Oliver Twist (62 page)

“And Bet?”

“Poor Bet! She went to see the Body, to speak to who it was,” replied Chitling, his contenance falling more and more, “and went off mad, screaming and raving, and beating her head against the boards; so they put a strait-weskut on her and took her to the hospital—and there she is.”

“Wot’s come of young Bates?” demanded Kags.

“He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he’ll be here soon,” replied Chitling. “There’s nowhere else to go to now, for the people at the Cripples are all in custody, and the bar of the ken—I went up there and see it with my own eyes—is filled with traps.”

“This is a smash,” observed Toby biting his lips. “There’s more than one will go with this.”

“The sessions are on,” said Kags: “if they get the inquest over, and Bolter turns King’s evidence—as of course he will, from what he’s said already—they can prove Fagin an accessory before the fact and get the trial on on Friday, and he’ll swing in six days from this, my G—!”

“You should have heard the people groan,”‘ said Chitling; “the officers fought like devils, or they’d have torn him away. He was down once, but they made a ring round him, and fought their way along. You should have seen how he looked about him, all muddy and bleeding, and clung to them as if they were his dearest friends. I can see ’em now, not able to stand upright with the pressing of the mob, and dragging him along amongst ‘em; I can see the people jumping up, one behind another, and snarling with their teeth and making at him; I can see the blood upon his hair and beard, and hear the cries with which the women worked themselves into the centre of the crowd at the street corner, and swore they’d tear his heart out!”

The horror-stricken witness of this scene pressed his hands upon his ears, and with his eyes closed got up and paced violently to and fro, like one distracted.

While he was thus engaged, and the two men sat by in silence with their eyes fixed upon the floor, a pattering noise was heard upon the stairs, and Sikes’s dog bounded into the room. They ran to the window, downstairs, and into the street. The dog had jumped in at an open window; he made no attempt to follow them, nor was his master to be seen.

“What’s the meaning of this?” said Toby when they had returned. “He can’t be coming here. I—I—hope not.”

“If he was coming here, he’d have come with the dog,” said Kags, stooping down to examine the animal, who lay panting on the floor. “Here! Give us some water for him; he has run himself faint.”

“He’s drunk it all up, every drop,” said Chitling after watching the dog some time in silence. “Covered with mud—lame—half-blind—he must have come a long way.” “Where can he have come from!” exclaimed Toby. “He’s been to the other kens of course, and finding them filled with strangers come on here, where he’s been many a time and often. But where can he had come from first, and how comes he here alone without the other!”

“He”—(none of them called the murderer by his old name)—“he can’t have made away with himself. What do you think?” said Chitling.

Toby shook his head.

“If he had,” said Kags, “the dog ‘ud want to lead us away to where he did it. No. I think he’d got out of the country, and left the dog behind. He must have given him the slip somehow, or he wouldn’t be so easy.”

This solution, appearing the most probable one, was adopted as the right; the dog, creeping under a chair, coiled himself up to sleep, without more notice from anybody.

It being now dark, the shutter was closed and a candle lighted and placed upon the table. The terrible events of the last two days had made a deep impression on all three, increased by the danger and uncertainty of their own position. They drew their chairs closer together, starting at every sound. They spoke little, and that in whispers, and were as silent and awe-stricken as if the remains of the murdered woman lay in the next room.

They had sat thus, some time, when suddenly was heard a hurried knocking on the door below.

“Young Bates,” said Kags, looking angrily round, to check the fear he felt himself.

The knocking came again. No, it wasn’t he. He never knocked like that.

Crackit went to the window and, shaking all over, drew in his head. There was no need to tell them who it was; his pale face was enough. The dog too was on the alert in an instant, and ran whining to the door.

“We must let him in,” he said, taking up the candle.

“Isn’t there any help for it?” asked the other man in a hoarse voice.

“None. He
must
come in.”

“Don’t leave us in the dark,” said Kags, taking down a candle from the chimney-piece, and lighting it with such a trembling hand that the knocking was twice repeated before he had finished.

