فصل 09

CHAPTER NINE

Oliver starts another life

In a comfortable, pleasant sitting-room, the two ladies of the house waited anxiously for the doctor and the police to arrive. The owner of the house, Mrs Maylie, was an older woman, but her niece, Rose, was a girl of seventeen, whose quiet beauty and gentle charm won all hearts.

As soon as the doctor arrived, he ran breathlessly into the house and burst into the room without knocking. He was clearly a good friend of the ladies.

‘I never heard of such a dreadful thing! You should both be dead of fright!’ he said to Mrs Maylie. ‘In the silence of the night, too! Are you both all right? Why didn’t you send for me at once?’

‘We are quite all right,’ said Rose, smiling. ‘But there’s an injured boy upstairs whom aunt wants you to see.’

Dr Losberne went up to examine Oliver, and was there for some time. He came down looking rather puzzled, and asked the two ladies to see the boy with him.

‘I can promise you there’s nothing very frightening about him,’ he said.

Instead of the evil-looking robber they expected to see, the two ladies found only a pale, thin child, lying peacefully asleep.

He looked so innocent that Mrs Maylie said, ‘This child could never have been in a gang of robbers!’

‘It certainly seems strange,’ agreed the doctor, ‘but wickedness can hide behind the most gentle face, you know.’

‘But he’s so young, too!’ cried Rose. ‘Can you really believe this poor boy is a criminal? Oh, Dr Losberne, and my dear aunt, I beg you both to have pity on him.’

Mrs Maylie did not need persuading, and the doctor could not resist Rose’s tears. He had, in fact, an extremely kind heart, which he tried to hide behind a quick, fierce manner - though this usually deceived no one.

‘Well, what’s to be done, then?’ he said quickly. ‘We’ll have the police here at any moment, ready to take the boy away and throw him into prison!’

Rose begged him to think of a plan, and the doctor thought hard for a few minutes, frowning fiercely. At last he said, ‘I’ve got it!’ and rubbed his hands together in satisfaction.

A little later, Oliver woke up and was very anxious to tell his story, although he had lost a lot of blood and was very weak. When the doctor and the ladies had heard all about his sad life, they were quite sure that they wanted to save Oliver from any unfair punishment. So Dr Losberne went down to the kitchen to talk to the three servants who had surprised Sikes and Oliver during the robbery. The doctor folded his arms and gave the men a long, hard stare.

‘Tell me,’ he began, ‘can you be absolutely sure that the boy upstairs is the same one that was in the house last night? Well?’

The doctor, usually such a friendly man, seemed so angry that the servants stared at him, open-mouthed. The doctor gave them no time to think, and went on fiercely.

‘Three men see a boy for about a second in the dark, in the middle of a lot of smoke and noise. A boy comes to the same house the next day and because one arm is injured, they think he must be the robber. Are you going to swear that this is the same boy? Well? What do you say?’ he finished impatiently.

The servants looked at each other in great confusion. Suddenly there was a ring at the gate; the police officers had finally arrived. Dr Losberne gave orders that plenty of beer should be served before the officers went up to see Oliver. He also made sure that the servants had a generous amount of beer, too.

When the officers were finally allowed to see Oliver, Dr Losberne said, ‘This is a boy who was shot this morning while walking on a farmer’s property where he shouldn’t have been. The servants saw him and immediately thought he must be the same boy from last night. But now they say they’re sure it’s the same boy.’

The servants were by now so confused by beer and excitement that they were not sure of anything at all. The robbers had certainly had a boy with them, they said, but whether this boy was the same boy… well, it seemed very doubtful. The police, too, had drunk quite a lot of beer by now, and before long they were very willing to believe that Oliver was not the robber of the night before. They had their own ideas about who committed all the robberies in the area, and Oliver was unknown to them.

At last the police left, and Oliver was allowed to recover in the kind care of Mrs Maylie, Rose, and Dr Losberne. It was several weeks before he was well enough to get out of bed. Bur then he quickly grew stronger, and every day told his rescuers how grateful he was. One thing, however, caused him unhappiness. He wanted to find Mr Brownlow, the kind old man who had looked after him in London. ‘Mr Brownlow would be pleased to know how happy I am now,’ he said. So when Dr Losberne offered to rake Oliver to London to see Mr Brown low, the hoy was very pleased.

They set out by coach one fine morning, and when they arrived in London, they went straight to Mr Brownlow’s house. Oliver’s heart beat with excitement as they stopped outside. But the house was empty. They were told by the people next door that Mr Brownlow had moved to the West Indies six weeks before. Oliver was very disappointed, he had thought about Mr Brownlow so much recently, and had always hoped to find him again. But now the kind old man had moved abroad, still believing Oliver was a lying thief, and he might hold this belief until the day he died.

This was a bitter disappointment to Oliver, but his new friends were still as kind to him as ever. They left the house in Chertsey and moved to a quiet cottage in the country, taking Oliver with them. Spring came, and in the fresh air, away from the noise and smoke and trouble of the city, Oliver began a new life. He went for walks with Rose and Mrs Maylie, or Rose read to him, and he worked hard at his lessons. He felt as if he had left behind forever the world of crime and hardship and poverty.