OLIVER TWIST OR THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS

'About the mother of the boy you named,' replied the matron
interrupting him. 'Yes.'
'The first question is, of what nature was her communication?'
said Monks.
'That's the second,' observed the woman with much deliberation.
'The first is, what may the communication be worth?'
'Who the devil can tell that, without knowing of what kind it
is?' asked Monks.
'Nobody better than you, I am persuaded,' answered Mrs. Bumble:
who did not want for spirit, as her yoke-fellow could abundantly
testify.
'Humph!' said Monks significantly, and with a look of eager
inquiry; 'there may be money's worth to get, eh?'
'Perhaps there may,' was the composed reply.
'Something that was taken from her,' said Monks. 'Something that
she wore. Something that--'
'You had better bid,' interrupted Mrs. Bumble. 'I have heard
enough, already, to assure me that you are the man I ought to
talk to.'
Mr. Bumble, who had not yet been admitted by his better half into
any greater share of the secret than he had originally possessed,
listened to this dialogue with outstretched neck and distended
eyes: which he directed towards his wife and Monks, by turns, in
undisguised astonishment; increased, if possible, when the latter
sternly demanded, what sum was required for the disclosure.
'What's it worth to you?' asked the woman, as collectedly as
before.
'It may be nothing; it may be twenty pounds,' replied Monks.
'Speak out, and let me know which.'
'Add five pounds to the sum you have named; give me
five-and-twenty pounds in gold,' said the woman; 'and I'll tell
you all I know. Not before.'
'Five-and-twenty pounds!' exclaimed Monks, drawing back.
'I spoke as plainly as I could,' replied Mrs. Bumble. 'It's not
a large sum, either.'
'Not a large sum for a paltry secret, that may be nothing when
it's told!' cried Monks impatiently; 'and which has been lying
dead for twelve years past or more!'
'Such matters keep well, and, like good wine, often double their
value in course of time,' answered the matron, still preserving
the resolute indifference she had assumed. 'As to lying dead,
there are those who will lie dead for twelve thousand years to
come, or twelve million, for anything you or I know, who will
tell strange tales at last!'
'What if I pay it for nothing?' asked Monks, hesitating.
'You can easily take it away again,' replied the matron. 'I am
but a woman; alone here; and unprotected.'
'Not alone, my dear, nor unprotected, neither,' submitted Mr.
Bumble, in a voice tremulous with fear: '_I_ am here, my dear.
And besides,' said Mr. Bumble, his teeth chattering as he spoke,
'Mr. Monks is too much of a gentleman to attempt any violence on
porochial persons. Mr. Monks is aware that I am not a young man,
my dear, and also that I am a little run to seed, as I may say;
bu he has heerd: I say I have no doubt Mr. Monks has heerd, my
dear: that I am a very determined officer, with very uncommon
strength, if I'm once roused. I only want a little rousing;
that's all.'
As Mr. Bumble spoke, he made a melancholy feint of grasping his
lantern with fierce determination; and plainly showed, by the
alarmed expression of every feature, that he DID want a little
rousing, and not a little, prior to making any very warlike
demonstration: unless, indeed, against paupers, or other person
or persons trained down for the purpose.
'You are a fool,' said Mrs. Bumble, in reply; 'and had better
hold your tongue.'
'He had better have cut it out, before he came, if he can't speak
in a lower tone,' said Monks, grimly. 'So! He's your husband,
eh?'
'He my husband!' tittered the matron, parrying the question.
'I thought as much, when you came in,' rejoined Monks, marking
the angry glance which the lady darted at her spouse as she
spoke. 'So much the better; I have less hesitation in dealing
with two people, when I find that there's only one will between
them. I'm in earnest. See here!'
He thrust his hand into a side-pocket; and producing a canvas
bag, told out twenty-five sovereigns on the table, and pushed
them over to the woman.
'Now,' he said, 'gather them up; and when this cursed peal of
thunder, which I feel is coming up to break over the house-top,
is gone, let's hear your story.'
The thunder, which seemed in fact much nearer, and to shiver and
break almost over their heads, having subsided, Monks, raising
his face from the table, bent forward to listen to what the woman
should say. The faces of the three nearly touched, as the two
men leant over the small table in their eagerness to hear, and
the woman also leant forward to render her whisper audible. The
sickly rays of the suspended lantern falling directly upon them,
aggravated the paleness and anxiety of their countenances: which,
encircled by the deepest gloom and darkness, looked ghastly in
the extreme.
'When this woman, that we called old Sally, died,' the matron
began, 'she and I were alone.'
'Was there no one by?' asked Monks, in the same hollow whisper;
'No sick wretch or idiot in some other bed? No one who could
hear, and might, by possibility, understand?'
'Not a soul,' replied the woman; 'we were alone. _I_ stood alone
beside the body when death came over it.'
'Good,' said Monks, regarding her attentively. 'Go on.'
'She spoke of a young creature,' resumed the matron, 'who had
brought a child into the world some years before; not merely in
the same room, but in the same bed, in which she then lay dying.'
'Ay?' said Monks, with quivering lip, and glancing over his
shoulder, 'Blood! How things come about!'
'The child was the one you named to him last night,' said the
matron, nodding carelessly towards her husband; 'the mother this
nurse had robbed.'
'In life?' asked Monks.
'In death,' replied the woman, with something like a shudder.
'She stole from the corpse, when it had hardly turned to one,
that which the dead mother had prayed her, with her last breath,
to keep for the infant's sake.'
'She sold it,' cried Monks, with desperate eagerness; 'did she
sell it? Where? When? To whom? How long before?'
'As she told me, with great difficulty, that she had done this,'
said the matron, 'she fell back and died.'
'Without saying more?' cried Monks, in a voice which, from its
very suppression, seemed only the more furious. 'It's a lie!
I'll not be played with. She said more. I'll tear the life out
of you both, but I'll know what it was.'
'She didn't utter another word,' said the woman, to all
appearance unmoved (as Mr. Bumble was very far from being) by the
strange man's violence; 'but she clutched my gown, violently,
with one hand, which was partly closed; and when I saw that she
was dead, and so removed the hand by force, I found it clasped a
scrap of dirty paper.'
'Which contained--' interposed Monks, stretching forward.
'Nothing,' replied the woman; 'it was a pawnbroker's duplicate.'
'For what?' demanded Monks.
'In good time I'll tell you.' said the woman. 'I judge that she
had kept the trinket, for some time, in the hope of turning it to
better account; and then had pawned it; and had saved or scraped
together money to pay the pawnbroker's interest year by year, and
prevent its running out; so that if anything came of it, it could
still be redeemed. Nothing had come of it; and, as I tell you,
she died with the scrap of paper, all worn and tattered, in her
hand. The time was out in two days; I thought something might
one day come of it too; and so redeemed the pledge.'
'Where is it now?' asked Monks quickly.
'THERE,' replied the woman. And, as if glad to be relieved of
it, she hastily threw upon the table a small kid bag scarcely
large enough for a French watch, which Monks pouncing upon, tore
open with trembling hands. It contained a little gold locket:
in which were two locks of hair, and a plain gold wedding-ring.
'It has the word "Agnes" engraved on the inside,' said the woman.
'There is a blank left for the surname; and then follows the
date; which is within a year before the child was born. I found
out that.'
'And this is all?' said Monks, after a close and eager scrutiny
of the contents of the little packet.
'All,' replied the woman.
Mr. Bumble drew a long breath, as if he were glad to find that
the story was over, and no mention made of taking the
five-and-twenty pounds back again; and now he took courage to
wipe the perspiration which had been trickling over his nose,
unchecked, during the whole of the previous dialogue.
'I know nothing of the story, beyond what I can guess at,' said
his wife addressing Monks, after a short silence; 'and I want to
know nothing; for it's safer not. But I may ask you two
questions, may I?'
'You may ask,' said Monks, with some show of surprise; 'but
whether I answer or not is another question.'
'--Which makes three,' observed Mr. Bumble, essaying a stroke of
facetiousness.
'Is that what you expected to get from me?' demanded the matron.
'It is,' replied Monks. 'The other question?'
'What do you propose to do with it? Can it be used against me?'
'Never,' rejoined Monks; 'nor against me either. See here! But
don't move a step forward, or your life is not worth a bulrush.'
With these words, he suddenly wheeled the table aside, and
pulling an iron ring in the boarding, threw back a large
trap-door which opened close at Mr. Bumble's feet, and caused
that gentleman to retire several paces backward, with great
precipitation.
'Look down,' said Monks, lowering the lantern into the gulf.
'Don't fear me. I could have let you down, quietly enough, when
you were seated over it, if that had been my game.'
Thus encouraged, the matron drew near to the brink; and even Mr.
Bumble himself, impelled by curiousity, ventured to do the same.
The turbid water, swollen by the heavy rain, was rushing rapidly
on below; and all other sounds were lost in the noise of its
plashing and eddying against the green and slimy piles. There
had once been a water-mill beneath; the tide foaming and chafing
round the few rotten stakes, and fragments of machinery that yet
remained, seemed to dart onward, with a new impulse, when freed
from the obstacles which had unavailingly attempted to stem its
headlong course.
'If you flung a man's body down there, where would it be
to-morrow morning?' said Monks, swinging the lantern to and fro
in the dark well.
'Twelve miles down the river, and cut to pieces besides,' replied
Bumble, recoiling at the thought.
Monks drew the little packet from his breast, where he had
hurriedly thrust it; and tying it to a leaden weight, which had
formed a part of some pulley, and was lying on the floor, dropped
it into the stream. It fell straight, and true as a die; clove
the water with a scarcely audible splash; and was gone.
The three looking into each other's faces, seemed to breathe more
freely.
'There!' said Monks, closing the trap-door, which fell heavily
back into its former position. 'If the sea ever gives up its
dead, as books say it will, it will keep its gold and silver to
itself, and that trash among it. We have nothing more to say,
and may break up our pleasant party.'
'By all means,' observed Mr. Bumble, with great alacrity.
'You'll keep a quiet tongue in your head, will you?' said Monks,
with a threatening look. 'I am not afraid of your wife.'
'You may depend upon me, young man,' answered Mr. Bumble, bowing
himself gradually towards the ladder, with excessive politeness.
'On everybody's account, young man; on my own, you know, Mr.
Monks.'
'I am glad, for your sake, to hear it,' remarked Monks. 'Light
your lantern! And get away from here as fast as you can.'
It was fortunate that the conversation terminated at this point,
or Mr. Bumble, who had bowed himself to within six inches of the
ladder, would infallibly have pitched headlong into the room
below. He lighted his lantern from that which Monks had detached
from the rope, and now carried in his hand; and making no effort
to prolong the discourse, descended in silence, followed by his
wife. Monks brought up the rear, after pausing on the steps to
satisfy himself that there were no other sounds to be heard than
the beating of the rain without, and the rushing of the water.
They traversed the lower room, slowly, and with caution; for
Monks started at every shadow; and Mr. Bumble, holding his
lantern a foot above the ground, walked not only with remarkable
care, but with a marvellously light step for a gentleman of his
figure: looking nervously about him for hidden trap-doors. The
gate at which they had entered, was softly unfastened and opened
by Monks; merely exchanging a nod with their mysterious
acquaintance, the married couple emerged into the wet and
darkness outside.
They were no sooner gone, than Monks, who appeared to entertain
an invincible repugnance to being left alone, called to a boy who
had been hidden somewhere below. Bidding him go first, and bear
the light, he returned to the chamber he had just quitted.
CHAPTER XXXIX
INTRODUCES SOME RESPECTABLE CHARACTERS WITH WHOM THE
READER IS
ALREADY ACQUAINTED, AND SHOWS HOW MONKS AND THE JEW LAID
THEIR
WORTHY HEADS TOGETHER
On the evening following that upon which the three worthies
mentioned in the last chapter, disposed of their little matter of
business as therein narrated, Mr. William Sikes, awakening from a
nap, drowsily growled forth an inquiry what time of night it was.
The room in which Mr. Sikes propounded this question, was not one
of those he had tenanted, previous to the Chertsey expedition,
although it was in the same quarter of the town, and was situated
at no great distance from his former lodgings. It was not, in
appearance, so desirable a habitation as his old quarters: being
a mean and badly-furnished apartment, of very limited size;
lighted only by one small window in the shelving roof, and
abutting on a close and dirty lane. Nor were there wanting other
indications of the good gentleman's having gone down in the world
of late: for a great scarcity of furniture, and total absence of
comfort, together with the disappearance of all such small
moveables as spare clothes and linen, bespoke a state of extreme
poverty; while the meagre and attenuated condition of Mr. Sikes
himself would have fully confirmed these symptoms, if they had
stood in any need of corroboration.
The housebreaker was lying on the bed, wrapped in his white
great-coat, by way of dressing-gown, and displaying a set of
features in no degree improved by the cadaverous hue of illness,
and the addition of a soiled nightcap, and a stiff, black beard
of a week's growth. The dog sat at the bedside: now eyeing his
master with a wistful look, and now pricking his ears, and
uttering a low growl as some noise in the street, or in the lower
part of the house, attracted his attention. Seated by the
window, busily engaged in patching an old waistcoat which formed
a portion of the robber's ordinary dress, was a female: so pale
and reduced with watching and privation, that there would have
been considerable difficulty in recognising her as the same Nancy
who has already figured in this tale, but for the voice in which
she replied to Mr. Sikes's question.
'Not long gone seven,' said the girl. 'How do you feel to-night,
Bill?'
'As weak as water,' replied Mr. Sikes, with an imprecation on his
eyes and limbs. 'Here; lend us a hand, and let me get off this
thundering bed anyhow.'
Illness had not improved Mr. Sikes's temper; for, as the girl
raised him up and led him to a chair, he muttered various curses
on her awkwardnewss, and struck her.
'Whining are you?' said Sikes. 'Come! Don't stand snivelling
there. If you can't do anything better than that, cut off
altogether. D'ye hear me?'
'I hear you,' replied the girl, turning her face aside, and
forcing a laugh. 'What fancy have you got in your head now?'
'Oh! you've thought better of it, have you?' growled Sikes,
marking the tear which trembled in her eye. 'All the better for
you, you have.'
'Why, you don't mean to say, you'd be hard upon me to-night,
Bill,' said the girl, laying her hand upon his shoulder.
'No!' cried Mr. Sikes. 'Why not?'
'Such a number of nights,' said the girl, with a touch of woman's
tenderness, which communicated something like sweetness of tone,
even to her voice: 'such a number of nights as I've been patient
with you, nursing and caring for you, as if you had been a child:
and this the first that I've seen you like yourself; you wouldn't
have served me as you did just now, if you'd thought of that,
would you? Come, come; say you wouldn't.'
'Well, then,' rejoined Mr. Sikes, 'I wouldn't. Why, damme, now,
the girls's whining again!'
'It's nothing,' said the girl, throwing herself into a chair.
'Don't you seem to mind me. It'll soon be over.'
'What'll be over?' demanded Mr. Sikes in a savage voice. 'What
foolery are you up to, now, again? Get up and bustle about, and
don't come over me with your woman's nonsense.'
At any other time, this remonstrance, and the tone in which it
was delivered, would have had the desired effect; but the girl
being really weak and exhausted, dropped her head over the back
of the chair, and fainted, before Mr. Sikes could get out a few
of the appropriate oaths with which, on similar occasions, he was
accustomed to garnish his threats. Not knowing, very well, what
to do, in this uncommon emergency; for Miss Nancy's hysterics
were usually of that violent kind which the patient fights and
struggles out of, without much assistance; Mr. Sikes tried a
little blasphemy: and finding that mode of treatment wholly
ineffectual, called for assistance.
'What's the matter here, my dear?' said Fagin, looking in.
'Lend a hand to the girl, can't you?' replied Sikes impatiently.
'Don't stand chattering and grinning at me!'
With an exclamation of surprise, Fagin hastened to the girl's
assistance, while Mr. John Dawkins (otherwise the Artful Dodger),
who had followed his venerable friend into the room, hastily
deposited on the floor a bundle with which he was laden; and
snatching a bottle from the grasp of Master Charles Bates who
came close at his heels, uncorked it in a twinkling with his
teeth, and poured a portion of its contents down the patient's
throat: previously taking a taste, himself, to prevent mistakes.
'Give her a whiff of fresh air with the bellows, Charley,' said
Mr. Dawkins; 'and you slap her hands, Fagin, while Bill undoes
the petticuts.'
These united restoratives, administered with great energy:
especially that department consigned to Master Bates, who
appeared to consider his share in the proceedings, a piece of
unexampled pleasantry: were not long in producing the desired
effect. The girl gradually recovered her senses; and, staggering
to a chair by the bedside, hid her face upon the pillow: leaving
Mr. Sikes to confront the new comers, in some astonishment at
their unlooked-for appearance.
'Why, what evil wind has blowed you here?' he asked Fagin.
'No evil wind at all, my dear, for evil winds blow nobody any
good; and I've brought something good with me, that you'll be
glad to see. Dodger, my dear, open the bundle; and give Bill the
little trifles that we spent all our money on, this morning.'
In compliance with Mr. Fagin's request, the Artful untied this
bundle, which was of large size, and formed of an old
table-cloth; and handed the articles it contained, one by one, to
Charley Bates: who placed them on the table, with various
encomiums on their rarity and excellence.
'Sitch a rabbit pie, Bill,' exclaimed that young gentleman,
disclosing to view a huge pasty; 'sitch delicate creeturs, with
sitch tender limbs, Bill, that the wery bones melt in your mouth,
and there's no occasion to pick 'em; half a pound of seven and
six-penny green, so precious strong that if you mix it with
biling water, it'll go nigh to blow the lid of the tea-pot off; a
pound and a half of moist sugar that the niggers didn't work at
all at, afore they got it up to sitch a pitch of goodness,--oh
no! Two half-quartern brans; pound of best fresh; piece of
double Glo'ster; and, to wind up all, some of the richest sort
you ever lushed!'
Uttering this last panegyrie, Master Bates produced, from one of
his extensive pockets, a full-sized wine-bottle, carefully
corked; while Mr. Dawkins, at the same instant, poured out a
wine-glassful of raw spirits from the bottle he carried: which
the invalid tossed down his throat without a moment's hesitation.
'Ah!' said Fagin, rubbing his hands with great satisfaction.
'You'll do, Bill; you'll do now.'
'Do!' exclaimed Mr. Sikes; 'I might have been done for, twenty
times over, afore you'd have done anything to help me. What do
you mean by leaving a man in this state, three weeks and more,
you false-hearted wagabond?'
'Only hear him, boys!' said Fagin, shrugging his shoulders. 'And
us come to bring him all these beau-ti-ful things.'
'The things is well enough in their way,' observed Mr. Sikes: a
little soothed as he glanced over the table; 'but what have you
got to say for yourself, why you should leave me here, down in
the mouth, health, blunt, and everything else; and take no more
notice of me, all this mortal time, than if I was that 'ere
dog.--Drive him down, Charley!'
'I never see such a jolly dog as that,' cried Master Bates, doing
as he was desired. 'Smelling the grub like a old lady a going to
market! He'd make his fortun' on the stage that dog would, and
rewive the drayma besides.'
'Hold your din,' cried Sikes, as the dog retreated under the bed:
still growling angrily. 'What have you got to say for yourself,
you withered old fence, eh?'
'I was away from London, a week and more, my dear, on a plant,'
replied the Jew.
'And what about the other fortnight?' demanded Sikes. 'What
about the other fortnight that you've left me lying here, like a
sick rat in his hole?'
'I couldn't help it, Bill. I can't go into a long explanation
before company; but I couldn't help it, upon my honour.'
'Upon your what?' growled Sikes, with excessive disgust. 'Here!
Cut me off a piece of that pie, one of you boys, to take the
taste of that out of my mouth, or it'll choke me dead.'
'Don't be out of temper, my dear,' urged Fagin, submissively. 'I
have never forgot you, Bill; never once.'
'No! I'll pound it that you han't,' replied Sikes, with a bitter
grin. 'You've been scheming and plotting away, every hour that I
have laid shivering and burning here; and Bill was to do this;
and Bill was to do that; and Bill was to do it all, dirt cheap,
as soon as he got well: and was quite poor enough for your work.
If it hadn't been for the girl, I might have died.'
'There now, Bill,' remonstrated Fagin, eagerly catching at the
word. 'If it hadn't been for the girl! Who but poor ould Fagin
was the means of your having such a handy girl about you?'
'He says true enough there!' said Nancy, coming hastily forward.
'Let him be; let him be.'
Nancy's appearance gave a new turn to the conversation; for the
boys, receiving a sly wink from the wary old Jew, began to ply
her with liquor: of which, however, she took very sparingly;
while Fagin, assuming an unusual flow of spirits, gradually
brought Mr. Sikes into a better temper, by affecting to regard
his threats as a little pleasant banter; and, moreover, by
laughing very heartily at one or two rough jokes, which, after
repeated applications to the spirit-bottle, he condescended to
make.
'It's all very well,' said Mr. Sikes; 'but I must have some blunt
from you to-night.'
'I haven't a piece of coin about me,' replied the Jew.
'Then you've got lots at home,' retorted Sikes; 'and I must have
some from there.'
'Lots!' cried Fagin, holding up is hands. 'I haven't so much as
would--'
'I don't know how much you've got, and I dare say you hardly know
yourself, as it would take a pretty long time to count it,' said
Sikes; 'but I must have some to-night; and that's flat.'
'Well, well,' said Fagin, with a sigh, 'I'll send the Artful
round presently.'
'You won't do nothing of the kind,' rejoined Mr. Sikes. 'The
Artful's a deal too artful, and would forget to come, or lose his
way, or get dodged by traps and so be perwented, or anything for
an excuse, if you put him up to it. Nancy shall go to the ken
and fetch it, to make all sure; and I'll lie down and have a
snooze while she's gone.'
After a great deal of haggling and squabbling, Fagin beat down
the amount of the required advance from five pounds to three
pounds four and sixpence: protesting with many solemn
asseverations that that would only leave him eighteen-pence to
keep house with; Mr. Sikes sullenly remarking that if he couldn't
get any more he must accompany him home; with the Dodger and
Master Bates put the eatables in the cupboard. The Jew then,
taking leave of his affectionate friend, returned homeward,
attended by Nancy and the boys: Mr. Sikes, meanwhile, flinging
himself on the bed, and composing himself to sleep away the time
until the young lady's return.
In due course, they arrived at Fagin's abode, where they found
Toby Crackit and Mr. Chitling intent upon their fifteenth game at
cribbage, which it is scarcely necessary to say the latter
gentleman lost, and with it, his fifteenth and last sixpence:
much to the amusement of his young friends. Mr. Crackit,
apparently somewhat ashamed at being found relaxing himself with
a gentleman so much his inferior in station and mental
endowments, yawned, and inquiring after Sikes, took up his hat to
go.
'Has nobody been, Toby?' asked Fagin.
'Not a living leg,' answered Mr. Crackit, pulling up his collar;
'it's been as dull as swipes. You ought to stand something
handsome, Fagin, to recompense me for keeping house so long.
Damme, I'm as flat as a juryman; and should have gone to sleep,
as fast as Newgate, if I hadn't had the good natur' to amuse this
youngster. Horrid dull, I'm blessed if I an't!'
With these and other ejaculations of the same kind, Mr. Toby
Crackit swept up his winnings, and crammed them into his
waistcoat pocket with a haughty air, as though such small pieces
of silver were wholly beneath the consideration of a man of his
figure; this done, he swaggered out of the room, with so much
elegance and gentility, that Mr. Chitling, bestowing numerous
admiring glances on his legs and boots till they were out of
sight, assured the company that he considered his acquaintance
cheap at fifteen sixpences an interview, and that he didn't value
his losses the snap of his little finger.
'Wot a rum chap you are, Tom!' said Master Bates, highly amused
by this declaration.
'Not a bit of it,' replied Mr. Chitling. 'Am I, Fagin?'
'A very clever fellow, my dear,' said Fagin, patting him on the
shoulder, and winking to his other pupils.
'And Mr. Crackit is a heavy swell; an't he, Fagin?' asked Tom.
'No doubt at all of that, my dear.'
'And it is a creditable thing to have his acquaintance; an't it,
Fagin?' pursued Tom.
'Very much so, indeed, my dear. They're only jealous, Tom,
because he won't give it to them.'
'Ah!' cried Tom, triumphantly, 'that's where it is! He has
cleaned me out. But I can go and earn some more, when I like;
can't I, Fagin?'
'To be sure you can, and the sooner you go the better, Tom; so
make up your loss at once, and don't lose any more time. Dodger!
Charley! It's time you were on the lay. Come! It's near ten,
and nothing done yet.'
In obedience to this hint, the boys, nodding to Nancy, took up
their hats, and left the room; the Dodger and his vivacious
friend indulging, as they went, in many witticisms at the expense
of Mr. Chitling; in whose conduct, it is but justice to say,
there was nothing very conspicuous or peculiar: inasmuch as
there are a great number of spirited young bloods upon town, who
pay a much higher price than Mr. Chitling for being seen in good
society: and a great number of fine gentlemen (composing the
good society aforesaid) who established their reputation upon
very much the same footing as flash Toby Crackit.
'Now,' said Fagin, when they had left the room, 'I'll go and get
you that cash, Nancy. This is only the key of a little cupboard
where I keep a few odd things the boys get, my dear. I never
lock up my money, for I've got none to lock up, my dear--ha! ha!
ha!--none to lock up. It's a poor trade, Nancy, and no thanks;
but I'm fond of seeing the young people about me; and I bear it
all, I bear it all. Hush!' he said, hastily concealing the key
in his breast; 'who's that? Listen!'
The girl, who was sitting at the table with her arms folded,
appeared in no way interested in the arrival: or to care whether
the person, whoever he was, came or went: until the murmur of a
man's voice reached her ears. The instant she caught the sound,
she tore off her bonnet and shawl, with the rapidity of
lightning, and thrust them under the table. The Jew, turning
round immediately afterwards, she muttered a complaint of the
heat: in a tone of languor that contrasted, very remarkably,
with the extreme haste and violence of this action: which,
however, had been unobserved by Fagin, who had his back towards
her at the time.
'Bah!' he whispered, as though nettled by the interruption; 'it's
the man I expected before; he's coming downstairs. Not a word
about the money while he's here, Nance. He won't stop long. Not
ten minutes, my dear.'
Laying his skinny forefinger upon his lip, the Jew carried a
candle to the door, as a man's step was heard upon the stairs
without. He reached it, at the same moment as the visitor, who,
coming hastily into the room, was close upon the girl before he
observed her.
It was Monks.
'Only one of my young people,' said Fagin, observing that Monks
drew back, on beholding a stranger. 'Don't move, Nancy.'
The girl drew closer to the table, and glancing at Monks with an
air of careless levity, withdrew her eyes; but as he turned
towards Fagin, she stole another look; so keen and searching, and
full of purpose, that if there had been any bystander to observe
the change, he could hardly have believed the two looks to have
proceeded from the same person.
'Any news?' inquired Fagin.
'Great.'
'And--and--good?' asked Fagin, hesitating as though he feared to
vex the other man by being too sanguine.
'Not bad, any way,' replied Monks with a smile. 'I have been
prompt enough this time. Let me have a word with you.'
The girl drew closer to the table, and made no offer to leave the
room, although she could see that Monks was pointing to her. The
Jew: perhaps fearing she might say something aloud about the
money, if he endeavoured to get rid of her: pointed upward, and
took Monks out of the room.
'Not that infernal hole we were in before,' she could hear the
man say as they went upstairs. Fagin laughed; and making some
reply which did not reach her, seemed, by the creaking of the
boards, to lead his companion to the second story.
Before the sound of their footsteps had ceased to echo through
the house, the girl had slipped off her shoes; and drawing her
gown loosely over her head, and muffling her arms in it, stood at
the door, listening with breathless interest. The moment the
noise ceased, she glided from the room; ascended the stairs with
incredible softness and silence; and was lost in the gloom above.
The room remained deserted for a quarter of an hour or more; the
girl glided back with the same unearthly tread; and, immediately
afterwards, the two men were heard descending. Monks went at
once into the street; and the Jew crawled upstairs again for the
money. When he returned, the girl was adjusting her shawl and
bonnet, as if preparing to be gone.
'Why, Nance!,' exclaimed the Jew, starting back as he put down
the candle, 'how pale you are!'
'Pale!' echoed the girl, shading her eyes with her hands, as if
to look steadily at him.
'Quite horrible. What have you been doing to yourself?'
'Nothing that I know of, except sitting in this close place for I
don't know how long and all,' replied the girl carelessly.
'Come! Let me get back; that's a dear.'
With a sigh for every piece of money, Fagin told the amount into
her hand. They parted without more conversation, merely
interchanging a 'good-night.'
When the girl got into the open street, she sat down upon a
doorstep; and seemed, for a few moments, wholly bewildered and
unable to pursue her way. Suddenly she arose; and hurrying on,
in a direction quite opposite to that in which Sikes was awaiting
her returned, quickened her pace, until it gradually resolved
into a violent run. After completely exhausting herself, she
stopped to take breath: and, as if suddenly recollecting
herself, and deploring her inability to do something she was bent
upon, wrung her hands, and burst into tears.
It might be that her tears relieved her, or that she felt the
full hopelessness of her condition; but she turned back; and
hurrying with nearly as great rapidity in the contrary direction;
partly to recover lost time, and partly to keep pace with the
violent current of her own thoughts: soon reached the dwelling
where she had left the housebreaker.
If she betrayed any agitation, when she presented herself to Mr.
Sikes, he did not observe it; for merely inquiring if she had
brought the money, and receiving a reply in the affirmative, he
uttered a growl of satisfaction, and replacing his head upon the
pillow, resumed the slumbers which her arrival had interrupted.
It was fortunate for her that the possession of money occasioned
him so much employment next day in the way of eating and
drinking; and withal had so beneficial an effect in smoothing
down the asperities of his temper; that he had neither time nor
inclination to be very critical upon her behaviour and
deportment. That she had all the abstracted and nervous manner
of one who is on the eve of some bold and hazardous step, which
it has required no common struggle to resolve upon, would have
been obvious to the lynx-eyed Fagin, who would most probably have
taken the alarm at once; but Mr. Sikes lacking the niceties of
discrimination, and being troubled with no more subtle misgivings
than those which resolve themselves into a dogged roughness of
behaviour towards everybody; and being, furthermore, in an
unusually amiable condition, as has been already observed; saw
nothing unusual in her demeanor, and indeed, troubled himself so
little about her, that, had her agitation been far more
perceptible than it was, it would have been very unlikely to have
awakened his suspicions.
As that day closed in, the girl's excitement increased; and, when
night came on, and she sat by, watching until the housebreaker
should drink himself asleep, there was an unusual paleness in her
cheek, and a fire in her eye, that even Sikes observed with
astonishment.
