Chapter 62

Ralph makes one last Appointment—and keeps it.

　　C reeping from the house, and slinking off like a thief;groping with his hands, when first he got into the street, asif he were a blind man; and looking often over his shoulderwhile he hurried away, as though he were followed in imaginationor reality by someone anxious to question or detain him; RalphNickleby left the city behind him, and took the road to his ownhome.

　　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 a few feet above the level of the street, and parted from it bya low parapet-wall and an iron railing; a rank, unwholesome,rotten spot, where the very grass and weeds seemed, in theirfrowsy growth, to tell that they had sprung from paupers’ bodies,and had struck their roots in the graves of men, sodden, whilealive, in steaming courts and drunken hungry dens. And here, intruth, they lay, parted from the living by a little earth and a boardor two—lay thick and close—corrupting in body as they had in  1123mind—a dense and squalid crowd. Here they lay, cheek by jowlwith life: no deeper down than the feet of the throng that passedthere every day, and piled high as their throats. Here they lay, agrisly family, all these dear departed brothers and sisters of theruddy clergyman who did his task so speedily when they werehidden in the ground!

　　As he passed here, Ralph called to mind that he had been one ofa jury, long before, on the body of a man who had cut his throat;and that he was buried in this place. He could not tell how hecame to recollect it now, when he had so often passed and neverthought about 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 mightbe his grave.

　　While he was thus engaged, there came towards him, with noiseof shouts and singing, some fellows full of drink, followed byothers, who were remonstrating with them and urging them to gohome in quiet. They were in high good-humour; and one of them,a little, weazen, hump-backed man, began to dance. He was agrotesque, fantastic figure, and the few bystanders laughed. Ralphhimself was moved to mirth, and echoed the laugh of one whostood near and who looked round in his face. When they hadpassed on, and he was left alone again, he resumed his speculationwith a new kind of interest; for he recollected that the last personwho had seen the suicide alive, had left him very merry, and heremembered how strange he and the other jurors had thought thatat the time.

　　He could not fix upon the spot among such a heap of graves,but he conjured up a strong and vivid idea of the man himself, and  1124how he looked, and what had led him to do it; all of which herecalled with ease. By dint of dwelling upon this theme, he carriedthe impression with him when he went away; as he remembered,when a child, to have had frequently before him the figure of somegoblin he had once seen chalked upon a door. But as he drewnearer and nearer home he forgot it again, and began to think howvery dull and solitary the house would be inside.

　　This feeling became so strong at last, that when he reached hisown door, he could hardly make up his mind to turn the key andopen it. When he had done that, and gone into the passage, he feltas though to shut it again would be to shut out the world. But helet it go, and it closed with a loud noise. There was no light. Howvery dreary, cold, and still it was!

　　Shivering from head to foot, he made his way upstairs into theroom where he had been last disturbed. He had made a kind ofcompact with himself that he would not think of what hadhappened until he got home. He was at home now, and sufferedhimself to consider it.

　　His own child, his own child! He never doubted the tale; he feltit was 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 wasthe worst!

　　They had all turned from him and deserted him in his very firstneed. Even money could not buy them now; everything must comeout, and everybody must know all. Here was the young lord dead,his companion abroad and beyond his reach, ten thousand poundsgone at one blow, his plot with Gride overset at the very momentof triumph, his after-schemes discovered, himself in danger, the  1125object of his persecution and Nicholas’s love, his own wretchedboy; everything crumbled and fallen upon him, and he beatendown beneath the ruins and 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 havebeen a careless, indifferent, rough, harsh father—like enough—hefelt that; but the thought would come that he might have beenotherwise, and that his son might have been a comfort to him, andthey two happy together. He began to think now, that hissupposed death and his wife’s flight had had some share inmaking him the morose, hard man he was. He seemed toremember a time when he was not quite so rough and obdurate;and almost thought that he had first hated Nicholas because hewas young and gallant, and perhaps like the stripling who hadbrought dishonour and loss of fortune on his head.

