‘Your mother, sir,’ replied Ralph, motioning towards her.
‘Whose ears have been poisoned by you,’ said Nicholas; ‘by you—who, under pretence of deserving the thanks she poured upon you, heaped every insult, wrong, and indignity upon my head. You, who sent me to a den where sordid cruelty, worthy of yourself, runs wanton, and youthful misery stalks precocious; where the lightness of childhood shrinks into the heaviness of age, and its every promise blights, and withers as it grows. I call Heaven to witness,’ said Nicholas, looking eagerly round, ‘that I have seen all this, and that he knows it.’
‘Refute these calumnies,’ said Kate, ‘and be more patient, so that you may give them no advantage. Tell us what you really did, and show that they are untrue.’
‘Of what do they—or of what does he—accuse me?’ said Nicholas.
‘First, of attacking your master, and being within an ace of qualifying yourself to be tried for murder,’ interposed Ralph. ‘I speak plainly, young man, bluster as you will.’
‘I interfered,’ said Nicholas, ‘to save a miserable creature from the vilest cruelty. In so doing, I inflicted such punishment upon a wretch as he will not readily forget, though far less than he deserved from me. If the same scene were renewed before me now, I would take the same part; but I would strike harder and heavier, and brand him with such marks as he should carry to his grave, go to it when he would.’
‘You hear?’ said Ralph, turning to Mrs. Nickleby. ‘Penitence, this!’
‘Oh dear me!’ cried Mrs. Nickleby, ‘I don’t know what to think, I really don’t.’
‘Do not speak just now, mama, I entreat you,’ said Kate. ‘Dear Nicholas, I only tell you, that you may know what wickedness can prompt, but they accuse you of—a ring is missing, and they dare to say that—’
‘The woman,’ said Nicholas, haughtily, ‘the wife of the fellow from whom these charges come, dropped—as I suppose—a worthless ring among some clothes of mine, early in the morning on which I left the house. At least, I know that she was in the bedroom where they lay, struggling with an unhappy child, and that I found it when I opened my bundle on the road. I returned it, at once, by coach, and they have it now.’