Unknown - "The Mabinogion"

Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - "Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v4"

Mary Godolphin - "The Pilgrim's Progess in Words of One Syllable"

Louis Stone - "Jonah"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Oliver Twist

C >> Charles Dickens >> Oliver Twist




'Any news?' inquired Fagin.

'Great.'

'And--and--good?' asked Fagin, hesitating as though he feared to
vex the other man by being too sanguine.

'Not bad, any way,' replied Monks with a smile. 'I have been
prompt enough this time. Let me have a word with you.'

The girl drew closer to the table, and made no offer to leave the
room, although she could see that Monks was pointing to her. The
Jew: perhaps fearing she might say something aloud about the
money, if he endeavoured to get rid of her: pointed upward, and
took Monks out of the room.

'Not that infernal hole we were in before,' she could hear the
man say as they went upstairs. Fagin laughed; and making some
reply which did not reach her, seemed, by the creaking of the
boards, to lead his companion to the second story.

Before the sound of their footsteps had ceased to echo through
the house, the girl had slipped off her shoes; and drawing her
gown loosely over her head, and muffling her arms in it, stood at
the door, listening with breathless interest. The moment the
noise ceased, she glided from the room; ascended the stairs with
incredible softness and silence; and was lost in the gloom above.

The room remained deserted for a quarter of an hour or more; the
girl glided back with the same unearthly tread; and, immediately
afterwards, the two men were heard descending. Monks went at
once into the street; and the Jew crawled upstairs again for the
money. When he returned, the girl was adjusting her shawl and
bonnet, as if preparing to be gone.

'Why, Nance!' exclaimed the Jew, starting back as he put down
the candle, 'how pale you are!'

'Pale!' echoed the girl, shading her eyes with her hands, as if
to look steadily at him.

'Quite horrible. What have you been doing to yourself?'

'Nothing that I know of, except sitting in this close place for I
don't know how long and all,' replied the girl carelessly.
'Come! Let me get back; that's a dear.'

With a sigh for every piece of money, Fagin told the amount into
her hand. They parted without more conversation, merely
interchanging a 'good-night.'

When the girl got into the open street, she sat down upon a
doorstep; and seemed, for a few moments, wholly bewildered and
unable to pursue her way. Suddenly she arose; and hurrying on,
in a direction quite opposite to that in which Sikes was awaiting
her returned, quickened her pace, until it gradually resolved
into a violent run. After completely exhausting herself, she
stopped to take breath: and, as if suddenly recollecting
herself, and deploring her inability to do something she was bent
upon, wrung her hands, and burst into tears.

It might be that her tears relieved her, or that she felt the
full hopelessness of her condition; but she turned back; and
hurrying with nearly as great rapidity in the contrary direction;
partly to recover lost time, and partly to keep pace with the
violent current of her own thoughts: soon reached the dwelling
where she had left the housebreaker.

If she betrayed any agitation, when she presented herself to Mr.
Sikes, he did not observe it; for merely inquiring if she had
brought the money, and receiving a reply in the affirmative, he
uttered a growl of satisfaction, and replacing his head upon the
pillow, resumed the slumbers which her arrival had interrupted.

It was fortunate for her that the possession of money occasioned
him so much employment next day in the way of eating and
drinking; and withal had so beneficial an effect in smoothing
down the asperities of his temper; that he had neither time nor
inclination to be very critical upon her behaviour and
deportment. That she had all the abstracted and nervous manner
of one who is on the eve of some bold and hazardous step, which
it has required no common struggle to resolve upon, would have
been obvious to the lynx-eyed Fagin, who would most probably have
taken the alarm at once; but Mr. Sikes lacking the niceties of
discrimination, and being troubled with no more subtle misgivings
than those which resolve themselves into a dogged roughness of
behaviour towards everybody; and being, furthermore, in an
unusually amiable condition, as has been already observed; saw
nothing unusual in her demeanor, and indeed, troubled himself so
little about her, that, had her agitation been far more
perceptible than it was, it would have been very unlikely to have
awakened his suspicions.

As that day closed in, the girl's excitement increased; and, when
night came on, and she sat by, watching until the housebreaker
should drink himself asleep, there was an unusual paleness in her
cheek, and a fire in her eye, that even Sikes observed with
astonishment.

