‘Hear it!’ he cried, shrinking back. ‘Hear it! Rolling and crashing on as if it echoed through a thousand caverns where the devils were hiding from it. I hate the sound!’
He remained silent for a few moments; and then, removing his hands suddenly from his face, showed, to the unspeakable discomposure of Mr. Bumble, that it was much distorted and discoloured.
‘These fits come over me, now and then,’ said Monks, observing his alarm; ‘and thunder sometimes brings them on. Don’t mind me now; it’s all over for this once.’
Thus speaking, he led the way up the ladder; and hastily closing the window-shutter of the room into which it led, lowered a lantern which hung at the end of a rope and pulley passed through one of the heavy beams in the ceiling: and which cast a dim light upon an old table and three chairs that were placed beneath it.
‘Now,’ said Monks, when they had all three seated themselves, ‘the sooner we come to our business, the better for all. The woman know what it is, does she?’
The question was addressed to Bumble; but his wife anticipated the reply, by intimating that she was perfectly acquainted with it.
‘He is right in saying that you were with this hag the night she died; and that she told you something — ‘
‘About the mother of the boy you named,’ replied the matron interrupting him. ‘Yes.’
‘The first question is, of what nature was her communication?’ said Monks.
‘That’s the second,’ observed the woman with much deliberation. ‘The first is, what may the communication be worth?’
‘Who the devil can tell that, without knowing of what kind it is?’ asked Monks.
‘Nobody better than you, I am persuaded,’ answered Mrs. Bumble: who did not want for spirit, as her yoke-fellow could abundantly testify.
‘Humph!’ said Monks significantly, and with a look of eager inquiry; ‘there may be money’s worth to get, eh?’
‘Perhaps there may,’ was the composed reply.
‘Something that was taken from her,’ said Monks. ‘Something that she wore. Something that — ‘
‘You had better bid,’ interrupted Mrs. Bumble. ‘I have heard enough, already, to assure me that you are the man I ought to talk to.’
Mr. Bumble, who had not yet been admitted by his better half into any greater share of the secret than he had originally possessed, listened to this dialogue with outstretched neck and distended eyes: which he directed towards his wife and Monks, by turns, in undisguised astonishment; increased, if possible, when the latter sternly demanded, what sum was required for the disclosure.
‘What’s it worth to you?’ asked the woman, as collectedly as before.
‘It may be nothing; it may be twenty pounds,’ replied Monks. ‘Speak out, and let me know which.’
‘Add five pounds to the sum you have named; give me five-and-twenty pounds in gold,’ said the woman; ‘and I’ll tell you all I know. Not before.’
‘Five-and-twenty pounds!’ exclaimed Monks, drawing back.
‘I spoke as plainly as I could,’ replied Mrs. Bumble. ‘It’s not a large sum, either.’
‘Not a large sum for a paltry secret, that may be nothing when it’s told!’ cried Monks impatiently; ‘and which has been lying dead for twelve years past or more!’
‘Such matters keep well, and, like good wine, often double their value in course of time,’ answered the matron, still preserving the resolute indifference she had assumed. ‘As to lying dead, there are those who will lie dead for twelve thousand years to come, or twelve million, for anything you or I know, who will tell strange tales at last!’
‘What if I pay it for nothing?’ asked Monks, hesitating.
‘You can easily take it away again,’ replied the matron. ‘I am but a woman; alone here; and unprotected.’
‘Not alone, my dear, nor unprotected, neither,’ submitted Mr. Bumble, in a voice tremulous with fear: ‘I am here, my dear. And besides,’ said Mr. Bumble, his teeth chattering as he spoke, ‘Mr. Monks is too much of a gentleman to attempt any violence on porochial persons. Mr. Monks is aware that I am not a young man, my dear, and also that I am a little run to seed, as I may say; bu he has heerd: I say I have no doubt Mr. Monks has heerd, my dear: that I am a very determined officer, with very uncommon strength, if I’m once roused. I only want a little rousing; that’s all.’
As Mr. Bumble spoke, he made a melancholy feint of grasping his lantern with fierce determination; and plainly showed, by the alarmed expression of every feature, that he did want a little rousing, and not a little, prior to making any very warlike demonstration: unless, indeed, against paupers, or other person or persons trained down for the purpose.
‘You are a fool,’ said Mrs. Bumble, in reply; ‘and had better hold your tongue.’
‘He had better have cut it out, before he came, if he can’t speak in a lower tone,’ said Monks, grimly. ‘So! He’s your husband, eh?’
‘He my husband!’ tittered the matron, parrying the question.
‘I thought as much, when you came in,’ rejoined Monks, marking the angry glance which the lady darted at her spouse as she spoke. ‘So much the better; I have less hesitation in dealing with two people, when I find that there’s only one will between them. I’m in earnest. See here!’
He thrust his hand into a side-pocket; and producing a canvas bag, told out twentyfive sovereigns on the table, and pushed them over to the woman.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘gather them up; and when this cursed peal of thunder, which I feel is coming up to break over the housetop, is gone, let’s hear your story.’
The thunder, which seemed in fact much nearer, and to shiver and break almost over their heads, having subsided, Monks, raising his face from the table, bent forward to listen to what the woman should say. The faces of the three nearly touched, as the two men leant over the small table in their eagerness to hear, and the woman also leant forward to render her whisper audible. The sickly rays of the suspended lantern falling directly upon them, aggravated the paleness and anxiety of their countenances: which, encircled by the deepest gloom and darkness, looked ghastly in the extreme.
‘When this woman, that we called old Sally, died,’ the matron began, ‘she and I were alone.’
‘Was there no one by?’ asked Monks, in the same hollow whisper; ‘No sick wretch or idiot in some other bed? No one who could hear, and might, by possibility, understand?’
‘Not a soul,’ replied the woman; ‘we were alone. I stood alone beside the body when death came over it.’
‘Good,’ said Monks, regarding her attentively. ‘Go on.’
‘She spoke of a young creature,’ resumed the matron, ‘who had brought a child into the world some years before; not merely in the same room, but in the same bed, in which she then lay dying.’
‘Ay?’ said Monks, with quivering lip, and glancing over his shoulder, ‘Blood! How things come about!’
‘The child was the one you named to him last night,’ said the matron, nodding carelessly towards her husband; ‘the mother this nurse had robbed.’
‘In life?’ asked Monks.
‘In death,’ replied the woman, with something like a shudder. ‘She stole from the corpse, when it had hardly turned to one, that which the dead mother had prayed her, with her last breath, to keep for the