HOW OLIVER PASSED HIS TIME IN THE IMPROVING SOCIETY OF HIS REPUTABLE
FRIENDS.
ABOUT noon next day, when the Dodger and Master Bates had gone out to
pursue their customary avocations, Mr. Fagin took the opportunity of
reading Oliver a long lecture on the crying sin of ingratitude, of
which he clearly demonstrated he had been guilty to no ordinary extent
in wilfully absenting himself from the society of his anxious friends,
and still more in endeavouring to escape from them after so much
trouble and expense had been incurred in his recovery. Mr. Fagin laid
great stress on the fact of his having taken Oliver in and cherished
him, when without his timely aid he might have perished with hunger;
and related the dismal and affecting history of a young lad whom in
his philanthropy he had succoured under parallel circumstances, but
who, proving unworthy of his confidence, and evincing a desire to
communicate with the police, had unfortunately come to be hung at the
Old Bailey one morning. Mr. Fagin did not seek to conceal his share
in the catastrophe, but lamented with tears in his eyes that the
wrong-headed and treacherous behaviour of the young person in question
had rendered it necessary that he should become the victim of certain
evidence for the crown, which, if it were not precisely true, was
indispensably necessary for the safety of him (Mr. Fagin) and a few
select friends. Mr. Fagin concluded by drawing a rather disagreeable
picture of the discomforts of hanging, and, with great friendliness and
politeness of manner, expressed his anxious hope that he might never be
obliged to submit Oliver Twist to that unpleasant operation.
Little Oliver’s blood ran cold as he listened to the Jew’s words, and
imperfectly comprehended the dark threats conveyed in them. That it
was possible even for justice itself to confound the innocent with the
guilty when they were in accidental companionship, he knew already; and
that deeply-laid plans for the destruction of inconveniently-knowing,
or over-communicative persons, had been really devised and carried
out by the old Jew on more occasions than one, he thought by no means
unlikely when he recollected the general nature of the altercations
between that gentleman and Mr. Sikes, which seemed to bear reference
to some foregone conspiracy of the kind. As he glanced timidly up, and
met the Jew’s searching look, he felt that his pale face and trembling
limbs were neither unnoticed, nor unrelished, by the wary villain.
The Jew smiled hideously, and, patting Oliver on the head, said that
if he kept himself quiet, and applied himself to business, he saw they
would be very good friends yet. Then taking his hat, and covering
himself up in an old patched great-coat, he went out and locked the
room-door behind him.
And so Oliver remained all that day, and for the greater part of many
subsequent days, seeing nobody between early morning and midnight, and
left during the long hours to commune with his own thoughts; which
never failing to revert to his kind friends, and the opinion they must
long ago have formed of him, were sad indeed. After the lapse of a week
or so, the Jew left the room-door unlocked, and he was at liberty to
wander about the house.
It was a very dirty place; but the rooms up-stairs had great high
wooden mantel-pieces and large doors, with paneled walls and cornices
to the ceilings, which, although they were black with neglect and
dust, were ornamented in various ways; from all of which tokens Oliver
concluded that a long time ago, before the old Jew was born, it had
belonged to better people, and had perhaps been quite gay and handsome,
dismal and dreary as it looked now.
Spiders had built their webs in the angles of the walls and ceilings;
and sometimes, when Oliver walked softly into a room, the mice would
scamper across the floor, and run back terrified to their holes. With
these exceptions, there was neither sight nor sound of any living
thing; and often, when it grew dark, and he was tired of wandering
from room to room, he would crouch in the corner of the passage by the
street-door, to be as near living people as he could, and remain there
listening and counting the hours until the Jew or the boys returned.
In all the rooms the mouldering shutters were fast closed, and the
bars which held them were screwed tight into the wood; the only light
which was admitted making its way through round holes at the top, which
made the rooms more gloomy, and filled them with strange shadows.
There was a back-garret window, with rusty bars outside, which had no
shutter, and out of which Oliver often gazed with a melancholy face for
hours together; but nothing was to be descried from it but a confused
and crowded mass of house-tops, blackened chimneys, and gable-ends.
Sometimes, indeed, a ragged grizzly head might be seen peering over the
parapet-wall of a distant house, but it was quickly withdrawn again;
and as the window of Oliver’s observatory was nailed down, and dimmed
with the rain and smoke of years, it was as much as he could do to
make out the forms of the different objects beyond, without making any
attempt to be seen or heard,—which he had as much chance of being as
if he had been inside the ball of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
One afternoon, the Dodger and Master Bates being engaged out that
evening, the first-named young gentleman took it into his head to
evince some anxiety regarding the decoration of his person (which, to
do him justice, was by no means an habitual weakness with him;) and,
with this end and aim, he condescendingly commanded Oliver to assist
him in his toilet straightway.
Oliver was but too glad to make himself useful; too happy to have some
faces, however bad, to look upon, and too desirous to conciliate those
about him when he could honestly do so, to throw any objection in the
way of this proposal; so he at once expressed his readiness, and,
kneeling on the floor, while the Dodger sat upon the table so that he
could take his foot in his lap, he applied himself to a process which
Mr. Dawkins designated as “japanning his trotter-cases,” and which
phrase, rendered into plain English, signifieth cleaning his boots.
