and he gained his employer's leave to take the lad with him. When Kit
learned that The Stranger had discovered where little Nell was he was
overjoyed; but he knew he himself was not the one to go, because before
they disappeared she had told him he must never come to the Old
Curiosity Shop again and that her grandfather blamed him as the cause of
their misfortune. But Kit promised the Stranger that his mother should
go in his place, and went to tell her at once.
Kit found his mother was at church, but the matter was so urgent that he
went straight to the pew and brought her out, which caused even the
minister to pause in his sermon and made all the congregation look
surprised. Kit took her home, packed her box and bundled her into the
coach which the Stranger brought, and away they went to find the
wanderers.
Now Quilp had all along suspected that Kit and his mother knew something
of their whereabouts, and he had made it his business to watch either
one or the other. The dwarf, in fact, was in the church when Kit came
for his mother, and he followed. When she left with the Stranger he took
another coach and pursued, feeling certain he was on the right track.
But they were all too late. When the Stranger found Mrs. Jarley next day
she could only tell him that little Nell and her grandfather had
disappeared again, and he had to return with Kit's mother, much
discouraged, to London.
The part Kit had played in this made the dwarf hate him, if possible,
more than ever, and he agreed to pay Brass, his rascally lawyer, to ruin
the lad by making a false charge of theft against him.
One day, when Kit came to Brass's house to see the Stranger, who lodged
up stairs, the lawyer cunningly hid a five-pound note in the lad's hat
and as soon as he left ran after him, seized him in the street and
accused him of taking it from his office desk.
Kit was arrested, and the note, of course, was found on his person. The
evidence seemed so strong that the poor fellow was quickly tried, found
guilty and sentenced to prison for a long time.
All might have gone wrong but for a little maid-servant of Brass's, whom
the lawyer had starved and mistreated for years. He used to keep her
locked in the moldy cellar and gave her so little to eat that she would
creep into the office at night (she had found a key that fitted the
door) to pick up the bits of bread that Dick Swiveller, Brass's clerk,
had left when he ate his luncheon.
One night, while this little drudge was prowling about above stairs,
she overheard Brass telling his sister, Sally (who was his partner and
colder and crueler and more wicked even than he was), the trick he was
going to play. After Kit was arrested she ran away from Brass's house
and told her story to Kit's employer, who had all along believed in his
innocence.
Brass in the meantime had gone to Quilp to get his reward for this evil
deed, but the terrible dwarf now only laughed at him and pretended to
remember nothing at all about the bargain.
This so enraged the lawyer that, when he was brought face to face with
the little maid's evidence and found that he himself was caught, he made
full confession of the part Quilp had played, and told the whole story
to revenge himself on the dwarf.
Officers were sent at once to arrest Quilp at a dingy dwelling on a
wharf in the river where he often slept with the object of terrifying
his wife by his long absences. Here he had set up the battered
figurehead of a wrecked ship and, imagining that its face resembled that
of Kit whom he so fiendishly hated, he used to amuse himself by screwing
gimlets into its breast, sticking forks into its eyes and beating it
with a poker.
A few minutes before the officers arrived the dwarf received warning
from Sally Brass, but he had no time to get away. When he heard the
knocking on the gates and knew that the law he had so long defied was
at last upon him, he fell into a panic and did not know which way to
turn. He tried to cover the light of the fire, but only succeeded in
upsetting the stove. Then he ran out of the house on to the dock in the
darkness.
It was a black, foggy night, and he could not see a foot before him. He
thought he could climb over the wall to the next wharf and so escape,
but in his fright he missed his way and fell over the edge of the
platform into the swift-flowing river.
He screamed in terror, but the water filled his throat and the knocking
on the gates was so loud that no one heard him. The water swept him
close to a ship, but its keel was smooth and slippery and there was
nothing to cling to. He had been so wicked that he was afraid to die and
he fought desperately, but the rapid tide smothered his cries and
dragged him down--to death.
The waves threw his drowned body finally on the edge of a dismal swamp,
in the red glare of the blazing ruin which the overturned stove that
night made of the building in which he had framed his evil plots. And
this was the end of Quilp, the dwarf.
