`I need look somewhat changed,' he said, after a short silence; `for I have undergone some suffering, both of mind and body, since I left London.
I have been very poor, too, and have even suffered from want.'
`Good Heaven, Mr Nicholas!' exclaimed Miss La Creevy, `what are you telling me?'
`Nothing which need distress you quite so much,' answered Nicholas, with a more sprightly air; `neither did I come here to bewail my lot, but on matter more to the purpose. I wish to meet my uncle face to face. Ishould tell you that first.'
`Then all I have to say about that is,' interposed Miss La Creevy, `that I don't envy you your taste; and that sitting in the same room with his very boots, would put me out of humour for a fortnight.'
`In the main,' said Nicholas, `there may be no great difference of opinion between you and me, so far; but you will understand, that I desire to confront him, to justify myself, and to cast his duplicity and malice in his throat.'
`That's quite another matter,' rejoined Miss La Creevy.
`Heaven forgive me; but I shouldn't cry my eyes quite out of my head, if they choked him. Well?'
`To this end, I called upon him this morning,' said Nicholas. `He only returned to town on Saturday, and I knew nothing of his arrival until late last night.'
`And did you see him?' asked Miss La Creevy.
`No,' replied Nicholas. `He had gone out.'
`Hah!' said Miss La Creevy; `on some kind, charitable business, I dare say.'
`I have reason to believe,' pursued Nicholas, `from what has been told me, by a friend of mine who is acquainted with his movements, that he intends seeing my mother and sister today, and giving them his version of the occurrences that have befallen me. I will meet him there.'
`That's right,' said Miss La Creevy, rubbing her hands. `And yet, Idon't know,' she added, `there is much to be thought of--others to be considered.'
`I have considered others,' rejoined Nicholas; `but as honesty and honour are both at issue, nothing shall deter me.'
`You should know best,' said Miss La Creevy.
`In this case I hope so,' answered Nicholas. `And all I want you to do for me is, to prepare them for my coming. They think me a long way off, and if I went wholly unexpected, I should frighten them. If you can spare time to tell them that you have seen me, and that I shall be with them in a quarter of an hour afterwards, you will do me a great service.'
`I wish I could do you, or any of you, a greater,' said Miss La Creevy;`but the power to serve, is as seldom joined with the will, as the will is with the power, I think.'
Talking on very fast and very much, Miss La Creevy finished her breakfast with great expedition, put away the tea-caddy and hid the key under the fender, resumed her bonnet, and, taking Nicholas's arm, sallied forth at once to the City. Nicholas left her near the door of his mother's house, and promised to return within a quarter of an hour.
It so chanced that Ralph Nickleby, at length seeing fit, for his own purposes, to communicate the atrocities of which Nicholas had been guilty, had (instead of first proceeding to another quarter of the town on business, as Newman Noggs supposed he would) gone straight to his sister-in-law.
Hence, when Miss La Creevy, admitted by a girl who was cleaning the house, made her way to the sitting-room, she found Mrs Nickleby and Kate in tears, and Ralph just concluding his statement of his nephew's misdemeanours.
Kate beckoned her not to retire, and Miss La Creevy took a seat in silence.
`You are here already, are you, my gentleman?' thought the little woman.
`Then he shall announce himself, and see what effect that has on you.'
`This is pretty,' said Ralph, folding up Miss Squeers's note; `very pretty. I recommend him--against all my previous conviction, for I knew he would never do any good--to a man with whom, behaving himself properly, he might have remained, in comfort, for years. What is the result? Conduct for which he might hold up his hand at the Old Bailey.'
`I never will believe it,' said Kate, indignantly; `never. It is some base conspiracy, which carries its own falsehood with it.'
`My dear,' said Ralph, `you wrong the worthy man. These are not inventions.
The man is assaulted, your brother is not to be found; this boy, of whom they speak, goes with him--remember, remember.'
`It is impossible,' said Kate. `Nicholas!--and a thief too! Mamma, how can you sit and hear such statements?'
Poor Mrs Nickleby, who had, at no time, been remarkable for the possession of a very clear understanding, and who had been reduced by the late changes in her affairs to a most complicated state of perplexity, made no other reply to this earnest remonstrance than exclaiming from behind a mass of pocket-handkerchief, that she never could have believed it--thereby most ingeniously leaving her hearers to suppose that she did believe it.
`It would be my duty, if he came in my way, to deliver him up to justice,'
said Ralph, `my bounden duty; I should have no other course, as a man of the world and a man of business, to pursue. And yet,' said Ralph, speaking in a very marked manner, and looking furtively, but fixedly, at Kate, `and yet I would not. I would spare the feelings of his--of his sister. And his mother of course,' added Ralph, as though by an afterthought, and with far less emphasis.
Kate very well understood that this was held out as an additional inducement to her to preserve the strictest silence regarding the events of the preceding night. She looked involuntarily towards Ralph as he ceased to speak, but he had turned his eyes another way, and seemed for the moment quite unconscious of her presence.
`Everything,' said Ralph, after a long silence, broken only by Mrs Nickleby's sobs, `everything combines to prove the truth of this letter, if indeed there were any possibility of disputing it. Do innocent men steal away from the sight of honest folks, and skulk in hiding-places, like outlaws?