At this point of the narrative the cook turned pale and asked the housemaid to shut the door, who asked Brittles, who asked the tinker, who pretended not to hear.
"--Heerd a noise," continued Mr. Giles. "I says, at first, 'This is illusion'; and was composing myself off to sleep when I heerd the noise again, distinct."
"What sort of a noise?" asked the cook.
"A kind of a busting noise," replied Mr. Giles, looking round him.
"More like the noise of powdering a iron bar on a nutmeg grater," suggested Brittles.
"It was, when you heerd it, sir," rejoined Mr. Giles; "but, at this time, it had a busting sound. I turned down the clothes," continued Giles, rolling back the table-cloth, "sat up in bed, and listened."
The cook and housemaid simultaneously ejaculated "Lor!" and drew their chairs closer together.
"I heerd it now, quite apparent," resumed Mr. Giles. " 'Somebody,' I says, 'is forcing of a door, or window; what's to be done? I'll call up that poor lad, Brittles, and save him from being murdered in his bed; or his throat,' I says 'may be cut from his right ear to his left, without his ever knowing it.' "
Here, all eyes were turned upon Brittles, who fixed his upon the speaker, and stared at him with his mouth wide open and his face expressive of the most unmitigated horror.
"I tossed off the clothes," said Giles, throwing away the table-cloth, and looking very hard at the cook and housemaid, "got softly out of bed; drew on a pair of--"
"Ladies present, Mr. Giles," murmured the tinker.
"--Of shoes, sir," said Giles, turning upon him, and laying great emphasis on the word, "seized the loaded pistol that always goes upstairs with the plate-basket, and walked on tip-toes to his room. 'Brittles, I says, when I had woke him, 'don't be frightened!' "
"So you did," observed Brittles, in a low voice.
" 'We're dead men, I think, Brittles,-' I says," continued Giles; " 'but don't be frightened. "
"Was he frightened?" asked the cook.
"Not a bit of it," replied Mr. Giles. "He was as firm--ah! pretty near as firm as I was."
"I should have died at once, I'm sure, if it had been me," observed the housemaid.
"You're a woman," retorted Brittles, plucking up a little.
"Brittles is right," said Mr. Giles, nodding his head, approvingly; "from a woman, nothing else was to be expected. We, being men, took a dark lantern that was standing on Brittles's hob, and groped our way downstairs in the pitch dark--as it might be so."
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 housemaid screamed.
"It was a knock," said Mr. Giles, assuming perfect serenity. "Open the door, somebody."
Nobody moved.
"It seems a strange sort of thing, a knock coming at such a time in the morning," said Mr. Giles, surveying the pale faces which surrounded him, and looking very blank himself; "but the door must be opened. Do you hear, somebody?"
Mr. Giles, as he spoke, looked at Brittles; but that young man, being naturally modest, probably considered himself nobody, and so held that the inquiry could not have any application to him; at all events, he tendered no reply. Mr. Giles directed an appealing glance at the tinker, but he had suddenly fallen asleep. The women were out of the question.
"If Brittles would rather open the door. in the presence of witnesses," said Mr. Giles, after a short silence, "I am ready to make one."
"So am I," said the tinker, waking up as suddenly as he had fallen asleep.
Brittles capitulated on these terms; and the party being somewhat reassured by the discovery (made on throwing open the shutters) that it was now broad day, took their way up stairs, with the dogs in front. The two women, who were afraid to stay below, brought up the rear. By the advice of Mr. Giles, they all talked very loud, to warn any evil-disposed person outside that they were strong in numbers; and by a master-stroke of policy, originating in the brain of the same ingenious gentleman, the dogs' tails were well pinched, in the hall. to make them bark savagely.
These 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 each other'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 the--eh?--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 low 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, calling, in a state of great excitement, up the staircase; "here's one of the thieves, ma'am! Here's a thief, miss! Wounded, miss! I shot him, miss; and Brittles held the light."
"--In a lantern, miss," cried Brittles, applying one hand to the side of his mouth, so that his voice might travel the better.
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 ain't 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.
"He looks as if he was a-going, miss," bawled Brittles, in the same manner as before. "Wouldn't you like to come and look at him, miss, in case he shoutd?"
"Hush, pray; there's a good man!" rejoined the lady. "Wait quietly only one instant, while I speak to aunt."
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, upstairs 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 doctor.
"But won't you take one look at him, first, miss?" asked Mr. Giles, with as much pride as if Oliver were some bird of rare plumage, that he had skilfully brought down. "Not one little peep, miss?"
"Not now, for the world," replied the young lady. "Poor fellow! Oh! treat him kindly, Giles, for my sake!"
The old servant looked up at the speaker, as she turned away, with a glance as proud and admiring as if she had been his own child. Then, bending over Oliver, he helped to carry him upstairs, with the care and solicitude of a woman.
CHAPTER XXIX
Has an introductory account of the inmates of
the house to which Oliver resorted.
IN A HANDSOME ROOM (THOUGH ITS FURNITURE HAD RATHER THE air of old-fashioned comfort than of modem 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. He had taken his station some half way between the sideboard and the breakfast-table and--with his body drawn up to its full height, his head thrown back and inclined the merest trifle on one side, his left leg advanced, and his right hand thrust into his waistcoat, while his left hung down by his side, grasping a waiter--looked like one who laboured under the very agreeable sense of his own merits and importance.
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, in a quaint mixture of by-gone costume, with some slight concessions to the prevailing taste, which rather served to point the old style pleasantly than to impair its effect, 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 companions.
The young lady was in the lovely bloom and spring-time of womanhood, at that age when, if ever angels be for God's . good purposes enthroned in mortal forms, they may be, without impiety, supposed to abide in such as hers.
