Oliver Twist
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 tomorrow 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 impulse 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 handkerchief 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.