AND MRS. BUMBLE, AND MR. MONKS, AT THEIR NOCTURNAL INTERVIEW
It was a dull, close, overcast summer evening. The clouds, which had
been threatening all day, spread out in a dense and sluggish mass of
vapour, already yielded large drops of rain, and seemed to presage a
violent thunder-storm, when Mr. and Mrs. Bumble, turning out of the
main street of the town, directed their course towards a scattered
little colony of ruinous houses, distant from it some mile and
a-half, or thereabouts, and erected on a low unwholesome swamp,
bordering upon the river.
They were both wrapped in old and shabby outer garments, which
might, perhaps, serve the double purpose of protecting their persons
from the rain, and sheltering them from observation. The husband
carried a lantern, from which, however, no light yet shone; and
trudged on, a few paces in front, as though--the way being dirty--to
give his wife the benefit of treading in his heavy footprints. They
went on, in profound silence; every now and then, Mr. Bumble relaxed
his pace, and turned his head as if to make sure that his helpmate
was following; then, discovering that she was close at his heels,
he mended his rate of walking, and proceeded, at a considerable
increase of speed, towards their place of destination.
This was far from being a place of doubtful character; for it had
long been known as the residence of none but low ruffians, who,
under various pretences of living by their labour, subsisted chiefly
on plunder and crime. It was a collection of mere hovels: some,
hastily built with loose bricks: others, of old worm-eaten
ship-timber: jumbled together without any attempt at order or
arrangement, and planted, for the most part, within a few feet of
the river’s bank. A few leaky boats drawn up on the mud, and made
fast to the dwarf wall which skirted it: and here and there an
oar or coil of rope: appeared, at first, to indicate that the
inhabitants of these miserable cottages pursued some avocation on
the river; but a glance at the shattered and useless condition of
the articles thus displayed, would have led a passer-by, without
much difficulty, to the conjecture that they were disposed there,
rather for the preservation of appearances, than with any view to
their being actually employed.
In the heart of this cluster of huts; and skirting the river, which
its upper stories overhung; stood a large building, formerly used as
a manufactory of some kind. It had, in its day, probably furnished
employment to the inhabitants of the surrounding tenements. But it
had long since gone to ruin. The rat, the worm, and the action of
the damp, had weakened and rotted the piles on which it stood; and a
considerable portion of the building had already sunk down into
the water; while the remainder, tottering and bending over the dark
stream, seemed to wait a favourable opportunity of following its old
companion, and involving itself in the same fate.
It was before this ruinous building that the worthy couple paused,
as the first peal of distant thunder reverberated in the air, and
the rain commenced pouring violently down.
‘The place should be somewhere here,’ said Bumble, consulting a
scrap of paper he held in his hand.
‘Halloa there!’ cried a voice from above.
Following the sound, Mr. Bumble raised his head and descried a man
looking out of a door, breast-high, on the second story.
‘Stand still, a minute,’ cried the voice; ‘I’ll be with you
directly.’ With which the head disappeared, and the door closed.
‘Is that the man?’ asked Mr. Bumble’s good lady.
Mr. Bumble nodded in the affirmative.
‘Then, mind what I told you,’ said the matron: ‘and be careful to
say as little as you can, or you’ll betray us at once.’
Mr. Bumble, who had eyed the building with very rueful looks, was
apparently about to express some doubts relative to the advisability
of proceeding any further with the enterprise just then, when he was
prevented by the appearance of Monks: who opened a small door, near
which they stood, and beckoned them inwards.
‘Come in!’ he cried impatiently, stamping his foot upon the ground.
‘Don’t keep me here!’
The woman, who had hesitated at first, walked boldly in, without
any other invitation. Mr. Bumble, who was ashamed or afraid to lag
behind, followed: obviously very ill at ease and with scarcely
any of that remarkable dignity which was usually his chief
characteristic.
‘What the devil made you stand lingering there, in the wet?’ said
Monks, turning round, and addressing Bumble, after he had bolted the
door behind them.
‘We--we were only cooling ourselves,’ stammered Bumble, looking
apprehensively about him.
‘Cooling yourselves!’ retorted Monks. ‘Not all the rain that ever
fell, or ever will fall, will put as much of hell’s fire out, as
a man can carry about with him. You won’t cool yourself so easily;
don’t think it!’
With this agreeable speech, Monks turned short upon the matron, and
bent his gaze upon her, till even she, who was not easily cowed, was
fain to withdraw her eyes, and turn them towards the ground.
‘This is the woman, is it?’ demanded Monks.
‘Hem! That is the woman,’ replied Mr. Bumble, mindful of his wife’s
caution.
‘You think women never can keep secrets, I suppose?’ said the
matron, interposing, and returning, as she spoke, the searching look
of Monks.
