garden gate; it was unlocked, and swung open on its hinges. He
tottered across the lawn; climbed the steps; knocked faintly at the
door; and, his whole strength failing him, sank down against one
of the pillars of the little portico.
It happened that about this time, Mr. Giles, Brittles, and the
tinker were recruiting themselves, after the fatigues and terrors of
the night, with tea and sundries, in the kitchen. Not that it was Mr.
Giles’s habit to admit to too great familiarity the humbler servants,
towards whom it was rather his wont to deport himself with a lofty
affability, which, while it gratified, could not fail to remind them of
his superior position in society. But death, fires, and burglary,
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make all men equals; so Mr. Giles sat with his legs stretched out
before the kitchen fender, leaning his left arm on the table, while,
with his right, he illustrated a circumstantial and minute account
of the robbery, to which his hearers (but especially the cook and
housemaid, who were of the party) listened with breathless
interest.
“It was about half-past two,” said Mr. Giles, “or I wouldn’t
swear that it mightn’t have been a little nearer three, when I woke
up, and, turning round in my bed, as it might be so (here Mr. Giles
turned round in his chair, and pulled the corner of the table-cloth
over him to imitate bed-clothes), I fancied I heerd a noise.”
At this point of the narrative the cook turned pale, and asked
the housemaid to shut the door; who asked Brittles, who asked the
tinker, who pretended not to hear.
“—Heerd a noise,” continued Mr. Giles. “I says, at first, ‘This is
illusion’; and was composing myself off to sleep, when I heerd the
noise again, distinct.”
“What sort of a noise?” asked the cook.
“A kind of a busting noise,” replied Mr. Giles, looking round
him.
“More like the noise of powdering a iron bar on a nutmeg-
grater,” suggested Brittles.
“It was, when you heerd it, sir,” rejoined Mr. Giles; “but, at this
time, it had a busting sound. I turned down the clothes,”
continued Giles, rolling back the tablecloth, “sat up in bed; and
listened.”
The cook and housemaid simultaneously ejaculated, “Lor!” and
drew their chairs closer together.
“I heerd it now, quite apparent,” resumed Mr. Giles.
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“‘Somebody,’ I says, ‘is forcing of a door, or window; what’s to be
done? I’ll call up that poor lad, Brittles, and save him from being
murdered in his bed; or his throat,’ I says, ‘may be cut, from his
right ear to his left, without his ever knowing it’.”
Here, all eyes were turned upon Brittles, who fixed his upon the
speaker, and stared at him, with his mouth wide open, and his face
expressive of the most unmitigated horror.
“I tossed off the clothes,” said Giles, throwing away the tablecloth, and looking very hard at the cook and housemaid, “got softly
out of bed; drew on a pair of—”
“Ladies present, Mr. Giles,” murmured the tinker.
“Of shoes, sir,” said Giles, turning upon him, and laying great
emphasis on the word; “seized the loaded pistol that always goes
upstairs with the plate-basket; and walked on tiptoes to his room.
‘Brittles,’ I says, when I had woke him, ‘don’t be frightened!’”
“So you did,” observed Brittles, in a low voice.
“‘We’re dead men, I think, Brittles,’ I says,” continued Giles;
“‘but don’t be frightened.’”
“Was he frightened?” asked the cook.
“Not a bit of it,” replied Mr. Giles. “He was as firm—ah! pretty
near as firm as I was.”
“I should have died at once, I’m sure, if it had been me,”
observed the housemaid.
“You’re a woman,” retorted Brittles, plucking up a little.
“Brittles is right,” said Mr. Giles, nodding his head approvingly;
“from a woman, nothing else was to be expected. We, being men,
took a dark lantern that was standing on Brittles’s hob, and
groped our way downstairs in the pitch dark—as it might be so.”
Mr. Giles had risen from his seat, and taken two steps with his
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eyes shut, to accompany his description with appropriate action,
when he started violently, in common with the rest of the
company, and hurried back to his chair. The cook and housemaid
screamed.
“It was a knock,” said Mr. Giles, assuming perfect serenity.
“Open the door, somebody.”
Nobody moved.
“It seems a strange sort of a thing, a knock coming at such a
time in the morning,” said Mr. Giles, surveying the pale faces
which surrounded him, and looking very blank himself; “but the
door must be opened. Do you hear, somebody?”
Mr. Giles, as he spoke, looked at Brittles; but that young man,
being naturally modest, probably considered himself nobody, and
so held that the inquiry could not have any application to him; at
all events, he tendered no reply. Mr. Giles directed an appealing
glance at the tinker; but he had suddenly fallen asleep. The
women were out of the question.
