Oliver Twist
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 in 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 beyond 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
his 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, if 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 mother, 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
dragging 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.”