“Nothing,” replied Mr. Brownlow, “except that it remains for us to take care that you are neither of you 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 must 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,” returned 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 is the eye of the law, the law’s 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 down stairs.
“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 gentleman, 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 promising 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 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 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 – cannot – bear all this.”
“You have borne more, and 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 now,” 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 does this mean!” faltered the young lady.
“It means but this – that when I left you last, I left you with the 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 originally 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 L
THE JEW’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 – the Jew. Before him and behind, above, below, on the right and on the left – he seemed to stand surrounded by a firmament all bright with beaming 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 bent on him as though he listened still.
A slight bustle in the court recalled him to himself, and looking round, he saw that the jurymen had turned together to consider of 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 him, or any feeling but one of all-absorbing interest that he should be condemned.
As he saw all this in one bewildered glance, the death-like 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 jailer 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 should 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 came 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 deep 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 – 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 bloodshot eyes upon the ground tried to collect his thoughts. After a while 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 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, and the other dragging in a mattress on which to pass the night, for the prisoner was to be left alone no more.
Then came night – dark, dismal, silent night. Other watchers are glad to hear the church-clocks strike, for they tell of life and coming day. To the Jew 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. 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 hopes 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 – ten. 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 ere the voice of the hour before 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 hung to-morrow, would have slept but ill that night, if they could have seen him then.
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 villany, I think it better – 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 him with some curiosity, opened another gate opposite to that at 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, through which came the sound of men’s voices, mingled with the noise of hammering and the throwing down of boards. They 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 seeming 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 the Jew. “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 precisely the same attitude of listening that 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,” replied the Jew, 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, and shrinking to the furthest corner of the seat, 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 the Jew. “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 these papers?”
“Oliver,” cried the Jew, 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 the Jew, drawing him towards him, “are in a canvass 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 the Jew, 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 the Jew. “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 the Jew. “Softly, but not so slow. Faster, faster!”
The men laid hands upon him, and disengaging Oliver from his grasp, held him back. He writhed and struggled with the power of desperation, and sent up shriek upon shriek 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, for 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, and joking. Everything told of life and animation, but one dark cluster of objects in the very centre of all – the black stage, the cross-beam, the rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death.