Oliver Twist
Page 47
"Young Bates," said Kags, looking angrily round, to check the fear he felt himself.
The knocking came again. No, it wasn't he. He never knocked like that.
Crackit went to the window and, shaking all over, drew in his head. There was no need to tell them who it was; his pale face was enough. The dog too was on the alert in an instant, and ran whining to the door.
"We must let him in," he said, taking up the candle.
"Isn't there any help for it?" asked the other man in a hoarse voice.
"None. He must come in."
"Don't leave us in the dark," said Kags, taking down a candle from the chimney-piece, and lighting it with such a trembling hand that the knocking was twice repeated before he had finished.
Crackit went down to the door, and returned followed by a man with the lower part of his face buried in a handkerchief and another tied over his head under his hat. He drew them slowly off. Blanched face, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, beard of three days' growth, wasted flesh, short thick breath: it was the very ghost of Sikes.
He laid his hand upon a chair which stood in the middle of the room, but shuddering as he was about to drop into it, and seeming to glance over his shoulder, dragged it back close to the wall--as close as it would go--ground it against it--and sat down.
Not a word had been exchanged. He looked from one to another in silence. If an eye were furtively raised and met his, it was instantly averted. When his hollow voice broke silence, they all three started. They seemed never to have heard its tones before.
"How came that dog here?" he asked.
"Alone. Three hours ago."
"To-night's paper says that Fagin's took. Is it true, or a lie?"
"True."
They were silent again.
"Damn you all!" said Sikes, passing his hand across his forehead. "Have you nothing to say to me?"
There was an uneasy movement among them, but nobody spoke.
"You that keep this house," said Sikes, turning his face to Crackit, "do you mean to sell me, or to let me lie here till this hunt is over?"
"You may stop here if you think it safe," returned the person addressed; after some hesitation.
Sikes carried his eyes slowly up the wall behind him, rather trying to turn his head than actually doing it, and said, "Is--it--the body--is it buried?"
They shook their heads.
"Why isn't it!" he retorted with the same glance behind him. "Wot do they keep such ugly things above the ground for?--Who's that knocking?"
Crackit intimated, by a motion of his hand as he left the room, that there was nothing to fear, and directly came back with Charley Bates behind him. Sikes sat opposite the door, so that the moment the boy entered the room he encountered his figure.
"Toby," said the boy falling back, as Sikes turned his eyes toward him, "why didn't you tell me this downstairs?"
There had been something so tremendous in the shrinking off of the three that the wretched man was willing to propitiate even this lad. Accordingly he nodded, and made as though he would shake hands with him.
"Let me go into some other room," said the boy, retreating still farther.
"Charley!" said Sikes, stepping forward. "Don't you--don't you know me?"
"Don't come nearer me," answered the boy, still retreating, and looking, with horror in his eyes, upon the murderer's face. "You monster!"
The man stopped half-way, and they looked at each other; but Sikes's eyes sunk gradually to the ground.
"Witness you three," cried the boy shaking his clenched fist, and becoming more and more excited as he spoke. "Witness you three--I'm not afraid of him--if they come here after him, I'll give him up; I will. I tell you out at once. He may kill me for it if he likes, or if he dares, but if I am here I'll give him up. I'd give him up if he was to be boiled alive. Murder! Help! If there's the pluck of a man among you three, you'll help me. Murder! Help! Down with him!"
Pouring out these cries, and accompanying them with violent gesticulation, the boy actually threw himself single-handed upon the strong man, and in the intensity of his energy and the suddenness of his surprise, brought him heavily to the ground.
The three spectators seemed quite stupefied. They offered no interference, and the boy and man rolled on the ground together--the former, heedless of the blows that showered upon him, wrenching his hands tighter and tighter in the garments about the murderer's breast, and never ceasing to call for help with all his might.
The contest, however, was too unequal to last long. Sikes had him down and his knee was on his throat, when Crackit pulled him back with a look of alarm and pointed to the window. There were lights gleaming below, voices in loud and earnest conversation, the gramp of hurried footsteps--endless they seemed in number--crossing the nearest wooden bridge. One man on horesback seemed to be among the crowd, for there was the noise of hoofs rattling on the uneven pavement. The gleam of lights increased; the footsteps came more thickly and noisily on. Then came a loud knocking at the door, and then a hoarse murmur from such a multitude of angry voices as would have made the boldest quail.
"Help!" shrieked the boy in a voice that rent the air. "He's here! Break down the door!"
"In the King's name!" cried the voices without; and the hoarse cry arose again, but louder.
"Break down the door!" screamed the boy. "I tell you they'll never open it. Run straight to the room where the light is. Break down the door!"
Strokes, thick and heavy, rattled upon the door and lower window-shutters as he ceased to speak, and a loud huzzah burst from the crowd, giving the listener, for the first time, some adequate idea of its immense extent.
