"We have been-we have been-toasting your lovely daughter, Mrs Nickleby," whispered Sir Mulberry, sitting down behind her.
"Oh, ho!" thought that knowing lady; "wine in, truth out.-You are very kind, Sir Mulberry."
"No, no upon my soul!" replied Sir Mulberry Hawk. "It"s you that"s kind, upon my soul it is. It was so kind of you to come tonight."
"So very kind of you to invite me, you mean, Sir Mulberry," replied Mrs Nickleby, tossing her head, and looking prodigiously sly.
"I am so anxious to know you, so anxious to cultivate your good opinion, so desirous that there should be a delicious kind of harmonious family understanding between us," said Sir Mulberry, "that you mustn"t think I"m disinterested in what I do. I"m infernal selfish; I am-upon my soul I am."
"I am sure you can"t be selfish, Sir Mulberry!" replied Mrs Nickleby. "You have much too open and generous a countenance for that."
"What an extraordinary observer you are!" said Sir Mulberry Hawk.
"Oh no, indeed, I don"t see very far into things, Sir Mulberry," replied Mrs Nickleby, in a tone of voice which left the baronet to infer that she saw very far indeed.
"I am quite afraid of you," said the baronet. "Upon my soul," repeated Sir Mulberry, looking round to his companions; "I am afraid of Mrs Nickleby. She is so immensely sharp."
Messrs Pyke and Pluck shook their heads mysteriously, and observed together that they had found that out long ago; upon which Mrs Nickleby t.i.ttered, and Sir Mulberry laughed, and Pyke and Pluck roared.
"But where"s my brother-in-law, Sir Mulberry?" inquired Mrs Nickleby. "I shouldn"t be here without him. I hope he"s coming."
"Pyke," said Sir Mulberry, taking out his toothpick and lolling back in his chair, as if he were too lazy to invent a reply to this question. "Where"s Ralph Nickleby?"
"Pluck," said Pyke, imitating the baronet"s action, and turning the lie over to his friend, "where"s Ralph Nickleby?"
Mr Pluck was about to return some evasive reply, when the hustle caused by a party entering the next box seemed to attract the attention of all four gentlemen, who exchanged glances of much meaning. The new party beginning to converse together, Sir Mulberry suddenly a.s.sumed the character of a most attentive listener, and implored his friends not to breathe-not to breathe.
"Why not?" said Mrs Nickleby. "What is the matter?"
"Hush!" replied Sir Mulberry, laying his hand on her arm. "Lord Frederick, do you recognise the tones of that voice?"
"Deyvle take me if I didn"t think it was the voice of Miss Nickleby."
"Lor, my lord!" cried Miss Nickleby"s mama, thrusting her head round the curtain. "Why actually-Kate, my dear, Kate."
"YOU here, mama! Is it possible!"
"Possible, my dear? Yes."
"Why who-who on earth is that you have with you, mama?" said Kate, shrinking back as she caught sight of a man smiling and kissing his hand.
"Who do you suppose, my dear?" replied Mrs Nickleby, bending towards Mrs Wit.i.tterly, and speaking a little louder for that lady"s edification. "There"s Mr Pyke, Mr Pluck, Sir Mulberry Hawk, and Lord Frederick Verisopht."
"Gracious Heaven!" thought Kate hurriedly. "How comes she in such society?"
Now, Kate thought thus SO hurriedly, and the surprise was so great, and moreover brought back so forcibly the recollection of what had pa.s.sed at Ralph"s delectable dinner, that she turned extremely pale and appeared greatly agitated, which symptoms being observed by Mrs Nickleby, were at once set down by that acute lady as being caused and occasioned by violent love. But, although she was in no small degree delighted by this discovery, which reflected so much credit on her own quickness of perception, it did not lessen her motherly anxiety in Kate"s behalf; and accordingly, with a vast quant.i.ty of trepidation, she quitted her own box to hasten into that of Mrs Wit.i.tterly. Mrs Wit.i.tterly, keenly alive to the glory of having a lord and a baronet among her visiting acquaintance, lost no time in signing to Mr Wit.i.tterly to open the door, and thus it was that in less than thirty seconds Mrs Nickleby"s party had made an irruption into Mrs Wit.i.tterly"s box, which it filled to the very door, there being in fact only room for Messrs Pyke and Pluck to get in their heads and waistcoats.
