Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. Illustrated
by Charles Dickens · English · Gutenberg #46675 · 913,590 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress. Illustrated
Author: Charles Dickens
Illustrator: George Cruikshank
Release date: August 24, 2014 [eBook #46675]
Most recently updated: July 20, 2025
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46675
Credits: David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLIVER TWIST; OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS. ILLUSTRATED ***
OLIVER TWIST,
Or, The Parish Boy’s Progress
By Charles Dickens
CONTENTS
I TREATS OF THE PLACE WHERE OLIVER TWIST WAS BORN AND OF THE
CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING HIS BIRTH
II TREATS OF OLIVER TWIST’S GROWTH, EDUCATION, AND BOARD
III RELATES HOW OLIVER TWIST WAS VERY NEAR GETTING A PLACE WHICH
WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A SINECURE
IV OLIVER, BEING OFFERED ANOTHER PLACE, MAKES HIS FIRST ENTRY INTO
PUBLIC LIFE
V OLIVER MINGLES WITH NEW ASSOCIATES. GOING TO A FUNERAL FOR THE
FIRST TIME, HE FORMS AN UNFAVOURABLE NOTION OF HIS MASTER’S
BUSINESS
VI OLIVER, BEING GOADED BY THE TAUNTS OF NOAH, ROUSES INTO ACTION,
AND RATHER ASTONISHES HIM
VII OLIVER CONTINUES REFRACTORY
VIII OLIVER WALKS TO LONDON. HE ENCOUNTERS ON THE ROAD A STRANGE
SORT OF YOUNG GENTLEMAN
IX CONTAINING FURTHER PARTICULARS CONCERNING THE PLEASANT OLD
GENTLEMAN, AND HIS HOPEFUL PUPILS
X OLIVER BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE CHARACTERS OF HIS NEW
ASSOCIATES; AND PURCHASES EXPERIENCE AT A HIGH PRICE. BEING A
SHORT, BUT VERY IMPORTANT CHAPTER, IN THIS HISTORY
XI TREATS OF MR. FANG THE POLICE MAGISTRATE; AND FURNISHES A
SLIGHT SPECIMEN OF HIS MODE OF ADMINISTERING JUSTICE
XII IN WHICH OLIVER IS TAKEN BETTER CARE OF THAN HE EVER WAS
BEFORE. AND IN WHICH THE NARRATIVE REVERTS TO THE MERRY OLD
GENTLEMAN AND HIS YOUTHFUL FRIENDS.
XIII SOME NEW ACQUAINTANCES ARE INTRODUCED TO THE INTELLIGENT READER,
CONNECTED WITH WHOM VARIOUS PLEASANT MATTERS ARE RELATED,
APPERTAINING TO THIS HISTORY
XIV COMPRISING FURTHER PARTICULARS OF OLIVER’S STAY AT MR.
BROWNLOW’S, WITH THE REMARKABLE PREDICTION WHICH ONE MR. GRIMWIG
UTTERED CONCERNING HIM, WHEN HE WENT OUT ON AN ERRAND
XV SHOWING HOW VERY FOND OF OLIVER TWIST, THE MERRY OLD JEW AND
MISS NANCY WERE
XVI RELATES WHAT BECAME OF OLIVER TWIST, AFTER HE HAD BEEN CLAIMED
BY NANCY
XVII OLIVER’S DESTINY CONTINUING UNPROPITIOUS, BRINGS A GREAT MAN TO
LONDON TO INJURE HIS REPUTATION
XVIII HOW OLIVER PASSED HIS TIME IN THE IMPROVING SOCIETY OF HIS
REPUTABLE FRIENDS
XIX IN WHICH A NOTABLE PLAN IS DISCUSSED AND DETERMINED ON
XX WHEREIN OLIVER IS DELIVERED OVER TO MR. WILLIAM SIKES
XXI THE EXPEDITION
XXII THE BURGLARY
XXIII WHICH CONTAINS THE SUBSTANCE OF A PLEASANT CONVERSATION BETWEEN
MR. BUMBLE AND A LADY; AND SHOWS THAT EVEN A BEADLE MAY BE
SUSCEPTIBLE ON SOME POINTS
XXIV TREATS ON A VERY POOR SUBJECT. BUT IS A SHORT ONE, AND MAY BE
FOUND OF IMPORTANCE IN THIS HISTORY
XXV WHEREIN THIS HISTORY REVERTS TO MR. FAGIN AND COMPANY
XXVI IN WHICH A MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER APPEARS UPON THE SCENE; AND MANY
THINGS, INSEPARABLE FROM THIS HISTORY, ARE DONE AND PERFORMED
XXVII ATONES FOR THE UNPOLITENESS OF A FORMER CHAPTER; WHICH DESERTED
A LADY, MOST UNCEREMONIOUSLY
XXVIII LOOKS AFTER OLIVER, AND PROCEEDS WITH HIS ADVENTURES
XXIX HAS AN INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNT OF THE INMATES OF THE HOUSE, TO
WHICH OLIVER RESORTED
XXX RELATES WHAT OLIVER’S NEW VISITORS THOUGHT OF HIM
XXXI INVOLVES A CRITICAL POSITION
XXXII OF THE HAPPY LIFE OLIVER BEGAN TO LEAD WITH HIS KIND FRIENDS
XXXIII WHEREIN THE HAPPINESS OF OLIVER AND HIS FRIENDS, EXPERIENCES A
SUDDEN CHECK
XXXIV CONTAINS SOME INTRODUCTORY PARTICULARS RELATIVE TO A YOUNG
GENTLEMAN WHO NOW ARRIVES UPON THE SCENE; AND A NEW ADVENTURE
WHICH HAPPENED TO OLIVER
XXXV CONTAINING THE UNSATISFACTORY RESULT OF OLIVER’S ADVENTURE; AND
A CONVERSATION OF SOME IMPORTANCE BETWEEN HARRY MAYLIE AND ROSE
XXXVI IS A VERY SHORT ONE, AND MAY APPEAR OF NO GREAT IMPORTANCE IN
ITS PLACE, BUT IT SHOULD BE READ NOTWITHSTANDING, AS A SEQUEL
TO THE LAST, AND A KEY TO ONE THAT WILL FOLLOW WHEN ITS TIME
ARRIVES
XXXVII IN WHICH THE READER MAY PERCEIVE A CONTRAST, NOT UNCOMMON IN
MATRIMONIAL CASES
XXXVIII CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF WHAT PASSED BETWEEN MR. AND MRS.
BUMBLE, AND MR. MONKS, AT THEIR NOCTURNAL INTERVIEW
XXXIX INTRODUCES SOME RESPECTABLE CHARACTERS WITH WHOM THE READER IS
ALREADY ACQUAINTED, AND SHOWS HOW MONKS AND THE JEW LAID THEIR
WORTHY HEADS TOGETHER
XL A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAMBER
XLI CONTAINING FRESH DISCOVERIES, AND SHOWING THAT SUPRISES, LIKE
MISFORTUNES, SELDOM COME ALONE
XLII AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE OF OLIVER’S, EXHIBITING DECIDED MARKS OF
GENIUS, BECOMES A PUBLIC CHARACTER IN THE METROPOLIS
XLIII WHEREIN IS SHOWN HOW THE ARTFUL DODGER GOT INTO TROUBLE
XLIV THE TIME ARRIVES FOR NANCY TO REDEEM HER PLEDGE TO ROSE MAYLIE.
SHE FAILS.
XLV NOAH CLAYPOLE IS EMPLOYED BY FAGIN ON A SECRET MISSION
XLVI THE APPOINTMENT KEPT
XLVII FATAL CONSEQUENCES
XLVIII THE FLIGHT OF SIKES
XLIX MONKS AND MR. BROWNLOW AT LENGTH MEET. THEIR CONVERSATION,
AND THE INTELLIGENCE THAT INTERRUPTS IT
L THE PURSUIT AND ESCAPE
LI AFFORDING AN EXPLANATION OF MORE MYSTERIES THAN ONE, AND
COMPREHENDING A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE WITH NO WORD OF SETTLEMENT
OR PIN-MONEY
LII FAGIN’S LAST NIGHT ALIVE
LIII AND LAST
CHAPTER I -- TREATS OF THE PLACE WHERE OLIVER TWIST WAS BORN AND OF
THE CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING HIS BIRTH
Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many
reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which
I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common
to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this
workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble
myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence
to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item
of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.
For a long time after it was ushered into this world of sorrow and
trouble, by the parish surgeon, it remained a matter of considerable
doubt whether the child would survive to bear any name at all; in
which case it is somewhat more than probable that these memoirs
would never have appeared; or, if they had, that being comprised
within a couple of pages, they would have possessed the inestimable
merit of being the most concise and faithful specimen of biography,
extant in the literature of any age or country.
Although I am not disposed to maintain that the being born in a
workhouse, is in itself the most fortunate and enviable circumstance
that can possibly befall a human being, I do mean to say that in
this particular instance, it was the best thing for Oliver Twist
that could by possibility have occurred. The fact is, that there was
considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the
office of respiration,--a troublesome practice, but one which custom
has rendered necessary to our easy existence; and for some time
he lay gasping on a little flock mattress, rather unequally poised
between this world and the next: the balance being decidedly in
favour of the latter. Now, if, during this brief period, Oliver had
been surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced
nurses, and doctors of profound wisdom, he would most inevitably
and indubitably have been killed in no time. There being nobody by,
however, but a pauper old woman, who was rendered rather misty by
an unwonted allowance of beer; and a parish surgeon who did such
matters by contract; Oliver and Nature fought out the point between
them. The result was, that, after a few struggles, Oliver breathed,
sneezed, and proceeded to advertise to the inmates of the workhouse
the fact of a new burden having been imposed upon the parish, by
setting up as loud a cry as could reasonably have been expected
from a male infant who had not been possessed of that very useful
appendage, a voice, for a much longer space of time than three
minutes and a quarter.
As Oliver gave this first proof of the free and proper action of his
lungs, the patchwork coverlet which was carelessly flung over the
iron bedstead, rustled; the pale face of a young woman was raised
feebly from the pillow; and a faint voice imperfectly articulated
the words, ‘Let me see the child, and die.’
The surgeon had been sitting with his face turned towards the fire:
giving the palms of his hands a warm and a rub alternately. As the
young woman spoke, he rose, and advancing to the bed’s head, said,
with more kindness than might have been expected of him:
‘Oh, you must not talk about dying yet.’
‘Lor bless her dear heart, no!’ interposed the nurse, hastily
depositing in her pocket a green glass bottle, the contents of which
she had been tasting in a corner with evident satisfaction.
‘Lor bless her dear heart, when she has lived as long as I have,
sir, and had thirteen children of her own, and all on ‘em dead
except two, and them in the wurkus with me, she’ll know better than
to take on in that way, bless her dear heart! Think what it is to be
a mother, there’s a dear young lamb do.’
Apparently this consolatory perspective of a mother’s prospects
failed in producing its due effect. The patient shook her head, and
stretched out her hand towards the child.
The surgeon deposited it in her arms. She imprinted her cold white
lips passionately on its forehead; passed her hands over her face;
gazed wildly round; shuddered; fell back--and died. They chafed her
breast, hands, and temples; but the blood had stopped forever. They
talked of hope and comfort. They had been strangers too long.
‘It’s all over, Mrs. Thingummy!’ said the surgeon at last.
‘Ah, poor dear, so it is!’ said the nurse, picking up the cork of
the green bottle, which had fallen out on the pillow, as she stooped
to take up the child. ‘Poor dear!’
‘You needn’t mind sending up to me, if the child cries, nurse,’ said
the surgeon, putting on his gloves with great deliberation. ‘It’s
very likely it _will_ be troublesome. Give it a little gruel if it
is.’ He put on his hat, and, pausing by the bed-side on his way to
the door, added, ‘She was a good-looking girl, too; where did she
come from?’
‘She was brought here last night,’ replied the old woman, ‘by the
overseer’s order. She was found lying in the street. She had walked
some distance, for her shoes were worn to pieces; but where she came
from, or where she was going to, nobody knows.’
The surgeon leaned over the body, and raised the left hand. ‘The
old story,’ he said, shaking his head: ‘no wedding-ring, I see. Ah!
Good-night!’
The medical gentleman walked away to dinner; and the nurse, having
once more applied herself to the green bottle, sat down on a low
chair before the fire, and proceeded to dress the infant.
What an excellent example of the power of dress, young Oliver Twist
was! Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only
covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar;
it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have assigned
him his proper station in society. But now that he was enveloped in
the old calico robes which had grown yellow in the same service, he
was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once--a
parish child--the orphan of a workhouse--the humble, half-starved
drudge--to be cuffed and buffeted through the world--despised by
all, and pitied by none.
Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan,
left to the tender mercies of church-wardens and overseers, perhaps
he would have cried the louder.
CHAPTER II -- TREATS OF OLIVER TWIST’S GROWTH, EDUCATION, AND BOARD
For the next eight or ten months, Oliver was the victim of a
systematic course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by
hand. The hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan
was duly reported by the workhouse authorities to the parish
authorities. The parish authorities inquired with dignity of the
workhouse authorities, whether there was no female then domiciled
in ‘the house’ who was in a situation to impart to Oliver Twist, the
consolation and nourishment of which he stood in need. The workhouse
authorities replied with humility, that there was not. Upon this,
the parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved, that
Oliver should be ‘farmed,’ or, in other words, that he should be
dispatched to a branch-workhouse some three miles off, where twenty
or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, rolled
about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much
food or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of
an elderly female, who received the culprits at and for the
consideration of sevenpence-halfpenny per small head per week.
Sevenpence-halfpenny’s worth per week is a good round diet for
a child; a great deal may be got for sevenpence-halfpenny, quite
enough to overload its stomach, and make it uncomfortable. The
elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what
was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of
what was good for herself. So, she appropriated the greater part
of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising
parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was originally
provided for them. Thereby finding in the lowest depth a deeper
still; and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher.
Everybody knows the story of another experimental philosopher who
had a great theory about a horse being able to live without eating,
and who demonstrated it so well, that he had got his own horse down
to a straw a day, and would unquestionably have rendered him a very
spirited and rampacious animal on nothing at all, if he had not
died, four-and-twenty hours before he was to have had his first
comfortable bait of air. Unfortunately for the experimental
philosophy of the female to whose protecting care Oliver Twist was
delivered over, a similar result usually attended the operation of
_her_ system; for at the very moment when the child had contrived
to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible
food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten,
either that it sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire
from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which
cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another
world, and there gathered to the fathers it had never known in this.
Occasionally, when there was some more than usually interesting
inquest upon a parish child who had been overlooked in turning up a
bedstead, or inadvertently scalded to death when there happened to
be a washing--though the latter accident was very scarce, anything
approaching to a washing being of rare occurrence in the farm--the
jury would take it into their heads to ask troublesome questions,
or the parishioners would rebelliously affix their signatures to a
remonstrance. But these impertinences were speedily checked by the
evidence of the surgeon, and the testimony of the beadle; the former
of whom had always opened the body and found nothing inside (which
was very probable indeed), and the latter of whom invariably swore
whatever the parish wanted; which was very self-devotional. Besides,
the board made periodical pilgrimages to the farm, and always sent
the beadle the day before, to say they were going. The children were
neat and clean to behold, when _they_ went; and what more would the
people have!
It cannot be expected that this system of farming would produce any
very extraordinary or luxuriant crop. Oliver Twist’s ninth birthday
found him a pale thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and
decidedly small in circumference. But nature or inheritance had
implanted a good sturdy spirit in Oliver’s breast. It had had plenty
of room to expand, thanks to the spare diet of the establishment;
and perhaps to this circumstance may be attributed his having any
ninth birth-day at all. Be this as it may, however, it was his ninth
birthday; and he was keeping it in the coal-cellar with a select
party of two other young gentleman, who, after participating
with him in a sound thrashing, had been locked up for atrociously
presuming to be hungry, when Mrs. Mann, the good lady of the house,
was unexpectedly startled by the apparition of Mr. Bumble, the
beadle, striving to undo the wicket of the garden-gate.
‘Goodness gracious! Is that you, Mr. Bumble, sir?’ said Mrs. Mann,
thrusting her head out of the window in well-affected ecstasies of
joy. ‘(Susan, take Oliver and them two brats upstairs, and wash ‘em
directly.)--My heart alive! Mr. Bumble, how glad I am to see you,
sure-ly!’
Now, Mr. Bumble was a fat man, and a choleric; so, instead of
responding to this open-hearted salutation in a kindred spirit, he
gave the little wicket a tremendous shake, and then bestowed upon it
a kick which could have emanated from no leg but a beadle’s.
‘Lor, only think,’ said Mrs. Mann, running out,--for the three boys
had been removed by this time,--‘only think of that! That I should
have forgotten that the gate was bolted on the inside, on account
of them dear children! Walk in sir; walk in, pray, Mr. Bumble, do,
sir.’
Although this invitation was accompanied with a curtsey that might
have softened the heart of a church-warden, it by no means mollified
the beadle.
‘Do you think this respectful or proper conduct, Mrs. Mann,’
inquired Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane, ‘to keep the parish officers
a waiting at your garden-gate, when they come here upon porochial
business with the porochial orphans? Are you aweer, Mrs. Mann, that
you are, as I may say, a porochial delegate, and a stipendiary?’
‘I’m sure Mr. Bumble, that I was only a telling one or two of the
dear children as is so fond of you, that it was you a coming,’
replied Mrs. Mann with great humility.
Mr. Bumble had a great idea of his oratorical powers and his
importance. He had displayed the one, and vindicated the other. He
relaxed.
‘Well, well, Mrs. Mann,’ he replied in a calmer tone; ‘it may be
as you say; it may be. Lead the way in, Mrs. Mann, for I come on
business, and have something to say.’
Mrs. Mann ushered the beadle into a small parlour with a brick
floor; placed a seat for him; and officiously deposited his cocked
hat and cane on the table before him. Mr. Bumble wiped from his
forehead the perspiration which his walk had engendered, glanced
complacently at the cocked hat, and smiled. Yes, he smiled. Beadles
are but men: and Mr. Bumble smiled.
‘Now don’t you be offended at what I’m a going to say,’ observed
Mrs. Mann, with captivating sweetness. ‘You’ve had a long walk, you
know, or I wouldn’t mention it. Now, will you take a little drop of
somethink, Mr. Bumble?’
‘Not a drop. Nor a drop,’ said Mr. Bumble, waving his right hand in
a dignified, but placid manner.
‘I think you will,’ said Mrs. Mann, who had noticed the tone of the
refusal, and the gesture that had accompanied it. ‘Just a leetle
drop, with a little cold water, and a lump of sugar.’
Mr. Bumble coughed.
‘Now, just a leetle drop,’ said Mrs. Mann persuasively.
‘What is it?’ inquired the beadle.
‘Why, it’s what I’m obliged to keep a little of in the house, to put
into the blessed infants’ Daffy, when they ain’t well, Mr. Bumble,’
replied Mrs. Mann as she opened a corner cupboard, and took down a
bottle and glass. ‘It’s gin. I’ll not deceive you, Mr. B. It’s gin.’
‘Do you give the children Daffy, Mrs. Mann?’ inquired Bumble,
following with his eyes the interesting process of mixing.
‘Ah, bless ‘em, that I do, dear as it is,’ replied the nurse. ‘I
couldn’t see ‘em suffer before my very eyes, you know sir.’
‘No’; said Mr. Bumble approvingly; ‘no, you could not. You are a
humane woman, Mrs. Mann.’ (Here she set down the glass.) ‘I shall
take a early opportunity of mentioning it to the board, Mrs. Mann.’
(He drew it towards him.) ‘You feel as a mother, Mrs. Mann.’
(He stirred the gin-and-water.) ‘I--I drink your health with
cheerfulness, Mrs. Mann’; and he swallowed half of it.
‘And now about business,’ said the beadle, taking out a leathern
pocket-book. ‘The child that was half-baptized Oliver Twist, is nine
year old to-day.’
‘Bless him!’ interposed Mrs. Mann, inflaming her left eye with the
corner of her apron.
‘And notwithstanding a offered reward of ten pound, which was
afterwards increased to twenty pound. Notwithstanding the most
superlative, and, I may say, supernat’ral exertions on the part of
this parish,’ said Bumble, ‘we have never been able to discover
who is his father, or what was his mother’s settlement, name, or
condition.’
Mrs. Mann raised her hands in astonishment; but added, after a
moment’s reflection, ‘How comes he to have any name at all, then?’
The beadle drew himself up with great pride, and said, ‘I inwented
it.’
‘You, Mr. Bumble!’
‘I, Mrs. Mann. We name our fondlings in alphabetical order. The last
was a S,--Swubble, I named him. This was a T,--Twist, I named _him_.
The next one comes will be Unwin, and the next Vilkins. I have got
names ready made to the end of the alphabet, and all the way through
it again, when we come to Z.’
‘Why, you’re quite a literary character, sir!’ said Mrs. Mann.
‘Well, well,’ said the beadle, evidently gratified with the
compliment; ‘perhaps I may be. Perhaps I may be, Mrs. Mann.’ He
finished the gin-and-water, and added, ‘Oliver being now too old
to remain here, the board have determined to have him back into the
house. I have come out myself to take him there. So let me see him
at once.’
‘I’ll fetch him directly,’ said Mrs. Mann, leaving the room for that
purpose. Oliver, having had by this time as much of the outer coat
of dirt which encrusted his face and hands, removed, as could be
scrubbed off in one washing, was led into the room by his benevolent
protectress.
‘Make a bow to the gentleman, Oliver,’ said Mrs. Mann.
Oliver made a bow, which was divided between the beadle on the
chair, and the cocked hat on the table.
‘Will you go along with me, Oliver?’ said Mr. Bumble, in a majestic
voice.
Oliver was about to say that he would go along with anybody with
great readiness, when, glancing upward, he caught sight of Mrs.
Mann, who had got behind the beadle’s chair, and was shaking her
fist at him with a furious countenance. He took the hint at once,
for the fist had been too often impressed upon his body not to be
deeply impressed upon his recollection.
