“I have seen you before, I think?” said he. “You were differently dressed at that time,and I only passed you in the street,but I should know you again. You were beadle here, once; were you not?”
“I was,” said Mr. Bumble, in some surprise; “porochial beadle.”
“Just so,” rejoined the other, nodding his head.“It was in that character I saw you. What are you now?”
“Master of the workhouse,” rejoined Mr. Bumble,slowly and impressively,to check any undue familiarity the stranger might otherwise assume.“Master of the workhouse, young man!”
“You have the same eye to your own interest,that you always had, I doubt not?” resumed the stranger, looking keenly into Mr.Bumble’s eyes, as he raised them in astonishment at the question.
“Don’t scruple to answer freely, man.I know you pretty well, you see.”
“I suppose, a married man,” replied Mr. Bumble,shading his eyes with his hand,and surveying the stranger, from head to foot,in evident perplexity,“is not more averse to turning an honest penny when he can,than a single one. Porochial officers are not so well paid that they can afford to refuse any little extra fee, when it comes to them in a civil and proper manner.”
The stranger smiled, and nodded his head again:as much to say, he had not mistaken his man; then rang the bell.
“Fill this glass again,” he said, handing Mr.Bumble’s empty tumbler to the landlord.“Let it be strong and hot. You like it so, I suppose?”
“Not too strong,” replied Mr. Bumble,with a delicate cough.
“You understand what that means, landlord!” said the stranger, drily.
The host smiled, disappeared,and shortly afterwards returned with a steaming jorum:of which, the first gulp brought the water into Mr. Bumble’s eyes.
“Now listen to me,” said the stranger,after closing the door and window.“I came down to this place, today, to find you out;and, by one of those chances which the devil throws in the way of his friends sometimes, you walked into the very room I was sitting in, while you were uppermost in my mind. I want some information from you. I don’t ask you to give it for nothing, slight as it is. Put up that, to begin with.”
As he spoke, he pushed a couple of sovereigns across the table to his companion,carefully, as though unwilling that the chinking of money should be heard without. When Mr. Bumble had scrupulously examined the coins, to see that they were genuine, and had put them up, with much satisfaction, in his waistcoat-pocket, he went on:
“Carry your memory back—let me see—twelve years, last winter.”
“It’s a long time,” said Mr. Bumble. “Very good. I’ve done it.”
“The scene, the workhouse.”
“Good!”
“And the time, night.”
“Yes.”
“And the place, the crazy hole, wherever it was,in which miserable drabs brought forth the life and health so often denied to themselves—gave birth to puling children for the parish to rear; and hid their shame, rot ’em in the grave!”
“The lying-in room, I suppose?” said Mr. Bumble, not quite following the stranger’s excited description.
“Yes,” said the stranger. “A boy was born there.”
“A many boys,” observed Mr. Bumble, shaking his head, despondingly.
“A murrain on the young devils!” cried the stranger; “I speak of one; a meek-looking,pale-faced boy, who was apprenticed down here,to a coffin-maker—I wish he had made his coffin,and screwed his body in it—and who afterwards ran away to London,as it was supposed.”
“Why, you mean Oliver!Young Twist!” said Mr. Bumble; “I remember him, of course.There wasn’t a obstinater young rascal—”
“It’s not of him I want to hear;I’ve heard enough of him,” said the stranger,stopping Mr. Bumble in the outset of a tirade on the subject of poor Oliver’s vices. “It’s of a woman; the hag that nursed his mother. Where is she?”
“Where is she?” said Mr. Bumble, whom the gin-and-water had rendered facetious.“It would be hard to tell. There’s no midwifery there,whichever place she’s gone to;so I suppose she’s out of employment, anyway.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the stranger, sternly.
“That she died last winter,” rejoined Mr. Bumble.
The man looked fixedly at him when he had given this information,and although he did not withdraw his eyes for some time afterwards,his gaze gradually became vacant and abstracted,and he seemed lost in thought. For some time,he appeared doubtful whether he ought to be relieved or disappointed by the intelligence; but at length he breathed more freely; and withdrawing his eyes, observed that it was no great matter. With that he rose, as if to depart.
But Mr. Bumble was cunning enough;and he at once saw that an opportunity was opened,for the lucrative disposal of some secret in the possession of his better half.He well remembered the night of old Sally’s death,which the occurrences of that day had given him good reason to recollect,as the occasion on which he had proposed to Mrs.Corney; and although that lady had never confided to him the disclosure of which she had been the solitary witness, he had heard enough to know that it related to something that had occurred in the old woman’s attendance, as workhouse nurse, upon the young mother of Oliver Twist. Hastily calling this circumstance to mind, he informed the stranger, with an air of mystery, that one woman had been closeted with the old harridan shortly before she died; and that she could, as he had reason to believe, throw some light on the subject of his inquiry.
“How can I find her?” said the stranger, thrown off his guard;and plainly showing that all his fears (whatever they were) were aroused afresh by the intelligence.
“Only through me,” rejoined Mr. Bumble.
“When?” cried the stranger, hastily.
“Tomorrow,” rejoined Bumble.
“At nine in the evening,” said the stranger,producing a scrap of paper, and writing down upon it,an obscure address by the water-side,in characters that betrayed his agitation;“at nine in the evening, bring her to me there.I needn’t tell you to be secret. It’s your interest.”
With these words, he led the way to the door,after stopping to pay for the liquor that had been drunk.Shortly remarking that their roads were different,he departed, without more ceremony than an emphatic repetition of the hour of appointment for the following night.
On glancing at the address,the parochial functionary observed that it contained no name.The stranger had not gone far,so he made after him to ask it.