Mr. Sikes being weak from the fever, was lying in bed, taking hot
water with his gin to render it less inflammatory; and had pushed
his glass towards Nancy to be replenished for the third or fourth
time, when these symptoms first struck him.
'Why, burn my body!' said the man, raising himself on his hands
as he stared the girl in the face. 'You look like a corpse come
to life again. What's the matter?'
'Matter!' replied the girl. 'Nothing. What do you look at me so
hard for?'
'What foolery is this?' demanded Sikes, grasping her by the arm,
and shaking her roughly. 'What is it? What do you mean? What
are you thinking of?'
'Of many things, Bill,' replied the girl, shivering, and as she
did so, pressing her hands upon her eyes. 'But, Lord! What odds
in that?'
The tone of forced gaiety in which the last words were spoken,
seemd to produce a deeper impression on Sikes than the wild and
rigid look which had preceded them.
'I tell you wot it is,' said Sikes; 'if you haven't caught the
fever, and got it comin' on, now, there's something more than
usual in the wind, and something dangerous too. You're not
a-going to--. No, damme! you wouldn't do that!'
'Do what?' asked the girl.
'There ain't,' said Sikes, fixing his eyes upon her, and
muttering the words to himself; 'there ain't a stauncher-hearted
gal going, or I'd have cut her throat three months ago. She's
got the fever coming on; that's it.'
Fortifying himself with this assurance, Sikes drained the glass
to the bottom, and then, with many grumbling oaths, called for
his physic. The girl jumped up, with great alacrity; poured it
quickly out, but with her back towards him; and held the vessel
to his lips, while he drank off the contents.
'Now,' said the robber, 'come and sit aside of me, and put on
your own face; or I'll alter it so, that you won't know it agin
when you do want it.'
The girl obeyed. Sikes, locking her hand in his, fell back upon
the pillow: turning his eyes upon her face. They closed; opened
again; closed once more; again opened. He shifted his position
restlessly; and, after dozing again, and again, for two or three
minutes, and as often springing up with a look of terror, and
gazing vacantly about him, was suddenly stricken, as it were,
while in the very attitude of rising, into a deep and heavy
sleep. The grasp of his hand relaxed; the upraised arm fell
languidly by his side; and he lay like one in a profound trance.
'The laudanum has taken effect at last,' murmured the girl, as
she rose from the bedside. 'I may be too late, even now.'
She hastily dressed herself in her bonnet and shawl: looking
fearfully round, from time to time, as if, despite the sleeping
draught, she expected every moment to feel the pressure of
Sikes's heavy hand upon her shoulder; then, stooping softly over
the bed, she kissed the robber's lips; and then opening and
closing the room-door with noiseless touch, hurried from the
house.
A watchman was crying half-past nine, down a dark passage through
which she had to pass, in gaining the main thoroughfare.
'Has it long gone the half-hour?' asked the girl.
'It'll strike the hour in another quarter,' said the man:
raising his lantern to her face.
'And I cannot get there in less than an hour or more,' muttered
Nancy: brushing swiftly past him, and gliding rapidly down the
street.
Many of the shops were already closing in the back lanes and
avenues through which she tracked her way, in making from
Spitalfields towards the West-End of London. The clock struck
ten, increasing her impatience. She tore along the narrow
pavement: elbowing the passengers from side to side; and darting
almost under the horses' heads, crossed crowded streets, where
clusters of persons were eagerly watching their opportunity to do
the like.
'The woman is mad!' said the people, turning to look after her as
she rushed away.
When she reached the more wealthy quarter of the town, the
streets were comparatively deserted; and here her headlong
progress excited a still greater curiosity in the stragglers whom
she hurried past. Some quickened their pace behind, as though to
see whither she was hastening at such an unusual rate; and a few
made head upon her, and looked back, surprised at her
undiminished speed; but they fell off one by one; and when she
neared her place of destination, she was alone.
It was a family hotel in a quiet but handsome street near Hyde
Park. As the brilliant light of the lamp which burnt before its
door, guided her to the spot, the clock struck eleven. She had
loitered for a few paces as though irresolute, and making up her
mind to advance; but the sound determined her, and she stepped
into the hall. The porter's seat was vacant. She looked round
with an air of incertitude, and advanced towards the stairs.
'Now, young woman!' said a smartly-dressed female, looking out
from a door behind her, 'who do you want here?'
'A lady who is stopping in this house,' answered the girl.
'A lady!' was the reply, accompanied with a scornful look. 'What
lady?'
'Miss Maylie,' said Nancy.
The young woman, who had by this time, noted her appearance,
replied only by a look of virtuous disdain; and summoned a man to
answer her. To him, Nancy repeated her request.
'What name am I to say?' asked the waiter.
'It's of no use saying any,' replied Nancy.
'Nor business?' said the man.
'No, nor that neither,' rejoined the girl. 'I must see the
lady.'
'Come!' said the man, pushing her towards the door. 'None of
this. Take yourself off.'
'I shall be carried out if I go!' said the girl violently; 'and I
can make that a job that two of you won't like to do. Isn't
there anybody here,' she said, looking round, 'that will see a
simple message carried for a poor wretch like me?'
This appeal produced an effect on a good-tempered-faced man-cook,
who with some of the other servants was looking on, and who
stepped forward to interfere.
'Take it up for her, Joe; can't you?' said this person.
'What's the good?' replied the man. 'You don't suppose the young
lady will see such as her; do you?'
This allusion to Nancy's doubtful character, raised a vast
quantity of chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who
remarked, with great fervour, that the creature was a disgrace to
her sex; and strongly advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly,
into the kennel.
'Do what you like with me,' said the girl, turning to the men
again; 'but do what I ask you first, and I ask you to give this
message for God Almighty's sake.'
The soft-hearted cook added his intercession, and the result was
that the man who had first appeared undertook its delivery.
'What's it to be?' said the man, with one foot on the stairs.
'That a young woman earnestly asks to speak to Miss Maylie
alone,' said Nancy; 'and that if the lady will only hear the
first word she has to say, she will know whether to hear her
business, or to have her turned out of doors as an impostor.'
'I say,' said the man, 'you're coming it strong!'
'You give the message,' said the girl firmly; 'and let me hear
the answer.'
The man ran upstairs. Nancy remained, pale and almost
breathless, listening with quivering lip to the very audible
expressions of scorn, of which the chaste housemaids were very
prolific; and of which they became still more so, when the man
returned, and said the young woman was to walk upstairs.
'It's no good being proper in this world,' said the first
housemaid.
'Brass can do better than the gold what has stood the fire,' said
the second.
The third contented herself with wondering 'what ladies was made
of'; and the fourth took the first in a quartette of 'Shameful!'
with which the Dianas concluded.
Regardless of all this: for she had weightier matters at heart:
Nancy followed the man, with trembling limbs, to a small
ante-chamber, lighted by a lamp from the ceiling. Here he left
her, and retired.
CHAPTER XL
A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAMBER
The girl's life had been squandered in the streets, and among the
most noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was
something of the woman's original nature left in her still; and
when she heard a light step approaching the door opposite to that
by which she had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which
the small room would in another moment contain, she felt burdened
with the sense of her own deep shame, and shrunk as though she
could scarcely bear the presence of her with whom she had sought
this interview.
But struggling with these better feelings was pride,--the vice of
the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high
and self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and
ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the
scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the
gallows itself,--even this degraded being felt too proud to
betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a
weakness, but which alone connected her with that humanity, of
which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when
a very child.
She raised her eyes sufficiently to observe that the figure which
presented itself was that of a slight and beautiful girl; then,
bending them on the ground, she tossed her head with affected
carelessness as she said:
'It's a hard matter to get to see you, lady. If I had taken
offence, and gone away, as many would have done, you'd have been
sorry for it one day, and not without reason either.'
'I am very sorry if any one has behaved harshly to you,' replied
Rose. 'Do not think of that. Tell me why you wished to see me.
I am the person you inquired for.'
The kind tone of this answer, the sweet voice, the gentle manner,
the absence of any accent of haughtiness or displeasure, took the
girl completely by surprise, and she burst into tears.
'Oh, lady, lady!' she said, clasping her hands passionately
before her face, 'if there was more like you, there would be
fewer like me,--there would--there would!'
'Sit down,' said Rose, earnestly. 'If you are in poverty or
affliction I shall be truly glad to relieve you if I can,--I
shall indeed. Sit down.'
'Let me stand, lady,' said the girl, still weeping, 'and do not
speak to me so kindly till you know me better. It is growing
late. Is--is--that door shut?'
'Yes,' said Rose, recoiling a few steps, as if to be nearer
assistance in case she should require it. 'Why?'
'Because,' said the girl, 'I am about to put my life and the
lives of others in your hands. I am the girl that dragged little
Oliver back to old Fagin's on the night he went out from the
house in Pentonville.'
'You!' said Rose Maylie.
'I, lady!' replied the girl. 'I am the infamous creature you
have heard of, that lives among the thieves, and that never from
the first moment I can recollect my eyes and senses opening on
London streets have known any better life, or kinder words than
they have given me, so help me God! Do not mind shrinking openly
from me, lady. I am younger than you would think, to look at me,
but I am well used to it. The poorest women fall back, as I make
my way along the crowded pavement.'
'What dreadful things are these!' said Rose, involuntarily
falling from her strange companion.
'Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady,' cried the girl, 'that
you had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and
that you were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot and
drunkenness, and--and--something worse than all--as I have been
from my cradle. I may use the word, for the alley and the gutter
were mine, as they will be my deathbed.'
'I pity you!' said Rose, in a broken voice. 'It wrings my heart
to hear you!'
'Heaven bless you for your goodness!' rejoined the girl. 'If you
knew what I am sometimes, you would pity me, indeed. But I have
stolen away from those who would surely murder me, if they knew I
had been here, to tell you what I have overheard. Do you know a
man named Monks?'
'No,' said Rose.
'He knows you,' replied the girl; 'and knew you were here, for it
was by hearing him tell the place that I found you out.'
'I never heard the name,' said Rose.
'Then he goes by some other amongst us,' rejoined the girl,
'which I more than thought before. Some time ago, and soon after
Oliver was put into your house on the night of the robbery,
I--suspecting this man--listened to a conversation held between
him and Fagin in the dark. I found out, from what I heard, that
Monks--the man I asked you about, you know--'
'Yes,' said Rose, 'I understand.'
'--That Monks,' pursued the girl, 'had seen him accidently with
two of our boys on the day we first lost him, and had known him
directly to be the same child that he was watching for, though I
couldn't make out why. A bargain was struck with Fagin, that if
Oliver was got back he should have a certain sum; and he was to
have more for making him a thief, which this Monks wanted for
some purpose of his own.
'For what purpose?' asked Rose.
'He caught sight of my shadow on the wall as I listened, in the
hope of finding out,' said the girl; 'and there are not many
people besides me that could have got out of their way in time to
escape discovery. But I did; and I saw him no more till last
night.'
'And what occurred then?'
'I'll tell you, lady. Last night he came again. Again they went
upstairs, and I, wrapping myself up so that my shadow would not
betray me, again listened at the door. The first words I heard
Monks say were these: "So the only proofs of the boy's identity
lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received
them from the mother is rotting in her coffin." They laughed,
and talked of his success in doing this; and Monks, talking on
about the boy, and getting very wild, said that though he had got
the young devil's money safely know, he'd rather have had it the
other way; for, what a game it would have been to have brought
down the boast of the father's will, by driving him through every
jail in town, and then hauling him up for some capital felony
which Fagin could easily manage, after having made a good profit
of him besides.'
'What is all this!' said Rose.
'The truth, lady, though it comes from my lips,' replied the
girl. 'Then, he said, with oaths common enough in my ears, but
strange to yours, that if he could gratify his hatred by taking
the boy's life without bringing his own neck in danger, he would;
but, as he couldn't, he'd be upon the watch to meet him at every
turn in life; and if he took advantage of his birth and history,
he might harm him yet. "In short, Fagin," he says, "Jew as you
are, you never laid such snares as I'll contrive for my young
brother, Oliver."'
'His brother!' exclaimed Rose.
'Those were his words,' said Nancy, glancing uneasily round, as
she had scarcely ceased to do, since she began to speak, for a
vision of Sikes haunted her perpetually. 'And more. When he
spoke of you and the other lady, and said it seemed contrived by
Heaven, or the devil, against him, that Oliver should come into
your hands, he laughed, and said there was some comfort in that
too, for how many thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds
would you not give, if you had them, to know who your two-legged
spaniel was.'
'You do not mean,' said Rose, turning very pale, 'to tell me that
this was said in earnest?'
'He spoke in hard and angry earnest, if a man ever did,' replied
the girl, shaking her head. 'He is an earnest man when his
hatred is up. I know many who do worse things; but I'd rather
listen to them all a dozen times, than to that Monks once. It is
growing late, and I have to reach home without suspicion of
having been on such an errand as this. I must get back quickly.'
'But what can I do?' said Rose. 'To what use can I turn this
communication without you? Back! Why do you wish to return to
companions you paint in such terrible colors? If you repeat this
information to a gentleman whom I can summon in an instant from
the next room, you can be consigned to some place of safety
without half an hour's delay.'
'I wish to go back,' said the girl. 'I must go back,
because--how can I tell such things to an innocent lady like
you?--because among the men I have told you of, there is one:
the most desperate among them all; that I can't leave: no, not
even to be saved from the life I am leading now.'
'Your having interfered in this dear boy's behalf before,' said
Rose; 'your coming here, at so great a risk, to tell me what you
have heard; your manner, which convinces me of the truth of what
you say; your evident contrition, and sense of shame; all lead me
to believe that you might yet be reclaimed. Oh!' said the
earnest girl, folding her hands as the tears coursed down her
face, 'do not turn a deaf ear to the entreaties of one of your
own sex; the first--the first, I do believe, who ever appealed to
you in the voice of pity and compassion. Do hear my words, and
let me save you yet, for better things.'
'Lady,' cried the girl, sinking on her knees, 'dear, sweet, angel
lady, you ARE the first that ever blessed me with such words as
these, and if I had heard them years ago, they might have turned
me from a life of sin and sorrow; but it is too late, it is too
late!'
'It is never too late,' said Rose, 'for penitence and atonement.'
'It is,' cried the girl, writhing in agony of her mind; 'I cannot
leave him now! I could not be his death.'
'Why should you be?' asked Rose.
'Nothing could save him,' cried the girl. 'If I told others what
I have told you, and led to their being taken, he would be sure
to die. He is the boldest, and has been so cruel!'
'Is it possible,' cried Rose, 'that for such a man as this, you
can resign every future hope, and the certainty of immediate
rescue? It is madness.'
'I don't know what it is,' answered the girl; 'I only know that
it is so, and not with me alone, but with hundreds of others as
bad and wretched as myself. I must go back. Whether it is God's
wrath for the wrong I have done, I do not know; but I am drawn
back to him through every suffering and ill usage; and I should
be, I believe, if I knew that I was to die by his hand at last.'
'What am I to do?' said Rose. 'I should not let you depart from
me thus.'
'You should, lady, and I know you will,' rejoined the girl,
rising. 'You will not stop my going because I have trusted in
your goodness, and forced no promise from you, as I might have
done.'
'Of what use, then, is the communication you have made?' said
Rose. 'This mystery must be investigated, or how will its
disclosure to me, benefit Oliver, whom you are anxious to serve?'
'You must have some kind gentleman about you that will hear it as
a secret, and advise you what to do,' rejoined the girl.
'But where can I find you again when it is necessary?' asked
Rose. 'I do not seek to know where these dreadful people live,
but where will you be walking or passing at any settled period
from this time?'
'Will you promise me that you will have my secret strictly kept,
and come alone, or with the only other person that knows it; and
that I shall not be watched or followed?' asked the girl.
'I promise you solemnly,' answered Rose.
'Every Sunday night, from eleven until the clock strikes twelve,'
said the girl without hesitation, 'I will walk on London Bridge
if I am alive.'
'Stay another moment,' interposed Rose, as the girl moved
hurriedly towards the door. 'Think once again on your own
condition, and the opportunity you have of escaping from it. You
have a claim on me: not only as the voluntary bearer of this
intelligence, but as a woman lost almost beyond redemption. Will
you return to this gang of robbers, and to this man, when a word
can save you? What fascination is it that can take you back, and
make you cling to wickedness and misery? Oh! is there no chord
in your heart that I can touch! Is there nothing left, to which
I can appeal against this terrible infatuation!'
'When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are,'
replied the girl steadily, 'give away your hearts, love will
carry you all lengths--even such as you, who have home, friends,
other admirers, everything, to fill them. When such as I, who
have no certain roof but the coffinlid, and no friend in sickness
or death but the hospital nurse, set our rotten hearts on any
man, and let him fill the place that has been a blank through all
our wretched lives, who can hope to cure us? Pity us, lady--pity
us for having only one feeling of the woman left, and for having
that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort and a pride,
into a new means of violence and suffering.'
'You will,' said Rose, after a pause, 'take some money from me,
which may enable you to live without dishonesty--at all events
until we meet again?'
'Not a penny,' replied the girl, waving her hand.
'Do not close your heart against all my efforts to help you,'
said Rose, stepping gently forward. 'I wish to serve you
indeed.'
'You would serve me best, lady,' replied the girl, wringing her
hands, 'if you could take my life at once; for I have felt more
grief to think of what I am, to-night, than I ever did before,
and it would be something not to die in the hell in which I have
lived. God bless you, sweet lady, and send as much happiness on
your head as I have brought shame on mine!'
Thus speaking, and sobbing aloud, the unhappy creature turned
away; while Rose Maylie, overpowered by this extraordinary
interview, which had more the semblance of a rapid dream than an
actual occurance, sank into a chair, and endeavoured to collect
her wandering thoughts.
CHAPTER XLI
CONTAINING FRESH DISCOVERIES, AND SHOWING THAT SUPRISES, LIKE
MISFORTUNES, SELDOM COME ALONE
Her situation was, indeed, one of no common trial and difficulty.
While she felt the most eager and burning desire to penetrate the
mystery in which Oliver's history was enveloped, she could not
but hold sacred the confidence which the miserable woman with
whom she had just conversed, had reposed in her, as a young and
guileless girl. Her words and manner had touched Rose Maylie's
heart; and, mingled with her love for her young charge, and
scarcely less intense in its truth and fervour, was her fond wish
to win the outcast back to repentance and hope.
They purposed remaining in London only three days, prior to
departing for some weeks to a distant part of the coast. It was
now midnight of the first day. What course of action could she
determine upon, which could be adopted in eight-and-forty hours?
Or how could she postpone the journey without exciting suspicion?
Mr. Losberne was with them, and would be for the next two days;
but Rose was too well acquainted with the excellent gentleman's
impetuosity, and foresaw too clearly the wrath with which, in the
first explosion of his indignation, he would regard the
instrument of Oliver's recapture, to trust him with the secret,
when her representations in the girl's behalf could be seconded
by no experienced person. These were all reasons for the
greatest caution and most circumspect behaviour in communicating
it to Mrs. Maylie, whose first impulse would infallibly be to
hold a conference with the worthy doctor on the subject. As to
resorting to any legal adviser, even if she had known how to do
so, it was scarcely to be thought of, for the same reason. Once
the thought occurred to her of seeking assistance from Harry; but
this awakened the recollection of their last parting, and it
seemed unworthy of her to call him back, when--the tears rose to
her eyes as she pursued this train of reflection--he might have
by this time learnt to forget her, and to be happier away.
Disturbed by these different reflections; inclining now to one
course and then to another, and again recoiling from all, as each
successive consideration presented itself to her mind; Rose
passed a sleepless and anxious night. After more communing with
herself next day, she arrived at the desperate conclusion of
consulting Harry.
'If it be painful to him,' she thought, 'to come back here, how
painful it will be to me! But perhaps he will not come; he may
write, or he may come himself, and studiously abstain from
meeting me--he did when he went away. I hardly thought he would;
but it was better for us both.' And here Rose dropped the pen,
and turned away, as though the very paper which was to be her
messenger should not see her weep.
She had taken up the same pen, and laid it down again fifty
times, and had considered and reconsidered the first line of her
letter without writing the first word, when Oliver, who had been
walking in the streets, with Mr. Giles for a body-guard, entered
the room in such breathless haste and violent agitation, as
seemed to betoken some new cause of alarm.
'What makes you look so flurried?' asked Rose, advancing to meet
him.
'I hardly know how; I feel as if I should be choked,' replied the
boy. 'Oh dear! To think that I should see him at last, and you
should be able to know that I have told you the truth!'
'I never thought you had told us anything but the truth,' said
Rose, soothing him. 'But what is this?--of whom do you speak?'
'I have seen the gentleman,' replied Oliver, scarcely able to
articulate, 'the gentleman who was so good to me--Mr. Brownlow,
that we have so often talked about.'
'Where?' asked Rose.
'Getting out of a coach,' replied Oliver, shedding tears of
delight, 'and going into a house. I didn't speak to him--I
couldn't speak to him, for he didn't see me, and I trembled so,
that I was not able to go up to him. But Giles asked, for me,
whether he lived there, and they said he did. Look here,' said
Oliver, opening a scrap of paper, 'here it is; here's where he
lives--I'm going there directly! Oh, dear me, dear me! What
shall I do when I come to see him and hear him speak again!'
With her attention not a little distracted by these and a great
many other incoherent exclamations of joy, Rose read the address,
which was Craven Street, in the Strand. She very soon determined
upon turning the discovery to account.
'Quick!' she said. 'Tell them to fetch a hackney-coach, and be
ready to go with me. I will take you there directly, without a
minute's loss of time. I will only tell my aunt that we are
going out for an hour, and be ready as soon as you are.'
Oliver needed no prompting to despatch, and in little more than
five minutes they were on their way to Craven Street. When they
arrived there, Rose left Oliver in the coach, under pretence of
preparing the old gentleman to receive him; and sending up her
card by the servant, requested to see Mr. Brownlow on very
pressing business. The servant soon returned, to beg that she
would walk upstairs; and following him into an upper room, Miss
Maylie was presented to an elderly gentleman of benevolent
appearance, in a bottle-green coat. At no great distance from
whom, was seated another old gentleman, in nankeen breeches and
gaiters; who did not look particularly benevolent, and who was
sitting with his hands clasped on the top of a thick stick, and
his chin propped thereupon.
'Dear me,' said the gentleman, in the bottle-green coat, hastily
rising with great politeness, 'I beg your pardon, young lady--I
imagined it was some importunate person who--I beg you will
excuse me. Be seated, pray.'
'Mr. Brownlow, I believe, sir?' said Rose, glancing from the
other gentleman to the one who had spoken.
'That is my name,' said the old gentleman. 'This is my friend,
Mr. Grimwig. Grimwig, will you leave us for a few minutes?'
'I believe,' interposed Miss Maylie, 'that at this period of our
interview, I need not give that gentleman the trouble of going
away. If I am correctly informed, he is cognizant of the
business on which I wish to speak to you.'
Mr. Brownlow inclined his head. Mr. Grimwig, who had made one
very stiff bow, and risen from his chair, made another very stiff
bow, and dropped into it again.
'I shall surprise you very much, I have no doubt,' said Rose,
naturally embarrassed; 'but you once showed great benevolence and
goodness to a very dear young friend of mine, and I am sure you
will take an interest in hearing of him again.'
'Indeed!' said Mr. Brownlow.
'Oliver Twist you knew him as,' replied Rose.
The words no sooner escaped her lips, than Mr. Grimwig, who had
been affecting to dip into a large book that lay on the table,
upset it with a great crash, and falling back in his chair,
discharged from his features every expression but one of
unmitigated wonder, and indulged in a prolonged and vacant stare;
then, as if ashamed of having betrayed so much emotion, he jerked
himself, as it were, by a convulsion into his former attitude,
and looking out straight before him emitted a long deep whistle,
which seemed, at last, not to be discharged on empty air, but to
die away in the innermost recesses of his stomach.
Mr. Browlow was no less surprised, although his astonishment was
not expressed in the same eccentric manner. He drew his chair
nearer to Miss Maylie's, and said,
'Do me the favour, my dear young lady, to leave entirely out of
the question that goodness and benevolence of which you speak,
and of which nobody else knows anything; and if you have it in
your power to produce any evidence which will alter the
unfavourable opinion I was once induced to entertain of that poor
child, in Heaven's name put me in possession of it.'
'A bad one! I'll eat my head if he is not a bad one,' growled
Mr. Grimwig, speaking by some ventriloquial power, without moving
a muscle of his face.
'He is a child of a noble nature and a warm heart,' said Rose,
colouring; 'and that Power which has thought fit to try him
beyond his years, has planted in his breast affections and
feelings which would do honour to many who have numbered his days
six times over.'
'I'm only sixty-one,' said Mr. Grimwig, with the same rigid face.
'And, as the devil's in it if this Oliver is not twelve years old
at least, I don't see the application of that remark.'
'Do not heed my friend, Miss Maylie,' said Mr. Brownlow; 'he does
not mean what he says.'
'Yes, he does,' growled Mr. Grimwig.
'No, he does not,' said Mr. Brownlow, obviously rising in wrath
as he spoke.
'He'll eat his head, if he doesn't,' growled Mr. Grimwig.
'He would deserve to have it knocked off, if he does,' said Mr.
Brownlow.
'And he'd uncommonly like to see any man offer to do it,'
responded Mr. Grimwig, knocking his stick upon the floor.
Having gone thus far, the two old gentlemen severally took snuff,
and afterwards shook hands, according to their invariable custom.
'Now, Miss Maylie,' said Mr. Brownlow, 'to return to the subject
in which your humanity is so much interested. Will you let me
know what intelligence you have of this poor child: allowing me
to promise that I exhausted every means in my power of
discovering him, and that since I have been absent from this
country, my first impression that he had imposed upon me, and had
been persuaded by his former associates to rob me, has been
considerably shaken.'
Rose, who had had time to collect her thoughts, at once related,
in a few natural words, all that had befallen Oliver since he
left Mr. Brownlow's house; reserving Nancy's information for that
gentleman's private ear, and concluding with the assurance that
his only sorrow, for some months past, had been not being able to
meet with his former benefactor and friend.
'Thank God!' said the old gentleman. 'This is great happiness to
me, great happiness. But you have not told me where he is now,
Miss Maylie. You must pardon my finding fault with you,--but why
not have brought him?'
'He is waiting in a coach at the door,' replied Rose.
'At this door!' cried the old gentleman. With which he hurried
out of the room, down the stairs, up the coachsteps, and into the
coach, without another word.
When the room-door closed behind him, Mr. Grimwig lifted up his
head, and converting one of the hind legs of his chair into a
pivot, described three distinct circles with the assistance of
his stick and the table; stitting in it all the time. After
performing this evolution, he rose and limped as fast as he could
up and down the room at least a dozen times, and then stopping
suddenly before Rose, kissed her without the slightest preface.
'Hush!' he said, as the young lady rose in some alarm at this
unusual proceeding. 'Don't be afraid. I'm old enough to be your
grandfather. You're a sweet girl. I like you. Here they are!'
In fact, as he threw himself at one dexterous dive into his
former seat, Mr. Brownlow returned, accompanied by Oliver, whom
Mr. Grimwig received very graciously; and if the gratification of
that moment had been the only reward for all her anxiety and care
in Oliver's behalf, Rose Maylie would have been well repaid.
'There is somebody else who should not be forgotten, by the bye,'
said Mr. Brownlow, ringing the bell. 'Send Mrs. Bedwin here, if
you please.'
The old housekeeper answered the summons with all dispatch; and
dropping a curtsey at the door, waited for orders.
'Why, you get blinder every day, Bedwin,' said Mr. Brownlow,
rather testily.
'Well, that I do, sir,' replied the old lady. 'People's eyes, at
my time of life, don't improve with age, sir.'
'I could have told you that,' rejoined Mr. Brownlow; 'but put on
your glasses, and see if you can't find out what you were wanted
for, will you?'
The old lady began to rummage in her pocket for her spectacles.
But Oliver's patience was not proof against this new trial; and
yielding to his first impulse, he sprang into her arms.
'God be good to me!' cried the old lady, embracing him; 'it is my
innocent boy!'
'My dear old nurse!' cried Oliver.
'He would come back--I knew he would,' said the old lady, holding
him in her arms. 'How well he looks, and how like a gentleman's
son he is dressed again! Where have you been, this long, long
while? Ah! the same sweet face, but not so pale; the same soft
eye, but not so sad. I have never forgotten them or his quiet
smile, but have seen them every day, side by side with those of
my own dear children, dead and gone since I was a lightsome young
creature.' Running on thus, and now holding Oliver from her to
mark how he had grown, now clasping him to her and passing her
fingers fondly through his hair, the good soul laughed and wept
upon his neck by turns.
Leaving her and Oliver to compare notes at leisure, Mr. Brownlow
led the way into another room; and there, heard from Rose a full
narration of her interview with Nancy, which occasioned him no
little surprise and perplexity. Rose also explained her reasons
for not confiding in her friend Mr. Losberne in the first
instance. The old gentleman considered that she had acted
prudently, and readily undertook to hold solemn conference with
the worthy doctor himself. To afford him an early opportunity
for the execution of this design, it was arranged that he should
call at the hotel at eight o'clock that evening, and that in the
meantime Mrs. Maylie should be cautiously informed of all that
had occurred. These preliminaries adjusted, Rose and Oliver
returned home.
Rose had by no means overrated the measure of the good doctor's
wrath. Nancy's history was no sooner unfolded to him, than he
poured forth a shower of mingled threats and execrations;
threatened to make her the first victim of the combined ingenuity
of Messrs. Blathers and Duff; and actually put on his hat
preparatory to sallying forth to obtain the assistance of those
worthies. And, doubtless, he would, in this first outbreak, have
carried the intention into effect without a moment's
consideration of the consequences, if he had not been restrained,
in part, by corresponding violence on the side of Mr. Brownlow,
who was himself of an irascible temperament, and party by such
arguments and representations as seemed best calculated to
dissuade him from his hotbrained purpose.
'Then what the devil is to be done?' said the impetuous doctor,
when they had rejoined the two ladies. 'Are we to pass a vote of
thanks to all these vagabonds, male and female, and beg them to
accept a hundred pounds, or so, apiece, as a trifling mark of our
esteem, and some slight acknowledgment of their kindness to
Oliver?'
'Not exactly that,' rejoined Mr. Brownlow, laughing; 'but we must
proceed gently and with great care.'
'Gentleness and care,' exclaimed the doctor. 'I'd send them one
and all to--'
'Never mind where,' interposed Mr. Brownlow. 'But reflect
whether sending them anywhere is likely to attain the object we
have in view.'
'What object?' asked the doctor.
'Simply, the discovery of Oliver's parentage, and regaining for
him the inheritance of which, if this story be true, he has been
fraudulently deprived.'
