Чарльз Диккенс
Nicholas Nickleby
So saying, Lord Frederick Verisopht walked out of the room, leaving Ralph Nickleby and Sir Mulberry in most unpleasant astonishment.
‘Is this your pupil?’ asked Ralph, softly, ‘or has he come fresh from some country parson?’
‘Green fools take these fits sometimes,’ replied Sir Mulberry Hawk, biting his lip, and pointing to the door. ‘Leave him to me.’
Ralph exchanged a familiar look with his old acquaintance; for they had suddenly grown confidential again in this alarming surprise; and took his way home, thoughtfully and slowly.
While these things were being said and done, and long before they were concluded, the omnibus had disgorged Miss La Creevy and her escort, and they had arrived at her own door. Now, the good-nature of the little miniature painter would by no means allow of Smike’s walking back again, until he had been previously refreshed with just a sip of something comfortable and a mixed biscuit or so; and Smike, entertaining no objection either to the sip of something comfortable, or the mixed biscuit, but, considering on the contrary that they would be a very pleasant preparation for a walk to Bow, it fell out that he delayed much longer than he originally intended, and that it was some half-hour after dusk when he set forth on his journey home.
There was no likelihood of his losing his way, for it lay quite straight before him, and he had walked into town with Nicholas, and back alone, almost every day. So, Miss La Creevy and he shook hands with mutual confidence, and, being charged with more kind remembrances to Mrs. and Miss Nickleby, Smike started off.
At the foot of Ludgate Hill, he turned a little out of the road to satisfy his curiosity by having a look at Newgate. After staring up at the sombre walls, from the opposite side of the way, with great care and dread for some minutes, he turned back again into the old track, and walked briskly through the city; stopping now and then to gaze in at the window of some particularly attractive shop, then running for a little way, then stopping again, and so on, as any other country lad might do.
He had been gazing for a long time through a jeweller’s window, wishing he could take some of the beautiful trinkets home as a present, and imagining what delight they would afford if he could, when the clocks struck three-quarters past eight; roused by the sound, he hurried on at a very quick pace, and was crossing the corner of a by-street when he felt himself violently brought to, with a jerk so sudden that he was obliged to cling to a lamp-post to save himself from falling. At the same moment, a small boy clung tight round his leg, and a shrill cry of ‘Here he is, father! Hooray!’ vibrated in his ears.
Smike knew that voice too well. He cast his despairing eyes downward towards the form from which it had proceeded, and, shuddering from head to foot, looked round. Mr. Squeers had hooked him in the coat collar with the handle of his umbrella, and was hanging on at the other end with all his might and main. The cry of triumph proceeded from Master Wackford, who, regardless of all his kicks and struggles, clung to him with the tenacity of a bull-dog!
One glance showed him this; and in that one glance the terrified creature became utterly powerless and unable to utter a sound.
‘Here’s a go!’ cried Mr. Squeers, gradually coming hand-over-hand down the umbrella, and only unhooking it when he had got tight hold of the victim’s collar. ‘Here’s a delicious go! Wackford, my boy, call up one of them coaches.’
‘A coach, father!’ cried little Wackford.
‘Yes, a coach, sir,’ replied Squeers, feasting his eyes upon the countenance of Smike. ‘Damn the expense. Let’s have him in a coach.’
‘What’s he been a doing of?’ asked a labourer with a hod of bricks, against whom and a fellow-labourer Mr. Squeers had backed, on the first jerk of the umbrella.
‘Everything!’ replied Mr. Squeers, looking fixedly at his old pupil in a sort of rapturous trance. ‘Everything – running away, sir – joining in bloodthirsty attacks upon his master – there’s nothing that’s bad that he hasn’t done. Oh, what a delicious go is this here, good Lord!’
The man looked from Squeers to Smike; but such mental faculties as the poor fellow possessed, had utterly deserted him. The coach came up; Master Wackford entered; Squeers pushed in his prize, and following close at his heels, pulled up the glasses. The coachman mounted his box and drove slowly off, leaving the two bricklayers, and an old apple-woman, and a town-made little boy returning from an evening school, who had been the only witnesses of the scene, to meditate upon it at their leisure.