"My dear Kate," said Mrs Nickleby, kissing her daughter affectionately. "How ill you looked a moment ago! You quite frightened me, I declare!"
"It was mere fancy, mama,-the-the-reflection of the lights perhaps," replied Kate, glancing nervously round, and finding it impossible to whisper any caution or explanation.
"Don"t you see Sir Mulberry Hawk, my dear?"
Kate bowed slightly, and biting her lip turned her head towards the stage.
But Sir Mulberry Hawk was not to be so easily repulsed, for he advanced with extended hand; and Mrs Nickleby officiously informing Kate of this circ.u.mstance, she was obliged to extend her own. Sir Mulberry detained it while he murmured a profusion of compliments, which Kate, remembering what had pa.s.sed between them, rightly considered as so many aggravations of the insult he had already put upon her. Then followed the recognition of Lord Verisopht, and then the greeting of Mr Pyke, and then that of Mr Pluck, and finally, to complete the young lady"s mortification, she was compelled at Mrs Wit.i.tterly"s request to perform the ceremony of introducing the odious persons, whom she regarded with the utmost indignation and abhorrence.
"Mrs Wit.i.tterly is delighted," said Mr Wit.i.tterly, rubbing his hands; "delighted, my lord, I am sure, with this opportunity of contracting an acquaintance which, I trust, my lord, we shall improve. Julia, my dear, you must not allow yourself to be too much excited, you must not. Indeed you must not. Mrs Wit.i.tterly is of a most excitable nature, Sir Mulberry. The snuff of a candle, the wick of a lamp, the bloom on a peach, the down on a b.u.t.terfly. You might blow her away, my lord; you might blow her away."
Sir Mulberry seemed to think that it would be a great convenience if the lady could be blown away. He said, however, that the delight was mutual, and Lord Verisopht added that it was mutual, whereupon Messrs Pyke and Pluck were heard to murmur from the distance that it was very mutual indeed.
"I take an interest, my lord," said Mrs Wit.i.tterly, with a faint smile, "such an interest in the drama."
"Ye-es. It"s very interesting," replied Lord Verisopht.
"I"m always ill after Shakespeare," said Mrs Wit.i.tterly. "I scarcely exist the next day; I find the reaction so very great after a tragedy, my lord, and Shakespeare is such a delicious creature."
"Ye-es!" replied Lord Verisopht. "He was a clayver man."
"Do you know, my lord," said Mrs Wit.i.tterly, after a long silence, "I find I take so much more interest in his plays, after having been to that dear little dull house he was born in! Were you ever there, my lord?"
"No, nayver," replied Verisopht.
"Then really you ought to go, my lord," returned Mrs Wit.i.tterly, in very languid and drawling accents. "I don"t know how it is, but after you"ve seen the place and written your name in the little book, somehow or other you seem to be inspired; it kindles up quite a fire within one."
"Ye-es!" replied Lord Verisopht, "I shall certainly go there."
"Julia, my life," interposed Mr Wit.i.tterly, "you are deceiving his lordship-unintentionally, my lord, she is deceiving you. It is your poetical temperament, my dear-your ethereal soul-your fervid imagination, which throws you into a glow of genius and excitement. There is nothing in the place, my dear-nothing, nothing."
"I think there must be something in the place," said Mrs Nickleby, who had been listening in silence; "for, soon after I was married, I went to Stratford with my poor dear Mr Nickleby, in a post-chaise from Birmingham-was it a post-chaise though?" said Mrs Nickleby, considering; "yes, it must have been a post-chaise, because I recollect remarking at the time that the driver had a green shade over his left eye;-in a post-chaise from Birmingham, and after we had seen Shakespeare"s tomb and birthplace, we went back to the inn there, where we slept that night, and I recollect that all night long I dreamt of nothing but a black gentleman, at full length, in plaster-of-Paris, with a lay-down collar tied with two ta.s.sels, leaning against a post and thinking; and when I woke in the morning and described him to Mr Nickleby, he said it was Shakespeare just as he had been when he was alive, which was very curious indeed. Stratford-Stratford," continued Mrs Nickleby, considering. "Yes, I am positive about that, because I recollect I was in the family way with my son Nicholas at the time, and I had been very much frightened by an Italian image boy that very morning. In fact, it was quite a mercy, ma"am," added Mrs Nickleby, in a whisper to Mrs Wit.i.tterly, "that my son didn"t turn out to be a Shakespeare, and what a dreadful thing that would have been!"