As for Kit, he found himself all at once not only free, but a hero. His
employer came to the jail to tell him that he was free and that everyone
knew now of his innocence, and they made him eat and drink, and
everybody shook hands with him. Then he was put into a coach and they
drove straight home, where his mother was waiting to kiss him and cry
over him with joy.
And last, but by no means least of all his new good fortune, he learned
then that the Stranger who had been searching so long for little Nell
and her grandfather had found certainly where they were and that Kit was
to go with him and his employer at once and bring them back again to
London.
They started the next day, and on the long road they talked much of
little Nell and the strange chance by which the lost had been found. A
gentleman who lived in the village to which they were now bound, who had
himself been kind to the child and to the old man whom the new
schoolmaster had brought with him, had written of the pair to Kit's
employer, and the letter had been the lost clue, so long sought, to
their hiding-place.
Snow began falling as the daylight wore away, and the coach wheels made
no noise. All night and all the next day, they rode, and it was midnight
before they came to the town where the two wanderers had taken refuge.
The village was very still, and the air was frosty and cold. Only a
single light was to be seen, coming from a window beside a church. This
was the house which the Stranger knew sheltered those they sought, but
both he and Kit felt a strange fear as they saw that light--the only one
in the whole village.
They left the driver to take the horses to the inn and approached the
building afoot. They went quite close and looked through the window. In
the room an old man bent low over a fire crooning to himself, and Kit,
seeing that it was his old master, opened the door, ran in, knelt by him
and caught his hand.
The old grandfather did not recognize Kit. He believed him a spirit, as
he thought many spirits had talked to him that day. He was much changed,
and it seemed as if some great blow or grief had crazed him. He had a
dress of little Nell's in his hand and smoothed and patted it as he
muttered that she had been asleep--asleep a long time now, and was
marble cold and would not wake.
"Her little homely dress!" he said. "And see here--these shoes--how worn
they are! You see where her feet went bare upon the ground. They told me
afterward that the stones had cut and bruised them. She never told me
that. No, no, God bless her! And I have remembered since how she walked
behind me, that I might not see how lame she was, but yet she had my
hand in hers and seemed to lead me still."
So he muttered on, and the cheeks of the others were wet with tears, for
they had begun to understand the sad truth.
Kit could not speak, but the Stranger did: "You speak of little Nell,"
he said. "Do you remember, long ago, another child, too, who loved you
when you were a child yourself? Say that you had a brother, long
forgotten, who now at last came back to you to be what you were then to
him. Give me but one word, dear brother, to say you know me, and life
will still be precious to us again."
The old man shook his head, for grief had killed all memory. Pushing
them aside, he went into the next room, calling little Nell's name
softly as he went.
They followed. Kit sobbed as they entered, for there on her bed little
Nell lay dead.
Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell! The schoolmaster told them of her
last hours. They had read and talked to her a while, and then she had
sunk peacefully to sleep. They knew by what she said in her dreams that
they were of her wanderings, and of the people who had helped them, for
often she whispered, "God bless you." And she spoke once of beautiful
music that was in the air.
Opening her eyes at last, she begged that they would kiss her once
again. That done, she turned to the old man with a lovely smile on her
face--such, he said, as he had never seen--and threw both arms about his
neck. They did not know at first that she was dead.
They laid little Nell to rest the next day in the churchyard where she
had so often sat. The old man never realized quite what had happened. He
thought she would come back to him some day, and that then they would go
away together. He used to sit beside her grave and watch for her each
afternoon.
One day he did not return at the usual hour and they went to look for
him. He was lying dead upon the stone.
They buried him beside the child he had loved, and there in the
churchyard where they had often talked together they both lie side by
side.
None of those who had known little Nell ever forgot her story. After the
death of the old man, his brother, the Stranger who had sought them so
long, traveled in the footsteps of the two wanderers to search out and
reward all who had been kind to them--Mrs. Jarley of the waxwork, the
Punch-and-Judy showmen, he found them all. Even the rough canal boatmen
were not forgotten.
