, ‘Do you see this? This is a 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 with
appropriate action, ‘I fill the glass from the bottle, and I say “Your
health, Slider,” and empty it; then I rinse it genteelly with a little
drop, which I’m forced to throw into the fire--hallo! we shall have the
chimbley alight next--fill it again, and hand it over to you.’
‘YOUR health,’ said Peg.
‘She understands that, anyways,’ muttered Squeers, watching Mrs
Sliderskew as she dispatched her portion, and choked and gasped in a
most awful manner after so doing. ‘Now then, let’s have a talk. How’s
the rheumatics?’
Mrs. Sliderskew, with much blinking and chuckling, and with looks
expressive of her strong admiration of Mr. Squeers, his person, manners,
and conversation, replied that the rheumatics were better.
‘What’s the reason,’ said Mr. Squeers, deriving fresh facetiousness 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 possibly because
they couldn’t help it.
‘Measles, rheumatics, hooping-cough, fevers, agers, and lumbagers,’ said
Mr. Squeers, ‘is all philosophy together; that’s what it is. The heavenly
bodies is philosophy, and the earthly bodies 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 little metaphysics in it, but that’s not often.
Philosophy’s the chap for me. If a parent asks a question in the
classical, commercial, or mathematical line, says I, gravely, “Why, sir,
in the first place, are you 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 a
serio-comic air, and keeping his eye all the time on Mrs. Sliderskew, who
was unable to hear one word, Mr. Squeers concluded by helping himself and
passing the bottle: to which Peg did becoming reverence.
‘That’s the time of day!’ said Mr. Squeers. ‘You look twenty pound ten
better than you did.’
Again Mrs. Sliderskew chuckled, but modesty forbade her assenting
verbally to the compliment.
‘Twenty pound ten better,’ repeated Mr. Squeers, ‘than you did that day
when I first introduced myself. Don’t you know?’
‘Ah!’ said Peg, shaking her head, ‘but you frightened me that day.’
‘Did I?’ said Squeers; ‘well, it was rather a startling thing for a
stranger to come and recommend himself by saying that he knew all about
you, and what your name was, and why you were living so quiet here, and
what you had boned, and who you boned it from, wasn’t it?’
Peg nodded her head in strong assent.
‘But I know everything that happens in that way, you see,’ continued
Squeers. ‘Nothing takes place, of that kind, that I an’t up to
entirely. I’m a sort of a lawyer, Slider, of first-rate standing, and
understanding too; I’m the intimate friend and confidential adwiser
of pretty nigh every man, woman, and child that gets themselves into
difficulties by being too nimble with their fingers, I’m--’
Mr. Squeers’s catalogue of his own merits and accomplishments, which
was partly the result of a concerted plan between himself and Ralph
Nickleby, and flowed, in part, from the black bottle, was here
interrupted by Mrs. Sliderskew.
‘Ha, ha, ha!’ she cried, folding her arms and wagging her head; ‘and so
he wasn’t married after all, wasn’t he. Not married after all?’
‘No,’ replied Squeers, ‘that he wasn’t!’
‘And a young lover come and carried off the bride, eh?’ said Peg.
‘From under his very nose,’ replied Squeers; ‘and I’m told the young
chap cut up rough besides, and broke the winders, and forced him to
swaller his wedding favour which nearly choked him.’
‘Tell me all about it again,’ cried Peg, with a malicious relish of her
old master’s defeat, which made her natural hideousness something quite
fearful; ‘let’s hear it all again, beginning at the beginning now, as
if you’d never told me. Let’s have it every word--now--now--beginning at
the very first, you know, when he went to the house that morning!’
Mr. Squeers, plying Mrs. Sliderskew freely with the liquor, and sustaining
himself under the exertion of speaking so loud by frequent applications
to it himself, complied with this request by describing the discomfiture
of Arthur Gride, with such improvements on the truth as happened to
occur to him, and the ingenious invention and application of which
had been very instrumental in recommending him to her notice in the
beginning of their acquaintance. Mrs. Sliderskew was in an ecstasy of
delight, rolling her head about, drawing up her skinny shoulders, and
wrinkling her cadaverous face into so many and such complicated forms of
ugliness, as awakened the unbounded astonishment and disgust even of Mr
Squeers.
‘He’s a treacherous old goat,’ said Peg, ‘and cozened me with cunning
tricks and lying promises, but never mind. I’m even with him. I’m even
with him.’
