At this part of the recital Monks held his breath, and listened with a face of intense eagerness,though his eyes were not directed towards the speaker. As Mr. Brownlow paused,he changed his position with the air of one who has experienced a sudden relief, and wiped his hot face and hands.
“Before he went abroad, and as he passed through London on his way,” said Mr. Brownlow, slowly,and fixing his eyes upon the other’s face, “he came to me.”
“I never heard of that,” interrupted Monks in a tone intended to appear incredulous,but savouring more of disagreeable surprise.
“He came to me, and left with me, among some other things,a picture—a portrait painted by himself—a likeness of this poor girl—which he did not wish to leave behind,and could not carry forward on his hasty journey.He was worn by anxiety and remorse almost to a shadow; talked in a wild, distracted way,of ruin and dishonour worked by himself;confided to me his intention to convert his whole property, at any loss, into money, and,having settled on his wife and you a portion of his recent acquisition,to fly the country—I guessed too well he would not fly alone—and never see it more. Even from me,his old and early friend, whose strong attachment had taken root in the earth that covered one most dear to both—even from me he withheld any more particular confession, promising to write and tell me all, and after that to see me once again, for the last time on earth. Alas!_That_ was the last time. I had no letter, and I never saw him more.”
“I went,” said Mr. Brownlow, after a short pause, “I went, when all was over,to the scene of his—I will use the term the world would freely use,for worldly harshness or favour are now alike to him—of his guilty love,resolved that if my fears were realised that erring child should find one heart and home to shelter and compassionate her.The family had left that part a week before;they had called in such trifling debts as were outstanding, discharged them,and left the place by night. Why, or whither, none can tell.”
Monks drew his breath yet more freely, and looked round with a smile of triumph.
“When your brother,” said Mr. Brownlow, drawing nearer to the other’s chair, “When your brother:a feeble, ragged, neglected child: was cast in my way by a stronger hand than chance,and rescued by me from a life of vice and infamy—”
“What?” cried Monks.
“By me,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I told you I should interest you before long.I say by me—I see that your cunning associate suppressed my name, although for aught he knew,it would be quite strange to your ears. When he was rescued by me, then,and lay recovering from sickness in my house,his strong resemblance to this picture I have spoken of, struck me with astonishment.Even when I first saw him in all his dirt and misery,there was a lingering expression in his face that came upon me like a glimpse of some old friend flashing on one in a vivid dream.I need not tell you he was snared away before I knew his history—”
“Why not?” asked Monks hastily.
“Because you know it well.”
“I!”
“Denial to me is vain,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “I shall show you that I know more than that.”
“You—you—can’t prove anything against me,” stammered Monks. “I defy you to do it!”
“We shall see,” returned the old gentleman with a searching glance. “I lost the boy,and no efforts of mine could recover him. Your mother being dead,I knew that you alone could solve the mystery if anybody could,and as when I had last heard of you you were on your own estate in the West Indies—whither,as you well know, you retired upon your mother’s death to escape the consequences of vicious courses here—I made the voyage.You had left it, months before, and were supposed to be in London, but no one could tell where.I returned. Your agents had no clue to your residence. You came and went, they said,as strangely as you had ever done: sometimes for days together and sometimes not for months:keeping to all appearance the same low haunts and mingling with the same infamous herd who had been your associates when a fierce ungovernable boy.I wearied them with new applications. I paced the streets by night and day,but until two hours ago, all my efforts were fruitless, and I never saw you for an instant.”
“And now you do see me,” said Monks, rising boldly, “what then?Fraud and robbery are high-sounding words—justified, you think,by a fancied resemblance in some young imp to an idle daub of a dead man’s Brother!You don’t even know that a child was born of this maudlin pair; you don’t even know that.”
