upon an old table and three chairs that were placed beneath it.
“Now,” said Monks, when they had all three seated themselves,
“the sooner we come to our business, the better for all. The
woman knows what it is, does she?”
The question was addressed to Bumble; but his wife anticipated
his reply, by intimating that she was perfectly acquainted with it.
“He is right in saying that you were with this hag the night she
died; and that she told you something—”
“About the mother of the boy you named,” replied the matron,
interrupting him. “Yes.”
“The first question is, of what nature was her communication?”
said Monks.
“That’s the second,” observed the woman, with much
deliberation. “The first is, what may the communication be
worth?”
“Who the devil can tell that, without knowing of what kind it
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is?” asked Monks.
“Nobody better than you, I am persuaded,” answered Mrs.
Bumble, who did not want for spirit, as her yoke-fellow could
abundantly testify.
“Humph!” said Monks significantly, and with a look of eager
inquiry; “there may be money’s worth to get, eh?”
“Perhaps there may,” was the composed reply.
“Something that was taken from her,” said Monks. “Something
that she wore. Something that—”
“You had better bid,” interrupted Mrs. Bumble. “I have heard
enough, already, to assure me that you are the man I ought to talk
to.”
Mr. Bumble, who had not yet been admitted by his better half
into any greater share of the secret than he had originally
possessed, listened to this dialogue with outstretched neck and
distended eyes, which he directed towards his wife and Monks, by
turns, in undisguised astonishment—increased, if possible, when
the latter sternly demanded what sum was required for the
disclosure.
“What’s it worth to you?” asked the woman, as collectedly as
before.
“It may be nothing; it may be twenty pounds,” replied Monks.
“Speak out, and let me know which.”
“Add five pounds to the sum you have named; give me five-andtwenty pounds in gold,” said the woman; “and I’ll tell you all I
know. Not before.”
“Five-and-twenty pounds!” exclaimed Monks, drawing back.
“I spoke as plainly as I could,” replied Mrs. Bumble. “It’s not a
large sum, either.”
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“Not a large sum for a paltry secret, that may be nothing when
it’s told!” cried Monks impatiently; “and which has been lying
dead for twelve years past or more!”
“Such matters keep well, and, like good wine, often double their
value in course of time,” answered the matron, still preserving the
resolute indifference she had assumed. “As to lying dead, there
are those who will lie dead for twelve thousand years to come, or
twelve million, for anything you or I know, who will tell strange
tales at last!”
“What if I pay it for nothing?” asked Monks hesitatingly.
“You can easily take it away again,” replied the matron. “I am
but a woman, alone here, and unprotected.”
“Not alone, my dear, nor unprotected neither,” submitted Mr.
Bumble, in a voice tremulous with fear; “I am here, my dear. And
besides,” said Mr. Bumble, his teeth chattering as he spoke, “Mr.
Monks is too much of a gentleman to attempt any violence on
porochial persons. Mr. Monks is aware that I am not a young man,
my dear, and also that I am a little run to seed, as I may say; but he
has heerd—I say I have no doubt Mr. Monks has heerd, my dear—
that I am a very determined officer, with very uncommon
strength, if I’m once roused. I only want a little rousing; that’s all.”
As Mr. Bumble spoke, he made a melancholy feint of grasping
his lantern with fierce determination; and plainly showed, by the
alarmed expression of every feature, that he did want a little
rousing, and not a little, prior to making any very warlike
demonstration—unless, indeed, against paupers, or other person
or persons trained down for the purpose.
“You are a fool,” said Mrs. Bumble, in reply; “and had better
hold your tongue.”
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“He had better have cut it out, before he came, if he can’t speak
in a lower tone,” said Monks grimly. “So! He’s your husband, eh?”
“He my husband!” tittered the matron, parrying the question.
“I thought as much, when you came in,” rejoined Monks,
marking the angry glance which the lady darted at her spouse as
she spoke. “So much the better; I have less hesitation in dealing
with two people, when I find that there’s only one will between
them. I’m in earnest. See here!” He thrust his hand into a side-
pocket; and, producing a canvas bag, told out twenty-five
sovereigns on the table, and pushed them over to the woman.
“Now,” he said, “gather them up; and when this cursed peal of
thunder, which I feel is coming up to break over the house-top, is
gone, let’s hear your story.”
