Of the Proceedings of Nicholas, and certain Internal Divisions in the Company of Mr. Vincent Crummles  
The unexpected success and favour with which his experiment at Portsmouth had been received, induced Mr. Crummles to prolong his stay in that town for a fortnight beyond the period he had originally assigned for the duration of his visit, during which time Nicholas personated a vast variety of characters with undiminished success, and attracted so many people to the theatre who had never been seen there before, that a benefit was considered by the manager a very promising speculation. Nicholas assenting to the terms proposed, the benefit was had, and by it he realised no less a sum than twenty pounds.
Possessed of this unexpected wealth, his first act was to enclose to honest John Browdie the amount of his friendly loan, which he accompanied with many expressions of gratitude and esteem, and many cordial wishes for his matrimonial happiness. To Newman Noggs he forwarded one half of the sum he had realised, entreating him to take an opportunity of handing it to Kate in secret, and conveying to her the warmest assurances of his love and affection. He made no mention of the way in which he had employed himself; merely informing Newman that a letter addressed to him under his assumed name at the Post Office, Portsmouth, would readily find him, and entreating that worthy friend to write full particulars of the situation of his mother and sister, and an account of all the grand things that Ralph Nickleby had done for them since his departure from London.
‘You are out of spirits,’ said Smike, on the night after the letter had been dispatched.
‘Not I!’ rejoined Nicholas, with assumed gaiety, for the confession would have made the boy miserable all night; ‘I was thinking about my sister, Smike.’
‘Sister!’
‘Ay.’
‘Is she like you?’ inquired Smike.
‘Why, so they say,’ replied Nicholas, laughing, ‘only a great deal handsomer.’
‘She must be very beautiful,’ said Smike, after thinking a little while with his hands folded together, and his eyes bent upon his friend.
‘Anybody who didn’t know you as well as I do, my dear fellow, would say you were an accomplished courtier,’ said Nicholas.
‘I don’t even know what that is,’ replied Smike, shaking his head. ‘Shall I ever see your sister?’
‘To be sure,’ cried Nicholas; ‘we shall all be together one of these days—when we are rich, Smike.’
‘How is it that you, who are so kind and good to me, have nobody to be kind to you?’ asked Smike. ‘I cannot make that out.’
‘Why, it is a long story,’ replied Nicholas, ‘and one you would have some difficulty in comprehending, I fear. I have an enemy—you understand what that is?’
‘Oh, yes, I understand that,’ said Smike.
‘Well, it is owing to him,’ returned Nicholas. ‘He is rich, and not so easily punished as your old enemy, Mr. Squeers. He is my uncle, but he is a villain, and has done me wrong.’
‘Has he though?’ asked Smike, bending eagerly forward. ‘What is his name? Tell me his name.’
‘Ralph—Ralph Nickleby.’
‘Ralph Nickleby,’ repeated Smike. ‘Ralph. I’ll get that name by heart.’
He had muttered it over to himself some twenty times, when a loud knock at the door disturbed him from his occupation. Before he could open it, Mr Folair, the pantomimist, thrust in his head.
Mr. Folair’s head was usually decorated with a very round hat, unusually high in the crown, and curled up quite tight in the brims. On the present occasion he wore it very much on one side, with the back part forward in consequence of its being the least rusty; round his neck he wore a flaming red worsted comforter, whereof the straggling ends peeped out beneath his threadbare Newmarket coat, which was very tight and buttoned all the way up. He carried in his hand one very dirty glove, and a cheap dress cane with a glass handle; in short, his whole appearance was unusually dashing, and demonstrated a far more scrupulous attention to his toilet than he was in the habit of bestowing upon it.
‘Good-evening, sir,’ said Mr. Folair, taking off the tall hat, and running his fingers through his hair. ‘I bring a communication. Hem!’
‘From whom and what about?’ inquired Nicholas. ‘You are unusually mysterious tonight.’
‘Cold, perhaps,’ returned Mr. Folair; ‘cold, perhaps. That is the fault of my position—not of myself, Mr. Johnson. My position as a mutual friend requires it, sir.’ Mr. Folair paused with a most impressive look, and diving into the hat before noticed, drew from thence a small piece of whity-brown paper curiously folded, whence he brought forth a note which it had served to keep clean, and handing it over to Nicholas, said—
‘Have the goodness to read that, sir.’
Nicholas, in a state of much amazement, took the note and broke the seal, glancing at Mr. Folair as he did so, who, knitting his brow and pursing up his mouth with great dignity, was sitting with his eyes steadily fixed upon the ceiling.