“I _did not_,” replied Mr. Brownlow, rising too;“but within the last fortnight I have learnt it all. You have a brother; you know it, and him.There was a will, which your mother destroyed,leaving the secret and the gain to you at her own death.It contained a reference to some child likely to be the result of this sad connection,which child was born, and accidentally encountered by you,when your suspicions were first awakened by his resemblance to your father.You repaired to the place of his birth.There existed proofs—proofs long suppressed—of his birth and parentage.Those proofs were destroyed by you, and now, in your own words to your accomplice the Jew,‘_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_.’ Unworthy son,coward, liar,—you, who hold your councils with thieves and murderers in dark rooms at night,—you,whose plots and wiles have brought a violent death upon the head of one worth millions such as you,—you, who from your cradle were gall and bitterness to your own father’s heart,and in whom all evil passions, vice, and profligacy, festered,till they found a vent in a hideous disease which had made your face an index even to your mind—you, Edward Leeford, do you still brave me!”
“No, no, no!” returned the coward, overwhelmed by these accumulated charges.
“Every word!” cried the gentleman, “every word that has passed between you and this detested villain,is known to me. Shadows on the wall have caught your whispers, and brought them to my ear;the sight of the persecuted child has turned vice itself,and given it the courage and almost the attributes of virtue. Murder has been done,to which you were morally if not really a party.”
“No, no,” interposed Monks. “I—I knew nothing of that;I was going to inquire the truth of the story when you overtook me. I didn’t know the cause. I thought it was a common quarrel.”
“It was the partial disclosure of your secrets,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “Will you disclose the whole?”
“Yes, I will.”
“Set your hand to a statement of truth and facts, and repeat it before witnesses?”
“That I promise too.”
“Remain quietly here, until such a document is drawn up,and proceed with me to such a place as I may deem most advisable, for the purpose of attesting it?”
“If you insist upon that, I’ll do that also,” replied Monks.
“You must do more than that,” said Mr. Brownlow.“Make restitution to an innocent and unoffending child, for such he is,although the offspring of a guilty and most miserable love.You have not forgotten the provisions of the will.Carry them into execution so far as your brother is concerned, and then go where you please. In this world you need meet no more.”
While Monks was pacing up and down, meditating with dark and evil looks on this proposal and the possibilities of evading it:torn by his fears on the one hand and his hatred on the other: the door was hurriedly unlocked,and a gentleman (Mr. Losberne) entered the room in violent agitation.
“The man will be taken,” he cried. “He will be taken tonight!”
“The murderer?” asked Mr. Brownlow.
“Yes, yes,” replied the other. “His dog has been seen lurking about some old haunt,and there seems little doubt that his master either is, or will be, there,under cover of the darkness. Spies are hovering about in every direction.I have spoken to the men who are charged with his capture, and they tell me he cannot escape.A reward of a hundred pounds is proclaimed by Government tonight.”
“I will give fifty more,” said Mr. Brownlow, “and proclaim it with my own lips upon the spot, if I can reach it. Where is Mr. Maylie?”
“Harry?As soon as he had seen your friend here, safe in a coach with you,he hurried off to where he heard this,” replied the doctor,“and mounting his horse sallied forth to join the first party at some place in the outskirts agreed upon between them. ”
“Fagin,” said Mr. Brownlow; “what of him?”
“When I last heard, he had not been taken, but he will be, or is, by this time. They’re sure of him. ”
“Have you made up your mind?” asked Mr. Brownlow, in a low voice, of Monks.
“Yes,” he replied. “You—you—will be secret with me?”
“I will. Remain here till I return. It is your only hope of safety.”
They left the room, and the door was again locked.
“What have you done?” asked the doctor in a whisper.
“All that I could hope to do, and even more.Coupling the poor girl’s intelligence with my previous knowledge,and the result of our good friend’s inquiries on the spot, I left him no loophole of escape,and laid bare the whole villainy which by these lights became plain as day.Write and appoint the evening after tomorrow, at seven, for the meeting. We shall be down there,a few hours before, but shall require rest: especially the young lady,who _may_ have greater need of firmness than either you or I can quite foresee just now.But my blood boils to avenge this poor murdered creature. Which way have they taken?”
“Drive straight to the office and you will be in time,” replied Mr. Losberne. “I will remain here.”
The two gentlemen hastily separated; each in a fever of excitement wholly uncontrollable.