“If Brittles would rather open the door, in the presence of
witnesses,” said Mr. Giles, after a short silence, “I am ready to
make one.”
“So am I,” said the tinker, waking up, as suddenly as he had
fallen asleep.
Brittles capitulated on these terms; and the party being
somewhat reassured by the discovery (made on throwing open the
shutters) that it was now broad day, took their way upstairs, with
the dogs in front, and the two women, who were afraid to stay
below, bringing up the rear. By the advice of Mr. Giles, they all
talked very loud, to warn any evil-disposed person outside, that
they were strong in numbers; and by a master-stroke of policy,
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originating in the brain of the same ingenious gentleman, the
dogs’ tails were well pinched, in the hall, to make them bark
savagely.
These precautions having been taken, Mr. Giles held on fast by
the tinker’s arm (to prevent his running away, as he pleasantly
said), and gave the word of command to open the door. Brittles
obeyed; the group, peeping timorously over each other’s
shoulders, beheld no more formidable object than poor little
Oliver Twist, speechless and exhausted, who raised his heavy eyes,
and mutely solicited their compassion.
“A boy!” exclaimed Mr. Giles, valiantly pushing the tinker into
the background. “What’s the matter with the Eh?—Why—
Brittles—look here—don’t you know?”
Brittles, who had got behind the door to open it, no sooner saw
Oliver, than he uttered a loud cry. Mr. Giles, seizing the boy by one
leg and one arm (fortunately not the broken limb) lugged him
straight into the hall, and deposited him at full length on the floor
thereof.
“Here he is!” bawled Giles, calling, in a state of great
excitement, up the staircase; “here’s one of the thieves, ma’am!
Here’s a thief, miss! Wounded, miss! I shot him, miss; and Brittles
held the light.”
“In a lantern, miss,” cried Brittles, applying one hand to the
side of his mouth, so that his voice might travel the better.
The two women-servants ran upstairs to carry the intelligence
that Mr. Giles had captured a robber; and the tinker busied
himself in endeavouring to restore Oliver, lest he should die before
he could be hanged. In the midst of all this noise and commotion
there was heard a sweet female voice, which quelled it in an
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instant.
“Giles!” whispered the voice from the stair-head.
“I’m here, miss,” replied Mr. Giles. “Don’t be frightened, miss; I
ain’t much injured. He didn’t make a very desperate resistance,
miss! I was soon too many for him.”
“Hush!” replied the young lady; “you frighten my aunt as much
as the thieves did. Is the poor creature much hurt?”
“Wounded desperate, miss,” replied Giles, with indescribable
complacency.
“He looks as if he was a-going, miss,” bawled Brittles, in the
same manner as before. “Wouldn’t you like to come and look at
him, miss, in case he should ?”
“Hush, pray, there’s a good man!” rejoined the lady. “Wait
quietly only one instant, while I speak to aunt.”
With a footstep as soft and gentle as the voice, the speaker
tripped away. She soon returned, with the direction that the
wounded person was to be carried, carefully, upstairs to Mr.
Giles’s room; and that Brittles was to saddle the pony and betake
himself instantly to Chertsey; from which place, he was to
despatch, with all speed, a constable and doctor.
“But won’t you take one look at him first, miss?” asked Mr.
Giles, with as much pride as if Oliver were some bird of rare
plumage, that he had skilfully brought down. “Not one little peep,
miss?”
“Not now, for the world,” replied the young lady. “Poor fellow!
Oh! treat him kindly, Giles, for my sake!”
The old servant looked up at the speaker, as she turned away,
with a glance as proud and admiring as if she had been his own
child. Then, bending over Oliver, he helped to carry him upstairs,
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with the care and solicitude of a woman.
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Chapter 29
Has An Introductory Account Of The Inmates Of
The House, To Which Oliver Resorted.
In a handsome room, though its furniture had rather the air of
old-fashioned comfort, than of modern elegance, there sat two
ladies at a well-spread breakfast-table. Mr. Giles, dressed with
scrupulous care in a full suit of black, was in attendance upon
them. He had taken his station some halfway between the
sideboard and the breakfast-table; and, with his body drawn up to
its full height, his head thrown back, and inclined the merest trifle
on one side, his left leg advanced, and his right hand thrust into
his waistcoat, while his left hung down by his side, grasping a
waiter, looked like one who laboured under a very agreeable sense
of his own merits and importance.
Of the two ladies, one was well advanced in years; but the high-
backed oaken chair in which she sat, was not more upright than
she. Dressed with the utmost nicety and precision, in a quaint
mixture of bygone costume, with some slight concessions to the
prevailing taste, which rather served to point the old style
pleasantly than to impair its effect, she sat, in a stately manner,
with her hands folded on the table before her. Her eyes (and age
had dimmed but little of their brightness) were attentively fixed
upon her young companion.
