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eyes, and softens down the temper,” said Mr. Bumble. “So cry
away.”
As he discharged himself of his pleasantry, Mr. Bumble took his
hat from a peg, and putting it on, rather rakishly on one side, as a
man might, who felt he had asserted his superiority in a becoming
manner, thrust his hands into his pockets, and sauntered towards
the door, with much ease and waggishness depicted in his whole
appearance.
Now, Mrs. Corney that was, had tried the tears, because
stranger’s name, and thought in his impatience, he might supply
the blank.
“I see you were not,” said the stranger; an expression of
sarcasm playing about his mouth; “or you would have known my
name. You don’t know it. I would recommend you not to ask for
it.”
“I mean no harm, young man,” observed Mr. Bumble
majestically.
“And have done none,” said the stranger.
Another silence succeeded this short dialogue; which was again
broken by the stranger.
“I have seen you before, I think?” said he. “You were differently
dressed at that time, and I only passed you in the street, but I
should know you again. You were beadle here once; were you
not?”
“I was,” said Mr. Bumble, in some surprise; “porochial beadle.”
“Just so,” rejoined the other, nodding his head. “It was in that
character I saw you. What are you now?”
“Master of the workhouse,” rejoined Mr. Bumble, slowly and
impressively, to check any undue familiarity the stranger might
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otherwise assume. “Master of the workhouse, young man!”
“You have the same eye to your own interest, that you always
had, I doubt not?” resumed the stranger, looking keenly into Mr.
Bumble’s eyes, as he raised them in astonishment at the question.
“Don’t scruple to answer freely, man. I know you pretty well, you
see.”
“I suppose, a married man,” replied Mr. Bumble, shading his
eyes with his hand, and surveying the stranger, from head to foot,
in evident perplexity, “is not more averse to turning an honest
penny when he can, than a single one. Porochial officers are not so
well paid that they can afford to refuse any little extra fee, when it
comes to them in a civil and proper manner.”
The stranger smiled, and nodded his head again, as much as to
say, he had not mistaken his man; then rang the “Fill this glass
again,” he said, handing Mr. Bumble’s empty tumbler to the
landlord. “Let it be strong and hot. You like it so, I suppose?” a
Not too strong,” replied Mr. Bumble, with a delicate cough.
“You understand what that means, landlord!” said the stranger
dryly.
The host smiled, disappeared, and shortly afterwards returned
with a steaming jorum, of which, the first gulp brought the water
into Mr. Bumble’s eyes.
“Now listen to me,” said the stranger, after closing the door and
window. “I came down to this place, today, to find you out; and, by
one of those chances which the devil throws in the way of his
friends sometimes, you walked into the very room I was sitting in,
while you were uppermost in my mind. I want some information
from you. I don’t ask you to give it for nothing, slight as it is. Put
up that, to begin with.”
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As he spoke, he pushed a couple of sovereigns across the table,
to his companion, carefully, as though unwilling that the clinking
of money should be heard without. When Mr. Bumble had
scrupulously examined the coins, to see that they were genuine,
and had put them up, with much satisfaction in his waistcoat
pocket, he went on:
“Carry your memory back—let me see—twelve years, last
winter.”
“It’s a long time,” said Mr. Bumble. “Very good. I’ve done it.”
“The scene, the workhouse.”
“Good!”
“And the time, night.”
“Yes.”
“And the place, the crazy hole, wherever it was, in which
miserable drabs brought forth the life and health so often denied
to themselves—gave birth to puling children for the parish to rear;
and hid their shame, rot ’em, in the grave!”
“The lying-in room, I suppose?” said Mr. Bumble, not quite
following the stranger’s excited description.
“Yes,” said the stranger. “A boy was born there.”
“A many boys,” observed Mr. Bumble, shaking his head
despondingly.
“A murrain on the young devils!” cried the stranger; “I speak of
one; a meek-looking, pale-faced boy, who was apprenticed down
here to a coffin-maker—I wish he had made his coffin, and
screwed his body in it—and who afterwards ran away to London,
as it was supposed.”
“Why, you mean Oliver! Young Twist!” said Mr. Bumble; “I
remember him, of course. There wasn’t an obstinater young
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rascal—”
“It’s not of him I want to hear; I’ve heard enough of him,” said
the stranger, stopping Mr. Bumble in the very outset of a tirade on
the subject of poor Oliver’s vices. “It’s of a woman; the hag that
nursed his mother. Where is she?”
