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deliberately kissed the matron.
“Mr. Bumble!” cried that discreet lady in a whisper, for the
fright was so great, that she had quite lost her voice: “Mr. Bumble,
I shall scream!” Mr. Bumble made no reply; but in a slow and
dignified manner, put his arm round the matron’s waist.
As the lady had stated her intention of screaming, of course she
would have screamed at this additional boldness, but that the
exertion was rendered unnecessary by a hasty knocking at the
door; which was no sooner heard, than Mr. Bumble darted, with
much agility, to the wine bottles, and began dusting them with
great violence; while the matron sharply demanded who was
there. It is worthy of remark, as a curious physical instance of the
efficacy of a sudden surprise in counteracting the effects of
extreme fear, that her voice had quite recovered all its official
asperity.
“If you please, mistress,” said a withered old female pauper,
hideously ugly, putting her head in at the door, “old Sally is a-
going fast.”
“Well, what’s that to me?” angrily demanded the matron. “I
can’t keep her alive, can I?”
“No, no, mistress,” replied the old woman, “nobody can; she’s
far beyond the reach of help. I’ve seen a many people die; little
babies and great strong men; and I know when death’s a-coming,
well enough. But she’s troubled in her mind; and when the fits are
not on her; and that’s not often, for she is dying very hard—she
says she has got something to tell, which you must hear. She’ll
never die quiet till you come, mistress.”
At this intelligence, the worthy Mrs. Corney muttered a variety
of invectives against old women who couldn’t even die without
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purposely annoying their betters; and, muffling herself in a thick
shawl which she hastily caught up, briefly requested Mr. Bumble
to stay till she came back, lest anything particular should occur;
and bidding the messenger walk fast, and not be all night hobbling
up the stairs, she followed her from the room with a very ill grace,
scolding all the way.
Mr. Bumble’s conduct on being left to himself, was rather
inexplicable. He opened the closet, counted the teaspoons,
weighed the sugar-tongs, closely inspected a silver milk-pot to
ascertain that it was of the genuine metal, and, having satisfied his
curiosity on these points, put on his cocked hat corner-wise, and
danced with much gravity four distinct times round the table.
Having gone through this very extraordinary performance, he
took off the cocked hat again, and, spreading himself before the
fire with his back towards it, seemed to be mentally engaged in
taking an exact inventory of the furniture.
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Chapter 24
Treats Of A Very Poor Subject—But Is A Short One,
And May Be Found Of Importance In This History.
It was no unfit messenger of death, who had disturbed the
quiet of the matron’s room. Her body was bent by age; her
limbs trembled with palsy; her face, distorted into a
mumbling leer, resembled more the grotesque shaping of some
wild pencil, than the work of Nature’s hand.
Alas! How few of Nature’s faces are left alone to gladden us
with their beauty! The cares, and sorrows, and hungerings, of the
world, change them as they change hearts; and it is only when
those passions sleep, and have lost their hold for ever, that the
troubled clouds pass off, and leave Heaven’s surface clear. It is a
common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that fixed
and rigid state, to subside into the long-forgotten expression of
sleeping infancy, and settle into the very look of early life; so calm,
so peaceful, do they grow again, that those who knew them in their
happy childhood, kneel by the coffin’s side in awe, and see the
angel even upon earth.
The old crone tottered along the passages, and up the stairs,
muttering some indistinct answers to the chidings of her
companion; and being at length compelled to pause for breath,
gave the light into her hand, and remained behind to follow as she
might; while the more nimble superior made her way to the room
where the sick woman lay.
It was a bare garret-room, with a dim light burning at the
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farther end. There was another old woman watching by the bed;
the parish apothecary’s apprentice was standing by the fire,
making a toothpick out of a quill.
“Cold night, Mrs. Corney,” said this young gentleman, as the
matron entered.
“Very cold, indeed, sir,” replied the mistress, in her most civil
tones, and dropping a curtsey as she spoke.
“You should get better coals out of your contractors,” said the
apothecary’s deputy, breaking a lump on the top of the fire with
the rusty poker; “these are not at all the sort of thing for a cold
night.”
“They’re the Board’s choosing, sir,” returned the matron. “The
least they could do, would be to keep us pretty warm; for our
places are hard enough.”
The conversation was here interrupted by a moan from the sick
woman.