It was directed to blank Johnson, Esq., by favour of Augustus Folair, Esq.; and the astonishment of Nicholas was in no degree lessened, when he found it to be couched in the following laconic terms:—
“Mr. Lenville presents his kind regards to Mr. Johnson, and will feel obliged if he will inform him at what hour tomorrow morning it will be most convenient to him to meet Mr. L. at the Theatre, for the purpose of having his nose pulled in the presence of the company.
“Mr. Lenville requests Mr. Johnson not to neglect making an appointment, as he has invited two or three professional friends to witness the ceremony, and cannot disappoint them upon any account whatever.
“PORTSMOUTH, TUESDAY NIGHT.”
Indignant as he was at this impertinence, there was something so exquisitely absurd in such a cartel of defiance, that Nicholas was obliged to bite his lip and read the note over two or three times before he could muster sufficient gravity and sternness to address the hostile messenger, who had not taken his eyes from the ceiling, nor altered the expression of his face in the slightest degree.
‘Do you know the contents of this note, sir?’ he asked, at length.
‘Yes,’ rejoined Mr. Folair, looking round for an instant, and immediately carrying his eyes back again to the ceiling.
‘And how dare you bring it here, sir?’ asked Nicholas, tearing it into very little pieces, and jerking it in a shower towards the messenger. ‘Had you no fear of being kicked downstairs, sir?’
Mr. Folair turned his head—now ornamented with several fragments of the note—towards Nicholas, and with the same imperturbable dignity, briefly replied ‘No.’
‘Then,’ said Nicholas, taking up the tall hat and tossing it towards the door, ‘you had better follow that article of your dress, sir, or you may find yourself very disagreeably deceived, and that within a dozen seconds.’
‘I say, Johnson,’ remonstrated Mr. Folair, suddenly losing all his dignity, ‘none of that, you know. No tricks with a gentleman’s wardrobe.’
‘Leave the room,’ returned Nicholas. ‘How could you presume to come here on such an errand, you scoundrel?’
‘Pooh! pooh!’ said Mr. Folair, unwinding his comforter, and gradually getting himself out of it. ‘There—that’s enough.’
‘Enough!’ cried Nicholas, advancing towards him. ‘Take yourself off, sir.’
‘Pooh! pooh! I tell you,’ returned Mr. Folair, waving his hand in deprecation of any further wrath; ‘I wasn’t in earnest. I only brought it in joke.’
‘You had better be careful how you indulge in such jokes again,’ said Nicholas, ‘or you may find an allusion to pulling noses rather a dangerous reminder for the subject of your facetiousness. Was it written in joke, too, pray?’
‘No, no, that’s the best of it,’ returned the actor; ‘right down earnest—honour bright.’
Nicholas could not repress a smile at the odd figure before him, which, at all times more calculated to provoke mirth than anger, was especially so at that moment, when with one knee upon the ground, Mr. Folair twirled his old hat round upon his hand, and affected the extremest agony lest any of the nap should have been knocked off—an ornament which it is almost superfluous to say, it had not boasted for many months.
‘Come, sir,’ said Nicholas, laughing in spite of himself. ‘Have the goodness to explain.’
‘Why, I’ll tell you how it is,’ said Mr. Folair, sitting himself down in a chair with great coolness. ‘Since you came here Lenville has done nothing but second business, and, instead of having a reception every night as he used to have, they have let him come on as if he was nobody.’
‘What do you mean by a reception?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Jupiter!’ exclaimed Mr. Folair, ‘what an unsophisticated shepherd you are, Johnson! Why, applause from the house when you first come on. So he has gone on night after night, never getting a hand, and you getting a couple of rounds at least, and sometimes three, till at length he got quite desperate, and had half a mind last night to play Tybalt with a real sword, and pink you—not dangerously, but just enough to lay you up for a month or two.’
‘Very considerate,’ remarked Nicholas.
‘Yes, I think it was under the circumstances; his professional reputation being at stake,’ said Mr. Folair, quite seriously. ‘But his heart failed him, and he cast about for some other way of annoying you, and making himself popular at the same time—for that’s the point. Notoriety, notoriety, is the thing. Bless you, if he had pinked you,’ said Mr. Folair, stopping to make a calculation in his mind, ‘it would have been worth—ah, it would have been worth eight or ten shillings a week to him. All the town would have come to see the actor who nearly killed a man by mistake; I shouldn’t wonder if it had got him an engagement in London. However, he was obliged to try some other mode of getting popular, and this one occurred to him. It’s a clever idea, really. If you had shown the white feather, and let him pull your nose, he’d have got it into the paper; if you had sworn the peace against him, it would have been in the paper too, and he’d have been just as much talked about as you—don’t you see?’
‘Oh, certainly,’ rejoined Nicholas; ‘but suppose I were to turn the tables, and pull his nose, what then? Would that make his fortune?’
‘Why, I don’t think it would,&............