‘Will she go with me?’ inquired poor Oliver.
‘No, she can’t,’ replied Mr. Bumble. ‘But she’ll come and see you
sometimes.’
This was no very great consolation to the child. Young as he was,
however, he had sense enough to make a feint of feeling great regret
at going away. It was no very difficult matter for the boy to
call tears into his eyes. Hunger and recent ill-usage are great
assistants if you want to cry; and Oliver cried very naturally
indeed. Mrs. Mann gave him a thousand embraces, and what Oliver
wanted a great deal more, a piece of bread and butter, less he
should seem too hungry when he got to the workhouse. With the slice
of bread in his hand, and the little brown-cloth parish cap on his
head, Oliver was then led away by Mr. Bumble from the wretched
home where one kind word or look had never lighted the gloom of his
infant years. And yet he burst into an agony of childish grief,
as the cottage-gate closed after him. Wretched as were the little
companions in misery he was leaving behind, they were the only
friends he had ever known; and a sense of his loneliness in the
great wide world, sank into the child’s heart for the first time.
Mr. Bumble walked on with long strides; little Oliver, firmly
grasping his gold-laced cuff, trotted beside him, inquiring at the
end of every quarter of a mile whether they were ‘nearly there.’
To these interrogations Mr. Bumble returned very brief and snappish
replies; for the temporary blandness which gin-and-water awakens
in some bosoms had by this time evaporated; and he was once again a
beadle.
Oliver had not been within the walls of the workhouse a quarter of
an hour, and had scarcely completed the demolition of a second slice
of bread, when Mr. Bumble, who had handed him over to the care of an
old woman, returned; and, telling him it was a board night, informed
him that the board had said he was to appear before it forthwith.
Not having a very clearly defined notion of what a live board was,
Oliver was rather astounded by this intelligence, and was not quite
certain whether he ought to laugh or cry. He had no time to think
about the matter, however; for Mr. Bumble gave him a tap on the
head, with his cane, to wake him up: and another on the back to make
him lively: and bidding him to follow, conducted him into a large
white-washed room, where eight or ten fat gentlemen were sitting
round a table. At the top of the table, seated in an arm-chair
rather higher than the rest, was a particularly fat gentleman with a
very round, red face.
‘Bow to the board,’ said Bumble. Oliver brushed away two or three
tears that were lingering in his eyes; and seeing no board but the
table, fortunately bowed to that.
‘What’s your name, boy?’ said the gentleman in the high chair.
Oliver was frightened at the sight of so many gentlemen, which made
him tremble: and the beadle gave him another tap behind, which
made him cry. These two causes made him answer in a very low and
hesitating voice; whereupon a gentleman in a white waistcoat said
he was a fool. Which was a capital way of raising his spirits, and
putting him quite at his ease.
‘Boy,’ said the gentleman in the high chair, ‘listen to me. You know
you’re an orphan, I suppose?’
‘What’s that, sir?’ inquired poor Oliver.
‘The boy _is_ a fool--I thought he was,’ said the gentleman in the
white waistcoat.
‘Hush!’ said the gentleman who had spoken first. ‘You know you’ve
got no father or mother, and that you were brought up by the parish,
don’t you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Oliver, weeping bitterly.
‘What are you crying for?’ inquired the gentleman in the white
waistcoat. And to be sure it was very extraordinary. What _could_
the boy be crying for?
‘I hope you say your prayers every night,’ said another gentleman in
a gruff voice; ‘and pray for the people who feed you, and take care
of you--like a Christian.’
‘Yes, sir,’ stammered the boy. The gentleman who spoke last was
unconsciously right. It would have been very like a Christian, and a
marvellously good Christian too, if Oliver had prayed for the people
who fed and took care of _him_. But he hadn’t, because nobody had
taught him.
‘Well! You have come here to be educated, and taught a useful
trade,’ said the red-faced gentleman in the high chair.
‘So you’ll begin to pick oakum to-morrow morning at six o’clock,’
added the surly one in the white waistcoat.
For the combination of both these blessings in the one simple
process of picking oakum, Oliver bowed low by the direction of
the beadle, and was then hurried away to a large ward; where, on
a rough, hard bed, he sobbed himself to sleep. What a novel
illustration of the tender laws of England! They let the paupers go
to sleep!
Poor Oliver! He little thought, as he lay sleeping in happy
unconsciousness of all around him, that the board had that very
day arrived at a decision which would exercise the most material
influence over all his future fortunes. But they had. And this was
it:
The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men;
and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse,
they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have
discovered--the poor people liked it! It was a regular place of
public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there
was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all
the year round; a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play
and no work. ‘Oho!’ said the board, looking very knowing; ‘we are
the fellows to set this to rights; we’ll stop it all, in no time.’
So, they established the rule, that all poor people should have
the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they), of being
starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of
it. With this view, they contracted with the water-works to lay
on an unlimited supply of water; and with a corn-factor to supply
periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and issued three meals
of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll of
Sundays. They made a great many other wise and humane regulations,
having reference to the ladies, which it is not necessary to repeat;
kindly undertook to divorce poor married people, in consequence of
the great expense of a suit in Doctors’ Commons; and, instead of
compelling a man to support his family, as they had theretofore
done, took his family away from him, and made him a bachelor! There
is no saying how many applicants for relief, under these last two
heads, might have started up in all classes of society, if it had
not been coupled with the workhouse; but the board were long-headed
men, and had provided for this difficulty. The relief was
inseparable from the workhouse and the gruel; and that frightened
people.
For the first six months after Oliver Twist was removed, the
system was in full operation. It was rather expensive at first,
in consequence of the increase in the undertaker’s bill, and
the necessity of taking in the clothes of all the paupers, which
fluttered loosely on their wasted, shrunken forms, after a week or
two’s gruel. But the number of workhouse inmates got thin as well as
the paupers; and the board were in ecstasies.
The room in which the boys were fed, was a large stone hall, with a
copper at one end: out of which the master, dressed in an apron for
the purpose, and assisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel at
mealtimes. Of this festive composition each boy had one porringer,
and no more--except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he
had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides.
The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished them with their
spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this
operation (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as
large as the bowls), they would sit staring at the copper, with such
eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which
it was composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their
fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray
splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon. Boys have
generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions
suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months: at last
they got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one boy, who was
tall for his age, and hadn’t been used to that sort of thing
(for his father had kept a small cook-shop), hinted darkly to his
companions, that unless he had another basin of gruel per diem, he
was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next
him, who happened to be a weakly youth of tender age. He had a wild,
hungry eye; and they implicitly believed him. A council was held;
lots were cast who should walk up to the master after supper that
evening, and ask for more; and it fell to Oliver Twist.
The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in
his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper
assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served
out; and a long grace was said over the short commons. The gruel
disappeared; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver;
while his next neighbors nudged him. Child as he was, he was
desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the
table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said:
somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
‘Please, sir, I want some more.’
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed
in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and
then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed
with wonder; the boys with fear.
‘What!’ said the master at length, in a faint voice.
‘Please, sir,’ replied Oliver, ‘I want some more.’
The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle; pinioned
him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.
The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed
into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in
the high chair, said,
‘Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for
more!’
There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance.
‘For _more_!’ said Mr. Limbkins. ‘Compose yourself, Bumble, and
answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after
he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?’
‘He did, sir,’ replied Bumble.
‘That boy will be hung,’ said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.
‘I know that boy will be hung.’
Nobody controverted the prophetic gentleman’s opinion. An animated
discussion took place. Oliver was ordered into instant confinement;
and a bill was next morning pasted on the outside of the gate,
offering a reward of five pounds to anybody who would take Oliver
Twist off the hands of the parish. In other words, five pounds
and Oliver Twist were offered to any man or woman who wanted an
apprentice to any trade, business, or calling.
‘I never was more convinced of anything in my life,’ said the
gentleman in the white waistcoat, as he knocked at the gate and read
the bill next morning: ‘I never was more convinced of anything in my
life, than I am that that boy will come to be hung.’
As I purpose to show in the sequel whether the white waistcoated
gentleman was right or not, I should perhaps mar the interest of
this narrative (supposing it to possess any at all), if I ventured
to hint just yet, whether the life of Oliver Twist had this violent
termination or no.
CHAPTER III -- RELATES HOW OLIVER TWIST WAS VERY NEAR GETTING A
PLACE WHICH WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A SINECURE
For a week after the commission of the impious and profane offence
of asking for more, Oliver remained a close prisoner in the dark and
solitary room to which he had been consigned by the wisdom and
mercy of the board. It appears, at first sight not unreasonable to
suppose, that, if he had entertained a becoming feeling of respect
for the prediction of the gentleman in the white waistcoat, he would
have established that sage individual’s prophetic character, once
and for ever, by tying one end of his pocket-handkerchief to a hook
in the wall, and attaching himself to the other. To the performance
of this feat, however, there was one obstacle: namely, that
pocket-handkerchiefs being decided articles of luxury, had been, for
all future times and ages, removed from the noses of paupers by the
express order of the board, in council assembled: solemnly given and
pronounced under their hands and seals. There was a still greater
obstacle in Oliver’s youth and childishness. He only cried bitterly
all day; and, when the long, dismal night came on, spread his little
hands before his eyes to shut out the darkness, and crouching in
the corner, tried to sleep: ever and anon waking with a start and
tremble, and drawing himself closer and closer to the wall, as if to
feel even its cold hard surface were a protection in the gloom and
loneliness which surrounded him.
Let it not be supposed by the enemies of ‘the system,’ that, during
the period of his solitary incarceration, Oliver was denied the
benefit of exercise, the pleasure of society, or the advantages of
religious consolation. As for exercise, it was nice cold weather,
and he was allowed to perform his ablutions every morning under the
pump, in a stone yard, in the presence of Mr. Bumble, who prevented
his catching cold, and caused a tingling sensation to pervade his
frame, by repeated applications of the cane. As for society, he
was carried every other day into the hall where the boys dined, and
there sociably flogged as a public warning and example. And so far
from being denied the advantages of religious consolation, he was
kicked into the same apartment every evening at prayer-time, and
there permitted to listen to, and console his mind with, a general
supplication of the boys, containing a special clause, therein
inserted by authority of the board, in which they entreated to be
made good, virtuous, contented, and obedient, and to be guarded from
the sins and vices of Oliver Twist: whom the supplication distinctly
set forth to be under the exclusive patronage and protection of the
powers of wickedness, and an article direct from the manufactory of
the very Devil himself.
It chanced one morning, while Oliver’s affairs were in this
auspicious and comfortable state, that Mr. Gamfield, chimney-sweep,
went his way down the High Street, deeply cogitating in his mind
his ways and means of paying certain arrears of rent, for which his
landlord had become rather pressing. Mr. Gamfield’s most sanguine
estimate of his finances could not raise them within full five
pounds of the desired amount; and, in a species of arithmetical
desperation, he was alternately cudgelling his brains and his
donkey, when passing the workhouse, his eyes encountered the bill on
the gate.
‘Wo--o!’ said Mr. Gamfield to the donkey.
The donkey was in a state of profound abstraction: wondering,
probably, whether he was destined to be regaled with a cabbage-stalk
or two when he had disposed of the two sacks of soot with which the
little cart was laden; so, without noticing the word of command, he
jogged onward.
Mr. Gamfield growled a fierce imprecation on the donkey generally,
but more particularly on his eyes; and, running after him, bestowed
a blow on his head, which would inevitably have beaten in any skull
but a donkey’s. Then, catching hold of the bridle, he gave his jaw
a sharp wrench, by way of gentle reminder that he was not his
own master; and by these means turned him round. He then gave him
another blow on the head, just to stun him till he came back again.
Having completed these arrangements, he walked up to the gate, to
read the bill.
The gentleman with the white waistcoat was standing at the gate
with his hands behind him, after having delivered himself of some
profound sentiments in the board-room. Having witnessed the little
dispute between Mr. Gamfield and the donkey, he smiled joyously when
that person came up to read the bill, for he saw at once that Mr.
Gamfield was exactly the sort of master Oliver Twist wanted. Mr.
Gamfield smiled, too, as he perused the document; for five pounds
was just the sum he had been wishing for; and, as to the boy with
which it was encumbered, Mr. Gamfield, knowing what the dietary of
the workhouse was, well knew he would be a nice small pattern, just
the very thing for register stoves. So, he spelt the bill through
again, from beginning to end; and then, touching his fur cap in
token of humility, accosted the gentleman in the white waistcoat.
‘This here boy, sir, wot the parish wants to ‘prentis,’ said Mr.
Gamfield.
‘Ay, my man,’ said the gentleman in the white waistcoat, with a
condescending smile. ‘What of him?’
‘If the parish vould like him to learn a right pleasant trade, in
a good ‘spectable chimbley-sweepin’ bisness,’ said Mr. Gamfield, ‘I
wants a ‘prentis, and I am ready to take him.’
‘Walk in,’ said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. Mr. Gamfield
having lingered behind, to give the donkey another blow on the head,
and another wrench of the jaw, as a caution not to run away in his
absence, followed the gentleman with the white waistcoat into the
room where Oliver had first seen him.
‘It’s a nasty trade,’ said Mr. Limbkins, when Gamfield had again
stated his wish.
‘Young boys have been smothered in chimneys before now,’ said
another gentleman.
‘That’s acause they damped the straw afore they lit it in the
chimbley to make ‘em come down again,’ said Gamfield; ‘that’s all
smoke, and no blaze; vereas smoke ain’t o’ no use at all in making
a boy come down, for it only sinds him to sleep, and that’s wot he
likes. Boys is wery obstinit, and wery lazy, Gen’l’men, and there’s
nothink like a good hot blaze to make ‘em come down vith a run.
It’s humane too, gen’l’men, acause, even if they’ve stuck in the
chimbley, roasting their feet makes ‘em struggle to hextricate
theirselves.’
The gentleman in the white waistcoat appeared very much amused by
this explanation; but his mirth was speedily checked by a look from
Mr. Limbkins. The board then proceeded to converse among themselves
for a few minutes, but in so low a tone, that the words ‘saving of
expenditure,’ ‘looked well in the accounts,’ ‘have a printed report
published,’ were alone audible. These only chanced to be heard,
indeed, or account of their being very frequently repeated with
great emphasis.
At length the whispering ceased; and the members of the board,
having resumed their seats and their solemnity, Mr. Limbkins said:
‘We have considered your proposition, and we don’t approve of it.’
‘Not at all,’ said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.
‘Decidedly not,’ added the other members.
As Mr. Gamfield did happen to labour under the slight imputation of
having bruised three or four boys to death already, it occurred to
him that the board had, perhaps, in some unaccountable freak, taken
it into their heads that this extraneous circumstance ought to
influence their proceedings. It was very unlike their general mode
of doing business, if they had; but still, as he had no particular
wish to revive the rumour, he twisted his cap in his hands, and
walked slowly from the table.
‘So you won’t let me have him, gen’l’men?’ said Mr. Gamfield,
pausing near the door.
‘No,’ replied Mr. Limbkins; ‘at least, as it’s a nasty business, we
think you ought to take something less than the premium we offered.’
Mr. Gamfield’s countenance brightened, as, with a quick step, he
returned to the table, and said,
‘What’ll you give, gen’l’men? Come! Don’t be too hard on a poor man.
What’ll you give?’
‘I should say, three pound ten was plenty,’ said Mr. Limbkins.
‘Ten shillings too much,’ said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.
‘Come!’ said Gamfield; ‘say four pound, gen’l’men. Say four pound,
and you’ve got rid of him for good and all. There!’
‘Three pound ten,’ repeated Mr. Limbkins, firmly.
‘Come! I’ll split the diff’erence, gen’l’men,’ urged Gamfield.
‘Three pound fifteen.’
‘Not a farthing more,’ was the firm reply of Mr. Limbkins.
‘You’re desperate hard upon me, gen’l’men,’ said Gamfield, wavering.
‘Pooh! pooh! nonsense!’ said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.
‘He’d be cheap with nothing at all, as a premium. Take him, you
silly fellow! He’s just the boy for you. He wants the stick, now and
then: it’ll do him good; and his board needn’t come very expensive,
for he hasn’t been overfed since he was born. Ha! ha! ha!’
Mr. Gamfield gave an arch look at the faces round the table, and,
observing a smile on all of them, gradually broke into a smile
himself. The bargain was made. Mr. Bumble, was at once instructed
that Oliver Twist and his indentures were to be conveyed before the
magistrate, for signature and approval, that very afternoon.
In pursuance of this determination, little Oliver, to his excessive
astonishment, was released from bondage, and ordered to put himself
into a clean shirt. He had hardly achieved this very unusual
gymnastic performance, when Mr. Bumble brought him, with his own
hands, a basin of gruel, and the holiday allowance of two ounces and
a quarter of bread. At this tremendous sight, Oliver began to cry
very piteously: thinking, not unnaturally, that the board must have
determined to kill him for some useful purpose, or they never would
have begun to fatten him up in that way.
‘Don’t make your eyes red, Oliver, but eat your food and be
thankful,’ said Mr. Bumble, in a tone of impressive pomposity.
‘You’re a going to be made a ‘prentice of, Oliver.’
‘A prentice, sir!’ said the child, trembling.
‘Yes, Oliver,’ said Mr. Bumble. ‘The kind and blessed gentleman
which is so many parents to you, Oliver, when you have none of your
own: are a going to ‘prentice’ you: and to set you up in life, and
make a man of you: although the expense to the parish is three pound
ten!--three pound ten, Oliver!--seventy shillins--one hundred and
forty sixpences!--and all for a naughty orphan which nobody can’t
love.’
As Mr. Bumble paused to take breath, after delivering this address
in an awful voice, the tears rolled down the poor child’s face, and
he sobbed bitterly.
‘Come,’ said Mr. Bumble, somewhat less pompously, for it was
gratifying to his feelings to observe the effect his eloquence
had produced; ‘Come, Oliver! Wipe your eyes with the cuffs of your
jacket, and don’t cry into your gruel; that’s a very foolish action,
Oliver.’ It certainly was, for there was quite enough water in it
already.
On their way to the magistrate, Mr. Bumble instructed Oliver that
all he would have to do, would be to look very happy, and say, when
the gentleman asked him if he wanted to be apprenticed, that he
should like it very much indeed; both of which injunctions Oliver
promised to obey: the rather as Mr. Bumble threw in a gentle hint,
that if he failed in either particular, there was no telling what
would be done to him. When they arrived at the office, he was shut
up in a little room by himself, and admonished by Mr. Bumble to stay
there, until he came back to fetch him.
There the boy remained, with a palpitating heart, for half an hour.
At the expiration of which time Mr. Bumble thrust in his head,
unadorned with the cocked hat, and said aloud:
‘Now, Oliver, my dear, come to the gentleman.’ As Mr. Bumble said
this, he put on a grim and threatening look, and added, in a low
voice, ‘Mind what I told you, you young rascal!’
Oliver stared innocently in Mr. Bumble’s face at this somewhat
contradictory style of address; but that gentleman prevented his
offering any remark thereupon, by leading him at once into an
adjoining room: the door of which was open. It was a large room,
with a great window. Behind a desk, sat two old gentleman with
powdered heads: one of whom was reading the newspaper; while
the other was perusing, with the aid of a pair of tortoise-shell
spectacles, a small piece of parchment which lay before him. Mr.
Limbkins was standing in front of the desk on one side; and Mr.
Gamfield, with a partially washed face, on the other; while two or
three bluff-looking men, in top-boots, were lounging about.
The old gentleman with the spectacles gradually dozed off, over the
little bit of parchment; and there was a short pause, after Oliver
had been stationed by Mr. Bumble in front of the desk.
‘This is the boy, your worship,’ said Mr. Bumble.
The old gentleman who was reading the newspaper raised his head
for a moment, and pulled the other old gentleman by the sleeve;
whereupon, the last-mentioned old gentleman woke up.
‘Oh, is this the boy?’ said the old gentleman.
‘This is him, sir,’ replied Mr. Bumble. ‘Bow to the magistrate, my
dear.’
Oliver roused himself, and made his best obeisance. He had been
wondering, with his eyes fixed on the magistrates’ powder, whether
all boards were born with that white stuff on their heads, and were
boards from thenceforth on that account.
‘Well,’ said the old gentleman, ‘I suppose he’s fond of
chimney-sweeping?’
‘He doats on it, your worship,’ replied Bumble; giving Oliver a sly
pinch, to intimate that he had better not say he didn’t.
‘And he _will_ be a sweep, will he?’ inquired the old gentleman.
‘If we was to bind him to any other trade to-morrow, he’d run away
simultaneous, your worship,’ replied Bumble.
‘And this man that’s to be his master--you, sir--you’ll treat him
well, and feed him, and do all that sort of thing, will you?’ said
the old gentleman.
‘When I says I will, I means I will,’ replied Mr. Gamfield doggedly.
‘You’re a rough speaker, my friend, but you look an honest,
open-hearted man,’ said the old gentleman: turning his spectacles
in the direction of the candidate for Oliver’s premium, whose
villainous countenance was a regular stamped receipt for cruelty.
But the magistrate was half blind and half childish, so he couldn’t
reasonably be expected to discern what other people did.
‘I hope I am, sir,’ said Mr. Gamfield, with an ugly leer.
‘I have no doubt you are, my friend,’ replied the old gentleman:
fixing his spectacles more firmly on his nose, and looking about him
for the inkstand.
It was the critical moment of Oliver’s fate. If the inkstand had
been where the old gentleman thought it was, he would have dipped
his pen into it, and signed the indentures, and Oliver would have
been straightway hurried off. But, as it chanced to be immediately
under his nose, it followed, as a matter of course, that he looked
all over his desk for it, without finding it; and happening in
the course of his search to look straight before him, his gaze
encountered the pale and terrified face of Oliver Twist: who,
despite all the admonitory looks and pinches of Bumble, was
regarding the repulsive countenance of his future master, with a
mingled expression of horror and fear, too palpable to be mistaken,
even by a half-blind magistrate.