CHAPTER L. THE PURSUIT AND ESCAPE
Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at Rotherhithe abuts,where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels on the river blackest with the dust of colliers and the smoke of close-built low-roofed houses,there exists the filthiest, the strangest,the most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London, wholly unknown,even by name, to the great mass of its inhabitants.
To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze of close, narrow,and muddy streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest of waterside people,and devoted to the traffic they may be supposed to occasion.The cheapest and least delicate provisions are heaped in the shops;the coarsest and commonest articles of wearing apparel dangle at the salesman’s door,and stream from the house-parapet and windows.Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers,brazen women, ragged children, and the raff and refuse of the river,he makes his way with difficulty along,assailed by offensive sights and smells from the narrow alleys which branch off on the right and left,and deafened by the clash of ponderous waggons that bear great piles of merchandise from the stacks of warehouses that rise from every corner.Arriving, at length, in streets remoter and less-frequented than those through which he has passed,he walks beneath tottering house-fronts projecting over the pavement,dismantled walls that seem to totter as he passes, chimneys half crushed half hesitating to fall,windows guarded by rusty iron bars that time and dirt have almost eaten away,every imaginable sign of desolation and neglect.
In such a neighborhood, beyond Dockhead in the Borough of Southwark, stands Jacob’s Island,surrounded by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet deep and fifteen or twenty wide when the tide is in,once called Mill Pond, but known in the days of this story as Folly Ditch.It is a creek or inlet from the Thames,and can always be filled at high water by opening the sluices at the Lead Mills from which it took its old name.At such times, a stranger, looking from one of the wooden bridges thrown across it at Mill Lane,will see the inhabitants of the houses on either side lowering from their back doors and windows,buckets, pails, domestic utensils of all kinds, in which to haul the water up;and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses themselves,his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene before him.Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses,with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched,with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy,so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter;wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud,and threatening to fall into it—as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations;every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage;all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.
In Jacob’s Island, the warehouses are roofless and empty; the walls are crumbling down;the windows are windows no more; the doors are falling into the streets;the chimneys are blackened, but they yield no smoke. Thirty or forty years ago,before losses and chancery suits came upon it, it was a thriving place;but now it is a desolate island indeed. The houses have no owners; they are broken open,and entered upon by those who have the courage; and there they live, and there they die.They must have powerful motives for a secret residence,or be reduced to a destitute condition indeed, who seek a refuge in Jacob’s Island.
In an upper room of one of these houses—a detached house of fair size, ruinous in other respects,but strongly defended at door and window:of which house the back commanded the ditch in manner already described—there were assembled three men,who, regarding each other every now and then with looks expressive of perplexity and expectation,sat for some time in profound and gloomy silence. One of these was Toby Crackit, another Mr.Chitling, and the third a robber of fifty years, whose nose had been almost beaten in,in some old scuffle, and whose face bore a frightful scar which might probably be traced to the same occasion.This man was a returned transport, and his name was Kags.
“I wish,” said Toby turning to Mr. Chitling,“that you had picked out some other crib when the two old ones got too warm, and had not come here, my fine feller.”
“Why didn’t you, blunder-head!” said Kags.
“Well, I thought you’d have been a little more glad to see me than this,” replied Mr. Chitling, with a melancholy air.
“Why, look’e, young gentleman,” said Toby,“when a man keeps himself so very ex-clusive as I have done,and by that means has a snug house over his head with nobody a prying and smelling about it,it’s rather a startling thing to have the honour of a wisit from a young gentleman (however respectable and pleasant a person he may be to play cards with at conweniency) circumstanced as you are.”
“Especially, when the exclusive young man has got a friend stopping with him,that’s arrived sooner than was expected from foreign parts,and is too modest to want to be presented to the Judges on his return,” added Mr. Kags.
There was a short silence, after which Toby Crackit,seeming to abandon as hopeless any further effort to maintain his usual devil-may-care swagger, turned to Chitling and said,
“When was Fagin took then?”
