Miss Nickleby, rendered desperate by the Persecution of Sir Mulberry Hawk, and the Complicated Difficulties and Distresses which surround her, appeals, as a last resource, to her Uncle for Protection  
The ensuing morning brought reflection with it, as morning usually does; but widely different was the train of thought it awakened in the different persons who had been so unexpectedly brought together on the preceding evening, by the active agency of Messrs Pyke and Pluck.
The reflections of Sir Mulberry Hawk—if such a term can be applied to the thoughts of the systematic and calculating man of dissipation, whose joys, regrets, pains, and pleasures, are all of self, and who would seem to retain nothing of the intellectual faculty but the power to debase himself, and to degrade the very nature whose outward semblance he wears—the reflections of Sir Mulberry Hawk turned upon Kate Nickleby, and were, in brief, that she was undoubtedly handsome; that her coyness must be easily conquerable by a man of his address and experience, and that the pursuit was one which could not fail to redound to his credit, and greatly to enhance his reputation with the world. And lest this last consideration—no mean or secondary one with Sir Mulberry—should sound strangely in the ears of some, let it be remembered that most men live in a world of their own, and that in that limited circle alone are they ambitious for distinction and applause. Sir Mulberry’s world was peopled with profligates, and he acted accordingly.
Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief actors therein setting at defiance so completely the opinion of the world; but there is no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they do consult the opinion of their own little world that such things take place at all, and strike the great world dumb with amazement.
The reflections of Mrs. Nickleby were of the proudest and most complacent kind; and under the influence of her very agreeable delusion she straightway sat down and indited a long letter to Kate, in which she expressed her entire approval of the admirable choice she had made, and extolled Sir Mulberry to the skies; asserting, for the more complete satisfaction of her daughter’s feelings, that he was precisely the individual whom she (Mrs. Nickleby) would have chosen for her son-in-law, if she had had the picking and choosing from all mankind. The good lady then, with the preliminary observation that she might be fairly supposed not to have lived in the world so long without knowing its ways, communicated a great many subtle precepts applicable to the state of courtship, and confirmed in their wisdom by her own personal experience. Above all things she commended a strict maidenly reserve, as being not only a very laudable thing in itself, but as tending materially to strengthen and increase a lover’s ardour. ‘And I never,’ added Mrs Nickleby, ‘was more delighted in my life than to observe last night, my dear, that your good sense had already told you this.’ With which sentiment, and various hints of the pleasure she derived from the knowledge that her daughter inherited so large an instalment of her own excellent sense and discretion (to nearly the full measure of which she might hope, with care, to succeed in time), Mrs. Nickleby concluded a very long and rather illegible letter.
Poor Kate was well-nigh distracted on the receipt of four closely-written and closely-crossed sides of congratulation on the very subject which had prevented her closing her eyes all night, and kept her weeping and watching in her chamber; still worse and more trying was the necessity of rendering herself agreeable to Mrs. Wititterly, who, being in low spirits after the fatigue of the preceding night, of course expected her companion (else wherefore had she board and salary?) to be in the best spirits possible. As to Mr. Wititterly, he went about all day in a tremor of delight at having shaken hands with a lord, and having actually asked him to come and see him in his own house. The lord himself, not being troubled to any inconvenient extent with the power of thinking, regaled himself with the conversation of Messrs Pyke and Pluck, who sharpened their wit by a plentiful indulgence in various costly stimulants at his expense.
It was four in the afternoon—that is, the vulgar afternoon of the sun and the clock—and Mrs. Wititterly reclined, according to custom, on the drawing-room sofa, while Kate read aloud a new novel in three volumes, entitled ‘The Lady Flabella,’ which Alphonse the doubtful had procured from the library that very morning. And it was a production admirably suited to a lady labouring under Mrs. Wititterly’s complaint, seeing that there was not a line in it, from beginning to end, which could, by the most remote contingency, awaken the smallest excitement in any person breathing.
Kate read on.
‘“Cherizette,” said the Lady Flabella, inserting her mouse-like feet in the blue satin slippers, which had unwittingly occasioned the half-playful half-angry altercation between herself and the youthful Colonel Befillaire, in the Duke of Mincefenille’s Salon De Danse on the previous night. “Cherizette, Ma Chere, Donnez-Moi De L’eau-De-Cologne, S’il Vous Plait, Mon Enfant.”
