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 juryman had turned together, to consider
their verdict. As his eyes wandered to the gallery, he could see
the people rising above each other to see his face: some hastily
applying their glasses to their eyes: and others whispering 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 but one of
all-absorbing interest that he should be condemned.
As he saw all this in one bewildered glance, the deathlike 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 leant; 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 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--and so, dropping into a whisper, was silent again.
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
under-jaw 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 blood-shot eyes upon the ground,
tried to collect his thoughts. After awhile, 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 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
and 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 the 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.
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 off.
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 burnt him up. Eight--nine--then. 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 to-morrow,
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 into the lodge.
‘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 this
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
curiousity, 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. There 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 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 that boy
away to bed!’
The jailer took the disengaged hand of Oliver; and, whispering 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 the Jew, 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 furthest corner of the seat, he demanded to know what they
wanted there.
‘Steady,’ said the turnkey, still holding him down. ‘Now, sir, tell
him what you want. Quick, if you please, for he grows worse as the
time gets on.’
‘You have some papers,’ said Mr. Brownlow advancing, ‘which were
placed in your hands, for better security, by a man called Monks.’
‘It’s all a lie together,’ replied Fagin. ‘I haven’t one--not one.’
‘For the love of God,’ said Mr. Brownlow solemnly, ‘do not say that
now, upon the very verge of death; but tell me where they are. You
know that Sikes is dead; that Monks has confessed; that there is no
hope of any further gain. Where are those papers?’
‘Oliver,’ cried Fagin, beckoning to him. ‘Here, here! Let me whisper
to you.’
‘I am not afraid,’ said Oliver in a low voice, as he relinquished
Mr. Brownlow’s hand.
‘The papers,’ said Fagin, drawing Oliver towards him, ‘are in
a canvas bag, in a hole a little way up the chimney in the top
front-room. I want to talk to you, my dear. I want to talk to you.’
‘Yes, yes,’ returned Oliver. ‘Let me say a prayer. Do! Let me say
one prayer. Say only one, upon your knees, with me, and we will talk
till morning.’
‘Outside, outside,’ replied Fagin, pushing the boy before him
towards the door, and looking vacantly over his head. ‘Say I’ve gone
to sleep--they’ll believe you. You can get me out, if you take me
so. Now then, now then!’
‘Oh! God forgive this wretched man!’ cried the boy with a burst of
tears.
‘That’s right, that’s right,’ said Fagin. ‘That’ll help us on. This
door first. If I shake and tremble, as we pass the gallows, don’t
you mind, but hurry on. Now, now, now!’
‘Have you nothing else to ask him, sir?’ inquired the turnkey.
‘No other question,’ replied Mr. Brownlow. ‘If I hoped we could
recall him to a sense of his position--’
‘Nothing will do that, sir,’ replied the man, shaking his head. ‘You
had better leave him.’
The door of the cell opened, and the attendants returned.
‘Press on, press on,’ cried Fagin. ‘Softly, but not so slow. Faster,
faster!’
The men laid hands upon him, and disengaging Oliver from his grasp,
held him back. He struggled with the power of desperation, for an
instant; and then sent up cry upon cry that penetrated even those
massive walls, and rang in their ears until they reached the open
yard.
It was some time before they left the prison. Oliver nearly swooned
after this frightful scene, and was so weak that for an hour or
more, he had not the strength to walk.
Day was dawning when they again emerged. A great multitude had
already assembled; the windows were filled with people, smoking
and playing cards to beguile the time; the crowd were pushing,
quarrelling, joking. Everything told of life and animation, but one
dark cluster of objects in the centre of all--the black stage, the
cross-beam, the rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death.