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.
Entering by the back way, she tapped softly with the key at one of the
cell-doors, and listened. There was no sound within, so she coughed and
listened again. Still there was no reply, so she spoke.
“Nolly, dear?” murmured Nancy in a gentle voice;—“Nolly?”
There was nobody inside but a miserable shoeless criminal, who had been
taken up for playing the flute, and who—the offence against society
having been clearly proved—had been very properly committed by Mr.
Fang to the House of Correction for one month, with the appropriate
and amusing remark that since he had so much breath to spare, it would
be much more wholesomely expended on the treadmill than in a musical
instrument. He made no answer, being occupied in mentally bewailing
the loss of the flute, which had been confiscated for the use of the
county; so Nancy passed on to the next cell, and knocked there.
“Well,” cried a faint and feeble voice.
“Is there a little boy here?” inquired Nancy with a preliminary sob.
“No,” replied the voice; “God forbid!”
This was a vagrant of sixty-five, who was going to prison for _not_
playing the flute, or, in other words, for begging in the streets, and
doing nothing for his livelihood. In the next cell was another man,
who was going to the same prison for hawking tin saucepans without a
licence: thereby doing something for his living in defiance of the
Stamp-office.
But, as neither of these criminals answered to the name of Oliver, or
knew anything about him, Nancy made straight up to the bluff officer
in the striped waistcoat, and with the most piteous wailings and
lamentations, rendered more piteous by a prompt and efficient use
of the street-door key and the little basket, demanded her own dear
brother.
“I haven’t got him, my dear,” said the old man.
“Where is he?” screamed Nancy in a distracted manner.
“Why, the gentleman’s got him,” replied the officer.
“What gentleman?—Oh, gracious heavens! what gentleman?” exclaimed
Nancy.
In reply to this incoherent questioning, the old man informed the
deeply affected sister that Oliver had been taken ill in the office,
and discharged in consequence of a witness having proved the robbery
to have been committed by another boy not in custody; and that the
prosecutor had carried him away in an insensible condition to his own
residence, of and concerning which all the informant knew was, that it
was somewhere at Pentonville; he having heard that word mentioned in
the directions to the coachman.
In a dreadful state of doubt and uncertainty the agonised young woman
staggered to the gate, and then,—exchanging her faltering gait for a
good swift steady run, returned by the most devious and complicated
route she could think of, to the domicile of the Jew.
Mr. Bill Sikes no sooner heard the account of the expedition delivered,
than he very hastily called up the white dog, and, putting on his hat,
expeditiously departed, without devoting any time to the formality of
wishing the company good-morning.
“We must know where he is, my dears; he must be found,” said the Jew,
greatly excited. “Charley, do nothing but skulk about, till you bring
home some news of him. Nancy, my dear, I must have him found: I trust
to you, my dear,—to you and the Artful for everything. Stay, stay,”
added the Jew, unlocking a drawer with a shaking hand; “there’s money,
my dears. I shall shut up this shop to-night: you’ll know where to find
me. Don’t stop here a minute,—not an instant, my dears!”
With these words he pushed them from the room, and carefully
double-locking and barring the door behind them, drew from its place of
concealment the box which he had unintentionally disclosed to Oliver,
and hastily proceeded to dispose the watches and jewellery beneath his
clothing.
A rap at the door startled him in this occupation. “Who’s there?” he
cried in a shrill tone of alarm.
“Me!” replied the voice of the Dodger through the key-hole.
“What now?” cried the Jew impatiently.
“Is he to be kidnapped to the other ken, Nancy says?” inquired the
Dodger cautiously.
“Yes,” replied the Jew, “wherever she lays hands on him. Find him, find
him out, that’s all. I shall know what to do next, never fear.”
The boy murmured a reply of intelligence, and hurried down stairs after
his companions.
“He has not peached so far,” said the Jew as he pursued his occupation.
“If he means to blab us among his new friends, we may stop his windpipe
yet.”