‘“Mercie—thank you,” said the Lady Flabella, as the lively but devoted Cherizette plentifully besprinkled with the fragrant compound the Lady Flabella’s MOUCHOIR of finest cambric, edged with richest lace, and emblazoned at the four corners with the Flabella crest, and gorgeous heraldic bearings of that noble family. “Mercie—that will do.”
‘At this instant, while the Lady Flabella yet inhaled that delicious fragrance by holding the mouchoir to her exquisite, but thoughtfully-chiselled nose, the door of the boudoir (artfully concealed by rich hangings of silken damask, the hue of Italy’s firmament) was thrown open, and with noiseless tread two valets-de-chambre, clad in sumptuous liveries of peach-blossom and gold, advanced into the room followed by a page in bas de soie—silk stockings—who, while they remained at some distance making the most graceful obeisances, advanced to the feet of his lovely mistress, and dropping on one knee presented, on a golden salver gorgeously chased, a scented billet.
‘The Lady Flabella, with an agitation she could not repress, hastily tore off the envelope and broke the scented seal. It was from Befillaire—the young, the slim, the low-voiced—her own Befillaire.’
‘Oh, charming!’ interrupted Kate’s patroness, who was sometimes taken literary. ‘Poetic, really. Read that description again, Miss Nickleby.’
Kate complied.
‘Sweet, indeed!’ said Mrs. Wititterly, with a sigh. ‘So voluptuous, is it not—so soft?’
‘Yes, I think it is,’ replied Kate, gently; ‘very soft.’
‘Close the book, Miss Nickleby,’ said Mrs. Wititterly. ‘I can hear nothing more today; I should be sorry to disturb the impression of that sweet description. Close the book.’
Kate complied, not unwillingly; and, as she did so, Mrs. Wititterly raising her glass with a languid hand, remarked, that she looked pale.
‘It was the fright of that—that noise and confusion last night,’ said Kate.
‘How very odd!’ exclaimed Mrs. Wititterly, with a look of surprise. And certainly, when one comes to think of it, it was very odd that anything should have disturbed a companion. A steam-engine, or other ingenious piece of mechanism out of order, would have been nothing to it.
‘How did you come to know Lord Frederick, and those other delightful creatures, child?’ asked Mrs. Wititterly, still eyeing Kate through her glass.
‘I met them at my uncle’s,’ said Kate, vexed to feel that she was colouring deeply, but unable to keep down the blood which rushed to her face whenever she thought of that man.
‘Have you known them long?’
‘No,’ rejoined Kate. ‘Not long.’
‘I was very glad of the opportunity which that respectable person, your mother, gave us of being known to them,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, in a lofty manner. ‘Some friends of ours were on the very point of introducing us, which makes it quite remarkable.’
This was said lest Miss Nickleby should grow conceited on the honour and dignity of having known four great people (for Pyke and Pluck were included among the delightful creatures), whom Mrs. Wititterly did not know. But as the circumstance had made no impression one way or other upon Kate’s mind, the force of the observation was quite lost upon her.
‘They asked permission to call,’ said Mrs. Wititterly. ‘I gave it them of course.’
‘Do you expect them today?’ Kate ventured to inquire.
Mrs. Wititterly’s answer was lost in the noise of a tremendous rapping at the street-door, and before it had ceased to vibrate, there drove up a handsome cabriolet, out of which leaped Sir Mulberry Hawk and his friend Lord Verisopht.
‘They are here now,’ said Kate, rising and hurrying away.
‘Miss Nickleby!’ cried Mrs. Wititterly, perfectly aghast at a companion’s attempting to quit the room, without her permission first had and obtained. ‘Pray don’t think of going.’
‘You are very good!’ replied Kate. ‘But—’
‘For goodness’ sake, don’t agitate me by making me speak so much,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, with great sharpness. ‘Dear me, Miss Nickleby, I beg—’
It was in vain for Kate to protest that she was unwell, for the footsteps of the knockers, whoever they were, were already on the stairs. She resumed her seat, and had scarcely done so, when the doubtful page darted into the room and announced, Mr. Pyke, and Mr. Pluck, and Lord Verisopht, and Sir Mulberry Hawk, all at one burst.