“Just at dinner-time—two o’clock this afternoon.Charley and I made our lucky up the wash-us chimney, and Bolter got into the empty water-butt,head downwards; but his legs were so precious long that they stuck out at the top, and so they took him too.”
“And Bet?”
“Poor Bet!She went to see the Body, to speak to who it was,” replied Chitling,his countenance falling more and more, “and went off mad, screaming and raving,and beating her head against the boards;so they put a strait-weskut on her and took her to the hospital—and there she is.”
“Wot’s come of young Bates?” demanded Kags.
“He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he’ll be here soon,” replied Chitling.“There’s nowhere else to go to now, for the people at the Cripples are all in custody,and the bar of the ken—I went up there and see it with my own eyes—is filled with traps.”
“This is a smash,” observed Toby, biting his lips. “There’s more than one will go with this.”
“The sessions are on,” said Kags: “if they get the inquest over, and Bolter turns King’s evidence:as of course he will, from what he’s said already:they can prove Fagin an accessory before the fact, and get the trial on on Friday,and he’ll swing in six days from this, by G—!”
“You should have heard the people groan,” said Chitling; “the officers fought like devils,or they’d have torn him away. He was down once, but they made a ring round him,and fought their way along. You should have seen how he looked about him, all muddy and bleeding,and clung to them as if they were his dearest friends. I can see ’em now,not able to stand upright with the pressing of the mob, and draggin him along amongst ’em;I can see the people jumping up, one behind another,and snarling with their teeth and making at him; I can see the blood upon his hair and beard,and hear the cries with which the women worked themselves into the centre of the crowd at the street corner, and swore they’d tear his heart out!”
The horror-stricken witness of this scene pressed his hands upon his ears,and with his eyes closed got up and paced violently to and fro, like one distracted.
While he was thus engaged, and the two men sat by in silence with their eyes fixed upon the floor,a pattering noise was heard upon the stairs, and Sikes’s dog bounded into the room.They ran to the window, downstairs, and into the street. The dog had jumped in at an open window;he made no attempt to follow them, nor was his master to be seen.
“What’s the meaning of this?” said Toby when they had returned. “He can’t be coming here. I—I—hope not.”
“If he was coming here, he’d have come with the dog,” said Kags,stooping down to examine the animal, who lay panting on the floor. “Here!Give us some water for him; he has run himself faint.”
“He’s drunk it all up, every drop,” said Chitling after watching the dog some time in silence.“Covered with mud—lame—half blind—he must have come a long way.”
“Where can he have come from!” exclaimed Toby. “He’s been to the other kens of course,and finding them filled with strangers come on here, where he’s been many a time and often.But where can he have come from first, and how comes he here alone without the other!”
“He”—(none of them called the murderer by his old name)—“He can’t have made away with himself. What do you think?” said Chitling.
Toby shook his head.
“If he had,” said Kags, “the dog ’ud want to lead us away to where he did it. No.I think he’s got out of the country, and left the dog behind.He must have given him the slip somehow, or he wouldn’t be so easy.”
This solution, appearing the most probable one, was adopted as the right; the dog,creeping under a chair, coiled himself up to sleep, without more notice from anybody.
It being now dark, the shutter was closed, and a candle lighted and placed upon the table.The terrible events of the last two days had made a deep impression on all three,increased by the danger and uncertainty of their own position.They drew their chairs closer together, starting at every sound. They spoke little,and that in whispers, and were as silent and awe-stricken as if the remains of the murdered woman lay in the next room.
They had sat thus, some time, when suddenly was heard a hurried knocking at the door below.
“Young Bates,” said Kags, looking angrily round, to check the fear he felt himself.
The knocking came again. No, it wasn’t he. He never knocked like that.
Crackit went to the window, and shaking all over, drew in his head.There was no need to tell them who it was; his pale face was enough.The dog too was on the alert in an instant, and ran whining to the door.
“We must let him in,” he said, taking up the candle.
“Isn’t there any help for it?” asked the other man in a hoarse voice.
“None. He _must_ come in.”
