Oliver Twist. Volume 2 of 3

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 an iron bar on a nutmeg-grater,” suggested Brittle.

“It was, when you heerd, 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 up stairs with the plate-basket, and walked on tiptoes 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 under any alarm.’”

“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 down stairs 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, and the two women, who were afraid to stop below, bringing 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, and 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 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 ground thereof.

“Here he is!” bawled Giles, calling, in a great state of excitement, up the staircase; “here’s one of the thieves, ma’am! Here’s a[151][152] 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 up stairs 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 hung. 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 should – ?”

“Hush, pray, there’s a good man!” rejoined the young lady. “Wait quietly one instant, while I speak to aunt.”

With a footstep as soft and gentle as the voice, the speaker tripped away, and soon retained, with the direction that the wounded person was to be carried carefully up stairs 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, if it is only 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 up stairs with the care and solicitude of a woman.

CHAPTER XXIX.

HAS AN INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNT OF THE INMATES OF THE HOUSE TO WHICH OLIVER RESORTED, AND RELATES WHAT THEY THOUGHT OF HIM

In a handsome room – though its furniture had rather the air of old-fashioned comfort 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. 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 a 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, and her eyes, of which age had dimmed but little of their brightness, attentively fixed upon her young companion.

The younger 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 intwined with the best sympathies and affections of our nature.

She was busily engaged in the little offices of the table, and chancing to raise her eyes as the elder lady was regarding her, playfully put back her hair, which was simply braided on her forehead, and threw into one beaming look such a gush of affection and artless loveliness, that blessed spirits might have smiled to look upon her.