'Ah!' said Mr. Losberne, cooling himself with his
pocket-handkerchief; 'I almost forgot that.'
'You see,' pursued Mr. Brownlow; 'placing this poor girl entirely
out of the question, and supposing it were possible to bring
these scoundrels to justice without compromising her safety, what
good should we bring about?'
'Hanging a few of them at least, in all probability,' suggested
the doctor, 'and transporting the rest.'
'Very good,' replied Mr. Brownlow, smiling; 'but no doubt they
will bring that about for themselves in the fulness of time, and
if we step in to forestall them, it seems to me that we shall be
performing a very Quixotic act, in direct opposition to our own
interest--or at least to Oliver's, which is the same thing.'
'How?' inquired the doctor.
'Thus. It is quite clear that we shall have extreme difficulty
in getting to the bottom of this mystery, unless we can bring
this man, Monks, upon his knees. That can only be done by
stratagem, and by catching him when he is not surrounded by these
people. For, suppose he were apprehended, we have no proof
against him. He is not even (so far as we know, or as the facts
appear to us) concerned with the gang in any of their robberies.
If he were not discharged, it is very unlikely that he could
receive any further punishment than being committed to prison as
a rogue and vagabond; and of course ever afterwards his mouth
would be so obstinately closed that he might as well, for our
purposes, be deaf, dumb, blind, and an idiot.'
'Then,' said the doctor impetuously, 'I put it to you again,
whether you think it reasonable that this promise to the girl
should be considered binding; a promise made with the best and
kindest intentions, but really--'
'Do not discuss the point, my dear young lady, pray,' said Mr.
Brownlow, interrupting Rose as she was about to speak. 'The
promise shall be kept. I don't think it will, in the slightest
degree, interfere with our proceedings. But, before we can
resolve upon any precise course of action, it will be necessary
to see the girl; to ascertain from her whether she will point out
this Monks, on the understanding that he is to be dealt with by
us, and not by the law; or, if she will not, or cannot do that,
to procure from her such an account of his haunts and description
of his person, as will enable us to identify him. She cannot be
seen until next Sunday night; this is Tuesday. I would suggest
that in the meantime, we remain perfectly quiet, and keep these
matters secret even from Oliver himself.'
Although Mr. Loseberne received with many wry faces a proposal
involving a delay of five whole days, he was fain to admit that
no better course occurred to him just then; and as both Rose and
Mrs. Maylie sided very strongly with Mr. Brownlow, that
gentleman's proposition was carried unanimously.
'I should like,' he said, 'to call in the aid of my friend
Grimwig. He is a strange creature, but a shrewd one, and might
prove of material assistance to us; I should say that he was bred
a lawyer, and quitted the Bar in disgust because he had only one
brief and a motion of course, in twenty years, though whether
that is recommendation or not, you must determine for
yourselves.'
'I have no objection to your calling in your friend if I may call
in mine,' said the doctor.
'We must put it to the vote,' replied Mr. Brownlow, 'who may he
be?'
'That lady's son, and this young lady's--very old friend,' said
the doctor, motioning towards Mrs. Maylie, and concluding with an
expressive glance at her niece.
Rose blushed deeply, but she did not make any audible objection
to this motion (possibly she felt in a hopeless minority); and
Harry Maylie and Mr. Grimwig were accordingly added to the
committee.
'We stay in town, of course,' said Mrs. Maylie, 'while there
remains the slightest prospect of prosecuting this inquiry with a
chance of success. I will spare neither trouble nor expense in
behalf of the object in which we are all so deeply interested,
and I am content to remain here, if it be for twelve months, so
long as you assure me that any hope remains.'
'Good!' rejoined Mr. Brownlow. 'And as I see on the faces about
me, a disposition to inquire how it happened that I was not in
the way to corroborate Oliver's tale, and had so suddenly left
the kingdom, let me stipulate that I shall be asked no questions
until such time as I may deem it expedient to forestall them by
telling my own story. Believe me, I make this request with good
reason, for I might otherwise excite hopes destined never to be
realised, and only increase difficulties and disappointments
already quite numerous enough. Come! Supper has been announced,
and young Oliver, who is all alone in the next room, will have
begun to think, by this time, that we have wearied of his
company, and entered into some dark conspiracy to thrust him
forth upon the world.'
With these words, the old gentleman gave his hand to Mrs. Maylie,
and escorted her into the supper-room. Mr. Losberne followed,
leading Rose; and the council was, for the present, effectually
broken up.
CHAPTER XLII
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE OF OLIVER'S, EXHIBITING DECIDED MARKS OF
GENIUS, BECOMES A PUBLIC CHARACTER IN THE METROPOLIS
Upon the night when Nancy, having lulled Mr. Sikes to sleep,
hurried on her self-imposed mission to Rose Maylie, there
advanced towards London, by the Great North Road, two persons,
upon whom it is expedient that this history should bestow some
attention.
They were a man and woman; or perhaps they would be better
described as a male and female: for the former was one of those
long-limbed, knock-kneed, shambling, bony people, to whom it is
difficult to assign any precise age,--looking as they do, when
they are yet boys, like undergrown men, and when they are almost
men, like overgrown boys. The woman was young, but of a robust
and hardy make, as she need have been to bear the weight of the
heavy bundle which was strapped to her back. Her companion was
not encumbered with much luggage, as there merely dangled from a
stick which he carried over his shoulder, a small parcel wrapped
in a common handkerchief, and apparently light enough. This
circumstance, added to the length of his legs, which were of
unusual extent, enabled him with much ease to keep some
half-dozen paces in advance of his companion, to whom he
occasionally turned with an impatient jerk of the head: as if
reproaching her tardiness, and urging her to greater exertion.
Thus, they had toiled along the dusty road, taking little heed of
any object within sight, save when they stepped aside to allow a
wider passage for the mail-coaches which were whirling out of
town, until they passed through Highgate archway; when the
foremost traveller stopped and called impatiently to his
companion,
'Come on, can't yer? What a lazybones yer are, Charlotte.'
'It's a heavy load, I can tell you,' said the female, coming up,
almost breathless with fatigue.
'Heavy! What are yer talking about? What are yer made for?'
rejoined the male traveller, changing his own little bundle as he
spoke, to the other shoulder. 'Oh, there yer are, resting again!
Well, if yer ain't enough to tire anybody's patience out, I don't
know what is!'
'Is it much farther?' asked the woman, resting herself against a
bank, and looking up with the perspiration streaming from her
face.
'Much farther! Yer as good as there,' said the long-legged
tramper, pointing out before him. 'Look there! Those are the
lights of London.'
'They're a good two mile off, at least,' said the woman
despondingly.
'Never mind whether they're two mile off, or twenty,' said Noah
Claypole; for he it was; 'but get up and come on, or I'll kick
yer, and so I give yer notice.'
As Noah's red nose grew redder with anger, and as he crossed the
road while speaking, as if fully prepared to put his threat into
execution, the woman rose without any further remark, and trudged
onward by his side.
'Where do you mean to stop for the night, Noah?' she asked, after
they had walked a few hundred yards.
'How should I know?' replied Noah, whose temper had been
considerably impaired by walking.
'Near, I hope,' said Charlotte.
'No, not near,' replied Mr. Claypole. 'There! Not near; so
don't think it.'
'Why not?'
'When I tell yer that I don't mean to do a thing, that's enough,
without any why or because either,' replied Mr. Claypole with
dignity.
'Well, you needn't be so cross,' said his companion.
'A pretty thing it would be, wouldn't it to go and stop at the
very first public-house outside the town, so that Sowerberry, if
he come up after us, might poke in his old nose, and have us
taken back in a cart with handcuffs on,' said Mr. Claypole in a
jeering tone. 'No! I shall go and lose myself among the
narrowest streets I can find, and not stop till we come to the
very out-of-the-wayest house I can set eyes on. 'Cod, yer may
thanks yer stars I've got a head; for if we hadn't gone, at
first, the wrong road a purpose, and come back across country,
yer'd have been locked up hard and fast a week ago, my lady. And
serve yer right for being a fool.'
'I know I ain't as cunning as you are,' replied Charlotte; 'but
don't put all the blame on me, and say I should have been locked
up. You would have been if I had been, any way.'
'Yer took the money from the till, yer know yer did,' said Mr.
Claypole.
'I took it for you, Noah, dear,' rejoined Charlotte.
'Did I keep it?' asked Mr. Claypole.
'No; you trusted in me, and let me carry it like a dear, and so
you are,' said the lady, chucking him under the chin, and drawing
her arm through his.
This was indeed the case; but as it was not Mr. Claypole's habit
to repose a blind and foolish confidence in anybody, it should be
observed, in justice to that gentleman, that he had trusted
Charlotte to this extent, in order that, if they were pursued,
the money might be found on her: which would leave him an
opportunity of asserting his innocence of any theft, and would
greatly facilitate his chances of escape. Of course, he entered
at this juncture, into no explanation of his motives, and they
walked on very lovingly together.
In pursuance of this cautious plan, Mr. Claypole went on, without
halting, until he arrived at the Angel at Islington, where he
wisely judged, from the crowd of passengers and numbers of
vehicles, that London began in earnest. Just pausing to observe
which appeared the most crowded streets, and consequently the
most to be avoided, he crossed into Saint John's Road, and was
soon deep in the obscurity of the intricate and dirty ways,
which, lying between Gray's Inn Lane and Smithfield, render that
part of the town one of the lowest and worst that improvement has
left in the midst of London.
Through these streets, Noah Claypole walked, dragging Charlotte
after him; now stepping into the kennel to embrace at a glance
the whole external character of some small public-house; now
jogging on again, as some fancied appearance induced him to
believe it too public for his purpose. At length, he stopped in
front of one, more humble in appearance and more dirty than any
he had yet seen; and, having crossed over and surveyed it from
the opposite pavement, graciously announced his intention of
putting up there, for the night.
'So give us the bundle,' said Noah, unstrapping it from the
woman's shoulders, and slinging it over his own; 'and don't yer
speak, except when yer spoke to. What's the name of the
house--t-h-r--three what?'
'Cripples,' said Charlotte.
'Three Cripples,' repeated Noah, 'and a very good sign too. Now,
then! Keep close at my heels, and come along.' With these
injunctions, he pushed the rattling door with his shoulder, and
entered the house, followed by his companion.
There was nobody in the bar but a young Jew, who, with his two
elbows on the counter, was reading a dirty newspaper. He stared
very hard at Noah, and Noah stared very hard at him.
If Noah had been attired in his charity-boy's dress, there might
have been some reason for the Jew opening his eyes so wide; but
as he had discarded the coat and badge, and wore a short
smock-frock over his leathers, there seemed no particular reason
for his appearance exciting so much attention in a public-house.
'Is this the Three Cripples?' asked Noah.
'That is the dabe of this 'ouse,' replied the Jew.
'A gentleman we met on the road, coming up from the country,
recommended us here,' said Noah, nudging Charlotte, perhaps to
call her attention to this most ingenious device for attracting
respect, and perhaps to warn her to betray no surprise. 'We want
to sleep here to-night.'
'I'b dot certaid you cad,' said Barney, who was the attendant
sprite; 'but I'll idquire.'
'Show us the tap, and give us a bit of cold meat and a drop of
beer while yer inquiring, will yer?' said Noah.
Barney complied by ushering them into a small back-room, and
setting the required viands before them; having done which, he
informed the travellers that they could be lodged that night, and
left the amiable couple to their refreshment.
Now, this back-room was immediately behind the bar, and some
steps lower, so that any person connected with the house,
undrawing a small curtain which concealed a single pane of glass
fixed in the wall of the last-named apartment, about five feet
from its flooring, could not only look down upon any guests in
the back-room without any great hazard of being observed (the
glass being in a dark angle of the wall, between which and a
large upright beam the observer had to thrust himself), but
could, by applying his ear to the partition, ascertain with
tolerable distinctness, their subject of conversation. The
landlord of the house had not withdrawn his eye from this place
of espial for five minutes, and Barney had only just returned
from making the communication above related, when Fagin, in the
course of his evening's business, came into the bar to inquire
after some of his young pupils.
'Hush!' said Barney: 'stradegers id the next roob.'
'Strangers!' repeated the old man in a whisper.
'Ah! Ad rub uds too,' added Barney. 'Frob the cuttry, but
subthig in your way, or I'b bistaked.'
Fagin appeared to receive this communication with great interest.
Mounting a stool, he cautiously applied his eye to the pane of
glass, from which secret post he could see Mr. Claypole taking
cold beef from the dish, and porter from the pot, and
administering homoepathic doses of both to Charlotte, who sat
patiently by, eating and drinking at his pleasure.
'Aha!' he whispered, looking round to Barney, 'I like that
fellow's looks. He'd be of use to us; he knows how to train the
girl already. Don't make as much noise as a mouse, my dear, and
let me hear 'em talk--let me hear 'em.'
He again applied his eye to the glass, and turning his ear to the
partition, listened attentively: with a subtle and eager look
upon his face, that might have appertained to some old goblin.
'So I mean to be a gentleman,' said Mr. Claypole, kicking out his
legs, and continuing a conversation, the commencement of which
Fagin had arrived too late to hear. 'No more jolly old coffins,
Charlotte, but a gentleman's life for me: and, if yer like, yer
shall be a lady.'
'I should like that well enough, dear,' replied Charlotte; 'but
tills ain't to be emptied every day, and people to get clear off
after it.'
'Tills be blowed!' said Mr. Claypole; 'there's more things
besides tills to be emptied.'
'What do you mean?' asked his companion.
'Pockets, women's ridicules, houses, mail-coaches, banks!' said
Mr. Claypole, rising with the porter.
'But you can't do all that, dear,' said Charlotte.
'I shall look out to get into company with them as can,' replied
Noah. 'They'll be able to make us useful some way or another.
Why, you yourself are worth fifty women; I never see such a
precious sly and deceitful creetur as yer can be when I let yer.'
'Lor, how nice it is to hear yer say so!' exclaimed Charlotte,
imprinting a kiss upon his ugly face.
'There, that'll do: don't yer be too affectionate, in case I'm
cross with yer,' said Noah, disengaging himself with great
gravity. 'I should like to be the captain of some band, and have
the whopping of 'em, and follering 'em about, unbeknown to
themselves. That would suit me, if there was good profit; and if
we could only get in with some gentleman of this sort, I say it
would be cheap at that twenty-pound note you've got,--especially
as we don't very well know how to get rid of it ourselves.'
After expressing this opinion, Mr. Claypole looked into the
porter-pot with an aspect of deep wisdom; and having well shaken
its contents, nodded condescendingly to Charlotte, and took a
draught, wherewith he appeared greatly refreshed. He was
meditating another, when the sudden opening of the door, and the
appearance of a stranger, interrupted him.
The stranger was Mr. Fagin. And very amiable he looked, and a
very low bow he made, as he advanced, and setting himself down at
the nearest table, ordered something to drink of the grinning
Barney.
'A pleasant night, sir, but cool for the time of year,' said
Fagin, rubbing his hands. 'From the country, I see, sir?'
'How do yer see that?' asked Noah Claypole.
'We have not so much dust as that in London,' replied Fagin,
pointing from Noah's shoes to those of his companion, and from
them to the two bundles.
'Yer a sharp feller,' said Noah. 'Ha! ha! only hear that,
Charlotte!'
'Why, one need be sharp in this town, my dear,' replied the Jew,
sinking his voice to a confidential whisper; 'and that's the
truth.'
Fagin followed up this remark by striking the side of his nose
with his right forefinger,--a gesture which Noah attempted to
imitate, though not with complete success, in consequence of his
own nose not being large enough for the purpose. However, Mr.
Fagin seemed to interpret the endeavour as expressing a perfect
coincidence with his opinion, and put about the liquor which
Barney reappeared with, in a very friendly manner.
'Good stuff that,' observed Mr. Claypole, smacking his lips.
'Dear!' said Fagin. 'A man need be always emptying a till, or a
pocket, or a woman's reticule, or a house, or a mail-coach, or a
bank, if he drinks it regularly.'
Mr. Claypole no sooner heard this extract from his own remarks
than he fell back in his chair, and looked from the Jew to
Charlotte with a countenance of ashy palences and excessive
terror.
'Don't mind me, my dear,' said Fagin, drawing his chair closer.
'Ha! ha! it was lucky it was only me that heard you by chance.
It was very lucky it was only me.'
'I didn't take it,' stammered Noah, no longer stretching out his
legs like an independent gentleman, but coiling them up as well
as he could under his chair; 'it was all her doing; yer've got it
now, Charlotte, yer know yer have.'
'No matter who's got it, or who did it, my dear,' replied Fagin,
glancing, nevertheless, with a hawk's eye at the girl and the two
bundles. 'I'm in that way myself, and I like you for it.'
'In what way?' asked Mr. Claypole, a little recovering.
'In that way of business,' rejoined Fagin; 'and so are the people
of the house. You've hit the right nail upon the head, and are
as safe here as you could be. There is not a safer place in all
this town than is the Cripples; that is, when I like to make it
so. And I have taken a fancy to you and the young woman; so I've
said the word, and you may make your minds easy.'
Noah Claypole's mind might have been at ease after this
assurance, but his body certainly was not; for he shuffled and
writhed about, into various uncouth positions: eyeing his new
friend meanwhile with mingled fear and suspicion.
'I'll tell you more,' said Fagin, after he had reassured the
girl, by dint of friendly nods and muttered encouragements. 'I
have got a friend that I think can gratify your darling wish, and
put you in the right way, where you can take whatever department
of the business you think will suit you best at first, and be
taught all the others.'
'Yer speak as if yer were in earnest,' replied Noah.
'What advantage would it be to me to be anything else?' inquired
Fagin, shrugging his shoulders. 'Here! Let me have a word with
you outside.'
'There's no occasion to trouble ourselves to move,' said Noah,
getting his legs by gradual degrees abroad again. 'She'll take
the luggage upstairs the while. Charlotte, see to them bundles.'
This mandate, which had been delivered with great majesty, was
obeyed without the slightest demur; and Charlotte made the best
of her way off with the packages while Noah held the door open
and watched her out.
'She's kept tolerably well under, ain't she?' he asked as he
resumed his seat: in the tone of a keeper who had tamed some
wild animal.
'Quite perfect,' rejoined Fagin, clapping him on the shoulder.
'You're a genius, my dear.'
'Why, I suppose if I wasn't, I shouldn't be here,' replied Noah.
'But, I say, she'll be back if yer lose time.'
'Now, what do you think?' said Fagin. 'If you was to like my
friend, could you do better than join him?'
'Is he in a good way of business; that's where it is!' responded
Noah, winking one of his little eyes.
'The top of the tree; employs a power of hands; has the very best
society in the profession.'
'Regular town-maders?' asked Mr. Claypole.
'Not a countryman among 'em; and I don't think he'd take you,
even on my recommendation, if he didn't run rather short of
assistants just now,' replied Fagin.
'Should I have to hand over?' said Noah, slapping his
breeches-pocket.
'It couldn't possibly be done without,' replied Fagin, in a most
decided manner.
'Twenty pound, though--it's a lot of money!'
'Not when it's in a note you can't get rid of,' retorted Fagin.
'Number and date taken, I suppose? Payment stopped at the Bank?
Ah! It's not worth much to him. It'll have to go abroad, and he
couldn't sell it for a great deal in the market.'
'When could I see him?' asked Noah doubtfully.
'To-morrow morning.'
'Where?'
'Here.'
'Um!' said Noah. 'What's the wages?'
'Live like a gentleman--board and lodging, pipes and spirits
free--half of all you earn, and half of all the young woman
earns,' replied Mr. Fagin.
Whether Noah Claypole, whose rapacity was none of the least
comprehensive, would have acceded even to these glowing terms,
had he been a perfectly free agent, is very doubtful; but as he
recollected that, in the event of his refusal, it was in the
power of his new acquaintance to give him up to justice
immediately (and more unlikely things had come to pass), he
gradually relented, and said he thought that would suit him.
'But, yer see,' observed Noah, 'as she will be able to do a good
deal, I should like to take something very light.'
'A little fancy work?' suggested Fagin.
'Ah! something of that sort,' replied Noah. 'What do you think
would suit me now? Something not too trying for the strength,
and not very dangerous, you know. That's the sort of thing!'
'I heard you talk of something in the spy way upon the others, my
dear,' said Fagin. 'My friend wants somebody who would do that
well, very much.'
'Why, I did mention that, and I shouldn't mind turning my hand to
it sometimes,' rejoined Mr. Claypole slowly; 'but it wouldn't pay
by itself, you know.'
'That's true!' observed the Jew, ruminating or pretending to
ruminate. 'No, it might not.'
'What do you think, then?' asked Noah, anxiously regarding him.
'Something in the sneaking way, where it was pretty sure work,
and not much more risk than being at home.'
'What do you think of the old ladies?' asked Fagin. 'There's a
good deal of money made in snatching their bags and parcels, and
running round the corner.'
'Don't they holler out a good deal, and scratch sometimes?' asked
Noah, shaking his head. 'I don't think that would answer my
purpose. Ain't there any other line open?'
'Stop!' said Fagin, laying his hand on Noah's knee. 'The kinchin
lay.'
'The kinchins, my dear,' said Fagin, 'is the young children
that's sent on errands by their mothers, with sixpences and
shillings; and the lay is just to take their money away--they've
always got it ready in their hands,--then knock 'em into the
kennel, and walk off very slow, as if there were nothing else the
matter but a child fallen down and hurt itself. Ha! ha! ha!'
'Ha! ha!' roared Mr. Claypole, kicking up his legs in an ecstasy.
'Lord, that's the very thing!'
'To be sure it is,' replied Fagin; 'and you can have a few good
beats chalked out in Camden Town, and Battle Bridge, and
neighborhoods like that, where they're always going errands; and
you can upset as many kinchins as you want, any hour in the day.
Ha! ha! ha!'
With this, Fagin poked Mr. Claypole in the side, and they joined
in a burst of laughter both long and loud.
'Well, that's all right!' said Noah, when he had recovered
himself, and Charlotte had returned. 'What time to-morrow shall
we say?'
'Will ten do?' asked Fagin, adding, as Mr. Claypole nodded
assent, 'What name shall I tell my good friend.'
'Mr. Bolter,' replied Noah, who had prepared himself for such
emergency. 'Mr. Morris Bolter. This is Mrs. Bolter.'
'Mrs. Bolter's humble servant,' said Fagin, bowing with grotesque
politeness. 'I hope I shall know her better very shortly.'
'Do you hear the gentleman, Charlotte?' thundered Mr. Claypole.
'Yes, Noah, dear!' replied Mrs. Bolter, extending her hand.
'She calls me Noah, as a sort of fond way of talking,' said Mr.
Morris Bolter, late Claypole, turning to Fagin. 'You
understand?'
'Oh yes, I understand--perfectly,' replied Fagin, telling the
truth for once. 'Good-night! Good-night!'
With many adieus and good wishes, Mr. Fagin went his way. Noah
Claypole, bespeaking his good lady's attention, proceeded to
enlighten her relative to the arrangement he had made, with all
that haughtiness and air of superiority, becoming, not only a
member of the sterner sex, but a gentleman who appreciated the
dignity of a special appointment on the kinchin lay, in London
and its vicinity.
CHAPTER XLIII
WHEREIN IS SHOWN HOW THE ARTFUL DODGER GOT INTO TROUBLE
'And so it was you that was your own friend, was it?' asked Mr.
Claypole, otherwise Bolter, when, by virtue of the compact
entered into between them, he had removed next day to Fagin's
house. ''Cod, I thought as much last night!'
'Every man's his own friend, my dear,' replied Fagin, with his
most insinuating grin. 'He hasn't as good a one as himself
anywhere.'
'Except sometimes,' replied Morris Bolter, assuming the air of a
man of the world. 'Some people are nobody's enemies but their
own, yer know.'
'Don't believe that,' said Fagin. 'When a man's his own enemy,
it's only because he's too much his own friend; not because he's
careful for everybody but himself. Pooh! pooh! There ain't such
a thing in nature.'
'There oughn't to be, if there is,' replied Mr. Bolter.
'That stands to reason. Some conjurers say that number three is
the magic number, and some say number seven. It's neither, my
friend, neither. It's number one.
'Ha! ha!' cried Mr. Bolter. 'Number one for ever.'
'In a little community like ours, my dear,' said Fagin, who felt
it necessary to qualify this position, 'we have a general number
one, without considering me too as the same, and all the other
young people.'
'Oh, the devil!' exclaimed Mr. Bolter.
'You see,' pursued Fagin, affecting to disregard this
interruption, 'we are so mixed up together, and identified in our
interests, that it must be so. For instance, it's your object to
take care of number one--meaning yourself.'
'Certainly,' replied Mr. Bolter. 'Yer about right there.'
'Well! You can't take care of yourself, number one, without
taking care of me, number one.'
'Number two, you mean,' said Mr. Bolter, who was largely endowed
with the quality of selfishness.
'No, I don't!' retorted Fagin. 'I'm of the same importance to
you, as you are to yourself.'
'I say,' interrupted Mr. Bolter, 'yer a very nice man, and I'm
very fond of yer; but we ain't quite so thick together, as all
that comes to.'
'Only think,' said Fagin, shrugging his shoulders, and stretching
out his hands; 'only consider. You've done what's a very pretty
thing, and what I love you for doing; but what at the same time
would put the cravat round your throat, that's so very easily
tied and so very difficult to unloose--in plain English, the
halter!'
Mr. Bolter put his hand to his neckerchief, as if he felt it
inconveniently tight; and murmured an assent, qualified in tone
but not in substance.
'The gallows,' continued Fagin, 'the gallows, my dear, is an ugly
finger-post, which points out a very short and sharp turning that
has stopped many a bold fellow's career on the broad highway. To
keep in the easy road, and keep it at a distance, is object
number one with you.'
'Of course it is,' replied Mr. Bolter. 'What do yer talk about
such things for?'
'Only to show you my meaning clearly,' said the Jew, raising his
eyebrows. 'To be able to do that, you depend upon me. To keep my
little business all snug, I depend upon you. The first is your
number one, the second my number one. The more you value your
number one, the more careful you must be of mine; so we come at
last to what I told you at first--that a regard for number one
holds us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to
pieces in company.'
'That's true,' rejoined Mr. Bolter, thoughtfully. 'Oh! yer a
cunning old codger!'
Mr. Fagin saw, with delight, that this tribute to his powers was
no mere compliment, but that he had really impressed his recruit
with a sense of his wily genius, which it was most important that
he should entertain in the outset of their acquaintance. To
strengthen an impression so desirable and useful, he followed up
the blow by acquainting him, in some detail, with the magnitude
and extent of his operations; blending truth and fiction
together, as best served his purpose; and bringing both to bear,
with so much art, that Mr. Bolter's respect visibly increased,
and became tempered, at the same time, with a degree of wholesome
fear, which it was highly desirable to awaken.
'It's this mutual trust we have in each other that consoles me
under heavy losses,' said Fagin. 'My best hand was taken from
me, yesterday morning.'
'You don't mean to say he died?' cried Mr. Bolter.
'No, no,' replied Fagin, 'not so bad as that. Not quite so bad.'
'What, I suppose he was--'
'Wanted,' interposed Fagin. 'Yes, he was wanted.'
'Very particular?' inquired Mr. Bolter.
'No,' replied Fagin, 'not very. He was charged with attempting
to pick a pocket, and they found a silver snuff-box on him,--his
own, my dear, his own, for he took snuff himself, and was very
fond of it. They remanded him till to-day, for they thought they
knew the owner. Ah! he was worth fifty boxes, and I'd give the
price of as many to have him back. You should have known the
Dodger, my dear; you should have known the Dodger.'
'Well, but I shall know him, I hope; don't yer think so?' said
Mr. Bolter.
'I'm doubtful about it,' replied Fagin, with a sigh. 'If they
don't get any fresh evidence, it'll only be a summary conviction,
and we shall have him back again after six weeks or so; but, if
they do, it's a case of lagging. They know what a clever lad he
is; he'll be a lifer. They'll make the Artful nothing less than
a lifer.'
'What do you mean by lagging and a lifer?' demanded Mr. Bolter.
'What's the good of talking in that way to me; why don't yer
speak so as I can understand yer?'
Fagin was about to translate these mysterious expressions into
the vulgar tongue; and, being interpreted, Mr. Bolter would have
been informed that they represented that combination of words,
'transportation for life,' when the dialogue was cut short by the
entry of Master Bates, with his hands in his breeches-pockets,
and his face twisted into a look of semi-comical woe.
'It's all up, Fagin,' said Charley, when he and his new companion
had been made known to each other.
'What do you mean?'
'They've found the gentleman as owns the box; two or three more's
a coming to 'dentify him; and the Artful's booked for a passage
out,' replied Master Bates. 'I must have a full suit of
mourning, Fagin, and a hatband, to wisit him in, afore he sets
out upon his travels. To think of Jack Dawkins--lummy Jack--the
Dodger--the Artful Dodger--going abroad for a common
twopenny-halfpenny sneeze-box! I never thought he'd a done it
under a gold watch, chain, and seals, at the lowest. Oh, why
didn't he rob some rich old gentleman of all his walables, and go
out as a gentleman, and not like a common prig, without no honour
nor glory!'
With this expression of feeling for his unfortunate friend,
Master Bates sat himself on the nearest chair with an aspect of
chagrin and despondency.
'What do you talk about his having neither honour nor glory for!'
exclaimed Fagin, darting an angry look at his pupil. 'Wasn't he
always the top-sawyer among you all! Is there one of you that
could touch him or come near him on any scent! Eh?'
'Not one,' replied Master Bates, in a voice rendered husky by
regret; 'not one.'
'Then what do you talk of?' replied Fagin angrily; 'what are you
blubbering for?'
''Cause it isn't on the rec-ord, is it?' said Charley, chafed
into perfect defiance of his venerable friend by the current of
his regrets; ''cause it can't come out in the 'dictment; 'cause
nobody will never know half of what he was. How will he stand in
the Newgate Calendar? P'raps not be there at all. Oh, my eye,
my eye, wot a blow it is!'
'Ha! ha!' cried Fagin, extending his right hand, and turning to
Mr. Bolter in a fit of chuckling which shook him as though he had
the palsy; 'see what a pride they take in their profession, my
dear. Ain't it beautiful?'
Mr. Bolter nodded assent, and Fagin, after contemplating the
grief of Charley Bates for some seconds with evident
satisfaction, stepped up to that young gentleman and patted him
on the shoulder.
'Never mind, Charley,' said Fagin soothingly; 'it'll come out,
it'll be sure to come out. They'll all know what a clever fellow
he was; he'll show it himself, and not disgrace his old pals and
teachers. Think how young he is too! What a distinction,
Charley, to be lagged at his time of life!'