Mr. Squeers sat himself down on the opposite seat to the unfortunate Smike, and, planting his hands firmly on his knees, looked at him for some five minutes, when, seeming to recover from his trance, he uttered a loud laugh, and slapped his old pupil’s face several times – taking the right and left sides alternately.
‘It isn’t a dream!’ said Squeers. ‘That’s real flesh and blood! I know the feel of it!’ and being quite assured of his good fortune by these experiments, Mr. Squeers administered a few boxes on the ear, lest the entertainments should seem to partake of sameness, and laughed louder and longer at every one.
‘Your mother will be fit to jump out of her skin, my boy, when she hears of this,’ said Squeers to his son.
‘Oh, won’t she though, father?’ replied Master Wackford.
‘To think,’ said Squeers, ‘that you and me should be turning out of a street, and come upon him at the very nick; and that I should have him tight, at only one cast of the umbrella, as if I had hooked him with a grappling-iron! Ha, ha!’
‘Didn’t I catch hold of his leg, neither, father?’ said little Wackford.
‘You did; like a good ‘un, my boy,’ said Mr. Squeers, patting his son’s head, ‘and you shall have the best button-over jacket and waistcoat that the next new boy brings down, as a reward of merit. Mind that. You always keep on in the same path, and do them things that you see your father do, and when you die you’ll go right slap to Heaven and no questions asked.’
Improving the occasion in these words, Mr. Squeers patted his son’s head again, and then patted Smike’s – but harder; and inquired in a bantering tone how he found himself by this time.
‘I must go home,’ replied Smike, looking wildly round.
‘To be sure you must. You’re about right there,’ replied Mr. Squeers. ‘You’ll go home very soon, you will. You’ll find yourself at the peaceful village of Dotheboys, in Yorkshire, in something under a week’s time, my young friend; and the next time you get away from there, I give you leave to keep away. Where’s the clothes you run off in, you ungrateful robber?’ said Mr. Squeers, in a severe voice.
Smike glanced at the neat attire which the care of Nicholas had provided for him; and wrung his hands.
‘Do you know that I could hang you up, outside of the Old Bailey, for making away with them articles of property?’ said Squeers. ‘Do you know that it’s a hanging matter – and I an’t quite certain whether it an’t an anatomy one besides – to walk off with up’ards of the valley of five pound from a dwelling-house? Eh? Do you know that? What do you suppose was the worth of them clothes you had? Do you know that that Wellington boot you wore, cost eight-and-twenty shillings when it was a pair, and the shoe seven-and-six? But you came to the right shop for mercy when you came to me, and thank your stars that it is me as has got to serve you with the article.’
Anybody not in Mr. Squeers’s confidence would have supposed that he was quite out of the article in question, instead of having a large stock on hand ready for all comers; nor would the opinion of sceptical persons have undergone much alteration when he followed up the remark by poking Smike in the chest with the ferrule of his umbrella, and dealing a smart shower of blows, with the ribs of the same instrument, upon his head and shoulders.
‘I never threshed a boy in a hackney coach before,’ said Mr. Squeers, when he stopped to rest. ‘There’s inconveniency in it, but the novelty gives it a sort of relish, too!’
Poor Smike! He warded off the blows, as well as he could, and now shrunk into a corner of the coach, with his head resting on his hands, and his elbows on his knees; he was stunned and stupefied, and had no more idea that any act of his, would enable him to escape from the all-powerful Squeers, now that he had no friend to speak to or to advise with, than he had had in all the weary years of his Yorkshire life which preceded the arrival of Nicholas.
The journey seemed endless; street after street was entered and left behind; and still they went jolting on. At last Mr. Squeers began to thrust his head out of the widow every half-minute, and to bawl a variety of directions to the coachman; and after passing, with some difficulty, through several mean streets which the appearance of the houses and the bad state of the road denoted to have been recently built, Mr. Squeers suddenly tugged at the check string with all his might, and cried, ‘Stop!’