“Oh!” said the young man, turning his face towards the bed, as
if he had previously quite forgotten the patient, “it’s all U. P. there,
Mrs. Corney.”
“It is, is it, sir?” asked the matron.
“If she lasts a couple of hours, I shall be surprised,” said the
apothecary’s apprentice, intent upon the toothpick’s point. “It’s a
break-up of the system altogether. Is she dozing, old lady?”
The attendant stooped over the bed, to ascertain; and nodded
in the affirmative.
“Then perhaps she’ll go off in that way, if you don’t make a
row,” said the young man. “Put the light on the floor. She won’t
see it there.”
The attendant did as she was told, shaking her head mean
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while, to intimate that the woman would not die so easily; having
done so; she resumed her seat by the side of the other nurse, who
had by this time returned. The mistress, with an expression of
impatience, wrapped herself in her shawl, and sat at the foot of the
bed.
The apothecary’s apprentice, having completed the
manufacture of the toothpick, planted himself in front of the fire,
and made good use of it for ten minutes or so; when, apparently
growing rather dull, he wished Mrs. Corney joy of her job, and
took himself off on tiptoe.
When they had sat in silence for some time, the two old women
rose from the bed, and crouching over the fire, held out their
withered hands to catch the heat. The flame threw a ghastly light
on their shrivelled faces, and made their ugliness appear terrible
as, in this position, they began to converse in a low voice.
“Did she say any more, my dear, while I was gone?” inquired
the messenger.
“Not a word,” replied the other. “She plucked and tore at her
arms for a little time; but I held her hands, and she soon dropped
off. She hasn’t much strength in her, so I easily kept her quiet. I
ain’t so weak for an old woman, although I am on parish
allowance; no, no!”
“Did she drink the hot wine the doctor said she was to have?”
demanded the first.
“I tried to get it down,” rejoined the other. “But her teeth were
tight set, and she clenched the mug so hard that it was as much as
I could do to get it back again. So I drank it; and it did me good!”
Looking cautiously round, to ascertain that they were not
overheard, the two hags cowered nearer the fire, and chuckled
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heartily.
“I mind the time,” said the first speaker, “when she would have
done the same, and made rare fun of it afterwards.”
“Ay, that she would,” rejoined the other; “she had a merry
heart. A many, many, beautiful corpses she laid out, as nice and
neat as wax-work. My old eyes have seen them—ay, and those old
hands touched them, too; for I have helped her, scores of times.”
Stretching forth her trembling fingers as she spoke, the old
creature shook them exultingly before her face, and fumbling in
her pocket, brought out an old time-discoloured tin snuff-box,
from which she shook a few grains into the outstretched palm of
her companion, and a few more into her own. While they were
thus employed, the matron, who had been impatiently watching
until the dying woman should awaken from her stupor, joined
them by the fire, and sharply asked how long she was to wait?
“Not long, mistress,” replied the second woman, looking up into
her face. “We have none of us long to wait for Death. Patience,
patience! He’ll be here soon enough for us all.”
“Hold your tongue, you doting idiot!” said the matron sternly.
“You, Martha, tell me; has she been in this way before?”
“Often,” answered the first woman.
“But will never be again,” added the second one; “that is, she’ll
never wake again but once—and mind, mistress, that won’t be for
long!”
“Long or short,” said the matron snappishly, “she won’t find me
here when she does wake; take care, both of you, how you worry
me again for nothing. It’s no part of my duty to see all the old
women in the house die, and I won’t—that’s more. Mind that, you
impudent old harridans. If you make a fool of me again, I’ll soon
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cure you, I warrant you!”
She was bouncing away, when a cry from the two women, who
had turned towards the bed, caused her to look round. The patient
had raised herself upright, and was stretching her arms towards
them.
“Who’s that?” she cried in a hollow voice.
“Hush, hush!” said one of the women, stooping over her. “Lie
down, lie down!”
“I’ll never lie down again alive!” said the woman, struggling. “I
will tell her! Come here! Nearer! Let me whisper in your ear.”
She clutched the matron by the arm, and forcing her into a
chair by the bedside, was about to speak, when looking round, she
caught sight of the two old women bending forward in the attitude
of eager listeners.
“Turn them away,” said the woman drowsily; “make haste!
make haste!”