Mr. Sikes being weak from the fever, was lying in bed, taking hot
water with his gin to render it less inflammatory; and had pushed
his glass towards Nancy to be replenished for the third or fourth
time, when these symptoms first struck him.

'Why, burn my body!' said the man, raising himself on his hands
as he stared the girl in the face. 'You look like a corpse come
to life again. What's the matter?'

'Matter!' replied the girl. 'Nothing. What do you look at me so
hard for?'

'What foolery is this?' demanded Sikes, grasping her by the arm,
and shaking her roughly. 'What is it? What do you mean? What
are you thinking of?'

'Of many things, Bill,' replied the girl, shivering, and as she
did so, pressing her hands upon her eyes. 'But, Lord! What odds
in that?'

The tone of forced gaiety in which the last words were spoken,
seemed to produce a deeper impression on Sikes than the wild and
rigid look which had preceded them.

'I tell you wot it is,' said Sikes; 'if you haven't caught the
fever, and got it comin' on, now, there's something more than
usual in the wind, and something dangerous too. You're not
a-going to--. No, damme! you wouldn't do that!'

'Do what?' asked the girl.

'There ain't,' said Sikes, fixing his eyes upon her, and
muttering the words to himself; 'there ain't a stauncher-hearted
gal going, or I'd have cut her throat three months ago. She's
got the fever coming on; that's it.'

Fortifying himself with this assurance, Sikes drained the glass
to the bottom, and then, with many grumbling oaths, called for
his physic. The girl jumped up, with great alacrity; poured it
quickly out, but with her back towards him; and held the vessel
to his lips, while he drank off the contents.

'Now,' said the robber, 'come and sit aside of me, and put on
your own face; or I'll alter it so, that you won't know it agin
when you do want it.'

The girl obeyed. Sikes, locking her hand in his, fell back upon
the pillow: turning his eyes upon her face. They closed; opened
again; closed once more; again opened. He shifted his position
restlessly; and, after dozing again, and again, for two or three
minutes, and as often springing up with a look of terror, and
gazing vacantly about him, was suddenly stricken, as it were,
while in the very attitude of rising, into a deep and heavy
sleep. The grasp of his hand relaxed; the upraised arm fell
languidly by his side; and he lay like one in a profound trance.

'The laudanum has taken effect at last,' murmured the girl, as
she rose from the bedside. 'I may be too late, even now.'

She hastily dressed herself in her bonnet and shawl: looking
fearfully round, from time to time, as if, despite the sleeping
draught, she expected every moment to feel the pressure of
Sikes's heavy hand upon her shoulder; then, stooping softly over
the bed, she kissed the robber's lips; and then opening and
closing the room-door with noiseless touch, hurried from the
house.

A watchman was crying half-past nine, down a dark passage through
which she had to pass, in gaining the main thoroughfare.

'Has it long gone the half-hour?' asked the girl.

'It'll strike the hour in another quarter,' said the man:
raising his lantern to her face.

'And I cannot get there in less than an hour or more,' muttered
Nancy: brushing swiftly past him, and gliding rapidly down the
street.

Many of the shops were already closing in the back lanes and
avenues through which she tracked her way, in making from
Spitalfields towards the West-End of London. The clock struck
ten, increasing her impatience. She tore along the narrow
pavement: elbowing the passengers from side to side; and darting
almost under the horses' heads, crossed crowded streets, where
clusters of persons were eagerly watching their opportunity to do
the like.

'The woman is mad!' said the people, turning to look after her as
she rushed away.

When she reached the more wealthy quarter of the town, the
streets were comparatively deserted; and here her headlong
progress excited a still greater curiosity in the stragglers whom
she hurried past. Some quickened their pace behind, as though to
see whither she was hastening at such an unusual rate; and a few
made head upon her, and looked back, surprised at her
undiminished speed; but they fell off one by one; and when she
neared her place of destination, she was alone.

It was a family hotel in a quiet but handsome street near Hyde
Park. As the brilliant light of the lamp which burnt before its
door, guided her to the spot, the clock struck eleven. She had
loitered for a few paces as though irresolute, and making up her
mind to advance; but the sound determined her, and she stepped
into the hall. The porter's seat was vacant. She looked round
with an air of incertitude, and advanced towards the stairs.

'Now, young woman!' said a smartly-dressed female, looking out
from a door behind her, 'who do you want here?'

'A lady who is stopping in this house,' answered the girl.