The old gentleman stopped, laid down his pen, and looked from Oliver
to Mr. Limbkins; who attempted to take snuff with a cheerful and
unconcerned aspect.
‘My boy!’ said the old gentleman, ‘you look pale and alarmed. What
is the matter?’
‘Stand a little away from him, Beadle,’ said the other magistrate:
laying aside the paper, and leaning forward with an expression of
interest. ‘Now, boy, tell us what’s the matter: don’t be afraid.’
Oliver fell on his knees, and clasping his hands together, prayed
that they would order him back to the dark room--that they would
starve him--beat him--kill him if they pleased--rather than send him
away with that dreadful man.
‘Well!’ said Mr. Bumble, raising his hands and eyes with most
impressive solemnity. ‘Well! of all the artful and designing orphans
that ever I see, Oliver, you are one of the most bare-facedest.’
‘Hold your tongue, Beadle,’ said the second old gentleman, when Mr.
Bumble had given vent to this compound adjective.
‘I beg your worship’s pardon,’ said Mr. Bumble, incredulous of
having heard aright. ‘Did your worship speak to me?’
‘Yes. Hold your tongue.’
Mr. Bumble was stupefied with astonishment. A beadle ordered to hold
his tongue! A moral revolution!
The old gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles looked at his
companion, he nodded significantly.
‘We refuse to sanction these indentures,’ said the old gentleman:
tossing aside the piece of parchment as he spoke.
‘I hope,’ stammered Mr. Limbkins: ‘I hope the magistrates will
not form the opinion that the authorities have been guilty of any
improper conduct, on the unsupported testimony of a child.’
‘The magistrates are not called upon to pronounce any opinion on the
matter,’ said the second old gentleman sharply. ‘Take the boy back
to the workhouse, and treat him kindly. He seems to want it.’
That same evening, the gentleman in the white waistcoat most
positively and decidedly affirmed, not only that Oliver would be
hung, but that he would be drawn and quartered into the bargain.
Mr. Bumble shook his head with gloomy mystery, and said he wished he
might come to good; whereunto Mr. Gamfield replied, that he wished
he might come to him; which, although he agreed with the beadle
in most matters, would seem to be a wish of a totally opposite
description.
The next morning, the public were once informed that Oliver Twist
was again To Let, and that five pounds would be paid to anybody who
would take possession of him.
CHAPTER IV -- OLIVER, BEING OFFERED ANOTHER PLACE, MAKES HIS FIRST
ENTRY INTO PUBLIC LIFE
In great families, when an advantageous place cannot be obtained,
either in possession, reversion, remainder, or expectancy, for the
young man who is growing up, it is a very general custom to send him
to sea. The board, in imitation of so wise and salutary an example,
took counsel together on the expediency of shipping off Oliver
Twist, in some small trading vessel bound to a good unhealthy port.
This suggested itself as the very best thing that could possibly be
done with him: the probability being, that the skipper would flog
him to death, in a playful mood, some day after dinner, or would
knock his brains out with an iron bar; both pastimes being, as is
pretty generally known, very favourite and common recreations among
gentleman of that class. The more the case presented itself to the
board, in this point of view, the more manifold the advantages of
the step appeared; so, they came to the conclusion that the only way
of providing for Oliver effectually, was to send him to sea without
delay.
Mr. Bumble had been despatched to make various preliminary
inquiries, with the view of finding out some captain or other who
wanted a cabin-boy without any friends; and was returning to
the workhouse to communicate the result of his mission; when he
encountered at the gate, no less a person than Mr. Sowerberry, the
parochial undertaker.
Mr. Sowerberry was a tall gaunt, large-jointed man, attired in a
suit of threadbare black, with darned cotton stockings of the
same colour, and shoes to answer. His features were not naturally
intended to wear a smiling aspect, but he was in general rather
given to professional jocosity. His step was elastic, and his face
betokened inward pleasantry, as he advanced to Mr. Bumble, and shook
him cordially by the hand.
‘I have taken the measure of the two women that died last night, Mr.
Bumble,’ said the undertaker.
‘You’ll make your fortune, Mr. Sowerberry,’ said the beadle, as he
thrust his thumb and forefinger into the proffered snuff-box of the
undertaker: which was an ingenious little model of a patent coffin.
‘I say you’ll make your fortune, Mr. Sowerberry,’ repeated Mr.
Bumble, tapping the undertaker on the shoulder, in a friendly
manner, with his cane.
‘Think so?’ said the undertaker in a tone which half admitted and
half disputed the probability of the event. ‘The prices allowed by
the board are very small, Mr. Bumble.’
‘So are the coffins,’ replied the beadle: with precisely as near an
approach to a laugh as a great official ought to indulge in.
Mr. Sowerberry was much tickled at this: as of course he ought to
be; and laughed a long time without cessation. ‘Well, well, Mr.
Bumble,’ he said at length, ‘there’s no denying that, since the new
system of feeding has come in, the coffins are something narrower
and more shallow than they used to be; but we must have some profit,
Mr. Bumble. Well-seasoned timber is an expensive article, sir; and
all the iron handles come, by canal, from Birmingham.’
‘Well, well,’ said Mr. Bumble, ‘every trade has its drawbacks. A
fair profit is, of course, allowable.’
‘Of course, of course,’ replied the undertaker; ‘and if I don’t get
a profit upon this or that particular article, why, I make it up in
the long-run, you see--he! he! he!’
‘Just so,’ said Mr. Bumble.
‘Though I must say,’ continued the undertaker, resuming the current
of observations which the beadle had interrupted: ‘though I must
say, Mr. Bumble, that I have to contend against one very great
disadvantage: which is, that all the stout people go off the
quickest. The people who have been better off, and have paid rates
for many years, are the first to sink when they come into the house;
and let me tell you, Mr. Bumble, that three or four inches over
one’s calculation makes a great hole in one’s profits: especially
when one has a family to provide for, sir.’
As Mr. Sowerberry said this, with the becoming indignation of an
ill-used man; and as Mr. Bumble felt that it rather tended to convey
a reflection on the honour of the parish; the latter gentleman
thought it advisable to change the subject. Oliver Twist being
uppermost in his mind, he made him his theme.
‘By the bye,’ said Mr. Bumble, ‘you don’t know anybody who wants a
boy, do you? A porochial ‘prentis, who is at present a dead-weight;
a millstone, as I may say, round the porochial throat? Liberal
terms, Mr. Sowerberry, liberal terms?’ As Mr. Bumble spoke, he
raised his cane to the bill above him, and gave three distinct raps
upon the words ‘five pounds’: which were printed thereon in Roman
capitals of gigantic size.
‘Gadso!’ said the undertaker: taking Mr. Bumble by the gilt-edged
lappel of his official coat; ‘that’s just the very thing I wanted
to speak to you about. You know--dear me, what a very elegant button
this is, Mr. Bumble! I never noticed it before.’
‘Yes, I think it rather pretty,’ said the beadle, glancing proudly
downwards at the large brass buttons which embellished his coat.
‘The die is the same as the porochial seal--the Good Samaritan
healing the sick and bruised man. The board presented it to me on
Newyear’s morning, Mr. Sowerberry. I put it on, I remember, for the
first time, to attend the inquest on that reduced tradesman, who
died in a doorway at midnight.’
‘I recollect,’ said the undertaker. ‘The jury brought it in, “Died
from exposure to the cold, and want of the common necessaries of
life,” didn’t they?’
Mr. Bumble nodded.
‘And they made it a special verdict, I think,’ said the undertaker,
‘by adding some words to the effect, that if the relieving officer
had--’
‘Tush! Foolery!’ interposed the beadle. ‘If the board attended to
all the nonsense that ignorant jurymen talk, they’d have enough to
do.’
‘Very true,’ said the undertaker; ‘they would indeed.’
‘Juries,’ said Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane tightly, as was his
wont when working into a passion: ‘juries is ineddicated, vulgar,
grovelling wretches.’
‘So they are,’ said the undertaker.
‘They haven’t no more philosophy nor political economy about ‘em
than that,’ said the beadle, snapping his fingers contemptuously.
‘No more they have,’ acquiesced the undertaker.
‘I despise ‘em,’ said the beadle, growing very red in the face.
‘So do I,’ rejoined the undertaker.
‘And I only wish we’d a jury of the independent sort, in the house
for a week or two,’ said the beadle; ‘the rules and regulations of
the board would soon bring their spirit down for ‘em.’
‘Let ‘em alone for that,’ replied the undertaker. So saying, he
smiled, approvingly: to calm the rising wrath of the indignant
parish officer.
Mr Bumble lifted off his cocked hat; took a handkerchief from the
inside of the crown; wiped from his forehead the perspiration which
his rage had engendered; fixed the cocked hat on again; and, turning
to the undertaker, said in a calmer voice:
‘Well; what about the boy?’
‘Oh!’ replied the undertaker; ‘why, you know, Mr. Bumble, I pay a
good deal towards the poor’s rates.’
‘Hem!’ said Mr. Bumble. ‘Well?’
‘Well,’ replied the undertaker, ‘I was thinking that if I pay so
much towards ‘em, I’ve a right to get as much out of ‘em as I can,
Mr. Bumble; and so--I think I’ll take the boy myself.’
Mr. Bumble grasped the undertaker by the arm, and led him into
the building. Mr. Sowerberry was closeted with the board for five
minutes; and it was arranged that Oliver should go to him that
evening ‘upon liking’--a phrase which means, in the case of a parish
apprentice, that if the master find, upon a short trial, that he can
get enough work out of a boy without putting too much food into him,
he shall have him for a term of years, to do what he likes with.
When little Oliver was taken before ‘the gentlemen’ that evening;
and informed that he was to go, that night, as general house-lad
to a coffin-maker’s; and that if he complained of his situation, or
ever came back to the parish again, he would be sent to sea, there
to be drowned, or knocked on the head, as the case might be, he
evinced so little emotion, that they by common consent pronounced
him a hardened young rascal, and ordered Mr. Bumble to remove him
forthwith.
Now, although it was very natural that the board, of all people in
the world, should feel in a great state of virtuous astonishment
and horror at the smallest tokens of want of feeling on the part
of anybody, they were rather out, in this particular instance.
The simple fact was, that Oliver, instead of possessing too little
feeling, possessed rather too much; and was in a fair way of being
reduced, for life, to a state of brutal stupidity and sullenness by
the ill usage he had received. He heard the news of his destination,
in perfect silence; and, having had his luggage put into his
hand--which was not very difficult to carry, inasmuch as it was all
comprised within the limits of a brown paper parcel, about half a
foot square by three inches deep--he pulled his cap over his eyes;
and once more attaching himself to Mr. Bumble’s coat cuff, was led
away by that dignitary to a new scene of suffering.
For some time, Mr. Bumble drew Oliver along, without notice or
remark; for the beadle carried his head very erect, as a beadle
always should: and, it being a windy day, little Oliver was
completely enshrouded by the skirts of Mr. Bumble’s coat as they
blew open, and disclosed to great advantage his flapped waistcoat
and drab plush knee-breeches. As they drew near to their
destination, however, Mr. Bumble thought it expedient to look down,
and see that the boy was in good order for inspection by his new
master: which he accordingly did, with a fit and becoming air of
gracious patronage.
‘Oliver!’ said Mr. Bumble.
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Oliver, in a low, tremulous voice.
‘Pull that cap off your eyes, and hold up your head, sir.’
Although Oliver did as he was desired, at once; and passed the back
of his unoccupied hand briskly across his eyes, he left a tear in
them when he looked up at his conductor. As Mr. Bumble gazed sternly
upon him, it rolled down his cheek. It was followed by another, and
another. The child made a strong effort, but it was an unsuccessful
one. Withdrawing his other hand from Mr. Bumble’s he covered his
face with both; and wept until the tears sprung out from between his
chin and bony fingers.
‘Well!’ exclaimed Mr. Bumble, stopping short, and darting at his
little charge a look of intense malignity. ‘Well! Of _all_ the
ungratefullest, and worst-disposed boys as ever I see, Oliver, you
are the--’
‘No, no, sir,’ sobbed Oliver, clinging to the hand which held the
well-known cane; ‘no, no, sir; I will be good indeed; indeed, indeed
I will, sir! I am a very little boy, sir; and it is so--so--’
‘So what?’ inquired Mr. Bumble in amazement.
‘So lonely, sir! So very lonely!’ cried the child. ‘Everybody hates
me. Oh! sir, don’t, don’t pray be cross to me!’ The child beat his
hand upon his heart; and looked in his companion’s face, with tears
of real agony.
Mr. Bumble regarded Oliver’s piteous and helpless look, with some
astonishment, for a few seconds; hemmed three or four times in a
husky manner; and after muttering something about ‘that troublesome
cough,’ bade Oliver dry his eyes and be a good boy. Then once more
taking his hand, he walked on with him in silence.
The undertaker, who had just put up the shutters of his shop,
was making some entries in his day-book by the light of a most
appropriate dismal candle, when Mr. Bumble entered.
‘Aha!’ said the undertaker; looking up from the book, and pausing in
the middle of a word; ‘is that you, Bumble?’
‘No one else, Mr. Sowerberry,’ replied the beadle. ‘Here! I’ve
brought the boy.’ Oliver made a bow.
‘Oh! that’s the boy, is it?’ said the undertaker: raising the candle
above his head, to get a better view of Oliver. ‘Mrs. Sowerberry,
will you have the goodness to come here a moment, my dear?’
Mrs. Sowerberry emerged from a little room behind the shop, and
presented the form of a short, thin, squeezed-up woman, with a
vixenish countenance.
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Sowerberry, deferentially, ‘this is the boy from
the workhouse that I told you of.’ Oliver bowed again.
‘Dear me!’ said the undertaker’s wife, ‘he’s very small.’
‘Why, he _is_ rather small,’ replied Mr. Bumble: looking at Oliver
as if it were his fault that he was no bigger; ‘he is small. There’s
no denying it. But he’ll grow, Mrs. Sowerberry--he’ll grow.’
‘Ah! I dare say he will,’ replied the lady pettishly, ‘on our
victuals and our drink. I see no saving in parish children, not I;
for they always cost more to keep, than they’re worth. However, men
always think they know best. There! Get downstairs, little bag o’
bones.’ With this, the undertaker’s wife opened a side door, and
pushed Oliver down a steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp
and dark: forming the ante-room to the coal-cellar, and denominated
‘kitchen’; wherein sat a slatternly girl, in shoes down at heel, and
blue worsted stockings very much out of repair.
‘Here, Charlotte,’ said Mr. Sowerberry, who had followed Oliver
down, ‘give this boy some of the cold bits that were put by for
Trip. He hasn’t come home since the morning, so he may go without
‘em. I dare say the boy isn’t too dainty to eat ‘em--are you, boy?’
Oliver, whose eyes had glistened at the mention of meat, and who was
trembling with eagerness to devour it, replied in the negative; and
a plateful of coarse broken victuals was set before him.
I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose meat and drink turn to gall
within him; whose blood is ice, whose heart is iron; could have
seen Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that the dog had
neglected. I wish he could have witnessed the horrible avidity with
which Oliver tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of famine.
There is only one thing I should like better; and that would be to
see the Philosopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the
same relish.
‘Well,’ said the undertaker’s wife, when Oliver had finished his
supper: which she had regarded in silent horror, and with fearful
auguries of his future appetite: ‘have you done?’
There being nothing eatable within his reach, Oliver replied in the
affirmative.
‘Then come with me,’ said Mrs. Sowerberry: taking up a dim and dirty
lamp, and leading the way upstairs; ‘your bed’s under the counter.
You don’t mind sleeping among the coffins, I suppose? But it doesn’t
much matter whether you do or don’t, for you can’t sleep anywhere
else. Come; don’t keep me here all night!’
Oliver lingered no longer, but meekly followed his new mistress.
CHAPTER V -- OLIVER MINGLES WITH NEW ASSOCIATES. GOING TO A FUNERAL
FOR THE FIRST TIME, HE FORMS AN UNFAVOURABLE NOTION OF HIS MASTER’S
BUSINESS
Oliver, being left to himself in the undertaker’s shop, set the
lamp down on a workman’s bench, and gazed timidly about him with a
feeling of awe and dread, which many people a good deal older than
he will be at no loss to understand. An unfinished coffin on black
tressels, which stood in the middle of the shop, looked so gloomy
and death-like that a cold tremble came over him, every time his
eyes wandered in the direction of the dismal object: from which he
almost expected to see some frightful form slowly rear its head, to
drive him mad with terror. Against the wall were ranged, in regular
array, a long row of elm boards cut in the same shape: looking in
the dim light, like high-shouldered ghosts with their hands in their
breeches pockets. Coffin-plates, elm-chips, bright-headed nails,
and shreds of black cloth, lay scattered on the floor; and the wall
behind the counter was ornamented with a lively representation of
two mutes in very stiff neckcloths, on duty at a large private
door, with a hearse drawn by four black steeds, approaching in the
distance. The shop was close and hot. The atmosphere seemed tainted
with the smell of coffins. The recess beneath the counter in which
his flock mattress was thrust, looked like a grave.
Nor were these the only dismal feelings which depressed Oliver.
He was alone in a strange place; and we all know how chilled and
desolate the best of us will sometimes feel in such a situation. The
boy had no friends to care for, or to care for him. The regret of no
recent separation was fresh in his mind; the absence of no loved and
well-remembered face sank heavily into his heart.
But his heart was heavy, notwithstanding; and he wished, as he crept
into his narrow bed, that that were his coffin, and that he could be
lain in a calm and lasting sleep in the churchyard ground, with the
tall grass waving gently above his head, and the sound of the old
deep bell to soothe him in his sleep.
Oliver was awakened in the morning, by a loud kicking at the outside
of the shop-door: which, before he could huddle on his clothes, was
repeated, in an angry and impetuous manner, about twenty-five times.
When he began to undo the chain, the legs desisted, and a voice
began.
‘Open the door, will yer?’ cried the voice which belonged to the
legs which had kicked at the door.
‘I will, directly, sir,’ replied Oliver: undoing the chain, and
turning the key.
‘I suppose yer the new boy, ain’t yer?’ said the voice through the
key-hole.
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Oliver.
‘How old are yer?’ inquired the voice.
‘Ten, sir,’ replied Oliver.
‘Then I’ll whop yer when I get in,’ said the voice; ‘you just see if
I don’t, that’s all, my work’us brat!’ and having made this obliging
promise, the voice began to whistle.
Oliver had been too often subjected to the process to which the very
expressive monosyllable just recorded bears reference, to entertain
the smallest doubt that the owner of the voice, whoever he might
be, would redeem his pledge, most honourably. He drew back the bolts
with a trembling hand, and opened the door.
For a second or two, Oliver glanced up the street, and down the
street, and over the way: impressed with the belief that the
unknown, who had addressed him through the key-hole, had walked
a few paces off, to warm himself; for nobody did he see but a big
charity-boy, sitting on a post in front of the house, eating a
slice of bread and butter: which he cut into wedges, the size of his
mouth, with a clasp-knife, and then consumed with great dexterity.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Oliver at length: seeing that no
other visitor made his appearance; ‘did you knock?’
‘I kicked,’ replied the charity-boy.
‘Did you want a coffin, sir?’ inquired Oliver, innocently.
At this, the charity-boy looked monstrous fierce; and said that
Oliver would want one before long, if he cut jokes with his
superiors in that way.
‘Yer don’t know who I am, I suppose, Work’us?’ said the charity-boy,
in continuation: descending from the top of the post, meanwhile,
with edifying gravity.
‘No, sir,’ rejoined Oliver.
‘I’m Mister Noah Claypole,’ said the charity-boy, ‘and you’re under
me. Take down the shutters, yer idle young ruffian!’ With this, Mr.
Claypole administered a kick to Oliver, and entered the shop with
a dignified air, which did him great credit. It is difficult for
a large-headed, small-eyed youth, of lumbering make and heavy
countenance, to look dignified under any circumstances; but it is
more especially so, when superadded to these personal attractions
are a red nose and yellow smalls.
Oliver, having taken down the shutters, and broken a pane of glass
in his effort to stagger away beneath the weight of the first one
to a small court at the side of the house in which they were kept
during the day, was graciously assisted by Noah: who having consoled
him with the assurance that ‘he’d catch it,’ condescended to help
him. Mr. Sowerberry came down soon after. Shortly afterwards, Mrs.
Sowerberry appeared. Oliver having ‘caught it,’ in fulfilment of
Noah’s prediction, followed that young gentleman down the stairs to
breakfast.
‘Come near the fire, Noah,’ said Charlotte. ‘I saved a nice little
bit of bacon for you from master’s breakfast. Oliver, shut that door
at Mister Noah’s back, and take them bits that I’ve put out on the
cover of the bread-pan. There’s your tea; take it away to that box,
and drink it there, and make haste, for they’ll want you to mind the
shop. D’ye hear?’
‘D’ye hear, Work’us?’ said Noah Claypole.
‘Lor, Noah!’ said Charlotte, ‘what a rum creature you are! Why don’t
you let the boy alone?’
‘Let him alone!’ said Noah. ‘Why everybody lets him alone enough,
for the matter of that. Neither his father nor his mother will
ever interfere with him. All his relations let him have his own way
pretty well. Eh, Charlotte? He! he! he!’
‘Oh, you queer soul!’ said Charlotte, bursting into a hearty laugh,
in which she was joined by Noah; after which they both looked
scornfully at poor Oliver Twist, as he sat shivering on the box in
the coldest corner of the room, and ate the stale pieces which had
been specially reserved for him.
Noah was a charity-boy, but not a workhouse orphan. No chance-child
was he, for he could trace his genealogy all the way back to his
parents, who lived hard by; his mother being a washerwoman, and
his father a drunken soldier, discharged with a wooden leg, and a
diurnal pension of twopence-halfpenny and an unstateable fraction.
