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from me because of this, have shrunk from you, and proved you so
far right. Such power and patronage, such relatives of influence
and rank, as smiled upon me then, look coldly now; but there are
smiling fields and waving trees in England’s richest county; and by
one village church—mine, Rose, my own!—there stands a rustic
dwelling which you can make me prouder of, than all the hopes I
have renounced, measured a thousandfold. This is my rank and
station now, and here I lay it down!”
*****
“It’s a trying time waiting supper for lovers,” said Mr. Grimwig,
waking up, and pulling his pocket-handkerchief from over his
head.
Truth to tell, the supper had been waiting a most unreasonable
time. Neither Mrs. Maylie, nor Harry, nor Rose (who all came in
together), could offer a word in extenuation.
“I had serious thoughts of eating my head tonight,” said Mr.
Grimwig, “for I began to think I should get nothing else. I’ll take
the liberty, if you’ll allow me, of saluting the bride that is to be.”
Mr. Grimwig lost no time in carrying this notice into effect upon
the blushing girl; and the example, being contagious, was followed
both by the doctor and Mr. Brownlow. Some people affirm that
Harry Maylie had been observed to set it, originally, in a dark
room adjoining; but the best authorities consider this downright
scandal, he being young and a clergyman.
“Oliver, my child,” said Mrs. Maylie, “where have you been, and
why do you look so sad? There are tears stealing down your face at
this moment. What is the matter?”
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It is a world of disappointment—often to the hopes we most
cherish, and hopes that do our nature the greatest honour.
Poor Dick was dead!
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Chapter 52
Fagin’s Last Night Alive
The court was paved, from floor to roof, with human faces.
Inquisitive and eager eyes peered from every inch of
space. From the rail before the dock, away into the
sharpest angle of the smallest corner in the galleries, all looks
were fixed upon one man—Fagin. Before him and behind—above,
below, on the right and on the left—he seemed to stand
surrounded by a firmament, all bright with gleaming eyes.
He stood there, in all this glare of living light, with one hand
resting on the wooden slab before him, the other held to his ear,
and his head thrust forward to enable him to catch with greater
distinctness every word that fell from the presiding judge, who
was delivering his charge to the jury. At times, he turned his eyes
sharply upon them to observe the effect of the slightest
featherweight in his favour; and when the points against him were
stated with terrible distinctness, looked towards his counsel, in
mute appeal that he would, even then, urge something in his
behalf. Beyond these manifestations of anxiety, he stirred not
hand or foot. He had scarcely moved since the trial began; and
now that the judge ceased to speak, he still remained in the same
strained attitude of close attention, with his gaze bent on him, as
though he listened still.
A slight bustle in the court, recalled him to himself. Looking
round, he saw that the jurymen had turned together to consider of
their verdict. As his eyes wandered to the gallery, he could see the
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people rising above each other to see his face—some hastily
applying their glasses to their eyes—and others whispering to
their neighbours with looks expressive of abhorrence. A few there
were, who seemed unmindful of him, and looked only to the jury,
in impatient wonder how they could delay. But in no one face—
not even among the women, of whom there were many there—
could he read the faintest sympathy with himself, or any feeling by
one of all-absorbing interest that he should be condemned.
As he saw all this in one bewildered glance, the death-like
stillness came again, and looking back, he saw that the jurymen
had turned towards the judge. Hush!
They only sought permission to retire.
He looked wistfully into their faces, one by one, when they
passed out, as though to see which way the greater number
leaned; but that was fruitless. The Jailer touched him on the
shoulder. He followed mechanically to the end of the dock, and sat
down on a chair. The man pointed it out, or he would not have
seen it.
He looked up into the gallery again. Some of the people were
eating, and some fanning themselves with handkerchiefs; for the
crowded place was very hot. There was one young man sketching
his face in a little note-book. He wondered whether it was like, and
looked on when the artist broke his pencil-point, and made
another with his knife, as any idle spectator might have done.
In the same way, when he turned his eyes towards the judge,
his mind began to busy itself with the fashion of his dress, and
what it cost, and how he put it on. There was an old fat gentleman
on the bench, too, who had gone out, some half an hour before,
and now come back. He wondered within himself whether this
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man had been to get his dinner, what he had had, and where he
had had it; and pursued this train of careless thought until some
new object caught his eye and roused another.
Not that, all this time, his mind was, for an instant, free from
one oppressive overwhelming sense of the grave that opened at his
feet; it was ever present to him, but in a vague and general way,
and he could not fix his thoughts upon it. Thus, even while he
trembled, and turned burning hot at the idea of speedy death, he
fell to counting the iron spikes before him, and wondering how the
head of one had been broken off and whether they would mend it,
or leave it as it was. Then he thought of all the horrors of the
gallows and the scaffold—and stopped to watch a man sprinkling
the floor to cool it—and then went on to think again.
