“Any news?” inquired Fagin.
“Great.”
“And—and—good?” asked Fagin, hesitating as though he
feared to vex the other man by being too sanguine.
“Not bad, anyway,” replied Monks, with a smile. “I have been
prompt enough this time. Let me have a word with you.”
The girl drew closer to the table, and made no offer to leave the
room, although she could see that Monks was pointing to her. The
Jew, perhaps fearing she might say something aloud about the
money, if he endeavoured to get rid of her, pointed upward, and
took Monks out of the room.
“Not that infernal hole we were in before,” she could hear the
man say as they went upstairs. Fagin laughed; and making some
reply which did not reach her, seemed, by the creaking of the
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boards, to lead his companion to the second storey.
Before the sound of their footsteps had ceased to echo through
the house, the girl had slipped off her shoes; and drawing her
gown loosely over her head, and muffling her arms in it, stood at
the door, listening with breathless interest. The moment the noise
ceased, she glided from the room; ascended the stairs with
incredible softness and silence; and was lost in the gloom above.
The room remained deserted for a quarter of an hour or more;
the girl glided back with the same unearthly tread; and,
immediately afterwards, the two men were heard descending.
Monks went at once into the street; and the Jew crawled upstairs
again for the money. When he returned, the girl was adjusting her
shawl and bonnet, as if preparing to be gone.
“Why, Nance,” exclaimed the Jew, staring back as he put down
the candle, “how pale you are!”
“Pale!” echoed the girl, shading her eyes with her hands, as if to
look steadily at him.
“Quite horrible. What have you been doing to yourself?”
“Nothing that I know of, except sitting in this close place for I
don’t know how long and all,” replied the girl carelessly. “Come!
Let me get back; that’s a dear.”
With a sigh for every piece of money, Fagin told the amount
into her hand. They parted without more conversation, merely
interchanging a “good-night.”
When the girl got into the open street, she sat down upon a
doorstep; and seemed, for a few moments, wholly bewildered and
unable to pursue her way. Suddenly she arose; and hurrying on, in
a direction quite opposite to that in which Sikes was awaiting her
return, quickened her pace, until it gradually resolved into a
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violent run. After completely exhausting herself, she stopped to
take breath; and, as if suddenly recollecting herself, and deploring
her inability to do something she was bent upon, wrung her hands,
and burst into tears.
It might be that her tears relieved her, or that she felt the full
hopelessness of her condition; but she turned back; and hurrying
with nearly as great rapidity in the contrary direction, partly to
recover lost time, and partly to keep pace with the violent current
of her own thoughts, soon reached the dwelling where she had left
the housebreaker.
If she betrayed any agitation, when she presented herself to Mr.
Sikes, he did not observe it; for merely inquiring if she had
brought the money, and receiving a reply in the affirmative, he
uttered a growl of satisfaction, and replacing his head upon the
pillow, resumed the slumbers which her arrival had interrupted.
It was fortunate for her that the possession of money
occasioned him so much employment next day in the way of eating
and drinking; and withal had so beneficial an effect in smoothing
down the asperities of his temper; that he had neither time nor
inclination to be very critical upon her behaviour and deportment.
That she had all the abstracted and nervous manner of one who is
on the eve of some bold and hazardous step, which it has required
no common struggle to resolve upon, would have been obvious to
the lynx-eyed Fagin, who would most probably have taken the
alarm at once; but Mr. Sikes, lacking the niceties of
discrimination, and being troubled with no more subtle misgivings
than those which resolve themselves into a dogged roughness of
behaviour towards everybody; and being, furthermore, in an
unusually amiable condition, as has been already observed, saw
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nothing unusual in her demeanour, and indeed, troubled himself
so little about her, that, had her agitation been or more perceptible
than it was, it would have been very unlikely to have awakened his
suspicions.
As that day closed in, the girl’s excitement increased; and, when
night came on, and she sat by, watching until the housebreaker
should drink himself asleep, there was an unusual paleness in her
cheek, and a fire in her eye, that even Sikes observed with
astonishment.
Mr. Sikes being weak from the fever, was lying in bed, taking
hot water with his gin to render it less inflammatory; and had
pushed his glass towards Nancy to be replenished for the third or
fourth time, when these symptoms first struck him.
