should have done so, if I had belonged to it, but I do not,’ said Nicholas.
‘Then how came you here, sir?’ was the natural inquiry of Mr. Gregsbury, MP. ‘And where the devil have you come from, sir?’ was the question which followed it.
‘I brought this card from the General Agency Office, sir,’ said Nicholas, ‘wishing to offer myself as your secretary, and understanding that you stood in need of one.’
‘That’s all you have come for, is it?’ said Mr. Gregsbury, eyeing him in some doubt.
Nicholas replied in the affirmative.
‘You have no connection with any of those rascally papers have you?’ said Mr. Gregsbury. ‘You didn’t get into the room, to hear what was going forward, and put it in print, eh?’
‘I have no connection, I am sorry to say, with anything at present,’ rejoined Nicholas, – politely enough, but quite at his ease.
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Gregsbury. ‘How did you find your way up here, then?’
Nicholas related how he had been forced up by the deputation.
‘That was the way, was it?’ said Mr. Gregsbury. ‘Sit down.’
Nicholas took a chair, and Mr. Gregsbury stared at him for a long time, as if to make certain, before he asked any further questions, that there were no objections to his outward appearance.
‘You want to be my secretary, do you?’ he said at length.
‘I wish to be employed in that capacity, sir,’ replied Nicholas.
‘Well,’ said Mr. Gregsbury; ‘now what can you do?’
‘I suppose,’ replied Nicholas, smiling, ‘that I can do what usually falls to the lot of other secretaries.’
‘What’s that?’ inquired Mr. Gregsbury.
‘What is it?’ replied Nicholas.
‘Ah! What is it?’ retorted the member, looking shrewdly at him, with his head on one side.
‘A secretary’s duties are rather difficult to define, perhaps,’ said Nicholas, considering. ‘They include, I presume, correspondence?’
‘Good,’ interposed Mr. Gregsbury.
‘The arrangement of papers and documents?’
‘Very good.’
‘Occasionally, perhaps, the writing from your dictation; and possibly, sir,’ said Nicholas, with a half-smile, ‘the copying of your speech for some public journal, when you have made one of more than usual importance.’
‘Certainly,’ rejoined Mr. Gregsbury. ‘What else?’
‘Really,’ said Nicholas, after a moment’s reflection, ‘I am not able, at this instant, to recapitulate any other duty of a secretary, beyond the general one of making himself as agreeable and useful to his employer as he can, consistently with his own respectability, and without overstepping that line of duties which he undertakes to perform, and which the designation of his office is usually understood to imply.’
Mr. Gregsbury looked fixedly at Nicholas for a short time, and then glancing warily round the room, said in a suppressed voice:
‘This is all very well, Mr – what is your name?’
‘Nickleby.’
‘This is all very well, Mr. Nickleby, and very proper, so far as it goes – so far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. There are other duties, Mr Nickleby, which a secretary to a parliamentary gentleman must never lose sight of. I should require to be crammed, sir.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ interposed Nicholas, doubtful whether he had heard aright.
‘ – To be crammed, sir,’ repeated Mr. Gregsbury.
‘May I beg your pardon again, if I inquire what you mean, sir?’ said Nicholas.
‘My meaning, sir, is perfectly plain,’ replied Mr. Gregsbury with a solemn aspect. ‘My secretary would have to make himself master of the foreign policy of the world, as it is mirrored in the newspapers; to run his eye over all accounts of public meetings, all leading articles, and accounts of the proceedings of public bodies; and to make notes of anything which it appeared to him might be made a point of, in any little speech upon the question of some petition lying on the table, or anything of that kind. Do you understand?’
‘I think I do, sir,’ replied Nicholas.
‘Then,’ said Mr. Gregsbury, ‘it would be necessary for him to make himself acquainted, from day to day, with newspaper paragraphs on passing events; such as “Mysterious disappearance, and supposed suicide of a potboy,” or anything of that sort, upon which I might found a question to the Secretary of State for the Home Department. Then, he would have to copy the question, and as much as I remembered of the answer (including a little compliment about independence and good sense); and to send the manuscript in a frank to the local paper, with perhaps half-a-dozen lines of leader, to the effect, that I was always to be found in my place in parliament, and never shrunk from the responsible and arduous duties, and so forth. You see?’
Nicholas bowed.
‘Besides which,’ continued Mr. Gregsbury, ‘I should expect him, now and then, to go through a few figures in the printed tables, and to pick out a few results, so that I might come out pretty well on timber duty questions, and finance questions, and so on; and I should like him to get up a few little arguments about the disastrous effects of a return to cash payments and a metallic currency, with a touch now and then about the exportation of bullion, and the Emperor of Russia, and bank notes, and all that kind of thing, which it’s only necessary to talk fluently about, because nobody understands it. Do you take me?’
‘I think I understand,’ said Nicholas.
‘With regard to such questions as are not political,’ continued Mr Gregsbury, warming; ‘and which one can’t be expected to care a curse about, beyond the natural care of not allowing inferior people to be as well off as ourselves – else where are our privileges? – I should wish my secretary to get together a few little flourishing speeches, of a patriotic cast. For instance, if any preposterous bill were brought forward, for giving poor grubbing devils of authors a right to their own property, I should like to say, that I for one would never consent to opposing an insurmountable bar to the diffusion of literature among the people, – you understand? – that the creations of the pocket, being man’s, might belong to one man, or one family; but that the creations of the brain, being God’s, ought as a matter of course to belong to the people at large – and if I was pleasantly disposed, I should like to make a joke about posterity, and say that those who wrote for posterity should be content to be rewarded by the approbation of posterity; it might take with the house, and could never do me any harm, because posterity can’t be expected to know anything about me or my jokes either – do you see?’
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте
