Page 267 [267]
OCR
203 lation, that in his minority he should never have stained his name with any public act of dishonour, meanness, cowardice, or wrong. He did this, he said, to mark his sea a in the mother, and his conviction—only strengthened by approaching death—that the child would share her gentle heart and noble nature. If he was disappointed in this expectation, then the money was to come to you, for then, and not till then, when both children were equal, would he recognise your prior claim upon his purse, who had none upon his heart, but had, from an infant, repulsed him with coldness and aversion.” My mother,” said Monks in a louder tone, “did what a woman should have done —she burnt this will. The letter never reached its destination, but that and other proofs she kept, in case they ever ther had the truth from her, with every aggravation that her violent hate—I love her for it now—could add. Goaded by shame and dishonour, he fled with his children into a remote corner of Wales, changing his very name, that his friends might never know of his retreat; and here, no great while afterwards, he was found dead in his bed. The girl had left her home in secret some weeks before ; he had searched for her on foot in every town and village near, and it was on the night that he returned home, assured that she had destroyed herself, to hide her shame and his, that his old heart broke." There was a short silence here, until Mr. Brownlow took up the thread of the narrative. “ Years after this,” he said, § this man’s —Edward Leeford’s—mother came to me. He had left her when only eighteen ; robbed her of jewels and money; gambled, squandered, forged, and fled to London, where, for two years, he had associated with the lowest outcasts. She was sinking under a painful and incurable disease, and wished to recover him before she died. Enquiries were set on foot; strict searches made—unavaiing for a long time—but ultimately successful—and he went back with her to France.” c There she died,” said Monks, “ after a lingering illness; and on her death-bed she bequeathed these secrets to me, toether with her unquenchable and deadly atred of all whom they involved, though she need not have left me that, for I had inherited it long before. She would not believe that the girl had destroyed herself and the child too, but was filled with the impression that a male child had been born, and was alive. I swore to her, if ever it crossed my path, to hunt it down; never to let it rest, to pursue it with the bitterest and most unrelenting animosity ; to vent upon it the hatred that I deeply felt; and to spit upon the empty vaunt of that insulting will by dragging it, if I could, to the very gallows’ foot. She was right. He came in my way at last; I began well, and, but for babbling drabs, I would have finished as I began; I would, I would!” . As the villain folded his arms tight together, and muttered curses on himself in the impotence of baffled malice, Mr. Brownlow turned to the terrified group beside him, and explained that the Jew, who had been his old accomplice and confidant, had a large loaned for keeping Oliver ensnared, of which some part was to be given up in the event of his bein rescued, and that a dispute on this h had led to their visit to the country-house for the purpose of identifying him. ‘The locket and ring ?” said Mr. Brownlow, turning to Monks. “T bought them from the man and woman I told you of, who stole them from the corpse,” answered Monks, without raising his eyes.» " You know what became of them." Mr. Brownlow merely nodded to Mr. Grimwig, who, disappearing with great alacrity, shortly returned, pera in Mrs. Bumble, and dragging her unwilling consort after him. “Do my hi’s deceive me!” cried Mr. Bumble, with ill-feigned enthusiasm, “ or is that little Oliver? Oh, O-li-ver, if you know’d how I’ve been grieving for you!" “ Hold your tongue, fool,” murmured Mrs. Bumble. “Isn’t natur natur, Mrs. Bumble?” remonstrated the work-house master. “‘Can’t I be suffered to feel—I as brought setting here among ladies and gentlemen of the very affablest description! I always loved that boy as if he’d been my— my—my own grandfather,” said Mr. Bumble, halting for an appropriate comparison. ‘ Master Oliver, my dear, you remember the blessed gentleman in the white waistcoat? Ah! he went to heaven last week in a oak coffin with plated handles, Oliver.” c Come, sir," said Mr. Grimwig, tartly, “suppress your feelings.” s] will do my endeavours, sir,? replied Mr. Bumble. “How do you do, sir? I hope you are very well.”