‘I know they will always keep _one_ till it’s found out,’ said
Monks.
‘And what may that be?’ asked the matron.
‘The loss of their own good name,’ replied Monks. ‘So, by the same
rule, if a woman’s a party to a secret that might hang or transport
her, I’m not afraid of her telling it to anybody; not I! Do you
understand, mistress?’
‘No,’ rejoined the matron, slightly colouring as she spoke.
‘Of course you don’t!’ said Monks. ‘How should you?’
Bestowing something half-way between a smile and a frown upon his
two companions, and again beckoning them to follow him, the man
hastened across the apartment, which was of considerable extent, but
low in the roof. He was preparing to ascend a steep staircase, or
rather ladder, leading to another floor of warehouses above: when a
bright flash of lightning streamed down the aperture, and a peal of
thunder followed, which shook the crazy building to its centre.
‘Hear it!’ he cried, shrinking back. ‘Hear it! Rolling and crashing
on as if it echoed through a thousand caverns where the devils were
hiding from it. I hate the sound!’
He remained silent for a few moments; and then, removing his hands
suddenly from his face, showed, to the unspeakable discomposure of
Mr. Bumble, that it was much distorted and discoloured.
‘These fits come over me, now and then,’ said Monks, observing his
alarm; ‘and thunder sometimes brings them on. Don’t mind me now;
it’s all over for this once.’
Thus speaking, he led the way up the ladder; and hastily closing
the window-shutter of the room into which it led, lowered a lantern
which hung at the end of a rope and pulley passed through one of the
heavy beams in the ceiling: and which cast a dim light upon an old
table and three chairs that were placed beneath it.
‘Now,’ said Monks, when they had all three seated themselves, ‘the
sooner we come to our business, the better for all. The woman know
what it is, does she?’
The question was addressed to Bumble; but his wife anticipated the
reply, by intimating that she was perfectly acquainted with it.
‘He is right in saying that you were with this hag the night she
died; and that she told you something--’
‘About the mother of the boy you named,’ replied the matron
interrupting him. ‘Yes.’
‘The first question is, of what nature was her communication?’ said
Monks.
‘That’s the second,’ observed the woman with much deliberation. ‘The
first is, what may the communication be worth?’
‘Who the devil can tell that, without knowing of what kind it is?’
asked Monks.
‘Nobody better than you, I am persuaded,’ answered Mrs. Bumble:
who did not want for spirit, as her yoke-fellow could abundantly
testify.
‘Humph!’ said Monks significantly, and with a look of eager inquiry;
‘there may be money’s worth to get, eh?’
‘Perhaps there may,’ was the composed reply.
‘Something that was taken from her,’ said Monks. ‘Something that she
wore. Something that--’
‘You had better bid,’ interrupted Mrs. Bumble. ‘I have heard enough,
already, to assure me that you are the man I ought to talk to.’
Mr. Bumble, who had not yet been admitted by his better half into
any greater share of the secret than he had originally possessed,
listened to this dialogue with outstretched neck and distended
eyes: which he directed towards his wife and Monks, by turns, in
undisguised astonishment; increased, if possible, when the latter
sternly demanded, what sum was required for the disclosure.
‘What’s it worth to you?’ asked the woman, as collectedly as before.
‘It may be nothing; it may be twenty pounds,’ replied Monks. ‘Speak
out, and let me know which.’
‘Add five pounds to the sum you have named; give me five-and-twenty
pounds in gold,’ said the woman; ‘and I’ll tell you all I know. Not
before.’
‘Five-and-twenty pounds!’ exclaimed Monks, drawing back.
‘I spoke as plainly as I could,’ replied Mrs. Bumble. ‘It’s not a
large sum, either.’
‘Not a large sum for a paltry secret, that may be nothing when it’s
told!’ cried Monks impatiently; ‘and which has been lying dead for
twelve years past or more!’
‘Such matters keep well, and, like good wine, often double their
value in course of time,’ answered the matron, still preserving the
resolute indifference she had assumed. ‘As to lying dead, there are
those who will lie dead for twelve thousand years to come, or twelve
million, for anything you or I know, who will tell strange tales at
last!’
‘What if I pay it for nothing?’ asked Monks, hesitating.
‘You can easily take it away again,’ replied the matron. ‘I am but a
woman; alone here; and unprotected.’
‘Not alone, my dear, nor unprotected, neither,’ submitted Mr.
Bumble, in a voice tremulous with fear: ‘_I_ am here, my dear. And
besides,’ said Mr. Bumble, his teeth chattering as he spoke,
‘Mr. Monks is too much of a gentleman to attempt any violence on
porochial persons. Mr. Monks is aware that I am not a young man, my
dear, and also that I am a little run to seed, as I may say; bu he
has heerd: I say I have no doubt Mr. Monks has heerd, my dear: that
I am a very determined officer, with very uncommon strength, if I’m
once roused. I only want a little rousing; that’s all.’
