Fagin's Last Day
(From Oliver Twist.)
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
[It will be remembered that Fagin was leader of a band of thieves, and that little Oliver Twist had once been held in the Jew's school for educating criminals. Through the influence of Mr. Brownlow and some friends the kidnapped boy was rescued and the Jew brought to justice.]
e sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for a 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 of them die—and had joked, too, because they died with prayers upon their lips. With what a rattling noise the drop went down, and how suddenly they changed, from strong and vigorous men to dangling heaps of clothes!
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; 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 clock strike, for they tell of life and coming day. To the Jew they brought despair. The boom of every iron bell came laden with the one, deep, hollow sound—death! What availed the noise and bustle of cheerful morning which penetrated even there to him? It was another form of knell, with mockery added to the warning.
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. At 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 defined or positive hope of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more than the dim probability of dying so soon. He had spoken little to either two men, who relieved each other in their attendance upon him; and they, for their parts, made no effort to rouse his attention. He had sat there awake, but dreaming. Now, he started up every minute, and with gasping mouth and burning skin, hurried to and fro in such a paroxysm of fear and wrath that even they—used to such sights—recoiled from him with horror. He grew so terrible, at last, in all the tortures of his evil conscience, that one man could not bear to sit there, eyeing him alone, and so the two kept watch together.
He cowed 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 burnt him up. Eight—nine—ten. If it was not a trick to frighten him, and those were the real hours treading on each other's heels, where would he be, when they came round again? Eleven! Another struck, before the voice of the previous hour had ceased to vibrate. At eight he would be the only mourner in his own funeral train; at eleven—
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.
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 door from which he must come out, and showed where the scaffold would be built, and walking with unwilling steps away, turned back to conjure up the scene. By degrees they fell off, one by one; and, for an hour in the dead of night, the street was left to solitude and darkness.
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.
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 appearing 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. It's worth the money to bring him up to it—Bolter's throat, Bill; never mind the girl—Bolter's throat, as deep as you can cut. Saw his head off!"
"Fagin," said the jailer.
"That's me!" cried the Jew, falling instantly into the attitude of listening 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. Shrinking to the farthest corner of the seat he demanded to know what they wanted there.
"Steady," said the turnkey, still holding him down.
"Now, sir, tell him what you want—quick, if you please, for he grows worse as the time gets on."
"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 those 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 canvas 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 struggled with the power of desperation for an instant, and then sent up cry upon cry that penetrated even those massive walls, and rang in their ears until they reached the open yard.