Kit's story got abroad and he found himself with hosts of friends, who
gave him a good position and secured his mother from want. So that his
greatest misfortune turned out, after all, to be his greatest good.
The little maid whose evidence cleared Kit of the terrible charge
against him lived to marry Dick Swiveller, the clerk of Brass, the
lawyer, while meek Mrs. Quilp, after her husband's drowning, married a
clever young man and lived a pleasant life on the dead dwarf's money.
The fate of the others, whose wickedness has been a part of this story,
was not so pleasant. The two gamblers who tempted the old man to steal
Mrs. Jarley's strong box were detected in another crime and sent to
jail. Brass became a convict, condemned to walk on a treadmill, chained
to a long line of other evil men, and dragging wherever he went a heavy
iron ball. After he was released he joined his wicked sister, Sally, and
the two sank lower and lower till they might even be seen on dark nights
on narrow London streets searching in refuse boxes for bits of food,
like twin spirits of wickedness and crime.
When Kit had grown to be a man and had children of his own, he often
took them to the spot where stood what had been The Old Curiosity Shop
and told them over and over the story of little Nell. And he always
ended by saying that if they were good like her they might go some time
where they could see and know her as he had done when he was a boy.
THE ADVENTURES OF OLIVER TWIST
Published 1837
_Scene_: London and Neighboring Towns
_Time_: 1825 to 1837
CHARACTERS
Oliver Twist A foundling
Mr. Bumble The master of the poorhouse
Mrs. Bumble The mistress of the poorhouse
Monks Oliver's half-brother and his enemy
Mr. Brownlow Oliver's benefactor
Mrs. Maylie Oliver's benefactress
Miss Rose Mrs. Maylie's adopted niece
In reality Oliver's aunt
Fagin A Jew
Leader of a gang of thieves in London
Bill Sikes A burglar
Nancy Sikes's partner in crime
"The Artful Dodger" A youthful pickpocket
OLIVER TWIST
I
HOW OLIVER CAME TO LONDON AND WHAT HE FOUND THERE
Oliver Twist was the son of a poor lady who was found lying in the
street one day in an English village, almost starved and very ill. She
had walked a long way, for her shoes were worn to pieces, but where she
came from or where she was going nobody knew. As she had no money, she
was taken to the poorhouse, where she died the next day without even
telling her name, leaving behind her only a gold locket, which was
around her neck, and a baby.
The locket fell into the hands of the mistress of the poorhouse, who was
named Mrs. Bumble. It contained the dead mother's wedding-ring, and, as
Mrs. Bumble was a dishonest woman, she hid both locket and ring,
intending sometime to sell them.
The baby was left, with no one to care for it, to grow up at the
poorhouse with the other wretched orphan children, who wore calico
dresses all alike and had little to eat and many whippings.
Mr. Bumble, the master of the poorhouse, was a pompous, self-important
bully who browbeat every one weaker than himself and scolded and cuffed
the paupers to his heart's content. It was he who named the baby "Oliver
Twist." He used to name all the babies as they came along, by the
letters of the alphabet. The one before Oliver was named Swubble; then
came Oliver with a T; the next would be Unwin, the next Vilkins, and so
on down to Z. Then he would begin the alphabet all over again.
Little Oliver, the baby, grew without any idea of who he was. When he
was a year old he was sent to the poor-farm where an old woman took care
of orphan children for a very small sum apiece each week. This money,
which was paid by the town, was hardly enough to buy them food, but
nevertheless the old woman took good care to save the bigger share for
herself.
He lived there till he was a pale, handsome boy of nine years, and then
he was taken to the workhouse, where, with many other boys of his own
age or older, he had to work hard all day picking oakum.
The boys had nothing but thin gruel for their meals, with an onion twice
a week and half a roll on Sundays. They ate in a great stone hall, in
one end of which stood the big copper of gruel which Mr. Bumble ladled
out. Each boy got only one helping, and the bowls never needed washing,
because, when the meal was through, there was not a drop of gruel left
in them. After each meal they all sat staring at the copper and sucking
their fingers, but nobody dared ask for more.