"Open the door of some place where I can lock this screeching Hell-babe," cried Sikes fiercely, running to and fro, and dragging the boy, now, as easily as if he were an empty sack. "That door. Quick!" He flung him in, bolted it, and turned the key. "Is the downstairs door fast?"
"Double-locked and chained," replied Crackit, who, with the other two men, still remained quite helpless and bewildered.
"The panels--are they strong?"
"Lined with sheet-iron."
"And the windows too?"
"Yes, and the windows."
"Damn you!" cried the desperate ruffian, throwing up the sash and menacing the crowd. "Do your worst! I'll cheat you yet!"
Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mortal ears, none could exceed the cry of the infuriated throng. Some shouted to those who were nearest to set the house on fire; others roared to the officers to shoot him dead. Among them all, none showed such fury as the man on horseback, who, throwing himself out of the saddle and bursting through the crowd as if he were parting water, cried beneath the window, in a voice that rose above all others, "Twenty guineas to the man who brings a ladder!"
The nearest voice took up the cry, and hundreds echoed it. Some called for ladders, some for sledge-hammers; some ran with torches to and fro as if to seek them, and still came back and roared again; some spent their breath in impotent curses and execrations; some pressed forward with the ecstasy of madmen, and thus impeded the progress of those below; some among the boldest attempted to climb up by the water-spout and crevices in the wall; and all waved to and fro, in the darkness beneath, like a field of corn moved by an angry wind, and joined from time to time in one loud furious roar.
"The tide," cried the murderer, as he staggered back into the room, and shut the faces out, "the tide was in as I came up. Give me a rope, a long rope. They're all in front. I may drop into the Folly Ditch, and clear off that way. Give me a rope, or I shall do three more murders and kill myself."
The panic-stricken men pointed to where such articles were kept; the murderer, hastily selecting the longest and strongest cord, hurried up to the house-top.
All the windows in the rear of the house had been long ago bricked up, except one small trap in the room where the boy was locked, and that was too small even for the passage of his body. But from this aperture he had never ceased to cal
l on those without, to guard the back; and thus, when the murderer emerged at last on the house-top by the door in the roof, a loud shout proclaimed the face to those in front, who immediately began to pour round, pressing upon each other in an unbroken stream.
He planted a board, which he had carried up with him for the purpose, so firmly against the door that it must be matter of great difficulty to open it from the inside, and creeping over the tiles, looked over the low parapet.
The water was out, and the ditch a bed of mud.
The crowd had been hushed during these few moments, watching his motions and doubtful of his purpose, but the instant they perceived it and knew it was defeated, they raised a cry of triumphant execration to which all their previous shouting had been whispers. Again and again it rose. Those who were at too great a distance to know its meaning, took up the sound; it echoed and re-echoed; it seemed as though the whole city had poured its population out to curse him.
On pressed the people from the front--on, on, on, in a strong struggling current of angry faces, with here and there a glaring torch to light them up and show them out in all their wrath and passion. The houses on the opposite side of the ditch had been entered by the mob; sashes were thrown up, or torn bodily out; there were tiers and tiers of faces in every window, cluster upon cluster of people clinging to every house-top. Each little bridge (and there were three in sight) bent beneath the weight of the crowd upon it. Still the current poured on to find some nook or hole from which to vent their shouts, and only for an instant see the wretch.
"They have him now," cried the man on the nearest bridge. "Hurrah!"
The crowd grew light with uncovered heads, and again the shout uprose.
"I will give fifty pounds," cried an old gentleman from the same quarter, "to the man who takes him alive. I will remain here till he comes to ask me for it."
There was another roar. At this moment the word was passed among the crowd that the door was forced at last, and that he who had first called for the ladder had mounted into the room. The stream abruptly turned as this intelligence. ran from mouth to mouth; and the people at the windows, seeing those upon the bridges pouring back, quitted their stations and, running into the street, joined the concourse that now thronged pell-mell to the spot they had left, each man crushing and striving with his neighbour, and all panting with impatience to get near the door and look upon the criminal as the officers brought him out. The cries and shrieks of those who were pressed almost to suffocation, or trampled down and trodden underfoot in the confusion, were dreadful; the narrow ways were completely blocked up; and at this time, between the rush of some to regain the space in front of the house, and the unavailing struggles of others to extricate themselves from the mass, the immediate attention was distracted from the murderer, although the universal eagerness for his capture was, if possible, increased.
The map had shrunk down, thoroughly quelled by the ferocity of the crowd and the impossibility of escape; but seeing this sudden change with no less rapidity than it had occurred, he sprang upon his feet, determined to make one last effort for his life by dropping into the ditch and, at the risk of being stifled, endeavouring to creep away in the darkness and confusion.