'A lady!' was the reply, accompanied with a scornful look. 'What
lady?'

'Miss Maylie,' said Nancy.

The young woman, who had by this time, noted her appearance,
replied only by a look of virtuous disdain; and summoned a man to
answer her. To him, Nancy repeated her request.

'What name am I to say?' asked the waiter.

'It's of no use saying any,' replied Nancy.

'Nor business?' said the man.

'No, nor that neither,' rejoined the girl. 'I must see the
lady.'

'Come!' said the man, pushing her towards the door. 'None of
this. Take yourself off.'

'I shall be carried out if I go!' said the girl violently; 'and I
can make that a job that two of you won't like to do. Isn't
there anybody here,' she said, looking round, 'that will see a
simple message carried for a poor wretch like me?'

This appeal produced an effect on a good-tempered-faced man-cook,
who with some of the other servants was looking on, and who
stepped forward to interfere.

'Take it up for her, Joe; can't you?' said this person.

'What's the good?' replied the man. 'You don't suppose the young
lady will see such as her; do you?'

This allusion to Nancy's doubtful character, raised a vast
quantity of chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who
remarked, with great fervour, that the creature was a disgrace to
her sex; and strongly advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly,
into the kennel.

'Do what you like with me,' said the girl, turning to the men
again; 'but do what I ask you first, and I ask you to give this
message for God Almighty's sake.'

The soft-hearted cook added his intercession, and the result was
that the man who had first appeared undertook its delivery.

'What's it to be?' said the man, with one foot on the stairs.

'That a young woman earnestly asks to speak to Miss Maylie
alone,' said Nancy; 'and that if the lady will only hear the
first word she has to say, she will know whether to hear her
business, or to have her turned out of doors as an impostor.'

'I say,' said the man, 'you're coming it strong!'

'You give the message,' said the girl firmly; 'and let me hear
the answer.'

The man ran upstairs. Nancy remained, pale and almost
breathless, listening with quivering lip to the very audible
expressions of scorn, of which the chaste housemaids were very
prolific; and of which they became still more so, when the man
returned, and said the young woman was to walk upstairs.

'It's no good being proper in this world,' said the first
housemaid.

'Brass can do better than the gold what has stood the fire,' said
the second.

The third contented herself with wondering 'what ladies was made
of'; and the fourth took the first in a quartette of 'Shameful!'
with which the Dianas concluded.

Regardless of all this: for she had weightier matters at heart:
Nancy followed the man, with trembling limbs, to a small
ante-chamber, lighted by a lamp from the ceiling. Here he left
her, and retired.




CHAPTER XL

A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAMBER

The girl's life had been squandered in the streets, and among the
most noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was
something of the woman's original nature left in her still; and
when she heard a light step approaching the door opposite to that
by which she had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which
the small room would in another moment contain, she felt burdened
with the sense of her own deep shame, and shrunk as though she
could scarcely bear the presence of her with whom she had sought
this interview.

But struggling with these better feelings was pride,--the vice of
the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high
and self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and
ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the
scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the
gallows itself,--even this degraded being felt too proud to
betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a
weakness, but which alone connected her with that humanity, of
which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when
a very child.

She raised her eyes sufficiently to observe that the figure which
presented itself was that of a slight and beautiful girl; then,
bending them on the ground, she tossed her head with affected
carelessness as she said:

'It's a hard matter to get to see you, lady. If I had taken
offence, and gone away, as many would have done, you'd have been
sorry for it one day, and not without reason either.'

'I am very sorry if any one has behaved harshly to you,' replied
Rose. 'Do not think of that. Tell me why you wished to see me.
I am the person you inquired for.'

The kind tone of this answer, the sweet voice, the gentle manner,
the absence of any accent of haughtiness or displeasure, took the
girl completely by surprise, and she burst into tears.

'Oh, lady, lady!' she said, clasping her hands passionately
before her face, 'if there was more like you, there would be
fewer like me,--there would--there would!'

'Sit down,' said Rose, earnestly. 'If you are in poverty or
affliction I shall be truly glad to relieve you if I can,--I
shall indeed. Sit down.'

'Let me stand, lady,' said the girl, still weeping, 'and do not
speak to me so kindly till you know me better. It is growing
late. Is--is--that door shut?'

'Yes,' said Rose, recoiling a few steps, as if to be nearer
assistance in case she should require it. 'Why?'