“Why, burn my body!” said the man, raising himself on his
hands as he stared the girl in the face. “You look like a corpse
come to life again. What’s the matter?”
“Matter!” replied the girl. “Nothing. What do you look at me so
hard for?”
“What foolery is this?” demanded Sikes, grasping her by the
arm, and shaking her roughly. “What is it? What do you mean?
What are you thinking of?”
“Of many things, Bill,” replied the girl, shivering, and as she did
so, pressing her hands upon her eyes. “But, Lord! What odds in
that?”
The tone of forced gaiety in which the last words were spoken,
seemed to produce a deeper impression on Sikes than the wild
and rigid look which had preceded them.
“I tell you wot it is,” said Sikes; “if you haven’t caught the fever,
and got it comin’ on, now, there’s something more than usual in
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the wind, and something dangerous, too. You’re not a-going to No,
damme! you wouldn’t do that!”
“Do what?” asked the girl.
“There ain’t,” said Sikes, fixing his eyes upon her, and
muttering the words to himself—“there ain’t a stauncher-hearted
gal going, or I’d have cut her throat three months ago. She’s got
the fever coming on; that’s it.”
Fortifying himself with this assurance, Sikes drained the glass
to the bottom, and then, with many grumbling oaths, called for his
physic. The girl jumped up, with great alacrity; poured it quickly
out, but with her back towards him; and held the vessel to his lips,
while he drank off the contents.
“Now,” said the robber, “come and sit aside of me, and put on
your own face; or I’ll alter it so, that you won’t know it again when
you do want it.”
The girl obeyed. Sikes, locking her hand in his, fell back upon
the pillow, turning his eyes upon her face. They closed; opened
again; closed once more; again opened. He shifted his position
restlessly; and, after dozing again, and again, for two or three
minutes, and as often springing up with a look of terror, and
gazing vacantly about him, was suddenly stricken, as it were,
while in the very attitude of rising, into a deep and heavy sleep.
The grasp of his hand relaxed; the upraised arm fell languidly by
his side; and he lay like one in a profound trance.
“The laudanum has taken effect at last,” murmured the girl, as
she rose from the bedside. “I may be too late, even now.”
She hastily dressed herself in her bonnet and shawl, looking
fearfully round, from time to time, as if, despite the sleeping
draught, she expected every moment to feel the pressure of Sikes’
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heavy hand upon her shoulders; then stooping softly over the bed,
she kissed the robber’s lips; and then opening and closing the
room door with noiseless touch, hurried from the house.
A watchman was crying half-past nine, down a dark passage
through which she had to pass, in gaining the main thoroughfare.
“Has it long gone the half-hour?” asked the girl.
“It’ll strike the hour in another quarter,” said the man, raising
the lantern to her face.
“And I cannot get there in less than an hour or more,” muttered
Nancy, brushing swiftly past him, and gliding rapidly down the
street.
Many of the shops were already closing in the back lanes and
avenues through which she tracked her way, in making from
Spitalfields towards the west end of London. The clock struck ten,
increasing her impatience. She tore along the narrow pavement,
elbowing the passengers from side to side, and darting almost
under the horses’ heads, crossed crowded streets, where clusters
of persons were eagerly watching their opportunity to do the like.
“‘The woman is mad!” said the people, turning to look after her
as she rushed away.
When she reached the more wealthy quarter of the town, the
streets were comparatively deserted; and here her headlong
progress excited a still greater curiosity in the stragglers whom
she hurried past. Some quickened their pace behind, as though to
see whither she was hastening at such an unusual rate; and a few
made head upon her, and looked back, surprised at her
undiminished speed; but they fell off one by one; and when she
neared her place of destination, she was alone.
It was a family hotel in a quiet but handsome street near Hyde
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Park. As the brilliant light of the lamp which burned before its
door, guided her to the spot, the clock struck eleven. She had
loitered for a few paces as though irresolute, and making up her
mind to advance; but the sound determined her, and she stepped
into the hall. The porter’s seat was vacant. She looked round with
an air of incertitude, and advanced towards the stairs.
“Now, young woman!” said a smartly-dressed female, looking
out from a door behind her, “who do you want here ?”
“A lady who is stopping in this house,” answered the girl.
“A lady!” was the reply, accompanied with a scornful look.
