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 mother, 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.”