Chapter-6
One night, Bill, Sikes, Crackit and Toby (the members of the Jew’s party) along with Oliver went out on a robbery spree. All of them except Oliver had their pistols fully loaded. In the dead of night they made their way towards a house to loot it. Now for the first time, Oliver nearly mad with grief and terror saw that housebreaking and robbery were the object of the spree. A cold sweat covered his face of as they entered the house to carry out his objective. Oliver who was holding a lantern in his hand let it fall and stood indecisively not knowing whether to advance or run away. He staggered back only to lose consciousness.
He fell to the ground with a loud thud. Soon the members of the house were awakened. One of the members by the name Giles instantly pressed the trigger of his pistol. The bullet hit none other than Oliver. Toby and Bill carrying Oliver on his shoulder ran through the dark fields.
‘Wolves tear your throats!’ muttered Sikes, grinding his teeth. ‘I wish I was among some of you; you’d howl the hoarser for it.’
Sikes rested the body of the wounded Oliver across his bended knee, and turned his head for an instant to look at his pursuers. There was little to be made out, in the mist and darkness; but the loud shouting of men vibrated through the air, and the barking of the neighbouring dogs, roused by the sound of the alarm bell, resounded in every direction. Sikes laid Oliver in a dry ditch at his feet, and drew a pistol from his pocket.
At this moment the noise grew louder. Sikes, again looking round could discern that the men who had given chase were already climbing the gate of the field in which he stood; and that a couple of dogs were some paces in advance of them.
‘It’s all up, Bill!’ cried Toby, ‘Drop Oliver and show ‘them your heels.’ With this parting advice, Mr Crackit preferring the chance of being shot by his friend to the certainty of being taken by his enemies, fairly turned tail and darted off at full speed. Sikes clenched his teeth, took one look around, threw over the prostrate form of Oliver the cape in which he had been hurriedly muffled, cleared the hedge at a bound, and was gone.
‘Ho, ho, there!’ cried a tremulous voice in the rear. ‘Pincher, Neptune, come here, come here!’
The dogs, who in common with their masters seemed to have no particular relish for the sport in which they were engaged, readily answered to the command.
‘My advice, or leastways, I should say, my orders are,’ said the fattest man of the party, ‘that we immediately go home again.’
‘I am agreeable to anything which is agreeable to Mr Giles,’ said a shorter man, who was by no means of a slim figure, and who was very pale in the face and very polite, as frightened men frequently are.
‘I shouldn’t wish to appear ill-mannered, gentlemen,’ said the third who had called the dogs back, ‘Mr Giles ought to know.’
This dialogue was held between the two men who had surprised the burglars, and a travelling tinker who had been sleeping in an outhouse, and who had been roused, together with his two mongrel curs, to join in the pursuit. Mr Giles acted in the double capacity of butler and steward to the old lady of the mansion; Brittles was a lad of all-work who, having entered her service a mere child, was treated as a promising young boy still, though he was something past thirty. They hastened back to the house.
Oliver lay motionless and insensible on the spot where Sikes had left him.
Morning drew on apace. The rain came down thick and fast, and pattered noisily among the leafless bushes. At length a low cry of pain broke the stillness that prevailed; and uttering it the boy awoke. His left arm, rudely bandaged in a shawl, hung heavy and useless at his side; the bandage was saturated with blood. He was so weak that he could scarcely raise himself into a sitting posture; when he had done so, he looked feebly round for help and groaned with pain. Trembling in every joint with cold and exhaustion, he made an effort to stand upright but, shuddering from head to foot, fell prostrate on the ground.
After a short return of the stupor in which he had been so long plunged, Oliver—urged by a creeping sickness at his heart, which seemed to warn him that if he lay there he must surely die—got upon his feet and essayed to walk. His head was dizzy, and he staggered to and fro like a drunken man. Thus he staggered on, creeping, almost mechanically, between the bars of gates, or though hedge gaps as they came in his way, until he reached a road. Here the rain began to fall so heavily that it roused him.