'Well, it is a honour that is!' said Charley, a little consoled.
'He shall have all he wants,' continued the Jew. 'He shall be
kept in the Stone Jug, Charley, like a gentleman. Like a
gentleman! With his beer every day, and money in his pocket to
pitch and toss with, if he can't spend it.'
'No, shall he though?' cried Charley Bates.
'Ay, that he shall,' replied Fagin, 'and we'll have a big-wig,
Charley: one that's got the greatest gift of the gab: to carry
on his defence; and he shall make a speech for himself too, if he
likes; and we'll read it all in the papers--"Artful
Dodger--shrieks of laughter--here the court was convulsed"--eh,
Charley, eh?'
'Ha! ha! laughed Master Bates, 'what a lark that would be,
wouldn't it, Fagin? I say, how the Artful would bother 'em
wouldn't he?'
'Would!' cried Fagin. 'He shall--he will!'
'Ah, to be sure, so he will,' repeated Charley, rubbing his
hands.
'I think I see him now,' cried the Jew, bending his eyes upon his
pupil.
'So do I,' cried Charley Bates. 'Ha! ha! ha! so do I. I see it
all afore me, upon my soul I do, Fagin. What a game! What a
regular game! All the big-wigs trying to look solemn, and Jack
Dawkins addressing of 'em as intimate and comfortable as if he
was the judge's own son making a speech arter dinner--ha! ha!
ha!'
In fact, Mr. Fagin had so well humoured his young friend's
eccentric disposition, that Master Bates, who had at first been
disposed to consider the imprisoned Dodger rather in the light of
a victim, now looked upon him as the chief actor in a scene of
most uncommon and exquisite humour, and felt quite impatient for
the arrival of the time when his old companion should have so
favourable an opportunity of displaying his abilities.
'We must know how he gets on to-day, by some handy means or
other,' said Fagin. 'Let me think.'
'Shall I go?' asked Charley.
'Not for the world,' replied Fagin. 'Are you mad, my dear, stark
mad, that you'd walk into the very place where--No, Charley, no.
One is enough to lose at a time.'
'You don't mean to go yourself, I suppose?' said Charley with a
humorous leer.
'That wouldn't quite fit,' replied Fagin shaking his head.
'Then why don't you send this new cove?' asked Master Bates,
laying his hand on Noah's arm. 'Nobody knows him.'
'Why, if he didn't mind--' observed Fagin.
'Mind!' interposed Charley. 'What should he have to mind?'
'Really nothing, my dear,' said Fagin, turning to Mr. Bolter,
'really nothing.'
'Oh, I dare say about that, yer know,' observed Noah, backing
towards the door, and shaking his head with a kind of sober
alarm. 'No, no--none of that. It's not in my department, that
ain't.'
'Wot department has he got, Fagin?' inquired Master Bates,
surveying Noah's lank form with much disgust. 'The cutting away
when there's anything wrong, and the eating all the wittles when
there's everything right; is that his branch?'
'Never mind,' retorted Mr. Bolter; 'and don't yer take liberties
with yer superiors, little boy, or yer'll find yerself in the
wrong shop.'
Master Bates laughed so vehemently at this magnificent threat,
that it was some time before Fagin could interpose, and represent
to Mr. Bolter that he incurred no possible danger in visiting the
police-office; that, inasmuch as no account of the little affair
in which he had engaged, nor any description of his person, had
yet been forwarded to the metropolis, it was very probable that
he was not even suspected of having resorted to it for shelter;
and that, if he were properly disguised, it would be as safe a
spot for him to visit as any in London, inasmuch as it would be,
of all places, the very last, to which he could be supposed
likely to resort of his own free will.
Persuaded, in part, by these representations, but overborne in a
much greater degree by his fear of Fagin, Mr. Bolter at length
consented, with a very bad grace, to undertake the expedition.
By Fagin's directions, he immediately substituted for his own
attire, a waggoner's frock, velveteen breeches, and leather
leggings: all of which articles the Jew had at hand. He was
likewise furnished with a felt hat well garnished with turnpike
tickets; and a carter's whip. Thus equipped, he was to saunter
into the office, as some country fellow from Covent Garden market
might be supposed to do for the gratification of his curiousity;
and as he was as awkward, ungainly, and raw-boned a fellow as
need be, Mr. Fagin had no fear but that he would look the part to
perfection.
These arrangements completed, he was informed of the necessary
signs and tokens by which to recognise the Artful Dodger, and was
conveyed by Master Bates through dark and winding ways to within
a very short distance of Bow Street. Having described the precise
situation of the office, and accompanied it with copious
directions how he was to walk straight up the passage, and when
he got into the side, and pull off his hat as he went into the
room, Charley Bates bade him hurry on alone, and promised to bide
his return on the spot of their parting.
Noah Claypole, or Morris Bolter as the reader pleases, punctually
followed the directions he had received, which--Master Bates
being pretty well acquainted with the locality--were so exact
that he was enabled to gain the magisterial presence without
asking any question, or meeting with any interruption by the way.
He found himself jostled among a crowd of people, chiefly women,
who were huddled together in a dirty frowsy room, at the upper
end of which was a raised platform railed off from the rest, with
a dock for the prisoners on the left hand against the wall, a box
for the witnesses in the middle, and a desk for the magistrates
on the right; the awful locality last named, being screened off
by a partition which concealed the bench from the common gaze,
and left the vulgar to imagine (if they could) the full majesty
of justice.
There were only a couple of women in the dock, who were nodding
to their admiring friends, while the clerk read some depositions
to a couple of policemen and a man in plain clothes who leant
over the table. A jailer stood reclining against the dock-rail,
tapping his nose listlessly with a large key, except when he
repressed an undue tendency to conversation among the idlers, by
proclaiming silence; or looked sternly up to bid some woman 'Take
that baby out,' when the gravity of justice was disturbed by
feeble cries, half-smothered in the mother's shawl, from some
meagre infant. The room smelt close and unwholesome; the walls
were dirt-discoloured; and the ceiling blackened. There was an
old smoky bust over the mantel-shelf, and a dusty clock above the
dock--the only thing present, that seemed to go on as it ought;
for depravity, or poverty, or an habitual acquaintance with both,
had left a taint on all the animate matter, hardly less
unpleasant than the thick greasy scum on every inaminate object
that frowned upon it.
Noah looked eagerly about him for the Dodger; but although there
were several women who would have done very well for that
distinguished character's mother or sister, and more than one man
who might be supposed to bear a strong resemblance to his father,
nobody at all answering the description given him of Mr. Dawkins
was to be seen. He waited in a state of much suspense and
uncertainty until the women, being committed for trial, went
flaunting out; and then was quickly relieved by the appearance of
another prisoner who he felt at once could be no other than the
object of his visit.
It was indeed Mr. Dawkins, who, shuffling into the office with
the big coat sleeves tucked up as usual, his left hand in his
pocket, and his hat in his right hand, preceded the jailer, with
a rolling gait altogether indescribable, and, taking his place in
the dock, requested in an audible voice to know what he was
placed in that 'ere disgraceful sitivation for.
'Hold your tongue, will you?' said the jailer.
'I'm an Englishman, ain't I?' rejoined the Dodger. 'Where are my
priwileges?'
'You'll get your privileges soon enough,' retorted the jailer,
'and pepper with 'em.'
'We'll see wot the Secretary of State for the Home Affairs has
got to say to the beaks, if I don't,' replied Mr. Dawkins. 'Now
then! Wot is this here business? I shall thank the madg'strates
to dispose of this here little affair, and not to keep me while
they read the paper, for I've got an appointment with a genelman
in the City, and as I am a man of my word and wery punctual in
business matters, he'll go away if I ain't there to my time, and
then pr'aps ther won't be an action for damage against them as
kep me away. Oh no, certainly not!'
At this point, the Dodger, with a show of being very particular
with a view to proceedings to be had thereafter, desired the
jailer to communicate 'the names of them two files as was on the
bench.' Which so tickled the spectators, that they laughed
almost as heartily as Master Bates could have done if he had
heard the request.
'Silence there!' cried the jailer.
'What is this?' inquired one of the magistrates.
'A pick-pocketing case, your worship.'
'Has the boy ever been here before?'
'He ought to have been, a many times,' replied the jailer. 'He
has been pretty well everywhere else. _I_ know him well, your
worship.'
'Oh! you know me, do you?' cried the Artful, making a note of the
statement. 'Wery good. That's a case of deformation of
character, any way.'
Here there was another laugh, and another cry of silence.
'Now then, where are the witnesses?' said the clerk.
'Ah! that's right,' added the Dodger. 'Where are they? I should
like to see 'em.'
This wish was immediately gratified, for a policeman stepped
forward who had seen the prisoner attempt the pocket of an
unknown gentleman in a crowd, and indeed take a handkerchief
therefrom, which, being a very old one, he deliberately put back
again, after trying in on his own countenance. For this reason,
he took the Dodger into custody as soon as he could get near him,
and the said Dodger, being searched, had upon his person a silver
snuff-box, with the owner's name engraved upon the lid. This
gentleman had been discovered on reference to the Court Guide,
and being then and there present, swore that the snuff-box was
his, and that he had missed it on the previous day, the moment he
had disengaged himself from the crowd before referred to. He had
also remarked a young gentleman in the throng, particularly
active in making his way about, and that young gentleman was the
prisoner before him.
'Have you anything to ask this witness, boy?' said the
magistrate.
'I wouldn't abase myself by descending to hold no conversation
with him' replied the Dodger.
'Have you anything to say at all?'
'Do you hear his worship ask if you've anything to say?' inquired
the jailer, nudging the silent Dodger with his elbow.
'I beg your pardon,' said the Dodger, looking up with an air of
abstraction. 'Did you redress yourself to me, my man?'
'I never see such an out-and-out young wagabond, your worship,'
observed the officer with a grin. 'Do you mean to say anything,
you young shaver?'
'No,' replied the Dodger, 'not here, for this ain't the shop for
justice: besides which, my attorney is a-breakfasting this
morning with the Wice President of the House of Commons; but I
shall have something to say elsewhere, and so will he, and so
will a wery numerous and 'spectable circle of acquaintance as'll
make them beaks wish they'd never been born, or that they'd got
their footmen to hang 'em up to their own hat-pegs, afore they
let 'em come out this morning to try it on upon me. I'll--'
'There! He's fully committed!' interposed the clerk. 'Take him
away.'
'Come on,' said the jailer.
'Oh ah! I'll come on,' replied the Dodger, brushing his hat with
the palm of his hand. 'Ah! (to the Bench) it's no use your
looking frightened; I won't show you no mercy, not a ha'porth of
it. YOU'LL pay for this, my fine fellers. I wouldn't be you for
something! I wouldn't go free, now, if you was to fall down on
your knees and ask me. Here, carry me off to prison! Take me
away!'
With these last words, the Dodger suffered himself to be led off
by the collar; threatening, till he got into the yard, to make a
parliamentary business of it; and then grinning in the officer's
face, with great glee and self-approval.
Having seen him locked up by himself in a little cell, Noah made
the best of his way back to where he had left Master Bates.
After waiting here some time, he was joined by that young
gentleman, who had prudently abstained from showing himself until
he had looked carefully abroad from a snug retreat, and
ascertained that his new friend had not been followed by any
impertinent person.
The two hastened back together, to bear to Mr. Fagin the
animating news that the Dodger was doing full justice to his
bringing-up, and establishing for himself a glorious reputation.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE TIME ARRIVES FOR NANCY TO REDEEM HER PLEDGE TO ROSE MAYLIE.
SHE FAILS.
Adept as she was, in all the arts of cunning and dissimulation,
the girl Nancy could not wholly conceal the effect which the
knowledge of the step she had taken, wrought upon her mind. She
remembered that both the crafty Jew and the brutal Sikes had
confided to her schemes, which had been hidden from all others:
in the full confidence that she was trustworthy and beyond the
reach of their suspicion. Vile as those schemes were, desperate
as were their originators, and bitter as were her feelings
towards Fagin, who had led her, step by step, deeper and deeper
down into an abyss of crime and misery, whence was no escape;
still, there were times when, even towards him, she felt some
relenting, lest her disclosure should bring him within the iron
grasp he had so long eluded, and he should fall at last--richly
as he merited such a fate--by her hand.
But, these were the mere wanderings of a mind unwholly to detach
itself from old companions and associations, though enabled to
fix itself steadily on one object, and resolved not to be turned
aside by any consideration. Her fears for Sikes would have been
more powerful inducements to recoil while there was yet time; but
she had stipulated that her secret should be rigidly kept, she
had dropped no clue which could lead to his discovery, she had
refused, even for his sake, a refuge from all the guilt and
wretchedness that encompasses her--and what more could she do!
She was resolved.
Though all her mental struggles terminated in this conclusion,
they forced themselves upon her, again and again, and left their
traces too. She grew pale and thin, even within a few days. At
times, she took no heed of what was passing before her, or no
part in conversations where once, she would have been the
loudest. At other times, she laughed without merriment, and was
noisy without a moment afterwards--she sat silent and dejected,
brooding with her head upon her hands, while the very effort by
which she roused herself, told, more forcibly than even these
indications, that she was ill at ease, and that her thoughts were
occupied with matters very different and distant from those in
the course of discussion by her companions.
It was Sunday night, and the bell of the nearest church struck
the hour. Sikes and the Jew were talking, but they paused to
listen. The girl looked up from the low seat on which she
crouched, and listened too. Eleven.
'An hour this side of midnight,' said Sikes, raising the blind to
look out and returning to his seat. 'Dark and heavy it is too.
A good night for business this.'
'Ah!' replied Fagin. 'What a pity, Bill, my dear, that there's
none quite ready to be done.'
'You're right for once,' replied Sikes gruffly. 'It is a pity,
for I'm in the humour too.'
Fagin sighed, and shook his head despondingly.
'We must make up for lost time when we've got things into a good
train. That's all I know,' said Sikes.
'That's the way to talk, my dear,' replied Fagin, venturing to
pat him on the shoulder. 'It does me good to hear you.'
'Does you good, does it!' cried Sikes. 'Well, so be it.'
'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed Fagin, as if he were relieved by even this
concession. 'You're like yourself to-night, Bill. Quite like
yourself.'
'I don't feel like myself when you lay that withered old claw on
my shoulder, so take it away,' said Sikes, casting off the Jew's
hand.
'It make you nervous, Bill,--reminds you of being nabbed, does
it?' said Fagin, determined not to be offended.
'Reminds me of being nabbed by the devil,' returned Sikes. 'There
never was another man with such a face as yours, unless it was
your father, and I suppose HE is singeing his grizzled red beard
by this time, unless you came straight from the old 'un without
any father at all betwixt you; which I shouldn't wonder at, a
bit.'
Fagin offered no reply to this compliment: but, pulling Sikes by
the sleeve, pointed his finger towards Nancy, who had taken
advantage of the foregoing conversation to put on her bonnet, and
was now leaving the room.
'Hallo!' cried Sikes. 'Nance. Where's the gal going to at this
time of night?'
'Not far.'
'What answer's that?' retorted Sikes. 'Do you hear me?'
'I don't know where,' replied the girl.
'Then I do,' said Sikes, more in the spirit of obstinacy than
because he had any real objection to the girl going where she
listed. 'Nowhere. Sit down.'
'I'm not well. I told you that before,' rejoined the girl. 'I
want a breath of air.'
'Put your head out of the winder,' replied Sikes.
'There's not enough there,' said the girl. 'I want it in the
street.'
'Then you won't have it,' replied Sikes. With which assurance he
rose, locked the door, took the key out, and pulling her bonnet
from her head, flung it up to the top of an old press. 'There,'
said the robber. 'Now stop quietly where you are, will you?'
'It's not such a matter as a bonnet would keep me,' said the girl
turning very pale. 'What do you mean, Bill? Do you know what
you're doing?'
'Know what I'm--Oh!' cried Sikes, turning to Fagin, 'she's out of
her senses, you know, or she daren't talk to me in that way.'
'You'll drive me on the something desperate,' muttered the girl
placing both hands upon her breast, as though to keep down by
force some violent outbreak. 'Let me go, will you,--this
minute--this instant.'
'No!' said Sikes.
'Tell him to let me go, Fagin. He had better. It'll be better
for him. Do you hear me?' cried Nancy stamping her foot upon the
ground.
'Hear you!' repeated Sikes turning round in his chair to confront
her. 'Aye! And if I hear you for half a minute longer, the dog
shall have such a grip on your throat as'll tear some of that
screaming voice out. Wot has come over you, you jade! Wot is
it?'
'Let me go,' said the girl with great earnestness; then sitting
herself down on the floor, before the door, she said, 'Bill, let
me go; you don't know what you are doing. You don't, indeed. For
only one hour--do--do!'
'Cut my limbs off one by one!' cried Sikes, seizing her roughly
by the arm, 'If I don't think the gal's stark raving mad. Get
up.'
'Not till you let me go--not till you let me go--Never--never!'
screamed the girl. Sikes looked on, for a minute, watching his
opportunity, and suddenly pinioning her hands dragged her,
struggling and wrestling with him by the way, into a small room
adjoining, where he sat himself on a bench, and thrusting her
into a chair, held her down by force. She struggled and implored
by turns until twelve o'clock had struck, and then, wearied and
exhausted, ceased to contest the point any further. With a
caution, backed by many oaths, to make no more efforts to go out
that night, Sikes left her to recover at leisure and rejoined
Fagin.
'Whew!' said the housebreaker wiping the perspiration from his
face. 'Wot a precious strange gal that is!'
'You may say that, Bill,' replied Fagin thoughtfully. 'You may
say that.'
'Wot did she take it into her head to go out to-night for, do you
think?' asked Sikes. 'Come; you should know her better than me.
Wot does is mean?'
'Obstinacy; woman's obstinacy, I suppose, my dear.'
'Well, I suppose it is,' growled Sikes. 'I thought I had tamed
her, but she's as bad as ever.'
'Worse,' said Fagin thoughtfully. 'I never knew her like this,
for such a little cause.'
'Nor I,' said Sikes. 'I think she's got a touch of that fever in
her blood yet, and it won't come out--eh?'
'Like enough.'
'I'll let her a little blood, without troubling the doctor, if
she's took that way again,' said Sikes.
Fagin nodded an expressive approval of this mode of treatment.
'She was hanging about me all day, and night too, when I was
stretched on my back; and you, like a blackhearted wolf as you
are, kept yourself aloof,' said Sikes. 'We was poor too, all the
time, and I think, one way or other, it's worried and fretted
her; and that being shut up here so long has made her
restless--eh?'
'That's it, my dear,' replied the Jew in a whisper. 'Hush!'
As he uttered these words, the girl herself appeared and resumed
her former seat. Her eyes were swollen and red; she rocked
herself to and fro; tossed her head; and, after a little time,
burst out laughing.
'Why, now she's on the other tack!' exclaimed Sikes, turning a
look of excessive surprise on his companion.
Fagin nodded to him to take no further notice just then; and, in
a few minutes, the girl subsided into her accustomed demeanour.
Whispering Sikes that there was no fear of her relapsing, Fagin
took up his hat and bade him good-night. He paused when he
reached the room-door, and looking round, asked if somebody would
light him down the dark stairs.
'Light him down,' said Sikes, who was filling his pipe. 'It's a
pity he should break his neck himself, and disappoint the
sight-seers. Show him a light.'
Nancy followed the old man downstairs, with a candle. When they
reached the passage, he laid his finger on his lip, and drawing
close to the girl, said, in a whisper.
'What is it, Nancy, dear?'
'What do you mean?' replied the girl, in the same tone.
'The reason of all this,' replied Fagin. 'If HE'--he pointed
with his skinny fore-finger up the stairs--'is so hard with you
(he's a brute, Nance, a brute-beast), why don't you--'
'Well?' said the girl, as Fagin paused, with his mouth almost
touching her ear, and his eyes looking into hers.
'No matter just now. We'll talk of this again. You have a
friend in me, Nance; a staunch friend. I have the means at hand,
quiet and close. If you want revenge on those that treat you
like a dog--like a dog! worse than his dog, for he humours him
sometimes--come to me. I say, come to me. He is the mere hound
of a day, but you know me of old, Nance.'
'I know you well,' replied the girls, without manifesting the
least emotion. 'Good-night.'
She shrank back, as Fagin offered to lay his hand on hers, but
said good-night again, in a steady voice, and, answering his
parting look with a nod of intelligence, closed the door between
them.
Fagin walked towards his home, intent upon the thoughts that were
working within his brain. He had conceived the idea--not from
what had just passed though that had tended to confirm him, but
slowly and by degrees--that Nancy, wearied of the housebreaker's
brutality, had conceived an attachment for some new friend. Her
altered manner, her repeated absences from home alone, her
comparative indifference to the interests of the gang for which
she had once been so zealous, and, added to these, her desperate
impatience to leave home that night at a particular hour, all
favoured the supposition, and rendered it, to him at least,
almost matter of certainty. The object of this new liking was
not among his myrmidons. He would be a valuable acquisition with
such an assistant as Nancy, and must (thus Fagin argued) be
secured without delay.
There was another, and a darker object, to be gained. Sikes knew
too much, and his ruffian taunts had not galled Fagin the less,
because the wounds were hidden. The girl must know, well, that
if she shook him off, she could never be safe from his fury, and
that it would be surely wreaked--to the maiming of limbs, or
perhaps the loss of life--on the object of her more recent fancy.
'With a little persuasion,' thought Fagin, 'what more likely than
that she would consent to poison him? Women have done such
things, and worse, to secure the same object before now. There
would be the dangerous villain: the man I hate: gone; another
secured in his place; and my influence over the girl, with a
knowledge of this crime to back it, unlimited.'
These things passed through the mind of Fagin, during the short
time he sat alone, in the housebreaker's room; and with them
uppermost in his thoughts, he had taken the opportunity
afterwards afforded him, of sounding the girl in the broken hints
he threw out at parting. There was no expression of surprise, no
assumption of an inability to understand his meaning. The girl
clearly comprehended it. Her glance at parting showed THAT.
But perhaps she would recoil from a plot to take the life of
Sikes, and that was one of the chief ends to be attained. 'How,'
thought Fagin, as he crept homeward, 'can I increase my influence
with her? what new power can I acquire?'
Such brains are fertile in expedients. If, without extracting a
confession from herself, he laid a watch, discovered the object
of her altered regard, and threatened to reveal the whole history
to Sikes (of whom she stood in no common fear) unless she entered
into his designs, could he not secure her compliance?
'I can,' said Fagin, almost aloud. 'She durst not refuse me
then. Not for her life, not for her life! I have it all. The
means are ready, and shall be set to work. I shall have you
yet!'
He cast back a dark look, and a threatening motion of the hand,
towards the spot where he had left the bolder villian; and went
on his way: busying his bony hands in the folds of his tattered
garment, which he wrenched tightly in his grasp, as though there
were a hated enemy crushed with every motion of his fingers.
CHAPTER XLV
NOAH CLAYPOLE IS EMPLOYED BY FAGIN ON A SECRET MISSION
The old man was up, betimes, next morning, and waited impatiently
for the appearance of his new associate, who after a delay that
seemed interminable, at length presented himself, and commenced a
voracious assault on the breakfast.
'Bolter,' said Fagin, drawing up a chair and seating himself
opposite Morris Bolter.
'Well, here I am,' returned Noah. 'What's the matter? Don't yer
ask me to do anything till I have done eating. That's a great
fault in this place. Yer never get time enough over yer meals.'
'You can talk as you eat, can't you?' said Fagin, cursing his
dear young friend's greediness from the very bottom of his heart.
'Oh yes, I can talk. I get on better when I talk,' said Noah,
cutting a monstrous slice of bread. 'Where's Charlotte?'
'Out,' said Fagin. 'I sent her out this morning with the other
young woman, because I wanted us to be alone.'
'Oh!' said Noah. 'I wish yer'd ordered her to make some buttered
toast first. Well. Talk away. Yer won't interrupt me.'
There seemed, indeed, no great fear of anything interrupting him,
as he had evidently sat down with a determination to do a great
deal of business.
'You did well yesterday, my dear,' said Fagin. 'Beautiful! Six
shillings and ninepence halfpenny on the very first day! The
kinchin lay will be a fortune to you.'
'Don't you forget to add three pint-pots and a milk-can,' said
Mr. Bolter.
'No, no, my dear. The pint-pots were great strokes of genius:
but the milk-can was a perfect masterpiece.'
'Pretty well, I think, for a beginner,' remarked Mr. Bolter
complacently. 'The pots I took off airy railings, and the
milk-can was standing by itself outside a public-house. I
thought it might get rusty with the rain, or catch cold, yer
know. Eh? Ha! ha! ha!'
Fagin affected to laugh very heartily; and Mr. Bolter having had
his laugh out, took a series of large bites, which finished his
first hunk of bread and butter, and assisted himself to a second.
'I want you, Bolter,' said Fagin, leaning over the table, 'to do
a piece of work for me, my dear, that needs great care and
caution.'
'I say,' rejoined Bolter, 'don't yer go shoving me into danger,
or sending me any more o' yer police-offices. That don't suit me,
that don't; and so I tell yer.'
'That's not the smallest danger in it--not the very smallest,'
said the Jew; 'it's only to dodge a woman.'
'An old woman?' demanded Mr. Bolter.
'A young one,' replied Fagin.
'I can do that pretty well, I know,' said Bolter. 'I was a
regular cunning sneak when I was at school. What am I to dodge
her for? Not to--'
'Not to do anything, but to tell me where she goes, who she sees,
and, if possible, what she says; to remember the street, if it is
a street, or the house, if it is a house; and to bring me back
all the information you can.'
'What'll yer give me?' asked Noah, setting down his cup, and
looking his employer, eagerly, in the face.
'If you do it well, a pound, my dear. One pound,' said Fagin,
wishing to interest him in the scent as much as possible. 'And
that's what I never gave yet, for any job of work where there
wasn't valuable consideration to be gained.'
'Who is she?' inquired Noah.
'One of us.'
'Oh Lor!' cried Noah, curling up his nose. 'Yer doubtful of her,
are yer?'
'She had found out some new friends, my dear, and I must know who
they are,' replied Fagin.
'I see,' said Noah. 'Just to have the pleasure of knowing them,
if they're respectable people, eh? Ha! ha! ha! I'm your man.'
'I knew you would be,' cried Fagin, eleated by the success of his
proposal.
'Of course, of course,' replied Noah. 'Where is she? Where am I
to wait for her? Where am I to go?'
'All that, my dear, you shall hear from me. I'll point her out
at the proper time,' said Fagin. 'You keep ready, and leave the
rest to me.'
That night, and the next, and the next again, the spy sat booted
and equipped in his carter's dress: ready to turn out at a word
from Fagin. Six nights passed--six long weary nights--and on
each, Fagin came home with a disappointed face, and briefly
intimated that it was not yet time. On the seventh, he returned
earlier, and with an exultation he could not conceal. It was
Sunday.
'She goes abroad to-night,' said Fagin, 'and on the right errand,
I'm sure; for she has been alone all day, and the man she is
afraid of will not be back much before daybreak. Come with me.
Quick!'
Noah started up without saying a word; for the Jew was in a state
of such intense excitement that it infected him. They left the
house stealthily, and hurrying through a labyrinth of streets,
arrived at length before a public-house, which Noah recognised as
the same in which he had slept, on the night of his arrival in
London.
It was past eleven o'clock, and the door was closed. It opened
softly on its hinges as Fagin gave a low whistle. They entered,
without noise; and the door was closed behind them.
Scarcely venturing to whisper, but substituting dumb show for
words, Fagin, and the young Jew who had admitted them, pointed
out the pane of glass to Noah, and signed to him to climb up and
observe the person in the adjoining room.
'Is that the woman?' he asked, scarcely above his breath.
Fagin nodded yes.
'I can't see her face well,' whispered Noah. 'She is looking
down, and the candle is behind her.
'Stay there,' whispered Fagin. He signed to Barney, who
withdrew. In an instant, the lad entered the room adjoining,
and, under pretence of snuffing the candle, moved it in the
required position, and, speaking to the girl, caused her to raise
her face.
'I see her now,' cried the spy.
'Plainly?'
'I should know her among a thousand.'
He hastily descended, as the room-door opened, and the girl came
out. Fagin drew him behind a small partition which was curtained
off, and they held their breaths as she passed within a few feet
of their place of concealment, and emerged by the door at which
they had entered.
'Hist!' cried the lad who held the door. 'Dow.'
Noah exchanged a look with Fagin, and darted out.
'To the left,' whispered the lad; 'take the left had, and keep od
the other side.'
He did so; and, by the light of the lamps, saw the girl's
retreating figure, already at some distance before him. He
advanced as near as he considered prudent, and kept on the
opposite side of the street, the better to observe her motions.
She looked nervously round, twice or thrice, and once stopped to
let two men who were following close behind her, pass on. She
seemed to gather courage as she advanced, and to walk with a
steadier and firmer step. The spy preserved the same relative
distance between them, and followed: with his eye upon her.
CHAPTER XLVI
THE APPOINTMENT KEPT
The church clocks chimed three quarters past eleven, as two
figures emerged on London Bridge. One, which advanced with a
swift and rapid step, was that of a woman who looked eagerly
about her as though in quest of some expected object; the other
figure was that of a man, who slunk along in the deepest shadow
he could find, and, at some distance, accommodated his pace to
hers: stopping when she stopped: and as she moved again,
creeping stealthily on: but never allowing himself, in the
ardour of his pursuit, to gain upon her footsteps. Thus, they
crossed the bridge, from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore, when
the woman, apparently disappointed in her anxious scrutiny of the
foot-passengers, turned back. The movement was sudden; but he
who watched her, was not thrown off his guard by it; for,
shrinking into one of the recesses which surmount the piers of
the bridge, and leaning over the parapet the better to conceal
his figure, he suffered her to pass on the opposite pavement.
When she was about the same distance in advance as she had been
before, he slipped quietly down, and followed her again. At
nearly the centre of the bridge, she stopped. The man stopped
too.
It was a very dark night. The day had been unfavourable, and at
that hour and place there were few people stirring. Such as there
were, hurried quickly past: very possibly without seeing, but
certainly without noticing, either the woman, or the man who kept
her in view. Their appearance was not calculated to attract the
importunate regards of such of London's destitute population, as
chanced to take their way over the bridge that night in search of
some cold arch or doorless hovel wherein to lay their heads; they
stood there in silence: neither speaking nor spoken to, by any
one who passed.
A mist hung over the river, deepening the red glare of the fires
that burnt upon the small craft moored off the different wharfs,
and rendering darker and more indistinct the murky buildings on
the banks. The old smoke-stained storehouses on either side,
rose heavy and dull from the dense mass of roofs and gables, and
frowned sternly upon water too black to reflect even their
lumbering shapes. The tower of old Saint Saviour's Church, and
the spire of Saint Magnus, so long the giant-warders of the
ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom; but the forest of
shipping below bridge, and the thickly scattered spires of
churches above, were nearly all hidden from sight.