“Where is she?” said Mr. Bumble, whom the gin-and-water had
rendered facetious. “It would be hard to tell. There’s no midwifery
there, whichever place she’s gone to; so I suppose she’s out of
employment, anyway.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the stranger sternly.
“That she died last winter,” rejoined Mr. Bumble.
The man looked fixedly at him when he had given this
information, and although he did not withdraw his eyes for some
time afterwards, his gaze gradually became vacant and abstracted,
and he seemed lost in thought. For some time, he appeared
doubtful whether he ought to be relieved or disappointed by the
intelligence; but at length he breathed more freely; and
withdrawing his eyes, observed that it was no great matter. With
that he rose, as if to depart.
But Mr. Bumble was cunning enough; and he at once saw that
an opportunity was opened, for the lucrative disposal of some
secret in the possession of his better half. He well remembered the
night of old Sally’s death, which the occurrences of that day had
given him good reason to recollect, as the occasion on which he
had proposed to Mrs. Corney; and although that lady had never
confided to him the disclosure of which she had been the solitary
witness, he had heard enough to know that it related to something
that had occurred in the old woman’s attendance, as workhouse
nurse, upon the young mother of Oliver Twist. Hastily calling this
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circumstance to mind, he informed the stranger, with an air of
mystery, that one woman had been closeted with the old harridan
shortly before she died; and that she could, as he had reason to
believe, throw some light on the subject of his inquiry.
“How can I find her?” said the stranger, thrown off his guard;
and plainly showing that all his fears (whatever they were) were
aroused afresh by the intelligence.
“Only through me,” rejoined Mr. Bumble.
“When?” cried the stranger hastily.
“Tomorrow,” rejoined Bumble.
“At nine in the evening,” said the stranger, producing a scrap of
paper, and writing down upon it, an obscure address by the waterside, in characters that betrayed his agitation; “at nine in the
evening, bring her to me there. I needn’t tell you to be secret. It’s
your interest.”
With these words, he led the way to the door, after stopping to
pay for the liquor that had been drunk. Shortly remarking that
their roads were different, he departed without more ceremony
than an emphatic repetition of the hour of appointment for the
following night.
On glancing at the address, the parochial functionary observed
that it contained no name. The stranger had not gone far, so he
made after him to ask it.
“What do you want,” cried the man, turning quickly round, as
Bumble touched him on the arm, “following me?”
“Only to ask a question,” said the other, pointing to the scrap of
paper. “What name am I to ask for?”
“Monks!” rejoined the man; and strode hastily away.
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Chapter 38
Containing An Account Of What Passed Between
Mr. And Mrs. Bumble, And Mr. Monks, At Their
Nocturnal Interview.
It was a dull, close, overcast summer evening. The clouds,
which had been threatening all day, spread out in a dense and
sluggish mass of vapour, already yielded large drops of rain,
and seemed to presage a violent thunder-storm, when Mr. and
Mrs. Bumble, turning out of the main street of the town, directed
their course towards a scattered little colony of ruinous houses,
distant from it some miles and a half, or thereabouts, and erected
on a low, unwholesome swamp, bordering upon the river.
They were both wrapped in old and shabby outer garments,
which might, perhaps, serve the double purpose of protecting
their persons from the rain, and sheltering them from observation.
The husband carried a lantern, from which, however, no light yet
shone; and trudged a few paces in front as though—the way being
dirty—to give his wife the benefit of treading in his heavy
footprints. They went on, in profound silence; every now and then,
Mr. Bumble relaxed his pace, and turned his head as if to make
sure that his helpmate was following; then, discovering that she
was close at his heels he mended his rate of walking, and
proceeded, at a considerable increase of speed, towards their place
of destination.
This was far from being a place of doubtful character; for it had
long been known as the residence of none but low ruffians, who,
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under various pretences of living by their labour, subsisted chiefly
on plunder and crime. It was a collection of mere hovels—some,
hastily built with loose bricks, others, of old worm-eaten ship-
timber jumbled together without any attempt at order or
arrangement, and planted, for the most part, within a few feet of
the river’s bank. A few leaky boats drawn up on the mud, and
made fast to the dwarf wall which skirted it, and here and there an
oar or coil of rope, appeared, at first, to indicate that the
inhabitants of these miserable cottages pursued some avocation
on the river; but a glance at the shattered and useless condition of
the articles thus displayed, would have led a passer-by, without
much difficulty, to the conjecture that they were disposed there,
rather for the preservation of appearances, than with any view of
their being actually employed.