At length there was a cry of silence, and a breathless look from
all towards the door. The jury returned, and passed him close.
He could glean nothing from their faces; they might as well
have been of stone. Perfect stillness ensued—not a rustle—not a
breath—Guilty.
The building rang with a tremendous shout, and another, and
another, and then it echoed loud groans, that gathered strength as
they swelled out, like angry thunder. It was a peal of joy from the
populace outside, greeting the news that he would die on Monday.
The noise subsided, and he was asked if he had anything to say
why sentence of death should not be passed upon him. He had
resumed his listening attitude, and looked intently at his
questioner while the demand was made; but it was twice repeated
before he seemed to hear it, and then he only muttered that he
was an old man—an old man—an old man—and so, dropping into
a whisper, was silent again.
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The judge assumed the black cap, and the prisoner still stood
with the same air and gesture. A woman in the gallery uttered
some exclamation, called forth by this dread solemnity; he looked
hastily up as if angry at the interruption, and bent forward yet
more attentively. The address was solemn and impressive; the
sentence fearful to hear. But he stood, like a marble figure,
without the motion of a nerve. His haggard face was still thrust
forward, his underjaw hanging down, and his eyes staring out
before him, when the jailer put his hand upon his arm, and
beckoned him away. He gazed stupidly about him for an instant,
and obeyed.
They led him through a paved room under the court, where
some prisoners were waiting till their turns came, and others were
talking to their friends, who crowded round a grate which looked
into the open yard. There was nobody there to speak to him; but,
as he passed, the prisoners fell back to render him more visible to
the people who were clinging to the bars; and they assailed him
with opprobrious names, and screeched and hissed. He shook his
fist, and would have spat upon them; but his conductors hurried
him on, through a gloomy passage lighted by a few dim lamps, into
the interior of the prison.
Here he was searched, that he might not have about him the
means of anticipating the law; this ceremony performed, they led
him to one of the condemned cells, and left him there—alone.
He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served
for seat and bedstead; and casting his bloodshot eyes upon the
ground, tried to collect his thoughts. After a while, he began to
remember a few disjointed fragments of what the judge had said;
though it had seemed to him, at the time, that he could not hear a
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word. These gradually fell into their proper places, and by degrees
suggested more; so that in a little time he had the whole, almost as
it was delivered. To be hanged by the neck, till he was dead—that
was the end. To be hanged by the neck—till he was dead.
As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had
known who had died upon the scaffold; some of them through his
means. They rose up, in such quick succession, that he could
hardly count them. He had seen some of them die—and had joked
too, because they died with prayers upon their lips. With what a
rattling noise, the drop went down; and how suddenly they
changed, from strong vigorous men to dangling heaps of clothes!
Some of them might have inhabited that very cell—sat upon
that very spot. It was very dark; why didn’t they bring a light? The
cell had been built for many years. Scores of men must have
passed their last hours there. It was like sitting in a vault strewn
with dead bodies—the cap, the noose, the pinioned arms, the faces
that he knew, even beneath that hideous veil.—Light, light!
At length, when his hands were raw with beating against the
heavy door and walls, two men appeared, one bearing a candle,
which he thrust into an iron candlestick fixed against the wall, the
other dragging in a mattress on which to pass the night; for the
prisoner was to be left alone no more.
Then came night—dark, dismal, silent night. Other watchers
are glad to hear this church clock strike, for they tell of life and
coming day. To him they brought despair. The boom of every iron
bell came laden with the one, deep, hollow sound—Death. What
availed the noise and bustle of cheerful morning, which
penetrated even there, to him? It was another form of knell, with
mockery added to the warning.
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The day passed off—day! There was no day; it was gone as soon
as come—and night came on again; night so long, and yet so short;
long in its dreadful silence, and short in its fleeting hours. At one
time he raved and blasphemed; and at another howled and tore
his hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion had come to pray
beside him, but he had driven them away with curses. They
renewed their charitable efforts and he beat them o￡ Saturday
night. He had only one night more to live. And as he thought of
this, the day broke—Sunday.
It was not until the night of this last awful day, that a withering
sense of his helpless, desperate state came in its full intensity upon
his blighted soul; not that he had ever held any defined or positive
hope of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more
than the dim probability of dying so soon. He had spoken little to
either of the two men, who relieved each other in their attendance
upon him; and they, for their parts, made no effort to rouse his
attention. He had sat there, awake, but dreaming. Now, he started
up, every minute, and with gasping mouth and burning skin,
hurried to and fro, in such a paroxysm of fear and wrath that even
they—used to such sights—recoiled from him with horror. He
grew so terrible, at last, in all the tortures of his evil conscience,
that one man could not bear to sit there, eyeing him alone; and so
the two kept watch together.