He looked about and saw that at no great distance there was a house, which perhaps he could reach. He summoned up all his strength for one last trial, and bent his faltering steps towards it.
As he drew nearer to this house, a feeling came over him that he had seen it before. He remembered nothing of its details but the shape and aspect of the building seemed familiar to him. It was the very house they had attempted to rob.
Oliver pushed against the garden gate; it was unlocked and swung open on its hinges. He tottered across the lawn, climbed the steps, knocked faintly at the door, and, his whole strength failing him, sunk down against one of the pillars of the little portico.
It happened that about this time, Mr Giles, Brittles, and the tinker were recruiting themselves after the fatigues and terrors of the night with tea and sundries in the kitchen. Not that it was Mr Giles’s habit to admit to too great familiarity the humbler servants, but death, fires, and burglary made all men equals; so Mr Giles gave a circumstantial and minute account of the robbery, to which his hearers (but especially the cook and the housemaid, who were of the party) listened with breathless interest.
Mr Giles had risen from his seat and taken two steps with his eyes shut to accompany his description with appropriate action, when he started violently, in common with the rest of the company, and hurried back to his chair.
The cook and the housemaid screamed.
‘It was a knock,’ said Mr Giles, assuming perfect serenity, ‘Open the door, somebody.’
Nobody moved. At last, several precautions having been taken, Mr Giles held on fast by the tinker’s arm (to prevent his running away, as he pleasantly said) and gave the word of command to open the door. Brittles obeyed; the group, peeping timorously over one another’s shoulders, beheld no more formidable object than poor little Oliver Twist, speechless and exhausted, who raised his heavy eyes and mutely solicited their compassion.
‘A boy!’ exclaimed Mr Giles, valiantly pushing the tinker into the background, ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘Why Brittles, look here—don’t you know?’
Brittles, who had got behind the door to open it, no sooner saw Oliver than he uttered a loud cry. Mr Giles, seizing the boy by one leg and one arm (fortunately not the broken limb) lugged him straight into the hall and deposited him at full length on the floor thereof.
‘Here he is!’ bawled Giles, ‘Here’s one of the thieves, miss! Here’s a thief, wounded! I shot him.’
The two women-servants ran upstairs to carry the intelligence that Mr Giles had captured a robber, and the tinker busied himself in endeavouring to restore Oliver, lest he should die before he could be hanged. In the midst of all this noise and commotion, there was heard a sweet female voice, which quelled it in an instant.
‘Giles!’ whispered the voice from the stair-head.
‘I’m here, miss,’ replied Mr Giles. ‘Don’t be frightened, miss; I am not much injured. He didn’t make a very desperate resistance, miss! I was soon too many for him.’
‘Hush!’ replied the young lady, ‘you frighten my aunt as much as the thieves did. Is the poor creature much hurt?’
‘Wounded desperate, miss,’ replied Giles, with indescribable complacency.
With a footstep as soft and gentle as the voice, the speaker tripped away. She soon returned, with the direction that the wounded person was to be carried carefully up to Mr Giles’s room, and that Brittles was to saddle the pony and betake himself instantly to Chertsey, from which place he was to despatch, with all speed, a constable and a doctor.
In a handsome room (though its furniture had the air of old-fashioned comfort rather than of modern elegance) there sat two ladies at a well-spread breakfast table. Mr Giles, dressed with scrupulous care in a full suit of black, was in attendance upon them.
Of the two ladies, one was well advanced in years; but the high-backed oaken chair in which she sat was not more upright than she. Dressed with the utmost nicety and precision of by-gone costume, she sat, in a stately manner, with her hands folded on the table before her. Her eyes (and age had dimmed but little of their brightness) were attentively fixed upon her young companion.
She was not past seventeen, cast in so slight and exquisite a mould, so mild and gentle, so pure and beautiful that earth seemed not her element, nor its rough creatures her fit companions. Chancing to raise her eyes as the elder lady was regarding her, she playfully put back her hair, which was simply braided on her forehead, and threw into her beaming look such an expression of affection and artless loveliness that blessed spirits might have smiled to look upon her.
‘And Brittles has been gone upwards of an hour, has he?’ asked the old lady, after a pause.
‘An hour and twelve minutes, ma’am,’ replied Mr Giles referring to a silver watch, which he drew forth by a black ribbon.
‘He is always slow,’ remarked the old lady.
Mr Giles was apparently considering the propriety of indulging in a respectful smile, when a gig drove up to the garden gate. Out of which there jumped a fat gentleman who ran straight up to the door, and who, getting quickly into the house by some mysterious process, burst into the room and nearly overturned Mr Giles and the breakfast table together.
‘I never heard of such a thing!’ exclaimed the fat gentleman, ‘My dear Mrs Maylie—bless my soul-in the silence of night, too—I never heard of such a thing!’
With these expressions of condolence, the fat gentleman shook hands with both ladies and, drawing up a chair, enquired how they found themselves.
The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery having been unexpected, and attempted in the night-time; as if it were the established custom of gentlemen in the house breaking way to transact business at noon, and to make an appointment, by post, a day or two previous.
‘And you, Miss Rose,’ said the doctor turning to the young lady, ‘I—’
‘Oh, very much so indeed,’ said Rose, interrupting him, ‘but there is a poor creature upstairs whom aunt wishes you to see.’
‘Ah, to be sure,’ replied the doctor, ‘so there is. That was your handiwork, Giles, I understand.’
Mr Giles, who had been feverishly putting the tea-cups to rights, blushed very red and said that he had had that honour.
‘Where is he?’ asked the doctor, ‘Show me the way. I’ll look in again as I come down, Mrs Maylie. That’s the little window that he got in at. Well, I couldn’t have believed it!’
Talking all the way, he followed Mr Giles upstairs.
The doctor was absent much longer than either he or the ladies anticipated. At length he returned and in reply to an anxious inquiry after his patient, looked very mysterious and closed the door carefully.
‘This is a very extraordinary thing, Mrs Maylie,’ said the doctor, standing with his back to the door, as if to keep it shut.
‘He is not in danger, I hope,’ said the old lady.
‘Why, that would not be an extraordinary thing under the circumstances,’ replied the doctor, ‘though I don’t think he is. Have you seen this thief?’
‘No,’ rejoined the old lady.
‘Nor heard anything about him?’
‘No.’
‘Then I think it is necessary,’ said the doctor; ‘at all events I am quite sure you would deeply regret not having done so if you postponed it. He is perfectly quiet and comfortable now. Allow me—Miss Rose, will you permit me? Not the slightest fear, I pledge you my honour.’
With many loquacious assurances that they would be agreeably surprised in the aspect of the criminal, the doctor led them, with much ceremony and stateliness upstairs.
‘Now,’ said the doctor in a whisper, as he softly turned the handle of a bedroom door, ‘let us hear what you think of him. He has not been shaved very recently.’
Stepping before them he gently drew back the curtains of the bed. Upon it, lieu of the dogged, black-visaged ruffian they had expected to behold, there lay a mere child, worn with pain and exhaustion and sunk into a deep sleep. The younger lady glided softly past and, seating herself in a chair by the bedside, gathered Oliver’s hair from his face. As she stooped over him, her tears fell upon his face.
The boy stirred and smiled in his sleep.
Oliver rose next morning in better heart, and went about his usual early occupations with more hope and pleasure than he had known for many days. Time did not hang heavily on his hands, for he applied himself with redoubled assiduity to the books from which he now received instructions at the hands of a white-headed old gentleman. It was while he was engaged in this pursuit that he was greatly startled and distressed by a most unexpected occurrence.
One beautiful evening when the first shades of twilight were beginning to settle upon the earth, Oliver sat, intent on his books, at the window of his little room on the ground-floor at the back of the house. He had been poring over them for some time. The day had been uncommonly sultry, and he had exerted himself a great deal. By slow degrees he fell asleep.