‘What are you pulling a man’s arm off for?’ said the coachman looking angrily down.
‘That’s the house,’ replied Squeers. ‘The second of them four little houses, one story high, with the green shutters. There’s brass plate on the door, with the name of Snawley.’
‘Couldn’t you say that without wrenching a man’s limbs off his body?’ inquired the coachman.
‘No!’ bawled Mr. Squeers. ‘Say another word, and I’ll summons you for having a broken winder. Stop!’
Obedient to this direction, the coach stopped at Mr. Snawley’s door. Mr Snawley may be remembered as the sleek and sanctified gentleman who confided two sons (in law) to the parental care of Mr. Squeers, as narrated in the fourth chapter of this history. Mr. Snawley’s house was on the extreme borders of some new settlements adjoining Somers Town, and Mr Squeers had taken lodgings therein for a short time, as his stay was longer than usual, and the Saracen, having experience of Master Wackford’s appetite, had declined to receive him on any other terms than as a full-grown customer.
‘Here we are!’ said Squeers, hurrying Smike into the little parlour, where Mr. Snawley and his wife were taking a lobster supper. ‘Here’s the vagrant – the felon – the rebel – the monster of unthankfulness.’
‘What! The boy that run away!’ cried Snawley, resting his knife and fork upright on the table, and opening his eyes to their full width.
‘The very boy’, said Squeers, putting his fist close to Smike’s nose, and drawing it away again, and repeating the process several times, with a vicious aspect. ‘If there wasn’t a lady present, I’d fetch him such a – : never mind, I’ll owe it him.’
And here Mr. Squeers related how, and in what manner, and when and where, he had picked up the runaway.
‘It’s clear that there has been a Providence in it, sir,’ said Mr. Snawley, casting down his eyes with an air of humility, and elevating his fork, with a bit of lobster on the top of it, towards the ceiling.
‘Providence is against him, no doubt,’ replied Mr. Squeers, scratching his nose. ‘Of course; that was to be expected. Anybody might have known that.’
‘Hard-heartedness and evil-doing will never prosper, sir,’ said Mr Snawley.
‘Never was such a thing known,’ rejoined Squeers, taking a little roll of notes from his pocket-book, to see that they were all safe.
‘I have been, Mr. Snawley,’ said Mr. Squeers, when he had satisfied himself upon this point, ‘I have been that chap’s benefactor, feeder, teacher, and clother. I have been that chap’s classical, commercial, mathematical, philosophical, and trigonomical friend. My son – my only son, Wackford – has been his brother; Mrs. Squeers has been his mother, grandmother, aunt, – ah! and I may say uncle too, all in one. She never cottoned to anybody, except them two engaging and delightful boys of yours, as she cottoned to this chap. What’s my return? What’s come of my milk of human kindness? It turns into curds and whey when I look at him.’
‘Well it may, sir,’ said Mrs. Snawley. ‘Oh! Well it may, sir.’
‘Where has he been all this time?’ inquired Snawley. ‘Has he been living with – ?’
‘Ah, sir!’ interposed Squeers, confronting him again. ‘Have you been a living with that there devilish Nickleby, sir?’
But no threats or cuffs could elicit from Smike one word of reply to this question; for he had internally resolved that he would rather perish in the wretched prison to which he was again about to be consigned, than utter one syllable which could involve his first and true friend. He had already called to mind the strict injunctions of secrecy as to his past life, which Nicholas had laid upon him when they travelled from Yorkshire; and a confused and perplexed idea that his benefactor might have committed some terrible crime in bringing him away, which would render him liable to heavy punishment if detected, had contributed, in some degree, to reduce him to his present state of apathy and terror.