The girl had taken a few restless turns to and fro--closely
watched meanwhile by her hidden observer--when the heavy bell of
St. Paul's tolled for the death of another day. Midnight had
come upon the crowded city. The palace, the night-cellar, the
jail, the madhouse: the chambers of birth and death, of health
and sickness, the rigid face of the corpse and the calm sleep of
the child: midnight was upon them all.
The hour had not struck two minutes, when a young lady,
accompanied by a grey-haired gentleman, alighted from a
hackney-carriage within a short distance of the bridge, and,
having dismissed the vehicle, walked straight towards it. They
had scarcely set foot upon its pavement, when the girl started,
and immediately made towards them.
They walked onward, looking about them with the air of persons
who entertained some very slight expectation which had little
chance of being realised, when they were suddenly joined by this
new associate. They halted with an exclamation of surprise, but
suppressed it immediately; for a man in the garments of a
countryman came close up--brushed against them, indeed--at that
precise moment.
'Not here,' said Nancy hurriedly, 'I am afraid to speak to you
here. Come away--out of the public road--down the steps yonder!'
As she uttered these words, and indicated, with her hand, the
direction in which she wished them to proceed, the countryman
looked round, and roughly asking what they took up the whole
pavement for, passed on.
The steps to which the girl had pointed, were those which, on the
Surrey bank, and on the same side of the bridge as Saint
Saviour's Church, form a landing-stairs from the river. To this
spot, the man bearing the appearance of a countryman, hastened
unobserved; and after a moment's survey of the place, he began to
descend.
These stairs are a part of the bridge; they consist of three
flights. Just below the end of the second, going down, the stone
wall on the left terminates in an ornamental pilaster facing
towards the Thames. At this point the lower steps widen: so
that a person turning that angle of the wall, is necessarily
unseen by any others on the stairs who chance to be above him, if
only a step. The countryman looked hastily round, when he reached
this point; and as there seemed no better place of concealment,
and, the tide being out, there was plenty of room, he slipped
aside, with his back to the pilaster, and there waited: pretty
certain that they would come no lower, and that even if he could
not hear what was said, he could follow them again, with safety.
So tardily stole the time in this lonely place, and so eager was
the spy to penetrate the motives of an interview so different
from what he had been led to expect, that he more than once gave
the matter up for lost, and persuaded himself, either that they
had stopped far above, or had resorted to some entirely different
spot to hold their mysterious conversation. He was on the point
of emerging from his hiding-place, and regaining the road above,
when he heard the sound of footsteps, and directly afterwards of
voices almost close at his ear.
He drew himself straight upright against the wall, and, scarcely
breathing, listened attentively.
'This is far enough,' said a voice, which was evidently that of
the gentleman. 'I will not suffer the young lady to go any
farther. Many people would have distrusted you too much to have
come even so far, but you see I am willing to humour you.'
'To humour me!' cried the voice of the girl whom he had followed.
'You're considerate, indeed, sir. To humour me! Well, well,
it's no matter.'
'Why, for what,' said the gentleman in a kinder tone, 'for what
purpose can you have brought us to this strange place? Why not
have let me speak to you, above there, where it is light, and
there is something stirring, instead of bringing us to this dark
and dismal hole?'
'I told you before,' replied Nancy, 'that I was afraid to speak
to you there. I don't know why it is,' said the girl,
shuddering, 'but I have such a fear and dread upon me to-night
that I can hardly stand.'
'A fear of what?' asked the gentleman, who seemed to pity her.
'I scarcely know of what,' replied the girl. 'I wish I did.
Horrible thoughts of death, and shrouds with blood upon them, and
a fear that has made me burn as if I was on fire, have been upon
me all day. I was reading a book to-night, to wile the time
away, and the same things came into the print.'
'Imagination,' said the gentleman, soothing her.
'No imagination,' replied the girl in a hoarse voice. 'I'll swear
I saw "coffin" written in every page of the book in large black
letters,--aye, and they carried one close to me, in the streets
to-night.'
'There is nothing unusual in that,' said the gentleman. 'They
have passed me often.'
'REAL ONES,' rejoined the girl. 'This was not.'
There was something so uncommon in her manner, that the flesh of
the concealed listener crept as he heard the girl utter these
words, and the blood chilled within him. He had never
experienced a greater relief than in hearing the sweet voice of
the young lady as she begged her to be calm, and not allow
herself to become the prey of such fearful fancies.
'Speak to her kindly,' said the young lady to her companion.
'Poor creature! She seems to need it.'
'Your haughty religious people would have held their heads up to
see me as I am to-night, and preached of flames and vengeance,'
cried the girl. 'Oh, dear lady, why ar'n't those who claim to be
God's own folks as gentle and as kind to us poor wretches as you,
who, having youth, and beauty, and all that they have lost, might
be a little proud instead of so much humbler?'
'Ah!' said the gentleman. 'A Turk turns his face, after washing
it well, to the East, when he says his prayers; these good
people, after giving their faces such a rub against the World as
to take the smiles off, turn with no less regularity, to the
darkest side of Heaven. Between the Mussulman and the Pharisee,
commend me to the first!'
These words appeared to be addressed to the young lady, and were
perhaps uttered with the view of afffording Nancy time to recover
herself. The gentleman, shortly afterwards, addressed himself to
her.
'You were not here last Sunday night,' he said.
'I couldn't come,' replied Nancy; 'I was kept by force.'
'By whom?'
'Him that I told the young lady of before.'
'You were not suspected of holding any communication with anybody
on the subject which has brought us here to-night, I hope?' asked
the old gentleman.
'No,' replied the girl, shaking her head. 'It's not very easy
for me to leave him unless he knows why; I couldn't give him a
drink of laudanum before I came away.'
'Did he awake before you returned?' inquired the gentleman.
'No; and neither he nor any of them suspect me.'
'Good,' said the gentleman. 'Now listen to me.'
'I am ready,' replied the girl, as he paused for a moment.
'This young lady,' the gentleman began, 'has communicated to me,
and to some other friends who can be safely trusted, what you
told her nearly a fortnight since. I confess to you that I had
doubts, at first, whether you were to be implicitly relied upon,
but now I firmly believe you are.'
'I am,' said the girl earnestly.
'I repeat that I firmly believe it. To prove to you that I am
disposed to trust you, I tell you without reserve, that we
propose to extort the secret, whatever it may be, from the fear
of this man Monks. But if--if--' said the gentleman, 'he cannot
be secured, or, if secured, cannot be acted upon as we wish, you
must deliver up the Jew.'
'Fagin,' cried the girl, recoiling.
'That man must be delivered up by you,' said the gentleman.
'I will not do it! I will never do it!' replied the girl. 'Devil
that he is, and worse than devil as he has been to me, I will
never do that.'
'You will not?' said the gentleman, who seemed fully prepared for
this answer.
'Never!' returned the girl.
'Tell me why?'
'For one reason,' rejoined the girl firmly, 'for one reason, that
the lady knows and will stand by me in, I know she will, for I
have her promise: and for this other reason, besides, that, bad
life as he has led, I have led a bad life too; there are many of
us who have kept the same courses together, and I'll not turn
upon them, who might--any of them--have turned upon me, but
didn't, bad as they are.'
'Then,' said the gentleman, quickly, as if this had been the
point he had been aiming to attain; 'put Monks into my hands, and
leave him to me to deal with.'
'What if he turns against the others?'
'I promise you that in that case, if the truth is forced from
him, there the matter will rest; there must be circumstances in
Oliver's little history which it would be painful to drag before
the public eye, and if the truth is once elicited, they shall go
scot free.'
'And if it is not?' suggested the girl.
'Then,' pursued the gentleman, 'this Fagin shall not be brought
to justice without your consent. In such a case I could show you
reasons, I think, which would induce you to yield it.'
'Have I the lady's promise for that?' asked the girl.
'You have,' replied Rose. 'My true and faithful pledge.'
'Monks would never learn how you knew what you do?' said the
girl, after a short pause.
'Never,' replied the gentleman. 'The intelligence should be
brought to bear upon him, that he could never even guess.'
'I have been a liar, and among liars from a little child,' said
the girl after another interval of silence, 'but I will take your
words.'
After receving an assurance from both, that she might safely do
so, she proceeded in a voice so low that it was often difficult
for the listener to discover even the purport of what she said,
to describe, by name and situation, the public-house whence she
had been followed that night. From the manner in which she
occasionally paused, it appeared as if the gentleman were making
some hasty notes of the information she communicated. When she
had thoroughly explained the localities of the place, the best
position from which to watch it without exciting observation, and
the night and hour on which Monks was most in the habit of
frequenting it, she seemed to consider for a few moments, for the
purpose of recalling his features and appearances more forcibly
to her recollection.
'He is tall,' said the girl, 'and a strongly made man, but not
stout; he has a lurking walk; and as he walks, constantly looks
over his shoulder, first on one side, and then on the other.
Don't forget that, for his eyes are sunk in his head so much
deeper than any other man's, that you might almost tell him by
that alone. His face is dark, like his hair and eyes; and,
although he can't be more than six or eight and twenty, withered
and haggard. His lips are often discoloured and disfigured with
the marks of teeth; for he has desperate fits, and sometimes even
bites his hands and covers them with wounds--why did you start?'
said the girl, stopping suddenly.
The gentleman replied, in a hurried manner, that he was not
conscious of having done so, and begged her to proceed.
'Part of this,' said the girl, 'I have drawn out from other
people at the house I tell you of, for I have only seen him
twice, and both times he was covered up in a large cloak. I
think that's all I can give you to know him by. Stay though,'
she added. 'Upon his throat: so high that you can see a part of
it below his neckerchief when he turns his face: there is--'
'A broad red mark, like a burn or scald?' cried the gentleman.
'How's this?' said the girl. 'You know him!'
The young lady uttered a cry of surprise, and for a few moments
they were so still that the listener could distinctly hear them
breathe.
'I think I do,' said the gentleman, breaking silence. 'I should
by your description. We shall see. Many people are singularly
like each other. It may not be the same.'
As he expressed himself to this effect, with assumed
carelessness, he took a step or two nearer the concealed spy, as
the latter could tell from the distinctness with which he heard
him mutter, 'It must be he!'
'Now,' he said, returning: so it seemed by the sound: to the
spot where he had stood before, 'you have given us most valuable
assistance, young woman, and I wish you to be the better for it.
What can I do to serve you?'
'Nothing,' replied Nancy.
'You will not persist in saying that,' rejoined the gentleman,
with a voice and emphasis of kindness that might have touched a
much harder and more obdurate heart. 'Think now. Tell me.'
'Nothing, sir,' rejoined the girl, weeping. 'You can do nothing
to help me. I am past all hope, indeed.'
'You put yourself beyond its pale,' said the gentleman. 'The past
has been a dreary waste with you, of youthful energies mis-spent,
and such priceless treasures lavished, as the Creator bestows but
once and never grants again, but, for the future, you may hope.
I do not say that it is in our power to offer you peace of heart
and mind, for that must come as you seek it; but a quiet asylum,
either in England, or, if you fear to remain here, in some
foreign country, it is not only within the compass of our ability
but our most anxious wish to secure you. Before the dawn of
morning, before this river wakes to the first glimpse of
day-light, you shall be placed as entirely beyond the reach of
your former associates, and leave as utter an absence of all
trace behind you, as if you were to disappear from the earth this
moment. Come! I would not have you go back to exchange one word
with any old companion, or take one look at any old haunt, or
breathe the very air which is pestilence and death to you. Quit
them all, while there is time and opportunity!'
'She will be persuaded now,' cried the young lady. 'She
hesitates, I am sure.'
'I fear not, my dear,' said the gentleman.
'No sir, I do not,' replied the girl, after a short struggle. 'I
am chained to my old life. I loathe and hate it now, but I
cannot leave it. I must have gone too far to turn back,--and yet
I don't know, for if you had spoken to me so, some time ago, I
should have laughed it off. But,' she said, looking hastily
round, 'this fear comes over me again. I must go home.'
'Home!' repeated the young lady, with great stress upon the word.
'Home, lady,' rejoined the girl. 'To such a home as I have
raised for myself with the work of my whole life. Let us part.
I shall be watched or seen. Go! Go! If I have done you any
service all I ask is, that you leave me, and let me go my way
alone.'
'It is useless,' said the gentleman, with a sigh. 'We compromise
her safety, perhaps, by staying here. We may have detained her
longer than she expected already.'
'Yes, yes,' urged the girl. 'You have.'
'What,' cried the young lady. 'can be the end of this poor
creature's life!'
'What!' repeated the girl. 'Look before you, lady. Look at that
dark water. How many times do you read of such as I who spring
into the tide, and leave no living thing, to care for, or bewail
them. It may be years hence, or it may be only months, but I
shall come to that at last.'
'Do not speak thus, pray,' returned the young lady, sobbing.
'It will never reach your ears, dear lady, and God forbid such
horrors should!' replied the girl. 'Good-night, good-night!'
The gentleman turned away.
'This purse,' cried the young lady. 'Take it for my sake, that
you may have some resource in an hour of need and trouble.'
'No!' replied the girl. 'I have not done this for money. Let me
have that to think of. And yet--give me something that you have
worn: I should like to have something--no, no, not a ring--your
gloves or handkerchief--anything that I can keep, as having
belonged to you, sweet lady. There. Bless you! God bless you.
Good-night, good-night!'
The violent agitation of the girl, and the apprehension of some
discovery which would subject her to ill-usage and violence,
seemed to determine the gentleman to leave her, as she requested.
The sound of retreating footsteps were audible and the voices
ceased.
The two figures of the young lady and her companion soon
afterwards appeared upon the bridge. They stopped at the summit
of the stairs.
'Hark!' cried the young lady, listening. 'Did she call! I
thought I heard her voice.'
'No, my love,' replied Mr. Brownlow, looking sadly back. 'She has
not moved, and will not till we are gone.'
Rose Maylie lingered, but the old gentleman drew her arm through
his, and led her, with gentle force, away. As they disappeared,
the girl sunk down nearly at her full length upon one of the
stone stairs, and vented the anguish of her heart in bitter
tears.
After a time she arose, and with feeble and tottering steps
ascended the street. The astonished listener remained motionless
on his post for some minutes afterwards, and having ascertained,
with many cautious glances round him, that he was again alone,
crept slowly from his hiding-place, and returned, stealthily and
in the shade of the wall, in the same manner as he had descended.
Peeping out, more than once, when he reached the top, to make
sure that he was unobserved, Noah Claypole darted away at his
utmost speed, and made for the Jew's house as fast as his legs
would carry him.
CHAPTER XLVII
FATAL CONSEQUENCES
It was nearly two hours before day-break; that time which in the
autumn of the year, may be truly called the dead of night; when
the streets are silent and deserted; when even sounds appear to
slumber, and profligacy and riot have staggered home to dream; it
was at this still and silent hour, that Fagin sat watching in his
old lair, with face so distorted and pale, and eyes so red and
blood-shot, that he looked less like a man, than like some
hideous phantom, moist from the grave, and worried by an evil
spirit.
He sat crouching over a cold hearth, wrapped in an old torn
coverlet, with his face turned towards a wasting candle that
stood upon a table by his side. His right hand was raised to his
lips, and as, absorbed in thought, he hit his long black nails,
he disclosed among his toothless gums a few such fangs as should
have been a dog's or rat's.
Stretched upon a mattress on the floor, lay Noah Claypole, fast
asleep. Towards him the old man sometimes directed his eyes for
an instant, and then brought them back again to the candle; which
with a long-burnt wick drooping almost double, and hot grease
falling down in clots upon the table, plainly showed that his
thoughts were busy elsewhere.
Indeed they were. Mortification at the overthrow of his notable
scheme; hatred of the girl who had dared to palter with
strangers; and utter distrust of the sincerity of her refusal to
yield him up; bitter disappointment at the loss of his revenge on
Sikes; the fear of detection, and ruin, and death; and a fierce
and deadly rage kindled by all; these were the passionate
considerations which, following close upon each other with rapid
and ceaseless whirl, shot through the brain of Fagin, as every
evil thought and blackest purpose lay working at his heart.
He sat without changing his attitude in the least, or appearing
to tkae the smallest heed of time, until his quick ear seemed to
be attracted by a footstep in the street.
'At last,' he muttered, wiping his dry and fevered mouth. 'At
last!'
The bell rang gently as he spoke. He crept upstairs to the door,
and presently returned accompanied by a man muffled to the chin,
who carried a bundle under one arm. Sitting down and throwing
back his outer coat, the man displayed the burly frame of Sikes.
'There!' he said, laying the bundle on the table. 'Take care of
that, and do the most you can with it. It's been trouble enough
to get; I thought I should have been here, three hours ago.'
Fagin laid his hand upon the bundle, and locking it in the
cupboard, sat down again without speaking. But he did not take
his eyes off the robber, for an instant, during this action; and
now that they sat over against each other, face to face, he
looked fixedly at him, with his lips quivering so violently, and
his face so altered by the emotions which had mastered him, that
the housebreaker involuntarily drew back his chair, and surveyed
him with a look of real affright.
'Wot now?' cried Sikes. 'Wot do you look at a man so for?'
Fagin raised his right hand, and shook his trembling forefinger
in the air; but his passion was so great, that the power of
speech was for the moment gone.
'Damme!' said Sikes, feeling in his breast with a look of alarm.
'He's gone mad. I must look to myself here.'
'No, no,' rejoined Fagin, finding his voice. 'It's not--you're
not the person, Bill. I've no--no fault to find with you.'
'Oh, you haven't, haven't you?' said Sikes, looking sternly at
him, and ostentatiously passing a pistol into a more convenient
pocket. 'That's lucky--for one of us. Which one that is, don't
matter.'
'I've got that to tell you, Bill,' said Fagin, drawing his chair
nearer, 'will make you worse than me.'
'Aye?' returned the robber with an incredulous air. 'Tell away!
Look sharp, or Nance will think I'm lost.'
'Lost!' cried Fagin. 'She has pretty well settled that, in her
own mind, already.'
Sikes looked with an aspect of great perplexity into the Jew's
face, and reading no satisfactory explanation of the riddle
there, clenched his coat collar in his huge hand and shook him
soundly.
'Speak, will you!' he said; 'or if you don't, it shall be for
want of breath. Open your mouth and say wot you've got to say in
plain words. Out with it, you thundering old cur, out with it!'
'Suppose that lad that's laying there--' Fagin began.
Sikes turned round to where Noah was sleeping, as if he had not
previously observed him. 'Well!' he said, resuming his former
position.
'Suppose that lad,' pursued Fagin, 'was to peach--to blow upon us
all--first seeking out the right folks for the purpose, and then
having a meeting with 'em in the street to paint our likenesses,
describe every mark that they might know us by, and the crib
where we might be most easily taken. Suppose he was to do all
this, and besides to blow upon a plant we've all been in, more or
less--of his own fancy; not grabbed, trapped, tried, earwigged by
the parson and brought to it on bread and water,--but of his own
fancy; to please his own taste; stealing out at nights to find
those most interested against us, and peaching to them. Do you
hear me?' cried the Jew, his eyes flashing with rage. 'Suppose
he did all this, what then?'
'What then!' replied Sikes; with a tremendous oath. 'If he was
left alive till I came, I'd grind his skull under the iron heel
of my boot into as many grains as there are hairs upon his head.'
'What if I did it!' cried Fagin almost in a yell. 'I, that knows
so much, and could hang so many besides myself!'
'I don't know,' replied Sikes, clenching his teeth and turning
white at the mere suggestion. 'I'd do something in the jail that
'ud get me put in irons; and if I was tried along with you, I'd
fall upon you with them in the open court, and beat your brains
out afore the people. I should have such strength,' muttered the
robber, poising his brawny arm, 'that I could smash your head as
if a loaded waggon had gone over it.'
'You would?'
'Would I!' said the housebreaker. 'Try me.'
'If it was Charley, or the Dodger, or Bet, or--'
'I don't care who,' replied Sikes impatiently. 'Whoever it was,
I'd serve them the same.'
Fagin looked hard at the robber; and, motioning him to be silent,
stooped over the bed upon the floor, and shook the sleeper to
rouse him. Sikes leant forward in his chair: looking on with
his hands upon his knees, as if wondering much what all this
questioning and preparation was to end in.
'Bolter, Bolter! Poor lad!' said Fagin, looking up with an
expression of devilish anticipation, and speaking slowly and with
marked emphasis. 'He's tired--tired with watching for her so
long,--watching for her, Bill.'
'Wot d'ye mean?' asked Sikes, drawing back.
Fagin made no answer, but bending over the sleeper again, hauled
him into a sitting posture. When his assumed name had been
repeated several times, Noah rubbed his eyes, and, giving a heavy
yawn, looked sleepily about him.
'Tell me that again--once again, just for him to hear,' said the
Jew, pointing to Sikes as he spoke.
'Tell yer what?' asked the sleepy Noah, shaking himself pettishy.
'That about--NANCY,' said Fagin, clutching Sikes by the wrist, as
if to prevent his leaving the house before he had heard enough.
'You followed her?'
'Yes.'
'To London Bridge?'
'Yes.'
'Where she met two people.'
'So she did.'
'A gentleman and a lady that she had gone to of her own accord
before, who asked her to give up all her pals, and Monks first,
which she did--and to describe him, which she did--and to tell
her what house it was that we meet at, and go to, which she
did--and where it could be best watched from, which she did--and
what time the people went there, which she did. She did all
this. She told it all every word without a threat, without a
murmur--she did--did she not?' cried Fagin, half mad with fury.
'All right,' replied Noah, scratching his head. 'That's just
what it was!'
'What did they say, about last Sunday?'
'About last Sunday!' replied Noah, considering. 'Why I told yer
that before.'
'Again. Tell it again!' cried Fagin, tightening his grasp on
Sikes, and brandishing his other hand aloft, as the foam flew
from his lips.
'They asked her,' said Noah, who, as he grew more wakeful, seemed
to have a dawning perception who Sikes was, 'they asked her why
she didn't come, last Sunday, as she promised. She said she
couldn't.'
'Why--why? Tell him that.'
'Because she was forcibly kept at home by Bill, the man she had
told them of before,' replied Noah.
'What more of him?' cried Fagin. 'What more of the man she had
told them of before? Tell him that, tell him that.'
'Why, that she couldn't very easily get out of doors unless he
knew where she was going to,' said Noah; 'and so the first time
she went to see the lady, she--ha! ha! ha! it made me laugh when
she said it, that it did--she gave him a drink of laudanum.'
'Hell's fire!' cried Sikes, breaking fiercely from the Jew. 'Let
me go!'
Flinging the old man from him, he rushed from the room, and
darted, wildly and furiously, up the stairs.
'Bill, Bill!' cried Fagin, following him hastily. 'A word. Only
a word.'
The word would not have been exchanged, but that the housebreaker
was unable to open the door: on which he was expending fruitless
oaths and violence, when the Jew came panting up.
'Let me out,' said Sikes. 'Don't speak to me; it's not safe.
Let me out, I say!'
'Hear me speak a word,' rejoined Fagin, laying his hand upon the
lock. 'You won't be--'
'Well,' replied the other.
'You won't be--too--violent, Bill?'
The day was breaking, and there was light enough for the men to
see each other's faces. They exchanged one brief glance; there
was a fire in the eyes of both, which could not be mistaken.
'I mean,' said Fagin, showing that he felt all disguise was now
useless, 'not too violent for safety. Be crafty, Bill, and not
too bold.'
Sikes made no reply; but, pulling open the door, of which Fagin
had turned the lock, dashed into the silent streets.
Without one pause, or moment's consideration; without once
turning his head to the right or left, or raising his eyes to the
sky, or lowering them to the ground, but looking straight before
him with savage resolution: his teeth so tightly compressed that
the strained jaw seemed starting through his skin; the robber
held on his headlong course, nor muttered a word, nor relaxed a
muscle, until he reached his own door. He opened it, softly,
with a key; strode lightly up the stairs; and entering his own
room, double-locked the door, and lifting a heavy table against
it, drew back the curtain of the bed.
The girl was lying, half-dressed, upon it. He had roused her
from her sleep, for she raised herself with a hurried and
startled look.
'Get up!' said the man.
'It is you, Bill!' said the girl, with an expression of pleasure
at his return.
'It is,' was the reply. 'Get up.'
There was a candle burning, but the man hastily drew it from the
candlestick, and hurled it under the grate. Seeing the faint
light of early day without, the girl rose to undraw the curtain.
'Let it be,' said Sikes, thrusting his hand before her. 'There's
enough light for wot I've got to do.'
'Bill,' said the girl, in the low voice of alarm, 'why do you
look like that at me!'
The robber sat regarding her, for a few seconds, with dilated
nostrils and heaving breast; and then, grasping her by the head
and throat, dragged her into the middle of the room, and looking
once towards the door, placed his heavy hand upon her mouth.
'Bill, Bill!' gasped the girl, wrestling with the strength of
mortal fear,--'I--I won't scream or cry--not once--hear me--speak
to me--tell me what I have done!'
'You know, you she devil!' returned the robber, suppressing his
breath. 'You were watched to-night; every word you said was
heard.'
'Then spare my life for the love of Heaven, as I spared yours,'
rejoined the girl, clinging to him. 'Bill, dear Bill, you cannot
have the heart to kill me. Oh! think of all I have given up,
only this one night, for you. You SHALL have time to think, and
save yourself this crime; I will not loose my hold, you cannot
throw me off. Bill, Bill, for dear God's sake, for your own, for
mine, stop before you spill my blood! I have been true to you,
upon my guilty soul I have!'
The man struggled violently, to release his arms; but those of
the girl were clasped round his, and tear her as he would, he
could not tear them away.
'Bill,' cried the girl, striving to lay her head upon his breast,
'the gentleman and that dear lady, told me to-night of a home in
some foreign country where I could end my days in solitude and
peace. Let me see them again, and beg them, on my knees, to show
the same mercy and goodness to you; and let us both leave this
dreadful place, and far apart lead better lives, and forget how
we have lived, except in prayers, and never see each other more.
It is never too late to repent. They told me so--I feel it
now--but we must have time--a little, little time!'
The housebreaker freed one arm, and grasped his pistol. The
certainty of immediate detection if he fired, flashed across his
mind even in the midst of his fury; and he beat it twice with all
the force he could summon, upon the upturned face that almost
touched his own.
She staggered and fell: nearly blinded with the blood that
rained down from a deep gash in her forehead; but raising
herself, with difficulty, on her knees, drew from her bosom a
white handkerchief--Rose Maylie's own--and holding it up, in her
folded hands, as high towards Heaven as her feeble strength would
allow, breathed one prayer for mercy to her Maker.
It was a ghastly figure to look upon. The murderer staggering
backward to the wall, and shutting out the sight with his hand,
seized a heavy club and struck her down.
CHAPTER XLVIII
THE FLIGHT OF SIKES
Of all bad deeds that, under cover of the darkness, had been
committed with wide London's bounds since night hung over it,
that was the worst. Of all the horrors that rose with an ill
scent upon the morning air, that was the foulest and most cruel.
The sun--the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but
new life, and hope, and freshness to man--burst upon the crowded
city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass
and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten
crevice, it shed its equal ray. It lighted up the room where the
murdered woman lay. It did. He tried to shut it out, but it
would stream in. If the sight had been a ghastly one in the dull
morning, what was it, now, in all that brilliant light!
He had not moved; he had been afraid to stir. There had been a
moan and motion of the hand; and, with terror added to rage, he
had struck and struck again. Once he threw a rug over it; but it
was worse to fancy the eyes, and imagine them moving towards him,
than to see them glaring upward, as if watching the reflection of
the pool of gore that quivered and danced in the sunlight on the
ceiling. He had plucked it off again. And there was the
body--mere flesh and blood, nor more--but such flesh, and so much
blood!
He struck a light, kindled a fire, and thrust the club into it.
There was hair upon the end, which blazed and shrunk into a light
cinder, and, caught by the air, whirled up the chimney. Even
that frightened him, sturdy as he was; but he held the weapon
till it broke, and then piled it on the coals to burn away, and
smoulder into ashes. He washed himself, and rubbed his clothes;
there were spots that would not be removed, but he cut the pieces
out, and burnt them. How those stains were dispersed about the
room! The very feet of the dog were bloody.
All this time he had, never once, turned his back upon the
corpse; no, not for a moment. Such preparations completed, he
moved, backward, towards the door: dragging the dog with him,
lest he should soil his feet anew and carry out new evidence of
the crime into the streets. He shut the door softly, locked it,
took the key, and left the house.
He crossed over, and glanced up at the window, to be sure that
nothing was visible from the outside. There was the curtain
still drawn, which she would have opened to admit the light she
never saw again. It lay nearly under there. HE knew that. God,
how the sun poured down upon the very spot!
The glance was instantaneous. It was a relief to have got free
of the room. He whistled on the dog, and walked rapidly away.
He went through Islington; strode up the hill at Highgate on
which stands the stone in honour of Whittington; turned down to
Highgate Hill, unsteady of purpose, and uncertain where to go;
struck off to the right again, almost as soon as he began to
descend it; and taking the foot-path across the fields, skirted
Caen Wood, and so came on Hampstead Heath. Traversing the hollow
by the Vale of Heath, he mounted the opposite bank, and crossing
the road which joins the villages of Hampstead and Highgate, made
along the remaining portion of the heath to the fields at North
End, in one of which he laid himself down under a hedge, and
slept.
Soon he was up again, and away,--not far into the country, but
back towards London by the high-road--then back again--then over
another part of the same ground as he already traversed--then
wandering up and down in fields, and lying on ditches' brinks to
rest, and starting up to make for some other spot, and do the
same, and ramble on again.
Where could he go, that was near and not too public, to get some
meat and drink? Hendon. That was a good place, not far off, and
out of most people's way. Thither he directed his
steps,--running sometimes, and sometimes, with a strange
perversity, loitering at a snail's pace, or stopping altogether
and idly breaking the hedges with a stick. But when he got
there, all the people he met--the very children at the
doors--seemed to view him with suspicion. Back he turned again,
without the courage to purchase bit or drop, though he had tasted
no food for many hours; and once more he lingered on the Heath,
uncertain where to go.
He wandered over miles and miles of ground, and still came back
to the old place. Morning and noon had passed, and the day was
on the wane, and still he rambled to and fro, and up and down,
and round and round, and still lingered about the same spot. At
last he got away, and shaped his course for Hatfield.
It was nine o'clock at night, when the man, quite tired out, and
the dog, limping and lame from the unaccustomed exercise, turned
down the hill by the church of the quiet village, and plodding
along the little street, crept into a small public-house, whose
scanty light had guided them to the spot. There was a fire in
the tap-room, and some country-labourers were drinking before it.