'Because,' said the girl, 'I am about to put my life and the
lives of others in your hands. I am the girl that dragged little
Oliver back to old Fagin's on the night he went out from the
house in Pentonville.'

'You!' said Rose Maylie.

'I, lady!' replied the girl. 'I am the infamous creature you
have heard of, that lives among the thieves, and that never from
the first moment I can recollect my eyes and senses opening on
London streets have known any better life, or kinder words than
they have given me, so help me God! Do not mind shrinking openly
from me, lady. I am younger than you would think, to look at me,
but I am well used to it. The poorest women fall back, as I make
my way along the crowded pavement.'

'What dreadful things are these!' said Rose, involuntarily
falling from her strange companion.

'Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady,' cried the girl, 'that
you had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and
that you were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot and
drunkenness, and--and--something worse than all--as I have been
from my cradle. I may use the word, for the alley and the gutter
were mine, as they will be my deathbed.'

'I pity you!' said Rose, in a broken voice. 'It wrings my heart
to hear you!'

'Heaven bless you for your goodness!' rejoined the girl. 'If you
knew what I am sometimes, you would pity me, indeed. But I have
stolen away from those who would surely murder me, if they knew I
had been here, to tell you what I have overheard. Do you know a
man named Monks?'

'No,' said Rose.

'He knows you,' replied the girl; 'and knew you were here, for it
was by hearing him tell the place that I found you out.'

'I never heard the name,' said Rose.

'Then he goes by some other amongst us,' rejoined the girl,
'which I more than thought before. Some time ago, and soon after
Oliver was put into your house on the night of the robbery,
I--suspecting this man--listened to a conversation held between
him and Fagin in the dark. I found out, from what I heard, that
Monks--the man I asked you about, you know--'

'Yes,' said Rose, 'I understand.'

'--That Monks,' pursued the girl, 'had seen him accidently with
two of our boys on the day we first lost him, and had known him
directly to be the same child that he was watching for, though I
couldn't make out why. A bargain was struck with Fagin, that if
Oliver was got back he should have a certain sum; and he was to
have more for making him a thief, which this Monks wanted for
some purpose of his own.'

'For what purpose?' asked Rose.

'He caught sight of my shadow on the wall as I listened, in the
hope of finding out,' said the girl; 'and there are not many
people besides me that could have got out of their way in time to
escape discovery. But I did; and I saw him no more till last
night.'

'And what occurred then?'

'I'll tell you, lady. Last night he came again. Again they went
upstairs, and I, wrapping myself up so that my shadow would not
betray me, again listened at the door. The first words I heard
Monks say were these: "So the only proofs of the boy's identity
lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received
them from the mother is rotting in her coffin." They laughed,
and talked of his success in doing this; and Monks, talking on
about the boy, and getting very wild, said that though he had got
the young devil's money safely now, he'd rather have had it the
other way; for, what a game it would have been to have brought
down the boast of the father's will, by driving him through every
jail in town, and then hauling him up for some capital felony
which Fagin could easily manage, after having made a good profit
of him besides.'

'What is all this!' said Rose.

'The truth, lady, though it comes from my lips,' replied the
girl. 'Then, he said, with oaths common enough in my ears, but
strange to yours, that if he could gratify his hatred by taking
the boy's life without bringing his own neck in danger, he would;
but, as he couldn't, he'd be upon the watch to meet him at every
turn in life; and if he took advantage of his birth and history,
he might harm him yet. "In short, Fagin," he says, "Jew as you
are, you never laid such snares as I'll contrive for my young
brother, Oliver."'

'His brother!' exclaimed Rose.

'Those were his words,' said Nancy, glancing uneasily round, as
she had scarcely ceased to do, since she began to speak, for a
vision of Sikes haunted her perpetually. 'And more. When he
spoke of you and the other lady, and said it seemed contrived by
Heaven, or the devil, against him, that Oliver should come into
your hands, he laughed, and said there was some comfort in that
too, for how many thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds
would you not give, if you had them, to know who your two-legged
spaniel was.'

'You do not mean,' said Rose, turning very pale, 'to tell me that
this was said in earnest?'

'He spoke in hard and angry earnest, if a man ever did,' replied
the girl, shaking her head. 'He is an earnest man when his
hatred is up. I know many who do worse things; but I'd rather
listen to them all a dozen times, than to that Monks once. It is
growing late, and I have to reach home without suspicion of
having been on such an errand as this. I must get back quickly.'

