Oliver Twist
“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 tomorrow
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 tonight, 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
awkwardness, 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?”