her heart, as she had done before—and then ran on, wildly, in the
same words, over and over again, as if he had gone distracted. I
believe he had.”
“The will,” said Mr. Brownlow, as Oliver’s tears fell fast.”
Monks was silent.
“The will,” said Mr. Brownlow, speaking for him, “was in the
same spirit as the letter. He talked of miseries which his wife had
brought upon him; of the rebellious disposition, vice, malice, and
premature bad passions of you his only son, who had been trained
to hate him; and left you, and your mother, each an annuity of
eight hundred pounds. The bulk of his property he divided into
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two equal portions—one for Agnes Fleming, and the other for
their child, if it should be born alive, and ever come of age. If it
were a girl, it was to inherit the money unconditionally; but if a
boy, only on the stipulation that in his minority he should never
have stained his name with any public act of dishonour, meanness,
cowardice, or wrong. He did this, he said, to mark his confidence
in the mother, and his conviction—only strengthened by
approaching death—that the child would share her gentle heart,
and noble nature. If he were disappointed in this expectation, then
the money was to come to you; for then, and not till then, when
both children were equal, would he recognise your prior claim
upon his purse, who had none upon his heart, but had from an
infant, repulsed him with coldness and aversion.”
“My mother,” said Monks, in a louder tone, “did what a woman
should have done. She burned this will. The letter never reached
its destination; but that, and other proofs, she kept, in case they
ever tried to lie away the blot. The girl’s father had the truth from
her with every aggravation that her violent hate—I love her for it
now—could add. Goaded by shame and dishonour he fled with his
children into a remote corner of Wales, changing his very name
that his friends might never know of his retreat; and here, no great
while afterwards, he was found dead in his bed. The girl had left
her home, in secret, some weeks before; he had searched for her,
on foot, in every town and village near; it was on the night when
he returned home, assured that she had destroyed herself? to hide
her shame and his, that his old heart broke.”
There was a short silence here, until Mr. Brownlow took up the
thread of the narrative.
“Years after this,” he said, “this man’s—Edward Leeford’s—
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mother came to me. He had left her, when only eighteen; robbed
her of jewels and money; gambled, squandered, forged, and fled to
London, where for two years he had associated with the lowest
outcasts. She was sinking under a painful and incurable disease,
and wished to recover him before she died. Inquiries were set on
foot, and strict searches made. They were unavailing for a long
time, but ultimately successful; and he went back with her to
France.”
“There she died,” said Monks, “after a lingering illness; and, on
her deathbed, she bequeathed these secrets to me, together with
her unquenchable and deadly hatred of all whom they involved—
though she need not have left me that, for I had inherited it long
before. She would not believe that the girl had destroyed herself,
and the child too, but was filled with the impression that a male
child had been born, and was alive. I swore to her, if ever it
crossed my path, to hunt it down; never to let it rest; to pursue it
with the bitterest and most unrelenting animosity; to vent upon it
the hatred that I deeply felt, and to spit upon the empty vaunt of
that insulting will by dragging it, if I could, to the very gallows-
foot. She was right. He came in my way at last. I began well; and,
but for babbling drabs, I would have finished as I began!”
As the villain folded his arms tight together, and muttered
curses on himself in the impotence of baffled malice, Mr.
Brownlow turned to the terrified group beside him, and explained
that the Jew, who had been his old accomplice and confidant, had
a large reward for keeping Oliver ensnared, of which some part
was to be given up, in the event of his being rescued, and that a
dispute on this head had led to their visit to the country houses for
the purpose of identifying hum.
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“The locket and ring?” said Mr. Brownlow, turning to Monks.
“I bought them from the man and woman I told you of, who
stole them from the nurse, who stole them from the corpse,”
answered Monks, without raising his eyes. “You know what
became of them.”
Mr. Brownlow merely nodded to Mr. Grimwig, who
disappearing with great alacrity, shortly returned, pushing in Mrs.
Bumble, and dragging her unwilling consort after him.
“Do my hi’s deceive me!” cried Mr. Bumble, with ill-feigned
enthusiasm, “or is that little Oliver? Oh, O-li-ver, if you know’d
how I’ve been a-grieving for you—”
“Hold your tongue, fool,” murmured Mrs. Bumble.
“Isn’t natur’, natur’, Mrs. Bumble?” remonstrated the
workhouse master. “Can’t I be supposed to feel—I as brought him
up porochially—when I see him a-setting here among ladies and
gentlemen of the very affablest description! I always loved that
boy as if he’d been my—my—my own grandfather,” said Mr.