Crackit went down to the door, and returned followed by a man with the lower part of his face buried in a handkerchief and another tied over his head under his hat. He drew them slowly off. Blanched face, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, beard of three days’ growth, wasted flesh, short thick breath: it was the very ghost of Sikes.

He laid his hand upon a chair which stood in the middle of the room, but shuddering as he was about to drop into it, and seeming to glance over his shoulder, dragged it back close to the wall—as close as it would go—ground it against it—and sat down.

Not a word had been exchanged. He looked from one to another in silence. If an eye were furtively raised and met his, it was instantly averted. When his hollow voice broke silence, they all three started. They seemed never to have heard its tones before.

“How came that dog here?” he asked.

“Alone. Three hours ago.”

“To-night’s paper says that Fagin’s took. Is it true, or a lie?”

“True.”

They were silent again.

“Damn you all!” said Sikes, passing his hand across his forehead. “Have you nothing to say to me?”

There was an uneasy movement among them, but nobody spoke.

“You that keep this house,” said Sikes, turning his face to Crackit, “do you mean to sell me, or to let me lie here till this hunt is over?”

“You may stop here if you think it safe,” returned the person addressed; after some hesitation.

Sikes carried his eyes slowly up the wall behind him, rather trying to turn his head than actually doing it, and said, “Is—it—the body—is it buried?”

They shook their heads.

“Why isn’t it!” he retorted with the same glance behind him. “Wot do they keep such ugly things above the ground for?—Who’s that knocking?”

Crackit intimated, by a motion of his hand as he left the room, that there was nothing to fear, and directly came back with Charley Bates behind him. Sikes sat opposite the door, so that the moment the boy entered the room he encountered his figure.

“Toby,” said the boy falling back, as Sikes turned his eyes toward him, “why didn’t you tell me this downstairs?”

There had been something so tremendous in the shrinking off of the three that the wretched man was willing to propitiate even this lad. Accordingly he nodded, and made as though he would shake hands with him.

“Let me go into some other room,” said the boy, retreating still farther.

“Charley!” said Sikes, stepping forward. “Don’t you—don’t you know me?”

“Don’t come nearer me,” answered the boy, still retreating, and looking, with horror in his eyes, upon the murderer’s face. “You monster!”

The man stopped half-way, and they looked at each other; but Sikes’s eyes sunk gradually to the ground.

“Witness you three,” cried the boy shaking his clenched fist, and becoming more and more excited as he spoke. “Witness you three—I’m not afraid of him—if they come here after him, I’ll give him up; I will. I tell you out at once. He may kill me for it if he likes, or if he dares, but if I am here I’ll give him up. I’d give him up if he was to be boiled alive. Murder! Help! If there’s the pluck of a man among you three, you’ll help me. Murder! Help! Down with him!”

Pouring out these cries, and accompanying them with violent gesticulation, the boy actually threw himself single-handed upon the strong man, and in the intensity of his energy and the suddenness of his surprise, brought him heavily to the ground.

The three spectators seemed quite stupefied. They offered no interference, and the boy and man rolled on the ground together—the former, heedless of the blows that showered upon him, wrenching his hands tighter and tighter in the garments about the murderer’s breast, and never ceasing to call for help with all his might.

The contest, however, was too unequal to last long. Sikes had him down and his knee was on his throat, when Crackit pulled him back with a look of alarm and pointed to the window. There were lights gleaming below, voices in loud and earnest conversation, the gramp of hurried footsteps—endless they seemed in number—crossing the nearest wooden bridge. One man on horesback seemed to be among the crowd, for there was the noise of hoofs rattling on the uneven pavement. The gleam of lights increased; the footsteps came more thickly and noisily on. Then came a loud knocking at the door, and then a hoarse murmur from such a multitude of angry voices as would have made the boldest quail.

“Help!” shrieked the boy in a voice that rent the air. “He’s here! Break down the door!”