‘The most extraordinary thing in the world,’ said Mr. Pluck, saluting both ladies with the utmost cordiality; ‘the most extraordinary thing. As Lord Frederick and Sir Mulberry drove up to the door, Pyke and I had that instant knocked.’
‘That instant knocked,’ said Pyke.
‘No matter how you came, so that you are here,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, who, by dint of lying on the same sofa for three years and a half, had got up quite a little pantomime of graceful attitudes, and now threw herself into the most striking of the whole series, to astonish the visitors. ‘I am delighted, I am sure.’
‘And how is Miss Nickleby?’ said Sir Mulberry Hawk, accosting Kate, in a low voice—not so low, however, but that it reached the ears of Mrs Wititterly.
‘Why, she complains of suffering from the fright of last night,’ said the lady. ‘I am sure I don’t wonder at it, for my nerves are quite torn to pieces.’
‘And yet you look,’ observed Sir Mulberry, turning round; ‘and yet you look—’
‘Beyond everything,’ said Mr. Pyke, coming to his patron’s assistance. Of course Mr. Pluck said the same.
‘I am afraid Sir Mulberry is a flatterer, my lord,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, turning to that young gentleman, who had been sucking the head of his cane in silence, and staring at Kate.
‘Oh, deyvlish!’ replied Verisopht. Having given utterance to which remarkable sentiment, he occupied himself as before.
‘Neither does Miss Nickleby look the worse,’ said Sir Mulberry, bending his bold gaze upon her. ‘She was always handsome, but upon my soul, ma’am, you seem to have imparted some of your own good looks to her besides.’
To judge from the glow which suffused the poor girl’s countenance after this speech, Mrs. Wititterly might, with some show of reason, have been supposed to have imparted to it some of that artificial bloom which decorated her own. Mrs. Wititterly admitted, though not with the best grace in the world, that Kate did look pretty. She began to think, too, that Sir Mulberry was not quite so agreeable a creature as she had at first supposed him; for, although a skilful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you can keep him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.
‘Pyke,’ said the watchful Mr. Pluck, observing the effect which the praise of Miss Nickleby had produced.
‘Well, Pluck,’ said Pyke.
‘Is there anybody,’ demanded Mr. Pluck, mysteriously, ‘anybody you know, that Mrs. Wititterly’s profile reminds you of?’
‘Reminds me of!’ answered Pyke. ‘Of course there is.’
‘Who do you mean?’ said Pluck, in the same mysterious manner. ‘The D. of B.?’
‘The C. of B.,’ replied Pyke, with the faintest trace of a grin lingering in his countenance. ‘The beautiful sister is the countess; not the duchess.’
‘True,’ said Pluck, ‘the C. of B. The resemblance is wonderful!’
‘Perfectly startling,’ said Mr. Pyke.
Here was a state of things! Mrs. Wititterly was declared, upon the testimony of two veracious and competent witnesses, to be the very picture of a countess! This was one of the consequences of getting into good society. Why, she might have moved among grovelling people for twenty years, and never heard of it. How could she, indeed? what did they know about countesses?
The two gentlemen having, by the greediness with which this little bait was swallowed, tested the extent of Mrs. Wititterly’s appetite for adulation, proceeded to administer that commodity in very large doses, thus affording to Sir Mulberry Hawk an opportunity of pestering Miss Nickleby with questions and remarks, to which she was absolutely obliged to make some reply. Meanwhile, Lord Verisopht enjoyed unmolested the full flavour of the gold knob at the top of his cane, as he would have done to the end of the interview if Mr. Wititterly had not come home, and caused the conversation to turn to his favourite topic.
‘My lord,’ said Mr. Wititterly, ‘I am delighted—honoured—proud. Be seated again, my lord, pray. I am proud, indeed—most proud.’
It was to the secret annoyance of his wife that Mr. Wititterly said all this, for, although she was bursting with pride and arrogance, she would have had the illustrious guests believe that their visit was quite a common occurrence, and that they had lords and baronets to see them every day in the week. But Mr. Wititterly’s feelings were beyond the power of suppression.
‘It is an honour, indeed!’ said Mr. Wititterly. ‘Julia, my soul, you will suffer for this tomorrow.’
‘Suffer!’ cried Lord Verisopht.