“What lady?”
“Miss Maylie,” said Nancy.
The young woman, who had by this time noted her appearance,
replied only by a look of virtuous disdain, and summoned a man to
answer her. To him, Nancy repeated her request.
“What name am I to say?” asked the waiter.
“It’s of no use saying any,” replied Nancy.
“Nor business?” said the man.
“No, nor that neither,” rejoined the girl. “I must see the lady.”
“Come!” said the man, pushing her towards the door. “None of
this. Take yourself off.”
“I shall be carried out, if I go!” said the girl violently; “and I can
make that a job that two of you won’t like to do. Isn’t there
anybody here,” she said, looking round, “that will see a simple
message carried for a poor wretch like me?”
This appeal produced an effect on a good-tempered-faced man-
cook, who with some other of the servants was looking on, and
who stepped forward to interfere.
“Take it up for her, Joe; can’t you?” said this person.
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“What’s the good?” replied the man. “You don’t suppose the
young lady will see such as her, do you?”
This allusion to Nancy’s doubtful character, raised a vast
quantity of chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who
remarked, with great fervour, that the creature was a disgrace to
her sex; and strongly advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly, into
the kennel.
“Do what you like with me,” said the girl, turning to the men
again; “but do what I ask you first, and I ask you to give this
message for God Almighty’s sake.”
The soft-hearted cook added his intercession, and the result
was that the man who had first appeared undertook its delivery.
“What’s it to be?” said the man, with one foot on the stairs.
“That a young woman earnestly asks to speak to Miss Maylie
alone,” said Nancy; “and that if the lady will only hear the first
word she has to say, she will know whether to hear her business,
or to have her turned out of doors as an impostor.”
“I say,” said the man, “you’re coming it strong!”
“You give the message,” said the girl firmly; “and let me hear
the answer.”
The man ran upstairs. Nancy remained, pale and almost
breathless, listening with quivering lip to the very audible
expressions of scorn, of which the chaste housemaids were very
prolific; and of which they became still more so, when the man
returned, and said the young woman was to walk upstairs.
“It’s no good being proper in this world,” said the first
housemaid.
“Brass can do better than the gold what has stood the fire,” said
the second.
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The third contented herself with wondering “what ladies was
made of;” and the fourth took the first in a quartet of “Shameful!”
with which the Dianas concluded.
Regardless of all this, for she had weightier matters at heart,
Nancy followed the man, with trembling limbs, to a small
antechamber, lighted by a lamp from the ceiling. Here he left her,
and retired.
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Chapter 40
A Strange Interview, Which Is A Sequel To The
Last Chapter.
The girl’s life had been squandered in the streets, and
among the most noisome of the stews and dens of London,
but there was something of the woman’s original nature
left in her still; and when she heard a light step approaching the
door opposite to that by which she had entered, and thought of the
wide contrast which the small room would in another moment
contain, she felt burdened with the sense of her own deep shame,
and shrank as though she could scarcely bear the presence of her
with whom she had sought this interview.
But struggling with these better feelings was pride—the vice of
the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high
and self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and
ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the
scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the
gallows itself—even this degraded being felt too proud to betray a
feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a
weakness, but which alone connected her with that humanity, of
which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when
a very child.
She raised her eyes sufficiently to observe that the figure which
presented itself was that of a slight and beautiful girl; then,
bending them on the ground, she tossed her head with affected
carelessness as she said:
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“It’s a hard matter to get to see you, lady. If I had taken offence,
and gone away, as many would have done, you’d have been sorry
for it one day, and not without reason either.”
“I am very sorry if any one has behaved harshly to you,” replied
Rose. “Do not think of that. Tell me why you wished to see me. I
am the person you inquired for.”
The kind tone of this answer, the sweet voice, the gentle
manner, the absence of any accent of haughtiness or displeasure,
took the girl completely by surprise, and she burst into tears.
“Oh, lady, lady!” she said, clasping her hands passionately
before her face, “if there was more like you, there would be fewer
like me—there would—there would!”
“Sit down,” said Rose earnestly. “If you are in poverty or
affliction I shall be truly glad to relieve you if I can—I shall indeed.
Sit down.”
“Let me stand, lady,” said the girl, still weeping, “and do not