“In the King’s name!” cried the voices without; and the hoarse cry arose again, but louder.

“Break down the door!” screamed the boy. “I tell you they’ll never open it. Run straight to the room where the light is. Break down the door!”

Strokes, thick and heavy, rattled upon the door and lower window-shutters as he ceased to speak, and a loud huzzah burst from the crowd, giving the listener, for the first time, some adequate idea of its immense extent.

“Open the door of some place where I can lock this screeching Hell-babe,” cried Sikes fiercely, running to and fro, and dragging the boy, now, as easily as if he were an empty sack. “That door. Quick!” He flung him in, bolted it, and turned the key. “Is the downstairs door fast?”

“Double-locked and chained,” replied Crackit, who, with the other two men, still remained quite helpless and bewildered.

“The panels—are they strong?”

“Lined with sheet-iron.”

“And the windows too?”

“Yes, and the windows.”

“Damn you!” cried the desperate ruffian, throwing up the sash and menacing the crowd. “Do your worst! I’ll cheat you yet!”

Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mortal ears, none could exceed the cry of the infuriated throng. Some shouted to those who were nearest to set the house on fire; others roared to the officers to shoot him dead. Among them all, none showed such fury as the man on horseback, who, throwing himself out of the saddle and bursting through the crowd as if he were parting water, cried beneath the window, in a voice that rose above all others, “Twenty guineas to the man who brings a ladder!”

The nearest voice took up the cry, and hundreds echoed it. Some called for ladders, some for sledge-hammers; some ran with torches to and fro as if to seek them, and still came back and roared again; some spent their breath in impotent curses and execrations; some pressed forward with the ecstasy of madmen, and thus impeded the progress of those below; some among the boldest attempted to climb up by the water-spout and crevices in the wall; and all waved to and fro, in the darkness beneath, like a field of corn moved by an angry wind, and joined from time to time in one loud furious roar.

“The tide,” cried the murderer, as he staggered back into the room, and shut the faces out, “the tide was in as I came up. Give me a rope, a long rope. They’re all in front. I may drop into the Folly Ditch, and clear off that way. Give me a rope, or I shall do three more murders and kill myself.”

The panic-stricken men pointed to where such articles were kept; the murderer, hastily selecting the longest and strongest cord, hurried up to the house-top.

All the windows in the rear of the house had been long ago bricked up, except one small trap in the room where the boy was locked, and that was too small even for the passage of his body. But from this aperture he had never ceased to call on those without, to guard the back; and thus, when the murderer emerged at last on the house-top by the door in the roof, a loud shout proclaimed the face to those in front, who immediately began to pour round, pressing upon each other in an unbroken stream.

He planted a board, which he had carried up with him for the purpose, so firmly against the door that it must be matter of great difficulty to open it from the inside, and creeping over the tiles, looked over the low parapet.

The water was out, and the ditch a bed of mud.

The crowd had been hushed during these few moments, watching his motions and doubtful of his purpose, but the instant they perceived it and knew it was defeated, they raised a cry of triumphant execration to which all their previous shouting had been whispers. Again and again it rose. Those who were at too great a distance to know its meaning, took up the sound; it echoed and re-echoed; it seemed as though the whole city had poured its population out to curse him.

On pressed the people from the front—on, on, on, in a strong struggling current of angry faces, with here and there a glaring torch to light them up and show them out in all their wrath and passion. The houses on the opposite side of the ditch had been entered by the mob; sashes were thrown up, or torn bodily out; there were tiers and tiers of faces in every window, cluster upon cluster of people clinging to every house-top. Each little bridge (and there were three in sight) bent beneath the weight of the crowd upon it. Still the current poured on to find some nook or hole from which to vent their shouts, and only for an instant see the wretch.

“They have him now,” cried the man on the nearest bridge. “Hurrah!”

The crowd grew light with uncovered heads, and again the shout uprose.

“I will give fifty pounds,” cried an old gentleman from the same quarter, “to the man who takes him alive. I will remain here till he comes to ask me for it.”