‘The reaction, my lord, the reaction,’ said Mr. Wititterly. ‘This violent strain upon the nervous system over, my lord, what ensues? A sinking, a depression, a lowness, a lassitude, a debility. My lord, if Sir Tumley Snuffim was to see that delicate creature at this moment, he would not give a—a—this for her life.’ In illustration of which remark, Mr. Wititterly took a pinch of snuff from his box, and jerked it lightly into the air as an emblem of instability.
‘Not that,’ said Mr. Wititterly, looking about him with a serious countenance. ‘Sir Tumley Snuffim would not give that for Mrs. Wititterly’s existence.’
Mr. Wititterly told this with a kind of sober exultation, as if it were no trifling distinction for a man to have a wife in such a desperate state, and Mrs. Wititterly sighed and looked on, as if she felt the honour, but had determined to bear it as meekly as might be.
‘Mrs. Wititterly,’ said her husband, ‘is Sir Tumley Snuffim’s favourite patient. I believe I may venture to say, that Mrs. Wititterly is the first person who took the new medicine which is supposed to have destroyed a family at Kensington Gravel Pits. I believe she was. If I am wrong, Julia, my dear, you will correct me.’
‘I believe I was,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, in a faint voice.
As there appeared to be some doubt in the mind of his patron how he could best join in this conversation, the indefatigable Mr. Pyke threw himself into the breach, and, by way of saying something to the point, inquired—with reference to the aforesaid medicine—whether it was nice.
‘No, sir, it was not. It had not even that recommendation,’ said Mr. W.
‘Mrs. Wititterly is quite a martyr,’ observed Pyke, with a complimentary bow.
‘I think I am,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, smiling.
‘I think you are, my dear Julia,’ replied her husband, in a tone which seemed to say that he was not vain, but still must insist upon their privileges. ‘If anybody, my lord,’ added Mr. Wititterly, wheeling round to the nobleman, ‘will produce to me a greater martyr than Mrs. Wititterly, all I can say is, that I shall be glad to see that martyr, whether male or female—that’s all, my lord.’
Pyke and Pluck promptly remarked that certainly nothing could be fairer than that; and the call having been by this time protracted to a very great length, they obeyed Sir Mulberry’s look, and rose to go. This brought Sir Mulberry himself and Lord Verisopht on their legs also. Many protestations of friendship, and expressions anticipative of the pleasure which must inevitably flow from so happy an acquaintance, were exchanged, and the visitors departed, with renewed assurances that at all times and seasons the mansion of the Wititterlys would be honoured by receiving them beneath its roof.
That they came at all times and seasons—that they dined there one day, supped the next, dined again on the next, and were constantly to and fro on all—that they made parties to visit public places, and met by accident at lounges—that upon all these occasions Miss Nickleby was exposed to the constant and unremitting persecution of Sir Mulberry Hawk, who now began to feel his character, even in the estimation of his two dependants, involved in the successful reduction of her pride—that she had no intervals of peace or rest, except at those hours when she could sit in her solitary room, and weep over the trials of the day—all these were consequences naturally flowing from the well-laid plans of Sir Mulberry, and their able execution by the auxiliaries, Pyke and Pluck.
And thus for a fortnight matters went on. That any but the weakest and silliest of people could have seen in one interview that Lord Verisopht, though he was a lord, and Sir Mulberry Hawk, though he was a baronet, were not persons accustomed to be the best possible companions, and were certainly not calculated by habits, manners, tastes, or conversation, to shine with any very great lustre in the society of ladies, need scarcely be remarked. But with Mrs. Wititterly the two titles were all sufficient; coarseness became humour, vulgarity softened itself down into the most charming eccentricity; insolence took the guise of an easy absence of reserve, attainable only by those who had had the good fortune to mix with high folks.
If the mistress put such a construction upon the behaviour of her new friends, what could the companion urge against them? If they accustomed themselves to very little restraint before the lady of the house, with how much more freedom could they address her paid dependent! Nor was even this the worst. As the odious Sir Mulberry Hawk attached himself to Kate with less and less of disguise, Mrs. Wititterly began to grow jealous of the superior attractions of Miss Nickleby. If this feeling had led to her banishment from the drawing-room when such company was there, Kate would have been only too happy and willing that it should have existed, but unfortunately for her she possessed that native grace and true gentil............