“Don’t leave us in the dark,” said Kags, taking down a candle from the chimney-piece,and lighting it, with such a trembling hand that the knocking was twice repeated before he had finished.
Crackit went down to the door, and returned followed by a man with the lower part of his face buried in a handkerchief,and another tied over his head under his hat. He drew them slowly off. Blanched face, sunken eyes,hollow cheeks, beard of three days’ growth, wasted flesh, short thick breath; it was the very ghost of Sikes.
He laid his hand upon a chair which stood in the middle of the room,but shuddering as he was about to drop into it, and seeming to glance over his shoulder,dragged it back close to the wall—as close as it would go—and ground it against it—and sat down.
Not a word had been exchanged. He looked from one to another in silence.If an eye were furtively raised and met his, it was instantly averted.When his hollow voice broke silence, they all three started.They seemed never to have heard its tones before.
“How came that dog here?” he asked.
“Alone. Three hours ago.”
“Tonight’s paper says that Fagin’s took. Is it true, or a lie?”
“True.”
They were silent again.
“Damn you all!” said Sikes, passing his hand across his forehead. “Have you nothing to say to me?”
There was an uneasy movement among them, but nobody spoke.
“You that keep this house,” said Sikes, turning his face to Crackit, “do you mean to sell me,or to let me lie here till this hunt is over?”
“You may stop here, if you think it safe,” returned the person addressed, after some hesitation.
Sikes carried his eyes slowly up the wall behind him:rather trying to turn his head than actually doing it: and said, “Is—it—the body—is it buried?”
They shook their heads.
“Why isn’t it!” he retorted with the same glance behind him.“Wot do they keep such ugly things above the ground for?—Who’s that knocking?”
Crackit intimated, by a motion of his hand as he left the room, that there was nothing to fear;and directly came back with Charley Bates behind him. Sikes sat opposite the door,so that the moment the boy entered the room he encountered his figure.
“Toby,” said the boy falling back, as Sikes turned his eyes towards him,“why didn’t you tell me this, downstairs?”
There had been something so tremendous in the shrinking off of the three,that the wretched man was willing to propitiate even this lad. Accordingly he nodded,and made as though he would shake hands with him.
“Let me go into some other room,” said the boy, retreating still farther.
“Charley!” said Sikes, stepping forward. “Don’t you—don’t you know me?”
“Don’t come nearer me,” answered the boy, still retreating, and looking, with horror in his eyes, upon the murderer’s face. “You monster!”
The man stopped half-way, and they looked at each other;but Sikes’s eyes sunk gradually to the ground.
“Witness you three,” cried the boy shaking his clenched fist,and becoming more and more excited as he spoke.“Witness you three—I’m not afraid of him—if they come here after him, I’ll give him up; I will.I tell you out at once. He may kill me for it if he likes, or if he dares,but if I am here I’ll give him up. I’d give him up if he was to be boiled alive. Murder!Help!If there’s the pluck of a man among you three, you’ll help me. Murder!Help!Down with him!”
Pouring out these cries, and accompanying them with violent gesticulation,the boy actually threw himself, single-handed, upon the strong man,and in the intensity of his energy and the suddenness of his surprise, brought him heavily to the ground.
The three spectators seemed quite stupefied. They offered no interference,and the boy and man rolled on the ground together; the former,heedless of the blows that showered upon him,wrenching his hands tighter and tighter in the garments about the murderer’s breast,and never ceasing to call for help with all his might.
The contest, however, was too unequal to last long. Sikes had him down,and his knee was on his throat, when Crackit pulled him back with a look of alarm,and pointed to the window. There were lights gleaming below,voices in loud and earnest conversation,the tramp of hurried footsteps—endless they seemed in number—crossing the nearest wooden bridge.One man on horseback seemed to be among the crowd;for there was the noise of hoofs rattling on the uneven pavement. The gleam of lights increased;the footsteps came more thickly and noisily on. Then, came a loud knocking at the door,and then a hoarse murmur from such a multitude of angry voices as would have made the boldest quail.
“Help!” shrieked the boy in a voice that rent the air. “He’s here!Break down the door!”