The shop-boys in the neighbourhood had long been in the habit of
branding Noah in the public streets, with the ignominious epithets
of ‘leathers,’ ‘charity,’ and the like; and Noah had bourne them
without reply. But, now that fortune had cast in his way a nameless
orphan, at whom even the meanest could point the finger of scorn,
he retorted on him with interest. This affords charming food for
contemplation. It shows us what a beautiful thing human nature may
be made to be; and how impartially the same amiable qualities are
developed in the finest lord and the dirtiest charity-boy.
Oliver had been sojourning at the undertaker’s some three weeks or a
month. Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry--the shop being shut up--were taking
their supper in the little back-parlour, when Mr. Sowerberry, after
several deferential glances at his wife, said,
‘My dear--’ He was going to say more; but, Mrs. Sowerberry looking
up, with a peculiarly unpropitious aspect, he stopped short.
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Sowerberry, sharply.
‘Nothing, my dear, nothing,’ said Mr. Sowerberry.
‘Ugh, you brute!’ said Mrs. Sowerberry.
‘Not at all, my dear,’ said Mr. Sowerberry humbly. ‘I thought you
didn’t want to hear, my dear. I was only going to say--’
‘Oh, don’t tell me what you were going to say,’ interposed Mrs.
Sowerberry. ‘I am nobody; don’t consult me, pray. _I_ don’t want to
intrude upon your secrets.’ As Mrs. Sowerberry said this, she gave
an hysterical laugh, which threatened violent consequences.
‘But, my dear,’ said Sowerberry, ‘I want to ask your advice.’
‘No, no, don’t ask mine,’ replied Mrs. Sowerberry, in an affecting
manner: ‘ask somebody else’s.’ Here, there was another hysterical
laugh, which frightened Mr. Sowerberry very much. This is a very
common and much-approved matrimonial course of treatment, which is
often very effective. It at once reduced Mr. Sowerberry to begging,
as a special favour, to be allowed to say what Mrs. Sowerberry was
most curious to hear. After a short duration, the permission was
most graciously conceded.
‘It’s only about young Twist, my dear,’ said Mr. Sowerberry. ‘A very
good-looking boy, that, my dear.’
‘He need be, for he eats enough,’ observed the lady.
‘There’s an expression of melancholy in his face, my dear,’
resumed Mr. Sowerberry, ‘which is very interesting. He would make a
delightful mute, my love.’
Mrs. Sowerberry looked up with an expression of considerable
wonderment. Mr. Sowerberry remarked it and, without allowing time
for any observation on the good lady’s part, proceeded.
‘I don’t mean a regular mute to attend grown-up people, my dear, but
only for children’s practice. It would be very new to have a mute in
proportion, my dear. You may depend upon it, it would have a superb
effect.’
Mrs. Sowerberry, who had a good deal of taste in the undertaking
way, was much struck by the novelty of this idea; but, as it would
have been compromising her dignity to have said so, under existing
circumstances, she merely inquired, with much sharpness, why such
an obvious suggestion had not presented itself to her husband’s mind
before? Mr. Sowerberry rightly construed this, as an acquiescence in
his proposition; it was speedily determined, therefore, that Oliver
should be at once initiated into the mysteries of the trade; and,
with this view, that he should accompany his master on the very next
occasion of his services being required.
The occasion was not long in coming. Half an hour after breakfast
next morning, Mr. Bumble entered the shop; and supporting his cane
against the counter, drew forth his large leathern pocket-book: from
which he selected a small scrap of paper, which he handed over to
Sowerberry.
‘Aha!’ said the undertaker, glancing over it with a lively
countenance; ‘an order for a coffin, eh?’
‘For a coffin first, and a porochial funeral afterwards,’ replied
Mr. Bumble, fastening the strap of the leathern pocket-book: which,
like himself, was very corpulent.
‘Bayton,’ said the undertaker, looking from the scrap of paper to
Mr. Bumble. ‘I never heard the name before.’
Bumble shook his head, as he replied, ‘Obstinate people, Mr.
Sowerberry; very obstinate. Proud, too, I’m afraid, sir.’
‘Proud, eh?’ exclaimed Mr. Sowerberry with a sneer. ‘Come, that’s
too much.’
‘Oh, it’s sickening,’ replied the beadle. ‘Antimonial, Mr.
Sowerberry!’
‘So it is,’ acquiesced the undertaker.
‘We only heard of the family the night before last,’ said the
beadle; ‘and we shouldn’t have known anything about them, then,
only a woman who lodges in the same house made an application to the
porochial committee for them to send the porochial surgeon to see a
woman as was very bad. He had gone out to dinner; but his
‘prentice (which is a very clever lad) sent ‘em some medicine in a
blacking-bottle, offhand.’
‘Ah, there’s promptness,’ said the undertaker.
‘Promptness, indeed!’ replied the beadle. ‘But what’s the
consequence; what’s the ungrateful behaviour of these rebels, sir?
Why, the husband sends back word that the medicine won’t suit his
wife’s complaint, and so she shan’t take it--says she shan’t take
it, sir! Good, strong, wholesome medicine, as was given with great
success to two Irish labourers and a coal-heaver, only a week
before--sent ‘em for nothing, with a blackin’-bottle in,--and he
sends back word that she shan’t take it, sir!’
As the atrocity presented itself to Mr. Bumble’s mind in full force,
he struck the counter sharply with his cane, and became flushed with
indignation.
‘Well,’ said the undertaker, ‘I ne--ver--did--’
‘Never did, sir!’ ejaculated the beadle. ‘No, nor nobody never did;
but now she’s dead, we’ve got to bury her; and that’s the direction;
and the sooner it’s done, the better.’
Thus saying, Mr. Bumble put on his cocked hat wrong side first, in a
fever of parochial excitement; and flounced out of the shop.
‘Why, he was so angry, Oliver, that he forgot even to ask after
you!’ said Mr. Sowerberry, looking after the beadle as he strode
down the street.
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Oliver, who had carefully kept himself out of
sight, during the interview; and who was shaking from head to foot
at the mere recollection of the sound of Mr. Bumble’s voice.
He needn’t haven taken the trouble to shrink from Mr. Bumble’s
glance, however; for that functionary, on whom the prediction of the
gentleman in the white waistcoat had made a very strong impression,
thought that now the undertaker had got Oliver upon trial the
subject was better avoided, until such time as he should be firmly
bound for seven years, and all danger of his being returned upon the
hands of the parish should be thus effectually and legally overcome.
‘Well,’ said Mr. Sowerberry, taking up his hat, ‘the sooner this job
is done, the better. Noah, look after the shop. Oliver, put on your
cap, and come with me.’ Oliver obeyed, and followed his master on
his professional mission.
They walked on, for some time, through the most crowded and densely
inhabited part of the town; and then, striking down a narrow street
more dirty and miserable than any they had yet passed through,
paused to look for the house which was the object of their search.
The houses on either side were high and large, but very old,
and tenanted by people of the poorest class: as their neglected
appearance would have sufficiently denoted, without the concurrent
testimony afforded by the squalid looks of the few men and women
who, with folded arms and bodies half doubled, occasionally skulked
along. A great many of the tenements had shop-fronts; but these
were fast closed, and mouldering away; only the upper rooms being
inhabited. Some houses which had become insecure from age and decay,
were prevented from falling into the street, by huge beams of wood
reared against the walls, and firmly planted in the road; but even
these crazy dens seemed to have been selected as the nightly haunts
of some houseless wretches, for many of the rough boards which
supplied the place of door and window, were wrenched from their
positions, to afford an aperture wide enough for the passage of a
human body. The kennel was stagnant and filthy. The very rats, which
here and there lay putrefying in its rottenness, were hideous with
famine.
There was neither knocker nor bell-handle at the open door where
Oliver and his master stopped; so, groping his way cautiously
through the dark passage, and bidding Oliver keep close to him and
not be afraid the undertaker mounted to the top of the first flight
of stairs. Stumbling against a door on the landing, he rapped at it
with his knuckles.
It was opened by a young girl of thirteen or fourteen. The
undertaker at once saw enough of what the room contained, to know
it was the apartment to which he had been directed. He stepped in;
Oliver followed him.
There was no fire in the room; but a man was crouching,
mechanically, over the empty stove. An old woman, too, had drawn a
low stool to the cold hearth, and was sitting beside him. There
were some ragged children in another corner; and in a small recess,
opposite the door, there lay upon the ground, something covered
with an old blanket. Oliver shuddered as he cast his eyes toward the
place, and crept involuntarily closer to his master; for though it
was covered up, the boy felt that it was a corpse.
The man’s face was thin and very pale; his hair and beard were
grizzly; his eyes were bloodshot. The old woman’s face was wrinkled;
her two remaining teeth protruded over her under lip; and her eyes
were bright and piercing. Oliver was afraid to look at either her or
the man. They seemed so like the rats he had seen outside.
‘Nobody shall go near her,’ said the man, starting fiercely up, as
the undertaker approached the recess. ‘Keep back! Damn you, keep
back, if you’ve a life to lose!’
‘Nonsense, my good man,’ said the undertaker, who was pretty well
used to misery in all its shapes. ‘Nonsense!’
‘I tell you,’ said the man: clenching his hands, and stamping
furiously on the floor,--‘I tell you I won’t have her put into the
ground. She couldn’t rest there. The worms would worry her--not eat
her--she is so worn away.’
The undertaker offered no reply to this raving; but producing a tape
from his pocket, knelt down for a moment by the side of the body.
‘Ah!’ said the man: bursting into tears, and sinking on his knees
at the feet of the dead woman; ‘kneel down, kneel down--kneel round
her, every one of you, and mark my words! I say she was starved to
death. I never knew how bad she was, till the fever came upon her;
and then her bones were starting through the skin. There was neither
fire nor candle; she died in the dark--in the dark! She couldn’t
even see her children’s faces, though we heard her gasping out their
names. I begged for her in the streets: and they sent me to prison.
When I came back, she was dying; and all the blood in my heart has
dried up, for they starved her to death. I swear it before the God
that saw it! They starved her!’ He twined his hands in his hair;
and, with a loud scream, rolled grovelling upon the floor: his eyes
fixed, and the foam covering his lips.
The terrified children cried bitterly; but the old woman, who had
hitherto remained as quiet as if she had been wholly deaf to all
that passed, menaced them into silence. Having unloosened the cravat
of the man who still remained extended on the ground, she tottered
towards the undertaker.
‘She was my daughter,’ said the old woman, nodding her head in the
direction of the corpse; and speaking with an idiotic leer, more
ghastly than even the presence of death in such a place. ‘Lord,
Lord! Well, it _is_ strange that I who gave birth to her, and was a
woman then, should be alive and merry now, and she lying there:
so cold and stiff! Lord, Lord!--to think of it; it’s as good as a
play--as good as a play!’
As the wretched creature mumbled and chuckled in her hideous
merriment, the undertaker turned to go away.
‘Stop, stop!’ said the old woman in a loud whisper. ‘Will she be
buried to-morrow, or next day, or to-night? I laid her out; and I
must walk, you know. Send me a large cloak: a good warm one: for
it is bitter cold. We should have cake and wine, too, before we
go! Never mind; send some bread--only a loaf of bread and a cup of
water. Shall we have some bread, dear?’ she said eagerly: catching
at the undertaker’s coat, as he once more moved towards the door.
‘Yes, yes,’ said the undertaker, ‘of course. Anything you like!’ He
disengaged himself from the old woman’s grasp; and, drawing Oliver
after him, hurried away.
The next day, (the family having been meanwhile relieved with a
half-quartern loaf and a piece of cheese, left with them by Mr.
Bumble himself,) Oliver and his master returned to the miserable
abode; where Mr. Bumble had already arrived, accompanied by four men
from the workhouse, who were to act as bearers. An old black cloak
had been thrown over the rags of the old woman and the man; and the
bare coffin having been screwed down, was hoisted on the shoulders
of the bearers, and carried into the street.
‘Now, you must put your best leg foremost, old lady!’ whispered
Sowerberry in the old woman’s ear; ‘we are rather late; and it won’t
do, to keep the clergyman waiting. Move on, my men,--as quick as you
like!’
Thus directed, the bearers trotted on under their light burden; and
the two mourners kept as near them, as they could. Mr. Bumble and
Sowerberry walked at a good smart pace in front; and Oliver, whose
legs were not so long as his master’s, ran by the side.
There was not so great a necessity for hurrying as Mr. Sowerberry
had anticipated, however; for when they reached the obscure corner
of the churchyard in which the nettles grew, and where the parish
graves were made, the clergyman had not arrived; and the clerk, who
was sitting by the vestry-room fire, seemed to think it by no means
improbable that it might be an hour or so, before he came. So, they
put the bier on the brink of the grave; and the two mourners waited
patiently in the damp clay, with a cold rain drizzling down, while
the ragged boys whom the spectacle had attracted into the churchyard
played a noisy game at hide-and-seek among the tombstones, or varied
their amusements by jumping backwards and forwards over the coffin.
Mr. Sowerberry and Bumble, being personal friends of the clerk, sat
by the fire with him, and read the paper.
At length, after a lapse of something more than an hour, Mr. Bumble,
and Sowerberry, and the clerk, were seen running towards the grave.
Immediately afterwards, the clergyman appeared: putting on his
surplice as he came along. Mr. Bumble then thrashed a boy or two, to
keep up appearances; and the reverend gentleman, having read as much
of the burial service as could be compressed into four minutes, gave
his surplice to the clerk, and walked away again.
‘Now, Bill!’ said Sowerberry to the grave-digger. ‘Fill up!’
It was no very difficult task, for the grave was so full, that
the uppermost coffin was within a few feet of the surface. The
grave-digger shovelled in the earth; stamped it loosely down with
his feet: shouldered his spade; and walked off, followed by the
boys, who murmured very loud complaints at the fun being over so
soon.
‘Come, my good fellow!’ said Bumble, tapping the man on the back.
‘They want to shut up the yard.’
The man who had never once moved, since he had taken his station by
the grave side, started, raised his head, stared at the person who
had addressed him, walked forward for a few paces; and fell down in
a swoon. The crazy old woman was too much occupied in bewailing the
loss of her cloak (which the undertaker had taken off), to pay him
any attention; so they threw a can of cold water over him; and when
he came to, saw him safely out of the churchyard, locked the gate,
and departed on their different ways.
‘Well, Oliver,’ said Sowerberry, as they walked home, ‘how do you
like it?’
‘Pretty well, thank you, sir’ replied Oliver, with considerable
hesitation. ‘Not very much, sir.’
‘Ah, you’ll get used to it in time, Oliver,’ said Sowerberry.
‘Nothing when you _are_ used to it, my boy.’
Oliver wondered, in his own mind, whether it had taken a very long
time to get Mr. Sowerberry used to it. But he thought it better not
to ask the question; and walked back to the shop: thinking over all
he had seen and heard.
CHAPTER VI -- OLIVER, BEING GOADED BY THE TAUNTS OF NOAH, ROUSES
INTO ACTION, AND RATHER ASTONISHES HIM
The month’s trial over, Oliver was formally apprenticed. It was a
nice sickly season just at this time. In commercial phrase, coffins
were looking up; and, in the course of a few weeks, Oliver acquired
a great deal of experience. The success of Mr. Sowerberry’s
ingenious speculation, exceeded even his most sanguine hopes. The
oldest inhabitants recollected no period at which measles had been
so prevalent, or so fatal to infant existence; and many were the
mournful processions which little Oliver headed, in a hat-band
reaching down to his knees, to the indescribable admiration and
emotion of all the mothers in the town. As Oliver accompanied his
master in most of his adult expeditions too, in order that he might
acquire that equanimity of demeanour and full command of nerve which
was essential to a finished undertaker, he had many opportunities
of observing the beautiful resignation and fortitude with which some
strong-minded people bear their trials and losses.
For instance; when Sowerberry had an order for the burial of some
rich old lady or gentleman, who was surrounded by a great number of
nephews and nieces, who had been perfectly inconsolable during the
previous illness, and whose grief had been wholly irrepressible
even on the most public occasions, they would be as happy among
themselves as need be--quite cheerful and contented--conversing
together with as much freedom and gaiety, as if nothing whatever
had happened to disturb them. Husbands, too, bore the loss of their
wives with the most heroic calmness. Wives, again, put on weeds for
their husbands, as if, so far from grieving in the garb of sorrow,
they had made up their minds to render it as becoming and attractive
as possible. It was observable, too, that ladies and gentlemen
who were in passions of anguish during the ceremony of interment,
recovered almost as soon as they reached home, and became quite
composed before the tea-drinking was over. All this was very
pleasant and improving to see; and Oliver beheld it with great
admiration.
That Oliver Twist was moved to resignation by the example of these
good people, I cannot, although I am his biographer, undertake to
affirm with any degree of confidence; but I can most distinctly say,
that for many months he continued meekly to submit to the domination
and ill-treatment of Noah Claypole: who used him far worse than
before, now that his jealousy was roused by seeing the new boy
promoted to the black stick and hatband, while he, the old one,
remained stationary in the muffin-cap and leathers. Charlotte
treated him ill, because Noah did; and Mrs. Sowerberry was his
decided enemy, because Mr. Sowerberry was disposed to be his friend;
so, between these three on one side, and a glut of funerals on the
other, Oliver was not altogether as comfortable as the hungry pig
was, when he was shut up, by mistake, in the grain department of a
brewery.
And now, I come to a very important passage in Oliver’s history;
for I have to record an act, slight and unimportant perhaps in
appearance, but which indirectly produced a material change in all
his future prospects and proceedings.
One day, Oliver and Noah had descended into the kitchen at the usual
dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton--a pound and a
half of the worst end of the neck--when Charlotte being called
out of the way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Noah
Claypole, being hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly
devote to a worthier purpose than aggravating and tantalising young
Oliver Twist.
Intent upon this innocent amusement, Noah put his feet on the
table-cloth; and pulled Oliver’s hair; and twitched his ears;
and expressed his opinion that he was a ‘sneak’; and furthermore
announced his intention of coming to see him hanged, whenever that
desirable event should take place; and entered upon various topics
of petty annoyance, like a malicious and ill-conditioned charity-boy
as he was. But, making Oliver cry, Noah attempted to be more
facetious still; and in his attempt, did what many sometimes do to
this day, when they want to be funny. He got rather personal.
‘Work’us,’ said Noah, ‘how’s your mother?’
‘She’s dead,’ replied Oliver; ‘don’t you say anything about her to
me!’
Oliver’s colour rose as he said this; he breathed quickly; and there
was a curious working of the mouth and nostrils, which Mr. Claypole
thought must be the immediate precursor of a violent fit of crying.
Under this impression he returned to the charge.
‘What did she die of, Work’us?’ said Noah.
‘Of a broken heart, some of our old nurses told me,’ replied Oliver:
more as if he were talking to himself, than answering Noah. ‘I think
I know what it must be to die of that!’
‘Tol de rol lol lol, right fol lairy, Work’us,’ said Noah, as a tear
rolled down Oliver’s cheek. ‘What’s set you a snivelling now?’
‘Not _you_,’ replied Oliver, sharply. ‘There; that’s enough. Don’t
say anything more to me about her; you’d better not!’
‘Better not!’ exclaimed Noah. ‘Well! Better not! Work’us, don’t be
impudent. _Your_ mother, too! She was a nice ‘un she was. Oh, Lor!’
And here, Noah nodded his head expressively; and curled up as much
of his small red nose as muscular action could collect together, for
the occasion.
‘Yer know, Work’us,’ continued Noah, emboldened by Oliver’s silence,
and speaking in a jeering tone of affected pity: of all tones the
most annoying: ‘Yer know, Work’us, it can’t be helped now; and of
course yer couldn’t help it then; and I am very sorry for it; and
I’m sure we all are, and pity yer very much. But yer must know,
Work’us, yer mother was a regular right-down bad ‘un.’
‘What did you say?’ inquired Oliver, looking up very quickly.
‘A regular right-down bad ‘un, Work’us,’ replied Noah, coolly. ‘And
it’s a great deal better, Work’us, that she died when she did, or
else she’d have been hard labouring in Bridewell, or transported, or
hung; which is more likely than either, isn’t it?’
Crimson with fury, Oliver started up; overthrew the chair and table;
seized Noah by the throat; shook him, in the violence of his rage,
till his teeth chattered in his head; and collecting his whole force
into one heavy blow, felled him to the ground.
A minute ago, the boy had looked the quiet child, mild, dejected
creature that harsh treatment had made him. But his spirit was
roused at last; the cruel insult to his dead mother had set his
blood on fire. His breast heaved; his attitude was erect; his eye
bright and vivid; his whole person changed, as he stood glaring over
the cowardly tormentor who now lay crouching at his feet; and defied
him with an energy he had never known before.
‘He’ll murder me!’ blubbered Noah. ‘Charlotte! missis! Here’s
the new boy a murdering of me! Help! help! Oliver’s gone mad!
Char--lotte!’
Noah’s shouts were responded to, by a loud scream from Charlotte,
and a louder from Mrs. Sowerberry; the former of whom rushed into
the kitchen by a side-door, while the latter paused on the
staircase till she was quite certain that it was consistent with the
preservation of human life, to come further down.
‘Oh, you little wretch!’ screamed Charlotte: seizing Oliver with her
utmost force, which was about equal to that of a moderately strong
man in particularly good training. ‘Oh, you little un-grate-ful,
mur-de-rous, hor-rid villain!’ And between every syllable, Charlotte
gave Oliver a blow with all her might: accompanying it with a
scream, for the benefit of society.
Charlotte’s fist was by no means a light one; but, lest it should
not be effectual in calming Oliver’s wrath, Mrs. Sowerberry plunged
into the kitchen, and assisted to hold him with one hand, while she
scratched his face with the other. In this favourable position of
affairs, Noah rose from the ground, and pommelled him behind.
This was rather too violent exercise to last long. When they were
all wearied out, and could tear and beat no longer, they dragged
Oliver, struggling and shouting, but nothing daunted, into the
dust-cellar, and there locked him up. This being done, Mrs.
Sowerberry sunk into a chair, and burst into tears.
‘Bless her, she’s going off!’ said Charlotte. ‘A glass of water,
Noah, dear. Make haste!’
