At length the door opened again, and a lady in mourning came in; and Nicholas kissing the lady in mourning affectionately, and calling her his mother, led her towards the chair from which Smike had risen when she entered the room.
`You are always kind-hearted, and anxious to help the oppressed, my dear mother,' said Nicholas, `so you will be favourably disposed towards him, I know.'
`I am sure, my dear Nicholas,' replied Mrs Nickleby, looking very hard at her new friend, and bending to him with something more of majesty than the occasion seemed to require, -- `I am sure any friend of yours has, as indeed he naturally ought to have, and must have, of course, you know -- a great claim upon me, and of course, it is a very great pleasure to me to be introduced to anybody you take an interest in -- there can he no doubt about that; none at all; not the least in the world,' said Mrs Nickleby. `At the same time I must say, Nicholas, my dear, as I used to say to your poor dear papa, when he would bring gentlemen home to dinner, and there was nothing in the house, that if he had come the day before yesterday -- no, I don't mean the day before yesterday now; I should have said, perhaps, the year before last -- we should have been better able to entertain him.'
With which remarks, Mrs Nickleby turned to her daughter, and inquired, in an audible whisper, whether the gentleman was going to stop all night.
`Because, if he is, Kate, my dear,' said Mrs Nickleby, `I don't see that it's possible for him to sleep anywhere, and that's the truth.'
Kate stepped gracefully forward, and without any show of annoyance or irritation, breathed a few words into her mother's ear.
`La, Kate, my dear,' said Mrs Nickleby, shrinking back, `how you do tickle one! Of course, I understand that , my love, without your telling me; and I said the same to Nicholas, and I am very much pleased. You didn't tell me, Nicholas, my dear,' added Mrs Nickleby, turning round with an air of less reserve than she had before assumed, `what your friend's name is.'
`His name, mother,' replied Nicholas, `is Smike.'
The effect of this communication was by no means anticipated; but the name was no sooner pronounced, than Mrs Nickleby dropped upon a chair, and burst into a fit of crying.
`What is the matter?' exclaimed Nicholas, running to support her.
`It's so like Pyke,' cried Mrs Nickleby; `so exactly like Pyke. Oh!
don't speak to me -- I shall be better presently.'
And after exhibiting every symptom of slow suffocation in all its stages, and drinking about a tea-spoonful of water from a full tumbler, and spilling the remainder, Mrs Nickleby was better, and remarked, with a feeble smile, that she was very foolish, she knew.
`It's a weakness in our family,' said Mrs Nickleby, `so, of course, I can't be blamed for it. Your grandmamma, Kate, was exactly the same --precisely. The least excitement, the slightest surprise, she fainted away directly. I have heard her say, often and often, that when she was a young lady, and before she was married, she was turning a corner into Oxford Street one day, when she ran against her own hairdresser, who, it seems, was escaping from a bear; -- the mere suddenness of the encounter made her faint away directly. Wait, though,' added Mrs Nickleby, pausing to consider. `Let me be sure I'm right. Was it her hairdresser who had escaped from a bear, or was it a bear who had escaped from her hairdresser's? Ideclare I can't remember just now, but the hairdresser was a very handsome man, I know, and quite a gentleman in his manners; so that it has nothing to do with the point of the story.'
Mrs Nickleby having fallen imperceptibly into one of her retrospective moods, improved in temper from that moment, and glided, by an easy change of the conversation occasionally, into various other anecdotes, no less remarkable for their strict application to the subject in hand.
`Mr Smike is from Yorkshire, Nicholas, my dear?' said Mrs Nickleby, after dinner, and when she had been silent for some time.
`Certainly, mother,' replied Nicholas. `I see you have not forgotten his melancholy history.'
`O dear no,' cried Mrs Nickleby. `Ah! melancholy, indeed. You don't happen, Mr Smike, ever to have dined with the Grimbles of Grimble Hall, somewhere in the North Riding, do you?' said the good lady, addressing herself to him. `A very proud man, Sir Thomas Grimble, with six grown-up and most lovely daughters, and the finest park in the county.'
`My dear mother,' reasoned Nicholas, `do you suppose that the unfortunate outcast of a Yorkshire school was likely to receive many cards of invitation from the nobility and gentry in the neighbourhood?'
`Really, my dear, I don't know why it should be so very extraordinary,'
said Mrs Nickleby. `I know that when I was at school, I always went at least twice every half-year to the Hawkinses at Taunton Vale, and they are much richer than the Grimbles, and connected with them in marriage;so you see it's not so very unlikely, after all.'
Having put down Nicholas in this triumphant manner, Mrs Nickleby was suddenly seized with a forgetfulness of Smike's real name, and an irresistible tendency to call him Mr Slammons; which circumstance she attributed to the remarkable similarity of the two names in point of sound both beginning with an S, and moreover being spelt with an M. But whatever doubt there might be on this point, there was none as to his being a most excellent listener; which circumstance had considerable influence in placing them on the very best terms, and inducing Mrs Nickleby to express the highest opinion of his general deportment and disposition.
Thus, the little circle remained, on the most amicable and agreeable footing, until the Monday morning, when Nicholas withdrew himself from it for a short time, seriously to reflect upon the state of his affairs, and to determine, if he could, upon some course of life, which would enable him to support those who were so entirely dependent upon his exertions.
