Charles Dickens - The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby

'Ask Mr Nickleby whether the sum I have mentioned is not a proper one,' reasoned Madame Mantalini.

'I don't want any sum,' replied her disconsolate husband; 'I shall require no demd allowance. I will be a body.'

On this repetition of Mr Mantalini's fatal threat, Madame Mantalini wrung her hands, and implored the interference of Ralph Nickleby; and after a great quantity of tears and talking, and several attempts on the part of Mr Mantalini to reach the door, preparatory to straightway committing violence upon himself, that gentleman was prevailed upon, with difficulty, to promise that he wouldn't be a body. This great point attained, Madame Mantalini argued the question of the allowance, and Mr Mantalini did the same, taking occasion to show that he could live with uncommon satisfaction upon bread and water, and go clad in rags, but that he could not support existence with the additional burden of being mistrusted by the object of his most devoted and disinterested affection. This brought fresh tears into Madame Mantalini's eyes, which having just begun to open to some few of the demerits of Mr Mantalini, were only open a very little way, and could be easily closed again. The result was, that without quite giving up the allowance question, Madame Mantalini, postponed its further consideration; and Ralph saw, clearly enough, that Mr Mantalini had gained a fresh lease of his easy life, and that, for some time longer at all events, his degradation and downfall were postponed.

'But it will come soon enough,' thought Ralph; 'all love—bah! that I should use the cant of boys and girls—is fleeting enough; though that which has its sole root in the admiration of a whiskered face like that of yonder baboon, perhaps lasts the longest, as it originates in the greater blindness and is fed by vanity. Meantime the fools bring grist to my mill, so let them live out their day, and the longer it is, the better.'

These agreeable reflections occurred to Ralph Nickleby, as sundry small caresses and endearments, supposed to be unseen, were exchanged between the objects of his thoughts.

'If you have nothing more to say, my dear, to Mr Nickleby,' said Madame Mantalini, 'we will take our leaves. I am sure we have detained him much too long already.'

Mr Mantalini answered, in the first instance, by tapping Madame Mantalini several times on the nose, and then, by remarking in words that he had nothing more to say.

'Demmit! I have, though,' he added almost immediately, drawing Ralph into a corner. 'Here's an affair about your friend Sir Mulberry. Such a demd extraordinary out-of-the-way kind of thing as never was —eh?'

'What do you mean?' asked Ralph.

'Don't you know, demmit?' asked Mr Mantalini.

'I see by the paper that he was thrown from his cabriolet last night, and severely injured, and that his life is in some danger,' answered Ralph with great composure; 'but I see nothing extraordinary in that—accidents are not miraculous events, when men live hard, and drive after dinner.'

'Whew!' cried Mr Mantalini in a long shrill whistle. 'Then don't you know how it was?'

'Not unless it was as I have just supposed,' replied Ralph, shrugging his shoulders carelessly, as if to give his questioner to understand that he had no curiosity upon the subject.

'Demmit, you amaze me,' cried Mantalini.

Ralph shrugged his shoulders again, as if it were no great feat to amaze Mr Mantalini, and cast a wistful glance at the face of Newman Noggs, which had several times appeared behind a couple of panes of glass in the room door; it being a part of Newman's duty, when unimportant people called, to make various feints of supposing that the bell had rung for him to show them out: by way of a gentle hint to such visitors that it was time to go.

'Don't you know,' said Mr Mantalini, taking Ralph by the button, 'that it wasn't an accident at all, but a demd, furious, manslaughtering attack made upon him by your nephew?'

'What!' snarled Ralph, clenching his fists and turning a livid white.

'Demmit, Nickleby, you're as great a tiger as he is,' said Mantalini, alarmed at these demonstrations.

'Go on,' cried Ralph. 'Tell me what you mean. What is this story? Who told you? Speak,' growled Ralph. 'Do you hear me?'

''Gad, Nickleby,' said Mr Mantalini, retreating towards his wife, 'what a demneble fierce old evil genius you are! You're enough to frighten the life and soul out of her little delicious wits—flying all at once into such a blazing, ravaging, raging passion as never was, demmit!'

'Pshaw,' rejoined Ralph, forcing a smile. 'It is but manner.'

'It is a demd uncomfortable, private-madhouse-sort of a manner,' said Mr Mantalini, picking up his cane.

Ralph affected to smile, and once more inquired from whom Mr Mantalini had derived his information.

'From Pyke; and a demd, fine, pleasant, gentlemanly dog it is,' replied Mantalini. 'Demnition pleasant, and a tip-top sawyer.'

'And what said he?' asked Ralph, knitting his brows.

'That it happened this way—that your nephew met him at a coffeehouse, fell upon him with the most demneble ferocity, followed him to his cab, swore he would ride home with him, if he rode upon the horse's back or hooked himself on to the horse's tail; smashed his countenance, which is a demd fine countenance in its natural state; frightened the horse, pitched out Sir Mulberry and himself, and—'

'And was killed?' interposed Ralph with gleaming eyes. 'Was he? Is he dead?'

Mantalini shook his head.

'Ugh,' said Ralph, turning away. 'Then he has done nothing. Stay,' he added, looking round again. 'He broke a leg or an arm, or put his shoulder out, or fractured his collar-bone, or ground a rib or two? His neck was saved for the halter, but he got some painful and slow-healing injury for his trouble? Did he? You must have heard that, at least.'

'No,' rejoined Mantalini, shaking his head again. 'Unless he was dashed into such little pieces that they blew away, he wasn't hurt, for he went off as quiet and comfortable as—as—as demnition,' said Mr Mantalini, rather at a loss for a simile.

'And what,' said Ralph, hesitating a little, 'what was the cause of quarrel?'

'You are the demdest, knowing hand,' replied Mr Mantalini, in an admiring tone, 'the cunningest, rummest, superlativest old fox—oh dem!—to pretend now not to know that it was the little bright-eyed niece—the softest, sweetest, prettiest—'

'Alfred!' interposed Madame Mantalini.

'She is always right,' rejoined Mr Mantalini soothingly, 'and when she says it is time to go, it is time, and go she shall; and when she walks along the streets with her own tulip, the women shall say, with envy, she has got a demd fine husband; and the men shall say with rapture, he has got a demd fine wife; and they shall both be right and neither wrong, upon my life and soul—oh demmit!'

With which remarks, and many more, no less intellectual and to the purpose, Mr Mantalini kissed the fingers of his gloves to Ralph Nickleby, and drawing his lady's arm through his, led her mincingly away.

'So, so,' muttered Ralph, dropping into his chair; 'this devil is loose again, and thwarting me, as he was born to do, at every turn. He told me once there should be a day of reckoning between us, sooner or later. I'll make him a true prophet, for it shall surely come.'

'Are you at home?' asked Newman, suddenly popping in his head.

'No,' replied Ralph, with equal abruptness.

Newman withdrew his head, but thrust it in again.

'You're quite sure you're not at home, are you?' said Newman.

'What does the idiot mean?' cried Ralph, testily.

'He has been waiting nearly ever since they first came in, and may have heard your voice—that's all,' said Newman, rubbing his hands.

'Who has?' demanded Ralph, wrought by the intelligence he had just heard, and his clerk's provoking coolness, to an intense pitch of irritation.