The court was paved from floor to roof with human faces. Inquisitive and eager eyes peered from every inch of space; from the rail before the dock, away into the sharpest angle of the smallest corner in the galleries, all looks were fixed upon one man—the Jew. Before him and behind, above, below, on the right and on the left—he seemed to stand surrounded by a firmament all bright with beaming eyes. He stood there, in all this glare of living light, with one hand resting on the wooden slab before him, the other held to his ear, and his head thrust forward to enable him to catch with greater distinctness every word that fell from the presiding judge, who was delivering his charge to the jury. At times he turned his eyes sharply upon them A slight bustle in the court recalled him to himself, and looking round, he saw that the jurymen had turned together to consider of their verdict. As his eyes wandered to the gallery, he could see the people rising above each other to see his face: some hastily applying their glasses to their eyes, and others whispering their neighbours with looks expressive of abhorrence. A few there were who seemed unmindful of him, and looked only to the jury in impatient wonder how they could delay, but in no one face—not even among the women, of whom there were many there—could he read the faintest sympathy As he saw all this in one bewildered glance, the death-like stillness came again, and looking back, he saw that the jurymen had turned towards the judge. Hush! They only sought permission to retire. He looked wistfully into their faces, one by one, when they passed out, as though to see which way the greater number leant; but that was fruitless. The jailer touched him on the shoulder. He followed mechanically to the end of the dock, and sat down on a chair. The man pointed it out, or he should not have seen it. He looked up into the gallery again. Some of the people were eating, and some fanning themselves with handkerchiefs, for the crowded place was very hot. There was one young man sketching his face in a little note-book. He wondered whether it was like, and looked on when the artist broke his pencil-point and made another with his knife, as any idle spectator might have done. In the same way, when he turned his eyes Not that all this time his mind was for an instant free from one oppressive overwhelming sense of the grave that opened at his feet; it was ever present to him, but in a vague and general way, and he could not fix his thoughts upon it. Thus, even while he trembled and turned, burning hot at the idea of speedy death, he fell to counting the iron spikes before him, and wondering how the head of one had been broken off, and whether they would mend it or leave it as it was. Then he thought of all the horrors of the gallows and the scaffold, and stopped to watch a man sprinkling the floor to cool it—and then went on to think again. At length there was a cry of silence, and a breathless look from all towards the door. The jury returned and passed him close. He could glean nothing from their faces; they might as well have been of stone. Perfect stillness ensued—not a rustle—not a breath—Guilty. The building rang with a tremendous shout, and another, and another, and then it echoed deep loud groans that gathered strength as they swelled out, like angry thunder. It was a peal of joy from the populace outside, greeting the news that he would die on Monday. The noise subsided, and he was asked if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him. He had resumed his listening attitude, and looked intently at his questioner while the demand was made, but it was twice repeated before he seemed to hear it, and then he only muttered that he was an old man—an old man—an old man—and so dropping into a whisper, was silent again. The judge assumed the black cap, and the prisoner still stood with the same air and gesture. A woman in the gallery uttered some Fagin in cell below window They led him through a paved room under the court, where some prisoners were waiting till their turns came, and others were talking to their friends who crowded round a grate which looked into the open yard. There was nobody there to speak to him, but as he passed, the prisoners fell back to render him more visible to the people who were clinging to the bars, and they assailed him with opprobrious names, and screeched and hissed. He shook his fist and would have spat upon them, but his conductors hurried him on through a gloomy passage lighted Here he was searched, that he might not have about him the means of anticipating the law; this ceremony performed, they led him to one of the condemned cells, and left him there—alone. He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for seat and bedstead, and casting his bloodshot eyes upon the ground tried to collect his thoughts. After a while he began to remember a few disjointed fragments of what the judge had said, though it had seemed to him at the time that he could not hear a word. These gradually fell into their proper places, and by degrees suggested more, so that in a little time he had the whole almost as it was delivered. To be hanged by the neck till he was dead—that was the end. To be hanged by the neck till he was dead. As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had known who had died upon the scaffold—some of them through his means. They rose up in such quick succession that he could hardly count them. He had seen some Some of them might have inhabited that very cell—sat upon that very spot. It was very dark; why didn’t they bring a light? The cell had been built for many years—scores of men must have passed their last hours there—it was like sitting in a vault strewn with dead bodies—the cap, the noose, the pinioned arms—the faces that he knew even beneath that hideous veil—Light, light! At length when his hands were raw with beating against the heavy door and walls, two men appeared, one bearing a candle which he thrust into an iron candlestick fixed against the wall, and the other dragging in a mattress on which to pass the night, for the prisoner was to be left alone no more. Then came night—dark, dismal, silent night. Other watchers are glad to hear the church-clocks strike, for they tell of life and coming The day passed off—day, there was no day; it was gone as soon as come—and night came on again; night so long and yet so short; long in its dreadful silence, and short in its fleeting hours. One time he raved and blasphemed, and at another howled and tore his hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion had come to pray beside him, but he had driven them away with curses. They renewed their charitable efforts, and he beat them off. Saturday night; he had only one night more to live. And as he thought of this, the day broke—Sunday. It was not until the night of this last awful day that a withering sense of his helpless desperate state came in its full intensity upon his blighted soul; not that he