Chapter Chapter 41 · CONTAINING FRESH DISCOVERIES, AND SHOWING THAT SUPRISES, LIKE MISFORTUNES, SELDOM COME ALONE

. CONTAINING FRESH DISCOVERIES, AND SHOWING THAT SUPRISES, LIKE MISFORTUNES, SELDOM COME ALONE

CONTAINING FRESH DISCOVERIES, AND SHOWING THAT SUPRISES, LIKE

MISFORTUNES, SELDOM COME ALONE

Her situation was, indeed, one of no common trial and difficulty. While

she felt the most eager and burning desire to penetrate the mystery in

which Oliver’s history was enveloped, she could not but hold sacred the

confidence which the miserable woman with whom she had just conversed,

had reposed in her, as a young and guileless girl. Her words and manner

had touched Rose Maylie’s heart; and, mingled with her love for her

young charge, and scarcely less intense in its truth and fervour, was

her fond wish to win the outcast back to repentance and hope.

They purposed remaining in London only three days, prior to departing

for some weeks to a distant part of the coast. It was now midnight of

the first day. What course of action could she determine upon, which

could be adopted in eight-and-forty hours? Or how could she postpone

the journey without exciting suspicion?

Mr. Losberne was with them, and would be for the next two days; but

Rose was too well acquainted with the excellent gentleman’s

impetuosity, and foresaw too clearly the wrath with which, in the first

explosion of his indignation, he would regard the instrument of

Oliver’s recapture, to trust him with the secret, when her

representations in the girl’s behalf could be seconded by no

experienced person. These were all reasons for the greatest caution and

most circumspect behaviour in communicating it to Mrs. Maylie, whose

first impulse would infallibly be to hold a conference with the worthy

doctor on the subject. As to resorting to any legal adviser, even if

she had known how to do so, it was scarcely to be thought of, for the

same reason. Once the thought occurred to her of seeking assistance

from Harry; but this awakened the recollection of their last parting,

and it seemed unworthy of her to call him back, when—the tears rose to

her eyes as she pursued this train of reflection—he might have by this

time learnt to forget her, and to be happier away.

Disturbed by these different reflections; inclining now to one course

and then to another, and again recoiling from all, as each successive

consideration presented itself to her mind; Rose passed a sleepless and

anxious night. After more communing with herself next day, she arrived

at the desperate conclusion of consulting Harry.

“If it be painful to him,” she thought, “to come back here, how painful

it will be to me! But perhaps he will not come; he may write, or he may

come himself, and studiously abstain from meeting me—he did when he

went away. I hardly thought he would; but it was better for us both.”

And here Rose dropped the pen, and turned away, as though the very

paper which was to be her messenger should not see her weep.

She had taken up the same pen, and laid it down again fifty times, and

had considered and reconsidered the first line of her letter without

writing the first word, when Oliver, who had been walking in the

streets, with Mr. Giles for a body-guard, entered the room in such

breathless haste and violent agitation, as seemed to betoken some new

cause of alarm.

“What makes you look so flurried?” asked Rose, advancing to meet him.

“I hardly know how; I feel as if I should be choked,” replied the boy.

“Oh dear! To think that I should see him at last, and you should be

able to know that I have told you the truth!”

“I never thought you had told us anything but the truth,” said Rose,

soothing him. “But what is this?—of whom do you speak?”

“I have seen the gentleman,” replied Oliver, scarcely able to

articulate, “the gentleman who was so good to me—Mr. Brownlow, that we

have so often talked about.”

“Where?” asked Rose.

“Getting out of a coach,” replied Oliver, shedding tears of delight,

“and going into a house. I didn’t speak to him—I couldn’t speak to him,

for he didn’t see me, and I trembled so, that I was not able to go up

to him. But Giles asked, for me, whether he lived there, and they said

he did. Look here,” said Oliver, opening a scrap of paper, “here it is;

here’s where he lives—I’m going there directly! Oh, dear me, dear me!

What shall I do when I come to see him and hear him speak again!”

With her attention not a little distracted by these and a great many

other incoherent exclamations of joy, Rose read the address, which was

Craven Street, in the Strand. She very soon determined upon turning the

discovery to account.

“Quick!” she said. “Tell them to fetch a hackney-coach, and be ready to

go with me. I will take you there directly, without a minute’s loss of

time. I will only tell my aunt that we are going out for an hour, and

be ready as soon as you are.”

