speak to me so kindly till you know me better. It is growing late.
Is—is—that door shut?”
“Yes,” said Rose, recoiling a few steps, as if to be nearer
assistance in case she should require it. “Why?”
“Because,” said the girl, “I am about to put my life, and the
lives of others in your hands. I am the girl that dragged little Oliver
back to old Fagin’s on the night he went out from the house in
Pentonville.”
“You!” said Rose Maylie.
“I, lady!” replied the girl. “I am the infamous creature you have
heard of, that lives among the thieves, and that never, from the
first moment I can recollect, my eyes and senses opening on
London streets, have known any better life, or kinder words than
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they have given me, so help me God! Do not mind shrinking
openly from me, lady. I am younger than you would think, to look
at me, but I am well used to it. The poorest women fall back, as I
make my way along the crowded pavement.”
“What dreadful things are these!” said Rose, involuntarily
falling from her strange companion.
“Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady,” cried the girl,
“that you had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood,
and that you were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot
and drunkenness, and—and— something worse than all—as I
have been from my cradle. I may use the word, for the alley and
the gutter were mine, as they will be my death-bed.”
“I pity you!” said Rose, in a broken voice. “It wrings my heart to
hear you!”
“Heaven bless you for your goodness!” rejoined the girl. “If you
knew what I am sometimes, you would pity me indeed. But I have
stolen away from those who would surely murder me, if they knew
I had been here, to tell you what I have overheard. Do you know a
man named Monks?”
“No,” said Rose.
“He knows you,” replied the girl; “and knew you were here, for
it was by hearing him tell the place that I found you out.”
“I never heard the name,” said Rose.
“Then he goes by some other amongst you,” rejoined the girl,
“which I more than thought before. Some time ago, and soon after
Oliver was put into your house on the night of the robbery, I—
suspecting this man—listened to a conversation held between him
and Fagin in the dark. I found out, from what I heard, that
Monks—the man I asked you about, you know—”
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“Yes,” said Rose, “I understand.”
“That Monks,” pursued the girl, “had seen him accidentally
with two of our boys on the day we first lost him, and had known
him directly to be the same child that he was watching for, though
I couldn’t make out why. A bargain was struck with Fagin, that if
Oliver was got back he should have a certain sum; and he was to
have more for making him a thief, which this Monks wanted for
some purpose of his own.”
“For what purpose?” asked Rose.
“He caught sight of my shadow on the wall as I listened, in the
hope of finding out,” said the girl; “and there are not many people
besides me that could have got out of their way in time to escape
discovery. But I did; and I saw him no more till last night.”
“And what occurred then?”
“I’ll tell you, lady. Last night he came again. Again they went
upstairs, and I, wrapping myself up so that my shadow should not
betray me, again listened at the door. The first words I heard
Monks say were these: ‘So the only proofs of the boy’s identity lie
at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received them from
the mother is rotting in her coffin.’ They laughed, and talked of his
success in doing this; and Monks, talking on about the boy, and
getting very wild, said that though he had got the young devil’s
money safely now, he’d rather have had it the other way; for, what
a game it would have been to have brought down the boast of the
father’s will, by driving him through every jail in town and then
hauling him up for some felony which Fagin could easily manage,
after having made a good profit of him besides.”
“What is all this?” said Rose.
“The truth, lady, though it comes from my lips,” replied the girl.
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“Then he said, with oaths common enough in my ears, but strange
to yours, that if he could gratify his hatred by taking the boy’s life
without bringing his own neck in danger, he would; but, as he
couldn’t, he’d be upon the watch to meet him at every turn in life;
and if he took advantage of his birth and history, he might harm
him yet. ‘In short, Fagin,’ he says, ‘Jew as you are, you never laid
such snares as I’ll contrive for my young brother, Oliver.’”
“His brother!” exclaimed Rose.
“Those were his words,” said Nancy, glancing uneasily round,
as she had scarcely ceased to do, since she began to speak, for a
vision of Sikes haunted her perpetually. “And more. When he
spoke of you and the other lady, and said it seemed contrived by
Heaven, or the devil against him, that Oliver should come into
your hands, he laughed, and said there was some comfort in that,
too, for how many thousand and hundreds of thousands of pounds
would you not give, if you had them, to know who your two-legged
spaniel was.”
“You do not mean,” said Rose, turning very pale, “to tell me
that this was said in earnest?”
“He spoke in hard and angry earnest, if a man ever did,”
replied the girl, shaking her head. “He is an earnest man when his
hatred is up. I know many who do worse things; but I’d rather
listen to them all a dozen times, than to that Monks once. It is
growing late, and I have to reach home without suspicion of
having been on such an errand as this. I must get back quickly.”