‘Oh! Charlotte,’ said Mrs. Sowerberry: speaking as well as she
could, through a deficiency of breath, and a sufficiency of cold
water, which Noah had poured over her head and shoulders. ‘Oh!
Charlotte, what a mercy we have not all been murdered in our beds!’
‘Ah! mercy indeed, ma’am,’ was the reply. I only hope this’ll teach
master not to have any more of these dreadful creatures, that are
born to be murderers and robbers from their very cradle. Poor Noah!
He was all but killed, ma’am, when I come in.’
‘Poor fellow!’ said Mrs. Sowerberry: looking piteously on the
charity-boy.
Noah, whose top waistcoat-button might have been somewhere on a
level with the crown of Oliver’s head, rubbed his eyes with the
inside of his wrists while this commiseration was bestowed upon him,
and performed some affecting tears and sniffs.
‘What’s to be done!’ exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry. ‘Your master’s not
at home; there’s not a man in the house, and he’ll kick that door
down in ten minutes.’ Oliver’s vigorous plunges against the bit of
timber in question, rendered this occurance highly probable.
‘Dear, dear! I don’t know, ma’am,’ said Charlotte, ‘unless we send
for the police-officers.’
‘Or the millingtary,’ suggested Mr. Claypole.
‘No, no,’ said Mrs. Sowerberry: bethinking herself of Oliver’s
old friend. ‘Run to Mr. Bumble, Noah, and tell him to come here
directly, and not to lose a minute; never mind your cap! Make haste!
You can hold a knife to that black eye, as you run along. It’ll keep
the swelling down.’
Noah stopped to make no reply, but started off at his fullest speed;
and very much it astonished the people who were out walking, to see
a charity-boy tearing through the streets pell-mell, with no cap on
his head, and a clasp-knife at his eye.
CHAPTER VII -- OLIVER CONTINUES REFRACTORY
Noah Claypole ran along the streets at his swiftest pace, and paused
not once for breath, until he reached the workhouse-gate. Having
rested here, for a minute or so, to collect a good burst of sobs
and an imposing show of tears and terror, he knocked loudly at the
wicket; and presented such a rueful face to the aged pauper who
opened it, that even he, who saw nothing but rueful faces about him
at the best of times, started back in astonishment.
‘Why, what’s the matter with the boy!’ said the old pauper.
‘Mr. Bumble! Mr. Bumble!’ cried Noah, with well-affected dismay: and
in tones so loud and agitated, that they not only caught the ear of
Mr. Bumble himself, who happened to be hard by, but alarmed him so
much that he rushed into the yard without his cocked hat,--which is
a very curious and remarkable circumstance: as showing that even a
beadle, acted upon a sudden and powerful impulse, may be afflicted
with a momentary visitation of loss of self-possession, and
forgetfulness of personal dignity.
‘Oh, Mr. Bumble, sir!’ said Noah: ‘Oliver, sir,--Oliver has--’
‘What? What?’ interposed Mr. Bumble: with a gleam of pleasure in his
metallic eyes. ‘Not run away; he hasn’t run away, has he, Noah?’
‘No, sir, no. Not run away, sir, but he’s turned wicious,’ replied
Noah. ‘He tried to murder me, sir; and then he tried to murder
Charlotte; and then missis. Oh! what dreadful pain it is! Such agony,
please, sir!’ And here, Noah writhed and twisted his body into an
extensive variety of eel-like positions; thereby giving Mr. Bumble to
understand that, from the violent and sanguinary onset of Oliver Twist,
he had sustained severe internal injury and damage, from which he was
at that moment suffering the acutest torture.
When Noah saw that the intelligence he communicated perfectly
paralysed Mr. Bumble, he imparted additional effect thereunto, by
bewailing his dreadful wounds ten times louder than before; and when
he observed a gentleman in a white waistcoat crossing the yard, he
was more tragic in his lamentations than ever: rightly conceiving it
highly expedient to attract the notice, and rouse the indignation,
of the gentleman aforesaid.
The gentleman’s notice was very soon attracted; for he had not
walked three paces, when he turned angrily round, and inquired what
that young cur was howling for, and why Mr. Bumble did not favour
him with something which would render the series of vocular
exclamations so designated, an involuntary process?
‘It’s a poor boy from the free-school, sir,’ replied Mr. Bumble,
‘who has been nearly murdered--all but murdered, sir,--by young
Twist.’
‘By Jove!’ exclaimed the gentleman in the white waistcoat, stopping
short. ‘I knew it! I felt a strange presentiment from the very
first, that that audacious young savage would come to be hung!’
‘He has likewise attempted, sir, to murder the female servant,’ said
Mr. Bumble, with a face of ashy paleness.
‘And his missis,’ interposed Mr. Claypole.
‘And his master, too, I think you said, Noah?’ added Mr. Bumble.
‘No! he’s out, or he would have murdered him,’ replied Noah. ‘He
said he wanted to.’
‘Ah! Said he wanted to, did he, my boy?’ inquired the gentleman in
the white waistcoat.
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Noah. ‘And please, sir, missis wants to know
whether Mr. Bumble can spare time to step up there, directly, and
flog him--‘cause master’s out.’
‘Certainly, my boy; certainly,’ said the gentleman in the white
waistcoat: smiling benignly, and patting Noah’s head, which was
about three inches higher than his own. ‘You’re a good boy--a
very good boy. Here’s a penny for you. Bumble, just step up to
Sowerberry’s with your cane, and see what’s best to be done. Don’t
spare him, Bumble.’
‘No, I will not, sir,’ replied the beadle. And the cocked hat
and cane having been, by this time, adjusted to their owner’s
satisfaction, Mr. Bumble and Noah Claypole betook themselves with
all speed to the undertaker’s shop.
Here the position of affairs had not at all improved. Sowerberry had
not yet returned, and Oliver continued to kick, with undiminished
vigour, at the cellar-door. The accounts of his ferocity as related
by Mrs. Sowerberry and Charlotte, were of so startling a nature,
that Mr. Bumble judged it prudent to parley, before opening the
door. With this view he gave a kick at the outside, by way of
prelude; and, then, applying his mouth to the keyhole, said, in a
deep and impressive tone:
‘Oliver!’
‘Come; you let me out!’ replied Oliver, from the inside.
‘Do you know this here voice, Oliver?’ said Mr. Bumble.
‘Yes,’ replied Oliver.
‘Ain’t you afraid of it, sir? Ain’t you a-trembling while I speak,
sir?’ said Mr. Bumble.
‘No!’ replied Oliver, boldly.
An answer so different from the one he had expected to elicit, and
was in the habit of receiving, staggered Mr. Bumble not a little. He
stepped back from the keyhole; drew himself up to his full height;
and looked from one to another of the three bystanders, in mute
astonishment.
‘Oh, you know, Mr. Bumble, he must be mad,’ said Mrs. Sowerberry.
‘No boy in half his senses could venture to speak so to you.’
‘It’s not Madness, ma’am,’ replied Mr. Bumble, after a few moments
of deep meditation. ‘It’s Meat.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry.
‘Meat, ma’am, meat,’ replied Bumble, with stern emphasis. ‘You’ve
over-fed him, ma’am. You’ve raised a artificial soul and spirit in
him, ma’am unbecoming a person of his condition: as the board, Mrs.
Sowerberry, who are practical philosophers, will tell you. What have
paupers to do with soul or spirit? It’s quite enough that we let
‘em have live bodies. If you had kept the boy on gruel, ma’am, this
would never have happened.’
‘Dear, dear!’ ejaculated Mrs. Sowerberry, piously raising her eyes
to the kitchen ceiling: ‘this comes of being liberal!’
The liberality of Mrs. Sowerberry to Oliver, had consisted of a
profuse bestowal upon him of all the dirty odds and ends which
nobody else would eat; so there was a great deal of meekness and
self-devotion in her voluntarily remaining under Mr. Bumble’s heavy
accusation. Of which, to do her justice, she was wholly innocent, in
thought, word, or deed.
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Bumble, when the lady brought her eyes down to earth
again; ‘the only thing that can be done now, that I know of, is to
leave him in the cellar for a day or so, till he’s a little starved
down; and then to take him out, and keep him on gruel all through
the apprenticeship. He comes of a bad family. Excitable natures,
Mrs. Sowerberry! Both the nurse and doctor said, that that mother of
his made her way here, against difficulties and pain that would have
killed any well-disposed woman, weeks before.’
At this point of Mr. Bumble’s discourse, Oliver, just hearing enough
to know that some allusion was being made to his mother, recommenced
kicking, with a violence that rendered every other sound inaudible.
Sowerberry returned at this juncture. Oliver’s offence having been
explained to him, with such exaggerations as the ladies thought
best calculated to rouse his ire, he unlocked the cellar-door in a
twinkling, and dragged his rebellious apprentice out, by the collar.
Oliver’s clothes had been torn in the beating he had received; his
face was bruised and scratched; and his hair scattered over his
forehead. The angry flush had not disappeared, however; and when he
was pulled out of his prison, he scowled boldly on Noah, and looked
quite undismayed.
‘Now, you are a nice young fellow, ain’t you?’ said Sowerberry;
giving Oliver a shake, and a box on the ear.
‘He called my mother names,’ replied Oliver.
‘Well, and what if he did, you little ungrateful wretch?’ said Mrs.
Sowerberry. ‘She deserved what he said, and worse.’
‘She didn’t’ said Oliver.
‘She did,’ said Mrs. Sowerberry.
‘It’s a lie!’ said Oliver.
Mrs. Sowerberry burst into a flood of tears.
This flood of tears left Mr. Sowerberry no alternative. If he had
hesitated for one instant to punish Oliver most severely, it must
be quite clear to every experienced reader that he would have been,
according to all precedents in disputes of matrimony established, a
brute, an unnatural husband, an insulting creature, a base imitation
of a man, and various other agreeable characters too numerous for
recital within the limits of this chapter. To do him justice, he
was, as far as his power went--it was not very extensive--kindly
disposed towards the boy; perhaps, because it was his interest to
be so; perhaps, because his wife disliked him. The flood of tears,
however, left him no resource; so he at once gave him a drubbing,
which satisfied even Mrs. Sowerberry herself, and rendered Mr.
Bumble’s subsequent application of the parochial cane, rather
unnecessary. For the rest of the day, he was shut up in the back
kitchen, in company with a pump and a slice of bread; and at night,
Mrs. Sowerberry, after making various remarks outside the door, by
no means complimentary to the memory of his mother, looked into the
room, and, amidst the jeers and pointings of Noah and Charlotte,
ordered him upstairs to his dismal bed.
It was not until he was left alone in the silence and stillness of
the gloomy workshop of the undertaker, that Oliver gave way to the
feelings which the day’s treatment may be supposed likely to have
awakened in a mere child. He had listened to their taunts with a
look of contempt; he had borne the lash without a cry: for he felt
that pride swelling in his heart which would have kept down a shriek
to the last, though they had roasted him alive. But now, when there
were none to see or hear him, he fell upon his knees on the floor;
and, hiding his face in his hands, wept such tears as, God send for
the credit of our nature, few so young may ever have cause to pour
out before him!
For a long time, Oliver remained motionless in this attitude. The
candle was burning low in the socket when he rose to his feet.
Having gazed cautiously round him, and listened intently, he gently
undid the fastenings of the door, and looked abroad.
It was a cold, dark night. The stars seemed, to the boy’s eyes,
farther from the earth than he had ever seen them before; there was
no wind; and the sombre shadows thrown by the trees upon the ground,
looked sepulchral and death-like, from being so still. He softly
reclosed the door. Having availed himself of the expiring light of
the candle to tie up in a handkerchief the few articles of wearing
apparel he had, sat himself down upon a bench, to wait for morning.
With the first ray of light that struggled through the crevices in
the shutters, Oliver arose, and again unbarred the door. One timid
look around--one moment’s pause of hesitation--he had closed it
behind him, and was in the open street.
He looked to the right and to the left, uncertain whither to fly.
He remembered to have seen the waggons, as they went out, toiling up
the hill. He took the same route; and arriving at a footpath across
the fields: which he knew, after some distance, led out again into
the road; struck into it, and walked quickly on.
Along this same footpath, Oliver well-remembered he had trotted
beside Mr. Bumble, when he first carried him to the workhouse from
the farm. His way lay directly in front of the cottage. His heart
beat quickly when he bethought himself of this; and he half resolved
to turn back. He had come a long way though, and should lose a great
deal of time by doing so. Besides, it was so early that there was
very little fear of his being seen; so he walked on.
He reached the house. There was no appearance of its inmates
stirring at that early hour. Oliver stopped, and peeped into the
garden. A child was weeding one of the little beds; as he stopped,
he raised his pale face and disclosed the features of one of his
former companions. Oliver felt glad to see him, before he went;
for, though younger than himself, he had been his little friend and
playmate. They had been beaten, and starved, and shut up together,
many and many a time.
‘Hush, Dick!’ said Oliver, as the boy ran to the gate, and thrust
his thin arm between the rails to greet him. ‘Is any one up?’
‘Nobody but me,’ replied the child.
‘You musn’t say you saw me, Dick,’ said Oliver. ‘I am running away.
They beat and ill-use me, Dick; and I am going to seek my fortune,
some long way off. I don’t know where. How pale you are!’
‘I heard the doctor tell them I was dying,’ replied the child with a
faint smile. ‘I am very glad to see you, dear; but don’t stop, don’t
stop!’
‘Yes, yes, I will, to say good-b’ye to you,’ replied Oliver. ‘I
shall see you again, Dick. I know I shall! You will be well and
happy!’
‘I hope so,’ replied the child. ‘After I am dead, but not before.
I know the doctor must be right, Oliver, because I dream so much of
Heaven, and Angels, and kind faces that I never see when I am awake.
Kiss me,’ said the child, climbing up the low gate, and flinging his
little arms round Oliver’s neck. ‘Good-b’ye, dear! God bless you!’
The blessing was from a young child’s lips, but it was the first
that Oliver had ever heard invoked upon his head; and through the
struggles and sufferings, and troubles and changes, of his after
life, he never once forgot it.
CHAPTER VIII -- OLIVER WALKS TO LONDON. HE ENCOUNTERS ON THE ROAD A
STRANGE SORT OF YOUNG GENTLEMAN
Oliver reached the stile at which the by-path terminated; and once
more gained the high-road. It was eight o’clock now. Though he was
nearly five miles away from the town, he ran, and hid behind the
hedges, by turns, till noon: fearing that he might be pursued and
overtaken. Then he sat down to rest by the side of the milestone,
and began to think, for the first time, where he had better go and
try to live.
The stone by which he was seated, bore, in large characters, an
intimation that it was just seventy miles from that spot to London.
The name awakened a new train of ideas in the boy’s mind.
London!--that great place!--nobody--not even Mr. Bumble--could ever
find him there! He had often heard the old men in the workhouse,
too, say that no lad of spirit need want in London; and that there
were ways of living in that vast city, which those who had been
bred up in country parts had no idea of. It was the very place for
a homeless boy, who must die in the streets unless some one helped
him. As these things passed through his thoughts, he jumped upon his
feet, and again walked forward.
He had diminished the distance between himself and London by full
four miles more, before he recollected how much he must undergo
ere he could hope to reach his place of destination. As this
consideration forced itself upon him, he slackened his pace a
little, and meditated upon his means of getting there. He had a
crust of bread, a coarse shirt, and two pairs of stockings, in
his bundle. He had a penny too--a gift of Sowerberry’s after some
funeral in which he had acquitted himself more than ordinarily
well--in his pocket. ‘A clean shirt,’ thought Oliver, ‘is a very
comfortable thing; and so are two pairs of darned stockings; and so
is a penny; but they are small helps to a sixty-five miles’ walk
in winter time.’ But Oliver’s thoughts, like those of most other
people, although they were extremely ready and active to point out
his difficulties, were wholly at a loss to suggest any feasible
mode of surmounting them; so, after a good deal of thinking to no
particular purpose, he changed his little bundle over to the other
shoulder, and trudged on.
Oliver walked twenty miles that day; and all that time tasted
nothing but the crust of dry bread, and a few draughts of water,
which he begged at the cottage-doors by the road-side. When the
night came, he turned into a meadow; and, creeping close under a
hay-rick, determined to lie there, till morning. He felt frightened
at first, for the wind moaned dismally over the empty fields: and
he was cold and hungry, and more alone than he had ever felt before.
Being very tired with his walk, however, he soon fell asleep and
forgot his troubles.
He felt cold and stiff, when he got up next morning, and so hungry
that he was obliged to exchange the penny for a small loaf, in the
very first village through which he passed. He had walked no more
than twelve miles, when night closed in again. His feet were sore,
and his legs so weak that they trembled beneath him. Another night
passed in the bleak damp air, made him worse; when he set forward on
his journey next morning he could hardly crawl along.
He waited at the bottom of a steep hill till a stage-coach came up,
and then begged of the outside passengers; but there were very few
who took any notice of him: and even those told him to wait till
they got to the top of the hill, and then let them see how far he
could run for a halfpenny. Poor Oliver tried to keep up with the
coach a little way, but was unable to do it, by reason of his
fatigue and sore feet. When the outsides saw this, they put their
halfpence back into their pockets again, declaring that he was an
idle young dog, and didn’t deserve anything; and the coach rattled
away and left only a cloud of dust behind.
In some villages, large painted boards were fixed up: warning all
persons who begged within the district, that they would be sent to
jail. This frightened Oliver very much, and made him glad to get out
of those villages with all possible expedition. In others, he would
stand about the inn-yards, and look mournfully at every one who
passed: a proceeding which generally terminated in the landlady’s
ordering one of the post-boys who were lounging about, to drive that
strange boy out of the place, for she was sure he had come to steal
something. If he begged at a farmer’s house, ten to one but they
threatened to set the dog on him; and when he showed his nose in
a shop, they talked about the beadle--which brought Oliver’s heart
into his mouth,--very often the only thing he had there, for many
hours together.
In fact, if it had not been for a good-hearted turnpike-man, and a
benevolent old lady, Oliver’s troubles would have been shortened by
the very same process which had put an end to his mother’s; in other
words, he would most assuredly have fallen dead upon the king’s
highway. But the turnpike-man gave him a meal of bread and cheese;
and the old lady, who had a shipwrecked grandson wandering barefoot
in some distant part of the earth, took pity upon the poor orphan,
and gave him what little she could afford--and more--with such kind
and gentle words, and such tears of sympathy and compassion, that
they sank deeper into Oliver’s soul, than all the sufferings he had
ever undergone.
Early on the seventh morning after he had left his native
place, Oliver limped slowly into the little town of Barnet. The
window-shutters were closed; the street was empty; not a soul had
awakened to the business of the day. The sun was rising in all its
splendid beauty; but the light only served to show the boy his
own lonesomeness and desolation, as he sat, with bleeding feet and
covered with dust, upon a door-step.
By degrees, the shutters were opened; the window-blinds were drawn
up; and people began passing to and fro. Some few stopped to gaze at
Oliver for a moment or two, or turned round to stare at him as they
hurried by; but none relieved him, or troubled themselves to inquire
how he came there. He had no heart to beg. And there he sat.
He had been crouching on the step for some time: wondering at the
great number of public-houses (every other house in Barnet was a
tavern, large or small), gazing listlessly at the coaches as they
passed through, and thinking how strange it seemed that they could
do, with ease, in a few hours, what it had taken him a whole week
of courage and determination beyond his years to accomplish: when
he was roused by observing that a boy, who had passed him carelessly
some minutes before, had returned, and was now surveying him most
earnestly from the opposite side of the way. He took little heed of
this at first; but the boy remained in the same attitude of close
observation so long, that Oliver raised his head, and returned his
steady look. Upon this, the boy crossed over; and walking close up
to Oliver, said,
‘Hullo, my covey! What’s the row?’
The boy who addressed this inquiry to the young wayfarer, was about
his own age: but one of the queerest looking boys that Oliver
had even seen. He was a snub-nosed, flat-browed, common-faced boy
enough; and as dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see; but he
had about him all the airs and manners of a man. He was short of his
age: with rather bow-legs, and little, sharp, ugly eyes. His hat was
stuck on the top of his head so lightly, that it threatened to fall
off every moment--and would have done so, very often, if the wearer
had not had a knack of every now and then giving his head a sudden
twitch, which brought it back to its old place again. He wore a
man’s coat, which reached nearly to his heels. He had turned
the cuffs back, half-way up his arm, to get his hands out of the
sleeves: apparently with the ultimate view of thrusting them into
the pockets of his corduroy trousers; for there he kept them. He
was, altogether, as roystering and swaggering a young gentleman as
ever stood four feet six, or something less, in the bluchers.
‘Hullo, my covey! What’s the row?’ said this strange young gentleman
to Oliver.
‘I am very hungry and tired,’ replied Oliver: the tears standing in
his eyes as he spoke. ‘I have walked a long way. I have been walking
these seven days.’
‘Walking for sivin days!’ said the young gentleman. ‘Oh, I see.
Beak’s order, eh? But,’ he added, noticing Oliver’s look of
surprise, ‘I suppose you don’t know what a beak is, my flash
com-pan-i-on.’
Oliver mildly replied, that he had always heard a bird’s mouth
described by the term in question.
‘My eyes, how green!’ exclaimed the young gentleman. ‘Why, a
beak’s a madgst’rate; and when you walk by a beak’s order, it’s
not straight for’erd, but always agoing up, and niver a coming down
agin. Was you never on the mill?’
‘What mill?’ inquired Oliver.
‘What mill! Why, _the_ mill--the mill as takes up so little room
that it’ll work inside a Stone Jug; and always goes better when the
wind’s low with people, than when it’s high; acos then they can’t
get workmen. But come,’ said the young gentleman; ‘you want grub,
and you shall have it. I’m at low-water-mark myself--only one bob
and a magpie; but, as far as it goes, I’ll fork out and stump. Up
with you on your pins. There! Now then! ‘Morrice!’
