AND COMPREHENDING A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE WITH NO WORD OF SETTLEMENT
OR PIN-MONEY
The events narrated in the last chapter were yet but two days old,
when Oliver found himself, at three o’clock in the afternoon, in
a travelling-carriage rolling fast towards his native town. Mrs.
Maylie, and Rose, and Mrs. Bedwin, and the good doctor were with
him: and Mr. Brownlow followed in a post-chaise, accompanied by one
other person whose name had not been mentioned.
They had not talked much upon the way; for Oliver was in a flutter
of agitation and uncertainty which deprived him of the power of
collecting his thoughts, and almost of speech, and appeared to have
scarcely less effect on his companions, who shared it, in at least
an equal degree. He and the two ladies had been very carefully made
acquainted by Mr. Brownlow with the nature of the admissions which
had been forced from Monks; and although they knew that the object
of their present journey was to complete the work which had been so
well begun, still the whole matter was enveloped in enough of doubt
and mystery to leave them in endurance of the most intense suspense.
The same kind friend had, with Mr. Losberne’s assistance, cautiously
stopped all channels of communication through which they could
receive intelligence of the dreadful occurrences that so recently
taken place. ‘It was quite true,’ he said, ‘that they must know them
before long, but it might be at a better time than the present, and
it could not be at a worse.’ So, they travelled on in silence:
each busied with reflections on the object which had brought them
together: and no one disposed to give utterance to the thoughts
which crowded upon all.
But if Oliver, under these influences, had remained silent while
they journeyed towards his birth-place by a road he had never seen,
how the whole current of his recollections ran back to old times,
and what a crowd of emotions were wakened up in his breast, when
they turned into that which he had traversed on foot: a poor
houseless, wandering boy, without a friend to help him, or a roof to
shelter his head.
‘See there, there!’ cried Oliver, eagerly clasping the hand of Rose,
and pointing out at the carriage window; ‘that’s the stile I came
over; there are the hedges I crept behind, for fear any one should
overtake me and force me back! Yonder is the path across the fields,
leading to the old house where I was a little child! Oh Dick, Dick,
my dear old friend, if I could only see you now!’
‘You will see him soon,’ replied Rose, gently taking his folded
hands between her own. ‘You shall tell him how happy you are, and
how rich you have grown, and that in all your happiness you have
none so great as the coming back to make him happy too.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Oliver, ‘and we’ll--we’ll take him away from here,
and have him clothed and taught, and send him to some quiet country
place where he may grow strong and well,--shall we?’
Rose nodded ‘yes,’ for the boy was smiling through such happy tears
that she could not speak.
‘You will be kind and good to him, for you are to every one,’ said
Oliver. ‘It will make you cry, I know, to hear what he can tell;
but never mind, never mind, it will be all over, and you will smile
again--I know that too--to think how changed he is; you did the same
with me. He said “God bless you” to me when I ran away,’ cried the
boy with a burst of affectionate emotion; ‘and I will say “God bless
you” now, and show him how I love him for it!’
As they approached the town, and at length drove through its narrow
streets, it became matter of no small difficulty to restrain the boy
within reasonable bounds. There was Sowerberry’s the undertaker’s
just as it used to be, only smaller and less imposing in appearance
than he remembered it--there were all the well-known shops and
houses, with almost every one of which he had some slight incident
connected--there was Gamfield’s cart, the very cart he used to have,
standing at the old public-house door--there was the workhouse, the
dreary prison of his youthful days, with its dismal windows frowning
on the street--there was the same lean porter standing at the gate,
at sight of whom Oliver involuntarily shrunk back, and then
laughed at himself for being so foolish, then cried, then laughed
again--there were scores of faces at the doors and windows that he
knew quite well--there was nearly everything as if he had left it
but yesterday, and all his recent life had been but a happy dream.
But it was pure, earnest, joyful reality. They drove straight to the
door of the chief hotel (which Oliver used to stare up at, with
awe, and think a mighty palace, but which had somehow fallen off in
grandeur and size); and here was Mr. Grimwig all ready to receive
them, kissing the young lady, and the old one too, when they got out
of the coach, as if he were the grandfather of the whole party, all
smiles and kindness, and not offering to eat his head--no, not once;
not even when he contradicted a very old postboy about the nearest
road to London, and maintained he knew it best, though he had only
come that way once, and that time fast asleep. There was dinner
prepared, and there were bedrooms ready, and everything was arranged
as if by magic.
