A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAPTER.
IT was fortunate for the girl that the possession of money occasioned
Mr. Sikes 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 his lynx-eyed friend, the
Jew, 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 every body, and being,
furthermore, in an unusually amiable condition, as has been already
observed, saw nothing unusual in her demeanour, and indeed, troubled
himself so little about her, that, had her agitation been far more
perceptible than it was, it would have been very unlikely to have
awakened his suspicions.
As the day closed in, the girl’s excitement increased, and, when night
came on, and she sat by, watching till the housebreaker should drink
himself asleep, there was an unusual paleness in her cheek, and 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, ha?”
“Of many things, Bill,” replied the girl, shuddering, 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 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 it
off.
“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, and 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; the housebreaker 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’s heavy hand
upon her shoulder; then stooping softly over the bed, she kissed the
robber’s lips, and 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 his
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 seemed to
excite a 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 Park.
As the brilliant light of the lamp which burnt 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,
pray?”
“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, will you?”
“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 any body
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.
“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 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 up stairs, and 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 became still
more so when the man returned, and said the young woman was to walk up
stairs.
“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.
The third contented herself with wondering “what ladies was made of;”
and the fourth took the first in a quartette 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, in which he left her, and retired.
The girl’s life had been squandered in the streets, and 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 shrunk 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 one 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 all outward 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, and then
bending them on the ground, tossed her head with affected carelessness
as she said,
“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 it; but 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; “you distress me. If you are in
poverty or affliction I shall be truly happy to relieve you if I
can,—I shall indeed. Sit down.”
“Let me stand, lady,” said the girl, still weeping, “and do not
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, the Jew’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 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 deathbed.”
“I pity you!” said Rose in a broken voice. “It wrings my heart to hear
you!”
“God 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 us,” 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—”
“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 up
stairs, 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 capital
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.
“Then he said with oaths common enough in my ears, but strangers 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, clasping her hands.
“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 thousands 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 one instant 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
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 should be, I believe, if I knew 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 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 this 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.”
“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 home, friends, other admirers, every
thing to fill them. When such as me, 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 parents, home, and friends filled once, or 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 judgment 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 to think
of what I am to-night than I ever did before, and it would be something
not to die in the same 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
bore more the semblance of a rapid dream than an actual occurrence,
sank into a chair, and endeavoured to collect her wandering thoughts.