The two old crones, chiming in together, began pouring out
many piteous lamentations that the poor dear was too far gone to
know her best friends; and were uttering sundry protestations that
they would never leave her, when the superior pushed them from
the room, closed the door, and returned to the bedside. On being
excluded, the old ladies changed their tone, and cried through the
keyhole that old Sally was drunk; which, indeed, was not unlikely;
since, in addition to a moderate dose of opium prescribed by the
apothecary, she was labouring under the effects of a final taste of
gin-and-water which had been privily administered, in the
openness of their hearts, by the worthy old ladies themselves.
“Now listen to me,” said the dying woman aloud, as if making a
great effort to revive one latent spark of energy. “In this very
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room—in this very bed—I once nursed a pretty young creetur’,
that was brought into the house with her feet cut and bruised with
walking, and all soiled with dust and blood. She gave birth to a
boy, and died. Let me think—what was the year again!”
“Never mind the year,” said the impatient auditor; “what about
her?”
“Ay,” murmured the sick woman, relapsing into her former
drowsy state, “what about her?—what about—I know!” she cried,
jumping fiercely up, her face flushed, and her eyes starting from
her head—“I robbed her, so I did! She wasn’t cold—I tell you she
wasn’t cold, when I stole it!”
“Stole what, for God’s sake?” cried the matron, with a gesture
as if she would call for help.
“It!” replied the woman, laying her hand over the other’s
mouth. “The only thing she had. She wanted clothes to keep her
warm, and food to eat; but she had kept it safe, and had it in her
bosom. It was gold, I tell you! Rich gold, that might have saved her
life!”
“Gold!” echoed the matron, bending eagerly over the woman as
she fell back. “Go on, go on—yes—what of it? Who was the
mother? When was it?”
“She charged me to keep it safe,” replied the woman, with a
groan, “and trusted me as the only woman about her. I stole it in
my heart when she first showed it me hanging round her neck;
and the child’s death, perhaps, is on me besides! They would have
treated him better, if they had known it all!”
“Known what?” asked the other. “Speak!”
“The boy grew so like his mother,” said the woman, rambling
on, and not heeding the question, “that I could never forget it
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when I saw his face. Poor girl! poor girl! She was so young, too!
Such a gentle lamb! Wait; there’s more to tell. I have not told you
all, have I?”
“No, no,” replied the matron, inclining her head to catch the
words, as they came more faintly from the dying woman. “Be
quick, or it may be too late!”
“The mother,” said the woman, making a more violent effort
than before—“the mother, when the pains of death first came
upon her, whispered in my ear that if her baby was born alive, and
thrived, the day might come when it would not feel so much
disgraced to hear its poor young mother named. ‘And oh, kind
Heaven!’ she said, folding her thin hands together, ‘whether it be
boy or girl, raise up some friends for it in this troubled world, and
take pity upon a lonely, desolate child, abandoned to its mercy!’”
“The boy’s name?” demanded the matron.
“They called him Oliver,” replied the woman feebly. “The gold I
stole was—”
“Yes, yes—what?” cried the other.
She was bending eagerly over the woman to hear her reply; but
drew back instinctively, as she once again rose, slowly and stiffly,
into a sitting posture; then, clutching the coverlid with both hands,
muttered some indistinct sounds in her throat and fell lifeless on
the bed.
*****
“Stone dead!” said one of the old women, hurrying in as soon as
the door was opened.
“And nothing to tell, after all,” rejoined the matron, walking
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carelessly away.
The two crones, to all appearances, too busily occupied in the
preparations for their dreadful duties to make any reply, were left
alone, hovering about the body.
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Chapter 25
Wherein This History Reverts To Mr. Fagin And
Company.
While these things were passing in the country
workhouse, Mr. Fagin sat in the old den—the same
from which Oliver had been removed by the girl—
brooding over a dull, smoky fire. He held a pair of bellows upon
his knee, with which he had apparently been endeavouring to
rouse it into more cheerful action; but he had fallen into deep
thought; and with his arms folded on them, and his chin resting on
his thumbs, fixed his eyes, abstractedly, on the rusty bars.
At a table behind him sat the Artful Dodger, Master Charles
Bates, and Mr. Chitling, all intent upon a game of whist; the Artful
taking dummy against Master Bates and Mr. Chitling. The
countenance of the first-named gentleman, peculiarly intelligent at
all times, acquired great additional interest from his close
observance of the game, and his attentive perusal of Mr. Chitling’s
hand; upon which, from time to time, as occasion served, he
