Chapter 40

CHAPTER 40

In which Nicholas falls in Love. He employs a Mediator, whose
Proceedings are crowned with unexpected Success, excepting in one
solitary Particular

Once more out of the clutches of his old persecutor, it needed no
fresh stimulation to call forth the utmost energy and exertion that
Smike was capable of summoning to his aid. Without pausing for a
moment to reflect upon the course he was taking, or the probability
of its leading him homewards or the reverse, he fled away with
surprising swiftness and constancy of purpose, borne upon such wings
as only Fear can wear, and impelled by imaginary shouts in the well
remembered voice of Squeers, who, with a host of pursuers, seemed to
the poor fellow's disordered senses to press hard upon his track;
now left at a greater distance in the rear, and now gaining faster
and faster upon him, as the alternations of hope and terror agitated
him by turns. Long after he had become assured that these sounds
were but the creation of his excited brain, he still held on, at a
pace which even weakness and exhaustion could scarcely retard. It
was not until the darkness and quiet of a country road, recalled him
to a sense of external objects, and the starry sky, above, warned
him of the rapid flight of time, that, covered with dust and panting
for breath, he stopped to listen and look about him.

All was still and silent. A glare of light in the distance, casting
a warm glow upon the sky, marked where the huge city lay. Solitary
fields, divided by hedges and ditches, through many of which he had
crashed and scrambled in his flight, skirted the road, both by the
way he had come and upon the opposite side. It was late now. They
could scarcely trace him by such paths as he had taken, and if he
could hope to regain his own dwelling, it must surely be at such a
time as that, and under cover of the darkness. This, by degrees,
became pretty plain, even to the mind of Smike. He had, at first,
entertained some vague and childish idea of travelling into the
country for ten or a dozen miles, and then returning homewards by a
wide circuit, which should keep him clear of London--so great was
his apprehension of traversing the streets alone, lest he should
again encounter his dreaded enemy--but, yielding to the conviction
which these thoughts inspired, he turned back, and taking the open
road, though not without many fears and misgivings, made for London
again, with scarcely less speed of foot than that with which he had
left the temporary abode of Mr Squeers.

By the time he re-entered it, at the western extremity, the greater
part of the shops were closed. Of the throngs of people who had
been tempted abroad after the heat of the day, but few remained in