Chapter-10
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 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, but reading in the old gentleman’s 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 nun,’ 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 and lonely man: it is because he knelt with me beside his only sister’s 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. 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 my brother? 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 ‘I don’t care for hard names,’ interrupted Monks with a leering 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, 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,’ resumed 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 but 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. 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 man paused; Monks was biting his lips, with his eyes fixed on 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. At length one of those rich relations to strengthen whose interest and importance your father had been sacrificed—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. 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 torn by anxiety and remorse almost to a shadow; talked in a wild and distracted way of ruin and dishonor 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 is 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 whither, none can tell.’
Monks drew his breath 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 aught 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 were on your own estate on the West Indies—whither, as you well know, you retired on 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 for months—keeping to all appearance the same low haunts and mingling with the same infamous herd who had been your associates when you were 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 his 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 boys identity lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received them from the mother is rotting in her coffin”. Unworthy son, coward, liar—you, Edward Leeford, do you still brave me?’
‘No, no, no!’ returned the coward, overwhelmed by these accumulated charges.
‘Every word,’ cried the old gentleman, ‘every word that has passed between you and this detested villain, is known to me. Murder has been done to which you are morally if not really a party.’
‘No, no,’ interposed Monks, ‘I—I know 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 on 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 and I 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, ‘lie will be taken tonight!’
‘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 that his master is or will be there, under cover of the darkness. Spies are hovering about in every direction. I have spoken with the men who are charged with his capture, and they tell me he cannot escape. A reward of a hundred pounds is proclaimed by the Government tonight.’
‘I will give fifty more.’ said Mr Brownlow, ‘and proclaim it with rny 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 until I return; it is your only hope of safety.’
They left the room and the door was again locked.
The court was paved, from floor to floor, 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 gallows, all looks were fixed upon one man—Fagin. Before him and behind—above, below, on the right and on the left—he seemed surrounded by a firmament all bright with gleaming eyes.
The judge had ceased to speak, the jury had sought permission to retire, and Fagin waited, still in the same strained attitude to close attention that he had exhibited since the trial began.
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 ensured—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 judge assumed the black cap. The address was solemn and impressive, the sentence fearful to hear, but the prisoner stood like a marble figure without the motion of a nerve, until the jailer put his hand upon his arm and beckoned him away.
Night—dark, dismal, silent night. the boom of every bell as the church-clock struck came laden with one deep hollow sound—Death.
The day passed off—it was gone as soon as it came. Saturday night. he had only one more night to live. 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. He sat there, awake but dreaming. Eight—nine—ten. Those were 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.
As it did so, the turnkey unlocked the door of the cell where the condemned criminal sat motionless on his bed and two visitors-an elderly gentleman and a young boy—followed him, in.
‘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 named 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.’
‘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!’
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 on him and disengaged Oliver from his grasp. 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 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, quarreling, 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.