Oliver needed no prompting to despatch, and in little more than five

minutes they were on their way to Craven Street. When they arrived

there, Rose left Oliver in the coach, under pretence of preparing the

old gentleman to receive him; and sending up her card by the servant,

requested to see Mr. Brownlow on very pressing business. The servant

soon returned, to beg that she would walk upstairs; and following him

into an upper room, Miss Maylie was presented to an elderly gentleman

of benevolent appearance, in a bottle-green coat. At no great distance

from whom, was seated another old gentleman, in nankeen breeches and

gaiters; who did not look particularly benevolent, and who was sitting

with his hands clasped on the top of a thick stick, and his chin

propped thereupon.

“Dear me,” said the gentleman, in the bottle-green coat, hastily rising

with great politeness, “I beg your pardon, young lady—I imagined it was

some importunate person who—I beg you will excuse me. Be seated, pray.”

“Mr. Brownlow, I believe, sir?” said Rose, glancing from the other

gentleman to the one who had spoken.

“That is my name,” said the old gentleman. “This is my friend, Mr.

Grimwig. Grimwig, will you leave us for a few minutes?”

“I believe,” interposed Miss Maylie, “that at this period of our

interview, I need not give that gentleman the trouble of going away. If

I am correctly informed, he is cognizant of the business on which I

wish to speak to you.”

Mr. Brownlow inclined his head. Mr. Grimwig, who had made one very

stiff bow, and risen from his chair, made another very stiff bow, and

dropped into it again.

“I shall surprise you very much, I have no doubt,” said Rose, naturally

embarrassed; “but you once showed great benevolence and goodness to a

very dear young friend of mine, and I am sure you will take an interest

in hearing of him again.”

“Indeed!” said Mr. Brownlow.

“Oliver Twist you knew him as,” replied Rose.

The words no sooner escaped her lips, than Mr. Grimwig, who had been

affecting to dip into a large book that lay on the table, upset it with

a great crash, and falling back in his chair, discharged from his

features every expression but one of unmitigated wonder, and indulged

in a prolonged and vacant stare; then, as if ashamed of having betrayed

so much emotion, he jerked himself, as it were, by a convulsion into

his former attitude, and looking out straight before him emitted a long

deep whistle, which seemed, at last, not to be discharged on empty air,

but to die away in the innermost recesses of his stomach.

Mr. Browlow was no less surprised, although his astonishment was not

expressed in the same eccentric manner. He drew his chair nearer to

Miss Maylie’s, and said,

“Do me the favour, my dear young lady, to leave entirely out of the

question that goodness and benevolence of which you speak, and of which

nobody else knows anything; and if you have it in your power to produce

any evidence which will alter the unfavourable opinion I was once

induced to entertain of that poor child, in Heaven’s name put me in

possession of it.”

“A bad one! I’ll eat my head if he is not a bad one,” growled Mr.

Grimwig, speaking by some ventriloquial power, without moving a muscle

of his face.

“He is a child of a noble nature and a warm heart,” said Rose,

colouring; “and that Power which has thought fit to try him beyond his

years, has planted in his breast affections and feelings which would do

honour to many who have numbered his days six times over.”

“I’m only sixty-one,” said Mr. Grimwig, with the same rigid face. “And,

as the devil’s in it if this Oliver is not twelve years old at least, I

don’t see the application of that remark.”

“Do not heed my friend, Miss Maylie,” said Mr. Brownlow; “he does not

mean what he says.”

“Yes, he does,” growled Mr. Grimwig.

“No, he does not,” said Mr. Brownlow, obviously rising in wrath as he

spoke.

“He’ll eat his head, if he doesn’t,” growled Mr. Grimwig.

“He would deserve to have it knocked off, if he does,” said Mr.

Brownlow.

“And he’d uncommonly like to see any man offer to do it,” responded Mr.

Grimwig, knocking his stick upon the floor.

Having gone thus far, the two old gentlemen severally took snuff, and

afterwards shook hands, according to their invariable custom.

“Now, Miss Maylie,” said Mr. Brownlow, “to return to the subject in

which your humanity is so much interested. Will you let me know what

intelligence you have of this poor child: allowing me to promise that I

exhausted every means in my power of discovering him, and that since I

have been absent from this country, my first impression that he had

imposed upon me, and had been persuaded by his former associates to rob

me, has been considerably shaken.”

Rose, who had had time to collect her thoughts, at once related, in a

few natural words, all that had befallen Oliver since he left Mr.

Brownlow’s house; reserving Nancy’s information for that gentleman’s

private ear, and concluding with the assurance that his only sorrow,

for some months past, had been not being able to meet with his former

benefactor and friend.

“Thank God!” said the old gentleman. “This is great happiness to me,

great happiness. But you have not told me where he is now, Miss Maylie.