Bumble, halting for an appropriate comparison. “Master Oliver,
my dear, you remember the blessed gentleman in the white
waistcoat? Ah! he went to heaven last week, in a oak coffin with
plated handles, Oliver.”
“Come, sir,” said Mr. Grimwig tartly; “suppress your feelings.
“I will do my endeavours, sir,” replied Mr. Bumble. “How do
you do, sir? I hope you are very well” This salutation was
addressed to Mr. Brownlow, who had stepped up to within a short
distance of the respectable couple. He inquired, as he pointed to
Monks:
“Do you know that person?”
“No,” replied Mrs. Bumble flatly.
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“Perhaps you don’t?” said Mr. Brownlow, addressing her
spouse.
“I never saw him in all my life,” said Mr. Bumble.
“Nor sold him anything, perhaps?”
“No,” replied Mr. Bumble.
“You never had, perhaps, a certain gold locket and ring?” said
Mr. Brownlow.
“Certainly not,” replied the matron. “Why are we brought here
to answer to such nonsense as this?”
Again Mr. Brownlow nodded to Mr. Grimwig; and again that
gentleman limped away with extraordinary readiness. But not
again did he return with a stout man and wife; for this time, he led
in two palsied women, who shook and tottered as they walked.
“You shut the door the night old Sally died,” said the foremost
one, raising her shrivelled hand, “but you couldn’t shut out the
sound, nor stop the chinks.”
“No, no,” said the other, looking round her and wagging her
toothless jaw. “No, no, no.”
“We heard her try to tell you what she’d done, and saw you take
a paper from her hand, and watched you too, next day, to the
pawnbroker’s shop,” said the first.
“Yes,” added the second, “and it was a ‘locket and gold ring.’
We found out that, and saw it given you. We were by. Oh! we were
by.”
“And we knew more than that,” resumed the first, “for she told
us often, long ago, that the young mother had told her that, feeling
she should never get over it, she was on her way, at the time that
she was taken ill, to die near the grave of the father of the child.”
“Would you like to see the pawnbroker himself?” asked Mr.
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Grimwig, with a motion towards the door.
“No,” replied the woman; “if he”—she pointed to Monks—“has
been coward enough to confess, as I see he has, and you have
sounded all these hags till you have found the right ones, I have
nothing more to say. I did sell them, and they’re where you’ll
never get them. What then?”
“Nothing,” replied Mr. Brownlow, “except that it remains for us
to take care that neither of you is employed in a situation of trust
again. You may leave the room.”
“I hope,” said Mr. Bumble, looking about him with great
ruefulness, as Mr. Grimwig disappeared with the two old woman—
”I hope that this unfortunate little circumstance will not deprive
me of my porochial office?”
“Indeed it will,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “You may make up your
mind to that, and think yourself well off besides.”
“It was all Mrs. Bumble.—She would do it,” urged Mr. Bumble,
first looking round to ascertain that his partner had left the room.
“That is no excuse,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “You were present
on the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and indeed are
the more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law
supposes that your wife acts under your direction.”
“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat
emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the
eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law
is, that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”
Laying great stress on the repetition of these two words, Mr.
Bumble fixed his hat on very tight, and putting his hands in his
pockets, followed his helpmate downstairs.
“Young lady,” said Mr. Brownlow, turning to Rose, “give me
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your hand. Do not tremble. You need not fear to hear the few
remaining words I have to say.”
“If they have—I do not know how they can, but if they have any
reference to me,” said Rose, “pray let me hear them at some other
time. I have not strength or spirits now.”
“Nay,” returned the old gentleman, drawing her arm through
his; “you have more fortitude than this, I am sure. Do you know
this young lady, sir?”
“Yes,” replied Monks.
“I never saw you before,” said Rose faintly.
“I have seen you often,” returned Monks.
“The father of the unhappy Agnes had two daughters,” said Mr.
Brownlow. “What was the fate of the other—the child?”
“The child,” replied Monks, “when her father died in a strange
place, in a strange name, without a letter, book, or scrap of paper
that yielded the faintest clue by which his friends or relatives
could be traced—the child was taken by some wretched cottagers,
who reared it as their own.”
“Go on,” said Mr. Brownlow, sighing to Mrs. Maylie to
approach. “Go on!”
“You couldn’t find the spot to which these people had
repaired,” said Monks, “but where friendship fails, hatred will
often force a way. My mother found it, after a year of cunning
search—ay, and found the child.”