Roused into new strength and energy, and stimulated by the noise within the house which announced that an entrance had really been affected, he set his foot against the stack of chimneys, fastened one end of the rope tightly and firmly round it, and with the other made a strong running noose by the aid of his hands and teeth almost in a second: He could let himself down by the cord to within a less distance of the ground than his own height, and had his knife ready in his hand to cut it then and drop.
At the very instant when he brought the loop over his head previous to slipping it beneath his arm-pits, and when the old gentleman before-mentioned (who had clung so tight to the railing of the bridge as to resist the force of the crowd and retain his position) earnestly warned those about him that the man was about to lower himself down--at that very instant the murderer, looking behind him on the roof, threw his arms above his head and uttered a yell of terror.
"The eyes again!" he cried in an unearthly screech.
Staggering as if struck by lightning, he lost his balance and tumbled over the parapet. The noose was on his neck. It ran up with his weight, tight as a bow-string and swift as the arrow it speeds. He fell for five-and-thirty feet. There was a sudden jerk, a terrific convulsion of the limbs; and there he hung, with the open knife clenched in his stiffening hand.
The old chimney quivered with the shock, but stood it bravely. The murderer swung lifeless against the wall; and the boy, thrusting aside the dangling body which obscured his view, called to the people to come and take him out, for God's sake.
A dog, which had lain concealed till now, ran backwards and forwards on the parapet with a dismal howl, and collecting himself for a spring, jumped for the dead man's shoulders. Missing his aim, he fell into the ditch, turning completely over as he went, and striking his head against a stone, dashed out his brains.
CHAPTER LI
Affording an explanation of more mysteries than one,
and comprehending a proposal of marriage with
no word of settlement or pin-money.
THE EVENTS NARRATED IN THE LAST CHAPTER WERE YET BUT two days old when Oliver found himself, at three o'clock in the afternoon, in a travelling-carriage rolling fast toward his native town. Mrs. Maylie, and Rose, and Mrs. Bedwin, and the good doctor were with him; and Mr. Brownlow followed in a post-chaise, accompanied by one other person whose name had not been mentioned.
They had not talked much upon the way; for Oliver was in a flutter of agitation and uncertainty which deprived him of the power of collecting his thoughts, and almost of speech, and appeared to have scarcely less effect on his companions, who shared it in at least an equal degree. He and the two ladies had been very carefully made acquainted by Mr. Brownlow with the nature of the admissions which had been forced from Monks; and although they knew that the object of their present journey was to complete the work which had been so well begun, still the whole matter was enveloped in enough of doubt and mystery to leave them in endurance of the most intense suspense.
The same kind friend had, with Mr. Losberne's assistance, cautiously stopped all channels of communication through which they could receive intelligence of the dreadful occurrences that had so recently taken place. "It was quite true," he said, "that they must know them before long, but it might be at a better time than the present, and it could not be at a worse." So they travelled on in silence, each busied with reflections on the object which had brought them together, and no one disposed to give utterance to the thoughts which crowded upon all.
But if Oliver, under these influences, had remained silent while they journeyed towards his birth-place by a road he had never seen, how the whole current of his recollections ran back to old times, and what a crowd of emotions were wakened up in his breast, when they turned into that which he had traversed on foot--a poor houseless, wandering boy, without a friend to help him or a roof to shelter his head.
"See there, there!" cried Oliver, eagerly clasping the hand of Rose, and pointing out at the carriage window; "That's the stile I came over; there are the hedges I crept behind, for fear any one should overtake me, and force me back! Yonder is the path across the fields, leading to the old house where I was a little child! Oh Dick, Dick, my dear old friend, if I could only see you now!"
"You will see him soon," replied Rose, gently taking his folded hands between her own. "You shall tell him how happy you are, and how rich you have grown, and that in all your happiness you have none so great as the coming back to make him happy too."
"Yes, yes," said Oliver, "and we'll--we'll take him away from here, and have him clothed and taught, and send him to some quiet country place where he may grow strong and well--shall we?"
Rose nodded "yes," for the boy was smiling through such happy tears that she could not speak.
As they approached the town and at length drove through its narrow streets, it became matter of no small difficulty to restrain the boy within reasonable bounds. There was Sowerberry's the undertaker's just as it used to be, only smaller and less imposing in appearance than he remembered it--there were all the well-known shops and houses, with almost every one of which he had some slight incident connected-there was Gamfield's cart, the very cart he used to have, standing at the old public-house door--there was the workhouse, the dreary prison of his youthful days, with its dismal windows frowning on the street--there was the same lean porter standing at the gate, at sight of whom Oliver involuntarily shrunk back, and then laughed at himself for being so foolish, then cried, then laughed again--there were scores of faces at 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.