Chapter 62

by Charles Dickens

　　Ralph makes one last Appointment--and keeps itCreeping from the house, and slinking off like a thief; groping withhis hands, when first he got into the street, as if he were a blindman; and looking often over his shoulder while he hurried away, asthough he were followed in imagination or reality by someone anxiousto 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 massthat seemed to follow him: not hurrying in the wild chase with theothers, but lingering sullenly behind, and gliding darkly andstealthily on. He often looked back at this, and, more than once,stopped to let it pass over; but, somehow, when he went forwardagain, 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 afew feet above the level of the street, and parted from it by a lowparapet-wall and an iron railing; a rank, unwholesome, rotten spot,where the very grass and weeds seemed, in their frouzy growth, totell that they had sprung from paupers' bodies, and had struck theirroots in the graves of men, sodden, while alive, in steaming courtsand drunken hungry dens. And here, in truth, they lay, parted fromthe living by a little earth and a board or two--lay thick andclose--corrupting in body as they had in mind--a dense and squalidcrowd. Here they lay, cheek by jowl with life: no deeper down thanthe feet of the throng that passed there every day, and piled highas their throats. Here they lay, a grisly family, all these deardeparted brothers and sisters of the ruddy clergyman who did histask so speedily when they were hidden in the ground!As he passed here, Ralph called to mind that he had been one of ajury, long before, on the body of a man who had cut his throat; andthat he was buried in this place. He could not tell how he came torecollect it now, when he had so often passed and never thoughtabout him, or how it was that he felt an interest in thecircumstance; but he did both; and stopping, and clasping the ironrailings with his hands, looked eagerly in, wondering which might behis grave.While he was thus engaged, there came towards him, with noise ofshouts and singing, some fellows full of drink, followed by others,who were remonstrating with them and urging them to go home inquiet. 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 wasmoved to mirth, and echoed the laugh of one who stood near and wholooked round in his face. When they had passed on, and he was leftalone again, he resumed his speculation with a new kind of interest;for he recollected that the last person who had seen the suicidealive, had left him very merry, and he remembered how strange he andthe other jurors had thought that at the time.He could not fix upon the spot among such a heap of graves, but heconjured up a strong and vivid idea of the man himself, and how helooked, and what had led him to do it; all of which he recalled withease. By dint of dwelling upon this theme, he carried theimpression with him when he went away; as he remembered, when achild, to have had frequently before him the figure of some goblinhe had once seen chalked upon a door. But as he drew nearer andnearer home he forgot it again, and began to think how very dull andsolitary the house would be inside.This feeling became so strong at last, that when he reached his owndoor, 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 thoughto 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 verydreary, cold, and still it was!Shivering from head to foot, he made his way upstairs into the roomwhere he had been last disturbed. He had made a kind of compactwith himself that he would not think of what had happened until hegot 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 itwas true; knew it as well, now, as if he had been privy to it allalong. His own child! And dead too. Dying beside Nicholas, lovinghim, and looking upon him as something like an angel. That was theworst!They had all turned from him and deserted him in his very firstneed. Even money could not buy them now; everything must come out,and everybody must know all. Here was the young lord dead, hiscompanion abroad and beyond his reach, ten thousand pounds gone atone blow, his plot with Gride overset at the very moment of triumph,his after-schemes discovered, himself in danger, the object of hispersecution and Nicholas's love, his own wretched boy; everythingcrumbled and fallen upon him, and he beaten down beneath the ruinsand grovelling in the dust.If he had known his child to be alive; if no deceit had been everpractised, and he had grown up beneath his eye; he might have been acareless, indifferent, rough, harsh father--like enough--he feltthat; but the thought would come that he might have been otherwise,and that his son might have been a comfort to him, and they twohappy together. He began to think now, that his supposed death andhis wife's flight had had some share in making him the morose, hardman he was. He seemed to remember a time when he was not quite sorough and obdurate; and almost thought that he had first hatedNicholas because he was young and gallant, and perhaps like thestripling who had brought dishonour and loss of fortune on his head.But one tender thought, or one of natural regret, in his whirlwindof passion and remorse, was as a drop of calm water in a stormymaddened sea. His hatred of Nicholas had been fed upon his owndefeat, nourished on his interference with his schemes, fattenedupon his old defiance and success. There were reasons for itsincrease; it had grown and strengthened gradually. Now it attaineda height which was sheer wild lunacy. That his, of all others,should have been the hands to rescue his miserable child; that heshould have been his protector and faithful friend; that he shouldhave shown him that love and tenderness which, from the wretchedmoment