Chapter 31

CHAPTER 31

Of Ralph Nickleby and Newman Noggs, and some wise Precautions, the
success or failure of which will appear in the Sequel

In blissful unconsciousness that his nephew was hastening at the
utmost speed of four good horses towards his sphere of action, and
that every passing minute diminished the distance between them,
Ralph Nickleby sat that morning occupied in his customary
avocations, and yet unable to prevent his thoughts wandering from
time to time back to the interview which had taken place between
himself and his niece on the previous day. At such intervals, after
a few moments of abstraction, Ralph would mutter some peevish
interjection, and apply himself with renewed steadiness of purpose
to the ledger before him, but again and again the same train of
thought came back despite all his efforts to prevent it, confusing
him in his calculations, and utterly distracting his attention from
the figures over which he bent. At length Ralph laid down his pen,
and threw himself back in his chair as though he had made up his
mind to allow the obtrusive current of reflection to take its own
course, and, by giving it full scope, to rid himself of it effectually.

'I am not a man to be moved by a pretty face,' muttered Ralph
sternly. 'There is a grinning skull beneath it, and men like me who
look and work below the surface see that, and not its delicate
covering. And yet I almost like the girl, or should if she had been
less proudly and squeamishly brought up. If the boy were drowned or
hanged, and the mother dead, this house should be her home. I wish
they were, with all my soul.'

Notwithstanding the deadly hatred which Ralph felt towards Nicholas,
and the bitter contempt with which he sneered at poor Mrs Nickleby--
notwithstanding the baseness with which he had behaved, and was then
behaving, and would behave again if his interest prompted him,
towards Kate herself--still there was, strange though it may seem,
something humanising and even gentle in his thoughts at that moment.
He thought of what his home might be if Kate were there; he placed
her in the empty chair, looked upon her, heard her speak; he felt
again upon his arm the gentle pressure of the trembling hand; he
strewed his costly rooms with the hundred silent tokens of feminine
presence and occupation; he came back again to the cold fireside and
the silent dreary splendour; and in that one glimpse of a better
nature, born as it was in selfish thoughts, the rich man felt
himself friendless, childless, and alone. Gold, for the instant,
lost its lustre in his eyes, for there were countless treasures of
the heart which it could never purchase.

A very slight circumstance was sufficient to banish such reflections