After musing for some minutes, the old gentleman walked, with the same meditative face, into a back anteroom opening from the yard; and there, retiring into a corner, called up before his mind’s eye a vast amphitheatre of faces over which a dusky curtain had hung for many years. “No,” said the old gentleman, shaking his head; “it must be imagination.”
He wandered over them again. He had called them into view, and it was not easy to replace the shroud that had so long concealed them. There were the faces of friends, and foes, and of many that had been almost strangers peering instrusively from the crowd; there were the faces of young and blooming girls that were now old women; there were faces that the grave had changed and closed upon, but which the mind, superior to its power, still dressed in their old freshness and beauty, calling back the lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the smile, the beaming of the soul through its mask of clay, and whispering of beauty beyond the tomb, changed but to be heightened, and taken from the earth only to be set up as a light, to shed a soft and gentle glow upon the path to Heaven.
But the old gentleman could recall no one countenance of which Oliver’s features bore a trace. So he heaved a sigh over the recollections he had awakened; and being, happily for himself, an absent old gentleman, buried them again in the pages of the musty book.
He was roused by a touch on the shoulder, and a request from the man with the keys to follow him into the office. He closed his book hastily; and was at once ushered into the imposing presence of the renowned Mr. Fang.
The office was a front parlour, with a panelled wall. Mr. Fang sat behind a bar, at the upper end; and on one side the door was a sort of wooden pen in which poor little Oliver was already deposited; trembling very much at the awfulness of the scene.
Mr. Fang was a lean, long-backed, stiff-necked, middle-sized man, with no great quantity of hair, and what he had, growing on the back and sides of his head. His face was stern, and much flushed. If he were really not in the habit of drinking rather more than was exactly good for him, he might have brought action against his countenance for libel, and have recovered heavy damages.
The old gentleman bowed respectfully; and advancing to the magistrate’s desk, said suiting the action to the word, “That is my name and address, sir.” He then withdrew a pace or two; and, with another polite and gentlemanly inclination of the head, waited to be questioned.
Now, it so happened that Mr. Fang was at that moment, perusing a leading article in a newspaper of the morning, adverting to some recent decision of his, and commending him, for the three hundred and fiftieth time, to the special and particular notice of the Secretary of State for the Home Department. He was out of temper; and he looked up with an angry scowl.
“Who are you?” said Mr. Fang.
The old gentleman pointed, with some surprise, to his card.
“Officer!” said Mr. Fang, tossing the card contemptuously away with the newspaper. “Who is this fellow?”
“My name, sir,” said the old gentleman, speaking like a gentleman, “my name, sir, is Brownlow. Permit me to inquire the name of the magistrate who offers a gratuitous and unprovoked insult to a respectable person, under the protection of the bench.” Saying this, Mr. Brownlow looked around the office as if in search of some person who would afford him the required information.
“Officer!” said Mr. Fang, throwing the paper on one side, “what’s this fellow charged with?”
“He’s not charged at all, your worship,” replied the officer. “He appears against the boy, your worship.”
His worship knew this perfectly well; but it was a good annoyance, and a safe one.
“Appears against the boy, does he?” said Fang, surveying Mr. Brownlow contemptuously from head to foot. “Swear him!”
“Before I am sworn, I must beg to say one word,” said Mr. Brownlow: “and that is, that I really never, without actual experience, could have believed—”