One day they felt so terribly hungry that one of the biggest boys said
unless he got another helping of gruel he was afraid he would have to
eat the boy who slept next him. The little boys all believed this and
cast lots to see who should ask for more. It fell to Oliver Twist.
So that night after supper, though he was dreadfully frightened, Oliver
rose and went up to the end of the room and said to Mr. Bumble, "Please,
sir, I want some more."
Mr. Bumble was so surprised he turned pale. "What!" he gasped.
"Please, sir," said Oliver again, "I want some more."
Mr. Bumble picked up the ladle and struck Oliver on the head with it;
then he pounced on him and shook him. When he was tired shaking him, he
dragged him away and shut him up in a dark room, where he stayed a whole
week, and was only taken out once a day to be whipped. Then, to make an
example of him, a notice was pasted on the gate of the workhouse
offering a reward to anybody who would take poor Oliver away and do what
he liked with him.
The first one who came by was a middle-aged chimney-sweep, who wanted a
boy to climb up the insides of chimneys and clean out the soot. This was
a dangerous thing to do, for sometimes the boys who did it got burned
or choked with the smoke, and when Oliver found what they were going to
do with him and looked at the man's cruel face, he burst out crying, so
that a kind-hearted magistrate interfered and would not let the
chimney-sweep have him.
Mr. Bumble finally gave him to the village undertaker, and there he had
to mind the shop and do all the chores. He slept under the counter among
piles of empty coffins. The undertaker's wife beat him often, and
whenever he was not at work he had to attend funerals, which was by no
means amusing, so that he found life no better than it had been at the
workhouse. The undertaker had an apprentice, too, who kicked him
whenever he came near.
All this wretchedness Oliver bore as well as he could, without
complaining. But one day the cowardly apprentice began to say unkind
things of Oliver's dead mother, and this he could not stand. His anger
made him stronger even than his tormentor, though the latter was more
than a head taller and much older, and he sprang upon him, caught him by
the throat and, after shaking him till his teeth rattled, knocked him
flat on the floor.
The big bully screamed for help and cried that he was being murdered, so
that the undertaker and his wife came running in. Oliver told them what
the apprentice had said, but that made no difference. The undertaker
sent for Mr. Bumble, and between them they flogged him till he could
hardly stand and sent him to bed without anything to eat.
Till then Oliver had not shed a tear, but now, alone in the dark, he
felt so miserable that he cried for a long time.
There was nothing to do, he thought at last, but to run away. So he tied
up his few belongings in a handkerchief and, waiting till the first beam
of sunrise, he unbarred the door and ran away as fast as he could,
through the town into the country.
He hid behind hedges whenever he saw anybody, for fear the undertaker or
Mr. Bumble were after him, and before long he found a road that he knew
led to London. Oliver had never seen a city, but he thought where there
were so many people there would certainly be something for a boy to do
to earn his living, so he trudged stoutly on and before nightfall had
walked twenty miles. He begged a crust of bread at a cottage and slept
under a hayrick. The next day and night he was so very hungry and cold
that when morning came again he could scarcely walk at all.
He sat down finally at the edge of a village, wondering whether he was
going to die, when he saw coming along the queerest-looking boy. He was
about Oliver's age, with a snub nose, bow legs and little sharp eyes.
His face was very dirty and he wore a man's coat, whose ragged tails
came to his heels.
The boy saw Oliver's plight and asked him what the matter was, mixing
his words with such a lot of strange slang that Oliver could hardly
understand him. When Oliver explained that he had been walking a number
of days and was very hungry, the other took him to a shop near by,
bought him some bread and ham, and watched him eat it with great
attention, asking him many questions--whether he had any money or knew
any place in London where he could stay. Oliver answered no.
"Don't fret about that," said the other. "I know a 'spectable old
genelman as lives there wot'll give you lodgings for nothing if I
interduce you."
Oliver did not think his new host looked very respectable himself, but
he thought it might be as well for him to know the old gentleman,
particularly as he had nowhere else to go. So they set off.