In the heart of this cluster of huts, and skirting the river, which
its upper storey overhung, stood a large building, formerly used as
a manufactory of some kind. It had, in its day, probably furnished
employment to the inhabitants of the surrounding tenements. But
it had long since gone to ruin. The rat, the worm, and the action of
the damp, had weakened and rotted the piles on which it stood;
and a considerable portion of the building had already sunk down
into the water; while the remainder, tottering and bending over
the dark stream, seemed to wait a favourable opportunity of
following its old companion, and involving itself in the same fate.
It was before this ruinous building that the worthy couple
paused, as the first peal of distant thunder reverberated in the air,
and the rain commenced pouring violently down.
“The place should be somewhere here,” said Bumble,
consulting a scrap of paper he held in his hand.
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“Hollo, there!” cried a voice from above.
Following the sound, Mr. Bumble raised his head, and descried
a man looking out of a door, breast-high, on the second storey.
“Stand still a minute,” cried the voice; “I’ll be with you directly.”
With which the head disappeared, and the door closed.
“Is that the man?” asked Mr. Bumble’s good lady.
Mr. Bumble nodded in the affirmative.
“Then, mind what I told you,” said the matron; “and be careful
to say as little as you can, or you’ll betray us at once.”
Mr. Bumble, who had eyed the building with very rueful looks,
was apparently about to express some doubts relative to the
advisability of proceeding any further with the enterprise just
then, when he was prevented by the appearance of Monks; who
opened a small door, near which they stood, and beckoned them
inwards.
“Come in!” he cried impatiently, stamping his foot upon the
ground. “Don’t keep me here!”
The woman, who had hesitated at first, walked boldly in,
without any other invitation. Mr. Bumble, who was ashamed or
afraid to lay behind, followed; obviously very ill at ease and with
scarcely any of that remarkable dignity which was usually his chief
characteristic.
“What the devil made you stand lingering there, in the wet?”
said Monks, turning round, and addressing Bumble, after he had
bolted the door behind them.
“We—we were only cooling ourselves,” stammered Bumble,
looking apprehensively about him.
“Cooling yourselves!” retorted Monks. “Not all the rain that
ever fell, or ever will fall, will put as much of hell’s fire out, as a
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man can carry about with him. You won’t cool yourself so easily;
don’t think it!”
With this agreeable speech, Monks turned short upon the
matron, and bent his gaze upon her, till even she, who was not
easily cowed, was fain to withdraw her eyes, and turn them
towards the ground.
“This is the woman, is it?” demanded Monks.
“Hem! That is the woman,” replied Mr. Bumble, mindful of his
wife’s caution.
“You think women never can keep secrets, I suppose?” said the
matron, interposing, and returning, as she spoke, the searching
look of Monks.
“I know they will always keep one till it’s found out,” said
Monks.
“And what may that be?” asked the matron.
“The loss of their own name,” replied Monks. “So, by the same
rule, if a woman’s a party to a secret that might hang or transport
her, I’m not afraid of her telling it to anybody; not I! Do you
understand, mistress?”
“No,” rejoined the matron, slightly colouring as she spoke.
“Of course you don’t!” said Monks. “How should you?”
Bestowing something half-way between a smile and a frown
upon his two companions, and again beckoning them to follow
him, the man hastened across the apartment, which was of
considerable extent, but low in the roof. He was preparing to
ascend a steep staircase, or rather ladder, leading to another floor
of warehouses above, when a bright flash of lightning streamed
down the aperture, and a peal of thunder followed, which shook
the crazy building to its centre.
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“Hear it!” he cried, shrinking back. “Hear it! Rolling and
crashing on as if it echoed through a thousand caverns where the
devils were hiding from it. I hate the sound!” He remained silent
for a few moments; and then, removing his hands suddenly from
his face, showed, to the unspeakable discomposure of Mr. Bumble,
that it was much distorted, and discoloured.
“These fits come over me, now and then,” said Monks,
observing his alarm; “and thunder sometimes brings them on.
Don’t mind me now; it’s all over for this once.”
Thus speaking, he led the way up the ladder; and hastily closing
the window-shutter of the room into which it led, lowered a
lantern which hung at the end of a rope and pulley passed through
one of the heavy beams in the ceiling, and which cast a dim light
