Chapter 62

Nicholas Nickleby

by Charles Dickens

Ralph makes one last Appointment--and keeps it

Creeping from the house, and slinking off like a thief; groping
with his hands, when first he got into the street, as if he were a
blind man; and looking often over his shoulder while he hurried away,
as though he were followed in imagination or reality by someone
anxious to question or detain him; Ralph Nickleby left the city
behind him, and took the road to his own home.

The night was dark, and a cold wind blew, driving the clouds,
furiously and fast, before it. There was one black, gloomy mass that
seemed to follow him: not hurrying in the wild chase with the others,
but lingering sullenly behind, and gliding darkly and stealthily on.
He often looked back at this, and, more than once, stopped to let it
pass over; but, somehow, when he went forward again, it was still
behind him, coming mournfully and slowly up, like a shadowy funeral
train.

He had to pass a poor, mean burial-ground--a dismal place,
raised a few feet above the level of the street, and parted from it
by a low parapet-wall and an iron railing; a rank, unwholesome,
rotten spot, where the very grass and weeds seemed, in their frouzy
growth, to tell that they had sprung from paupers' bodies, and had
struck their roots in the graves of men, sodden, while alive, in
steaming courts and drunken hungry dens. And here, in truth, they
lay, parted from the living by a little earth and a board or two--lay
thick and close--corrupting in body as they had in mind--a dense and
squalid crowd. Here they lay, cheek by jowl with life: no deeper
down than the feet of the throng that passed there every day, and
piled high as their throats. Here they lay, a grisly family, all
these dear departed brothers and sisters of the ruddy clergyman who
did his task so speedily when they were hidden in the ground!

As he passed here, Ralph called to mind that he had been one of
a jury, long before, on the body of a man who had cut his throat; and
that he was buried in this place. He could not tell how he came to
recollect it now, when he had so often passed and never thought about
him, or how it was that he felt an interest in the circumstance; but
he did both; and stopping, and clasping the iron railings with his
hands, looked eagerly in, wondering which might be his grave.

While he was thus engaged, there came towards him, with noise of
shouts and singing, some fellows full of drink, followed by others,
who were remonstrating with them and urging them to go home in quiet.
They were in high good-humour; and one of them, a little, weazen,
hump-backed man, began to dance. He was a grotesque, fantastic
figure, and the few bystanders laughed. Ralph himself was moved to
mirth, and echoed the laugh of one who stood near and who looked
round in his face. When they had passed on, and he was left alone
again, he resumed his speculation with a new kind of interest; for he
recollected that the last person who had seen the suicide alive, had
left him very merry, and he remembered how strange he and the other
jurors had thought that at the time.

He could not fix upon the spot among such a heap of graves, but
he conjured up a strong and vivid idea of the man himself, and how he
looked, and what had led him to do it; all of which he recalled with
ease. By dint of dwelling upon this theme, he carried the impression
with him when he went away; as he remembered, when a child, to have
had frequently before him the figure of some goblin he had once seen
chalked upon a door. But as he drew nearer and nearer home he forgot
it again, and began to think how very dull and solitary the house
would be inside.

This feeling became so strong at last, that when he reached his
own door, he could hardly make up his mind to turn the key and open
it. When he had done that, and gone into the passage, he felt as
though to shut it again would be to shut out the world. But he let
it go, and it closed with a loud noise. There was no light. How
very dreary, cold, and still it was!

Shivering from head to foot, he made his way upstairs into the
room where he had been last disturbed. He had made a kind of compact
with himself that he would not think of what had happened until he
got home. He was at home now, and suffered himself to consider
it.

His own child, his own child! He never doubted the tale; he
felt it was true; knew it as well, now, as if he had been privy to it
all along. His own child! And dead too. Dying beside Nicholas,
loving him, and looking upon him as something like an angel. That
was the worst!

They had all turned from him and deserted him in his very first
need. Even money could not buy them now; everything must come out,
and everybody must know all. Here was the young lord dead, his
companion abroad and beyond his reach, ten thousand pounds gone at
one blow, his plot with Gride overset at the very moment of triumph,
his after-schemes discovered, himself in danger, the object of his
persecution and Nicholas's love, his own wretched boy; everything
crumbled and fallen upon him, and he beaten down beneath the ruins
and grovelling in the dust.

If he had known his child to be alive; if no deceit had been
ever practised, and he had grown up beneath his eye; he might have
been a careless, indifferent, rough, harsh father--like enough--he
felt that; but the thought would come that he might have been
otherwise, and that his son might have been a comfort to him, and
they two happy together. He began to think now, that his supposed
death and his wife's flight had had some share in making him the
morose, hard man he was. He seemed to remember a time when he was
not quite so rough and obdurate; and almost thought that he had first
hated Nicholas because he was young and gallant, and perhaps like the
stripling who had brought dishonour and loss of fortune on his
head.

But one tender thought, or one of natural regret, in his
whirlwind of passion and remorse, was as a drop of calm water in a
stormy maddened sea. His hatred of Nicholas had been fed upon his
own defeat, nourished on his interference with his schemes, fattened
upon his old defiance and success. There were reasons for its
increase; it had grown and strengthened gradually. Now it attained a
height which was sheer wild lunacy. That his, of all others, should
have been the hands to rescue his miserable child; that he should
have been his protector and faithful friend; that he should have
shown him that love and tenderness which, from the wretched moment of
his birth, he had never known; that he should have taught him to hate
his own parent and execrate his very name; that he should now know
and feel all this, and triumph in the recollection; was gall and
madness to the usurer's heart. The dead boy's love for Nicholas, and
the attachment of Nicholas to him, was insupportable agony. The
picture of his deathbed, with Nicholas at his side, tending and
supporting him, and he breathing out his thanks, and expiring in his
arms, when he would have had them mortal enemies and hating each
other to the last, drove him frantic. He gnashed his teeth and smote
the air, and looking wildly round, with eyes which gleamed through
the darkness, cried aloud:

'I am trampled down and ruined. The wretch told me true. The
night has come! Is there no way to rob them of further triumph, and
spurn their mercy and compassion? Is there no devil to help me?'