‘More than even, Slider,’ returned Squeers; ‘you’d have been even with
him if he’d got married; but with the disappointment besides, you’re
a long way ahead. Out of sight, Slider, quite out of sight. And that
reminds me,’ he added, handing her the glass, ‘if you want me to give
you my opinion of them deeds, and tell you what you’d better keep and
what you’d better burn, why, now’s your time, Slider.’
‘There an’t no hurry for that,’ said Peg, with several knowing looks and
winks.
‘Oh! very well!’ observed Squeers, ‘it don’t matter to me; you asked
me, you know. I shouldn’t charge you nothing, being a friend. You’re the
best judge of course. But you’re a bold woman, Slider.’
‘How do you mean, bold?’ said Peg.
‘Why, I only mean that if it was me, I wouldn’t keep papers as might
hang me, littering about when they might be turned into money--them as
wasn’t useful made away with, and them as was, laid by somewheres, safe;
that’s all,’ returned Squeers; ‘but everybody’s the best judge of their
own affairs. All I say is, Slider, I wouldn’t do it.’
‘Come,’ said Peg, ‘then you shall see ‘em.’
‘I don’t want to see ‘em,’ replied Squeers, affecting to be out of
humour; ‘don’t talk as if it was a treat. Show ‘em to somebody else, and
take their advice.’
Mr. Squeers would, very likely, have carried on the farce of being
offended a little longer, if Mrs. Sliderskew, in her anxiety to restore
herself to her former high position in his good graces, had not become
so extremely affectionate that he stood at some risk of being smothered
by her caresses. Repressing, with as good a grace as possible, these
little familiarities--for which, there is reason to believe, the black
bottle was at least as much to blame as any constitutional infirmity on
the part of Mrs. Sliderskew--he protested that he had only been joking:
and, in proof of his unimpaired good-humour, that he was ready to
examine the deeds at once, if, by so doing, he could afford any
satisfaction or relief of mind to his fair friend.
‘And now you’re up, my Slider,’ bawled Squeers, as she rose to fetch
them, ‘bolt the door.’
Peg trotted to the door, and after fumbling at the bolt, crept to the
other end of the room, and from beneath the coals which filled the
bottom of the cupboard, drew forth a small deal box. Having placed this
on the floor at Squeers’s feet, she brought, from under the pillow of
her bed, a small key, with which she signed to that gentleman to open
it. Mr. Squeers, who had eagerly followed her every motion, lost no time
in obeying this hint: and, throwing back the lid, gazed with rapture on
the documents which lay within.
‘Now you see,’ said Peg, kneeling down on the floor beside him, and
staying his impatient hand; ‘what’s of no use we’ll burn; what we can
get any money by, we’ll keep; and if there’s any we could get him into
trouble by, and fret and waste away his heart to shreds, those we’ll
take particular care of; for that’s what I want to do, and what I hoped
to do when I left him.’
‘I thought,’ said Squeers, ‘that you didn’t bear him any particular
good-will. But, I say, why didn’t you take some money besides?’
‘Some what?’ asked Peg.
‘Some money,’ roared Squeers. ‘I do believe the woman hears me, and
wants to make me break a wessel, so that she may have the pleasure of
nursing me. Some money, Slider, money!’
‘Why, what a man you are to ask!’ cried Peg, with some contempt. ‘If I
had taken money from Arthur Gride, he’d have scoured the whole earth to
find me--aye, and he’d have smelt it out, and raked it up, somehow, if
I had buried it at the bottom of the deepest well in England. No, no!
I knew better than that. I took what I thought his secrets were hid in:
and them he couldn’t afford to make public, let’em be worth ever so much
money. He’s an old dog; a sly, old, cunning, thankless dog! He first
starved, and then tricked me; and if I could I’d kill him.’
‘All right, and very laudable,’ said Squeers. ‘But, first and foremost,
Slider, burn the box. You should never keep things as may lead to
discovery. Always mind that. So while you pull it to pieces (which you
can easily do, for it’s very old and rickety) and burn it in little
bits, I’ll look over the papers and tell you what they are.’
Peg, expressing her acquiescence in this arrangement, Mr. Squeers turned
the box bottom upwards, and tumbling the contents upon the floor, handed
it to her; the destruction of the box being an extemporary device for
engaging her attention, in case it should prove desirable to distract it
from his own proceedings.
‘There!’ said Squeers; ‘you poke the pieces between the bars, and make
up a good fire, and I’ll read the while. Let me see, let me see.’ And
taking the candle down beside him, Mr. Squeers, with great eagerness
and a cunning grin overspreading his face, entered upon his task of
examination.