“But what can I do?” said Rose. “To what use can I turn this
communication without you? Back! Why do you wish to return to
companions you paint in such terrible colours? If you repeat this
information to a gentleman whom I can summon in an instant
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from the next room, you can be consigned to some place of safety
without half an hour’s delay.”
“I wish to go back,” said the girl. “I must go back, because—
how can I tell such things to an innocent lady like you?—because
among the men I have told you of, there is one—the most
desperate among them all—that I can’t leave; no, not even to be
saved from the life I am leading now.”
“Your having interfered in this dear boy’s behalf before,” said
Rose; “your coming here, at so great a risk, to tell me what you
have heard; your manner, which convinces me of the truth of what
you say; your evident contrition and sense of shame; all lead me to
believe that you might be yet reclaimed. Oh!” said the earnest girl,
folding her hands as the tears coursed down her face, “do not turn
a deaf ear to the entreaties of one of your own sex; the first—the
first, I do believe, who ever appealed to you in the voice of pity and
compassion. Do hear my words, and let me save you yet, for better
things.”
“Lady,” cried the girl, sinking on her knees, “dear, sweet angel-
lady, you are the first that ever blessed me with such words as
these, and if I had heard them years ago, they might have turned
me from a life of sin and sorrow; but it is too late—it is too late!”
“It is never too late,” said Rose, “for penitence and atonement.”
“It is,” cried the girl, writhing in the agony of her mind; “I
cannot leave him now! I could not be his death!”
“Why should you be?” asked Rose.
“Nothing could save him,” cried the girl. “If I told others what I
have told you, and led to their being taken, he would be sure to
die. He is the boldest, and has been so cruel!”
“Is it possible,” cried Rose, “that for such a man as this, you can
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resign every future hope, and the certainty of immediate rescue?
It is madness.”
“I don’t know what it is,” answered the girl; “I only know that it
is so, and not with me alone, but with hundreds of others as bad
and wretched as myself. I must go back. Whether it is God’s wrath
for the wrong I have done, I do not know; but I am drawn back to
him through every suffering and ill-usage; and I should be, I
believe, if I know that I was to die by his hand at last.”
“What am I to do?” said Rose. “I should not let, you depart from
me thus.”
“You should, lady, and I know you will,” rejoined the girl,
rising. “You will not stop my going because I have trusted in your
goodness, and forced no promise from you, as I might have done.”
“Of what use, then, is the communication you have made?” said
Rose. “This mystery must be investigated, or how will its
disclosure to me benefit Oliver, whom you are anxious to serve?”
“You must have some kind of gentleman about you that will
hear it as a secret, and advise you what to do,” rejoined the girl.
“But where can I find you again when it is necessary?” asked
Rose. “I do not seek to know where these dreadful people live, but
where will you be walking or passing at any settled period from
thus time?”
“Will you promise me that you will have my secret strictly kept,
and come alone, or with the only other person that knows it; and
that I shall not be watched or followed?” asked the girl.
“I promise you solemnly,” answered Rose.
“Every Sunday night, from eleven until the clock strikes
twelve,” said the girl without hesitation, “I will walk on London
Bridge, if I am alive.”
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“Stay another moment,” interposed Rose, as the girl moved
hurriedly towards the door. “Think once again on your own
condition, and the opportunity you have of escaping from it. You
have a claim on me, not only as the voluntary bearer of this
intelligence, but as a woman lost almost beyond redemption. Will
you return to this gang of robbers, and to this man, when a word
can save you? What fascination is it that can take you back, and
make you cling to wickedness and misery? Oh! is there no chord
in your heart that I can touch! Is there nothing left, to which I can
appeal against this terrible infatuation!
“When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are,”
replied the girl steadily, “give away your hearts, love will carry you
all lengths—even such as you, who have a home, friends, other
admirers, everything, to fill them. When such as I, who have no
certain roof but the coffin-lid, and no friend in sickness or death
but the hospital nurse, set our rotten hearts on any man, and let
him fill the place that has been a blank through all our wretched
lives, who can hope to cure us? Pity us, lady—pity us for having
only one feeling of the woman left, and for having that turned, by a
heavy judgement, from a comfort and a pride, into a new means of
violence and suffering.”
“You will,” said Rose, after a pause, “take some money from
me, which may enable you to live without dishonesty—at all
events until we meet again.”
“Not a penny,” replied the girl, waving her hand.
“Do not close your heart against all my efforts to help you,” said
Rose, stepping gently forward. “I wish to serve you indeed.”