The younger lady was in the lovely bloom and springtime of
womanhood; at that age, when, if ever angels be for God’s good
purposes enthroned in mortal forms, they may be, without
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impiety, supposed to abide in such as hers.
She was not past seventeen. Cast in so slight and exquisite a
mould; so mild and gentle; so pure and beautiful; that earth
seemed not her element, not its rough creatures her fit
companions. The very intelligence that shone in her deep-blue
eye, and was stamped upon her noble head, seemed scarcely of
her age, or of the world; and yet the changing expression of
sweetness and good-humour, the thousand lights that played
about the face, and left no shadow there; above all, the smile, the
cheerful, happy smile, were made for home and fireside peace and
happiness.
She was busily engaged in the little offices of the table.
Chancing to raise her eyes as the elder lady was regarding her, she
playfully put back her hair, which was simply braided on her
forehead; and threw into her beaming look, such an expression of
affection and artless loveliness, that blessed spirits might have
smiled to look upon her.
“And Brittles has been gone upwards of an hour, has he?”
asked the old lady, after a pause.
“An hour and twelve minutes, ma’am,” replied Mr. Giles,
referring to a silver watch, which he drew forth by a black ribbon.
“He is always slow,” remarked the old lady.
“Brittles always was a slow boy, ma’am,” replied the attendant.
And seeing, by the bye, that Brittles had been a slow boy for
upwards of thirty years, there appeared no great probability of his
ever being a fast one.
“He gets worse instead of better, I think,” said the elder lady.
“It is very inexcusable in him if he stops to play with any other
boys,” said the young lady, smiling.
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Mr. Giles was apparently considering the propriety of indulging
in a respectful smile himself, when a gig drove up to the garden
gate, out of which there jumped a fat gentleman, who ran straight
up to the door; and who, getting quickly into the house by some
mysterious process, burst into the room, and nearly overturned
Mr. Giles and the breakfast-table together.
“I never heard of such a thing!” exclaimed the fat gentleman.
“My dear Mrs. Maylie—bless my soul—in the silence of night,
too—I never heard of such a thing!”
With these expressions of condolence, the fat gentleman shook
hands with both ladies, and drawing up a chair, inquired how they
found themselves.
“You ought to be dead; positively dead with the fright,” said the
fat gentleman. “Why didn’t you send? Bless me, my man should
have come in a minute; and so would I; and my assistant would
have been delighted; or anybody, I’m sure, under such
circumstances. Dear, dear! So unexpected! In the silence of night,
too!”
The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the
robbery having been unexpected, and attempted in the night-time;
as if it were the established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way to transact business at noon, and to make an
appointment, by post, a day or two previous.
“And you, Miss Rose,” said the doctor, turning to the young
lady, “I”
“Oh! very much so, indeed,” said Rose, interrupting him; “but
there is a poor creature upstairs, whom aunt wishes you to see.”
“Ah! to be sure,” replied the doctor, “so there is. That was your
handiwork, Giles, I understand.”
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Mr. Giles, who had been feverishly putting the tea-cups to
rights, blushed very red, and said that he had had that honour.
“Honour, eh?” said the doctor; “well, I don’t know; perhaps it’s
as honourable to hit a thief in a back kitchen, as to hit your man at
twelve paces. Fancy that he fired in the air, and you’ve fought a
duel, Giles.”
Mr. Giles, who thought this light treatment of the matter an
unjust attempt at diminishing his glory, answered respectfully that
it was not for the like of him to judge about that; but he rather
thought it was no joke to the opposite party.
“Gad, that’s true!” said the doctor. “Where is he? Show me the
way. I’ll look in again, as I come down, Mrs. Maylie. That’s the
little window that he got in at, eh? Well, I couldn’t have believed
it!”
Talking all the way, he followed Mr. Giles upstairs; and while he
is going upstairs, the reader may be informed, that Mr. Losberne,
a surgeon in the neighbourhood, known through a circuit of ten
miles round as “the doctor,” had grown fat, more from good-
humour than from good living; and was as kind and hearty, and
withal as eccentric an old bachelor, as will be found in five times
that space, by any explorer alive.
The doctor was absent much longer than either he or the ladies
had anticipated. A large flat box was fetched out of the gig; and a
bedroom bell was rung very often; and the servants ran up and
downstairs perpetually; from which tokens it was justly concluded
that something important was going on above. At length he
returned; and in reply to an anxious inquiry after his patient,
looked very mysterious, and closed the door carefully.
“This is a very extraordinary thing, Mrs. Maylie,” said the
