Nicholas Nickleby

yourself one of these days, if you ever fall in love with anybody; as I trust and hope you will, provided she is respectable and well conducted, and of course you’d never dream of falling in love with anybody who was not), I say, I can assure you that a great deal more depends upon these little things than you would suppose possible. If your poor papa was alive, he would tell you how much depended on the parties being left alone. Of course, you are not to go out of the room as if you meant it and did it on purpose, but as if it was quite an accident, and to come back again in the same way. If you cough in the passage before you open the door, or whistle carelessly, or hum a tune, or something of that sort, to let them know you’re coming, it’s always better; because, of course, though it’s not only natural but perfectly correct and proper under the circumstances, still it is very confusing if you interrupt young people when they are⁠—when they are sitting on the sofa, and⁠—and all that sort of thing: which is very nonsensical, perhaps, but still they will do it.”

The profound astonishment with which her son regarded her during this long address, gradually increasing as it approached its climax in no way discomposed Mrs. Nickleby, but rather exalted her opinion of her own cleverness; therefore, merely stopping to remark, with much complacency, that she had fully expected him to be surprised, she entered on a vast quantity of circumstantial evidence of a particularly incoherent and perplexing kind; the upshot of which was, to establish, beyond the possibility of doubt, that Mr. Frank Cheeryble had fallen desperately in love with Kate.

“With whom?” cried Nicholas.

Mrs. Nickleby repeated, with Kate.

“What! our Kate! My sister!”

“Lord, Nicholas!” returned Mrs. Nickleby, “whose Kate should it be, if not ours; or what should I care about it, or take any interest in it for, if it was anybody but your sister?”

“Dear mother,” said Nicholas, “surely it can’t be!”

“Very good, my dear,” replied Mrs. Nickleby, with great confidence. “Wait and see.”

Nicholas had never, until that moment, bestowed a thought upon the remote possibility of such an occurrence as that which was now communicated to him; for, besides that he had been much from home of late and closely occupied with other matters, his own jealous fears had prompted the suspicion that some secret interest in Madeline, akin to that which he felt himself, occasioned those visits of Frank Cheeryble which had recently become so frequent. Even now, although he knew that the observation of an anxious mother was much more likely to be correct in such a case than his own, and although she reminded him of many little circumstances which, taken together, were certainly susceptible of the construction she triumphantly put upon them, he was not quite convinced but that they arose from mere good-natured thoughtless gallantry, which would have dictated the same conduct towards any other girl who was young and pleasing. At all events, he hoped so, and therefore tried to believe it.

“I am very much disturbed by what you tell me,” said Nicholas, after a little reflection, “though I yet hope you may be mistaken.”

“I don’t understand why you should hope so,” said Mrs. Nickleby, “I confess; but you may depend upon it I am not.”

“What of Kate?” inquired Nicholas.

“Why that, my dear,” returned Mrs. Nickleby, “is just the point upon which I am not yet satisfied. During this sickness, she has been constantly at Madeline’s bedside⁠—never were two people so fond of each other as they have grown⁠—and to tell you the truth, Nicholas, I have rather kept her away now and then, because I think it’s a good plan, and urges a young man on. He doesn’t get too sure, you know.”

She said this with such a mingling of high delight and self-congratulation, that it was inexpressibly painful to Nicholas to dash her hopes; but he felt that there was only one honourable course before him, and that he was bound to take it.

“Dear mother,” he said kindly, “don’t you see that if there were really any serious inclination on the part of Mr. Frank towards Kate, and we suffered ourselves for a moment to encourage it, we should be acting a most dishonourable and ungrateful part? I ask you if you don’t see it, but I need not say that I know you don’t, or you would have been more strictly on your guard. Let me explain my meaning to you. Remember how poor we are.”

Mrs. Nickleby shook her head, and said, through her tears, that poverty was not a crime.

“No,” said Nicholas, “and for that reason poverty should engender an honest pride, that it may not lead and tempt us to unworthy actions, and that we may preserve the self-respect which a hewer of wood and drawer of water may maintain, and does better in maintaining than a monarch in preserving his. Think what we owe to these two brothers: remember what they have done, and what they do every day for us with a generosity and delicacy for which the devotion of our whole lives would be a most imperfect and inadequate return. What kind of return would that be which would be comprised in our permitting their nephew, their only relative, whom they regard as a son, and for whom it would be mere childishness to suppose they have not formed plans suitably adapted to the education he has had, and the fortune he will inherit⁠—in our permitting him to marry a portionless girl: so closely connected with us, that the irresistible inference must be, that he was entrapped by a plot; that it was a deliberate scheme, and a speculation amongst us three? Bring the matter clearly before yourself, mother. Now, how would you feel, if they were married, and the brothers, coming here on one of those kind errands which bring them