Whether it was the sense of freedom and independence which a rational
animal may be supposed to feel when he sits on a table in an easy
attitude, smoking a pipe, swinging one leg carelessly to and fro, and
having his boots cleaned all the time, without even the past trouble of
having taken them off, or the prospective misery of putting them on, to
disturb his reflections; or whether it was the goodness of the tobacco
that soothed the feelings of the Dodger, or the mildness of the beer
that mollified his thoughts, he was evidently tinctured for the nonce
with a spice of romance and enthusiasm foreign to his general nature.
He looked down on Oliver with a thoughtful countenance for a brief
space, and then, raising his head, and heaving a gentle sigh, said,
half in abstraction, and half to Master Bates,
“What a pity it is he isn’t a prig!”
“Ah!” said Master Charles Bates; “he don’t know what’s good for him.”
The Dodger sighed again, and resumed his pipe, as did Charley Bates.
They both smoked for some seconds in silence.
“I suppose you don’t even know what a prig is?” said the Dodger
mournfully.
“I think I know that,” replied Oliver, hastily looking up. “It’s a
th—; you’re one, are you not?” inquired Oliver, checking himself.
“I am,” replied the Dodger. “I’d scorn to be anythink else.” Mr.
Dawkins gave his hat a ferocious cock after delivering this sentiment,
and looked at Master Bates as if to denote that he would feel obliged
by his saying anything to the contrary. “I am,” repeated the Dodger;
“so’s Charley, so’s Fagin, so’s Sikes, so’s Nancy, so’s Bet, so we all
are, down to the dog, and he’s the downiest one of the lot.”
“And the least given to peaching,” added Charley Bates.
“He wouldn’t so much as bark in a witness-box for fear of committing
himself; no, not if you tied him up in one, and left him there without
wittles for a fortnight,” said the Dodger.
“That he wouldn’t; not a bit of it,” observed Charley.
“He’s a rum dog. Don’t he look fierce at any strange cove that laughs
or sings when he’s in company!” pursued the Dodger. “Won’t he growl at
all when he hears a fiddle playing, and don’t he hate other dogs as
ain’t of his breed!—Oh, no!”
“He’s an out-and-out Christian,” said Charley.
This was merely intended as a tribute to the animal’s abilities, but it
was an appropriate remark in another sense, if Master Bates had only
known it; for there are a great many ladies and gentlemen claiming to
be out-and-out Christians, between whom and Mr. Sikes’s dog there
exist very strong and singular points of resemblance.
“Well, well,” said the Dodger, recurring to the point from which they
had strayed, with that mindfulness of his profession which influenced
all his proceedings. “This hasn’t got anything to do with young Green
here.”
“No more it has,” said Charley. “Why don’t you put yourself under
Fagin, Oliver?”
“And make your fortun’ out of hand?” added the Dodger, with a grin.
“And so be able to retire on your property, and do the gen-teel, as I
mean to in the very next leap-year but four that ever comes, and the
forty-second Tuesday in Trinity-week,” said Charley Bates.
“I don’t like it,” rejoined Oliver timidly; “I wish they would let me
go. I—I—would rather go.”
“And Fagin would _rather_ not!” rejoined Charley.
Oliver knew this too well; but, thinking it might be dangerous to
express his feelings more openly, he only sighed, and went on with his
boot-cleaning.
“Go!” exclaimed the Dodger. “Why, where’s your spirit? Don’t you take
any pride out of yourself? Would you go and be dependent on your
friends, eh?”
“Oh, blow that!” said Master Bates, drawing two or three silk
handkerchiefs from his pocket, and tossing them into a cupboard,
“that’s too mean, that is.”
“_I_ couldn’t do it,” said the Dodger, with an air of haughty disgust.
“You can leave your friends, though,” said Oliver with a half-smile,
“and let them be punished for what you did.”
“That,” rejoined the Dodger, with a wave of his pipe,—“that was all
out of consideration for Fagin, ’cause the traps know that we work
together, and he might have got into trouble if we hadn’t made our
lucky; that was the move, wasn’t it, Charley?”
Master Bates nodded assent, and would have spoken, but that the
recollection of Oliver’s flight came so suddenly upon him, that the
smoke he was inhaling got entangled with a laugh, and went up into his
head, and down into his throat, and brought on a fit of coughing and
stamping about five minutes long.
[Illustration: _Master Bates explains a professional technicality._]
“Look here,” said the Dodger, drawing forth a handful of shillings and
halfpence. “Here’s a jolly life!—what’s the odds where it comes from?
Here, catch hold; there’s plenty more where they were took from. You
won’t, won’t you?—Oh, you precious flat!”
“It’s naughty, ain’t it, Oliver?” inquired Charley Bates. “He’ll come
to be scragged, won’t he?”
“I don’t know what that means,” replied Oliver, looking round.
“Something in this way, old feller,” said Charley. As he said it,
Master Bates caught up an end of his neckerchief, and, holding it erect
in the air, dropped his head on his shoulder, and jerked a curious
sound through his teeth, thereby indicating, by a lively pantomimic
representation, that scragging and hanging were one and the same thing.