He cowered down upon his stone bed, and thought of the past.
He had been wounded with some missiles from the crowd on the
day of his capture, and his head was bandaged with a linen cloth.
His red hair hung down upon his bloodless face; his beard was
torn, and twisted into knots; his eyes shone with a terrible light;
his unwashed flesh crackled with the fever that burned him up.
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Eight—nine—ten. If it was not a trick to frighten him, and those
were the real hours treading on each other’s heels, where would
he be, when they came round again! Eleven. Another struck,
before the voice of the previous hour had ceased to vibrate. At
eight, he would be the only mourner in his own funeral train; at
eleven—
Those dreadful walls of Newgate, which have hidden so much
misery and such unspeakable anguish, not only from the eyes, but,
too often, and too long, from the thoughts, of men, never held so
dread a spectacle as that. The few who lingered as they passed,
and wondered what the man was doing who was to be hanged
tomorrow, would have slept but ill that night, if they could have
seen him.
From early in the evening until nearly midnight, little groups of
two and three presented themselves at the lodge gate, and
inquired, with anxious faces, whether any reprieve had been
received. These being answered in the negative, communicated
the welcome intelligence to clusters in the street who pointed out
to one another the door from which he must come out, and
showed where the scaffold would be built, and walking with
unwilling steps away, turned back to conjure up the scene. By
degrees they fell off, one by one; and, for an hour, in the dead of
night, the street was left to solitude and darkness.
The space before the prison was cleared, and a few strong
barriers, painted black, had been already thrown across the road
to break the pressure of the expected crowd, when Mr. Brownlow
and Oliver appeared at the wicket, and presented an order of
admission to the prisoner, signed by one of the sheriffs. They were
immediately admitted to the lodge.
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“Is the young gentleman to come too, sir?” said the man whose
duty it was to conduct them. “It’s not a sight for children, sir.”
“It is not indeed, my friend,” rejoined Mr. Brownlow; “but my
business with this man is intimately connected with him; and as
the child has seen him in the full career of his success and villainy,
I think it as well—even at the cost of some pain and fear—that he
should see him now.”
These few words had been said apart, so as to be inaudible to
Oliver. The man touched his hat; and, glancing at Oliver with
some curiosity, opened another gate, opposite to that by which
they had entered, and led them on, through dark and winding
ways, towards the cells.
“This,” said the man, stopping in a gloomy passage where a
couple of workmen were making some preparations in profound
silence—“this is the place he passes through. If you step this way,
you can see the door he goes out at.”
He led them into a stone kitchen, fitted with coppers for
dressing the prison food, and pointed to a door. There was an open
grating above it, through which came the sound of men’s voices,
mingled with the noise of hammering, and the throwing down of
boards. They were putting up the scaffold.
From this place, they passed through several strong gates,
opened by other turnkeys—from the inner side; and, having
entered an open yard, ascended a flight of narrow steps, and came
into a passage with a row of strong doors on the left hand.
Motioning them to remain where they were, the turnkey knocked
at one of these with his bunch of keys. The two attendants, after a
little whispering, came out into the passage, stretching themselves
as if glad of the temporary relief, and motioned the visitors to
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follow the jailer into the cell. They did so.
The condemned criminal was seated on his bed, rocking
himself from side to side, with a countenance more like that of a
snared beast than the face of a man. His mind was evidently
wandering to his old life, for he continued to mutter, without
appearing conscious of their presence otherwise than as a part of
his vision.
“Good boy, Charley—well done,” he mumbled. “Oliver, too, ha!
ha! ha! Oliver too—quite the gentleman now—quite the—Take the
boy away to bed!”
The jailer took the disengaged hand of Oliver; and, whispering
to him not to be alarmed, looked on without speaking.
“Take him away to bed!” cried Fagin. “Do you hear me, some of
you? He has been the—the—somehow the cause of all this. It’s
worth the money to bring him up to it—Bolter’s throat, Bill; never
mind the girl—Bolter’s throat as deep as you can cut. Saw his
head off!”
“Fagin,” said the jailer.
“That’s me!” cried Fagin, falling instantly into the attitude of
listening he had assumed upon his trial. “An old man, my Lord; a
very old, old man!”
“Here,” said the turnkey, laying his hand upon his breast to
keep him down. “Here’s somebody wants to see you, to ask you
some questions, I suppose. Fagin, Fagin! Are you a man?”
“I shan’t be one long,” he replied, looking up with a face
retaining no human expression but rage and terror. “Strike them
all dead! What right have they to butcher me?”
As he spoke he caught sight of Oliver and Mr. Brownlow.
Shrinking to the farthest corner of the seat, he demanded to know
