The cowering wretch, who still shook in every limb, and whose few grey hairs trembled and quivered on his head with abject dismay, tottered to his feet as he met Ralph’s eye, and, shielding his face with both hands, protested, while he crept towards the door, that it was no fault of his.
“Who said it was, man?” returned Ralph, in a suppressed voice. “Who said it was?”
“You looked as if you thought I was to blame,” said Gride, timidly.
“Pshaw!” Ralph muttered, forcing a laugh. “I blame him for not living an hour longer. One hour longer would have been long enough. I blame no one else.”
“N—n—no one else?” said Gride.
“Not for this mischance,” replied Ralph. “I have an old score to clear with that young fellow who has carried off your mistress; but that has nothing to do with his blustering just now, for we should soon have been quit of him, but for this cursed accident.”
There was something so unnatural in the calmness with which Ralph Nickleby spoke, when coupled with his face, the expression of the features, to which every nerve and muscle, as it twitched and throbbed with a spasm whose workings no effort could conceal, gave, every instant, some new and frightful aspect—there was something so unnatural and ghastly in the contrast between his harsh, slow, steady voice (only altered by a certain halting of the breath which made him pause between almost every word like a drunken man bent upon speaking plainly), and these evidences of the most intense and violent passion, and the struggle he made to keep them under; that if the dead body which lay above had stood, instead of him, before the cowering Gride, it could scarcely have presented a spectacle which would have terrified him more.
“The coach,” said Ralph after a time, during which he had struggled like some strong man against a fit. “We came in a coach. Is it waiting?”
Gride gladly availed himself of the pretext for going to the window to see. Ralph, keeping his face steadily the other way, tore at his shirt with the hand which he had thrust into his breast, and muttered in a hoarse whisper:
“Ten thousand pounds! He said ten thousand! The precise sum paid in but yesterday for the two mortgages, and which would have gone out again, at heavy interest, tomorrow. If that house has failed, and he the first to bring the news!—Is the coach there?”
“Yes, yes,” said Gride, startled by the fierce tone of the inquiry. “It’s here. Dear, dear, what a fiery man you are!”
“Come here,” said Ralph, beckoning to him. “We mustn’t make a show of being disturbed. We’ll go down arm in arm.”
“But you pinch me black and blue,” urged Gride.
Ralph let him go impatiently, and descending the stairs with his usual firm and heavy tread, got into the coach. Arthur Gride followed. After looking doubtfully at Ralph when the man asked where he was to drive, and finding that he remained silent, and expressed no wish upon the subject, Arthur mentioned his own house, and thither they proceeded.
On their way, Ralph sat in the furthest corner with folded arms, and uttered not a word. With his chin sunk upon his breast, and his downcast eyes quite hidden by the contraction of his knotted brows, he might have been asleep for any sign of consciousness he gave until the coach stopped, when he raised his head, and glancing through the window, inquired what place that was.
“My house,” answered the disconsolate Gride, affected perhaps by its loneliness. “Oh dear! my house.”
“True,” said Ralph, “I have not observed the way we came. I should like a glass of water. You have that in the house, I suppose?”
“You shall have a glass of—of anything you like,” answered Gride, with a groan. “It’s no use knocking, coachman. Ring the bell!”
The man rang, and rang, and rang again; then, knocked until the street reechoed with the sounds; then, listened at the keyhole of the door. Nobody came. The house was silent as the grave.
“How’s this?” said Ralph impatiently.
“Peg is so very deaf,” answered Gride with a look of anxiety and alarm. “Oh dear! Ring again, coachman. She sees the bell.”
Again the man rang and knocked, and knocked and rang again. Some of the neighbours threw up their windows, and called across the street to each other that old Gride’s housekeeper must have dropped down dead. Others collected round the coach, and gave vent to various surmises; some held that she had fallen asleep; some, that she had burnt herself to death; some, that she had got drunk; and one very fat man that she had seen something to eat which had frightened her so much (not being used to it) that she had fallen into a fit. This last suggestion particularly delighted the bystanders, who cheered it rather uproariously, and were, with some difficulty, deterred from dropping down the area and breaking open the kitchen door to ascertain the fact. Nor was this all. Rumours having gone abroad that Arthur was to be married that morning, very particular inquiries were made after the bride, who was held by the majority to be disguised in the person of Mr. Ralph Nickleby, which gave rise to much jocose indignation at the public appearance of a bride in boots and pantaloons, and called forth a great many hoots and groans. At length, the two moneylenders obtained shelter in a house next door, and, being accommodated with a ladder, clambered over the wall of the backyard—which was not a high one—and descended in safety on the other side.
“I am almost afraid to go in, I declare,” said Arthur, turning to Ralph when they were alone. “Suppose she should be murdered. Lying with her brains knocked out by a poker, eh?”
“Suppose she were,” said Ralph. “I tell you, I wish such things were more common