The thunder, which seemed in fact much nearer and to shiver
and break almost over their heads, having subsided, Monks,
raising his face from the table, bent forward to listen to what the
woman should say. The faces of the three nearly touched, as the
two men leaned over the small table in their eagerness to hear,
and the woman also leaned forward to render her whisper audible.
The sickly rays of the suspended lantern falling directly upon
them, aggravated the paleness and anxiety of their countenances,
which, encircled by the deepest gloom and darkness, looked
ghastly in the extreme.
“When this woman, that we called old Sally, died,” the matron
began, “she and I were alone.”
“Was there no one by?” asked Monks, in the same hollow
whisper; “no sick wretch or idiot in some other bed? No one who
could hear, and might, by possibility, understand?”
“Not a soul,” replied the woman; “we were alone. I stood alone
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beside the body when death came over it.”
“Good,” said Monks, regarding her attentively. “Go on.”
“She spoke of a young creature,” resumed the matron, “who
had brought a child into the world some years before; not merely
in the same room, but in the same bed, in which she then lay
dying.”
‘‘Ay?” said Monks, with quivering lip, and glancing over his
shoulder. “Blood! How things come about!”
“The child was the one you named to him last night,” said the
matron, nodding carelessly towards her husband; “the mother this
nurse had robbed.”
“In life?” asked Monks.
“In death,” replied the woman, with something like a shudder.
“She stole from the corpse, when it had hardly turned to one, that
which the dead mother had prayed her, with her last breath, to
keep for the infant’s sake.”
“She sold it?” cried Monks, with desperate eagerness; “did she
sell it? Where! When? To whom? How long before?”
“As she told me, with great difficulty, that she had done this,”
said the matron, “she fell back and died.”
“Without saying more?” cried Monks, in a voice which, from its
very suppression, seemed only the more furious. “It’s a lie! I’ll not
be played with. She said more. I’ll tear the life out of you both, but
I’ll know what it was.”
“She didn’t utter another word,” said the woman, to all
appearance unmoved (as Mr. Bumble was very far from being) by
the strange man’s violence; “but she clutched my gown, violently,
with one hand, which was partly closed; and when I saw that she
was dead, and so removed the hand by force, I found it clasped a
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scrap of dirty paper.”
“Which contained—” interposed Monks, stretching forward.
“Nothing,” replied the woman; “it was a pawnbroker’s
duplicate.”
“For what?” demanded Monks.
“In good time I’ll tell you,” said the woman. “I judge that she
had kept the trinket, for some time, in the hope of turning it to
better account; and then had pawned it; and had saved or scraped
together money to pay the pawnbroker’s interest year by year, and
prevent it running out; so that if anything came of it, it could still
be redeemed. Nothing had come of it; and, as I tell you, she died
with the scrap of paper, all worn and tattered, in her hand. The
time was out in two days; I thought something might one day come
of it too; and so redeemed the pledge.”
“Where is it now?” asked Monks quickly.
“There,” replied the woman. And, as if glad to be relieved of it,
she hastily threw upon the table a small kid bag scarcely large
enough for a French watch, which Monks pouncing upon, tore
open with trembling hands. It contained a little gold locket, in
which were two locks of hair, and a plain gold wedding-ring.
“It has the word ‘Agnes’ engraved on the inside,” said the
woman. “There is a blank left for the surname; and then follows
the date; which is within a year before the child was born. I found
out that.”
“And this is all?” said Monks, after a close and eager scrutiny of
the contents of the little packet.
“All,” replied the woman.
Mr. Bumble drew a long breath, as if he were glad to find that
the story was over, and no mention made of taking the five-and-
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twenty pounds back again; and now he took courage to wipe off
the perspiration which had been trickling over his nose,
unchecked, during the whole of the previous dialogue.
“I know nothing of the story, beyond what I can guess at,” said
his wife, addressing Monks, after a short silence; “and I want to
know nothing; for it’s safer not. But I may ask you two questions,
may I?”
“You may ask,” said Monks, with some show of surprise; “but
whether I answer or not is another question.”
“Which makes three,” observed Mr. Bumble, essaying a stroke
of facetiousness.
“Is that what you expected to get from me?” demanded the
matron “It is,” replied Monks. “The other question?”
“What do you propose to do with it? Can it be used against
me?”
“Never,” rejoined Monks; “nor against me either. See here! But
don’t move a step forward, or your life is not worth a bulrush.”
With these words, he suddenly wheeled the table aside, and
pulling an iron ring in the boarding, threw back a large trapdoor
which opened close at Mr. Bumble’s feet, and caused that
gentleman to retire several paces backward, with great
precipitation.
