Chương Chương 40 · A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAMBER

. A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAMBER

A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAMBER

The girl’s life had been squandered in the streets, and among the most

noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was something of the

woman’s original nature left in her still; and when she heard a light

step approaching the door opposite to that by which she had entered,

and thought of the wide contrast which the small room would in another

moment contain, she felt burdened with the sense of her own deep shame,

and shrunk as though she could scarcely bear the presence of her with

whom she had sought this interview.

But struggling with these better feelings was pride,—the vice of the

lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and

self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and ruffians, the

fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the

jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself,—even

this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the

womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone connected

her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so

many, many traces when a very child.

She raised her eyes sufficiently to observe that the figure which

presented itself was that of a slight and beautiful girl; then, bending

them on the ground, she tossed her head with affected carelessness as

she said:

“It’s a hard matter to get to see you, lady. If I had taken offence,

and gone away, as many would have done, you’d have been sorry for it

one day, and not without reason either.”

“I am very sorry if any one has behaved harshly to you,” replied Rose.

“Do not think of that. Tell me why you wished to see me. I am the

person you inquired for.”

The kind tone of this answer, the sweet voice, the gentle manner, the

absence of any accent of haughtiness or displeasure, took the girl

completely by surprise, and she burst into tears.

“Oh, lady, lady!” she said, clasping her hands passionately before her

face, “if there was more like you, there would be fewer like me,—there

would—there would!”

“Sit down,” said Rose, earnestly. “If you are in poverty or affliction

I shall be truly glad to relieve you if I can,—I shall indeed. Sit

down.”

“Let me stand, lady,” said the girl, still weeping, “and do not speak

to me so kindly till you know me better. It is growing late. Is—is—that

door shut?”

“Yes,” said Rose, recoiling a few steps, as if to be nearer assistance

in case she should require it. “Why?”

“Because,” said the girl, “I am about to put my life and the lives of

others in your hands. I am the girl that dragged little Oliver back to

old Fagin’s on the night he went out from the house in Pentonville.”

“You!” said Rose Maylie.

“I, lady!” replied the girl. “I am the infamous creature you have heard

of, that lives among the thieves, and that never from the first moment

I can recollect my eyes and senses opening on London streets have known

any better life, or kinder words than they have given me, so help me

God! Do not mind shrinking openly from me, lady. I am younger than you

would think, to look at me, but I am well used to it. The poorest women

fall back, as I make my way along the crowded pavement.”

“What dreadful things are these!” said Rose, involuntarily falling from

her strange companion.

“Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady,” cried the girl, “that you

had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and that you

were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot and drunkenness,

and—and—something worse than all—as I have been from my cradle. I may

use the word, for the alley and the gutter were mine, as they will be

my deathbed.”

“I pity you!” said Rose, in a broken voice. “It wrings my heart to hear

you!”

“Heaven bless you for your goodness!” rejoined the girl. “If you knew

what I am sometimes, you would pity me, indeed. But I have stolen away

from those who would surely murder me, if they knew I had been here, to

tell you what I have overheard. Do you know a man named Monks?”

“No,” said Rose.

“He knows you,” replied the girl; “and knew you were here, for it was

by hearing him tell the place that I found you out.”

“I never heard the name,” said Rose.

“Then he goes by some other amongst us,” rejoined the girl, “which I

more than thought before. Some time ago, and soon after Oliver was put

into your house on the night of the robbery, I—suspecting this

man—listened to a conversation held between him and Fagin in the dark.

I found out, from what I heard, that Monks—the man I asked you about,

you know—”

“Yes,” said Rose, “I understand.”

“—That Monks,” pursued the girl, “had seen him accidently with two of

our boys on the day we first lost him, and had known him directly to be

the same child that he was watching for, though I couldn’t make out

why. A bargain was struck with Fagin, that if Oliver was got back he

should have a certain sum; and he was to have more for making him a

thief, which this Monks wanted for some purpose of his own.”

“For what purpose?” asked Rose.

“He caught sight of my shadow on the wall as I listened, in the hope of

finding out,” said the girl; “and there are not many people besides me

that could have got out of their way in time to escape discovery. But I

did; and I saw him no more till last night.”

“And what occurred then?”

“I’ll tell you, lady. Last night he came again. Again they went

upstairs, and I, wrapping myself up so that my shadow would not betray

me, again listened at the door. The first words I heard Monks say were

these: ‘So the only proofs of the boy’s identity lie at the bottom of

the river, and the old hag that received them from the mother is

rotting in her coffin.’ They laughed, and talked of his success in

doing this; and Monks, talking on about the boy, and getting very wild,

said that though he had got the young devil’s money safely now, he’d

rather have had it the other way; for, what a game it would have been

to have brought down the boast of the father’s will, by driving him

through every jail in town, and then hauling him up for some capital

felony which Fagin could easily manage, after having made a good profit

of him besides.”

“What is all this!” said Rose.

“The truth, lady, though it comes from my lips,” replied the girl.

“Then, he said, with oaths common enough in my ears, but strange to

yours, that if he could gratify his hatred by taking the boy’s life

without bringing his own neck in danger, he would; but, as he couldn’t,

he’d be upon the watch to meet him at every turn in life; and if he

took advantage of his birth and history, he might harm him yet. ‘In

short, Fagin,’ he says, ‘Jew as you are, you never laid such snares as

I’ll contrive for my young brother, Oliver.’”

“His brother!” exclaimed Rose.