of his birth, he had never known; that he should have taughthim to hate his own parent and execrate his very name; that heshould 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 forNicholas, and the attachment of Nicholas to him, was insupportableagony. The picture of his deathbed, with Nicholas at his side,tending and supporting him, and he breathing out his thanks, andexpiring in his arms, when he would have had them mortal enemies andhating each other to the last, drove him frantic. He gnashed histeeth and smote the air, and looking wildly round, with eyes whichgleamed through the darkness, cried aloud:'I am trampled down and ruined. The wretch told me true. The nighthas come! Is there no way to rob them of further triumph, and spurntheir mercy and compassion? Is there no devil to help me?'Swiftly, there glided again into his brain the figure he had raisedthat night. It seemed to lie before him. The head was covered now.So it was when he first saw it. The rigid, upturned, marble feettoo, he remembered well. Then came before him the pale andtrembling relatives who had told their tale upon the inquest--theshrieks of women--the silent dread of men--the consternation anddisquiet--the victory achieved by that heap of clay, which, with onemotion of its hand, had let out the life and made this stir amongthem--He spoke no more; but, after a pause, softly groped his way out ofthe room, and up the echoing stairs--up to the top--to the frontgarret--where he closed the door behind him, and remained.It was a mere lumber-room now, but it yet contained an olddismantled bedstead; the one on which his son had slept; for noother had ever been there. He avoided it hastily, and sat down asfar from it as he could.The weakened glare of the lights in the street below, shiningthrough the window which had no blind or curtain to intercept it,was enough to show the character of the room, though not sufficientfully to reveal the various articles of lumber, old corded trunksand broken furniture, which were scattered about. It had a shelvingroof; high in one part, and at another descending almost to thefloor. It was towards the highest part that Ralph directed hiseyes; and upon it he kept them fixed steadily for some minutes, whenhe rose, and dragging thither an old chest upon which he had beenseated, mounted on it, and felt along the wall above his head withboth hands. At length, they touched a large iron hook, firmlydriven into one of the beams.At that moment, he was interrupted by a loud knocking at the doorbelow. After a little hesitation he opened the window, and demandedwho 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 whetherthe man whom he had seen that night was to be detained; and thatalthough it was now midnight they had sent, in their anxiety to doright.'Yes,' cried Ralph, 'detain him till tomorrow; then let them bringhim here--him and my nephew--and come themselves, and be sure that Iwill be ready to receive them.''At what hour?' asked the voice.'At any hour,' replied Ralph fiercely. 'In the afternoon, tellthem. At any hour, at any minute. All times will be alike to me.'He listened to the man's retreating footsteps until the sound hadpassed, and then, gazing up into the sky, saw, or thought he saw,the same black cloud that had seemed to follow him home, and whichnow appeared to hover directly above the house.'I know its meaning now,' he muttered, 'and the restless nights, thedreams, and why I have quailed of late. All pointed to this. Oh! ifmen by selling their own souls could ride rampant for a term, forhow 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 merrilyfor births that make expectants writhe, and marriages that are madein hell, and toll ruefully for the dead whose shoes are wornalready! Call men to prayers who are godly because not found out,and ring chimes for the coming in of every year that brings thiscursed world nearer to its end. No bell or book for me! Throw meon a dunghill, and let me rot there, to infect the air!'With a wild look around, in which frenzy, hatred, and despair werehorribly 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 quakedand rocked; the crazy casement rattled with the wind, as though animpatient hand inside were striving to burst it open. But no handwas there, and it opened no more.'How's this?' cried one. 'The gentleman say they can't make anybodyhear, and have been trying these two hours.''And yet he came home last night,' said another; 'for he spoke tosomebody 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 theirobserving that the house was still close shut, as the housekeeperhad said she had left it on the previous night, and led to a greatmany suggestions: which terminated in two or three of the boldestgetting round to the back, and so entering by a window, while theothers remained outside, in impatient expectation.They looked into all the rooms below: opening the shutters as theywent, to admit the fading light: and still finding nobody, andeverything quiet and in its place, doubted whether they should gofarther. One man, however, remarking that they had not yet beeninto the garret, and that it was there he had been last seen, theyagreed to look there too, and went up softly; for the mystery andsilence made them timid.After they had stood for an instant, on the landing, eyeing eachother, he who had proposed their carrying the search so far, turnedthe handle of the door, and, pushing it open, looked through thechink, 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 othersaside 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 onan iron hook immediately below the trap-door in the ceiling--in thevery place to which the eyes of his son, a lonely, desolate, littlecreature, had so often been directed in childish terror, fourteenyears before.