When Mrs Nickleby had brought this interesting anecdote to a close, Pyke and Pluck, ever zealous in their patron"s cause, proposed the adjournment of a detachment of the party into the next box; and with so much skill were the preliminaries adjusted, that Kate, despite all she could say or do to the contrary, had no alternative but to suffer herself to be led away by Sir Mulberry Hawk. Her mother and Mr Pluck accompanied them, but the worthy lady, pluming herself upon her discretion, took particular care not so much as to look at her daughter during the whole evening, and to seem wholly absorbed in the jokes and conversation of Mr Pluck, who, having been appointed sentry over Mrs Nickleby for that especial purpose, neglected, on his side, no possible opportunity of engrossing her attention.
Lord Frederick Verisopht remained in the next box to be talked to by Mrs Wit.i.tterly, and Mr Pyke was in attendance to throw in a word or two when necessary. As to Mr Wit.i.tterly, he was sufficiently busy in the body of the house, informing such of his friends and acquaintance as happened to be there, that those two gentlemen upstairs, whom they had seen in conversation with Mrs W., were the distinguished Lord Frederick Verisopht and his most intimate friend, the gay Sir Mulberry Hawk-a communication which inflamed several respectable house-keepers with the utmost jealousy and rage, and reduced sixteen unmarried daughters to the very brink of despair.
The evening came to an end at last, but Kate had yet to be handed downstairs by the detested Sir Mulberry; and so skilfully were the manoeuvres of Messrs Pyke and Pluck conducted, that she and the baronet were the last of the party, and were even-without an appearance of effort or design-left at some little distance behind.
"Don"t hurry, don"t hurry," said Sir Mulberry, as Kate hastened on, and attempted to release her arm.
She made no reply, but still pressed forward.
"Nay, then-" coolly observed Sir Mulberry, stopping her outright.
"You had best not seek to detain me, sir!" said Kate, angrily.
"And why not?" retorted Sir Mulberry. "My dear creature, now why do you keep up this show of displeasure?"
"SHOW!" repeated Kate, indignantly. "How dare you presume to speak to me, sir-to address me-to come into my presence?"
"You look prettier in a pa.s.sion, Miss Nickleby," said Sir Mulberry Hawk, stooping down, the better to see her face.
"I hold you in the bitterest detestation and contempt, sir," said Kate. "If you find any attraction in looks of disgust and aversion, you-let me rejoin my friends, sir, instantly. Whatever considerations may have withheld me thus far, I will disregard them all, and take a course that even YOU might feel, if you do not immediately suffer me to proceed."
Sir Mulberry smiled, and still looking in her face and retaining her arm, walked towards the door.
"If no regard for my s.e.x or helpless situation will induce you to desist from this coa.r.s.e and unmanly persecution," said Kate, scarcely knowing, in the tumult of her pa.s.sions, what she said,-"I have a brother who will resent it dearly, one day."
"Upon my soul!" exclaimed Sir Mulberry, as though quietly communing with himself; pa.s.sing his arm round her waist as he spoke, "she looks more beautiful, and I like her better in this mood, than when her eyes are cast down, and she is in perfect repose!"
How Kate reached the lobby where her friends were waiting she never knew, but she hurried across it without at all regarding them, and disengaged herself suddenly from her companion, sprang into the coach, and throwing herself into its darkest corner burst into tears.
Messrs Pyke and Pluck, knowing their cue, at once threw the party into great commotion by shouting for the carriages, and getting up a violent quarrel with sundry inoffensive bystanders; in the midst of which tumult they put the affrighted Mrs Nickleby in her chariot, and having got her safely off, turned their thoughts to Mrs Wit.i.tterly, whose attention also they had now effectually distracted from the young lady, by throwing her into a state of the utmost bewilderment and consternation. At length, the conveyance in which she had come rolled off too with its load, and the four worthies, being left alone under the portico, enjoyed a hearty laugh together.
"There," said Sir Mulberry, turning to his n.o.ble friend. "Didn"t I tell you last night that if we could find where they were going by bribing a servant through my fellow, and then established ourselves close by with the mother, these people"s honour would be our own? Why here it is, done in four-and-twenty hours."
"Ye-es," replied the dupe. "But I have been tied to the old woman all ni-ight."
"Hear him," said Sir Mulberry, turning to his two friends. "Hear this discontented grumbler. Isn"t it enough to make a man swear never to help him in his plots and schemes again? Isn"t it an infernal shame?"