They made room for the stranger, but he sat down in the furthest
corner, and ate and drank alone, or rather with his dog: to whom
he cast a morsel of food from time to time.
The conversation of the men assembled here, turned upon the
neighboring land, and farmers; and when those topics were
exhausted, upon the age of some old man who had been buried on
the previous Sunday; the young men present considering him very
old, and the old men present declaring him to have been quite
young--not older, one white-haired grandfather said, than he
was--with ten or fifteen year of life in him at least--if he had
taken care; if he had taken care.
There was nothing to attract attention, or excite alarm in this.
The robber, after paying his reckoning, sat silent and unnoticed
in his corner, and had almost dropped asleep, when he was half
wakened by the noisy entrance of a new comer.
This was an antic fellow, half pedlar and half mountebank, who
travelled about the country on foot to vend hones, stops, razors,
washballs, harness-paste, medicine for dogs and horses, cheap
perfumery, cosmetics, and such-like wares, which he carried in a
case slung to his back. His entrance was the signal for various
homely jokes with the countrymen, which slackened not until he
had made his supper, and opened his box of treasures, when he
ingeniously contrived to unite business with amusement.
'And what be that stoof? Good to eat, Harry?' asked a grinning
countryman, pointing to some composition-cakes in one corner.
'This,' said the fellow, producing one, 'this is the infallible
and invaluable composition for removing all sorts of stain, rust,
dirt, mildew, spick, speck, spot, or spatter, from silk, satin,
linen, cambrick, cloth, crape, stuff, carpet, merino, muslin,
bombazeen, or woollen stuff. Wine-stains, fruit-stains,
beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains, pitch-stains, any
stains, all come out at one rub with the infallible and
invaluable composition. If a lady stains her honour, she has
only need to swallow one cake and she's cured at once--for it's
poison. If a gentleman wants to prove this, he has only need to
bolt one little square, and he has put it beyond question--for
it's quite as satisfactory as a pistol-bullet, and a great deal
nastier in the flavour, consequently the more credit in taking
it. One penny a square. With all these virtues, one penny a
square!'
There were two buyers directly, and more of the listeners plainly
hesitated. The vendor observing this, increased in loquacity.
'It's all bought up as fast as it can be made,' said the fellow.
'There are fourteen water-mills, six steam-engines, and a
galvanic battery, always a-working upon it, and they can't make
it fast enough, though the men work so hard that they die off,
and the widows is pensioned directly, with twenty pound a-year
for each of the children, and a premium of fifty for twins. One
penny a square! Two half-pence is all the same, and four
farthings is received with joy. One penny a square!
Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains,
paint-stains, pitch-stains, mud-stains, blood-stains! Here is a
stain upon the hat of a gentleman in company, that I'll take
clean out, before he can order me a pint of ale.'
'Hah!' cried Sikes starting up. 'Give that back.'
'I'll take it clean out, sir,' replied the man, winking to the
company, 'before you can come across the room to get it.
Gentlemen all, observe the dark stain upon this gentleman's hat,
no wider than a shilling, but thicker than a half-crown. Whether
it is a wine-stain, fruit-stain, beer-stain, water-stain,
paint-stain, pitch-stain, mud-stain, or blood-stain--'
The man got no further, for Sikes with a hideous imprecation
overthrew the table, and tearing the hat from him, burst out of
the house.
With the same perversity of feeling and irresolution that had
fastened upon him, despite himself, all day, the murderer,
finding that he was not followed, and that they most probably
considered him some drunken sullen fellow, turned back up the
town, and getting out of the glare of the lamps of a stage-coach
that was standing in the street, was walking past, when he
recognised the mail from London, and saw that it was standing at
the little post-office. He almost knew what was to come; but he
crossed over, and listened.
The guard was standing at the door, waiting for the letter-bag.
A man, dressed like a game-keeper, came up at the moment, and he
handed him a basket which lay ready on the pavement.
'That's for your people,' said the guard. 'Now, look alive in
there, will you. Damn that 'ere bag, it warn't ready night afore
last; this won't do, you know!'
'Anything new up in town, Ben?' asked the game-keeper, drawing
back to the window-shutters, the better to admire the horses.
'No, nothing that I knows on,' replied the man, pulling on his
gloves. 'Corn's up a little. I heerd talk of a murder, too,
down Spitalfields way, but I don't reckon much upon it.'
'Oh, that's quite true,' said a gentleman inside, who was looking
out of the window. 'And a dreadful murder it was.'
'Was it, sir?' rejoined the guard, touching his hat. 'Man or
woman, pray, sir?'
'A woman,' replied the gentleman. 'It is supposed--'
'Now, Ben,' replied the coachman impatiently.
'Damn that 'ere bag,' said the guard; 'are you gone to sleep in
there?'
'Coming!' cried the office keeper, running out.
'Coming,' growled the guard. 'Ah, and so's the young 'ooman of
property that's going to take a fancy to me, but I don't know
when. Here, give hold. All ri--ight!'
The horn sounded a few cheerful notes, and the coach was gone.
Sikes remained standing in the street, apparently unmoved by what
he had just heard, and agitated by no stronger feeling than a
doubt where to go. At length he went back again, and took the
road which leads from Hatfield to St. Albans.
He went on doggedly; but as he left the town behind him, and
plunged into the solitude and darkness of the road, he felt a
dread and awe creeping upon him which shook him to the core.
Every object before him, substance or shadow, still or moving,
took the semblance of some fearful thing; but these fears were
nothing compared to the sense that haunted him of that morning's
ghastly figure following at his heels. He could trace its shadow
in the gloom, supply the smallest item of the outline, and note
how stiff and solemn it seemed to stalk along. He could hear its
garments rustling in the leaves, and every breath of wind came
laden with that last low cry. If he stopped it did the same. If
he ran, it followed--not running too: that would have been a
relief: but like a corpse endowed with the mere machinery of
life, and borne on one slow melancholy wind that never rose or
fell.
At times, he turned, with desperate determination, resolved to
beat this phantom off, though it should look him dead; but the
hair rose on his head, and his blood stood still, for it had
turned with him and was behind him then. He had kept it before
him that morning, but it was behind now--always. He leaned his
back against a bank, and felt that it stood above him, visibly
out against the cold night-sky. He threw himself upon the
road--on his back upon the road. At his head it stood, silent,
erect, and still--a living grave-stone, with its epitaph in
blood.
Let no man talk of murderers escaping justice, and hint that
Providence must sleep. There were twenty score of violent deaths
in one long minute of that agony of fear.
There was a shed in a field he passed, that offered shelter for
the night. Before the door, were three tall poplar trees, which
made it very dark within; and the wind moaned through them with a
dismal wail. He COULD NOT walk on, till daylight came again; and
here he stretched himself close to the wall--to undergo new
torture.
For now, a vision came before him, as constant and more terrible
than that from which he had escaped. Those widely staring eyes,
so lustreless and so glassy, that he had better borne to see them
than think upon them, appeared in the midst of the darkness:
light in themselves, but giving light to nothing. There were but
two, but they were everywhere. If he shut out the sight, there
came the room with every well-known object--some, indeed, that he
would have forgotten, if he had gone over its contents from
memory--each in its accustomed place. The body was in ITS place,
and its eyes were as he saw them when he stole away. He got up,
and rushed into the field without. The figure was behind him.
He re-entered the shed, and shrunk down once more. The eyes were
there, before he had laid himself along.
And here he remained in such terror as none but he can know,
trembling in every limb, and the cold sweat starting from every
pore, when suddenly there arose upon the night-wind the noise of
distant shouting, and the roar of voices mingled in alarm and
wonder. Any sound of men in that lonely place, even though it
conveyed a real cause of alarm, was something to him. He
regained his strength and energy at the prospect of personal
danger; and springing to his feet, rushed into the open air.
The broad sky seemed on fire. Rising into the air with showers
of sparks, and rolling one above the other, were sheets of flame,
lighting the atmosphere for miles round, and driving clouds of
smoke in the direction where he stood. The shouts grew louder as
new voices swelled the roar, and he could hear the cry of Fire!
mingled with the ringing of an alarm-bell, the fall of heavy
bodies, and the crackling of flames as they twined round some new
obstacle, and shot aloft as though refreshed by food. The noise
increased as he looked. There were people there--men and
women--light, bustle. It was like new life to him. He darted
onward--straight, headlong--dashing through brier and brake, and
leaping gate and fence as madly as his dog, who careered with
loud and sounding bark before him.
He came upon the spot. There were half-dressed figures tearing
to and fro, some endeavouring to drag the frightened horses from
the stables, others driving the cattle from the yard and
out-houses, and others coming laden from the burning pile, amidst
a shower of falling sparks, and the tumbling down of red-hot
beams. The apertures, where doors and windows stood an hour ago,
disclosed a mass of raging fire; walls rocked and crumbled into
the burning well; the molten lead and iron poured down, white
hot, upon the ground. Women and children shrieked, and men
encouraged each other with noisy shouts and cheers. The clanking
of the engine-pumps, and the spirting and hissing of the water as
it fell upon the blazing wood, added to the tremendous roar. He
shouted, too, till he was hoarse; and flying from memory and
himself, plunged into the thickest of the throng. Hither and
thither he dived that night: now working at the pumps, and now
hurrying through the smoke and flame, but never ceasing to engage
himself wherever noise and men were thickest. Up and down the
ladders, upon the roofs of buildings, over floors that quaked and
trembled with his weight, under the lee of falling bricks and
stones, in every part of that great fire was he; but he bore a
charmed life, and had neither scratch nor bruise, nor weariness
nor thought, till morning dawned again, and only smoke and
blackened ruins remained.
This mad excitement over, there returned, with ten-fold force,
the dreadful consciousness of his crime. He looked suspiciously
about him, for the men were conversing in groups, and he feared
to be the subject of their talk. The dog obeyed the significant
beck of his finger, and they drew off, stealthily, together. He
passed near an engine where some men were seated, and they called
to him to share in their refreshment. He took some bread and
meat; and as he drank a draught of beer, heard the firemen, who
were from London, talking about the murder. 'He has gone to
Birmingham, they say,' said one: 'but they'll have him yet, for
the scouts are out, and by to-morrow night there'll be a cry all
through the country.'
He hurried off, and walked till he almost dropped upon the
ground; then lay down in a lane, and had a long, but broken and
uneasy sleep. He wandered on again, irresolute and undecided,
and oppressed with the fear of another solitary night.
Suddenly, he took the desperate resolution to going back to
London.
'There's somebody to speak to there, at all event,' he thought.
'A good hiding-place, too. They'll never expect to nab me there,
after this country scent. Why can't I lie by for a week or so,
and, forcing blunt from Fagin, get abroad to France? Damme, I'll
risk it.'
He acted upon this impluse without delay, and choosing the least
frequented roads began his journey back, resolved to lie
concealed within a short distance of the metropolis, and,
entering it at dusk by a circuitous route, to proceed straight to
that part of it which he had fixed on for his destination.
The dog, though. If any description of him were out, it would
not be forgotten that the dog was missing, and had probably gone
with him. This might lead to his apprehension as he passed along
the streets. He resolved to drown him, and walked on, looking
about for a pond: picking up a heavy stone and tying it to his
handerkerchief as he went.
The animal looked up into his master's face while these
preparations were making; whether his instinct apprehended
something of their purpose, or the robber's sidelong look at him
was sterner than ordinary, he skulked a little farther in the
rear than usual, and cowered as he came more slowly along. When
his master halted at the brink of a pool, and looked round to
call him, he stopped outright.
'Do you hear me call? Come here!' cried Sikes.
The animal came up from the very force of habit; but as Sikes
stooped to attach the handkerchief to his throat, he uttered a
low growl and started back.
'Come back!' said the robber.
The dog wagged his tail, but moved not. Sikes made a running
noose and called him again.
The dog advanced, retreated, paused an instant, and scoured away
at his hardest speed.
The man whistled again and again, and sat down and waited in the
expectation that he would return. But no dog appeared, and at
length he resumed his journey.
CHAPTER XLIX
MONKS AND MR. BROWNLOW AT LENGTH MEET. THEIR CONVERSATION,
AND
THE INTELLIGENCE THAT INTERRUPTS IT
The twilight was beginning to close in, when Mr. Brownlow
alighted from a hackney-coach at his own door, and knocked
softly. The door being opened, a sturdy man got out of the coach
and stationed himself on one side of the steps, while another
man, who had been seated on the box, dismounted too, and stood
upon the other side. At a sign from Mr. Brownlow, they helped
out a third man, and taking him between them, hurried him into
the house. This man was Monks.
They walked in the same manner up the stairs without speaking,
and Mr. Brownlow, preceding them, led the way into a back-room.
At the door of this apartment, Monks, who had ascended with
evident reluctance, stopped. The two men looked at the old
gentleman as if for instructions.
'He knows the alternative,' said Mr. Browlow. 'If he hesitates
or moves a finger but as you bid him, drag him into the street,
call for the aid of the police, and impeach him as a felon in my
name.'
'How dare you say this of me?' asked Monks.
'How dare you urge me to it, young man?' replied Mr. Brownlow,
confronting him with a steady look. 'Are you mad enough to leave
this house? Unhand him. There, sir. You are free to go, and we
to follow. But I warn you, by all I hold most solemn and most
sacred, that instant will have you apprehended on a charge of
fraud and robbery. I am resolute and immoveable. If you are
determined to be the same, your blood be upon your own head!'
'By what authority am I kidnapped in the street, and brought here
by these dogs?' asked Monks, looking from one to the other of the
men who stood beside him.
'By mine,' replied Mr. Brownlow. 'Those persons are indemnified
by me. If you complain of being deprived of your liberty--you
had power and opportunity to retrieve it as you came along, but
you deemed it advisable to remain quiet--I say again, throw
yourself for protection on the law. I will appeal to the law
too; but when you have gone too far to recede, do not sue to me
for leniency, when the power will have passed into other hands;
and do not say I plunged you down the gulf into which you rushed,
yourself.'
Monks was plainly disconcerted, and alarmed besides. He
hesitated.
'You will decide quickly,' said Mr. Brownlow, with perfect
firmness and composure. 'If you wish me to prefer my charges
publicly, and consign you to a punishment the extent of which,
although I can, with a shudder, foresee, I cannot control, once
more, I say, for you know the way. If not, and you appeal to my
forbearance, and the mercy of those you have deeply injured, seat
yourself, without a word, in that chair. It has waited for you
two whole days.'
Monks muttered some unintelligible words, but wavered still.
'You will be prompt,' said Mr. Brownlow. 'A word from me, and
the alternative has gone for ever.'
Still the man hesitated.
'I have not the inclination to parley,' said Mr. Brownlow, 'and,
as I advocate the dearest interests of others, I have not the
right.'
'Is there--' demanded Monks with a faltering tongue,--'is
there--no middle course?'
'None.'
Monks looked at the old gentleman, with an anxious eye; but,
reading in his countenance nothing but severity and
determination, walked into the room, and, shrugging his
shoulders, sat down.
'Lock the door on the outside,' said Mr. Brownlow to the
attendants, 'and come when I ring.'
The men obeyed, and the two were left alone together.
'This is pretty treatment, sir,' said Monks, throwing down his
hat and cloak, 'from my father's oldest friend.'
'It is because I was your father's oldest friend, young man,'
returned Mr. Brownlow; 'it is because the hopes and wishes of
young and happy years were bound up with him, and that fair
creature of his blood and kindred who rejoined her God in youth,
and left me here a solitary, lonely man: it is because he knelt
with me beside his only sisters' death-bed when he was yet a boy,
on the morning that would--but Heaven willed otherwise--have made
her my young wife; it is because my seared heart clung to him,
from that time forth, through all his trials and errors, till he
died; it is because old recollections and associations filled my
heart, and even the sight of you brings with it old thoughts of
him; it is because of all these things that I am moved to treat
you gently now--yes, Edward Leeford, even now--and blush for your
unworthiness who bear the name.'
'What has the name to do with it?' asked the other, after
contemplating, half in silence, and half in dogged wonder, the
agitation of his companion. 'What is the name to me?'
'Nothing,' replied Mr. Brownlow, 'nothing to you. But it was
HERS, and even at this distance of time brings back to me, an old
man, the glow and thrill which I once felt, only to hear it
repeated by a stranger. I am very glad you have changed
it--very--very.'
'This is all mighty fine,' said Monks (to retain his assumed
designation) after a long silence, during which he had jerked
himself in sullen defiance to and fro, and Mr. Brownlow had sat,
shading his face with his hand. 'But what do you want with me?'
'You have a brother,' said Mr. Brownlow, rousing himself: 'a
brother, the whisper of whose name in your ear when I came behind
you in the street, was, in itself, almost enough to make you
accompany me hither, in wonder and alarm.'
'I have no brother,' replied Monks. 'You know I was an only
child. Why do you talk to me of brothers? You know that, as
well as I.'
'Attend to what I do know, and you may not,' said Mr. Brownlow.
'I shall interest you by and by. I know that of the wretched
marriage, into which family pride, and the most sordid and
narrowest of all ambition, forced your unhappy father when a mere
boy, you were the sole and most unnatural issue.'
'I don't care for hard names,' interrupted Monks with a jeering
laugh. 'You know the fact, and that's enough for me.'
'But I also know,' pursued the old gentleman, 'the misery, the
slow torture, the protracted anguish of that ill-assorted union.
I know how listlessly and wearily each of that wretched pair
dragged on their heavy chain through a world that was poisoned to
them both. I know how cold formalities were succeeded by open
taunts; how indifference gave place to dislike, dislike to hate,
and hate to loathing, until at last they wrenched the clanking
bond asunder, and retiring a wide space apart, carried each a
galling fragment, of which nothing but death could break the
rivets, to hide it in new society beneath the gayest looks they
could assume. Your mother succeeded; she forgot it soon. But it
rusted and cankered at your father's heart for years.'
'Well, they were separated,' said Monks, 'and what of that?'
'When they had been separated for some time,' returned Mr.
Brownlow, 'and your mother, wholly given up to continental
frivolities, had utterly forgotten the young husband ten good
years her junior, who, with prospects blighted, lingered on at
home, he fell among new friends. This circumstance, at least,
you know already.'
'Not I,' said Monks, turning away his eyes and beating his foot
upon the ground, as a man who is determined to deny everything.
'Not I.'
'Your manner, no less than your actions, assures me that you have
never forgotten it, or ceased to think of it with bitterness,'
returned Mr. Brownlow. 'I speak of fifteen years ago, when you
were not more than eleven years old, and your father but
one-and-thirty--for he was, I repeat, a boy, when HIS father
ordered him to marry. Must I go back to events which cast a shade
upon the memory of your parent, or will you spare it, and
disclose to me the truth?'
'I have nothing to disclose,' rejoined Monks. 'You must talk on
if you will.'
'These new friends, then,' said Mr. Brownlow, 'were a naval
officer retired from active service, whose wife had died some
half-a-year before, and left him with two children--there had
been more, but, of all their family, happily but two survived.
They were both daughters; one a beautiful creature of nineteen,
and the other a mere child of two or three years old.'
'What's this to me?' asked Monks.
'They resided,' said Mr. Brownlow, without seeming to hear the
interruption, 'in a part of the country to which your father in
his wandering had repaired, and where he had taken up his abode.
Acquaintance, intimacy, friendship, fast followed on each other.
Your father was gifted as few men are. He had his sister's soul
and person. As the old officer knew him more and more, he grew
to love him. I would that it had ended there. His daughter did
the same.
The old gentleman paused; Monks was biting his lips, with his
eyes fixed upon the floor; seeing this, he immediately resumed:
'The end of a year found him contracted, solemnly contracted, to
that daughter; the object of the first, true, ardent, only
passion of a guileless girl.'
'Your tale is of the longest,' observed Monks, moving restlessly
in his chair.
'It is a true tale of grief and trial, and sorrow, young man,'
returned Mr. Brownlow, 'and such tales usually are; if it were
one of unmixed joy and happiness, it would be very brief. At
length one of those rich relations to strengthen whose interest
and importance your father had been sacrificed, as others are
often--it is no uncommon case--died, and to repair the misery he
had been instrumental in occasioning, left him his panacea for
all griefs--Money. It was necessary that he should immediately
repair to Rome, whither this man had sped for health, and where
he had died, leaving his affairs in great confusion. He went;
was seized with mortal illness there; was followed, the moment
the intelligence reached Paris, by your mother who carried you
with her; he died the day after her arrival, leaving no will--NO
WILL--so that the whole property fell to her and you.'
At this part of the recital Monks held his breath, and listened
with a face of intense eagerness, though his eyes were not
directed towards the speaker. As Mr. Brownlow paused, he changed
his position with the air of one who has experienced a sudden
relief, and wiped his hot face and hands.
'Before he went abroad, and as he passed through London on his
way,' said Mr. Brownlow, slowly, and fixing his eyes upon the
other's face, 'he came to me.'
'I never heard of that,' interrupted MOnks in a tone intended to
appear incredulous, but savouring more of disagreeable surprise.
'He came to me, and left with me, among some other things, a
picture--a portrait painted by himself--a likeness of this poor
girl--which he did not wish to leave behind, and could not carry
forward on his hasty journey. He was worn by anxiety and remorse
almost to a shadow; talked in a wild, distracted way, of ruin and
dishonour worked by himself; confided to me his intention to
convert his whole property, at any loss, into money, and, having
settled on his wife and you a portion of his recent acquisition,
to fly the country--I guessed too well he would not fly
alone--and never see it more. Even from me, his old and early
friend, whose strong attachment had taken root in the earth that
covered one most dear to both--even from me he withheld any more
particular confession, promising to write and tell me all, and
after that to see me once again, for the last time on earth.
Alas! THAT was the last time. I had no letter, and I never saw
him more.'
'I went,' said Mr. Brownlow, after a short pause, 'I went, when
all was over, to the scene of his--I will use the term the world
would freely use, for worldly harshness or favour are now alike
to him--of his guilty love, resolved that if my fears were
realised that erring child should find one heart and home to
shelter and compassionate her. The family had left that part a
week before; they had called in such trifling debts as were
outstanding, discharged them, and left the place by night. Why,
or whithter, none can tell.'
Monks drew his breath yet more freely, and looked round with a
smile of triumph.
'When your brother,' said Mr. Brownlow, drawing nearer to the
other's chair, 'When your brother: a feeble, ragged, neglected
child: was cast in my way by a stronger hand than chance, and
rescued by me from a life of vice and infamy--'
'What?' cried Monks.
'By me,' said Mr. Brownlow. 'I told you I should interest you
before long. I say by me--I see that your cunning associate
suppressed my name, although for ought he knew, it would be quite
strange to your ears. When he was rescued by me, then, and lay
recovering from sickness in my house, his strong resemblance to
this picture I have spoken of, struck me with astonishment. Even
when I first saw him in all his dirt and misery, there was a
lingering expression in his face that came upon me like a glimpse
of some old friend flashing on one in a vivid dream. I need not
tell you he was snared away before I knew his history--'
'Why not?' asked Monks hastily.
'Because you know it well.'
'I!'
'Denial to me is vain,' replied Mr. Brownlow. 'I shall show you
that I know more than that.'
'You--you--can't prove anything against me,' stammered Monks. 'I
defy you to do it!'
'We shall see,' returned the old gentleman with a searching
glance. 'I lost the boy, and no efforts of mine could recover
him. Your mother being dead, I knew that you alone could solve
the mystery if anybody could, and as when I had last heard of you
you were on your own estate in the West Indies--whither, as you
well know, you retired upon your mother's death to escape the
consequences of vicious courses here--I made the voyage. You had
left it, months before, and were supposed to be in London, but no
one could tell where. I returned. Your agents had no clue to
your residence. You came and went, they said, as strangely as
you had ever done: sometimes for days together and sometimes not
for months: keeping to all appearance the same low haunts and
mingling with the same infamous herd who had been your associates
when a fierce ungovernable boy. I wearied them with new
applications. I paced the streets by night and day, but until
two hours ago, all my efforts were fruitless, and I never saw you
for an instant.'
'And now you do see me,' said Monks, rising boldly, 'what then?
Fraud and robbery are high-sounding words--justified, you think,
by a fancied resemblance in some young imp to an idle daub of a
dead man's Brother! You don't even know that a child was born of
this maudlin pair; you don't even know that.'
'I DID NOT,' replied Mr. Brownlow, rising too; 'but within the
last fortnight I have learnt it all. You have a brother; you
know it, and him. There was a will, which your mother destroyed,
leaving the secret and the gain to you at her own death. It
contained a reference to some child likely to be the result of
this sad connection, which child was born, and accidentally
encountered by you, when your suspicions were first awakened by
his resemblance to your father. You repaired to the place of his
birth. There existed proofs--proofs long suppressed--of his birth
and parentage. Those proofs were destroyed by you, and now, in
your own words to your accomplice the Jew, "THE ONLY PROOFS OF
THE BOY'S IDENTITY LIE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER, AND THE OLD
HAG THAT RECEIVED THEM FORM THE MOTHER IS ROTTING IN HER COFFIN."
Unworthy son, coward, liar,--you, who hold your councils with
thieves and murderers in dark rooms at night,--you, whose plots
and wiles have brought a violent death upon the head of one worth
millions such as you,--you, who from your cradle were gall and
bitterness to your own father's heart, and in whom all evil
passions, vice, and profligacy, festered, till they found a vent
in a hideous disease which had made your face an index even to
your mind--you, Edward Leeford, do you still brave me!'
'No, no, no!' returned the coward, overwhelmed by these
accumulated charges.
'Every word!' cried the gentleman, 'every word that has passed
between you and this detested villain, is known to me. Shadows
on the wall have caught your whispers, and brought them to my
ear; the sight of the persecuted child has turned vice itself,
and given it the courage and almost the attributes of virtue.
Murder has been done, to which you were morally if not really a
party.'
'No, no,' interposed Monks. 'I--I knew nothing of that; I was
going to inquire the truth of the story when you overtook me. I
didn't know the cause. I thought it was a common quarrel.'
'It was the partial disclosure of your secrets,' replied Mr.
Brownlow. 'Will you disclose the whole?'
'Yes, I will.'
'Set your hand to a statement of truth and facts, and repeat it
before witnesses?'
'That I promise too.'
'Remain quietly here, until such a document is drawn up, and
proceed with me to such a place as I may deem most advisable, for
the purpose of attesting it?'
'If you insist upon that, I'll do that also,' replied Monks.
'You must do more than that,' said Mr. Brownlow. 'Make
restitution to an innocent and unoffending child, for such he is,
although the offspring of a guilty and most miserable love. You
have not forgotten the provisions of the will. Carry them into
execution so far as your brother is concerned, and then go where
you please. In this world you need meet no more.'
While Monks was pacing up and down, meditating with dark and evil
looks on this proposal and the possibilities of evading it: torn
by his fears on the one hand and his hatred on the other: the
door was hurriedly unlocked, and a gentleman (Mr. Losberne)
entered the room in violent agitation.
'The man will be taken,' he cried. 'He will be taken to-night!'
'The murderer?' asked Mr. Brownlow.
'Yes, yes,' replied the other. 'His dog has been seen lurking
about some old haunt, and there seems little doubt hat his master
either is, or will be, there, under cover of the darkness. Spies
are hovering about in every direction. I have spoken to the men
who are charged with his capture, and they tell me he cannot
escape. A reward of a hundred pounds is proclaimed by Government
to-night.'
'I will give fifty more,' said Mr. Brownlow, 'and proclaim it
with my own lips upon the spot, if I can reach it. Where is Mr.
Maylie?'
'Harry? As soon as he had seen your friend here, safe in a coach
with you, he hurried off to where he heard this,' replied the
doctor, 'and mounting his horse sallied forth to join the first
party at some place in the outskirts agreed upon between them.'
'Fagin,' said Mr. Brownlow; 'what of him?'
'When I last heard, he had not been taken, but he will be, or is,
by this time. They're sure of him.'
'Have you made up your mind?' asked Mr. Brownlow, in a low voice,
of Monks.
'Yes,' he replied. 'You--you--will be secret with me?'
'I will. Remain here till I return. It is your only hope of
safety.
They left the room, and the door was again locked.
'What have you done?' asked the doctor in a whisper.
'All that I could hope to do, and even more. Coupling the poor
girl's intelligence with my previous knowledge, and the result of
our good friend's inquiries on the spot, I left him no loophole
of escape, and laid bare the whole villainy which by these lights
became plain as day. Write and appoint the evening after
to-morrow, at seven, for the meeting. We shall be down there, a
few hours before, but shall require rest: especially the young
lady, who MAY have greater need of firmness than either you or I
can quite foresee just now. But my blood boils to avenge this
poor murdered creature. Which way have they taken?'
'Drive straight to the office and you will be in time,' replied
Mr. Losberne. 'I will remain here.'
The two gentlemen hastily separated; each in a fever of
excitement wholly uncontrollable.
CHAPTER L
THE PURSUIT AND ESCAPE
Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at
Rotherhithe abuts, where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest
and the vessels on the river blackest with the dust of colliers
and the smoke of close-built low-roofed houses, there exists the
filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many
localities that are hidden in London, wholly unknown, even by
name, to the great mass of its inhabitants.
To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze
of close, narrow, and muddy streets, thronged by the rougest and
poorest of waterside people, and devoted to the traffic they may
be supposed to occasion. The cheapest and least delicate
provisions are heaped in the shops; the coarsest and commonest
articles of wearing apparel dangle at the salesman's door, and
stream from the house-parapet and windows. Jostling with
unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast-heavers,
coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the raff and
refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along,
assailed by offensive sights and smells from the narrow alleys
which branch off on the right and left, and deafened by the clash
of ponderous waggons that bear great piles of merchandise from
the stacks of warehouses that rise from every corner. Arriving,
at length, in streets remoter and less-frequented than those
through which he has passed, he walks beneath tottering
house-fronts projecting over the pavement, dismantled walls that
seem to totter as he passes, chimneys half crushed half
hesitating to fall, windows guarded by rusty iron bars that time
and dirt have almost eaten away, every imaginable sign of
desolation and neglect.
In such a neighborhood, beyond Dockhead in the Borough of
Southwark, stands Jacob's Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch,
six or eight feet deep and fifteen or twenty wide when the tide
is in, once called Mill Pond, but known in the days of this story
as Folly Ditch. It is a creek or inlet from the Thames, and can
always be filled at high water by opening the sluices at the Lead
Mills from which it took its old name. At such times, a
stranger, looking from one of the wooden bridges thrown across it
at Mill Lane, will see the inhabitants of the houses on either
side lowering from their back doors and windows, buckets, pails,
domestic utensils of all kinds, in which to haul the water up;
and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses
themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene
before him. Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a
dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime
beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on
which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so
filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for
the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers
thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall
into it--as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying
foundations; every repulsive lineament of poverty, every
loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these
ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.