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. The very intelligence that shone in her deep blue eye, and was stamped upon her noble head, seemed scarcely of her age, or of the world; and yet the changing expression of sweetness and good-humour, the thousand lights that played about the face and left no shadow there; above all, the smile, the cheerful, happy smile--were made for Home, and fireside peace and happiness.
She was busily engaged in the little offices of the table. 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.
"Brittles always was a slow boy, ma'am," replied the attendant. And seeing, by the by, that Brittles had been a slow boy for upwards of thirty years, there appeared no great probability of his ever being a fast one.
"He gets worse instead of better, I think," said the elder lady.
"It is very inexcusable in him if he stops to play with any other boys," said the young lady, smiling.
Mr. Giles was apparently considering the propriety of indulging in a respectful smile himself, 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, inquired how they found themselves.
"You ought to be dead, positively dead with the fright," said the fat gentleman. "Why didn't you send? Bless me, my man should have come in a minute, and so would I; and my assistant would have been delighted, or anybody. I'm sure, under such circumstances. Dear, dear! So unexpected! In the silence of night, too!"
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 housebreaking 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.
"Honour, eh?" said the doctor; "well, I don't know; perhaps it's as honourable to hit a thief in the back kitchen as to hit your man at twelve paces. Fancy that he fired in the air, and you've fought a duel, Giles."
Mr. Giles, who thought this light treatment of the matter an unjust attempt at diminishing his glory, answered respectfully that it was not for the like of him to judge about that; but he rather thought it was no joke to the opposite party.
"Gad that's true!" said the doctor. "Where is he? 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, eh? Well, I couldn't have believed it!"
Talking all the way, he followed Mr. Giles upstairs; and while he is going upstairs, the reader may be informed that Mr. Losberne, a surgeon in the neighbourhood, known through a circuit of ten miles round as "the doctor," had grown fat, more than good-humour than from good living, and was as kind and hearty and withal as eccentric an old bachelor as will be found in five times that space by any explorer alive.
The doctor was absent much longer than either he or the ladies had anticipated. A large flat box was fetched out of the gig, and a bed-room bell was rung very often, and the servants ran up and down stairs perpetually, from which tokens it was justly concluded that something important was going on above. 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."
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," interposed Mr. Giles; "but I was going to tell you about him when Doctor Losberne came in."
The fact was, that Mr. Giles had not. at first, been able to bring his mind to the avowal that he had only shot a boy. Such commendations had been bestowed upon his bravery that he could not, for the life of him, help postponing the explanation for a few delicious minutes, during which he had flourished in the very zenith of a brief reputation for undaunted courage.
"Rose wished to see the man," said Mrs. Maylie, "but I wouldn't hear of it."
"Humph!" rejoined the doctor. "There is nothing very alarming in his appearance. Have you any objection to see him in my presence?"
"If it be necessary," replied the old lady, "certainly not."
"Then I think it is necessary," said the doctor; "at all events, I am quite sure that 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!"
CHAPTER XXX
Relates what Oliver's new visitors thought of him.
WITH MANY LOQUACIOUS ASSURANCES THAT THEY WOULD BE agreeably surprised in the aspect of the criminal, the doctor drew the young lady's arm through one of his, and offering his disengaged hand to Mrs. Maylie, led them, with much ceremony and stateliness, upstairs.
"Now," said the doctor, in a whisper, as he softly turned the handle of the bed-room door, "let us hear what you think of him. He has not been shaved very recently, but he don't look at all ferocious notwithstanding. Stop, though! Let me first see that he is in visiting order."
Stepping before them, he looked into the room. Motioning them to advance, he closed the door when they had entered, and gently drew back the curtains of the bed. Upon it, in 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 deep sleep. His wounded arm, bound and splintered up, was crossed upon his breast; his head reclined upon the other arm, which was half hidden by his long hair as it streamed over the pillow.
The honest gentleman held the curtain in his hand and looked on for a minute or so in silence. Whilst he was watching the patient thus, the younger lady glided softly past and, seating herself in a chair by the bedside, gathered Oliver's hair from hi
s face. As she stooped over him, her tears fell upon his forehead.
The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known. Thus a strain of gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent place, or the odour of a flower, or the mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never were, in this life; which vanish like a breath; which some brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, would seem to have awakened; which no voluntary exertion of the mind can ever recall.
"What can this mean?" exclaimed the elder lady. "This poor child can never have been the pupil of robbers!"
"Vice," sighed the surgeon, replacing the curtain, "takes up her abode in many temples; and who can say that a fair outside shall not enshrine her?"
"But at so early an age!" urged Rose.
"My dear young lady," rejoined the surgeon, mournfully shaking his head; "crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims."
"But, can you--oh! can you really believe that this delicate boy has been the voluntary associate of the worst outcasts of society?" said Rose.
The surgeon shook his head, in a manner which intimated that he feared it was very possible; and observing that they might disturb the patient, led the way into an adjoining apartment.
"But even if he has been wicked," pursued Rose, "think how young he is; think that he may never have known a mother's love or the comfort of a home, that ill-usage and blows, or the want of bread, may have driven him to herd with men who have forced him to guilt. Aunt, dear aunt, for mercy's sake, think of this before you let them drag this sick child to a prison, which in any case must be the grave of all his chances of amendment. Oh! as you love me, and know that I have never felt the want of parents in your goodness and affection. but that I might have done so, and might have been equally helpless and unprotected with this poor child, have pity upon him before it is too late!"
"My dear love," said the elder lady, as she folded the weeping girl to her bosom, "do you think I would harm a hair on his head?"
"Oh, no!" replied Rose, eagerly.