　　But one tender thought, or one of natural regret, in hiswhirlwind of passion and remorse, was as a drop of calm water ina stormy maddened sea. His hatred of Nicholas had been fed uponhis own defeat, nourished on his interference with his schemes,fattened upon his old defiance and success. There were reasonsfor its increase; it had grown and strengthened gradually. Now itattained a height which was sheer wild lunacy. That his, of allothers, should have been the hands to rescue his miserable child;that he should have been his protector and faithful friend; that heshould have shown him that love and tenderness which, from thewretched moment of his birth, he had never known; that he shouldhave taught him to hate his own parent and execrate his veryname; that he should now know and feel all this, and triumph inthe recollection; was gall and madness to the usurer’s heart. The  1126dead boy’s love for Nicholas, and the attachment of Nicholas tohim, was insupportable agony. The picture of his deathbed, withNicholas at his side, tending and supporting him, and he breathingout his thanks, and expiring in his arms, when he would have hadthem mortal enemies and hating each other to the last, drove himfrantic. He gnashed his teeth and smote the air, and looking wildlyround, with eyes which gleamed through the darkness, criedaloud:

　　‘I am trampled down and ruined. The wretch told me true. Thenight has come! Is there no way to rob them of further triumph,and spurn their mercy and compassion? Is there no devil to helpme?’

　　Swiftly, there glided again into his brain the figure he hadraised that night. It seemed to lie before him. The head wascovered now. So it was when he first saw it. The rigid, upturned,marble feet too, he remembered well. Then came before him thepale and trembling relatives who had told their tale upon theinquest—the shrieks of women—the silent dread of men—theconsternation and disquiet—the victory achieved by that heap ofclay, which, with one motion of its hand, had let out the life andmade this stir among them—He spoke no more; but, after a pause, softly groped his way outof the 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, shining  1127through the window which had no blind or curtain to intercept it,was enough to show the character of the room, though notsufficient fully to reveal the various articles of lumber, old cordedtrunks and broken furniture, which were scattered about. It had ashelving roof; high in one part, and at another descending almostto the floor. It was towards the highest part that Ralph directed hiseyes; and upon it he kept them fixed steadily for some minutes,when he rose, and dragging thither an old chest upon which hehad been seated, mounted on it, and felt along the wall above hishead with both hands. At length, they touched a large iron hook,firmly driven into one of the beams.

　　At that moment, he was interrupted by a loud knocking at thedoor below. After a little hesitation he opened the window, anddemanded who 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 knowwhether the man whom he had seen that night was to be detained;and that although it was now midnight they had sent, in theiranxiety to do right.

　　‘Yes,’ cried Ralph, ‘detain him till tomorrow; then let thembring him here—him and my nephew—and come themselves, andbe sure that I will 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  1128had passed, and then, gazing up into the sky, saw, or thought hesaw, the same black cloud that had seemed to follow him home,and which now appeared to hover directly above the house.

　　‘I know its meaning now,’ he muttered, ‘and the restless nights,the dreams, and why I have quailed of late. All pointed to this. Oh!

　　if men 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 aremade in 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 despairwere horribly mingled, he shook his clenched hand at the skyabove him, which was still dark and threatening, and closed thewindow.

　　The rain and hail pattered against the glass; the chimneysquaked and rocked; the crazy casement rattled with the wind, asthough an impatient hand inside were striving to burst it open.

　　But no hand was there, and it opened no more.

　　*****‘How’s this?’ cried one. ‘The gentleman say they can’t makeanybody hear, and have been trying these two hours.’

　　‘And yet he came home last night,’ said another; ‘for he spoke to  1129somebody out of that window upstairs.’

　　They were a little knot of men, and, the window beingmentioned, went out into the road to look up at it. This occasionedtheir observing that the house was still close shut, as thehousekeeper had said she had left it on the previous night, and ledto a great many suggestions: which terminated in two or three ofthe boldest getting round to the back, and so entering by awindow, while the others remained outside, in impatientexpectation.

　　They looked into all the rooms below: opening the shutters asthey went, 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,turned the handle of the door, and, pushing it open, lookedthrough the chink, 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 theothers aside with a loud exclamation, drew a clasp-knife from hispocket, and dashing into the room, cut down the body.

　　He had torn a rope from one of the old trunks, and hunghimself on an iron hook immediately below the trap-door in theceiling—in the very place to which the eyes of his son, a lonely,desolate, little creature, had so often been directed in childish  1130terror, fourteen years before.