He had struck upon a key which rendered the task of commencement an easier one. Brother Charles turned, and said that it was a death of which they had to tell him, but that his niece was well.
“You don’t mean to tell me,” said Ralph, as his eyes brightened, “that her brother’s dead? No, that’s too good. I’d not believe it, if you told me so. It would be too welcome news to be true.”
“Shame on you, you hardened and unnatural man,” cried the other brother, warmly. “Prepare yourself for intelligence which, if you have any human feeling in your breast, will make even you shrink and tremble. What if we tell you that a poor unfortunate boy: a child in everything but never having known one of those tender endearments, or one of those lightsome hours which make our childhood a time to be remembered like a happy dream through all our after life: a warmhearted, harmless, affectionate creature, who never offended you, or did you wrong, but on whom you have vented the malice and hatred you have conceived for your nephew, and whom you have made an instrument for wreaking your bad passions upon him: what if we tell you that, sinking under your persecution, sir, and the misery and ill-usage of a life short in years but long in suffering, this poor creature has gone to tell his sad tale where, for your part in it, you must surely answer?”
“If you tell me,” said Ralph; “if you tell me that he is dead, I forgive you all else. If you tell me that he is dead, I am in your debt and bound to you for life. He is! I see it in your faces. Who triumphs now? Is this your dreadful news; this your terrible intelligence? You see how it moves me. You did well to send. I would have travelled a hundred miles afoot, through mud, mire, and darkness, to hear this news just at this time.”
Even then, moved as he was by this savage joy, Ralph could see in the faces of the two brothers, mingling with their look of disgust and horror, something of that indefinable compassion for himself which he had noticed before.
“And he brought you the intelligence, did he?” said Ralph, pointing with his finger towards the recess already mentioned; “and sat there, no doubt, to see me prostrated and overwhelmed by it! Ha, ha, ha! But I tell him that I’ll be a sharp thorn in his side for many a long day to come; and I tell you two, again, that you don’t know him yet; and that you’ll rue the day you took compassion on the vagabond.”
“You take me for your nephew,” said a hollow voice; “it would be better for you, and for me too, if I were he indeed.”
The figure that he had seen so dimly, rose, and came slowly down. He started back, for he found that he confronted—not Nicholas, as he had supposed, but Brooker.
Ralph had no reason, that he knew, to fear this man; he had never feared him before; but the pallor which had been observed in his face when he issued forth that night, came upon him again. He was seen to tremble, and his voice changed as he said, keeping his eyes upon him,
“What does this fellow here? Do you know he is a convict, a felon, a common thief?”
“Hear what he has to tell you. Oh, Mr. Nickleby, hear what he has to tell you, be he what he may!” cried the brothers, with such emphatic earnestness, that Ralph turned to them in wonder. They pointed to Brooker. Ralph again gazed at him: as it seemed mechanically.
“That boy,” said the man, “that these gentlemen have been talking of—”
“That boy,” repeated Ralph, looking vacantly at him.
“Whom I saw, stretched dead and cold upon his bed, and who is now in his grave—”
“Who is now in his grave,” echoed Ralph, like one who talks in his sleep.
The man raised his eyes, and clasped his hands solemnly together:
“—Was your only son, so help me God in heaven!”
In the midst of a dead silence, Ralph sat down, pressing his two hands upon his temples. He removed them, after a minute, and never was there seen, part of a living man undisfigured by any wound, such a ghastly face as he then disclosed. He looked at Brooker, who was by this time standing at a short distance from him; but did not say one word, or make the slightest sound or gesture.
“Gentlemen,” said the man, “I offer no excuses for myself. I am long past that. If, in telling you how this has happened, I tell you that I was harshly used, and perhaps driven out of my real nature, I do it only as a necessary part of my story, and not to shield myself. I am a guilty man.”
He stopped, as if to recollect, and looking away from Ralph, and addressing himself to the brothers, proceeded in a subdued and humble tone:
“Among those who once had dealings with this man, gentlemen—that’s from twenty to five-and-twenty years ago—there was one: a rough foxhunting, hard-drinking gentleman, who had run through his own fortune, and wanted to squander away that of his sister: they were both orphans, and she lived with him and managed his house. I don’t know whether it was, originally, to back his influence and try to over-persuade the young woman or not, but he,” pointing, to Ralph, “used to go down to the house in Leicestershire pretty often, and stop there many days at a time. They had had a great many dealings together, and he may have gone on some of those, or to patch up his client’s affairs, which were in a ruinous state; of course he went for