had ever held any He cowered down upon his stone bed, and thought of the past. He had been wounded with some missiles from the crowd on the day of his capture, and his head was bandaged with a linen cloth. His red hair hung down upon his bloodless face; his beard was torn and twisted into knots; his eyes shone with a terrible light; his unwashed flesh crackled with the fever that Those dreadful walls of Newgate, which have hidden so much misery and such unspeakable anguish, not only from the eyes, but too often and too long from the thoughts of men, never held so dread a spectacle as that. The few who lingered as they passed and wondered what the man was doing who was to be hung to-morrow, would have slept but ill that night, if they could have seen him then. From early in the evening until nearly midnight, little groups of two and three presented themselves at the lodge-gate, and inquired with anxious faces whether any reprieve had been received. These being answered in the negative, communicated the welcome intelligence to clusters in the street, who pointed out to one another the The space before the prison was cleared, and a few strong barriers, painted black, had been already thrown across the road to break the pressure of the expected crowd, when Mr. Brownlow and Oliver appeared at the wicket, and presented an order of admission to the prisoner, signed by one of the sheriffs. They were immediately admitted into the lodge. “Is the young gentleman to come too, sir?” said the man whose duty it was to conduct them. “It’s not a sight for children, sir.” “It is not indeed, my friend,” rejoined Mr. Brownlow, “but my business with this man is intimately connected with him, and as this child has seen him in the full career of his success and villany, I think it better—even at the cost of some pain and fear—that he should see him now.” These few words had been said apart, so as to be inaudible to Oliver. The man touched his hat, and glancing at him with some curiosity, opened another gate opposite to that at which they had entered, and led them on through dark and winding ways, towards the cells. “This,” said the man, stopping in a gloomy passage where a couple of workmen were making some preparations in profound silence,—“this is the place he passes through. If you step this way, you can see the door he goes out at.” He led them into a stone kitchen, fitted with coppers for dressing the prison food, and pointed to a door. There was an open grating above it, through which came the sound of men’s voices, mingled with the noise of hammering and the throwing down of boards. They were putting up the scaffold. From this place they passed through several strong gates, opened by other turnkeys from the inner side, and having entered an open yard, ascended a flight of narrow steps, and came into a passage with a row of strong doors on the left hand. Motioning them to remain The condemned criminal was seated on his bed, rocking himself from side to side, with a countenance more like that of a snared beast than the face of a man. His mind was evidently wandering to his old life, for he continued to mutter, without seeming conscious of their presence otherwise than as a part of his vision. “Good boy, Charley—well done—” he mumbled. “Oliver too, ha! ha! ha! Oliver too—quite the gentleman now—quite the—take that boy away to bed.” The jailer took the disengaged hand of Oliver, and whispering him not to be alarmed, looked on without speaking. “Take him away to bed—” cried the Jew. “Do you hear me, some of you? He has been the—the—somehow the cause of all this. “Fagin,” said the jailer. “That’s me!” cried the Jew, falling instantly into precisely the same attitude of listening that he had assumed upon his trial. “An old man, my Lord; a very old, old man.” “Here,” said the turnkey, laying his hand upon his breast to keep him down. “Here’s somebody wants to see you, to ask you some questions, I suppose. Fagin, Fagin. Are you a man?” “I shan’t be one long,” replied the Jew, looking up with a face retaining no human expression but rage and terror. “Strike them all dead! what right have they to butcher me?” As he spoke he caught sight of Oliver and Mr. Brownlow, and shrinking to the furthest corner of the seat, demanded to know what they wanted there. “Steady,” said the turnkey, still holding “You have some papers,” said Mr. Brownlow advancing, “which were placed in your hands for better security, by a man called Monks.” “It’s all a lie together,” replied the Jew. “I haven’t one—not one.” “For the love of God,” said Mr. Brownlow solemnly, “do not say that now, upon the very verge of death; but tell me where they are. You know that Sikes is dead; that Monks has confessed; that there is no hope of any further gain. Where are these papers?” “Oliver,” cried the Jew, beckoning to him. “Here, here. Let me whisper to you.” “I am not afraid,” said Oliver in a low voice, as he relinquished Mr. Brownlow’s hand. “The papers,” said the Jew, drawing him towards him, “are in a canvass bag, in a hole a little way up the chimney in the top front-room. I want to talk to you, my dear—I want to talk to you.” “Yes, yes,” returned Oliver. “Let me say a prayer. Do. Let me say one prayer; say only one upon your knees with me, and we will talk till morning.” “Outside, outside,” replied the Jew, pushing the boy before him towards the door, and looking vacantly over his head. “Say I’ve gone to sleep—they’ll believe you. You can get me out if you take me so. Now then, now then.” “Oh! God forgive this wretched man!” cried the boy with a burst of tears. “That’s right, that’s right,” said the Jew. “That’ll help us on. This door first; if I shake and tremble as we pass the gallows, don’t you mind, but hurry on. Now, now, now.” “Have you nothing else to ask him, sir?” inquired the turnkey. “No other question,” replied Mr. Brownlow. “If I hoped we could recall him to a sense of his position—” “Nothing will do that, sir,” replied the man, shaking his head. “You had better leave him.” The door of the cell opened, and the attendants returned. “Press on, press on,” cried the Jew. “Softly, but not so slow. Faster, faster!” The men laid hands upon him, and disengaging Oliver from his grasp, held him back. He writhed and struggled with the power of desperation, and sent up shriek upon shriek that penetrated even those massive walls, and rang in their ears until they reached the open yard. It was some time before they left the prison, for Oliver nearly swooned after this frightful scene, and was so weak that for an hour or more he had not the strength to walk. Day was dawning when they again emerged. A great multitude had already assembled; the windows were filled with people smoking and playing cards to beguile the time; the crowd were pushing, quarrelling, and joking. Everything told of life and animation, but one dark cluster of objects in the very centre of all—the black stage, the cross-beam, the rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death. |