“Those were his words,” said Nancy, glancing uneasily round, as she had

scarcely ceased to do, since she began to speak, for a vision of Sikes

haunted her perpetually. “And more. When he spoke of you and the other

lady, and said it seemed contrived by Heaven, or the devil, against

him, that Oliver should come into your hands, he laughed, and said

there was some comfort in that too, for how many thousands and hundreds

of thousands of pounds would you not give, if you had them, to know who

your two-legged spaniel was.”

“You do not mean,” said Rose, turning very pale, “to tell me that this

was said in earnest?”

“He spoke in hard and angry earnest, if a man ever did,” replied the

girl, shaking her head. “He is an earnest man when his hatred is up. I

know many who do worse things; but I’d rather listen to them all a

dozen times, than to that Monks once. It is growing late, and I have to

reach home without suspicion of having been on such an errand as this.

I must get back quickly.”

“But what can I do?” said Rose. “To what use can I turn this

communication without you? Back! Why do you wish to return to

companions you paint in such terrible colors? If you repeat this

information to a gentleman whom I can summon in an instant from the

next room, you can be consigned to some place of safety without half an

hour’s delay.”

“I wish to go back,” said the girl. “I must go back, because—how can I

tell such things to an innocent lady like you?—because among the men I

have told you of, there is one: the most desperate among them all; that

I can’t leave: no, not even to be saved from the life I am leading

now.”

“Your having interfered in this dear boy’s behalf before,” said Rose;

“your coming here, at so great a risk, to tell me what you have heard;

your manner, which convinces me of the truth of what you say; your

evident contrition, and sense of shame; all lead me to believe that you

might yet be reclaimed. Oh!” said the earnest girl, folding her hands

as the tears coursed down her face, “do not turn a deaf ear to the

entreaties of one of your own sex; the first—the first, I do believe,

who ever appealed to you in the voice of pity and compassion. Do hear

my words, and let me save you yet, for better things.”

“Lady,” cried the girl, sinking on her knees, “dear, sweet, angel lady,

you _are_ the first that ever blessed me with such words as these, and

if I had heard them years ago, they might have turned me from a life of

sin and sorrow; but it is too late, it is too late!”

“It is never too late,” said Rose, “for penitence and atonement.”

“It is,” cried the girl, writhing in agony of her mind; “I cannot leave

him now! I could not be his death.”

“Why should you be?” asked Rose.

“Nothing could save him,” cried the girl. “If I told others what I have

told you, and led to their being taken, he would be sure to die. He is

the boldest, and has been so cruel!”

“Is it possible,” cried Rose, “that for such a man as this, you can

resign every future hope, and the certainty of immediate rescue? It is

madness.”

“I don’t know what it is,” answered the girl; “I only know that it is

so, and not with me alone, but with hundreds of others as bad and

wretched as myself. I must go back. Whether it is God’s wrath for the

wrong I have done, I do not know; but I am drawn back to him through

every suffering and ill usage; and I should be, I believe, if I knew

that I was to die by his hand at last.”

“What am I to do?” said Rose. “I should not let you depart from me

thus.”

“You should, lady, and I know you will,” rejoined the girl, rising.

“You will not stop my going because I have trusted in your goodness,

and forced no promise from you, as I might have done.”

“Of what use, then, is the communication you have made?” said Rose.

“This mystery must be investigated, or how will its disclosure to me,

benefit Oliver, whom you are anxious to serve?”

“You must have some kind gentleman about you that will hear it as a

secret, and advise you what to do,” rejoined the girl.

“But where can I find you again when it is necessary?” asked Rose. “I

do not seek to know where these dreadful people live, but where will

you be walking or passing at any settled period from this time?”

“Will you promise me that you will have my secret strictly kept, and

come alone, or with the only other person that knows it; and that I

shall not be watched or followed?” asked the girl.

“I promise you solemnly,” answered Rose.

“Every Sunday night, from eleven until the clock strikes twelve,” said

the girl without hesitation, “I will walk on London Bridge if I am

alive.”

“Stay another moment,” interposed Rose, as the girl moved hurriedly

towards the door. “Think once again on your own condition, and the

opportunity you have of escaping from it. You have a claim on me: not

only as the voluntary bearer of this intelligence, but as a woman lost

almost beyond redemption. Will you return to this gang of robbers, and

to this man, when a word can save you? What fascination is it that can

take you back, and make you cling to wickedness and misery? Oh! is

there no chord in your heart that I can touch! Is there nothing left,

to which I can appeal against this terrible infatuation!”

“When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are,” replied the

girl steadily, “give away your hearts, love will carry you all

lengths—even such as you, who have home, friends, other admirers,

everything, to fill them. When such as I, who have no certain roof but

the coffinlid, and no friend in sickness or death but the hospital

nurse, set our rotten hearts on any man, and let him fill the place

that has been a blank through all our wretched lives, who can hope to

cure us? Pity us, lady—pity us for having only one feeling of the woman

left, and for having that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort

and a pride, into a new means of violence and suffering.”

“You will,” said Rose, after a pause, “take some money from me, which

may enable you to live without dishonesty—at all events until we meet

again?”

“Not a penny,” replied the girl, waving her hand.

“Do not close your heart against all my efforts to help you,” said

Rose, stepping gently forward. “I wish to serve you indeed.”

“You would serve me best, lady,” replied the girl, wringing her hands,

“if you could take my life at once; for I have felt more grief to think

of what I am, tonight, than I ever did before, and it would be

something not to die in the hell in which I have lived. God bless you,

sweet lady, and send as much happiness on your head as I have brought

shame on mine!”

Thus speaking, and sobbing aloud, the unhappy creature turned away;

while Rose Maylie, overpowered by this extraordinary interview, which

had more the semblance of a rapid dream than an actual occurrence, sank

into a chair, and endeavoured to collect her wandering thoughts.