Such were the thoughts – if to visions so imperfect and undefined as those which wandered through his enfeebled brain, the term can be applied – which were present to the mind of Smike, and rendered him deaf alike to intimidation and persuasion. Finding every effort useless, Mr. Squeers conducted him to a little back room up-stairs, where he was to pass the night; and, taking the precaution of removing his shoes, and coat and waistcoat, and also of locking the door on the outside, lest he should muster up sufficient energy to make an attempt at escape, that worthy gentleman left him to his meditations.
What those meditations were, and how the poor creature’s heart sunk within him when he thought – when did he, for a moment, cease to think? – of his late home, and the dear friends and familiar faces with which it was associated, cannot be told. To prepare the mind for such a heavy sleep, its growth must be stopped by rigour and cruelty in childhood; there must be years of misery and suffering, lightened by no ray of hope; the chords of the heart, which beat a quick response to the voice of gentleness and affection, must have rusted and broken in their secret places, and bear the lingering echo of no old word of love or kindness. Gloomy, indeed, must have been the short day, and dull the long, long twilight, preceding such a night of intellect as his.
There were voices which would have roused him, even then; but their welcome tones could not penetrate there; and he crept to bed the same listless, hopeless, blighted creature, that Nicholas had first found him at the Yorkshire school.
CHAPTER 39
In which another old Friend encounters Smike, very opportunely and to some Purpose
The night, fraught with so much bitterness to one poor soul, had given place to a bright and cloudless summer morning, when a north-country mail-coach traversed, with cheerful noise, the yet silent streets of Islington, and, giving brisk note of its approach with the lively winding of the guard’s horn, clattered onward to its halting-place hard by the Post Office.
The only outside passenger was a burly, honest-looking countryman on the box, who, with his eyes fixed upon the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, appeared so wrapt in admiring wonder, as to be quite insensible to all the bustle of getting out the bags and parcels, until one of the coach windows being let sharply down, he looked round, and encountered a pretty female face which was just then thrust out.
‘See there, lass!’ bawled the countryman, pointing towards the object of his admiration. ‘There be Paul’s Church. ‘Ecod, he be a soizable ‘un, he be.’
‘Goodness, John! I shouldn’t have thought it could have been half the size. What a monster!’
‘Monsther! – Ye’re aboot right theer, I reckon, Mrs. Browdie,’ said the countryman good-humouredly, as he came slowly down in his huge top-coat; ‘and wa’at dost thee tak yon place to be noo – thot’un owor the wa’? Ye’d never coom near it ‘gin you thried for twolve moonths. It’s na’ but a Poast Office! Ho! ho! They need to charge for dooble-latthers. A Poast Office! Wa’at dost thee think o’ thot? ‘Ecod, if thot’s on’y a Poast Office, I’d loike to see where the Lord Mayor o’ Lunnun lives.’
So saying, John Browdie – for he it was – opened the coach-door, and tapping Mrs. Browdie, late Miss Price, on the cheek as he looked in, burst into a boisterous fit of laughter.
‘Weel!’ said John. ‘Dang my bootuns if she bean’t asleep agean!’
‘She’s been asleep all night, and was, all yesterday, except for a minute or two now and then,’ replied John Browdie’s choice, ‘and I was very sorry when she woke, for she has been so cross!’
The subject of these remarks was a slumbering figure, so muffled in shawl and cloak, that it would have been matter of impossibility to guess at its sex but for a brown beaver bonnet and green veil which ornamented the head, and which, having been crushed and flattened, for two hundred and fifty miles, in that particular angle of the vehicle from which the lady’s snores now proceeded, presented an appearance sufficiently ludicrous to have moved less risible muscles than those of John Browdie’s ruddy face.
‘Hollo!’ cried John, twitching one end of the dragged veil. ‘Coom, wakken oop, will ‘ee?’
After several burrowings into the old corner, and many exclamations of impatience and fatigue, the figure struggled into a sitting posture; and there, under a mass of crumpled beaver, and surrounded by a semicircle of blue curl-papers, were the delicate features of Miss Fanny Squeers.
‘Oh, ‘Tilda!’ cried Miss Squeers, ‘how you have been kicking of me through this blessed night!’