As Mr. Bumble spoke, he made a melancholy feint of grasping his
lantern with fierce determination; and plainly showed, by the
alarmed expression of every feature, that he _did_ want a little
rousing, and not a little, prior to making any very warlike
demonstration: unless, indeed, against paupers, or other person or
persons trained down for the purpose.
‘You are a fool,’ said Mrs. Bumble, in reply; ‘and had better hold
your tongue.’
‘He had better have cut it out, before he came, if he can’t speak in
a lower tone,’ said Monks, grimly. ‘So! He’s your husband, eh?’
‘He my husband!’ tittered the matron, parrying the question.
‘I thought as much, when you came in,’ rejoined Monks, marking the
angry glance which the lady darted at her spouse as she spoke. ‘So
much the better; I have less hesitation in dealing with two people,
when I find that there’s only one will between them. I’m in earnest.
See here!’
He thrust his hand into a side-pocket; and producing a canvas bag,
told out twenty-five sovereigns on the table, and pushed them over
to the woman.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘gather them up; and when this cursed peal of
thunder, which I feel is coming up to break over the house-top, is
gone, let’s hear your story.’
The thunder, which seemed in fact much nearer, and to shiver and
break almost over their heads, having subsided, Monks, raising his
face from the table, bent forward to listen to what the woman should
say. The faces of the three nearly touched, as the two men leant
over the small table in their eagerness to hear, and the woman also
leant forward to render her whisper audible. The sickly rays of
the suspended lantern falling directly upon them, aggravated the
paleness and anxiety of their countenances: which, encircled by the
deepest gloom and darkness, looked ghastly in the extreme.
‘When this woman, that we called old Sally, died,’ the matron began,
‘she and I were alone.’
‘Was there no one by?’ asked Monks, in the same hollow whisper; ‘No
sick wretch or idiot in some other bed? No one who could hear, and
might, by possibility, understand?’
‘Not a soul,’ replied the woman; ‘we were alone. _I_ stood alone
beside the body when death came over it.’
‘Good,’ said Monks, regarding her attentively. ‘Go on.’
‘She spoke of a young creature,’ resumed the matron, ‘who had
brought a child into the world some years before; not merely in the
same room, but in the same bed, in which she then lay dying.’
‘Ay?’ said Monks, with quivering lip, and glancing over his
shoulder, ‘Blood! How things come about!’
‘The child was the one you named to him last night,’ said the
matron, nodding carelessly towards her husband; ‘the mother this
nurse had robbed.’
‘In life?’ asked Monks.
‘In death,’ replied the woman, with something like a shudder. ‘She
stole from the corpse, when it had hardly turned to one, that which
the dead mother had prayed her, with her last breath, to keep for
the infant’s sake.’
‘She sold it,’ cried Monks, with desperate eagerness; ‘did she sell
it? Where? When? To whom? How long before?’
‘As she told me, with great difficulty, that she had done this,’
said the matron, ‘she fell back and died.’
‘Without saying more?’ cried Monks, in a voice which, from its very
suppression, seemed only the more furious. ‘It’s a lie! I’ll not be
played with. She said more. I’ll tear the life out of you both, but
I’ll know what it was.’
‘She didn’t utter another word,’ said the woman, to all appearance
unmoved (as Mr. Bumble was very far from being) by the strange man’s
violence; ‘but she clutched my gown, violently, with one hand, which
was partly closed; and when I saw that she was dead, and so removed
the hand by force, I found it clasped a scrap of dirty paper.’
‘Which contained--’ interposed Monks, stretching forward.
‘Nothing,’ replied the woman; ‘it was a pawnbroker’s duplicate.’
‘For what?’ demanded Monks.
‘In good time I’ll tell you.’ said the woman. ‘I judge that she had
kept the trinket, for some time, in the hope of turning it to better
account; and then had pawned it; and had saved or scraped together
money to pay the pawnbroker’s interest year by year, and prevent
its running out; so that if anything came of it, it could still be
redeemed. Nothing had come of it; and, as I tell you, she died with
the scrap of paper, all worn and tattered, in her hand. The time was
out in two days; I thought something might one day come of it too;
and so redeemed the pledge.’
‘Where is it now?’ asked Monks quickly.
‘_There_,’ replied the woman. And, as if glad to be relieved of
it, she hastily threw upon the table a small kid bag scarcely large
enough for a French watch, which Monks pouncing upon, tore open with
trembling hands. It contained a little gold locket: in which were
two locks of hair, and a plain gold wedding-ring.