If the old woman had not been very deaf, she must have heard, when she
last went to the door, the breathing of two persons close behind it: and
if those two persons had been unacquainted with her infirmity, they must
probably have chosen that moment either for presenting themselves or
taking to flight. But, knowing with whom they had to deal, they remained
quite still, and now, not only appeared unobserved at the door--which
was not bolted, for the bolt had no hasp--but warily, and with noiseless
footsteps, advanced into the room.
As they stole farther and farther in by slight and scarcely perceptible
degrees, and with such caution that they scarcely seemed to breathe, the
old hag and Squeers little dreaming of any such invasion, and utterly
unconscious of there being any soul near but themselves, were busily
occupied with their tasks. The old woman, with her wrinkled face close
to the bars of the stove, puffing at the dull embers which had not yet
caught the wood; Squeers stooping down to the candle, which brought out
the full ugliness of his face, as the light of the fire did that of his
companion; both intently engaged, and wearing faces of exultation which
contrasted strongly with the anxious looks of those behind, who took
advantage of the slightest sound to cover their advance, and, almost
before they had moved an inch, and all was silent, stopped again. This,
with the large bare room, damp walls, and flickering doubtful light,
combined to form a scene which the most careless and indifferent
spectator (could any have been present) could scarcely have failed to
derive some interest from, and would not readily have forgotten.
Of the stealthy comers, Frank Cheeryble was one, and Newman Noggs
the other. Newman had caught up, by the rusty nozzle, an old pair of
bellows, which were just undergoing a flourish in the air preparatory
to a descent upon the head of Mr. Squeers, when Frank, with an earnest
gesture, stayed his arm, and, taking another step in advance, came so
close behind the schoolmaster that, by leaning slightly forward, he
could plainly distinguish the writing which he held up to his eye.
Mr. Squeers, not being remarkably erudite, appeared to be considerably
puzzled by this first prize, which was in an engrossing hand, and not
very legible except to a practised eye. Having tried it by reading from
left to right, and from right to left, and finding it equally clear both
ways, he turned it upside down with no better success.
‘Ha, ha, ha!’ chuckled Peg, who, on her knees before the fire, was
feeding it with fragments of the box, and grinning in most devilish
exultation. ‘What’s that writing about, eh?’
‘Nothing particular,’ replied Squeers, tossing it towards her. ‘It’s
only an old lease, as well as I can make out. Throw it in the fire.’
Mrs. Sliderskew complied, and inquired what the next one was.
‘This,’ said Squeers, ‘is a bundle of overdue acceptances and renewed
bills of six or eight young gentlemen, but they’re all MPs, so it’s of
no use to anybody. Throw it in the fire!’ Peg did as she was bidden, and
waited for the next.
‘This,’ said Squeers, ‘seems to be some deed of sale of the right of
presentation to the rectory of Purechurch, in the valley of Cashup. Take
care of that, Slider, literally for God’s sake. It’ll fetch its price at
the Auction Mart.’
‘What’s the next?’ inquired Peg.
‘Why, this,’ said Squeers, ‘seems, from the two letters that’s with it,
to be a bond from a curate down in the country, to pay half a year’s
wages of forty pound for borrowing twenty. Take care of that, for if he
don’t pay it, his bishop will very soon be down upon him. We know what
the camel and the needle’s eye means; no man as can’t live upon his
income, whatever it is, must expect to go to heaven at any price. It’s
very odd; I don’t see anything like it yet.’
‘What’s the matter?’ said Peg.
‘Nothing,’ replied Squeers, ‘only I’m looking for--’
Newman raised the bellows again. Once more, Frank, by a rapid motion of
his arm, unaccompanied by any noise, checked him in his purpose.
‘Here you are,’ said Squeers, ‘bonds--take care of them. Warrant of
attorney--take care of that. Two cognovits--take care of them. Lease and
release--burn that. Ah! “Madeline Bray--come of age or marry--the said
Madeline”--here, burn THAT!’
Eagerly throwing towards the old woman a parchment that he caught up for
the purpose, Squeers, as she turned her head, thrust into the breast of
his large coat, the deed in which these words had caught his eye, and
burst into a shout of triumph.
‘I’ve got it!’ said Squeers. ‘I’ve got it! Hurrah! The plan was a good
one, though the chance was desperate, and the day’s our own at last!’
Peg demanded what he laughed at, but no answer was returned. Newman’s
arm could no longer be restrained; the bellows, descending heavily and
with unerring aim on the very centre of Mr. Squeers’s head, felled him to
the floor, and stretched him on it flat and senseless.