Chapter 62

CHAPTER 62

Ralph makes one last Appointment--and keeps it

Creeping from the house, and slinking off like a thief; groping with
his hands, when first he got into the street, as if he were a blind
man; and looking often over his shoulder while he hurried away, as
though he were followed in imagination or reality by someone anxious
to question or detain him; Ralph Nickleby left the city behind him,
and took the road to his own home.

The night was dark, and a cold wind blew, driving the clouds,
furiously and fast, before it. There was one black, gloomy mass
that seemed to follow him: not hurrying in the wild chase with the
others, but lingering sullenly behind, and gliding darkly and
stealthily on. He often looked back at this, and, more than once,
stopped to let it pass over; but, somehow, when he went forward
again, 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 by a low
parapet-wall and an iron railing; a rank, unwholesome, rotten spot,
where the very grass and weeds seemed, in their frouzy growth, to
tell that they had sprung from paupers' bodies, and had struck their
roots in the graves of men, sodden, while alive, in steaming courts
and drunken hungry dens. And here, in truth, they lay, parted from
the living by a little earth and a board or two--lay thick and
close--corrupting in body as they had in mind--a dense and squalid
crowd. Here they lay, cheek by jowl with life: no deeper down than
the feet of the throng that passed there every day, and piled high
as their throats. Here they lay, a grisly family, all these dear
departed brothers and sisters of the ruddy clergyman who did his
task so speedily when they were hidden in the ground!

As he passed here, Ralph called to mind that he had been one of a
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 he came to
recollect it now, when he had so often passed and never thought
about him, or how it was that he felt an interest in the
circumstance; but he did both; and stopping, and clasping the iron
railings with his hands, looked eagerly in, wondering which might be
his grave.

While he was thus engaged, there came towards him, with noise of
shouts and singing, some fellows full of drink, followed by others,
who were remonstrating with them and urging them to go home in
quiet. They were in high good-humour; and one of them, a little,
weazen, hump-backed man, began to dance. He was a grotesque,
fantastic figure, and the few bystanders laughed. Ralph himself was
moved to