In Jacob's Island, the warehouses are roofless and empty; the
walls are crumbling down; the windows are windows no more; the
doors are falling into the streets; the chimneys are blackened,
but they yield no smoke. Thirty or forty years ago, before
losses and chancery suits came upon it, it was a thriving place;
but now it is a desolate island indeed. The houses have no
owners; they are broken open, and entered upon by those who have
the courage; and there they live, and there they die. They must
have powerful motives for a secret residence, or be reduced to a
destitute condition indeed, who seek a refuge in Jacob's Island.
In an upper room of one of these houses--a detached house of fair
size, ruinous in other respects, but strongly defended at door
and window: of which house the back commanded the ditch in
manner already described--there were assembled three men, who,
regarding each other every now and then with looks expressive of
perplexity and expectation, sat for some time in profound and
gloomy silence. One of these was Toby Crackit, another Mr.
Chitling, and the third a robber of fifty years, whose nose had
been almost beaten in, in some old scuffle, and whose face bore a
frightful scar which might probably be traced to the same
occasion. This man was a returned transport, and his name was
Kags.
'I wish,' said Toby turning to Mr. Chitling, 'that you had picked
out some other crig when the two old ones got too warm, and had
not come here, my fine feller.'
'Why didn't you, blunder-head!' said Kags.
'Well, I thought you'd have been a little more glad to see me
than this,' replied Mr. Chitling, with a melancholy air.
'Why, look'e, young gentleman,' said Toby, 'when a man keeps
himself so very ex-clusive as I have done, and by that means has
a snug house over his head with nobody a prying and smelling
about it, it's rather a startling thing to have the honour of a
wisit from a young gentleman (however respectable and pleasant a
person he may be to play cards with at conweniency) circumstanced
as you are.'
'Especially, when the exclusive young man has got a friend
stopping with him, that's arrived sooner than was expected from
foreign parts, and is too modest to want to be presented to the
Judges on his return,' added Mr. Kags.
There was a short silence, after which Toby Crackit, seeming to
abandon as hopeless any further effort to maintain his usual
devil-may-care swagger, turned to Chitling and said,
'When was Fagin took then?'
'Just at dinner-time--two o'clock this afternoon. Charley and I
made our lucky up the wash-us chimney, and Bolter got into the
empty water-butt, head downwards; but his legs were so precious
long that they stuck out at the top, and so they took him too.'
'And Bet?'
'Poor Bet! She went to see the Body, to speak to who it was,'
replied Chitling, his countenance falling more and more, 'and
went off mad, screaming and raving, and beating her head against
the boards; so they put a strait-weskut on her and took her to
the hospital--and there she is.'
'Wot's come of young Bates?' demanded Kags.
'He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he'll be
here soon,' replied Chitling. 'There's nowhere else to go to
now, for the people at the Cripples are all in custody, and the
bar of the ken--I went up there and see it with my own eyes--is
filled with traps.'
'This is a smash,' observed Toby, biting his lips. 'There's more
than one will go with this.'
'The sessions are on,' said Kags: 'if they get the inquest over,
and Bolter turns King's evidence: as of course he will, from
what he's said already: they can prove Fagin an accessory before
the fact, and get the trial on on Friday, and he'll swing in six
days from this, by G--!'
'You should have heard the people groan,' said Chitling; 'the
officers fought like devils, or they'd have torn him away. He
was down once, but they made a ring round him, and fought their
way along. You should have seen how he looked about him, all
muddy and bleeding, and clung to them as if they were his dearest
friends. I can see 'em now, not able to stand upright with the
pressing of the mob, and draggin him along amongst 'em; I can see
the people jumping up, one behind another, and snarling with
their teeth and making at him; I can see the blood upon his hair
and beard, and hear the cries with which the women worked
themselves into the centre of the crowd at the street corner, and
swore they'd tear his heart out!'
The horror-stricken witness of this scene pressed his hands upon
his ears, and with his eyes closed got up and paced violently to
and fro, like one distracted.
While he was thus engaged, and the two men sat by in silence with
their eyes fixed upon the floor, a pattering noise was heard upon
the stairs, and Sikes's dog bounded into the room. They ran to
the window, downstairs, and into the street. The dog had jumped
in at an open window; he made no attempt to follow them, nor was
his master to be seen.
'What's the meaning of this?' said Toby when they had returned.
'He can't be coming here. I--I--hope not.'
'If he was coming here, he'd have come with the dog,' said Kags,
stooping down to examine the animal, who lay panting on the
floor. 'Here! Give us some water for him; he has run himself
faint.'
'He's drunk it all up, every drop,' said Chitling after watching
the dog some time in silence. 'Covered with mud--lame--half
blind--he must have come a long way.'
'Where can he have come from!' exclaimed Toby. 'He's been to the
other kens of course, and finding them filled with strangers come
on here, where he's been many a time and often. But where can he
have come from first, and how comes he here alone without the
other!'
'He'--(none of them called the murderer by his old name)--'He
can't have made away with himself. What do you think?' said
Chitling.
Toby shook his head.
'If he had,' said Kags, 'the dog 'ud want to lead us away to
where he did it. No. I think he's got out of the country, and
left the dog behind. He must have given him the slip somehow, or
he wouldn't be so easy.'
This solution, appearing the most probable one, was adopted as
the right; the dog, creeping under a chair, coiled himself up to
sleep, without more notice from anybody.
It being now dark, the shutter was closed, and a candle lighted
and placed upon the table. The terrible events of the last two
days had made a deep impression on all three, increased by the
danger and uncertainty of their own position. They drew their
chairs closer together, starting at every sound. They spoke
little, and that in whispers, and were as silent and awe-stricken
as if the remains of the murdered woman lay in the next room.
They had sat thus, some time, when suddenly was heard a hurried
knocking at the door below.
'Young Bates,' said Kags, looking angrily round, to check the
fear he felt himself.
The knocking came again. No, it wasn't he. He never knocked
like that.
Crackit went to the window, and shaking all over, drew in his
head. There was no need to tell them who it was; his pale face
was enough. The dog too was on the alert in an instant, and ran
whining to the door.
'We must let him in,' he said, taking up the candle.
'Isn't there any help for it?' asked the other man in a hoarse
voice.
'None. He MUST come in.'
'Don't leave us in the dark,' said Kags, taking down a candle
from the chimney-piece, and lighting it, with such a trembling
hand that the knocking was twice repeated before he had finished.
Crackit went down to the door, and returned followed by a man
with the lower part of his face buried in a handkerchief, and
another tied over his head under his hat. He drew them slowly
off. Blanched face, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, beard of three
days' growth, wasted flesh, short thick breath; it was the very
ghost of Sikes.
He laid his hand upon a chair which stood in the middle of the
room, but shuddering as he was about to drop into it, and seeming
to glance over his shoulder, dragged it back close to the
wall--as close as it would go--and ground it against it--and sat
down.
Not a word had been exchanged. He looked from one to another in
silence. If an eye were furtively raised and met his, it was
instantly averted. When his hollow voice broke silence, they all
three started. They seemed never to have heard its tones before.
'How came that dog here?' he asked.
'Alone. Three hours ago.'
'To-night's paper says that Fagin's took. Is it true, or a lie?'
'True.'
They were silent again.
'Damn you all!' said Sikes, passing his hand across his forehead.
'Have you nothing to say to me?'
There was an uneasy movement among them, but nobody spoke.
'You that keep this house,' said Sikes, turning his face to
Crackit, 'do you mean to sell me, or to let me lie here till this
hunt is over?'
'You may stop here, if you think it safe,' returned the person
addressed, after some hesitation.
Sikes carried his eyes slowly up the wall behind him: rather
trying to turn his head than actually doing it: and said,
'Is--it--the body--is it buried?'
They shook their heads.
'Why isn't it!' he retorted with the same glance behind him.
'Wot do they keep such ugly things above the ground for?--Who's
that knocking?'
Crackit intimated, by a motion of his hand as he left the room,
that there was nothing to fear; and directly came back with
Charley Bates behind him. Sikes sat opposite the door, so that
the moment the boy entered the room he encountered his figure.
'Toby,' said the boy falling back, as Sikes turned his eyes
towards him, 'why didn't you tell me this, downstairs?'
There had been something so tremendous in the shrinking off of
the three, that the wretched man was willing to propitiate even
this lad. Accordingly he nodded, and made as though he would
shake hands with him.
'Let me go into some other room,' said the boy, retreating still
farther.
'Charley!' said Sikes, stepping forward. 'Don't you--don't you
know me?'
'Don't come nearer me,' answered the boy, still retreating, and
looking, with horror in his eyes, upon the murderer's face. 'You
monster!'
The man stopped half-way, and they looked at each other; but
Sikes's eyes sunk gradually to the ground.
'Witness you three,' cried the boy shaking his clenched fist, and
becoming more and more excited as he spoke. 'Witness you
three--I'm not afraid of him--if they come here after him, I'll
give him up; I will. I tell you out at once. He may kill me for
it if he likes, or if he dares, but if I am here I'll give him
up. I'd give him up if he was to be boiled alive. Murder!
Help! If there's the pluck of a man among you three, you'll help
me. Murder! Help! Down with him!'
Pouring out these cries, and accompanying them with violent
gesticulation, the boy actually threw himself, single-handed,
upon the strong man, and in the intensity of his energy and the
suddenness of his surprise, brought him heavily to the ground.
The three spectators seemed quite stupefied. They offered no
interference, and the boy and man rolled on the ground together;
the former, heedless of the blows that showered upon him,
wrenching his hands tighter and tighter in the garments about the
murderer's breast, and never ceasing to call for help with all
his might.
The contest, however, was too unequal to last long. Sikes had
him down, and his knee was on his throat, when Crackit pulled him
back with a look of alarm, and pointed to the window. There were
lights gleaming below, voices in loud and earnest conversation,
the tramp of hurried footsteps--endless they seemed in
number--crossing the nearest wooden bridge. One man on horseback
seemed to be among the crowd; for there was the noise of hoofs
rattling on the uneven pavement. The gleam of lights increased;
the footsteps came more thickly and noisily on. Then, came a
loud knocking at the door, and then a hoarse murmur from such a
multitude of angry voices as would have made the boldest quail.
'Help!' shrieked the boy in a voice that rent the air.
'He's here! Break down the door!'
'In the King's name,' cried the voices without; and the hoarse
cry arose again, but louder.
'Break down the door!' screamed the boy. 'I tell you they'll
never open it. Run straight to the room where the light is.
Break down the door!'
Strokes, thick and heavy, rattled upon the door and lower
window-shutters as he ceased to speak, and a loud huzzah burst
from the crowd; giving the listener, for the first time, some
adequate idea of its immense extent.
'Open the door of some place where I can lock this screeching
Hell-babe,' cried Sikes fiercely; running to and fro, and
dragging the boy, now, as easily as if he were an empty sack.
'That door. Quick!' He flung him in, bolted it, and turned the
key. 'Is the downstairs door fast?'
'Double-locked and chained,' replied Crackit, who, with the other
two men, still remained quite helpless and bewildered.
'The panels--are they strong?'
'Lined with sheet-iron.'
'And the windows too?'
'Yes, and the windows.'
'Damn you!' cried the desperate ruffian, throwing up the sash and
menacing the crowd. 'Do your worst! I'll cheat you yet!'
Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mortal ears, none
could exceed the cry of the infuriated throng. Some shouted to
those who were nearest to set the house on fire; others roared to
the officers to shoot him dead. Among them all, none showed such
fury as the man on horseback, who, throwing himself out of the
saddle, and bursting through the crowd as if he were parting
water, cried, beneath the window, in a voice that rose above all
others, 'Twenty guineas to the man who brings a ladder!'
The nearest voices took up the cry, and hundreds echoed it. Some
called for ladders, some for sledge-hammers; some ran with
torches to and fro as if to seek them, and still came back and
roared again; some spent their breath in impotent curses and
execrations; some pressed forward with the ecstasy of madmen, and
thus impeded the progress of those below; some among the boldest
attempted to climb up by the water-spout and crevices in the
wall; and all waved to and fro, in the darkness beneath, like a
field of corn moved by an angry wind: and joined from time to
time in one loud furious roar.
'The tide,' cried the murderer, as he staggered back into the
room, and shut the faces out, 'the tide was in as I came up.
Give me a rope, a long rope. They're all in front. I may drop
into the Folly Ditch, and clear off that way. Give me a rope, or
I shall do three more murders and kill myself.
The panic-stricken men pointed to where such articles were kept;
the murderer, hastily selecting the longest and strongest cord,
hurried up to the house-top.
All the window in the rear of the house had been long ago bricked
up, except one small trap in the room where the boy was locked,
and that was too small even for the passage of his body. But,
from this aperture, he had never ceased to call on those without,
to guard the back; and thus, when the murderer emerged at last on
the house-top by the door in the roof, a loud shout proclaimed
the fact to those in front, who immediately began to pour round,
pressing upon each other in an unbroken stream.
He planted a board, which he had carried up with him for the
purpose, so firmly against the door that it must be matter of
great difficulty to open it from the inside; and creeping over
the tiles, looked over the low parapet.
The water was out, and the ditch a bed of mud.
The crowd had been hushed during these few moments, watching his
motions and doubtful of his purpose, but the instant they
perceived it and knew it was defeated, they raised a cry of
triumphant execration to which all their previous shouting had
been whispers. Again and again it rose. Those who were at too
great a distance to know its meaning, took up the sound; it
echoed and re-echoed; it seemed as though the whole city had
poured its population out to curse him.
On pressed the people from the front--on, on, on, in a strong
struggling current of angry faces, with here and there a glaring
torch to lighten them up, and show them out in all their wrath
and passion. The houses on the opposite side of the ditch had
been entered by the mob; sashes were thrown up, or torn bodily
out; there were tiers and tiers of faces in every window; cluster
upon cluster of people clinging to every house-top. Each little
bridge (and there were three in sight) bent beneath the weight of
the crowd upon it. Still the current poured on to find some nook
or hole from which to vent their shouts, and only for an instant
see the wretch.
'They have him now,' cried a man on the nearest bridge. 'Hurrah!'
The crowd grew light with uncovered heads; and again the shout
uprose.
'I will give fifty pounds,' cried an old gentleman from the same
quarter, 'to the man who takes him alive. I will remain here,
till he come to ask me for it.'
There was another roar. At this moment the word was passed among
the crowd that the door was forced at last, and that he who had
first called for the ladder had mounted into the room. The
stream abruptly turned, as this intelligence ran from mouth to
mouth; and the people at the windows, seeing those upon the
bridges pouring back, quitted their stations, and running into
the street, joined the concourse that now thronged pell-mell to
the spot they had left: each man crushing and striving with his
neighbor, and all panting with impatience to get near the door,
and look upon the criminal as the officers brought him out. The
cries and shrieks of those who were pressed almost to
suffocation, or trampled down and trodden under foot in the
confusion, were dreadful; the narrow ways were completely blocked
up; and at this time, between the rush of some to regain the
space in front of the house, and the unavailing struggles of
others to extricate themselves from the mass, the immediate
attention was distracted from the murderer, although the
universal eagerness for his capture was, if possible, increased.
The man had shrunk down, thoroughly quelled by the ferocity of
the crowd, and the impossibility of escape; but seeing this
sudden change with no less rapidity than it had occurred, he
sprang upon his feet, determined to make one last effort for his
life by dropping into the ditch, and, at the risk of being
stifled, endeavouring to creep away in the darkness and
confusion.
Roused into new strength and energy, and stimulated by the noise
within the house which announced that an entrance had really been
effected, he set his foot against the stack of chimneys, fastened
one end of the rope tightly and firmly round it, and with the
other made a strong running noose by the aid of his hands and
teeth almost in a second. He could let himself down by the cord
to within a less distance of the ground than his own height, and
had his knife ready in his hand to cut it then and drop.
At the very instant when he brought the loop over his head
previous to slipping it beneath his arm-pits, and when the old
gentleman before-mentioned (who had clung so tight to the railing
of the bridge as to resist the force of the crowd, and retain his
position) earnestly warned those about him that the man was about
to lower himself down--at that very instant the murderer, looking
behind him on the roof, threw his arms above his head, and
uttered a yell of terror.
'The eyes again!' he cried in an unearthly screech.
Staggering as if struck by lightning, he lost his balance and
tumbled over the parapet. The noose was on his neck. It ran up
with his weight, tight as a bow-string, and swift as the arrow it
speeds. He fell for five-and-thirty feet. There was a sudden
jerk, a terrific convulsion of the limbs; and there he hung, with
the open knife clenched in his stiffening hand.
The old chimney quivered with the shock, but stood it bravely.
The murderer swung lifeless against the wall; and the boy,
thrusting aside the dangling body which obscured his view, called
to the people to come and take him out, for God's sake.
A dog, which had lain concealed till now, ran backwards and
forwards on the parapet with a dismal howl, and collecting
himself for a spring, jumped for the dead man's shoulders.
Missing his aim, he fell into the ditch, turning completely over
as he went; and striking his head against a stone, dashed out his
brains.
CHAPTER LI
AFFORDING AN EXPLANATION OF MORE MYSTERIES THAN ONE, AND
COMPREHENDING A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE WITH NO WORD OF
SETTLEMENT
OR PIN-MONEY
The events narrated in the last chapter were yet but two days
old, when Oliver found himself, at three o'clock in the
afternoon, in a travelling-carriage rolling fast towards his
native town. Mrs. Maylie, and Rose, and Mrs. Bedwin, and the
good doctor were with him: and Mr. Brownlow followed in a
post-chaise, accompanied by one other person whose name had not
been mentioned.
They had not talked much upon the way; for Oliver was in a
flutter of agitation and uncertainty which deprived him of the
power of collecting his thoughts, and almost of speech, and
appeared to have scarcely less effect on his companions, who
shared it, in at least an equal degree. He and the two ladies
had been very carefully made acquainted by Mr. Brownlow with the
nature of the admissions which had been forced from Monks; and
although they knew that the object of their present journey was
to complete the work which had been so well begun, still the
whole matter was enveloped in enough of doubt and mystery to
leave them in endurance of the most intense suspense.
The same kind friend had, with Mr. Losberne's assistance,
cautiously stopped all channels of communication through which
they could receive intelligence of the dreadful occurrences that
so recently taken place. 'It was quite true,' he said, 'that
they must know them before long, but it might be at a better time
than the present, and it could not be at a worse.' So, they
travelled on in silence: each busied with reflections on the
object which had brought them together: and no one disposed to
give utterance to the thoughts which crowded upon all.
But if Oliver, under these influences, had remained silent while
they journeyed towards his birth-place by a road he had never
seen, how the whole current of his recollections ran back to old
times, and what a crowd of emotions were wakened up in his
breast, when they turned into that which he had traversed on
foot: a poor houseless, wandering boy, without a friend to help
him, or a roof to shelter his head.
'See there, there!' cried Oliver, eagerly clasping the hand of
Rose, and pointing out at the carriage window; 'that's the stile
I came over; there are the hedges I crept behind, for fear any
one should overtake me and force me back! Yonder is the path
across the fields, leading to the old house where I was a little
child! Oh Dick, Dick, my dear old friend, if I could only see
you now!'
'You will see him soon,' replied Rose, gently taking his folded
hands between her own. 'You shall tell him how happy you are,
and how rich you have grown, and that in all your happiness you
have none so great as the coming back to make him happy too.'
'Yes, yes,' said Oliver, 'and we'll--we'll take him away from
here, and have him clothed and taught, and send him to some quiet
country place where he may grow strong and well,--shall we?'
Rose nodded 'yes,' for the boy was smiling through such happy
tears that she could not speak.
'You will be kind and good to him, for you are to every one,'
said Oliver. 'It will make you cry, I know, to hear what he can
tell; but never mind, never mind, it will be all over, and you
will smile again--I know that too--to think how changed he is;
you did the same with me. He said "God bless you" to me when I
ran away,' cried the boy with a burst of affectionate emotion;
'and I will say "God bless you" now, and show him how I love him
for it!'
As they approached the town, and at length drove through its
narrow streets, it became matter of no small difficulty to
restrain the boy within reasonable bounds. There was
Sowerberry's the undertaker's just as it used to be, only smaller
and less imposing in appearance than he remembered it--there were
all the well-known shops and houses, with almost every one of
which he had some slight incident connected--there was Gamfield's
cart, the very cart he used to have, standing at the old
public-house door--there was the workhouse, the dreary prison of
his youthful days, with its dismal windows frowning on the
street--there was the same lean porter standing at the gate, at
sight of whom Oliver involuntarily shrunk back, and then laughed
at himself for being so foolish, then cried, then laughed
again--there were scores of faces at the doors and windows that
he knew quite well--there was nearly everything as if he had left
it but yesterday, and all his recent life had been but a happy
dream.
But it was pure, earnest, joyful reality. They drove straight to
the door of the chief hotel (which Oliver used to stare up at,
with awe, and think a mighty palace, but which had somehow fallen
off in grandeur and size); and here was Mr. Grimwig all ready to
receive them, kissing the young lady, and the old one too, when
they got out of the coach, as if he were the grandfather of the
whole party, all smiles and kindness, and not offering to eat his
head--no, not once; not even when he contradicted a very old
postboy about the nearest road to London, and maintained he knew
it best, though he had only come that way once, and that time
fast asleep. There was dinner prepared, and there were bedrooms
ready, and everything was arranged as if by magic.
Notwithstanding all this, when the hurry of the first half-hour
was over, the same silence and constraint prevailed that had
marked their journey down. Mr. Brownlow did not join them at
dinner, but remained in a separate room. The two other gentlemen
hurried in and out with anxious faces, and, during the short
intervals when they were present, conversed apart. Once, Mrs.
Maylie was called away, and after being absent for nearly an
hour, returned with eyes swollen with weeping. All these things
made Rose and Oliver, who were not in any new secrets, nervous
and uncomfortable. They sat wondering, in silence; or, if they
exchanged a few words, spoke in whispers, as if they were afraid
to hear the sound of their own voices.
At length, when nine o'clock had come, and they began to think
they were to hear no more that night, Mr. Losberne and Mr.
Grimwig entered the room, followed by Mr. Brownlow and a man whom
Oliver almost shrieked with surprise to see; for they told him it
was his brother, and it was the same man he had met at the
market-town, and seen looking in with Fagin at the window of his
little room. Monks cast a look of hate, which, even then, he
could not dissemble, at the astonished boy, and sat down near the
door. Mr. Brownlow, who had papers in his hand, walked to a
table near which Rose and Oliver were seated.
'This is a painful task,' said he, 'but these declarations, which
have been signed in London before many gentlemen, must be
substance repeated here. I would have spared you the
degradation, but we must hear them from your own lips before we
part, and you know why.'
'Go on,' said the person addressed, turning away his face.
'Quick. I have almost done enough, I think. Don't keep me
here.'
'This child,' said Mr. Brownlow, drawing Oliver to him, and
laying his hand upon his head, 'is your half-brother; the
illegitimate son of your father, my dear friend Edwin Leeford, by
poor young Agnes Fleming, who died in giving him birth.'
'Yes,' said Monks, scowling at the trembling boy: the beating of
whose heart he might have heard. 'That is the bastard child.'
'The term you use,' said Mr. Brownlow, sternly, 'is a reproach to
those long since passed beyong the feeble censure of the world.
It reflects disgrace on no one living, except you who use it.
Let that pass. He was born in this town.'
'In the workhouse of this town,' was the sullen reply. 'You have
the story there.' He pointed impatiently to the papers as he
spoke.
'I must have it here, too,' said Mr. Brownlow, looking round upon
the listeners.
'Listen then! You!' returned Monks. 'His father being taken ill
at Rome, was joined by his wife, my mother, from whom he had been
long separated, who went from Paris and took me with her--to look
after his property, for what I know, for she had no great
affection for him, nor he for her. He knew nothing of us, for
his senses were gone, and he slumbered on till next day, when he
died. Among the papers in his desk, were two, dated on the night
his illness first came on, directed to yourself'; he addressed
himself to Mr. Brownlow; 'and enclosed in a few short lines to
you, with an intimation on the cover of the package that it was
not to be forwarded till after he was dead. One of these papers
was a letter to this girl Agnes; the other a will.'
'What of the letter?' asked Mr. Brownlow.
'The letter?--A sheet of paper crossed and crossed again, with a
penitent confession, and prayers to God to help her. He had
palmed a tale on the girl that some secret mystery--to be
explained one day--prevented his marrying her just then; and so
she had gone on, trusting patiently to him, until she trusted too
far, and lost what none could ever give her back. She was, at
that time, within a few months of her confinement. He told her
all he had meant to do, to hide her shame, if he had lived, and
prayed her, if he died, not to curse him memory, or think the
consequences of their sin would be visited on her or their young
child; for all the guilt was his. He reminded her of the day he
had given her the little locket and the ring with her christian
name engraved upon it, and a blank left for that which he hoped
one day to have bestowed upon her--prayed her yet to keep it, and
wear it next her heart, as she had done before--and then ran on,
wildly, in the same words, over and over again, as if he had gone
distracted. I believe he had.'
'The will,' said Mr. Brownlow, as Oliver's tears fell fast.
Monks was silent.
'The will,' said Mr. Brownlow, speaking for him, 'was in the same
spirit as the letter. He talked of miseries which his wife had
brought upon him; of the rebellious disposition, vice, malice,
and premature bad passions of you his only son, who had been
trained to hate him; and left you, and your mother, each an
annuity of eight hundred pounds. The bulk of his property he
divided into two equal portions--one for Agnes Fleming, and the
other for their child, it it should be born alive, and ever come
of age. If it were a girl, it was to inherit the money
unconditionally; but if a boy, only on the stipulation that in
his minority he should never have stained his name with any
public act of dishonour, meanness, cowardice, or wrong. He did
this, he said, to mark his confidence in the other, and his
conviction--only strengthened by approaching death--that the
child would share her gentle heart, and noble nature. If he were
disappointed in this expectation, then the money was to come to
you: for then, and not till then, when both children were equal,
would he recognise your prior claim upon his purse, who had none
upon his heart, but had, from an infant, repulsed him with
coldness and aversion.'
'My mother,' said Monks, in a louder tone, 'did what a woman
should have done. She burnt this will. The letter never reached
its destination; but that, and other proofs, she kept, in case
they ever tried to lie away the blot. The girl's father had the
truth from her with every aggravation that her violent hate--I
love her for it now--could add. Goaded by shame and dishonour he
fled with his children into a remote corner of Wales, changing
his very name that his friends might never know of his retreat;
and here, no great while afterwards, he was found dead in his
bed. The girl had left her home, in secret, some weeks before;
he had searched for her, on foot, in every town and village near;
it was on the night when he returned home, assured that she had
destroyed herself, to hide her shame and his, that his old heart
broke.'
There was a short silence here, until Mr. Brownlow took up the
thread of the narrative.
'Years after this,' he said, 'this man's--Edward
Leeford's--mother came to me. He had left her, when only
eighteen; robbed her of jewels and money; gambled, squandered,
forged, and fled to London: where for two years he had
associated with the lowest outcasts. She was sinking under a
painful and incurable disease, and wished to recover him before
she died. Inquiries were set on foot, and strict searches made.
They were unavailing for a long time, but ultimately successful;
and he went back with her to France.
'There she died,' said Monks, 'after a lingering illness; and, on
her death-bed, she bequeathed these secrets to me, together with
her unquenchable and deadly hatred of all whom they
involved--though she need not have left me that, for I had
inherited it long before. She would not believe that the girl
had destroyed herself, and the child too, but was filled with the
impression that a male child had been born, and was alive. I
swore to her, if ever it crossed my path, to hunt it down; never
to let it rest; to pursue it with the bitterest and most
unrelenting animosity; to vent upon it the hatred that I deeply
felt, and to spit upon the empty vaunt of that insulting will by
draggin it, if I could, to the very gallows-foot. She was right.
He came in my way at last. I began well; and, but for babbling
drabs, I would have finished as I began!'
As the villain folded his arms tight together, and muttered
curses on himself in the impotence of baffled malice, Mr.
Brownlow turned to the terrified group beside him, and explained
that the Jew, who had been his old accomplice and confidant, had
a large reward for keeping Oliver ensnared: of which some part
was to be given up, in the event of his being rescued: and that
a dispute on this head had led to their visit to the country
house for the purpose of identifying him.
'The locket and ring?' said Mr. Brownlow, turning to Monks.
'I bought them from the man and woman I told you of, who stole
them from the nurse, who stole them from the corpse,' answered
Monks without raising his eyes. 'You know what became of them.'
Mr. Brownlow merely nodded to Mr. Grimwig, who disappearing with
great alacrity, shortly returned, pushing in Mrs. Bumble, and
dragging her unwilling consort after him.
'Do my hi's deceive me!' cried Mr. Bumble, with ill-feigned
enthusiasm, 'or is that little Oliver? Oh O-li-ver, if you
know'd how I've been a-grieving for you--'
'Hold your tongue, fool,' murmured Mrs. Bumble.
'Isn't natur, natur, Mrs. Bumble?' remonstrated the workhouse
master. 'Can't I be supposed to feel--_I_ as brought him up
porochially--when I see him a-setting here among ladies and
gentlemen of the very affablest description! I always loved that
boy as if he'd been my--my--my own grandfather,' said Mr. Bumble,
halting for an appropriate comparison. 'Master Oliver, my dear,
you remember the blessed gentleman in the white waistcoat? Ah!
he went to heaven last week, in a oak coffin with plated handles,
Oliver.'
'Come, sir,' said Mr. Grimwig, tartly; 'suppress your feelings.'
'I will do my endeavours, sir,' replied Mr. Bumble. 'How do you
do, sir? I hope you are very well.'
This salutation was addressed to Mr. Brownlow, who had stepped up
to within a short distance of the respectable couple. He
inquired, as he pointed to Monks,
'Do you know that person?'
'No,' replied Mrs. Bumble flatly.
'Perhaps YOU don't?' said Mr. Brownlow, addressing her spouse.
'I never saw him in all my life,' said Mr. Bumble.
'Nor sold him anything, perhaps?'
'No,' replied Mrs. Bumble.
'You never had, perhaps, a certain gold locket and ring?' said
Mr. Brownlow.
'Certainly not,' replied the matron. 'Why are we brought here to
answer to such nonsense as this?'
Again Mr. Brownlow nodded to Mr. Grimwig; and again that
gentleman limped away with extraordinary readiness. But not
again did he return with a stout man and wife; for this time, he
led in two palsied women, who shook and tottered as they walked.
'You shut the door the night old Sally died,' said the foremost
one, raising her shrivelled hand, 'but you couldn't shut out the
sound, nor stop the chinks.'
'No, no,' said the other, looking round her and wagging her
toothless jaws. 'No, no, no.'