‘Well, I do like that,’ replied her friend, laughing, ‘when you have had nearly the whole coach to yourself.’
‘Don’t deny it, ‘Tilda,’ said Miss Squeers, impressively, ‘because you have, and it’s no use to go attempting to say you haven’t. You mightn’t have known it in your sleep, ‘Tilda, but I haven’t closed my eyes for a single wink, and so I think I am to be believed.’
With which reply, Miss Squeers adjusted the bonnet and veil, which nothing but supernatural interference and an utter suspension of nature’s laws could have reduced to any shape or form; and evidently flattering herself that it looked uncommonly neat, brushed off the sandwich-crumbs and bits of biscuit which had accumulated in her lap, and availing herself of John Browdie’s proffered arm, descended from the coach.
‘Noo,’ said John, when a hackney coach had been called, and the ladies and the luggage hurried in, ‘gang to the Sarah’s Head, mun.’
‘To the vere?’ cried the coachman.
‘Lawk, Mr. Browdie!’ interrupted Miss Squeers. ‘The idea! Saracen’s Head.’
‘Sure-ly,’ said John, ‘I know’d it was something aboot Sarah’s Son’s Head. Dost thou know thot?’
‘Oh, ah! I know that,’ replied the coachman gruffly, as he banged the door.
‘’Tilda, dear, really,’ remonstrated Miss Squeers, ‘we shall be taken for I don’t know what.’
‘Let them tak’ us as they foind us,’ said John Browdie; ‘we dean’t come to Lunnun to do nought but ‘joy oursel, do we?’
‘I hope not, Mr. Browdie,’ replied Miss Squeers, looking singularly dismal.
‘Well, then,’ said John, ‘it’s no matther. I’ve only been a married man fower days, ‘account of poor old feyther deein, and puttin’ it off. Here be a weddin’ party – broide and broide’s-maid, and the groom – if a mun dean’t ‘joy himsel noo, when ought he, hey? Drat it all, thot’s what I want to know.’
So, in order that he might begin to enjoy himself at once, and lose no time, Mr. Browdie gave his wife a hearty kiss, and succeeded in wresting another from Miss Squeers, after a maidenly resistance of scratching and struggling on the part of that young lady, which was not quite over when they reached the Saracen’s Head.
Here, the party straightway retired to rest; the refreshment of sleep being necessary after so long a journey; and here they met again about noon, to a substantial breakfast, spread by direction of Mr. John Browdie, in a small private room upstairs commanding an uninterrupted view of the stables.
To have seen Miss Squeers now, divested of the brown beaver, the green veil, and the blue curl-papers, and arrayed in all the virgin splendour of a white frock and spencer, with a white muslin bonnet, and an imitative damask rose in full bloom on the inside thereof – her luxuriant crop of hair arranged in curls so tight that it was impossible they could come out by any accident, and her bonnet-cap trimmed with little damask roses, which might be supposed to be so many promising scions of the big rose – to have seen all this, and to have seen the broad damask belt, matching both the family rose and the little roses, which encircled her slender waist, and by a happy ingenuity took off from the shortness of the spencer behind, – to have beheld all this, and to have taken further into account the coral bracelets (rather short of beads, and with a very visible black string) which clasped her wrists, and the coral necklace which rested on her neck, supporting, outside her frock, a lonely cornelian heart, typical of her own disengaged affections – to have contemplated all these mute but expressive appeals to the purest feelings of our nature, might have thawed the frost of age, and added new and inextinguishable fuel to the fire of youth.
The waiter was touched. Waiter as he was, he had human passions and feelings, and he looked very hard at Miss Squeers as he handed the muffins.
‘Is my pa in, do you know?’ asked Miss Squeers with dignity.
‘Beg your pardon, miss?’
‘My pa,’ repeated Miss Squeers; ‘is he in?’
‘In where, miss?’
‘In here – in the house!’ replied Miss Squeers. ‘My pa – Mr Wackford Squeers – he’s stopping here. Is he at home?’
‘I didn’t know there was any gen’l’man of that name in the house, miss’ replied the waiter. ‘There may be, in the coffee-room.’
May Be. Very pretty this, indeed! Here was Miss Squeers, who had been depending, all the way to London, upon showing her friends how much at home she would be, and how much respectful notice her name and connections would excite, told that her father might be there! ‘As if he was a feller!’ observed Miss Squeers, with emphatic indignation.
‘Ye’d betther inquire, mun,’ said John Browdie. ‘An’ hond up another pigeon-pie, will ‘ee? Dang the chap,’ muttered John, looking into the empty dish as the waiter retired; ‘does he ca’ this a pie – three yoong pigeons and a troifling matther o’ steak, and a crust so loight that you doant know when it’s in your mooth and when it’s gane? I wonder hoo many pies goes to a breakfast!’
After a short interval, which John Browdie employed upon the ham and a cold round of beef, the waiter returned with another pie, and the information that Mr. Squeers was not stopping in the house, but that he came there every day and that directly he arrived, he should be shown upstairs. With this, he retired; and he had not retired two minutes, when he returned with Mr. Squeers and his hopeful son.
‘Why, who’d have thought of this?’ said Mr. Squeers, when he had saluted the party and received some private family intelligence from his daughter.
‘Who, indeed, pa!’ replied that young lady, spitefully. ‘But you see ‘Tilda is married at last.’
‘And I stond threat for a soight o’ Lunnun, schoolmeasther,’ said John, vigorously attacking the pie.
‘One of them things that young men do when they get married,’ returned Squeers; ‘and as runs through with their money like nothing at all! How much better wouldn’t it be now, to save it up for the eddication of any little boys, for instance! They come on you,’ said Mr. Squeers in a moralising way, ‘before you’re aware of it; mine did upon me.’
‘Will ‘ee pick a bit?’ said John.
‘I won’t myself,’ returned Squeers; ‘but if you’ll just let little Wackford tuck into something fat, I’ll be obliged to you. Give it him in his fingers, else the waiter charges it on, and there’s lot of profit on this sort of vittles without that. If you hear the waiter coming, sir, shove it in your pocket and look out of the window, d’ye hear?’
‘I’m awake, father,’ replied the dutiful Wackford.
‘Well,’ said Squeers, turning to his daughter, ‘it’s your turn to be married next. You must make haste.’
‘Oh, I’m in no hurry,’ said Miss Squeers, very sharply.
‘No, Fanny?’ cried her old friend with some archness.
‘No, ‘Tilda,’ replied Miss Squeers, shaking her head vehemently. ‘I can wait.’
‘So can the young men, it seems, Fanny,’ observed Mrs. Browdie.
‘They an’t draw’d into it by me, ‘Tilda,’ retorted Miss Squeers.
‘No,’ returned her friend; ‘that’s exceedingly true.’
The sarcastic tone of this reply might have provoked a rather acrimonious retort from Miss Squeers, who, besides being of a constitutionally vicious temper – aggravated, just now, by travel and recent jolting – was somewhat irritated by old recollections and the failure of her own designs upon Mr. Browdie; and the acrimonious retort might have led to a great many other retorts, which might have led to Heaven knows what, if the subject of conversation had not been, at that precise moment, accidentally changed by Mr. Squeers himself
‘What do you think?’ said that gentleman; ‘who do you suppose we have laid hands on, Wackford and me?’
‘Pa! not Mr – ?’ Miss Squeers was unable to finish the sentence, but Mrs. Browdie did it for her, and added, ‘Nickleby?’
‘No,’ said Squeers. ‘But next door to him though.’
‘You can’t mean Smike?’ cried Miss Squeers, clapping her hands.
‘Yes, I can though,’ rejoined her father. ‘I’ve got him, hard and fast.’
‘Wa’at!’ exclaimed John Browdie, pushing away his plate. ‘Got that poor – dom’d scoondrel? Where?’
‘Why, in the top back room, at my lodging,’ replied Squeers, ‘with him on one side, and the key on the other.’