'But what can I do?' said Rose. 'To what use can I turn this
communication without you? Back! Why do you wish to return to
companions you paint in such terrible colors? If you repeat this
information to a gentleman whom I can summon in an instant from
the next room, you can be consigned to some place of safety
without half an hour's delay.'

'I wish to go back,' said the girl. 'I must go back,
because--how can I tell such things to an innocent lady like
you?--because among the men I have told you of, there is one:
the most desperate among them all; that I can't leave: no, not
even to be saved from the life I am leading now.'

'Your having interfered in this dear boy's behalf before,' said
Rose; 'your coming here, at so great a risk, to tell me what you
have heard; your manner, which convinces me of the truth of what
you say; your evident contrition, and sense of shame; all lead me
to believe that you might yet be reclaimed. Oh!' said the
earnest girl, folding her hands as the tears coursed down her
face, 'do not turn a deaf ear to the entreaties of one of your
own sex; the first--the first, I do believe, who ever appealed to
you in the voice of pity and compassion. Do hear my words, and
let me save you yet, for better things.'

'Lady,' cried the girl, sinking on her knees, 'dear, sweet, angel
lady, you _are_ the first that ever blessed me with such words as
these, and if I had heard them years ago, they might have turned
me from a life of sin and sorrow; but it is too late, it is too
late!'

'It is never too late,' said Rose, 'for penitence and atonement.'

'It is,' cried the girl, writhing in agony of her mind; 'I cannot
leave him now! I could not be his death.'

'Why should you be?' asked Rose.

'Nothing could save him,' cried the girl. 'If I told others what
I have told you, and led to their being taken, he would be sure
to die. He is the boldest, and has been so cruel!'

'Is it possible,' cried Rose, 'that for such a man as this, you
can resign every future hope, and the certainty of immediate
rescue? It is madness.'

'I don't know what it is,' answered the girl; 'I only know that
it is so, and not with me alone, but with hundreds of others as
bad and wretched as myself. I must go back. Whether it is God's
wrath for the wrong I have done, I do not know; but I am drawn
back to him through every suffering and ill usage; and I should
be, I believe, if I knew that I was to die by his hand at last.'

'What am I to do?' said Rose. 'I should not let you depart from
me thus.'

'You should, lady, and I know you will,' rejoined the girl,
rising. 'You will not stop my going because I have trusted in
your goodness, and forced no promise from you, as I might have
done.'

'Of what use, then, is the communication you have made?' said
Rose. 'This mystery must be investigated, or how will its
disclosure to me, benefit Oliver, whom you are anxious to serve?'

'You must have some kind gentleman about you that will hear it as
a secret, and advise you what to do,' rejoined the girl.

'But where can I find you again when it is necessary?' asked
Rose. 'I do not seek to know where these dreadful people live,
but where will you be walking or passing at any settled period
from this time?'

'Will you promise me that you will have my secret strictly kept,
and come alone, or with the only other person that knows it; and
that I shall not be watched or followed?' asked the girl.

'I promise you solemnly,' answered Rose.

'Every Sunday night, from eleven until the clock strikes twelve,'
said the girl without hesitation, 'I will walk on London Bridge
if I am alive.'

'Stay another moment,' interposed Rose, as the girl moved
hurriedly towards the door. 'Think once again on your own
condition, and the opportunity you have of escaping from it. You
have a claim on me: not only as the voluntary bearer of this
intelligence, but as a woman lost almost beyond redemption. Will
you return to this gang of robbers, and to this man, when a word
can save you? What fascination is it that can take you back, and
make you cling to wickedness and misery? Oh! is there no chord
in your heart that I can touch! Is there nothing left, to which
I can appeal against this terrible infatuation!'

'When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are,'
replied the girl steadily, 'give away your hearts, love will
carry you all lengths--even such as you, who have home, friends,
other admirers, everything, to fill them. When such as I, who
have no certain roof but the coffinlid, and no friend in sickness
or death but the hospital nurse, set our rotten hearts on any
man, and let him fill the place that has been a blank through all
our wretched lives, who can hope to cure us? Pity us, lady--pity
us for having only one feeling of the woman left, and for having
that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort and a pride,
into a new means of violence and suffering.'