“Look down,” said Monks, lowering the lantern into the gulf.
“Don’t fear me. I could have let you down, quietly enough, when
you were seated over it, if that had been my game.”
Thus encouraged, the matron drew near to the brink; and even
Mr. Bumble himself, impelled by curiosity, ventured to do the
same. The turbid water, swollen by the heavy rain, was rushing
rapidly on below; and all other sounds were lost in the noise of its
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plashing and eddying against the green and slimy piles. There had
once been a water-mill beneath; the tide foaming and chafing
round the few rotten stakes, and fragments of machinery that yet
remained, seemed to dart onward, with a new impulse, when freed
from the obstacles which had unavailingly attempted to stem its
headlong course.
“If you flung a man’s body down there, where would it be by
tomorrow morning?” said Monks, swinging the lantern to and fro
in the dark well.
“Twelve miles down the river, and cut to pieces besides,”
replied Bumble, recoiling at the thought.
Monks drew the little packet from his breast, where he had
hurriedly thrust it; and tying it to a leaden weight, which had
formed a part of some pulley, and was lying on the floor, dropped
it into the stream. It fell straight, and true as a die; clove the water
with a scarcely audible splash; and was gone.
The three, looking into each other’s faces, seemed to breathe
more freely.
“There!” said Monks, closing the trap-door, which fell heavily
back into its former position. “If the sea ever gives up its dead, as
books say it will, it will keep its gold and silver to itself, and that
trash among it. We have nothing more to say, and may break up
our pleasant party.”
“By all means,” observed Mr. Bumble, with great alacrity.
“You’ll keep a quiet tongue in your head, will you?” said
Monks, with a threatening look. “I am not afraid of your wife.”
“You may depend upon me, young man,” answered Mr.
Bumble, bowing himself gradually towards the ladder, with
excessive politeness. “On everybody’s account, young man; on my
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own, you know, Mr. Monks.”
“I am glad, for your sake, to hear it,” remarked Monks. “Light
your lantern! And get away from here as fast as you can.”
It was fortunate that the conversation terminated at this point,
or Mr. Bumble, who had bowed himself to within six inches of the
ladder, would infallibly have pitched headlong into the room
below. He lighted his lantern from that which Monks had
detached the rope, and now carried in his hand; and, making no
effort to prolong the discourse, descended in silence, followed by
his wife. Monks brought up the rear, after pausing on the steps to
satisfy himself that there were no other sounds to be heard than
the beating of the rain without, and the rushing of the water.
They traversed the lower room, slowly, and with caution; for
Monks started at every shadow; and Mr. Bumble, holding his
lantern a foot above the ground, walked not only with remarkable
care, but with a marvellously light step for a gentleman of his
figure, looking nervously about him for hidden trap-doors. The
gate at which they had entered, was softly unfastened and opened
by Monks; and, merely exchanging a nod with their mysterious
acquaintance, the married couple emerged into the wet and
darkness outside.
They were no sooner gone, than Monks, who appeared to
entertain an invincible repugnance to being left alone, called to a
boy who had been hidden somewhere below. Bidding him go first,
and bear the light, he returned to the chamber he had just quitted.
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Chapter 39
Introduces Some Respectable Characters With
Whom The Reader Is Already Acquainted, And
Shows How Monks And The Jew Laid Their Worthy
Heads Together
O n the evening following that upon which the three
worthies mentioned in the last chapter, disposed of their
little matter of business as therein narrated, Mr. William
Sikes, awakening from a nap, drowsily growled forth an inquiry
what time of night it was.
The room in which Mr. Sikes propounded this question, was
not one of those he had tenanted, previous to the Chertsey
expedition, although it was in the same quarter of the town, and
was situated at no great distance from his former lodgings. It was
not, in appearance, so desirable a habitation as his old quarters,
being a mean and badly-furnished apartment, of very limited size;
lighted only by one small window in the shelving roof, and
abutting on a close and dirty lane. Nor were there wanting other
indications of the good gentleman’s having gone down in the
world of late; for a great scarcity of furniture and total absence of
comfort, together with the disappearance of all such small
movables as spare clothes and linen, bespoke a state of extreme
poverty; while the meagre and attenuated condition of Mr. Sikes
himself would have fully confirmed these symptoms, if they had
stood in any need of corroboration.
The housebreaker was lying on the bed, wrapped in his white