‘It has the word “Agnes” engraved on the inside,’ said the woman.
‘There is a blank left for the surname; and then follows the date;
which is within a year before the child was born. I found out that.’
‘And this is all?’ said Monks, after a close and eager scrutiny of
the contents of the little packet.
‘All,’ replied the woman.
Mr. Bumble drew a long breath, as if he were glad to find that the
story was over, and no mention made of taking the five-and-twenty
pounds back again; and now he took courage to wipe the perspiration
which had been trickling over his nose, unchecked, during the whole
of the previous dialogue.
‘I know nothing of the story, beyond what I can guess at,’ said his
wife addressing Monks, after a short silence; ‘and I want to know
nothing; for it’s safer not. But I may ask you two questions, may
I?’
‘You may ask,’ said Monks, with some show of surprise; ‘but whether
I answer or not is another question.’
‘--Which makes three,’ observed Mr. Bumble, essaying a stroke of
facetiousness.
‘Is that what you expected to get from me?’ demanded the matron.
‘It is,’ replied Monks. ‘The other question?’
‘What do you propose to do with it? Can it be used against me?’
‘Never,’ rejoined Monks; ‘nor against me either. See here! But don’t
move a step forward, or your life is not worth a bulrush.’
With these words, he suddenly wheeled the table aside, and pulling
an iron ring in the boarding, threw back a large trap-door which
opened close at Mr. Bumble’s feet, and caused that gentleman to
retire several paces backward, with great precipitation.
‘Look down,’ said Monks, lowering the lantern into the gulf. ‘Don’t
fear me. I could have let you down, quietly enough, when you were
seated over it, if that had been my game.’
Thus encouraged, the matron drew near to the brink; and even Mr.
Bumble himself, impelled by curiousity, ventured to do the same.
The turbid water, swollen by the heavy rain, was rushing rapidly on
below; and all other sounds were lost in the noise of its plashing
and eddying against the green and slimy piles. There had once been
a water-mill beneath; the tide foaming and chafing round the few
rotten stakes, and fragments of machinery that yet remained, seemed
to dart onward, with a new impulse, when freed from the obstacles
which had unavailingly attempted to stem its headlong course.
‘If you flung a man’s body down there, where would it be to-morrow
morning?’ said Monks, swinging the lantern to and fro in the dark
well.
‘Twelve miles down the river, and cut to pieces besides,’ replied
Bumble, recoiling at the thought.
Monks drew the little packet from his breast, where he had hurriedly
thrust it; and tying it to a leaden weight, which had formed a part
of some pulley, and was lying on the floor, dropped it into the
stream. It fell straight, and true as a die; clove the water with a
scarcely audible splash; and was gone.
The three looking into each other’s faces, seemed to breathe more
freely.
‘There!’ said Monks, closing the trap-door, which fell heavily back
into its former position. ‘If the sea ever gives up its dead, as
books say it will, it will keep its gold and silver to itself, and
that trash among it. We have nothing more to say, and may break up
our pleasant party.’
‘By all means,’ observed Mr. Bumble, with great alacrity.
‘You’ll keep a quiet tongue in your head, will you?’ said Monks,
with a threatening look. ‘I am not afraid of your wife.’
‘You may depend upon me, young man,’ answered Mr. Bumble, bowing
himself gradually towards the ladder, with excessive politeness. ‘On
everybody’s account, young man; on my own, you know, Mr. Monks.’
‘I am glad, for your sake, to hear it,’ remarked Monks. ‘Light your
lantern! And get away from here as fast as you can.’
It was fortunate that the conversation terminated at this point,
or Mr. Bumble, who had bowed himself to within six inches of the
ladder, would infallibly have pitched headlong into the room below.
He lighted his lantern from that which Monks had detached from the
rope, and now carried in his hand; and making no effort to prolong
the discourse, descended in silence, followed by his wife. Monks
brought up the rear, after pausing on the steps to satisfy himself
that there were no other sounds to be heard than the beating of the
rain without, and the rushing of the water.
They traversed the lower room, slowly, and with caution; for Monks
started at every shadow; and Mr. Bumble, holding his lantern a foot
above the ground, walked not only with remarkable care, but with
a marvellously light step for a gentleman of his figure: looking
nervously about him for hidden trap-doors. The gate at which they
had entered, was softly unfastened and opened by Monks; merely
exchanging a nod with their mysterious acquaintance, the married
couple emerged into the wet and darkness outside.
They were no sooner gone, than Monks, who appeared to entertain an
invincible repugnance to being left alone, called to a boy who had
been hidden somewhere below. Bidding him go first, and bear the
light, he returned to the chamber he had just quitted.