Assisting Oliver to rise, the young gentleman took him to an
adjacent chandler’s shop, where he purchased a sufficiency of
ready-dressed ham and a half-quartern loaf, or, as he himself
expressed it, ‘a fourpenny bran!’ the ham being kept clean and
preserved from dust, by the ingenious expedient of making a hole
in the loaf by pulling out a portion of the crumb, and stuffing it
therein. Taking the bread under his arm, the young gentlman turned
into a small public-house, and led the way to a tap-room in the rear
of the premises. Here, a pot of beer was brought in, by direction
of the mysterious youth; and Oliver, falling to, at his new friend’s
bidding, made a long and hearty meal, during the progress of which
the strange boy eyed him from time to time with great attention.
‘Going to London?’ said the strange boy, when Oliver had at length
concluded.
‘Yes.’
‘Got any lodgings?’
‘No.’
‘Money?’
‘No.’
The strange boy whistled; and put his arms into his pockets, as far
as the big coat-sleeves would let them go.
‘Do you live in London?’ inquired Oliver.
‘Yes. I do, when I’m at home,’ replied the boy. ‘I suppose you want
some place to sleep in to-night, don’t you?’
‘I do, indeed,’ answered Oliver. ‘I have not slept under a roof
since I left the country.’
‘Don’t fret your eyelids on that score,’ said the young gentleman.
‘I’ve got to be in London to-night; and I know a ‘spectable old
gentleman as lives there, wot’ll give you lodgings for nothink,
and never ask for the change--that is, if any genelman he knows
interduces you. And don’t he know me? Oh, no! Not in the least! By
no means. Certainly not!’
The young gentleman smiled, as if to intimate that the latter
fragments of discourse were playfully ironical; and finished the
beer as he did so.
This unexpected offer of shelter was too tempting to be resisted;
especially as it was immediately followed up, by the assurance that
the old gentleman referred to, would doubtless provide Oliver with a
comfortable place, without loss of time. This led to a more friendly
and confidential dialogue; from which Oliver discovered that his
friend’s name was Jack Dawkins, and that he was a peculiar pet and
protege of the elderly gentleman before mentioned.
Mr. Dawkin’s appearance did not say a vast deal in favour of the
comforts which his patron’s interest obtained for those whom he took
under his protection; but, as he had a rather flightly and dissolute
mode of conversing, and furthermore avowed that among his intimate
friends he was better known by the sobriquet of ‘The Artful Dodger,’
Oliver concluded that, being of a dissipated and careless turn, the
moral precepts of his benefactor had hitherto been thrown away upon
him. Under this impression, he secretly resolved to cultivate the
good opinion of the old gentleman as quickly as possible; and, if
he found the Dodger incorrigible, as he more than half suspected he
should, to decline the honour of his farther acquaintance.
As John Dawkins objected to their entering London before nightfall,
it was nearly eleven o’clock when they reached the turnpike at
Islington. They crossed from the Angel into St. John’s Road; struck
down the small street which terminates at Sadler’s Wells Theatre;
through Exmouth Street and Coppice Row; down the little court by the
side of the workhouse; across the classic ground which once bore the
name of Hockley-in-the-Hole; thence into Little Saffron Hill; and
so into Saffron Hill the Great: along which the Dodger scudded at a
rapid pace, directing Oliver to follow close at his heels.
Although Oliver had enough to occupy his attention in keeping sight
of his leader, he could not help bestowing a few hasty glances
on either side of the way, as he passed along. A dirtier or more
wretched place he had never seen. The street was very narrow and
muddy, and the air was impregnated with filthy odours.
There were a good many small shops; but the only stock in trade
appeared to be heaps of children, who, even at that time of night,
were crawling in and out at the doors, or screaming from the inside.
The sole places that seemed to prosper amid the general blight of
the place, were the public-houses; and in them, the lowest orders
of Irish were wrangling with might and main. Covered ways and yards,
which here and there diverged from the main street, disclosed
little knots of houses, where drunken men and women were positively
wallowing in filth; and from several of the door-ways, great
ill-looking fellows were cautiously emerging, bound, to all
appearance, on no very well-disposed or harmless errands.
Oliver was just considering whether he hadn’t better run away, when
they reached the bottom of the hill. His conductor, catching him
by the arm, pushed open the door of a house near Field Lane; and
drawing him into the passage, closed it behind them.
‘Now, then!’ cried a voice from below, in reply to a whistle from
the Dodger.
‘Plummy and slam!’ was the reply.
This seemed to be some watchword or signal that all was right; for
the light of a feeble candle gleamed on the wall at the remote end
of the passage; and a man’s face peeped out, from where a balustrade
of the old kitchen staircase had been broken away.
‘There’s two on you,’ said the man, thrusting the candle farther
out, and shielding his eyes with his hand. ‘Who’s the t’other one?’
‘A new pal,’ replied Jack Dawkins, pulling Oliver forward.
‘Where did he come from?’
‘Greenland. Is Fagin upstairs?’
‘Yes, he’s a sortin’ the wipes. Up with you!’ The candle was drawn
back, and the face disappeared.
Oliver, groping his way with one hand, and having the other firmly
grasped by his companion, ascended with much difficulty the dark
and broken stairs: which his conductor mounted with an ease and
expedition that showed he was well acquainted with them.
He threw open the door of a back-room, and drew Oliver in after him.
The walls and ceiling of the room were perfectly black with age
and dirt. There was a deal table before the fire: upon which were a
candle, stuck in a ginger-beer bottle, two or three pewter pots,
a loaf and butter, and a plate. In a frying-pan, which was on the
fire, and which was secured to the mantelshelf by a string, some
sausages were cooking; and standing over them, with a toasting-fork
in his hand, was a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking
and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair.
He was dressed in a greasy flannel gown, with his throat bare; and
seemed to be dividing his attention between the frying-pan and the
clothes-horse, over which a great number of silk handkerchiefs were
hanging. Several rough beds made of old sacks, were huddled side by
side on the floor. Seated round the table were four or five boys,
none older than the Dodger, smoking long clay pipes, and drinking
spirits with the air of middle-aged men. These all crowded about
their associate as he whispered a few words to the Jew; and
then turned round and grinned at Oliver. So did the Jew himself,
toasting-fork in hand.
‘This is him, Fagin,’ said Jack Dawkins; ‘my friend Oliver Twist.’
The Jew grinned; and, making a low obeisance to Oliver, took him
by the hand, and hoped he should have the honour of his intimate
acquaintance. Upon this, the young gentleman with the pipes came
round him, and shook both his hands very hard--especially the one
in which he held his little bundle. One young gentleman was very
anxious to hang up his cap for him; and another was so obliging
as to put his hands in his pockets, in order that, as he was very
tired, he might not have the trouble of emptying them, himself, when
he went to bed. These civilities would probably be extended much
farther, but for a liberal exercise of the Jew’s toasting-fork on
the heads and shoulders of the affectionate youths who offered them.
‘We are very glad to see you, Oliver, very,’ said the Jew. ‘Dodger,
take off the sausages; and draw a tub near the fire for Oliver. Ah,
you’re a-staring at the pocket-handkerchiefs! eh, my dear. There are
a good many of ‘em, ain’t there? We’ve just looked ‘em out, ready
for the wash; that’s all, Oliver; that’s all. Ha! ha! ha!’
The latter part of this speech, was hailed by a boisterous shout
from all the hopeful pupils of the merry old gentleman. In the midst
of which they went to supper.
Oliver ate his share, and the Jew then mixed him a glass of hot
gin-and-water: telling him he must drink it off directly, because
another gentleman wanted the tumbler. Oliver did as he was desired.
Immediately afterwards he felt himself gently lifted on to one of
the sacks; and then he sunk into a deep sleep.
CHAPTER IX -- CONTAINING FURTHER PARTICULARS CONCERNING THE PLEASANT
OLD GENTLEMAN, AND HIS HOPEFUL PUPILS
It was late next morning when Oliver awoke, from a sound, long
sleep. There was no other person in the room but the old Jew, who
was boiling some coffee in a saucepan for breakfast, and whistling
softly to himself as he stirred it round and round, with an iron
spoon. He would stop every now and then to listen when there was the
least noise below: and when he had satisfied himself, he would go on
whistling and stirring again, as before.
Although Oliver had roused himself from sleep, he was not thoroughly
awake. There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking,
when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and
yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you,
than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed, and your
senses wrapt in perfect unconsciousness. At such time, a mortal
knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to form some glimmering
conception of its mighty powers, its bounding from earth and
spurning time and space, when freed from the restraint of its
corporeal associate.
Oliver was precisely in this condition. He saw the Jew with his
half-closed eyes; heard his low whistling; and recognised the sound
of the spoon grating against the saucepan’s sides: and yet the
self-same senses were mentally engaged, at the same time, in busy
action with almost everybody he had ever known.
When the coffee was done, the Jew drew the saucepan to the hob.
Standing, then in an irresolute attitude for a few minutes, as if he
did not well know how to employ himself, he turned round and looked
at Oliver, and called him by his name. He did not answer, and was to
all appearances asleep.
After satisfying himself upon this head, the Jew stepped gently to
the door: which he fastened. He then drew forth: as it seemed to
Oliver, from some trap in the floor: a small box, which he placed
carefully on the table. His eyes glistened as he raised the lid, and
looked in. Dragging an old chair to the table, he sat down; and took
from it a magnificent gold watch, sparkling with jewels.
‘Aha!’ said the Jew, shrugging up his shoulders, and distorting
every feature with a hideous grin. ‘Clever dogs! Clever dogs!
Staunch to the last! Never told the old parson where they were.
Never poached upon old Fagin! And why should they? It wouldn’t have
loosened the knot, or kept the drop up, a minute longer. No, no, no!
Fine fellows! Fine fellows!’
With these, and other muttered reflections of the like nature, the
Jew once more deposited the watch in its place of safety. At least
half a dozen more were severally drawn forth from the same box, and
surveyed with equal pleasure; besides rings, brooches, bracelets,
and other articles of jewellery, of such magnificent materials, and
costly workmanship, that Oliver had no idea, even of their names.
Having replaced these trinkets, the Jew took out another: so small
that it lay in the palm of his hand. There seemed to be some very
minute inscription on it; for the Jew laid it flat upon the table,
and shading it with his hand, pored over it, long and earnestly.
At length he put it down, as if despairing of success; and, leaning
back in his chair, muttered:
‘What a fine thing capital punishment is! Dead men never repent;
dead men never bring awkward stories to light. Ah, it’s a fine thing
for the trade! Five of ‘em strung up in a row, and none left to play
booty, or turn white-livered!’
As the Jew uttered these words, his bright dark eyes, which had been
staring vacantly before him, fell on Oliver’s face; the boy’s eyes
were fixed on his in mute curiousity; and although the recognition
was only for an instant--for the briefest space of time that can
possibly be conceived--it was enough to show the old man that he had
been observed.
He closed the lid of the box with a loud crash; and, laying his hand
on a bread knife which was on the table, started furiously up. He
trembled very much though; for, even in his terror, Oliver could see
that the knife quivered in the air.
‘What’s that?’ said the Jew. ‘What do you watch me for? Why are you
awake? What have you seen? Speak out, boy! Quick--quick! for your
life.
‘I wasn’t able to sleep any longer, sir,’ replied Oliver, meekly. ‘I
am very sorry if I have disturbed you, sir.’
‘You were not awake an hour ago?’ said the Jew, scowling fiercely on
the boy.
‘No! No, indeed!’ replied Oliver.
‘Are you sure?’ cried the Jew: with a still fiercer look than
before: and a threatening attitude.
‘Upon my word I was not, sir,’ replied Oliver, earnestly. ‘I was
not, indeed, sir.’
‘Tush, tush, my dear!’ said the Jew, abruptly resuming his old
manner, and playing with the knife a little, before he laid it down;
as if to induce the belief that he had caught it up, in mere sport.
‘Of course I know that, my dear. I only tried to frighten you.
You’re a brave boy. Ha! ha! you’re a brave boy, Oliver.’ The Jew
rubbed his hands with a chuckle, but glanced uneasily at the box,
notwithstanding.
‘Did you see any of these pretty things, my dear?’ said the Jew,
laying his hand upon it after a short pause.
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Oliver.
‘Ah!’ said the Jew, turning rather pale. ‘They--they’re mine,
Oliver; my little property. All I have to live upon, in my old age.
The folks call me a miser, my dear. Only a miser; that’s all.’
Oliver thought the old gentleman must be a decided miser to live in
such a dirty place, with so many watches; but, thinking that perhaps
his fondness for the Dodger and the other boys, cost him a good deal
of money, he only cast a deferential look at the Jew, and asked if
he might get up.
‘Certainly, my dear, certainly,’ replied the old gentleman. ‘Stay.
There’s a pitcher of water in the corner by the door. Bring it here;
and I’ll give you a basin to wash in, my dear.’
Oliver got up; walked across the room; and stooped for an instant to
raise the pitcher. When he turned his head, the box was gone.
He had scarcely washed himself, and made everything tidy, by
emptying the basin out of the window, agreeably to the Jew’s
directions, when the Dodger returned: accompanied by a very
sprightly young friend, whom Oliver had seen smoking on the previous
night, and who was now formally introduced to him as Charley Bates.
The four sat down, to breakfast, on the coffee, and some hot rolls
and ham which the Dodger had brought home in the crown of his hat.
‘Well,’ said the Jew, glancing slyly at Oliver, and addressing
himself to the Dodger, ‘I hope you’ve been at work this morning, my
dears?’
‘Hard,’ replied the Dodger.
‘As nails,’ added Charley Bates.
‘Good boys, good boys!’ said the Jew. ‘What have you got, Dodger?’
‘A couple of pocket-books,’ replied that young gentlman.
‘Lined?’ inquired the Jew, with eagerness.
‘Pretty well,’ replied the Dodger, producing two pocket-books; one
green, and the other red.
‘Not so heavy as they might be,’ said the Jew, after looking at
the insides carefully; ‘but very neat and nicely made. Ingenious
workman, ain’t he, Oliver?’
‘Very indeed, sir,’ said Oliver. At which Mr. Charles Bates laughed
uproariously; very much to the amazement of Oliver, who saw nothing
to laugh at, in anything that had passed.
‘And what have you got, my dear?’ said Fagin to Charley Bates.
‘Wipes,’ replied Master Bates; at the same time producing four
pocket-handkerchiefs.
‘Well,’ said the Jew, inspecting them closely; ‘they’re very good
ones, very. You haven’t marked them well, though, Charley; so the
marks shall be picked out with a needle, and we’ll teach Oliver how
to do it. Shall us, Oliver, eh? Ha! ha! ha!’
‘If you please, sir,’ said Oliver.
‘You’d like to be able to make pocket-handkerchiefs as easy as
Charley Bates, wouldn’t you, my dear?’ said the Jew.
‘Very much, indeed, if you’ll teach me, sir,’ replied Oliver.
Master Bates saw something so exquisitely ludicrous in this reply,
that he burst into another laugh; which laugh, meeting the coffee he
was drinking, and carrying it down some wrong channel, very nearly
terminated in his premature suffocation.
‘He is so jolly green!’ said Charley when he recovered, as an
apology to the company for his unpolite behaviour.
The Dodger said nothing, but he smoothed Oliver’s hair over his
eyes, and said he’d know better, by and by; upon which the old
gentleman, observing Oliver’s colour mounting, changed the subject
by asking whether there had been much of a crowd at the execution
that morning? This made him wonder more and more; for it was plain
from the replies of the two boys that they had both been there; and
Oliver naturally wondered how they could possibly have found time to
be so very industrious.
When the breakfast was cleared away; the merry old gentlman and
the two boys played at a very curious and uncommon game, which was
performed in this way. The merry old gentleman, placing a snuff-box
in one pocket of his trousers, a note-case in the other, and a watch
in his waistcoat pocket, with a guard-chain round his neck, and
sticking a mock diamond pin in his shirt: buttoned his coat tight
round him, and putting his spectacle-case and handkerchief in his
pockets, trotted up and down the room with a stick, in imitation of
the manner in which old gentlemen walk about the streets any hour
in the day. Sometimes he stopped at the fire-place, and sometimes at
the door, making believe that he was staring with all his might into
shop-windows. At such times, he would look constantly round him, for
fear of thieves, and would keep slapping all his pockets in turn, to
see that he hadn’t lost anything, in such a very funny and natural
manner, that Oliver laughed till the tears ran down his face. All
this time, the two boys followed him closely about: getting out
of his sight, so nimbly, every time he turned round, that it was
impossible to follow their motions. At last, the Dodger trod upon
his toes, or ran upon his boot accidently, while Charley Bates
stumbled up against him behind; and in that one moment they
took from him, with the most extraordinary rapidity, snuff-box,
note-case, watch-guard, chain, shirt-pin, pocket-handkerchief, even
the spectacle-case. If the old gentlman felt a hand in any one of
his pockets, he cried out where it was; and then the game began all
over again.
When this game had been played a great many times, a couple of young
ladies called to see the young gentleman; one of whom was named Bet,
and the other Nancy. They wore a good deal of hair, not very
neatly turned up behind, and were rather untidy about the shoes and
stockings. They were not exactly pretty, perhaps; but they had a
great deal of colour in their faces, and looked quite stout and
hearty. Being remarkably free and agreeable in their manners, Oliver
thought them very nice girls indeed. As there is no doubt they were.
The visitors stopped a long time. Spirits were produced, in
consequence of one of the young ladies complaining of a coldness in
her inside; and the conversation took a very convivial and improving
turn. At length, Charley Bates expressed his opinion that it was
time to pad the hoof. This, it occurred to Oliver, must be French
for going out; for directly afterwards, the Dodger, and Charley,
and the two young ladies, went away together, having been kindly
furnished by the amiable old Jew with money to spend.
‘There, my dear,’ said Fagin. ‘That’s a pleasant life, isn’t it?
They have gone out for the day.’
‘Have they done work, sir?’ inquired Oliver.
‘Yes,’ said the Jew; ‘that is, unless they should unexpectedly come
across any, when they are out; and they won’t neglect it, if they
do, my dear, depend upon it. Make ‘em your models, my dear. Make ‘em
your models,’ tapping the fire-shovel on the hearth to add force to
his words; ‘do everything they bid you, and take their advice in
all matters--especially the Dodger’s, my dear. He’ll be a great man
himself, and will make you one too, if you take pattern by him.--Is
my handkerchief hanging out of my pocket, my dear?’ said the Jew,
stopping short.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Oliver.
‘See if you can take it out, without my feeling it; as you saw them
do, when we were at play this morning.’
Oliver held up the bottom of the pocket with one hand, as he had
seen the Dodger hold it, and drew the handkerchief lightly out of it
with the other.
‘Is it gone?’ cried the Jew.
‘Here it is, sir,’ said Oliver, showing it in his hand.
‘You’re a clever boy, my dear,’ said the playful old gentleman,
patting Oliver on the head approvingly. ‘I never saw a sharper lad.
Here’s a shilling for you. If you go on, in this way, you’ll be the
greatest man of the time. And now come here, and I’ll show you how
to take the marks out of the handkerchiefs.’
Oliver wondered what picking the old gentleman’s pocket in play, had
to do with his chances of being a great man. But, thinking that
the Jew, being so much his senior, must know best, he followed him
quietly to the table, and was soon deeply involved in his new study.
CHAPTER X -- OLIVER BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE CHARACTERS OF
HIS NEW ASSOCIATES; AND PURCHASES EXPERIENCE AT A HIGH PRICE. BEING
A SHORT, BUT VERY IMPORTANT CHAPTER, IN THIS HISTORY
For many days, Oliver remained in the Jew’s room, picking the
marks out of the pocket-handkerchief, (of which a great number
were brought home,) and sometimes taking part in the game already
described: which the two boys and the Jew played, regularly, every
morning. At length, he began to languish for fresh air, and took
many occasions of earnestly entreating the old gentleman to allow
him to go out to work with his two companions.
Oliver was rendered the more anxious to be actively employed,
by what he had seen of the stern morality of the old gentleman’s
character. Whenever the Dodger or Charley Bates came home at night,
empty-handed, he would expatiate with great vehemence on the misery
of idle and lazy habits; and would enforce upon them the necessity
of an active life, by sending them supperless to bed. On one
occasion, indeed, he even went so far as to knock them both down a
flight of stairs; but this was carrying out his virtuous precepts to
an unusual extent.
At length, one morning, Oliver obtained the permission he had so
eagerly sought. There had been no handkerchiefs to work upon, for
two or three days, and the dinners had been rather meagre. Perhaps
these were reasons for the old gentleman’s giving his assent; but,
whether they were or no, he told Oliver he might go, and placed him
under the joint guardianship of Charley Bates, and his friend the
Dodger.
The three boys sallied out; the Dodger with his coat-sleeves tucked
up, and his hat cocked, as usual; Master Bates sauntering along with
his hands in his pockets; and Oliver between them, wondering
where they were going, and what branch of manufacture he would be
instructed in, first.
The pace at which they went, was such a very lazy, ill-looking
saunter, that Oliver soon began to think his companions were going
to deceive the old gentleman, by not going to work at all. The
Dodger had a vicious propensity, too, of pulling the caps from the
heads of small boys and tossing them down areas; while Charley Bates
exhibited some very loose notions concerning the rights of property,
by pilfering divers apples and onions from the stalls at the kennel
sides, and thrusting them into pockets which were so surprisingly
capacious, that they seemed to undermine his whole suit of clothes
in every direction. These things looked so bad, that Oliver was on
the point of declaring his intention of seeking his way back, in
the best way he could; when his thoughts were suddenly directed into
another channel, by a very mysterious change of behaviour on the
part of the Dodger.
They were just emerging from a narrow court not far from the
open square in Clerkenwell, which is yet called, by some strange
perversion of terms, ‘The Green’: when the Dodger made a sudden
stop; and, laying his finger on his lip, drew his companions back
again, with the greatest caution and circumspection.
‘What’s the matter?’ demanded Oliver.
‘Hush!’ replied the Dodger. ‘Do you see that old cove at the
book-stall?’
‘The old gentleman over the way?’ said Oliver. ‘Yes, I see him.’
‘He’ll do,’ said the Dodger.
‘A prime plant,’ observed Master Charley Bates.