Pyke asked Pluck whether it was not an infernal shame, and Pluck asked Pyke; but neither answered.
"Isn"t it the truth?" demanded Verisopht. "Wasn"t it so?"
"Wasn"t it so!" repeated Sir Mulberry. "How would you have had it? How could we have got a general invitation at first sight-come when you like, go when you like, stop as long as you like, do what you like-if you, the lord, had not made yourself agreeable to the foolish mistress of the house? Do I care for this girl, except as your friend? Haven"t I been sounding your praises in her ears, and bearing her pretty sulks and peevishness all night for you? What sort of stuff do you think I"m made of? Would I do this for every man? Don"t I deserve even grat.i.tude in return?"
"You"re a deyvlish good fellow," said the poor young lord, taking his friend"s arm. "Upon my life you"re a deyvlish good fellow, Hawk."
"And I have done right, have I?" demanded Sir Mulberry.
"Quite ri-ght."
"And like a poor, silly, good-natured, friendly dog as I am, eh?"
"Ye-es, ye-es; like a friend," replied the other.
"Well then," replied Sir Mulberry, "I"m satisfied. And now let"s go and have our revenge on the German baron and the Frenchman, who cleaned you out so handsomely last night."
With these words the friendly creature took his companion"s arm and led him away, turning half round as he did so, and bestowing a wink and a contemptuous smile on Messrs Pyke and Pluck, who, cramming their handkerchiefs into their mouths to denote their silent enjoyment of the whole proceedings, followed their patron and his victim at a little distance.
CHAPTER 28
Miss Nickleby, rendered desperate by the Persecution of Sir Mulberry Hawk, and the Complicated Difficulties and Distresses which surround her, appeals, as a last resource, to her Uncle for Protection The ensuing morning brought reflection with it, as morning usually does; but widely different was the train of thought it awakened in the different persons who had been so unexpectedly brought together on the preceding evening, by the active agency of Messrs Pyke and Pluck.
The reflections of Sir Mulberry Hawk-if such a term can be applied to the thoughts of the systematic and calculating man of dissipation, whose joys, regrets, pains, and pleasures, are all of self, and who would seem to retain nothing of the intellectual faculty but the power to debase himself, and to degrade the very nature whose outward semblance he wears-the reflections of Sir Mulberry Hawk turned upon Kate Nickleby, and were, in brief, that she was undoubtedly handsome; that her coyness MUST be easily conquerable by a man of his address and experience, and that the pursuit was one which could not fail to redound to his credit, and greatly to enhance his reputation with the world. And lest this last consideration-no mean or secondary one with Sir Mulberry-should sound strangely in the ears of some, let it be remembered that most men live in a world of their own, and that in that limited circle alone are they ambitious for distinction and applause. Sir Mulberry"s world was peopled with profligates, and he acted accordingly.
Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief actors therein setting at defiance so completely the opinion of the world; but there is no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they do consult the opinion of their own little world that such things take place at all, and strike the great world dumb with amazement.
The reflections of Mrs Nickleby were of the proudest and most complacent kind; and under the influence of her very agreeable delusion she straightway sat down and indited a long letter to Kate, in which she expressed her entire approval of the admirable choice she had made, and extolled Sir Mulberry to the skies; a.s.serting, for the more complete satisfaction of her daughter"s feelings, that he was precisely the individual whom she (Mrs Nickleby) would have chosen for her son-in-law, if she had had the picking and choosing from all mankind. The good lady then, with the preliminary observation that she might be fairly supposed not to have lived in the world so long without knowing its ways, communicated a great many subtle precepts applicable to the state of courtship, and confirmed in their wisdom by her own personal experience. Above all things she commended a strict maidenly reserve, as being not only a very laudable thing in itself, but as tending materially to strengthen and increase a lover"s ardour. "And I never," added Mrs Nickleby, "was more delighted in my life than to observe last night, my dear, that your good sense had already told you this." With which sentiment, and various hints of the pleasure she derived from the knowledge that her daughter inherited so large an instalment of her own excellent sense and discretion (to nearly the full measure of which she might hope, with care, to succeed in time), Mrs Nickleby concluded a very long and rather illegible letter.
