Tales from Dickens Part 6

Whichever way he went he could not rid himself of that horror. When night came he crawled into a disused shed, but he could not sleep.

Whenever he closed his eyes he seemed to see Nancy's eyes looking at him. He got up and wandered on again, desperately lonely for some one to talk to.

He heard a man telling another about the murder as he read the account in a newspaper, and knew that he must hide. He hastened then to a den he knew in a house beside the river, dirty and dismal and the haunt of thieves. Some of his old companions were there, but even they shrank from him.

He had been seen to enter the place, however, and in a few minutes the street was full of people, all yelling for his capture. He barred the doors and windows, but they began to break down the shutters with sledge-hammers.

He ran to the roof with a rope, thinking to let himself down on the side next the river and so escape. Here he fastened one end of the rope to the chimney, and, making a loop in the other end, put it over his head.

Just at that instant he imagined he saw Nancy's eyes again looking at him. He staggered back in terror, missed his footing, and fell over the edge of the roof. He had not had time to draw the noose down under his arms, so that it slipped up around his neck, and there he hung, dead, with a broken neck.

Meanwhile Mr. Brownlow had acted very quickly, so that Monks had got no warning. He had had men watching for the latter and now, having found out all he wanted to know, he had him seized in the street, put into a coach and driven to his office, where he brought him face to face with Oliver.

The old gentleman told Monks he could do one of two things: either he could confess before witnesses the whole infamous plot he had framed against Oliver, and so restore to him his rights and name, or else he could refuse, in which case he would at once be arrested and sent to prison. Seeing that Mr. Brownlow knew all about the part he had played, Monks, to save himself, made a full confession--how he had planned to keep his half-brother from his inheritance. And he also confessed what no one there had guessed: that Miss Rose, who had been adopted in her infancy, was really the sister of Oliver's dead mother--his aunt, indeed. This was the happiest of all Oliver's surprises that day, for he had learned to love Miss Rose very dearly.

Monks thus bought his own freedom, and cheap enough he probably thought it, for before he had finished his story, word came that f.a.gin the Jew had been captured by the police and was to be tried without delay for his life.

Oliver no longer had anything to fear, and came into possession of his true name and his fortune. Mr. Brownlow adopted him as his own son, and moved to the village where Oliver had been cared for in the family of Miss Rose, and where they all lived happily ever afterward.

The company of thieves was broken up with f.a.gin's arrest. f.a.gin himself was found guilty, and died on the gallows shrieking with fear. Monks sailed for America, where he was soon detected in crime and died in prison.

The wicked apprentice, who had been the real cause of poor Nancy's murder, was so frightened at the fate of f.a.gin that he reformed and became a spy for the police, and by his aid the Artful Dodger, who continued to pick pockets, soon found himself in jail.

As for Mr. and Mrs. b.u.mble, they, of course, lost their positions, and sank from bad to worse till they finally became paupers and were sent to the very same poorhouse where they had tortured little Oliver Twist.

BARNABY RUDGE

Published 1841

_Scene_: London and the Country

_Time_: 1775 to 1780

CHARACTERS

Barnaby Rudge A half-witted boy

Rudge His father A murderer

Mrs. Rudge His mother

Geoffrey Haredale A country gentleman

Emma Haredale His niece

Sir John Chester An enemy of Haredale's

Edward Chester His son In love with Emma Haredale

Varden A locksmith

Dolly Varden His daughter A friend of Emma Haredale's

Simon Tappert.i.t Varden's apprentice

Joe Willet The son of an innkeeper In love with Dolly Varden

"Maypole Hugh" A giant hostler In reality, the son of Sir John Chester

Lord George Gordon A deluded n.o.bleman

Gashford His secretary

Dennis A hangman

"Grip" Barnaby's tame raven

BARNABY RUDGE

I

BARNABY'S BOYHOOD

Many years ago a gentleman named Haredale lived at a house called The Warren, near London. His wife was dead and he had one baby daughter, Emma.

One morning he was found murdered in his house, which had been robbed.

Both the gardener and the steward, Rudge, were missing, and some people thought one had done it and some thought the other. But some days later a disfigured body was found in a pond on the grounds which, by its clothes and a watch and ring, was recognized as that of Rudge, the missing steward. Then, of course, every one believed the gardener had murdered both, and the police searched for him a long time, but he was never found.

On the same day this cruel murder was discovered, a baby was born to Mrs. Rudge, the wife of the steward--a pretty boy, though with a birth-mark on the wrist as red as blood, and a strange look of terror on the baby face. He was named Barnaby, and his mother loved him all the more because it was soon seen he was weak-minded, and could never be in his right senses. She herself, poor woman! seemed never able to forget the horror of that day.

Geoffrey Haredale, the brother and heir of the murdered man, took up his abode at The Warren and adopted the little Emma, his niece, as his own daughter. He was kind to Mrs. Rudge also. Not only did he let her live rent-free in a house he owned, but he did many a kind deed secretly for her half-witted son as he grew older.

Barnaby Rudge grew up a strange, weird creature. His hair was long and red and hung in disorder about his shoulders. His skin was pale, his eyes bright and his clothes he trimmed most curiously with bits of gaudy lace and bright ribbons and gla.s.s toys. He wore a cl.u.s.ter of broken peac.o.c.k feathers in his hat and girded at his side was the broken hilt of an old sword without a blade. But strangest of all was a little wicker basket he always carried on his back. When he set this down and opened it, there hopped out a tame raven who would c.o.c.k its head on one side and say hoa.r.s.ely and very knowingly:

"h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo! What's the matter here? Keep up your spirits.

Never say die. I'm a devil, I'm a devil, I'm a devil! Hurrah!"

Then it would whistle or make a noise like the drawing of a cork out of a bottle, repeated a great many times, and flap its wings against its sides as if it were bursting with laughter. This raven was named Grip and was Barnaby's constant companion. The neighbors used to say it was one hundred and twenty years old (for ravens live a very long time), and some said it knew altogether too much to be only a bird. But Barnaby would hear nothing said against it, and, next to his mother, loved it better than anything in the world.

Barnaby knew that folks called him half-witted, but he cared little for that. Sometimes he would laugh at what they said.