“In the King’s name,” cried the voices without; and the hoarse cry arose again, but louder.
“Break down the door!” screamed the boy. “I tell you they’ll never open it. Run straight to the room where the light is. Break down the door!”
Strokes, thick and heavy, rattled upon the door and lower window-shutters as he ceased to speak,and a loud huzzah burst from the crowd; giving the listener, for the first time,some adequate idea of its immense extent.
“Open the door of some place where I can lock this screeching Hell-babe,” cried Sikes fiercely;running to and fro, and dragging the boy, now, as easily as if he were an empty sack. “That door. Quick!” He flung him in, bolted it, and turned the key. “Is the downstairs door fast?”
“Double-locked and chained,” replied Crackit, who, with the other two men,still remained quite helpless and bewildered.
“The panels—are they strong?”
“Lined with sheet-iron.”
“And the windows too?”
“Yes, and the windows.”
“Damn you!” cried the desperate ruffian, throwing up the sash and menacing the crowd. “Do your worst!I’ll cheat you yet!”
Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mortal ears,none could exceed the cry of the infuriated throng.Some shouted to those who were nearest to set the house on fire;others roared to the officers to shoot him dead. Among them all,none showed such fury as the man on horseback, who, throwing himself out of the saddle,and bursting through the crowd as if he were parting water, cried, beneath the window,in a voice that rose above all others, “Twenty guineas to the man who brings a ladder!”
The nearest voices took up the cry, and hundreds echoed it. Some called for ladders,some for sledge-hammers; some ran with torches to and fro as if to seek them,and still came back and roared again; some spent their breath in impotent curses and execrations;some pressed forward with the ecstasy of madmen, and thus impeded the progress of those below;some among the boldest attempted to climb up by the water-spout and crevices in the wall;and all waved to and fro, in the darkness beneath, like a field of corn moved by an angry wind:and joined from time to time in one loud furious roar.
“The tide,” cried the murderer, as he staggered back into the room, and shut the faces out,“the tide was in as I came up. Give me a rope, a long rope. They’re all in front.I may drop into the Folly Ditch, and clear off that way. Give me a rope,or I shall do three more murders and kill myself.”
The panic-stricken men pointed to where such articles were kept; the murderer,hastily selecting the longest and strongest cord, hurried up to the house-top.
All the windows in the rear of the house had been long ago bricked up,except one small trap in the room where the boy was locked,and that was too small even for the passage of his body. But, from this aperture,he had never ceased to call on those without, to guard the back; and thus,when the murderer emerged at last on the house-top by the door in the roof,a loud shout proclaimed the fact to those in front, who immediately began to pour round,pressing upon each other in an unbroken stream.
He planted a board, which he had carried up with him for the purpose,so firmly against the door that it must be matter of great difficulty to open it from the inside;and creeping over the tiles, looked over the low parapet.
The water was out, and the ditch a bed of mud.
The crowd had been hushed during these few moments,watching his motions and doubtful of his purpose,but the instant they perceived it and knew it was defeated,they raised a cry of triumphant execration to which all their previous shouting had been whispers.Again and again it rose. Those who were at too great a distance to know its meaning,took up the sound; it echoed and re-echoed;it seemed as though the whole city had poured its population out to curse him.
On pressed the people from the front—on, on, on, in a strong struggling current of angry faces,with here and there a glaring torch to lighten them up,and show them out in all their wrath and passion.The houses on the opposite side of the ditch had been entered by the mob; sashes were thrown up,or torn bodily out; there were tiers and tiers of faces in every window;cluster upon cluster of people clinging to every house-top.Each little bridge (and there were three in sight) bent beneath the weight of the crowd upon it.Still the current poured on to find some nook or hole from which to vent their shouts, and only for an instant see the wretch.
“They have him now,” cried a man on the nearest bridge. “Hurrah!”
The crowd grew light with uncovered heads; and again the shout uprose.
“I will give fifty pounds,” cried an old gentleman from the same quarter,“to the man who takes him alive. I will remain here, till he come to ask me for it.”