There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us sometimes, which, while it holds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of things about it. Oliver knew perfectly well that he was in his own little room, that his books were lying on the table before him, that the sweet air was stirring among the creeping plants outside. And yet he was asleep. Suddenly the scene changed; the air became close and confined; and he thought with a glow of terror that he was in the Jew’s house again. There sat the hideous old man in his accustomed corner, pointing at him and whispering to another man, with his face averted, who sat beside him.
‘Hush, my dear,’ he thought he heard the Jew say, ‘it is he sure enough. Come away.’
‘He!’ the other man seemed to answer; ‘could I mistake him, think you?’
The man seemed to say this with such dreadful hatred that Oliver awoke with the feat and started up.
Good Heaven! What was that which sent the blood tingling to his heart, and deprived him of his voice and power to move! There—there—at the window—close before him—so close that he could have almost touched him before he started back, with his eyes peering into the room and meeting his, there stood the Jew! And beside him, white with rage, or fear, or both, were the scowling features of the very man who had accosted him in the innyard.
It was but an instant, a glance, a flash, before his eyes, and they were gone. But they had recognized him and he them; and their look was as firmly impressed upon his memory as if it had been deeply carved in stone and set before him from birth. He stood transfixed for a moment; then leaping from the window into the garden, called loudly for help.
The inmates of the house found him pale and agitated, pointing in the direction of the meadows behind the house, and scarcely able to articulate the words, ‘The Jew! The Jew!’
Mr Giles was at a loss to comprehend what this outcry meant; but Harry Maylie, whose perceptions were something quicker, and who had heard Oliver’s history from his mother, understood it at once.
‘What direction did he take?’ he asked, catching up a heavy stick which was standing in a corner.
‘That,’ replied Oliver, pointing out the course the road had taken, ‘I missed them in an instant.’
Harry sprang over the hedge and darted off; Giles and Oliver followed, and Mr Losberne, who had been out walking, tumbled over the hedge after them, but the search was all in vain though only with the coming on of night did they give up with reluctance. After a few days the affair began to be forgotten, as most affairs are when wonder, having no fresh food to support it, dies away of itself.
Meantime Rose was rapidly recovering. She had left her room, was able to go out and, mixing once more with the family, carried joy into the hearts of all.
But although this happy change had a visible effect on the little circle, it became evident that something was in progress which affected the peace of the young lady and of somebody else besides. At length, one morning when Rose was alone in the breakfast parlour, Harry Maylie begged permission to speak with her.
‘Rose, the most cherished hopes of my heart are not unknown to you, though from my lips you have not yet heard them stated. Rose, my own dear Rose, for years I have loved you, hoping to win my way to fame and then come proudly home and tell you it had been pursued only for you to share. That time has not yet arrived; but here, with no fame won, I offer you the heart so long your own.’
There were tears in the eyes of the gentle girl as these words were spoken, but she mastered her emotion and replied firmly:
‘No, Harry. I am a friendless portionless girl with a blight upon my name. The prospect before you is a brilliant one. All the honours to which great talents and powerful connections can help men in public life are in store for you. I will neither mingle with such as may hold in scorn the mother who gave me life, nor bring disgrace or failure on the son of her who has so well supplied that mother’s place. There is a stain upon my name which the world visits on innocent heads. I will carry it into no blood but my own; and the reproach shall rest alone on me. And now I must leave you, indeed.’
She extended her hand, but the young man caught her to his bosom and imprinting one kiss on her beautiful forehead, hurried from the room to inform Mr Losberne, who was that morning departing for Chertsey, that he would be his travelling companion.
The good doctor bustled out to seethe luggage packed and Harry beckoned Oliver into the window recess.
‘Oliver,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I shall not be at home again, perhaps for some time. I wish you to write to me—say once a fortnight, on every alternate Monday—to the General Post Office in London, will you? I should like to know how—how my mother and Miss Maylie are, and whether she—they, I mean—seem happy and quite well. I would rather you did not mention it to them because it might make my mother anxious to write often and it is a trouble and worry to her. Do you understand me?’
Oliver, quite elated and honoured by a sense of his importance, faithfully promised to be secret and explicit in his communications, and Mr Maylie took leave of him with many assurances of his regard and protection.