Notwithstanding all this, when the hurry of the first half-hour
was over, the same silence and constraint prevailed that had marked
their journey down. Mr. Brownlow did not join them at dinner, but
remained in a separate room. The two other gentlemen hurried in and
out with anxious faces, and, during the short intervals when they
were present, conversed apart. Once, Mrs. Maylie was called away,
and after being absent for nearly an hour, returned with eyes
swollen with weeping. All these things made Rose and Oliver, who
were not in any new secrets, nervous and uncomfortable. They sat
wondering, in silence; or, if they exchanged a few words, spoke
in whispers, as if they were afraid to hear the sound of their own
voices.
At length, when nine o’clock had come, and they began to think
they were to hear no more that night, Mr. Losberne and Mr. Grimwig
entered the room, followed by Mr. Brownlow and a man whom Oliver
almost shrieked with surprise to see; for they told him it was his
brother, and it was the same man he had met at the market-town, and
seen looking in with Fagin at the window of his little room. Monks
cast a look of hate, which, even then, he could not dissemble, at
the astonished boy, and sat down near the door. Mr. Brownlow, who
had papers in his hand, walked to a table near which Rose and Oliver
were seated.
‘This is a painful task,’ said he, ‘but these declarations, which
have been signed in London before many gentlemen, must be in
substance repeated here. I would have spared you the degradation,
but we must hear them from your own lips before we part, and you
know why.’
‘Go on,’ said the person addressed, turning away his face. ‘Quick. I
have almost done enough, I think. Don’t keep me here.’
‘This child,’ said Mr. Brownlow, drawing Oliver to him, and laying
his hand upon his head, ‘is your half-brother; the illegitimate son
of your father, my dear friend Edwin Leeford, by poor young Agnes
Fleming, who died in giving him birth.’
‘Yes,’ said Monks, scowling at the trembling boy: the beating of
whose heart he might have heard. ‘That is the bastard child.’
‘The term you use,’ said Mr. Brownlow, sternly, ‘is a reproach to
those long since passed beyond the feeble censure of the world. It
reflects disgrace on no one living, except you who use it. Let that
pass. He was born in this town.’
‘In the workhouse of this town,’ was the sullen reply. ‘You have the
story there.’ He pointed impatiently to the papers as he spoke.
‘I must have it here, too,’ said Mr. Brownlow, looking round upon
the listeners.
‘Listen then! You!’ returned Monks. ‘His father being taken ill at
Rome, was joined by his wife, my mother, from whom he had been long
separated, who went from Paris and took me with her--to look after
his property, for what I know, for she had no great affection for
him, nor he for her. He knew nothing of us, for his senses were
gone, and he slumbered on till next day, when he died. Among the
papers in his desk, were two, dated on the night his illness
first came on, directed to yourself’; he addressed himself to
Mr. Brownlow; ‘and enclosed in a few short lines to you, with
an intimation on the cover of the package that it was not to be
forwarded till after he was dead. One of these papers was a letter
to this girl Agnes; the other a will.’
‘What of the letter?’ asked Mr. Brownlow.
‘The letter?--A sheet of paper crossed and crossed again, with a
penitent confession, and prayers to God to help her. He had palmed
a tale on the girl that some secret mystery--to be explained one
day--prevented his marrying her just then; and so she had gone on,
trusting patiently to him, until she trusted too far, and lost what
none could ever give her back. She was, at that time, within a few
months of her confinement. He told her all he had meant to do, to
hide her shame, if he had lived, and prayed her, if he died, not to
curse his memory, or think the consequences of their sin would be
visited on her or their young child; for all the guilt was his. He
reminded her of the day he had given her the little locket and the
ring with her christian name engraved upon it, and a blank left for
that which he hoped one day to have bestowed upon her--prayed
her yet to keep it, and wear it next 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 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 other,
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 burnt 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--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 death-bed, 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 draggin 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 house for the purpose of
identifying him.
‘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.
‘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 Mrs. 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 jaws. ‘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 know 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. 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 women: ‘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 your
hand. Do not tremble. You need not fear to hear the few remaining
words we 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 gentlman, 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, signing 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 promised more,
which she never meant to send. She didn’t quite rely, however, on
their discontent and poverty for the child’s unhappiness, but told
the history of the 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!’
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 to-night, for 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 to-night? It is a struggle,’ said
Rose, ‘but one I am proud to make; it is a pang, but one my heart
shall bear.’
‘The disclosure of to-night,’--Harry began.
‘The disclosure of to-night,’ 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 to-night.’
‘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 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 thing 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 to-night,’ 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?’
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!