You must pardon my finding fault with you,—but why not have brought

him?”

“He is waiting in a coach at the door,” replied Rose.

“At this door!” cried the old gentleman. With which he hurried out of

the room, down the stairs, up the coachsteps, and into the coach,

without another word.

When the room-door closed behind him, Mr. Grimwig lifted up his head,

and converting one of the hind legs of his chair into a pivot,

described three distinct circles with the assistance of his stick and

the table; sitting in it all the time. After performing this evolution,

he rose and limped as fast as he could up and down the room at least a

dozen times, and then stopping suddenly before Rose, kissed her without

the slightest preface.

“Hush!” he said, as the young lady rose in some alarm at this unusual

proceeding. “Don’t be afraid. I’m old enough to be your grandfather.

You’re a sweet girl. I like you. Here they are!”

In fact, as he threw himself at one dexterous dive into his former

seat, Mr. Brownlow returned, accompanied by Oliver, whom Mr. Grimwig

received very graciously; and if the gratification of that moment had

been the only reward for all her anxiety and care in Oliver’s behalf,

Rose Maylie would have been well repaid.

“There is somebody else who should not be forgotten, by the bye,” said

Mr. Brownlow, ringing the bell. “Send Mrs. Bedwin here, if you please.”

The old housekeeper answered the summons with all dispatch; and

dropping a curtsey at the door, waited for orders.

“Why, you get blinder every day, Bedwin,” said Mr. Brownlow, rather

testily.

“Well, that I do, sir,” replied the old lady. “People’s eyes, at my

time of life, don’t improve with age, sir.”

“I could have told you that,” rejoined Mr. Brownlow; “but put on your

glasses, and see if you can’t find out what you were wanted for, will

you?”

The old lady began to rummage in her pocket for her spectacles. But

Oliver’s patience was not proof against this new trial; and yielding to

his first impulse, he sprang into her arms.

“God be good to me!” cried the old lady, embracing him; “it is my

innocent boy!”

“My dear old nurse!” cried Oliver.

“He would come back—I knew he would,” said the old lady, holding him in

her arms. “How well he looks, and how like a gentleman’s son he is

dressed again! Where have you been, this long, long while? Ah! the same

sweet face, but not so pale; the same soft eye, but not so sad. I have

never forgotten them or his quiet smile, but have seen them every day,

side by side with those of my own dear children, dead and gone since I

was a lightsome young creature.” Running on thus, and now holding

Oliver from her to mark how he had grown, now clasping him to her and

passing her fingers fondly through his hair, the good soul laughed and

wept upon his neck by turns.

Leaving her and Oliver to compare notes at leisure, Mr. Brownlow led

the way into another room; and there, heard from Rose a full narration

of her interview with Nancy, which occasioned him no little surprise

and perplexity. Rose also explained her reasons for not confiding in

her friend Mr. Losberne in the first instance. The old gentleman

considered that she had acted prudently, and readily undertook to hold

solemn conference with the worthy doctor himself. To afford him an

early opportunity for the execution of this design, it was arranged

that he should call at the hotel at eight o’clock that evening, and

that in the meantime Mrs. Maylie should be cautiously informed of all

that had occurred. These preliminaries adjusted, Rose and Oliver

returned home.

Rose had by no means overrated the measure of the good doctor’s wrath.

Nancy’s history was no sooner unfolded to him, than he poured forth a

shower of mingled threats and execrations; threatened to make her the

first victim of the combined ingenuity of Messrs. Blathers and Duff;

and actually put on his hat preparatory to sallying forth to obtain the

assistance of those worthies. And, doubtless, he would, in this first

outbreak, have carried the intention into effect without a moment’s

consideration of the consequences, if he had not been restrained, in

part, by corresponding violence on the side of Mr. Brownlow, who was

himself of an irascible temperament, and partly by such arguments and

representations as seemed best calculated to dissuade him from his

hotbrained purpose.

“Then what the devil is to be done?” said the impetuous doctor, when

they had rejoined the two ladies. “Are we to pass a vote of thanks to

all these vagabonds, male and female, and beg them to accept a hundred

pounds, or so, apiece, as a trifling mark of our esteem, and some

slight acknowledgment of their kindness to Oliver?”

“Not exactly that,” rejoined Mr. Brownlow, laughing; “but we must

proceed gently and with great care.”

“Gentleness and care,” exclaimed the doctor. “I’d send them one and all

to—”

“Never mind where,” interposed Mr. Brownlow. “But reflect whether

sending them anywhere is likely to attain the object we have in view.”

