Oliver Twist. Volume 1 of 3

CHAPTER XIII

REVERTS TO THE MERRY OLD GENTLEMAN AND HIS YOUTHFUL FRIENDS, THROUGH WHOM A NEW ACQUAINTANCE IS INTRODUCED TO THE INTELLIGENT READER, AND CONNECTED WITH WHOM VARIOUS PLEASANT MATTERS ARE RELATED APPERTAINING TO THIS HISTORY

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 with great perspicuity in a foregoing chapter, they were actuated, as we therein took occasion to observe, 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 must 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 mainsprings 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, as matters totally beneath a female who is acknowledged by universal admission to be so far beyond 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; for although I do not mean to assert that it is the practice of renowned and learned sages at all 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 all 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 by one consent 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 door-step, 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 against 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, and 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 arms, 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 left 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 intently.

“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 and closed it behind them.

“Where’s Oliver?” said the furious 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 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 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 an insane 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 in a month or two.

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 neckankecher 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 enclosed a very 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: disclosing, 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-looking 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 about 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 arterwards, though; for you’re fit for nothing but keeping as a curiosity of ugliness in a glass bottle, and I suppose they don’t blow them 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 were 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 or three glassfulls 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 fiercely 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 what’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; and this was, that the Dodger, and Charley Bates, and Fagin, and Mr. William Sikes, happened one and all to entertain a most 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 say. 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, and 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,” bawled Nancy.

“Yes, she will, Fagin,” said Sikes.

And Mr. Sikes was right. By dint of alternate threats, promises, and bribes, the female 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 very recently removed into the neighbourhood 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 acquaintance.

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 fore-finger of the young lady’s right hand. “There; very good, – very good indeed, my dear,” said the Jew, rubbing his hands.

“Oh, my brother! my poor, dear, sweet, innocent little brother!” exclaimed Nancy, bursting into tears, and wringing the little basket and the street-door key in an agony of distress. “What has become of him! – where have they taken him to! Oh, do have pity, and tell me what’s been done with the dear boy, gentlemen; do, gentlemen, if you please, gentlemen.”

Having uttered these words in a most lamentable and heart-broken tone, to the immeasurable delight of her hearers, Miss Nancy paused, winked to the company, nodded smilingly round, and disappeared.

“Ah! she’s a clever girl, my dears,” said the Jew, turning round to his young friends, and shaking his head gravely, as if in mute admonition to them to follow the bright example they had just beheld.

“She’s a honour to her sex,” said Mr. Sikes, filling his glass, and smiting the table with his enormous fist. “Here’s her health, and wishing they was all like her!”

While these and many other encomiums were being passed on the accomplished Nancy, that young lady made the best of her way to the police-office; whither, notwithstanding a little natural timidity consequent upon walking through the streets alone and unprotected, she arrived in perfect safety shortly afterwards.