‘At thy loodgin’! Thee’st gotten him at thy loodgin’? Ho! ho! The schoolmeasther agin all England. Give us thee hond, mun; I’m darned but I must shak thee by the hond for thot. – Gotten him at thy loodgin’?’
‘Yes,’ replied Squeers, staggering in his chair under the congratulatory blow on the chest which the stout Yorkshireman dealt him; ‘thankee. Don’t do it again. You mean it kindly, I know, but it hurts rather. Yes, there he is. That’s not so bad, is it?’
‘Ba’ad!’ repeated John Browdie. ‘It’s eneaf to scare a mun to hear tell on.’
‘I thought it would surprise you a bit,’ said Squeers, rubbing his hands. ‘It was pretty neatly done, and pretty quick too.’
‘Hoo wor it?’ inquired John, sitting down close to him. ‘Tell us all aboot it, mun; coom, quick!’
Although he could not keep pace with John Browdie’s impatience, Mr. Squeers related the lucky chance by which Smike had fallen into his hands, as quickly as he could, and, except when he was interrupted by the admiring remarks of his auditors, paused not in the recital until he had brought it to an end.
‘For fear he should give me the slip, by any chance,’ observed Squeers, when he had finished, looking very cunning, ‘I’ve taken three outsides for tomorrow morning – for Wackford and him and me – and have arranged to leave the accounts and the new boys to the agent, don’t you see? So it’s very lucky you come today, or you’d have missed us; and as it is, unless you could come and tea with me tonight, we shan’t see anything more of you before we go away.’
‘Dean’t say anoother wurd,’ returned the Yorkshireman, shaking him by the hand. ‘We’d coom, if it was twonty mile.’
‘No, would you though?’ returned Mr. Squeers, who had not expected quite such a ready acceptance of his invitation, or he would have considered twice before he gave it.
John Browdie’s only reply was another squeeze of the hand, and an assurance that they would not begin to see London till tomorrow, so that they might be at Mr. Snawley’s at six o’clock without fail; and after some further conversation, Mr. Squeers and his son departed.
During the remainder of the day, Mr. Browdie was in a very odd and excitable state; bursting occasionally into an explosion of laughter, and then taking up his hat and running into the coach-yard to have it out by himself. He was very restless too, constantly walking in and out, and snapping his fingers, and dancing scraps of uncouth country dances, and, in short, conducting himself in such a very extraordinary manner, that Miss Squeers opined he was going mad, and, begging her dear ‘Tilda not to distress herself, communicated her suspicions in so many words. Mrs Browdie, however, without discovering any great alarm, observed that she had seen him so once before, and that although he was almost sure to be ill after it, it would not be anything very serious, and therefore he was better left alone.
The result proved her to be perfectly correct for, while they were all sitting in Mr. Snawley’s parlour that night, and just as it was beginning to get dusk, John Browdie was taken so ill, and seized with such an alarming dizziness in the head, that the whole company were thrown into the utmost consternation. His good lady, indeed, was the only person present, who retained presence of mind enough to observe that if he were allowed to lie down on Mr. Squeers’s bed for an hour or so, and left entirely to himself, he would be sure to recover again almost as quickly as he had been taken ill. Nobody could refuse to try the effect of so reasonable a proposal, before sending for a surgeon. Accordingly, John was supported upstairs, with great difficulty; being a monstrous weight, and regularly tumbling down two steps every time they hoisted him up three; and, being laid on the bed, was left in charge of his wife, who, after a short interval, reappeared in the parlour, with the gratifying intelligence that he had fallen fast asleep.
Now, the fact was, that at that particular moment, John Browdie was sitting on the bed with the reddest face ever seen, cramming the corner of the pillow into his mouth, to prevent his roaring out loud with laughter. He had no sooner succeeded in suppressing this emotion, than he slipped off his shoes, and creeping to the adjoining room where the prisoner was confined, turned the key, which was on the outside, and darting in, covered Smike’s mouth with his huge hand before he could utter a sound.