“What object?” asked the doctor.

“Simply, the discovery of Oliver’s parentage, and regaining for him the

inheritance of which, if this story be true, he has been fraudulently

deprived.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Losberne, cooling himself with his pocket-handkerchief;

“I almost forgot that.”

“You see,” pursued Mr. Brownlow; “placing this poor girl entirely out

of the question, and supposing it were possible to bring these

scoundrels to justice without compromising her safety, what good should

we bring about?”

“Hanging a few of them at least, in all probability,” suggested the

doctor, “and transporting the rest.”

“Very good,” replied Mr. Brownlow, smiling; “but no doubt they will

bring that about for themselves in the fulness of time, and if we step

in to forestall them, it seems to me that we shall be performing a very

Quixotic act, in direct opposition to our own interest—or at least to

Oliver’s, which is the same thing.”

“How?” inquired the doctor.

“Thus. It is quite clear that we shall have extreme difficulty in

getting to the bottom of this mystery, unless we can bring this man,

Monks, upon his knees. That can only be done by stratagem, and by

catching him when he is not surrounded by these people. For, suppose he

were apprehended, we have no proof against him. He is not even (so far

as we know, or as the facts appear to us) concerned with the gang in

any of their robberies. If he were not discharged, it is very unlikely

that he could receive any further punishment than being committed to

prison as a rogue and vagabond; and of course ever afterwards his mouth

would be so obstinately closed that he might as well, for our purposes,

be deaf, dumb, blind, and an idiot.”

“Then,” said the doctor impetuously, “I put it to you again, whether

you think it reasonable that this promise to the girl should be

considered binding; a promise made with the best and kindest

intentions, but really—”

“Do not discuss the point, my dear young lady, pray,” said Mr.

Brownlow, interrupting Rose as she was about to speak. “The promise

shall be kept. I don’t think it will, in the slightest degree,

interfere with our proceedings. But, before we can resolve upon any

precise course of action, it will be necessary to see the girl; to

ascertain from her whether she will point out this Monks, on the

understanding that he is to be dealt with by us, and not by the law;

or, if she will not, or cannot do that, to procure from her such an

account of his haunts and description of his person, as will enable us

to identify him. She cannot be seen until next Sunday night; this is

Tuesday. I would suggest that in the meantime, we remain perfectly

quiet, and keep these matters secret even from Oliver himself.”

Although Mr. Losberne received with many wry faces a proposal involving

a delay of five whole days, he was fain to admit that no better course

occurred to him just then; and as both Rose and Mrs. Maylie sided very

strongly with Mr. Brownlow, that gentleman’s proposition was carried

unanimously.

“I should like,” he said, “to call in the aid of my friend Grimwig. He

is a strange creature, but a shrewd one, and might prove of material

assistance to us; I should say that he was bred a lawyer, and quitted

the Bar in disgust because he had only one brief and a motion of

course, in twenty years, though whether that is recommendation or not,

you must determine for yourselves.”

“I have no objection to your calling in your friend if I may call in

mine,” said the doctor.

“We must put it to the vote,” replied Mr. Brownlow, “who may he be?”

“That lady’s son, and this young lady’s—very old friend,” said the

doctor, motioning towards Mrs. Maylie, and concluding with an

expressive glance at her niece.

Rose blushed deeply, but she did not make any audible objection to this

motion (possibly she felt in a hopeless minority); and Harry Maylie and

Mr. Grimwig were accordingly added to the committee.

“We stay in town, of course,” said Mrs. Maylie, “while there remains

the slightest prospect of prosecuting this inquiry with a chance of

success. I will spare neither trouble nor expense in behalf of the

object in which we are all so deeply interested, and I am content to

remain here, if it be for twelve months, so long as you assure me that

any hope remains.”

“Good!” rejoined Mr. Brownlow. “And as I see on the faces about me, a

disposition to inquire how it happened that I was not in the way to

corroborate Oliver’s tale, and had so suddenly left the kingdom, let me

stipulate that I shall be asked no questions until such time as I may

deem it expedient to forestall them by telling my own story. Believe

me, I make this request with good reason, for I might otherwise excite

hopes destined never to be realised, and only increase difficulties and

disappointments already quite numerous enough. Come! Supper has been

announced, and young Oliver, who is all alone in the next room, will

have begun to think, by this time, that we have wearied of his company,

and entered into some dark conspiracy to thrust him forth upon the

world.”

With these words, the old gentleman gave his hand to Mrs. Maylie, and

escorted her into the supper-room. Mr. Losberne followed, leading Rose;

and the council was, for the present, effectually broken up.