“She took it, did she?”
“No. The people were poor and began to sicken—at least the
man did—of their fine humanity; so she left it with them, giving
them a small present of money which would not last long, and
promising more, which she never meant to send. She didn’t quite
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rely, however, on their discontent and poverty for the child’s
unhappiness, but told the history of her sister’s shame, with such
alterations as suited her; bade them take good heed of the child,
for she came of bad blood; and told them she was illegitimate, and
sure to go wrong at one time or other. The circumstances
countenanced all this; the people believed it; and there the child
dragged on an existence, miserable enough even to satisfy us, until
a widow lady, residing, then, at Chester, saw the girl by chance,
pitied her, and took her home. There was some cursed spell, I
think, against us; for in spite of all our efforts she remained there
and was happy. I lost sight of her, two or three years ago, and saw
her no more until a few months back.”
“Do you see her now?”
“Yes. Leaning on your arm.”
“But not the less my niece,” cried Mrs. Maylie, folding the
fainting girl in her arms; “not the less my dearest child. I would
not lose her now, for all the treasures of the world. My sweet
companion, my own dear girl!”
“The only friend I ever had,” cried Rose, clinging to her. “The
kindest, best of friends. My heart will burst, I cannot bear all this.”
“You have borne more, and have been through all, the best and
gentlest creature that ever shed happiness on every one she
knew,” said Mrs. Maylie, embracing her tenderly. “Come, come,
my love, remember who this is who waits to clasp you in his arms,
poor child! See here—look, look, my dear!”
“Not aunt,” cried Oliver, throwing his arms about her neck; “I’ll
never call her aunt—sister, my own dear sister, that something
taught my heart to love so dearly from the first! Rose, dear, darling
Rose!”
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Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were
exchanged in the long, close embrace between the orphans, be
sacred. A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that
one moment. Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there
were no bitter tears; for even grief itself arose so softened, and
clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a
solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.
They were a long, long time alone. A soft tap at the door, at
length announced that some one was without. Oliver opened it,
glided away, and gave place to Harry Maylie.
“I know it all,” he said, taking a seat beside the lovely girl.
“Dear Rose, I know it all.”
“I am not here by accident,” he added, after a lengthened
silence; “nor have I heard all this tonight, but I knew it
yesterday—only yesterday. Do you guess that I have come to
remind you of a promise?”
“Stay,” said Rose. “You do know all.”
“All. You gave me leave, at any time within a year, to renew the
subject of our last discourse.”
“I did.”
“Not to press you to alter your determination,” pursued the
young man, “but to hear you repeat it, if you would. I was to lay
whatever of station or fortune I might possess at your feet, and if
you still adhered to your former determination, I pledged myself,
by no word or act, to seek to change it.”
“The same reasons which influenced me then, will influence me
now,” said Rose firmly. “If I ever owed a strict and rigid duty to
her, whose goodness saved me from a life of indigence and
suffering, when should I ever feel it, as I should tonight? It is a
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struggle,” said Rose, “but one I am proud to make; it is a pang, but
one my heart shall bear.”
“The disclosure of tonight—” Harry began.
“The disclosure of tonight,” replied Rose softly, “leaves me in
the same position, with reference to you, as that in which I stood
before.”
“You harden your heart against me, Rose,” urged her lover.
“Oh, Harry, Harry,” said the young lady, bursting into tears; “I
wish I could, and spare myself this pain.”
“Then why inflict it on yourself?” said Harry, taking her hand.
“Think, dear Rose, think what you have heard tonight.”
“And what have I heard? What have I heard?” cried Rose.
“That a sense of his deep disgrace so worked upon my own father
that he shunned all There, we have said enough, Harry, we have
said enough.”
“Not yet, not yet,” said the young man, detaining her as she
rose. “My hopes, my wishes, prospects, feeling—every thought in
life except my love for you—have undergone a change. I offer you,
now, no distinction among a bustling crowd; no mingling with a
world of malice and detraction where the blood is called into
honest cheeks by aught but real disgrace and shame; but a home—
a heart and home—yes, dearest Rose, and those, and those alone,
are all I have to offer.”
“What do you mean?” she faltered.
“I mean but this—that when I left you last, I left you, with a
firm determination to level all fancied barriers between yourself
and me; resolved that if my world could not be yours, I would
make yours mine; that no pride of birth should curl the lip at you,
for I would turn from it. This I have done. Those who have shrunk