Oliver looked from one to the other, with the greatest surprise; but
he was not permitted to make any inquiries; for the two boys walked
stealthily across the road, and slunk close behind the old gentleman
towards whom his attention had been directed. Oliver walked a few
paces after them; and, not knowing whether to advance or retire,
stood looking on in silent amazement.
The old gentleman was a very respectable-looking personage, with a
powdered head and gold spectacles. He was dressed in a bottle-green
coat with a black velvet collar; wore white trousers; and carried
a smart bamboo cane under his arm. He had taken up a book from the
stall, and there he stood, reading away, as hard as if he were
in his elbow-chair, in his own study. It is very possible that
he fancied himself there, indeed; for it was plain, from his
abstraction, that he saw not the book-stall, nor the street, nor
the boys, nor, in short, anything but the book itself: which he was
reading straight through: turning over the leaf when he got to the
bottom of a page, beginning at the top line of the next one, and
going regularly on, with the greatest interest and eagerness.
What was Oliver’s horror and alarm as he stood a few paces off,
looking on with his eyelids as wide open as they would possibly go,
to see the Dodger plunge his hand into the old gentleman’s pocket,
and draw from thence a handkerchief! To see him hand the same to
Charley Bates; and finally to behold them, both running away round
the corner at full speed!
In an instant the whole mystery of the hankerchiefs, and the
watches, and the jewels, and the Jew, rushed upon the boy’s mind.
He stood, for a moment, with the blood so tingling through all his
veins from terror, that he felt as if he were in a burning fire;
then, confused and frightened, he took to his heels; and, not
knowing what he did, made off as fast as he could lay his feet to
the ground.
This was all done in a minute’s space. In the very instant when
Oliver began to run, the old gentleman, putting his hand to his
pocket, and missing his handkerchief, turned sharp round. Seeing the
boy scudding away at such a rapid pace, he very naturally concluded
him to be the depredator; and shouting ‘Stop thief!’ with all his
might, made off after him, book in hand.
But the old gentleman was not the only person who raised the
hue-and-cry. The Dodger and Master Bates, unwilling to attract
public attention by running down the open street, had merely retired
into the very first doorway round the corner. They no sooner heard
the cry, and saw Oliver running, than, guessing exactly how the
matter stood, they issued forth with great promptitude; and,
shouting ‘Stop thief!’ too, joined in the pursuit like good
citizens.
Although Oliver had been brought up by philosophers, he was
not theoretically acquainted with the beautiful axiom that
self-preservation is the first law of nature. If he had been,
perhaps he would have been prepared for this. Not being prepared,
however, it alarmed him the more; so away he went like the wind,
with the old gentleman and the two boys roaring and shouting behind
him.
‘Stop thief! Stop thief!’ There is a magic in the sound. The
tradesman leaves his counter, and the car-man his waggon; the
butcher throws down his tray; the baker his basket; the milkman his
pail; the errand-boy his parcels; the school-boy his marbles;
the paviour his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away they run,
pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming,
knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing
up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls: and streets, squares, and
courts, re-echo with the sound.
‘Stop thief! Stop thief!’ The cry is taken up by a hundred voices,
and the crowd accumulate at every turning. Away they fly, splashing
through the mud, and rattling along the pavements: up go the
windows, out run the people, onward bear the mob, a whole audience
desert Punch in the very thickest of the plot, and, joining the
rushing throng, swell the shout, and lend fresh vigour to the cry,
‘Stop thief! Stop thief!’
‘Stop thief! Stop thief!’ There is a passion for _hunting_
_something_ deeply implanted in the human breast. One wretched
breathless child, panting with exhaustion; terror in his looks;
agony in his eyes; large drops of perspiration streaming down his
face; strains every nerve to make head upon his pursuers; and as
they follow on his track, and gain upon him every instant, they hail
his decreasing strength with joy. ‘Stop thief!’ Ay, stop him for
God’s sake, were it only in mercy!
Stopped at last! A clever blow. He is down upon the pavement; and
the crowd eagerly gather round him: each new comer, jostling and
struggling with the others to catch a glimpse. ‘Stand aside!’ ‘Give
him a little air!’ ‘Nonsense! he don’t deserve it.’ ‘Where’s the
gentleman?’ ‘Here his is, coming down the street.’ ‘Make room there
for the gentleman!’ ‘Is this the boy, sir!’ ‘Yes.’
Oliver lay, covered with mud and dust, and bleeding from the mouth,
looking wildly round upon the heap of faces that surrounded him,
when the old gentleman was officiously dragged and pushed into the
circle by the foremost of the pursuers.
‘Yes,’ said the gentleman, ‘I am afraid it is the boy.’
‘Afraid!’ murmured the crowd. ‘That’s a good ‘un!’
‘Poor fellow!’ said the gentleman, ‘he has hurt himself.’
‘_I_ did that, sir,’ said a great lubberly fellow, stepping forward;
‘and preciously I cut my knuckle agin’ his mouth. I stopped him,
sir.’
The fellow touched his hat with a grin, expecting something for
his pains; but, the old gentleman, eyeing him with an expression of
dislike, look anxiously round, as if he contemplated running away
himself: which it is very possible he might have attempted to do,
and thus have afforded another chase, had not a police officer (who
is generally the last person to arrive in such cases) at that moment
made his way through the crowd, and seized Oliver by the collar.
‘Come, get up,’ said the man, roughly.
‘It wasn’t me indeed, sir. Indeed, indeed, it was two other boys,’
said Oliver, clasping his hands passionately, and looking round.
‘They are here somewhere.’
‘Oh no, they ain’t,’ said the officer. He meant this to be ironical,
but it was true besides; for the Dodger and Charley Bates had filed
off down the first convenient court they came to.
‘Come, get up!’
‘Don’t hurt him,’ said the old gentleman, compassionately.
‘Oh no, I won’t hurt him,’ replied the officer, tearing his jacket
half off his back, in proof thereof. ‘Come, I know you; it won’t do.
Will you stand upon your legs, you young devil?’
Oliver, who could hardly stand, made a shift to raise himself on his
feet, and was at once lugged along the streets by the jacket-collar,
at a rapid pace. The gentleman walked on with them by the officer’s
side; and as many of the crowd as could achieve the feat, got a
little ahead, and stared back at Oliver from time to time. The boys
shouted in triumph; and on they went.
CHAPTER XI -- TREATS OF MR. FANG THE POLICE MAGISTRATE; AND
FURNISHES A SLIGHT SPECIMEN OF HIS MODE OF ADMINISTERING JUSTICE
The offence had been committed within the district, and indeed in
the immediate neighborhood of, a very notorious metropolitan police
office. The crowd had only the satisfaction of accompanying Oliver
through two or three streets, and down a place called Mutton Hill,
when he was led beneath a low archway, and up a dirty court, into
this dispensary of summary justice, by the back way. It was a small
paved yard into which they turned; and here they encountered a stout
man with a bunch of whiskers on his face, and a bunch of keys in his
hand.
‘What’s the matter now?’ said the man carelessly.
‘A young fogle-hunter,’ replied the man who had Oliver in charge.
‘Are you the party that’s been robbed, sir?’ inquired the man with
the keys.
‘Yes, I am,’ replied the old gentleman; ‘but I am not sure that this
boy actually took the handkerchief. I--I would rather not press the
case.’
‘Must go before the magistrate now, sir,’ replied the man. ‘His
worship will be disengaged in half a minute. Now, young gallows!’
This was an invitation for Oliver to enter through a door which he
unlocked as he spoke, and which led into a stone cell. Here he was
searched; and nothing being found upon him, locked up.
This cell was in shape and size something like an area cellar,
only not so light. It was most intolerably dirty; for it was Monday
morning; and it had been tenanted by six drunken people, who had
been locked up, elsewhere, since Saturday night. But this is little.
In our station-houses, men and women are every night confined on
the most trivial charges--the word is worth noting--in dungeons,
compared with which, those in Newgate, occupied by the most
atrocious felons, tried, found guilty, and under sentence of death,
are palaces. Let any one who doubts this, compare the two.
The old gentleman looked almost as rueful as Oliver when the key
grated in the lock. He turned with a sigh to the book, which had
been the innocent cause of all this disturbance.
‘There is something in that boy’s face,’ said the old gentleman to
himself as he walked slowly away, tapping his chin with the cover
of the book, in a thoughtful manner; ‘something that touches and
interests me. _Can_ he be innocent? He looked like--Bye the bye,’
exclaimed the old gentleman, halting very abruptly, and staring up
into the sky, ‘Bless my soul!--where have I seen something like that
look before?’
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 intrusively 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 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 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 this 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 Mr. 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--’
‘Hold your tongue, sir!’ said Mr. Fang, peremptorily.
‘I will not, sir!’ replied the old gentleman.
‘Hold your tongue this instant, or I’ll have you turned out of the
office!’ said Mr. Fang. ‘You’re an insolent impertinent fellow. How
dare you bully a magistrate!’
‘What!’ exclaimed the old gentleman, reddening.
‘Swear this person!’ said Fang to the clerk. ‘I’ll not hear another
word. Swear him.’
Mr. Brownlow’s indignation was greatly roused; but reflecting
perhaps, that he might only injure the boy by giving vent to it, he
suppressed his feelings and submitted to be sworn at once.
‘Now,’ said Fang, ‘what’s the charge against this boy? What have you
got to say, sir?’
‘I was standing at a bookstall--’ Mr. Brownlow began.
‘Hold your tongue, sir,’ said Mr. Fang. ‘Policeman! Where’s the
policeman? Here, swear this policeman. Now, policeman, what is
this?’
The policeman, with becoming humility, related how he had taken the
charge; how he had searched Oliver, and found nothing on his person;
and how that was all he knew about it.
‘Are there any witnesses?’ inquired Mr. Fang.
‘None, your worship,’ replied the policeman.
Mr. Fang sat silent for some minutes, and then, turning round to the
prosecutor, said in a towering passion.
‘Do you mean to state what your complaint against this boy is,
man, or do you not? You have been sworn. Now, if you stand there,
refusing to give evidence, I’ll punish you for disrespect to the
bench; I will, by--’
By what, or by whom, nobody knows, for the clerk and jailor coughed
very loud, just at the right moment; and the former dropped a
heavy book upon the floor, thus preventing the word from being
heard--accidently, of course.
With many interruptions, and repeated insults, Mr. Brownlow
contrived to state his case; observing that, in the surprise of
the moment, he had run after the boy because he had saw him running
away; and expressing his hope that, if the magistrate should believe
him, although not actually the thief, to be connected with the
thieves, he would deal as leniently with him as justice would allow.
‘He has been hurt already,’ said the old gentleman in conclusion.
‘And I fear,’ he added, with great energy, looking towards the bar,
‘I really fear that he is ill.’
‘Oh! yes, I dare say!’ said Mr. Fang, with a sneer. ‘Come, none of
your tricks here, you young vagabond; they won’t do. What’s your
name?’
Oliver tried to reply but his tongue failed him. He was deadly pale;
and the whole place seemed turning round and round.
‘What’s your name, you hardened scoundrel?’ demanded Mr. Fang.
‘Officer, what’s his name?’
This was addressed to a bluff old fellow, in a striped waistcoat,
who was standing by the bar. He bent over Oliver, and repeated
the inquiry; but finding him really incapable of understanding the
question; and knowing that his not replying would only infuriate
the magistrate the more, and add to the severity of his sentence; he
hazarded a guess.
‘He says his name’s Tom White, your worship,’ said the kind-hearted
thief-taker.
‘Oh, he won’t speak out, won’t he?’ said Fang. ‘Very well, very
well. Where does he live?’
‘Where he can, your worship,’ replied the officer; again pretending
to receive Oliver’s answer.
‘Has he any parents?’ inquired Mr. Fang.
‘He says they died in his infancy, your worship,’ replied the
officer: hazarding the usual reply.
At this point of the inquiry, Oliver raised his head; and, looking
round with imploring eyes, murmured a feeble prayer for a draught of
water.
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Mr. Fang: ‘don’t try to make a fool of
me.’
‘I think he really is ill, your worship,’ remonstrated the officer.
‘I know better,’ said Mr. Fang.
‘Take care of him, officer,’ said the old gentleman, raising his
hands instinctively; ‘he’ll fall down.’
‘Stand away, officer,’ cried Fang; ‘let him, if he likes.’
Oliver availed himself of the kind permission, and fell to the floor
in a fainting fit. The men in the office looked at each other, but
no one dared to stir.
‘I knew he was shamming,’ said Fang, as if this were incontestable
proof of the fact. ‘Let him lie there; he’ll soon be tired of that.’
‘How do you propose to deal with the case, sir?’ inquired the clerk
in a low voice.
‘Summarily,’ replied Mr. Fang. ‘He stands committed for three
months--hard labour of course. Clear the office.’
The door was opened for this purpose, and a couple of men were
preparing to carry the insensible boy to his cell; when an elderly
man of decent but poor appearance, clad in an old suit of black,
rushed hastily into the office, and advanced towards the bench.
‘Stop, stop! don’t take him away! For Heaven’s sake stop a moment!’
cried the new comer, breathless with haste.
Although the presiding Genii in such an office as this, exercise a
summary and arbitrary power over the liberties, the good name, the
character, almost the lives, of Her Majesty’s subjects, expecially
of the poorer class; and although, within such walls, enough
fantastic tricks are daily played to make the angels blind with
weeping; they are closed to the public, save through the medium of
the daily press.[Footnote: Or were virtually, then.] Mr. Fang was
consequently not a little indignant to see an unbidden guest enter
in such irreverent disorder.
‘What is this? Who is this? Turn this man out. Clear the office!’
cried Mr. Fang.
‘I _will_ speak,’ cried the man; ‘I will not be turned out. I saw it
all. I keep the book-stall. I demand to be sworn. I will not be put
down. Mr. Fang, you must hear me. You must not refuse, sir.’
The man was right. His manner was determined; and the matter was
growing rather too serious to be hushed up.
‘Swear the man,’ growled Mr. Fang, with a very ill grace. ‘Now, man,
what have you got to say?’
‘This,’ said the man: ‘I saw three boys: two others and the prisoner
here: loitering on the opposite side of the way, when this gentleman
was reading. The robbery was committed by another boy. I saw it
done; and I saw that this boy was perfectly amazed and stupified
by it.’ Having by this time recovered a little breath, the worthy
book-stall keeper proceeded to relate, in a more coherent manner the
exact circumstances of the robbery.
‘Why didn’t you come here before?’ said Fang, after a pause.
‘I hadn’t a soul to mind the shop,’ replied the man. ‘Everybody who
could have helped me, had joined in the pursuit. I could get nobody
till five minutes ago; and I’ve run here all the way.’
‘The prosecutor was reading, was he?’ inquired Fang, after another
pause.
‘Yes,’ replied the man. ‘The very book he has in his hand.’
‘Oh, that book, eh?’ said Fang. ‘Is it paid for?’
‘No, it is not,’ replied the man, with a smile.
‘Dear me, I forgot all about it!’ exclaimed the absent old
gentleman, innocently.
‘A nice person to prefer a charge against a poor boy!’ said Fang,
with a comical effort to look humane. ‘I consider, sir, that you
have obtained possession of that book, under very suspicious
and disreputable circumstances; and you may think yourself very
fortunate that the owner of the property declines to prosecute. Let
this be a lesson to you, my man, or the law will overtake you yet.
The boy is discharged. Clear the office!’
‘D--n me!’ cried the old gentleman, bursting out with the rage he
had kept down so long, ‘d--n me! I’ll--’
‘Clear the office!’ said the magistrate. ‘Officers, do you hear?
Clear the office!’
The mandate was obeyed; and the indignant Mr. Brownlow was conveyed
out, with the book in one hand, and the bamboo cane in the other: in
a perfect phrenzy of rage and defiance. He reached the yard; and his
passion vanished in a moment. Little Oliver Twist lay on his back on
the pavement, with his shirt unbuttoned, and his temples bathed with
water; his face a deadly white; and a cold tremble convulsing his
whole frame.
‘Poor boy, poor boy!’ said Mr. Brownlow, bending over him. ‘Call a
coach, somebody, pray. Directly!’
A coach was obtained, and Oliver having been carefully laid on the
seat, the old gentleman got in and sat himself on the other.
‘May I accompany you?’ said the book-stall keeper, looking in.
‘Bless me, yes, my dear sir,’ said Mr. Brownlow quickly. ‘I forgot
you. Dear, dear! I have this unhappy book still! Jump in. Poor
fellow! There’s no time to lose.’
The book-stall keeper got into the coach; and away they drove.
CHAPTER XII -- IN WHICH OLIVER IS TAKEN BETTER CARE OF THAN HE EVER
WAS BEFORE. AND IN WHICH THE NARRATIVE REVERTS TO THE MERRY OLD
GENTLEMAN AND HIS YOUTHFUL FRIENDS.
The coach rattled away, over nearly the same ground as that which
Oliver had traversed when he first entered London in company with
the Dodger; and, turning a different way when it reached the Angel
at Islington, stopped at length before a neat house, in a quiet
shady street near Pentonville. Here, a bed was prepared, without
loss of time, in which Mr. Brownlow saw his young charge carefully
and comfortably deposited; and here, he was tended with a kindness
and solicitude that knew no bounds.
But, for many days, Oliver remained insensible to all the goodness
of his new friends. The sun rose and sank, and rose and sank again,
and many times after that; and still the boy lay stretched on his
uneasy bed, dwindling away beneath the dry and wasting heat of
fever. The worm does not work more surely on the dead body, than
does this slow creeping fire upon the living frame.
Weak, and thin, and pallid, he awoke at last from what seemed to
have been a long and troubled dream. Feebly raising himself in the
bed, with his head resting on his trembling arm, he looked anxiously
around.
‘What room is this? Where have I been brought to?’ said Oliver.
‘This is not the place I went to sleep in.’
He uttered these words in a feeble voice, being very faint and weak;
but they were overheard at once. The curtain at the bed’s head
was hastily drawn back, and a motherly old lady, very neatly and
precisely dressed, rose as she undrew it, from an arm-chair close
by, in which she had been sitting at needle-work.
‘Hush, my dear,’ said the old lady softly. ‘You must be very quiet,
or you will be ill again; and you have been very bad,--as bad as bad
could be, pretty nigh. Lie down again; there’s a dear!’ With those
words, the old lady very gently placed Oliver’s head upon the
pillow; and, smoothing back his hair from his forehead, looked so
kindly and loving in his face, that he could not help placing his
little withered hand in hers, and drawing it round his neck.
‘Save us!’ said the old lady, with tears in her eyes. ‘What a
grateful little dear it is. Pretty creetur! What would his mother
feel if she had sat by him as I have, and could see him now!’
‘Perhaps she does see me,’ whispered Oliver, folding his hands
together; ‘perhaps she has sat by me. I almost feel as if she had.’
‘That was the fever, my dear,’ said the old lady mildly.
‘I suppose it was,’ replied Oliver, ‘because heaven is a long way
off; and they are too happy there, to come down to the bedside of a
poor boy. But if she knew I was ill, she must have pitied me, even
there; for she was very ill herself before she died. She can’t know
anything about me though,’ added Oliver after a moment’s silence.
‘If she had seen me hurt, it would have made her sorrowful; and her
face has always looked sweet and happy, when I have dreamed of her.’
The old lady made no reply to this; but wiping her eyes first, and
her spectacles, which lay on the counterpane, afterwards, as if they
were part and parcel of those features, brought some cool stuff for
Oliver to drink; and then, patting him on the cheek, told him he
must lie very quiet, or he would be ill again.
So, Oliver kept very still; partly because he was anxious to obey
the kind old lady in all things; and partly, to tell the truth,
because he was completely exhausted with what he had already said.
He soon fell into a gentle doze, from which he was awakened by the
light of a candle: which, being brought near the bed, showed him a
gentleman with a very large and loud-ticking gold watch in his hand,
who felt his pulse, and said he was a great deal better.
‘You _are_ a great deal better, are you not, my dear?’ said the
gentleman.
‘Yes, thank you, sir,’ replied Oliver.
‘Yes, I know you are,’ said the gentleman: ‘You’re hungry too, an’t
you?’
‘No, sir,’ answered Oliver.
‘Hem!’ said the gentleman. ‘No, I know you’re not. He is not hungry,
Mrs. Bedwin,’ said the gentleman: looking very wise.
The old lady made a respectful inclination of the head, which seemed
to say that she thought the doctor was a very clever man. The doctor
appeared much of the same opinion himself.
‘You feel sleepy, don’t you, my dear?’ said the doctor.
‘No, sir,’ replied Oliver.
‘No,’ said the doctor, with a very shrewd and satisfied look.
‘You’re not sleepy. Nor thirsty. Are you?’
‘Yes, sir, rather thirsty,’ answered Oliver.
‘Just as I expected, Mrs. Bedwin,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s very
natural that he should be thirsty. You may give him a little tea,
ma’am, and some dry toast without any butter. Don’t keep him too
warm, ma’am; but be careful that you don’t let him be too cold; will
you have the goodness?’
The old lady dropped a curtsey. The doctor, after tasting the cool
stuff, and expressing a qualified approval of it, hurried away: his
boots creaking in a very important and wealthy manner as he went
downstairs.
Oliver dozed off again, soon after this; when he awoke, it was
nearly twelve o’clock. The old lady tenderly bade him good-night
shortly afterwards, and left him in charge of a fat old woman who
had just come: bringing with her, in a little bundle, a small Prayer
Book and a large nightcap. Putting the latter on her head and the
former on the table, the old woman, after telling Oliver that she
had come to sit up with him, drew her chair close to the fire
and went off into a series of short naps, chequered at frequent
intervals with sundry tumblings forward, and divers moans and
chokings. These, however, had no worse effect than causing her to
rub her nose very hard, and then fall asleep again.
And thus the night crept slowly on. Oliver lay awake for some time,
counting the little circles of light which the reflection of the
rushlight-shade threw upon the ceiling; or tracing with his languid
eyes the intricate pattern of the paper on the wall. The darkness
and the deep stillness of the room were very solemn; as they brought
into the boy’s mind the thought that death had been hovering there,
for many days and nights, and might yet fill it with the gloom and
dread of his awful presence, he turned his face upon the pillow, and
fervently prayed to Heaven.