Poor Kate was well-nigh distracted on the receipt of four closely-written and closely-crossed sides of congratulation on the very subject which had prevented her closing her eyes all night, and kept her weeping and watching in her chamber; still worse and more trying was the necessity of rendering herself agreeable to Mrs Wit.i.tterly, who, being in low spirits after the fatigue of the preceding night, of course expected her companion (else wherefore had she board and salary?) to be in the best spirits possible. As to Mr Wit.i.tterly, he went about all day in a tremor of delight at having shaken hands with a lord, and having actually asked him to come and see him in his own house. The lord himself, not being troubled to any inconvenient extent with the power of thinking, regaled himself with the conversation of Messrs Pyke and Pluck, who sharpened their wit by a plentiful indulgence in various costly stimulants at his expense.
It was four in the afternoon-that is, the vulgar afternoon of the sun and the clock-and Mrs Wit.i.tterly reclined, according to custom, on the drawing-room sofa, while Kate read aloud a new novel in three volumes, ent.i.tled "The Lady Flabella," which Alphonse the doubtful had procured from the library that very morning. And it was a production admirably suited to a lady labouring under Mrs Wit.i.tterly"s complaint, seeing that there was not a line in it, from beginning to end, which could, by the most remote contingency, awaken the smallest excitement in any person breathing.
Kate read on.
""Cherizette," said the Lady Flabella, inserting her mouse-like feet in the blue satin slippers, which had unwittingly occasioned the half-playful half-angry altercation between herself and the youthful Colonel Befillaire, in the Duke of Mincefenille"s SALON DE DANSE on the previous night. "CHERIZETTE, MA CHERE, DONNEZ-MOI DE L"EAU-DE-COLOGNE, S"IL VOUS PLAIT, MON ENFANT."
""MERCIE-thank you," said the Lady Flabella, as the lively but devoted Cherizette plentifully besprinkled with the fragrant compound the Lady Flabella"s MOUCHOIR of finest cambric, edged with richest lace, and emblazoned at the four corners with the Flabella crest, and gorgeous heraldic bearings of that n.o.ble family. "MERCIE-that will do."
"At this instant, while the Lady Flabella yet inhaled that delicious fragrance by holding the MOUCHOIR to her exquisite, but thoughtfully-chiselled nose, the door of the BOUDOIR (artfully concealed by rich hangings of silken damask, the hue of Italy"s firmament) was thrown open, and with noiseless tread two VALETS-DE-CHAMBRE, clad in sumptuous liveries of peach-blossom and gold, advanced into the room followed by a page in BAS DE SOIE-silk stockings-who, while they remained at some distance making the most graceful obeisances, advanced to the feet of his lovely mistress, and dropping on one knee presented, on a golden salver gorgeously chased, a scented BILLET.
"The Lady Flabella, with an agitation she could not repress, hastily tore off the ENVELOPE and broke the scented seal. It WAS from Befillaire-the young, the slim, the low-voiced-HER OWN Befillaire."
"Oh, charming!" interrupted Kate"s patroness, who was sometimes taken literary. "Poetic, really. Read that description again, Miss Nickleby."
Kate complied.
"Sweet, indeed!" said Mrs Wit.i.tterly, with a sigh. "So voluptuous, is it not-so soft?"
"Yes, I think it is," replied Kate, gently; "very soft."
"Close the book, Miss Nickleby," said Mrs Wit.i.tterly. "I can hear nothing more today; I should be sorry to disturb the impression of that sweet description. Close the book."
Kate complied, not unwillingly; and, as she did so, Mrs Wit.i.tterly raising her gla.s.s with a languid hand, remarked, that she looked pale.
"It was the fright of that-that noise and confusion last night," said Kate.
"How very odd!" exclaimed Mrs Wit.i.tterly, with a look of surprise. And certainly, when one comes to think of it, it WAS very odd that anything should have disturbed a companion. A steam-engine, or other ingenious piece of mechanism out of order, would have been nothing to it.
"How did you come to know Lord Frederick, and those other delightful creatures, child?" asked Mrs Wit.i.tterly, still eyeing Kate through her gla.s.s.
"I met them at my uncle"s," said Kate, vexed to feel that she was colouring deeply, but unable to keep down the blood which rushed to her face whenever she thought of that man.
"Have you known them long?"
"No," rejoined Kate. "Not long."
"I was very glad of the opportunity which that respectable person, your mother, gave us of being known to them," said Mrs Wit.i.tterly, in a lofty manner. "Some friends of ours were on the very point of introducing us, which makes it quite remarkable."