AFFORDING AN EXPLANATION OF MORE MYSTERIES THAN ONE, 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 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 beyong 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 him
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, it 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 had, 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 know,' 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, orginally, 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!
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