“That’s what it means,” said Charley. “Look how he stares, Jack. I
never did see such prime company as that ’ere boy; he’ll be the death
of me, I know he will.” And Master Charles Bates, having laughed
heartily again, resumed his pipe with tears in his eyes.
“You’ve been brought up bad,” said the Dodger, surveying his boots
with much satisfaction when Oliver had polished them. “Fagin will make
something of you, though, or you’ll be the first he ever had that
turned out unprofitable. You’d better begin at once, for you’ll come
to the trade long before you think of it, and you’re only losing time,
Oliver.”
Master Bates backed this advice with sundry moral admonitions of his
own, which being exhausted, he and his friend Mr. Dawkins launched into
a glowing description of the numerous pleasures incidental to the life
they led, interspersed with a variety of hints to Oliver that the best
thing he could do, would be to secure Fagin’s favour without more delay
by the same means which they had employed to gain it.
“And always put this in your pipe, Nolly,” said the Dodger, as the
Jew was heard unlocking the door above, “if you don’t take fogles and
tickers——”
“What’s the good of talking in that way?” interposed Master Bates: “he
don’t know what you mean.”
“If you don’t take pocket-hankechers and watches,” said the Dodger,
reducing his conversation to the level of Oliver’s capacity, “some
other cove will; so that the coves that lose ’em will be all the worse,
and you’ll be all the worse too, and nobody half a ha’p’orth the
better, except the chaps wot gets them—and you’ve just as good a right
to them as they have.”
“To be sure,—to be sure!” said the Jew, who had entered unseen by
Oliver. “It all lies in a nutshell, my dear—in a nutshell, take the
Dodger’s word for it. Ha! ha!—he understands the catechism of his
trade.”
The old man rubbed his hands gleefully together as he corroborated the
Dodger’s reasoning in these terms, and chuckled with delight at his
pupil’s proficiency.
The conversation proceeded no farther at this time, for the Jew had
returned home accompanied by Miss Betsy, and a gentleman whom Oliver
had never seen before, but who was accosted by the Dodger as Tom
Chitling, and who, having lingered on the stairs to exchange a few
gallantries with the lady, now made his appearance.
Mr. Chitling was older in years than the Dodger, having perhaps
numbered eighteen winters; but there was a degree of deference in
his deportment towards that young gentleman which seemed to indicate
that he felt himself conscious of a slight inferiority in point of
genius and professional acquirements. He had small twinkling eyes, and
a pock-marked face; wore a fur cap, a dark corduroy jacket, greasy
fustian trousers, and an apron. His wardrobe was, in truth, rather out
of repair; but he excused himself to the company by stating that his
“time” was only out an hour before, and that, in consequence of having
worn the regimentals for six weeks past, he had not been able to bestow
any attention on his private clothes. Mr. Chitling added, with strong
marks of irritation, that the new way of fumigating clothes up yonder
was infernal unconstitutional, for it burnt holes in them, and there
was no remedy against the county; the same remark he considered to
apply to the regulation mode of cutting the hair, which he held to be
decidedly unlawful. Mr. Chitling wound up his observations by stating
that he had not touched a drop of anything for forty-two mortal long
hard-working days, and that he “wished he might be busted if he wasn’t
as dry as a lime-basket.”
“Where do you think the gentleman has come from, Oliver?” inquired the
Jew with a grin, as the other boys put a bottle of spirits on the
table.
“I—I—don’t know, sir,” replied Oliver.
“Who’s that?” inquired Tom Chitling, casting a contemptuous look at
Oliver.
“A young friend of mine, my dear,” replied the Jew.
“He’s in luck then,” said the young man, with a meaning look at Fagin.
“Never mind where I came from, young ’un; you’ll find your way there
soon enough, I’ll bet a crown!”
At this sally the boys laughed, and, after some more jokes on the same
subject, exchanged a few short whispers with Fagin, and withdrew.
After some words apart between the last comer and Fagin, they drew
their chairs towards the fire; and the Jew, telling Oliver to come
and sit by him, led the conversation to the topics most calculated to
interest his hearers. These were, the great advantages of the trade,
the proficiency of the Dodger, the amiability of Charley Bates, and
the liberality of the Jew himself. At length these subjects displayed
signs of being thoroughly exhausted, and Mr. Chitling did the same (for
the house of correction becomes fatiguing after a week or two); Miss
Betsy accordingly withdrew, and left the party to their repose.
From this day Oliver was seldom left alone, but was placed in almost
constant communication with the two boys, who played the old game with
the Jew every day,—whether for their own improvement or Oliver’s, Mr.
Fagin best knew. At other times the old man would tell them stories
of robberies he had committed in his younger days, mixed up with so
much that was droll and curious, that Oliver could not help laughing
heartily, and showing that he was amused in spite of all his better
feelings.
In short, the wily old Jew had the boy in his toils; and, having
prepared his mind, by solitude and gloom, to prefer any society to the
companionship of his own sad thoughts in such a dreary place, was now
slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would blacken
it and change its hue for ever.