OLIVER WALKS TO LONDON, AND ENCOUNTERS ON THE ROAD A STRANGE SORT OF
YOUNG GENTLEMAN.
OLIVER reached the style at which the bypath terminated, and once more
gained the high-road. It was eight o’clock now; and, 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 a mile-stone, 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
large 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; and a penny—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,—very; 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; for his feet were sore, and his legs
so weak that they trembled beneath him. Another night passed in the
bleak damp air only made him worse; and, 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, which
frightened Oliver very much, and made him very glad to get out of
them 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 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 barefooted 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 his 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 cold
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 is 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 ever
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 slightly 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 halfway 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 his
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
forerd, but always going up, and nivir coming down agen. Was you never
on the mill?”
“What mill?” inquired Oliver.
“What mill!—why, _the_ mill—the mill as takes up so little room
that’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—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 gentleman 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 the 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
genelman 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 already 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
_protegé_ of the elderly gentleman before mentioned.
Mr. Dawkins’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 flighty and dissolute
mode of conversing, and furthermore avowed that among his intimate
friends he was better known by the _soubriquet_ 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 (who are generally the lowest orders of
anything) 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 the filth; and from several of the door-ways, great ill-looking
fellows were cautiously emerging, bound, to all appearance, upon 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 farther 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 shading 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 up stairs?”
“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 with 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 was 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 villanous-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 a 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; and
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, as did the Jew himself: toasting-fork in hand.
[Illustration: _Oliver introduced to the respectable Old Gentleman._]
“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 gentlemen 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 when he went to bed. These civilities would
probably have been extended much further, 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. Almost
instantly afterwards, he felt himself gently lifted on to one of the
sacks, and then he sunk into a deep sleep.