“You would serve me best, lady,” replied the girl, wringing her
hands, “if you could take my life at once; for I have felt more grief
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to think of what I am, tonight, than I ever did before, and it would
be something not to die in the hell in which I have lived. God bless
you, sweet lady, and send as much happiness on your head as I
have brought shame on mine!”
Thus speaking, and sobbing aloud, the unhappy creature
turned away; while Rose Maylie, overpowered by this
extraordinary interview, which had more the semblance of a rapid
dream than an actual occurrence, sank into a chair and
endeavoured to collect her wandering
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Chapter 41
Containing Fresh Discoveries, And Showing That
Surprises, Like Misfortunes, Seldom Come Alone.
Her situation was, indeed, one of no common trial and
difficulty. While she felt the most eager and burning
desire to penetrate the mystery in which Oliver’s history
was enveloped, she could not but hold sacred the confidence
which the miserable woman with whom she had just conversed,
had reposed in her, as a young and guileless girl. Her words and
manner had touched Rose Maylie’s heart; and, mingled with her
love for her young charge, and scarcely less intense in its truth
and fervour, was her fond wish to win the outcast back to
repentance and hope.
They purposed remaining in London only three days, prior to
departing for some weeks to a distant part of the coast. It was now
midnight of the first day. What course of action could she
determine upon, which could be adopted in eight-and-forty hours?
Or how could she postpone the journey without exciting
suspicion?
Mr. Losberne was with them, and would be for the next two
days; but Rose was too well acquainted with the excellent
gentleman’s impetuosity, and foresaw too clearly the wrath with
which, in the first explosion of his indignation, he would regard
the instrument of Oliver’s recapture, to trust him with the secret,
when her representations in the girl’s behalf could be seconded by
no experienced person. These were all reasons for the greatest
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caution and most circumspect behaviour in communicating it to
Mrs. Maylie, whose first impulse would infallibly be to hold a
conference with the worthy doctor on the subject. As to resorting
to any legal adviser, even if she had known how to do so, it was
scarcely to be thought of, for the same reasons. Once the thought
occurred to her of seeking assistance from Harry; but this
awakened the recollection of their last parting, and it seemed
unworthy of her to call him back, when—the tears rose to her eyes
as she pursued this train of reflection—he might have by this time
learned to forget her, and to be happier away.
Disturbed by these different reflections, inclining now to one
course and then to another, and again recoiling from all, as each
successive consideration presented itself to her mind, Rose passed
a sleepless and anxious night. After more communing with herself
next day, she arrived at the desperate conclusion of consulting
Harry.
“If it be painful to him,” she thought, “to come back here, how
painful it will be to me! But perhaps he will not come; he may
write, or he may come himself, and studiously abstain from
meeting me—he did when he went away. I hardly thought he
would; but it was better for us both.” And here Rose dropped the
pen, and turned away, as though the very paper which was to be
her messenger should not see her weep.
She had taken up the same pen, and laid it down again fifty
times, and had considered and reconsidered the first line of her
letter without writing the first word, when Oliver, who had been
walking in the streets, with Mr. Giles for a bodyguard, entered the
room in such breathless haste and violent agitation, as seemed to
betoken some new cause of alarm.
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“What makes you look so hurried?” asked Rose, advancing to
meet him.
“I hardly know how; I feel as if I should be choked,” replied the
boy. “Oh, dear! To think that I should see him at last, and you
should be able to know that I have told you all the truth!”
“I never thought you had told us anything but the truth,” said
Rose, soothing him. “But what is this?—of whom do you speak?”
“I have seen the gentleman,” replied Oliver, scarcely able to
articulate, “the gentleman who was so good to me—Mr. Brownlow,
that we have so often talked about.”
“Where?” asked Rose.
“Getting out of a coach,” replied Oliver, shedding tears of
delight, “and going into a house. I didn’t speak to him—I couldn’t
speak to him, for he didn’t see me, and I trembled so, that I was
not able to go up to him. But Giles asked, for me, whether he lived
there, and they said he did. Look here,” said Oliver, opening a
scrap of paper, “here it is; here’s where he lives—I’m going there
directly! Oh, dear me, dear me! What shall I do when I come to see
him and hear him speak again!”
With her attention not a little distracted by these and a great
many other incoherent exclamations of joy, Rose read the address,
which was Craven Street, in the Strand, and very soon determined
upon turning the discovery to account.
“Quick!” she said, “tell them to fetch a hackney-coach, and be
ready to go with me. I will take you there directly, without a
moment’s loss of time. I will only tell my aunt that we are going
out for an hour, and be ready as soon as you are.”