Gradually, he fell into that deep tranquil sleep which ease from
recent suffering alone imparts; that calm and peaceful rest which it
is pain to wake from. Who, if this were death, would be roused again
to all the struggles and turmoils of life; to all its cares for
the present; its anxieties for the future; more than all, its weary
recollections of the past!
It had been bright day, for hours, when Oliver opened his eyes; he
felt cheerful and happy. The crisis of the disease was safely past.
He belonged to the world again.
In three days’ time he was able to sit in an easy-chair, well
propped up with pillows; and, as he was still too weak to walk,
Mrs. Bedwin had him carried downstairs into the little housekeeper’s
room, which belonged to her. Having him set, here, by the fire-side,
the good old lady sat herself down too; and, being in a state of
considerable delight at seeing him so much better, forthwith began
to cry most violently.
‘Never mind me, my dear,’ said the old lady; ‘I’m only having
a regular good cry. There; it’s all over now; and I’m quite
comfortable.’
‘You’re very, very kind to me, ma’am,’ said Oliver.
‘Well, never you mind that, my dear,’ said the old lady; ‘that’s got
nothing to do with your broth; and it’s full time you had it; for
the doctor says Mr. Brownlow may come in to see you this morning;
and we must get up our best looks, because the better we look, the
more he’ll be pleased.’ And with this, the old lady applied herself
to warming up, in a little saucepan, a basin full of broth: strong
enough, Oliver thought, to furnish an ample dinner, when reduced to
the regulation strength, for three hundred and fifty paupers, at the
lowest computation.
‘Are you fond of pictures, dear?’ inquired the old lady, seeing that
Oliver had fixed his eyes, most intently, on a portrait which hung
against the wall; just opposite his chair.
‘I don’t quite know, ma’am,’ said Oliver, without taking his eyes
from the canvas; ‘I have seen so few that I hardly know. What a
beautiful, mild face that lady’s is!’
‘Ah!’ said the old lady, ‘painters always make ladies out prettier
than they are, or they wouldn’t get any custom, child. The man that
invented the machine for taking likenesses might have known that
would never succeed; it’s a deal too honest. A deal,’ said the old
lady, laughing very heartily at her own acuteness.
‘Is--is that a likeness, ma’am?’ said Oliver.
‘Yes,’ said the old lady, looking up for a moment from the broth;
‘that’s a portrait.’
‘Whose, ma’am?’ asked Oliver.
‘Why, really, my dear, I don’t know,’ answered the old lady in a
good-humoured manner. ‘It’s not a likeness of anybody that you or I
know, I expect. It seems to strike your fancy, dear.’
‘It is so pretty,’ replied Oliver.
‘Why, sure you’re not afraid of it?’ said the old lady: observing
in great surprise, the look of awe with which the child regarded the
painting.
‘Oh no, no,’ returned Oliver quickly; ‘but the eyes look so
sorrowful; and where I sit, they seem fixed upon me. It makes my
heart beat,’ added Oliver in a low voice, ‘as if it was alive, and
wanted to speak to me, but couldn’t.’
‘Lord save us!’ exclaimed the old lady, starting; ‘don’t talk in
that way, child. You’re weak and nervous after your illness. Let me
wheel your chair round to the other side; and then you won’t see
it. There!’ said the old lady, suiting the action to the word; ‘you
don’t see it now, at all events.’
Oliver _did_ see it in his mind’s eye as distinctly as if he had not
altered his position; but he thought it better not to worry the
kind old lady; so he smiled gently when she looked at him; and Mrs.
Bedwin, satisfied that he felt more comfortable, salted and broke
bits of toasted bread into the broth, with all the bustle befitting
so solemn a preparation. Oliver got through it with extraordinary
expedition. He had scarcely swallowed the last spoonful, when there
came a soft rap at the door. ‘Come in,’ said the old lady; and in
walked Mr. Brownlow.
Now, the old gentleman came in as brisk as need be; but, he had no
sooner raised his spectacles on his forehead, and thrust his hands
behind the skirts of his dressing-gown to take a good long look at
Oliver, than his countenance underwent a very great variety of odd
contortions. Oliver looked very worn and shadowy from sickness,
and made an ineffectual attempt to stand up, out of respect to his
benefactor, which terminated in his sinking back into the chair
again; and the fact is, if the truth must be told, that Mr.
Brownlow’s heart, being large enough for any six ordinary old
gentlemen of humane disposition, forced a supply of tears into
his eyes, by some hydraulic process which we are not sufficiently
philosophical to be in a condition to explain.
‘Poor boy, poor boy!’ said Mr. Brownlow, clearing his throat. ‘I’m
rather hoarse this morning, Mrs. Bedwin. I’m afraid I have caught
cold.’
‘I hope not, sir,’ said Mrs. Bedwin. ‘Everything you have had, has
been well aired, sir.’
‘I don’t know, Bedwin. I don’t know,’ said Mr. Brownlow; ‘I rather
think I had a damp napkin at dinner-time yesterday; but never mind
that. How do you feel, my dear?’
‘Very happy, sir,’ replied Oliver. ‘And very grateful indeed, sir,
for your goodness to me.’
‘Good by,’ said Mr. Brownlow, stoutly. ‘Have you given him any
nourishment, Bedwin? Any slops, eh?’
‘He has just had a basin of beautiful strong broth, sir,’ replied
Mrs. Bedwin: drawing herself up slightly, and laying strong emphasis
on the last word: to intimate that between slops, and broth will
compounded, there existed no affinity or connection whatsoever.
‘Ugh!’ said Mr. Brownlow, with a slight shudder; ‘a couple of
glasses of port wine would have done him a great deal more good.
Wouldn’t they, Tom White, eh?’
‘My name is Oliver, sir,’ replied the little invalid: with a look of
great astonishment.
‘Oliver,’ said Mr. Brownlow; ‘Oliver what? Oliver White, eh?’
‘No, sir, Twist, Oliver Twist.’
‘Queer name!’ said the old gentleman. ‘What made you tell the
magistrate your name was White?’
‘I never told him so, sir,’ returned Oliver in amazement.
This sounded so like a falsehood, that the old gentleman looked
somewhat sternly in Oliver’s face. It was impossible to doubt him;
there was truth in every one of its thin and sharpened lineaments.
‘Some mistake,’ said Mr. Brownlow. But, although his motive for
looking steadily at Oliver no longer existed, the old idea of the
resemblance between his features and some familiar face came upon
him so strongly, that he could not withdraw his gaze.
‘I hope you are not angry with me, sir?’ said Oliver, raising his
eyes beseechingly.
‘No, no,’ replied the old gentleman. ‘Why! what’s this? Bedwin, look
there!’
As he spoke, he pointed hastily to the picture over Oliver’s head,
and then to the boy’s face. There was its living copy. The eyes, the
head, the mouth; every feature was the same. The expression was,
for the instant, so precisely alike, that the minutest line seemed
copied with startling accuracy!
Oliver knew not the cause of this sudden exclamation; for, not being
strong enough to bear the start it gave him, he fainted away. A
weakness on his part, which affords the narrative an opportunity
of relieving the reader from suspense, in behalf of the two young
pupils of the Merry Old Gentleman; and of recording--
That when the Dodger, and his accomplished friend Master Bates,
joined in the hue-and-cry which was raised at Oliver’s heels,
in consequence of their executing an illegal conveyance of Mr.
Brownlow’s personal property, as has been already described, they
were actuated by a very laudable and becoming regard for themselves;
and forasmuch as the freedom of the subject and the liberty of the
individual are among the first and proudest boasts of a true-hearted
Englishman, so, I need hardly beg the reader to observe, that this
action should tend to exalt them in the opinion of all public and
patriotic men, in almost as great a degree as this strong proof
of their anxiety for their own preservation and safety goes to
corroborate and confirm the little code of laws which certain
profound and sound-judging philosophers have laid down as
the main-springs of all Nature’s deeds and actions: the said
philosophers very wisely reducing the good lady’s proceedings
to matters of maxim and theory: and, by a very neat and pretty
compliment to her exalted wisdom and understanding, putting entirely
out of sight any considerations of heart, or generous impulse and
feeling. For, these are matters totally beneath a female who is
acknowledged by universal admission to be far above the numerous
little foibles and weaknesses of her sex.
If I wanted any further proof of the strictly philosophical nature
of the conduct of these young gentlemen in their very delicate
predicament, I should at once find it in the fact (also recorded in
a foregoing part of this narrative), of their quitting the pursuit,
when the general attention was fixed upon Oliver; and making
immediately for their home by the shortest possible cut. Although
I do not mean to assert that it is usually the practice of renowned
and learned sages, to shorten the road to any great conclusion
(their course indeed being rather to lengthen the distance, by
various circumlocutions and discursive staggerings, like unto those
in which drunken men under the pressure of a too mighty flow of
ideas, are prone to indulge); still, I do mean to say, and do
say distinctly, that it is the invariable practice of many mighty
philosophers, in carrying out their theories, to evince great wisdom
and foresight in providing against every possible contingency which
can be supposed at all likely to affect themselves. Thus, to do a
great right, you may do a little wrong; and you may take any means
which the end to be attained, will justify; the amount of the right,
or the amount of the wrong, or indeed the distinction between the
two, being left entirely to the philosopher concerned, to be settled
and determined by his clear, comprehensive, and impartial view of
his own particular case.
It was not until the two boys had scoured, with great rapidity,
through a most intricate maze of narrow streets and courts, that
they ventured to halt beneath a low and dark archway. Having
remained silent here, just long enough to recover breath to speak,
Master Bates uttered an exclamation of amusement and delight; and,
bursting into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, flung himself upon
a doorstep, and rolled thereon in a transport of mirth.
‘What’s the matter?’ inquired the Dodger.
‘Ha! ha! ha!’ roared Charley Bates.
‘Hold your noise,’ remonstrated the Dodger, looking cautiously
round. ‘Do you want to be grabbed, stupid?’
‘I can’t help it,’ said Charley, ‘I can’t help it! To see him
splitting away at that pace, and cutting round the corners, and
knocking up again’ the posts, and starting on again as if he was
made of iron as well as them, and me with the wipe in my pocket,
singing out arter him--oh, my eye!’ The vivid imagination of Master
Bates presented the scene before him in too strong colours. As he
arrived at this apostrophe, he again rolled upon the door-step, and
laughed louder than before.
‘What’ll Fagin say?’ inquired the Dodger; taking advantage of
the next interval of breathlessness on the part of his friend to
propound the question.
‘What?’ repeated Charley Bates.
‘Ah, what?’ said the Dodger.
‘Why, what should he say?’ inquired Charley: stopping rather
suddenly in his merriment; for the Dodger’s manner was impressive.
‘What should he say?’
Mr. Dawkins whistled for a couple of minutes; then, taking off his
hat, scratched his head, and nodded thrice.
‘What do you mean?’ said Charley.
‘Toor rul lol loo, gammon and spinnage, the frog he wouldn’t,
and high cockolorum,’ said the Dodger: with a slight sneer on his
intellectual countenance.
This was explanatory, but not satisfactory. Master Bates felt it so;
and again said, ‘What do you mean?’
The Dodger made no reply; but putting his hat on again, and
gathering the skirts of his long-tailed coat under his arm, thrust
his tongue into his cheek, slapped the bridge of his nose some
half-dozen times in a familiar but expressive manner, and turning
on his heel, slunk down the court. Master Bates followed, with a
thoughtful countenance.
The noise of footsteps on the creaking stairs, a few minutes after
the occurrence of this conversation, roused the merry old gentleman
as he sat over the fire with a saveloy and a small loaf in his hand;
a pocket-knife in his right; and a pewter pot on the trivet. There
was a rascally smile on his white face as he turned round, and
looking sharply out from under his thick red eyebrows, bent his ear
towards the door, and listened.
‘Why, how’s this?’ muttered the Jew: changing countenance; ‘only two
of ‘em? Where’s the third? They can’t have got into trouble. Hark!’
The footsteps approached nearer; they reached the landing. The door
was slowly opened; and the Dodger and Charley Bates entered, closing
it behind them.
CHAPTER XIII -- SOME NEW ACQUAINTANCES ARE INTRODUCED TO THE
INTELLIGENT READER, CONNECTED WITH WHOM VARIOUS PLEASANT MATTERS ARE
RELATED, APPERTAINING TO THIS HISTORY
‘Where’s Oliver?’ said the Jew, rising with a menacing look.
‘Where’s the boy?’
The young thieves eyed their preceptor as if they were alarmed at
his violence; and looked uneasily at each other. But they made no
reply.
‘What’s become of the boy?’ said the Jew, seizing the Dodger tightly
by the collar, and threatening him with horrid imprecations. ‘Speak
out, or I’ll throttle you!’
Mr. Fagin looked so very much in earnest, that Charley Bates, who
deemed it prudent in all cases to be on the safe side, and who
conceived it by no means improbable that it might be his turn to
be throttled second, dropped upon his knees, and raised a loud,
well-sustained, and continuous roar--something between a mad bull
and a speaking trumpet.
‘Will you speak?’ thundered the Jew: shaking the Dodger so much that
his keeping in the big coat at all, seemed perfectly miraculous.
‘Why, the traps have got him, and that’s all about it,’ said the
Dodger, sullenly. ‘Come, let go o’ me, will you!’ And, swinging
himself, at one jerk, clean out of the big coat, which he left in
the Jew’s hands, the Dodger snatched up the toasting fork, and made
a pass at the merry old gentleman’s waistcoat; which, if it had
taken effect, would have let a little more merriment out than could
have been easily replaced.
The Jew stepped back in this emergency, with more agility than could
have been anticipated in a man of his apparent decrepitude; and,
seizing up the pot, prepared to hurl it at his assailant’s head. But
Charley Bates, at this moment, calling his attention by a perfectly
terrific howl, he suddenly altered its destination, and flung it
full at that young gentleman.
‘Why, what the blazes is in the wind now!’ growled a deep voice.
‘Who pitched that ‘ere at me? It’s well it’s the beer, and not the
pot, as hit me, or I’d have settled somebody. I might have know’d,
as nobody but an infernal, rich, plundering, thundering old Jew
could afford to throw away any drink but water--and not that, unless
he done the River Company every quarter. Wot’s it all about, Fagin?
D--me, if my neck-handkercher an’t lined with beer! Come in, you
sneaking warmint; wot are you stopping outside for, as if you was
ashamed of your master! Come in!’
The man who growled out these words, was a stoutly-built fellow of
about five-and-thirty, in a black velveteen coat, very soiled
drab breeches, lace-up half boots, and grey cotton stockings which
inclosed a bulky pair of legs, with large swelling calves;--the kind
of legs, which in such costume, always look in an unfinished and
incomplete state without a set of fetters to garnish them. He had
a brown hat on his head, and a dirty belcher handkerchief round his
neck: with the long frayed ends of which he smeared the beer from
his face as he spoke. He disclosed, when he had done so, a broad
heavy countenance with a beard of three days’ growth, and two
scowling eyes; one of which displayed various parti-coloured
symptoms of having been recently damaged by a blow.
‘Come in, d’ye hear?’ growled this engaging ruffian.
A white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty
different places, skulked into the room.
‘Why didn’t you come in afore?’ said the man. ‘You’re getting too
proud to own me afore company, are you? Lie down!’
This command was accompanied with a kick, which sent the animal to
the other end of the room. He appeared well used to it, however; for
he coiled himself up in a corner very quietly, without uttering
a sound, and winking his very ill-looking eyes twenty times in
a minute, appeared to occupy himself in taking a survey of the
apartment.
‘What are you up to? Ill-treating the boys, you covetous,
avaricious, in-sa-ti-a-ble old fence?’ said the man, seating himself
deliberately. ‘I wonder they don’t murder you! I would if I was
them. If I’d been your ‘prentice, I’d have done it long ago,
and--no, I couldn’t have sold you afterwards, for you’re fit for
nothing but keeping as a curiousity of ugliness in a glass bottle,
and I suppose they don’t blow glass bottles large enough.’
‘Hush! hush! Mr. Sikes,’ said the Jew, trembling; ‘don’t speak so
loud!’
‘None of your mistering,’ replied the ruffian; ‘you always mean
mischief when you come that. You know my name: out with it! I shan’t
disgrace it when the time comes.’
‘Well, well, then--Bill Sikes,’ said the Jew, with abject humility.
‘You seem out of humour, Bill.’
‘Perhaps I am,’ replied Sikes; ‘I should think you was rather out of
sorts too, unless you mean as little harm when you throw pewter pots
about, as you do when you blab and--’
‘Are you mad?’ said the Jew, catching the man by the sleeve, and
pointing towards the boys.
Mr. Sikes contented himself with tying an imaginary knot under his
left ear, and jerking his head over on the right shoulder; a piece
of dumb show which the Jew appeared to understand perfectly.
He then, in cant terms, with which his whole conversation was
plentifully besprinkled, but which would be quite unintelligible if
they were recorded here, demanded a glass of liquor.
‘And mind you don’t poison it,’ said Mr. Sikes, laying his hat upon
the table.
This was said in jest; but if the speaker could have seen the evil
leer with which the Jew bit his pale lip as he turned round to the
cupboard, he might have thought the caution not wholly unnecessary,
or the wish (at all events) to improve upon the distiller’s
ingenuity not very far from the old gentleman’s merry heart.
After swallowing two of three glasses of spirits, Mr. Sikes
condescended to take some notice of the young gentlemen; which
gracious act led to a conversation, in which the cause and manner
of Oliver’s capture were circumstantially detailed, with such
alterations and improvements on the truth, as to the Dodger appeared
most advisable under the circumstances.
‘I’m afraid,’ said the Jew, ‘that he may say something which will
get us into trouble.’
‘That’s very likely,’ returned Sikes with a malicious grin. ‘You’re
blowed upon, Fagin.’
‘And I’m afraid, you see,’ added the Jew, speaking as if he had not
noticed the interruption; and regarding the other closely as he did
so,--‘I’m afraid that, if the game was up with us, it might be up
with a good many more, and that it would come out rather worse for
you than it would for me, my dear.’
The man started, and turned round upon the Jew. But the old
gentleman’s shoulders were shrugged up to his ears; and his eyes
were vacantly staring on the opposite wall.
There was a long pause. Every member of the respectable coterie
appeared plunged in his own reflections; not excepting the dog, who
by a certain malicious licking of his lips seemed to be meditating
an attack upon the legs of the first gentleman or lady he might
encounter in the streets when he went out.
‘Somebody must find out wot’s been done at the office,’ said Mr.
Sikes in a much lower tone than he had taken since he came in.
The Jew nodded assent.
‘If he hasn’t peached, and is committed, there’s no fear till he
comes out again,’ said Mr. Sikes, ‘and then he must be taken care
on. You must get hold of him somehow.’
Again the Jew nodded.
The prudence of this line of action, indeed, was obvious; but,
unfortunately, there was one very strong objection to its being
adopted. This was, that the Dodger, and Charley Bates, and Fagin,
and Mr. William Sikes, happened, one and all, to entertain a violent
and deeply-rooted antipathy to going near a police-office on any
ground or pretext whatever.
How long they might have sat and looked at each other, in a state
of uncertainty not the most pleasant of its kind, it is difficult
to guess. It is not necessary to make any guesses on the subject,
however; for the sudden entrance of the two young ladies whom Oliver
had seen on a former occasion, caused the conversation to flow
afresh.
‘The very thing!’ said the Jew. ‘Bet will go; won’t you, my dear?’
‘Wheres?’ inquired the young lady.
‘Only just up to the office, my dear,’ said the Jew coaxingly.
It is due to the young lady to say that she did not positively
affirm that she would not, but that she merely expressed an emphatic
and earnest desire to be ‘blessed’ if she would; a polite and
delicate evasion of the request, which shows the young lady to have
been possessed of that natural good breeding which cannot bear to
inflict upon a fellow-creature, the pain of a direct and pointed
refusal.
The Jew’s countenance fell. He turned from this young lady, who was
gaily, not to say gorgeously attired, in a red gown, green boots,
and yellow curl-papers, to the other female.
‘Nancy, my dear,’ said the Jew in a soothing manner, ‘what do _you_
say?’
‘That it won’t do; so it’s no use a-trying it on, Fagin,’ replied
Nancy.
‘What do you mean by that?’ said Mr. Sikes, looking up in a surly
manner.
‘What I say, Bill,’ replied the lady collectedly.
‘Why, you’re just the very person for it,’ reasoned Mr. Sikes:
‘nobody about here knows anything of you.’
‘And as I don’t want ‘em to, neither,’ replied Nancy in the same
composed manner, ‘it’s rather more no than yes with me, Bill.’
‘She’ll go, Fagin,’ said Sikes.
‘No, she won’t, Fagin,’ said Nancy.
‘Yes, she will, Fagin,’ said Sikes.
And Mr. Sikes was right. By dint of alternate threats, promises,
and bribes, the lady in question was ultimately prevailed upon to
undertake the commission. She was not, indeed, withheld by the same
considerations as her agreeable friend; for, having recently removed
into the neighborhood of Field Lane from the remote but genteel
suburb of Ratcliffe, she was not under the same apprehension of
being recognised by any of her numerous acquaintances.
Accordingly, with a clean white apron tied over her gown, and her
curl-papers tucked up under a straw bonnet,--both articles of dress
being provided from the Jew’s inexhaustible stock,--Miss Nancy
prepared to issue forth on her errand.
‘Stop a minute, my dear,’ said the Jew, producing, a little covered
basket. ‘Carry that in one hand. It looks more respectable, my
dear.’
‘Give her a door-key to carry in her t’other one, Fagin,’ said
Sikes; ‘it looks real and genivine like.’
‘Yes, yes, my dear, so it does,’ said the Jew, hanging a large
street-door key on the forefinger of the young lady’s right hand.
‘There; very good! Very good indeed, my dear!’ said the Je
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