'We heard her try to tell you what she'd done, and saw you take a
paper from her hand, and watched you too, next day, to the
pawnbroker's shop,' said the first.
'Yes,' added the second, 'and it was a "locket and gold ring."
We found out that, and saw it given you. We were by. Oh! we
were by.'
'And we know more than that,' resumed the first, 'for she told us
often, long ago, that the young mother had told her that, feeling
she should never get over it, she was on her way, at the time
that she was taken ill, to die near the grave of the father of
the child.'
'Would you like to see the pawnbroker himself?' asked Mr. Grimwig
with a motion towards the door.
'No,' replied the woman; 'if he--she pointed to Monks--'has been
coward enough to confess, as I see he had, and you have sounded
all these hags till you have found the right ones, I have nothing
more to say. I DID sell them, and they're where you'll never get
them. What then?'
'Nothing,' replied Mr. Brownlow, 'except that it remains for us
to take care that neither of you is employed in a situation of
trust again. You may leave the room.'
'I hope,' said Mr. Bumble, looking about him with great
ruefulness, as Mr. Grimwig disappeared with the two old women:
'I hope that this unfortunate little circumstance will not
deprive me of my porochial office?'
'Indeed it will,' replied Mr. Brownlow. 'You may make up your
mind to that, and think yourself well off besides.'
'It was all Mrs. Bumble. She WOULD do it,' urged Mr. Bumble;
first looking round to ascertain that his partner had left the
room.
'That is no excuse,' replied Mr. Brownlow. 'You were present on
the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and indeed are
the more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law
supposes that your wife acts under your direction.'
'If the law supposes that,' said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat
emphatically in both hands, 'the law is a ass--a idiot. If
that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I
wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience--by
experience.'
Laying great stress on the repetition of these two words, Mr.
Bumble fixed his hat on very tight, and putting his hands in his
pockets, followed his helpmate downstairs.
'Young lady,' said Mr. Brownlow, turning to Rose, 'give me your
hand. Do not tremble. You need not fear to hear the few
remaining words we have to say.'
'If they have--I do not know how they can, but if they have--any
reference to me,' said Rose, 'pray let me hear them at some other
time. I have not strength or spirits now.'
'Nay,' returned the old gentlman, drawing her arm through his;
'you have more fortitude than this, I am sure. Do you know this
young lady, sir?'
'Yes,' replied Monks.
'I never saw you before,' said Rose faintly.
'I have seen you often,' returned Monks.
'The father of the unhappy Agnes had TWO daughters,' said Mr.
Brownlow. 'What was the fate of the other--the child?'
'The child,' replied Monks, 'when her father died in a strange
place, in a strange name, without a letter, book, or scrap of
paper that yielded the faintest clue by which his friends or
relatives could be traced--the child was taken by some wretched
cottagers, who reared it as their own.'
'Go on,' said Mr. Brownlow, signing to Mrs. Maylie to approach.
'Go on!'
'You couldn't find the spot to which these people had repaired,'
said Monks, 'but where friendship fails, hatred will often force
a way. My mother found it, after a year of cunning search--ay,
and found the child.'
'She took it, did she?'
'No. The people were poor and began to sicken--at least the man
did--of their fine humanity; so she left it with them, giving
them a small present of money which would not last long, and
promised more, which she never meant to send. She didn't quite
rely, however, on their discontent and poverty for the child's
unhappiness, but told the history of the sister's shame, with
such alterations as suited her; bade them take good heed of the
child, for she came of bad blood;; and told them she was
illegitimate, and sure to go wrong at one time or other. The
circumstances countenanced all this; the people believed it; and
there the child dragged on an existence, miserable enough even to
satisfy us, until a widow lady, residing, then, at Chester, saw
the girl by chance, pitied her, and took her home. There was
some cursed spell, I think, against us; for in spite of all our
efforts she remained there and was happy. I lost sight of her,
two or three years ago, and saw her no more until a few months
back.'
'Do you see her now?'
'Yes. Leaning on your arm.'
'But not the less my niece,' cried Mrs. Maylie, folding the
fainting girl in her arms; 'not the less my dearest child. I
would not lose her now, for all the treasures of the world. My
sweet companion, my own dear girl!'
'The only friend I ever had,' cried Rose, clinging to her. 'The
kindest, best of friends. My heart will burst. I cannot bear
all this.'
'You have borne more, and have been, through all, the best and
gentlest creature that ever shed happiness on every one she
knew,' said Mrs. Maylie, embracing her tenderly. 'Come, come, my
love, remember who this is who waits to clasp you in his arms,
poor child! See here--look, look, my dear!'
'Not aunt,' cried Oliver, throwing his arms about her neck; 'I'll
never call her aunt--sister, my own dear sister, that something
taught my heart to love so dearly from the first! Rose, dear,
darling Rose!'
Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were
exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans, be
sacred. A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in
that one moment. Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but
there were no bitter tears: for even grief itself arose so
softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections,
that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.
They were a long, long time alone. A soft tap at the door, at
length announced that some one was without. Oliver opened it,
glided away, and gave place to Harry Maylie.
'I know it all,' he said, taking a seat beside the lovely girl.
'Dear Rose, I know it all.'
'I am not here by accident,' he added after a lengthened silence;
'nor have I heard all this to-night, for I knew it
yesterday--only yesterday. Do you guess that I have come to
remind you of a promise?'
'Stay,' said Rose. 'You DO know all.'
'All. You gave me leave, at any time within a year, to renew the
subject of our last discourse.'
'I did.'
'Not to press you to alter your determination,' pursued the young
man, 'but to hear you repeat it, if you would. I was to lay
whatever of station or fortune I might possess at your feet, and
if you still adhered to your former determination, I pledged
myself, by no word or act, to seek to change it.'
'The same reasons which influenced me then, will influence me
know,' said Rose firmly. 'If I ever owed a strict and rigid duty
to her, whose goodness saved me from a life of indigence and
suffering, when should I ever feel it, as I should to-night? It
is a struggle,' said Rose, 'but one I am proud to make; it is a
pang, but one my heart shall bear.'
'The disclosure of to-night,'--Harry began.
'The disclosure of to-night,' replied Rose softly, 'leaves me in
the same position, with reference to you, as that in which I
stood before.'
'You harden your heart against me, Rose,' urged her lover.
'Oh Harry, Harry,' said the young lady, bursting into tears; 'I
wish I could, and spare myself this pain.'
'Then why inflict it on yourself?' said Harry, taking her hand.
'Think, dear Rose, think what you have heard to-night.'
'And what have I heard! What have I heard!' cried Rose. 'That a
sense of his deep disgrace so worked upon my own father that he
shunned all--there, we have said enough, Harry, we have said
enough.'
'Not yet, not yet,' said the young man, detaining her as she
rose. 'My hopes, my wishes, prospects, feeling: every thought
in life except my love for you: have undergone a change. I
offer you, now, no distinction among a bustling crowd; no
mingling with a world of malice and detraction, where the blood
is called into honest cheeks by aught but real disgrace and
shame; but a home--a heart and home--yes, dearest Rose, and
those, and those alone, are all I have to offer.'
'What do you mean!' she faltered.
'I mean but this--that when I left you last, I left you with a
firm determination to level all fancied barriers between yourself
and me; resolved that if my world could not be yours, I would
make yours mine; that no pride of birth should curl the lip at
you, for I would turn from it. This I have done. Those who have
shrunk from me because of this, have shrunk from you, and proved
you so far right. Such power and patronage: such relatives of
influence and rank: as smiled upon me then, look coldly now; but
there are smiling fields and waving trees in England's richest
county; and by one village church--mine, Rose, my own!--there
stands a rustic dwelling which you can make me prouder of, than
all the hopes I have renounced, measured a thousandfold. This is
my rank and station now, and here I lay it down!'
* * * * * * *
'It's a trying thing waiting supper for lovers,' said Mr.
Grimwig, waking up, and pulling his pocket-handkerchief from over
his head.
Truth to tell, the supper had been waiting a most unreasonable
time. Neither Mrs. Maylie, nor Harry, nor Rose (who all came in
together), could offer a word in extenuation.
'I had serious thoughts of eating my head to-night,' said Mr.
Grimwig, 'for I began to think I should get nothing else. I'll
take the liberty, if you'll allow me, of saluting the bride that
is to be.'
Mr. Grimwig lost no time in carrying this notice into effect upon
the blushing girl; and the example, being contagious, was
followed both by the doctor and Mr. Brownlow: some people affirm
that Harry Maylie had been observed to set it, orginally, in a
dark room adjoining; but the best authorities consider this
downright scandal: he being young and a clergyman.
'Oliver, my child,' said Mrs. Maylie, 'where have you been, and
why do you look so sad? There are tears stealing down your face
at this moment. What is the matter?'
It is a world of disappointment: often to the hopes we most
cherish, and hopes that do our nature the greatest honour.
Poor Dick was dead!
CHAPTER LII
FAGIN'S LAST NIGHT ALIVE
The court was paved, from floor to roof, with human faces.
Inquisitive and eager eyes peered from every inch of space. From
the rail before the dock, away into the sharpest angle of the
smallest corner in the galleries, all looks were fixed upon one
man--Fagin. Before him and behind: above, below, on the right
and on the left: he seemed to stand surrounded by a firmament,
all bright with gleaming eyes.
He stood there, in all this glare of living light, with one hand
resting on the wooden slab before him, the other held to his ear,
and his head thrust forward to enable him to catch with greater
distinctness every word that fell from the presiding judge, who
was delivering his charge to the jury. At times, he turned his
eyes sharply upon them to observe the effect of the slightest
featherweight in his favour; and when the points against him were
stated with terrible distinctness, looked towards his counsel, in
mute appeal that he would, even then, urge something in his
behalf. Beyond these manifestations of anxiety, he stirred not
hand or foot. He had scarcely moved since the trial began; and
now that the judge ceased to speak, he still remained in the same
strained attitude of close attention, with his gaze ben on him,
as though he listened still.
A slight bustle in the court, recalled him to himself. Looking
round, he saw that the juryman had turned together, to consider
their verdict. As his eyes wandered to the gallery, he could see
the people rising above each other to see his face: some hastily
applying their glasses to their eyes: and others whispering
their neighbours with looks expressive of abhorrence. A few
there were, who seemed unmindful of him, and looked only to the
jury, in impatient wonder how they could delay. But in no one
face--not even among the women, of whom there were many
there--could he read the faintest sympathy with himself, or any
feeling but one of all-absorbing interest that he should be
condemned.
As he saw all this in one bewildered glance, the deathlike
stillness came again, and looking back he saw that the jurymen
had turned towards the judge. Hush!
They only sought permission to retire.
He looked, wistfully, into their faces, one by one when they
passed out, as though to see which way the greater number leant;
but that was fruitless. The jailed touched him on the shoulder.
He followed mechanically to the end of the dock, and sat down on
a chair. The man pointed it out, or he would not have seen it.
He looked up into the gallery again. Some of the people were
eating, and some fanning themselves with handkerchiefs; for the
crowded place was very hot. There was one young man sketching
his face in a little note-book. He wondered whether it was like,
and looked on when the artist broke his pencil-point, and made
another with his knife, as any idle spectator might have done.
In the same way, when he turned his eyes towards the judge, his
mind began to busy itself with the fashion of his dress, and what
it cost, and how he put it on. There was an old fat gentleman on
the bench, too, who had gone out, some half an hour before, and
now come back. He wondered within himself whether this man had
been to get his dinner, what he had had, and where he had had it;
and pursued this train of careless thought until some new object
caught his eye and roused another.
Not that, all this time, his mind was, for an instant, free from
one oppressive overwhelming sense of the grave that opened at his
feet; it was ever present to him, but in a vague and general way,
and he could not fix his thoughts upon it. Thus, even while he
trembled, and turned burning hot at the idea of speedy death, he
fell to counting the iron spikes before him, and wondering how
the head of one had been broken off, and whether they would mend
it, or leave it as it was. Then, he thought of all the horrors
of the gallows and the scaffold--and stopped to watch a man
sprinkling the floor to cool it--and then went on to think again.
At length there was a cry of silence, and a breathless look from
all towards the door. The jury returned, and passed him close.
He could glean nothing from their faces; they might as well have
been of stone. Perfect stillness ensued--not a rustle--not a
breath--Guilty.
The building rang with a tremendous shout, and another, and
another, and then it echoed loud groans, that gathered strength
as they swelled out, like angry thunder. It was a peal of joy
from the populace outside, greeting the news that he would die on
Monday.
The noise subsided, and he was asked if he had anything to say
why sentence of death should not be passed upon him. He had
resumed his listening attitude, and looked intently at his
questioner while the demand was made; but it was twice repeated
before he seemed to hear it, and then he only muttered that he
was an old man--an old man--and so, dropping into a whisper, was
silent again.
The judge assumed the black cap, and the prisoner still stood
with the same air and gesture. A woman in the gallery, uttered
some exclamation, called forth by this dread solemnity; he looked
hastily up as if angry at the interruption, and bent forward yet
more attentively. The address was solemn and impressive; the
sentence fearful to hear. But he stood, like a marble figure,
without the motion of a nerve. His haggard face was still thrust
forward, his under-jaw hanging down, and his eyes staring out
before him, when the jailer put his hand upon his arm, and
beckoned him away. He gazed stupidly about him for an instant,
and obeyed.
They led him through a paved room under the court, where some
prisoners were waiting till their turns came, and others were
talking to their friends, who crowded round a grate which looked
into the open yard. There was nobody there to speak to HIM; but,
as he passed, the prisoners fell back to render him more visible
to the people who were clinging to the bars: and they assailed
him with opprobrious names, and screeched and hissed. He shook
his fist, and would have spat upon them; but his conductors
hurried him on, through a gloomy passage lighted by a few dim
lamps, into the interior of the prison.
Here, he was searched, that he might not have about him the means
of anticipating the law; this ceremony performed, they led him to
one of the condemned cells, and left him there--alone.
He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for
seat and bedstead; and casting his blood-shot eyes upon the
ground, tried to collect his thoughts. After awhile, he began to
remember a few disjointed fragments of what the judge had said:
though it had seemed to him, at the time, that he could not hear
a word. These gradually fell into their proper places, and by
degrees suggested more: so that in a little time he had the
whole, almost as it was delivered. To be hanged by the neck,
till he was dead--that was the end. To be hanged by the neck
till he was dead.
As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had
known who had died upon the scaffold; some of them through his
means. They rose up, in such quick succession, that he could
hardly count them. He had seen some of them die,--and had joked
too, because they died with prayers upon their lips. With what a
rattling noise the drop went down; and how suddenly they changed,
from strong and vigorous men to dangling heaps of clothes!
Some of them might have inhabited that very cell--sat upon that
very spot. It was very dark; why didn't they bring a light? The
cell had been built for many years. Scores of men must have
passed their last hours there. It was like sitting in a vault
strewn with dead bodies--the cap, the noose, the pinioned arms,
the faces that he knew, even beneath that hideous veil.--Light,
light!
At length, when his hands were raw with beating against the heavy
door and walls, two men appeared: one bearing a candle, which he
thrust into an iron candlestick fixed against the wall: the
other dragging in a mattress on which to pass the night; for the
prisoner was to be left alone no more.
Then came the night--dark, dismal, silent night. Other watchers
are glad to hear this church-clock strike, for they tell of life
and coming day. To him they brought despair. The boom of every
iron bell came laden with the one, deep, hollow sound--Death.
What availed the noise and bustle of cheerful morning, which
penetrated even there, to him? It was another form of knell,
with mockery added to the warning.
The day passed off. Day? There was no day; it was gone as soon
as come--and night came on again; night so long, and yet so
short; long in its dreadful silence, and short in its fleeting
hours. At one time he raved and blasphemed; and at another
howled and tore his hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion
had come to pray beside him, but he had driven them away with
curses. They renewed their charitable efforts, and he beat them
off.
Saturday night. He had only one night more to live. And as he
thought of this, the day broke--Sunday.
It was not until the night of this last awful day, that a
withering sense of his helpless, desperate state came in its full
intensity upon his blighted soul; not that he had ever held any
defined or positive hope of mercy, but that he had never been
able to consider more than the dim probability of dying so soon.
He had spoken little to either of the two men, who relieved each
other in their attendance upon him; and they, for their parts,
made no effort to rouse his attention. He had sat there, awake,
but dreaming. Now, he started up, every minute, and with gasping
mouth and burning skin, hurried to and fro, in such a paroxysm of
fear and wrath that even they--used to such sights--recoiled from
him with horror. He grew so terrible, at last, in all the
tortures of his evil conscience, that one man could not bear to
sit there, eyeing him alone; and so the two kept watch together.
He cowered down upon his stone bed, and thought of the past. He
had been wounded with some missiles from the crowd on the day of
his capture, and his head was bandaged with a linen cloth. His
red hair hung down upon his bloodless face; his beard was torn,
and twisted into knots; his eyes shone with a terrible light; his
unwashed flesh crackled with the fever that burnt him up.
Eight--nine--then. If it was not a trick to frighten him, and
those were the real hours treading on each other's heels, where
would he be, when they came round again! Eleven! Another
struck, before the voice of the previous hour had ceased to
vibrate. At eight, he would be the only mourner in his own
funeral train; at eleven--
Those dreadful walls of Newgate, which have hidden so much misery
and such unspeakable anguish, not only from the eyes, but, too
often, and too long, from the thoughts, of men, never held so
dread a spectacle as that. The few who lingered as they passed,
and wondered what the man was doing who was to be hanged
to-morrow, would have slept but ill that night, if they could
have seen him.
From early in the evening until nearly midnight, little groups of
two and three presented themselves at the lodge-gate, and
inquired, with anxious faces, whether any reprieve had been
received. These being answered in the negative, communicated the
welcome intelligence to clusters in the street, who pointed out
to one another the door from which he must come out, and showed
where the scaffold would be built, and, walking with unwilling
steps away, turned back to conjure up the scene. By degrees they
fell off, one by one; and, for an hour, in the dead of night, the
street was left to solitude and darkness.
The space before the prison was cleared, and a few strong
barriers, painted black, had been already thrown across the road
to break the pressure of the expected crowd, when Mr. Brownlow
and Oliver appeared at the wicket, and presented an order of
admission to the prisoner, signed by one of the sheriffs. They
were immediately admitted into the lodge.
'Is the young gentleman to come too, sir?' said the man whose
duty it was to conduct them. 'It's not a sight for children,
sir.'
'It is not indeed, my friend,' rejoined Mr. Brownlow; 'but my
business with this man is intimately connected with him; and as
this child has seen him in the full career of his success and
villainy, I think it as well--even at the cost of some pain and
fear--that he should see him now.'
These few words had been said apart, so as to be inaudible to
Oliver. The man touched his hat; and glancing at Oliver with
some curiousity, opened another gate, opposite to that by which
they had entered, and led them on, through dark and winding ways,
towards the cells.
'This,' said the man, stopping in a gloomy passage where a couple
of workmen were making some preparations in profound
silence--'this is the place he passes through. If you step this
way, you can see the door he goes out at.'
He led them into a stone kitchen, fitted with coppers for
dressing the prison food, and pointed to a door. There was an
open grating above it, throught which came the sound of men's
voices, mingled with the noise of hammering, and the throwing
down of boards. There were putting up the scaffold.
From this place, they passed through several strong gates, opened
by other turnkeys from the inner side; and, having entered an
open yard, ascended a flight of narrow steps, and came into a
passage with a row of strong doors on the left hand. Motioning
them to remain where they were, the turnkey knocked at one of
these with his bunch of keys. The two attendants, after a little
whispering, came out into the passage, stretching themselves as
if glad of the temporary relief, and motioned the visitors to
follow the jailer into the cell. They did so.
The condemned criminal was seated on his bed, rocking himself
from side to side, with a countenance more like that of a snared
beast than the face of a man. His mind was evidently wandering
to his old life, for he continued to mutter, without appearing
conscious of their presence otherwise than as a part of his
vision.
'Good boy, Charley--well done--' he mumbled. 'Oliver, too, ha!
ha! ha! Oliver too--quite the gentleman now--quite the--take
that boy away to bed!'
The jailer took the disengaged hand of Oliver; and, whispering
him not to be alarmed, looked on without speaking.
'Take him away to bed!' cried Fagin. 'Do you hear me, some of
you? He has been the--the--somehow the cause of all this. It's
worth the money to bring him up to it--Bolter's throat, Bill;
never mind the girl--Bolter's throat as deep as you can cut. Saw
his head off!'
'Fagin,' said the jailer.
'That's me!' cried the Jew, falling instantly, into the attitude
of listening he had assumed upon his trial. 'An old man, my
Lord; a very old, old man!'
'Here,' said the turnkey, laying his hand upon his breast to keep
him down. 'Here's somebody wants to see you, to ask you some
questions, I suppose. Fagin, Fagin! Are you a man?'
'I shan't be one long,' he replied, looking up with a face
retaining no human expression but rage and terror. 'Strike them
all dead! What right have they to butcher me?'
As he spoke he caught sight of Oliver and Mr. Brownlow. Shrinking
to the furthest corner of the seat, he demanded to know what they
wanted there.
'Steady,' said the turnkey, still holding him down. 'Now, sir,
tell him what you want. Quick, if you please, for he grows worse
as the time gets on.'
'You have some papers,' said Mr. Brownlow advancing, 'which were
placed in your hands, for better security, by a man called
Monks.'
'It's all a lie together,' replied Fagin. 'I haven't one--not
one.'
'For the love of God,' said Mr. Brownlow solemnly, 'do not say
that now, upon the very verge of death; but tell me where they
are. You know that Sikes is dead; that Monks has confessed; that
there is no hope of any further gain. Where are those papers?'
'Oliver,' cried Fagin, beckoning to him. 'Here, here! Let me
whisper to you.'
'I am not afraid,' said Oliver in a low voice, as he relinquished
Mr. Brownlow's hand.
'The papers,' said Fagin, drawing Oliver towards him, 'are in a
canvas bag, in a hole a little way up the chimney in the top
front-room. I want to talk to you, my dear. I want to talk to
you.'
'Yes, yes,' returned Oliver. 'Let me say a prayer. Do! Let me
say one prayer. Say only one, upon your knees, with me, and we
will talk till morning.'
'Outside, outside,' replied Fagin, pushing the boy before him
towards the door, and looking vacantly over his head. 'Say I've
gone to sleep--they'll believe you. You can get me out, if you
take me so. Now then, now then!'
'Oh! God forgive this wretched man!' cried the boy with a burst
of tears.
'That's right, that's right,' said Fagin. 'That'll help us on.
This door first. If I shake and tremble, as we pass the gallows,
don't you mind, but hurry on. Now, now, now!'
'Have you nothing else to ask him, sir?' inquired the turnkey.
'No other question,' replied Mr. Brownlow. 'If I hoped we could
recall him to a sense of his position--'
'Nothing will do that, sir,' replied the man, shaking his head.
'You had better leave him.'
The door of the cell opened, and the attendants returned.
'Press on, press on,' cried Fagin. 'Softly, but not so slow.
Faster, faster!'
The men laid hands upon him, and disengaging Oliver from his
grasp, held him back. He struggled with the power of
desperation, for an instant; and then sent up cry upon cry that
penetrated even those massive walls, and rang in their ears until
they reached the open yard.
It was some time before they left the prison. Oliver nearly
swooned after this frightful scene, and was so weak that for an
hour or more, he had not the strength to walk.
Day was dawning when they again emerged. A great multitude had
already assembled; the windows were filled with people, smoking
and playing cards to beguile the time; the crowd were pushing,
quarrelling, joking. Everything told of life and animation, but
one dark cluster of objects in the centre of all--the black stage,
the cross-beam, the rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death.
CHAPTER LIII
AND LAST
The fortunes of those who have figured in this tale are nearly
closed. The little that remains to their historian to relate, is
told in few and simple words.
Before three months had passed, Rose Fleming and Harry Maylie
were married in the village church which was henceforth to be the
scene of the young clergyman's labours; on the same day they
entered into possession of their new and happy home.
Mrs. Maylie took up her abode with her son and daughter-in-law,
to enjoy, during the tranquil remainder of her days, the greatest
felicity that age and worth can know--the contemplation of the
happiness of those on whom the warmest affections and tenderest
cares of a well-spent life, have been unceasingly bestowed.
It appeared, on full and careful investigation, that if the wreck
of property remaining in the custody of Monks (which had never
prospered either in his hands or in those of his mother) were
equally divided between himself and Oliver, it would yield, to
each, little more than three thousand pounds. By the provisions
of his father's will, Oliver would have been entitled to the
whole; but Mr. Brownlow, unwilling to deprive the elder son of
the opportunity of retrieving his former vices and pursuing an
honest career, proposed this mode of distribution, to which his
young charge joyfully acceded.
Monks, still bearing that assumed name, retired with his portion
to a distant part of the New World; where, having quickly
squandered it, he once more fell into his old courses, and, after
undergoing a long confinement for some fresh act of fraud and
knavery, at length sunk under an attack of his old disorder, and
died in prison. As far from home, died the chief remaining
members of his friend Fagin's gang.
Mr. Brownlow adopted Oliver as his son. Removing with him and
the old housekeeper to within a mile of the parsonage-house,
where his dear friends resided, he gratified the only remaining
wish of Oliver's warm and earnest heart, and thus linked together
a little society, whose condition approached as nearly to one of
perfect happiness as can ever be known in this changing world.
Soon after the marriage of the young people, the worthy doctor
returned to Chertsey, where, bereft of the presence of his old
friends, he would have been discontented if his temperament had
admitted of such a feeling; and would have turned quite peevish
if he had known how. For two or three months, he contented
himself with hinting that he feared the air began to disagree
with him; then, finding that the place really no longer was, to
him, what it had been, he settled his business on his assistant,
took a bachelor's cottage outside the village of which his young
friend was pastor, and instantaneously recovered. Here he took
to gardening, planting, fishing, carpentering, and various other
pursuits of a similar kind: all undertaken with his
characteristic impetuosity. In each and all he has since become
famous throughout the neighborhood, as a most profound authority.
Before his removal, he had managed to contract a strong
friendship for Mr. Grimwig, which that eccentric gentleman
cordially reciprocated. He is accordingly visited by Mr. Grimwig
a great many times in the course of the year. On all such
occasions, Mr. Grimwig plants, fishes, and carpenters, with great
ardour; doing everything in a very singular and unprecedented
manner, but always maintaining with his favourite asseveration,
that his mode is the right one. On Sundays, he never fails to
criticise the sermon to the young clergyman's face: always
informing Mr. Losberne, in strict confidence afterwards, that he
considers it an excellent performance, but deems it as well not
to say so. It is a standing and very favourite joke, for Mr.
Brownlow to rally him on his old prophecy concerning Oliver, and
to remind him of the night on which they sat with the watch
between them, waiting his return; but Mr. Grimwig contends that
he was right in the main, and, in proof thereof, remarks that
Oliver did not come back after all; which always calls forth a
laugh on his side, and increases his good humour.
Mr. Noah Claypole: receiving a free pardon from the Crown in
consequence of being admitted approver against Fagin: and
considering his profession not altogether as safe a one as he
could wish: was, for some little time, at a loss for the means
of a livelihood, not burdened with too much work. After some
consideration, he went into business as an Informer, in which
calling he realises a genteel subsistence. His plan is, to walk
out once a week during church time attended by Charlotte in
respectable attire. The lady faints away at the doors of
charitable publicans, and the gentleman being accommodated with
three-penny worth of brandy to restore her, lays an information
next day, and pockets half the penalty. Sometimes Mr. Claypole
faints himself, but the result is the same.
Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, deprived of their situations, were gradually
reduced to great indigence and misery, and finally became paupers
in that very same workhouse in which they had once lorded it over
others. Mr. Bumble has been heard to say, that in this reverse
and degradation, he has not even spirits to be thankful for being
separated from his wife.
As to Mr. Giles and Brittles, they still remain in their old
posts, although the former is bald, and the last-named boy quite
grey. They sleep at the parsonage, but divide their attentions
so equally among its inmates, and Oliver and Mr. Brownlow, and
Mr. Losberne, that to this day the villagers have never been able
to discover to which establishment they properly belong.
Master Charles Bates, appalled by Sikes's crime, fell into a
train of reflection whether an honest life was not, after all,
the best. Arriving at the conclusion that it certainly was, he
turned his back upon the scenes of the past, resolved to amend it
in some new sphere of action. He struggled hard, and suffered
much, for some time; but, having a contented disposition, and a
good purpose, succeeded in the end; and, from being a farmer's
drudge, and a carrier's lad, he is now the merriest young grazier
in all Northamptonshire.
And now, the hand that traces these words, falters, as it
approaches the conclusion of its task; and would weave, for a
little longer space, the thread of these adventures.
I would fain linger yet with a few of those among whom I have so
long moved, and share their happiness by endeavouring to depict
it. I would show Rose Maylie in all the bloom and grace of early
womanhood, shedding on her secluded path in life soft and gentle
light, that fell on all who trod it with her, and shone into
their hearts. I would paint her the life and joy of the
fire-side circle and the lively summer group; I would follow her
through the sultry fields at noon, and hear the low tones of her
sweet voice in the moonlit evening walk; I would watch her in all
her goodness and charity abroad, and the smiling untiring
discharge of domestic duties at home; I would paint her and her
dead sister's child happy in their love for one another, and
passing whole hours together in picturing the friends whom they
had so sadly lost; I would summon before me, once again, those
joyous little faces that clustered round her knee, and listen to
their merry prattle; I would recall the tones of that clear
laugh, and conjure up the sympathising tear that glistened in the
soft blue eye. These, and a thousand looks and smiles, and turns
fo thought and speech--I would fain recall them every one.
How Mr. Brownlow went on, from day to day, filling the mind of
his adopted child with stores of knowledge, and becoming attached
to him, more and more, as his nature developed itself, and showed
the thriving seeds of all he wished him to become--how he traced
in him new traits of his early friend, that awakened in his own
bosom old remembrances, melancholy and yet sweet and
soothing--how the two orphans, tried by adversity, remembered its
lessons in mercy to others, and mutual love, and fervent thanks
to Him who had protected and preserved them--these are all
matters which need not to be told. I have said that they were
truly happy; and without strong affection and humanity of heart,
and gratitude to that Being whose code is Mercy, and whose great
attribute is Benevolence to all things that breathe, happiness
can never be attained.
Within the altar of the old village church there stands a white
marble tablet, which bears as yet but one word: 'AGNES.' There
is no coffin in that tomb; and may it be many, many years, before
another name is placed above it! But, if the spirits of the Dead
ever come back to earth, to visit spots hallowed by the love--the
love beyond the grave--of those whom they knew in life, I believe
that the shade of Agnes sometimes hovers round that solemn nook.
I believe it none the less because that nook is in a Church, and
she was weak and erring.