Swiftly, there glided again into his brain the figure he had
raised that night. It seemed to lie before him. The head was
covered now. So it was when he first saw it. The rigid, upturned,
marble feet too, he remembered well. Then came before him the pale
and trembling relatives who had told their tale upon the inquest--the
shrieks of women--the silent dread of men--the consternation and
disquiet--the victory achieved by that heap of clay, which, with one
motion of its hand, had let out the life and made this stir among
them--

He spoke no more; but, after a pause, softly groped his way out
of the room, and up the echoing stairs--up to the top--to the front
garret--where he closed the door behind him, and remained.

It was a mere lumber-room now, but it yet contained an old
dismantled bedstead; the one on which his son had slept; for no other
had ever been there. He avoided it hastily, and sat down as far from
it as he could.

The weakened glare of the lights in the street below, shining
through the window which had no blind or curtain to intercept it, was
enough to show the character of the room, though not sufficient fully
to reveal the various articles of lumber, old corded trunks and
broken furniture, which were scattered about. It had a shelving
roof; high in one part, and at another descending almost to the
floor. It was towards the highest part that Ralph directed his eyes;
and upon it he kept them fixed steadily for some minutes, when he
rose, and dragging thither an old chest upon which he had been
seated, mounted on it, and felt along the wall above his head with
both hands. At length, they touched a large iron hook, firmly driven
into one of the beams.

At that moment, he was interrupted by a loud knocking at the
door below. After a little hesitation he opened the window, and
demanded who it was.

'I want Mr Nickleby,' replied a voice.

'What with him?'

'That's not Mr Nickleby's voice, surely?' was the rejoinder.

It was not like it; but it was Ralph who spoke, and so he
said.

The voice made answer that the twin brothers wished to know
whether the man whom he had seen that night was to be detained; and
that although it was now midnight they had sent, in their anxiety to
do right.

'Yes,' cried Ralph, 'detain him till tomorrow; then let them
bring him here--him and my nephew--and come themselves, and be sure
that I will be ready to receive them.'

'At what hour?' asked the voice.

'At any hour,' replied Ralph fiercely. 'In the afternoon, tell
them. At any hour, at any minute. All times will be alike to
me.'

He listened to the man's retreating footsteps until the sound
had passed, and then, gazing up into the sky, saw, or thought he saw,
the same black cloud that had seemed to follow him home, and which
now appeared to hover directly above the house.

'I know its meaning now,' he muttered, 'and the restless nights,
the dreams, and why I have quailed of late. All pointed to this.
Oh! if men by selling their own souls could ride rampant for a term,
for how short a term would I barter mine tonight!'

The sound of a deep bell came along the wind. One.

'Lie on!' cried the usurer, 'with your iron tongue! Ring
merrily for births that make expectants writhe, and marriages that
are made in hell, and toll ruefully for the dead whose shoes are worn
already! Call men to prayers who are godly because not found out,
and ring chimes for the coming in of every year that brings this
cursed world nearer to its end. No bell or book for me! Throw me on
a dunghill, and let me rot there, to infect the air!'

With a wild look around, in which frenzy, hatred, and despair
were horribly mingled, he shook his clenched hand at the sky above
him, which was still dark and threatening, and closed the window.

The rain and hail pattered against the glass; the chimneys
quaked and rocked; the crazy casement rattled with the wind, as
though an impatient hand inside were striving to burst it open. But
no hand was there, and it opened no more.

'How's this?' cried one. 'The gentleman say they can't make
anybody hear, and have been trying these two hours.'

'And yet he came home last night,' said another; 'for he spoke
to somebody out of that window upstairs.'

They were a little knot of men, and, the window being mentioned,
went out into the road to look up at it. This occasioned their
observing that the house was still close shut, as the housekeeper had
said she had left it on the previous night, and led to a great many
suggestions: which terminated in two or three of the boldest getting
round to the back, and so entering by a window, while the others
remained outside, in impatient expectation.

They looked into all the rooms below: opening the shutters as
they went, to admit the fading light: and still finding nobody, and
everything quiet and in its place, doubted whether they should go
farther. One man, however, remarking that they had not yet been into
the garret, and that it was there he had been last seen, they agreed
to look there too, and went up softly; for the mystery and silence
made them timid.

After they had stood for an instant, on the landing, eyeing each
other, he who had proposed their carrying the search so far, turned
the handle of the door, and, pushing it open, looked through the
chink, and fell back directly.

'It's very odd,' he whispered, 'he's hiding behind the door!
Look!'

They pressed forward to see; but one among them thrusting the
others aside with a loud exclamation, drew a clasp-knife from his
pocket, and dashing into the room, cut down the body.

He had torn a rope from one of the old trunks, and hung himself
on an iron hook immediately below the trap-door in the ceiling--in
the very place to which the eyes of his son, a lonely, desolate,
little creature, had so often been directed in childish terror,
fourteen years before.