It was night when they reached London, and it was so big and crowded
that Oliver kept close to his guide. He noticed, however, that the
streets they passed through were narrow and dirty and the houses old and
hideously filthy. The people, too, seemed low and wretched.
He was just wondering if he had not better run away when the boy pushed
open a door, drew Oliver inside, up a broken stairway and into a back
room.
Here, frying some sausages over a stove, was a shriveled old Jew in a
greasy flannel gown. He was very ugly and his matted red hair hung down
over his villainous face. In a corner stood a clothes-horse on which
hung hundreds of silk handkerchiefs, and four or five boys, as dirty and
oddly dressed as the one who had brought Oliver, sat about a table
smoking pipes like rough, grown men.
Oliver's guide introduced him to the Jew, whose name was Fagin, and the
boys crowded around him, putting their hands into his pockets, which he
thought a queer joke. Fagin grinned horribly as he shook hands with him
and told him he was very welcome, which did not tend to reassure him,
and then the sausages were passed around. The Jew gave Oliver a glass of
something to drink, and as soon as he drank it he became very sleepy and
knew nothing more till the following morning.
The next few days Oliver saw much to wonder at. When he woke up, Fagin
was sorting over a great box full of watches, which he hid away when he
saw Oliver was looking. Every day the boy who had brought him there,
whom they called "the Artful Dodger," came in and gave the Jew some
pocketbooks and handkerchiefs. Oliver thought he must have made the
pocketbooks, only they did not look new, and some seemed to have money
in them. He noticed, too, that whenever the Artful Dodger came home
empty-handed Fagin seemed angry and cuffed and kicked him and sent him
to bed supperless; but when he brought home a good number everything was
very jolly.
Whenever there was nothing else to do, the old Jew played a very curious
game with the boys. This was the way they played it:
Fagin would put a snuff-box in one pocket, a watch in another and a
handkerchief in a third; then he would walk about the room just as any
old gentleman would walk about the street, stopping now and then, as if
he were looking into shop-windows. All the time the boys followed him
closely, sometimes treading on his toes or stumbling against him, and
when this happened one of them would slip a hand into his pocket and
take out either the watch or the snuff-box or the handkerchief. If the
Jew felt a hand in his pocket he cried out which it was, and then the
game began all over again. At last Fagin made Oliver try if he could
take something out of his pocket without his knowing it, and when Oliver
succeeded he patted his head and seemed well pleased.
But Oliver grew very tired of the dirty room and the same game. He
longed for the open air and begged to be allowed to go out; so one day
the Jew put him in charge of the Artful Dodger and they went upon the
streets, Oliver wondering where in the world he was going to be taught
to make pocketbooks.
He was on the point of asking, when the Artful Dodger signed to him to
be silent, and slunk behind an old gentleman who was reading a book in
front of a book-stall. You can imagine Oliver's horror when he saw him
thrust his hand into the old gentleman's pocket, draw out a silk
handkerchief and run off at full speed.
In an instant Oliver understood the mystery of the handkerchiefs, the
watches, the purses and the curious game he had learned at Fagin's. He
knew then that the Artful Dodger was a pickpocket. He was so frightened
that for a minute he lost his wits and ran off as fast as he could go.
Just then the old gentleman found his handkerchief was gone and, seeing
Oliver running away, shouted "Stop thief!" which frightened the poor boy
even more and made him run all the faster. Everybody joined the chase,
and before he had gone far a burly fellow overtook Oliver and knocked
him down.
A policeman was at hand and he was dragged, more dead than alive, to the
police court, followed by the angry old gentleman.
The moment the latter saw the boy's face, however, he could not believe
it was the face of a thief, and refused to appear against him, but the
magistrate was in a bad humor and was about to sentence Oliver to
prison, anyway, when the owner of the book-stall came hurrying in. He
had seen the theft and knew Oliver was not guilty, so the magistrate was
obliged to let him go.
But the terror and the blow he had received had been too much for
Oliver. He fell down in a faint, and the old gentleman, whose name was
Mr. Brownlow, overcome with pity, put him into a coach and drove him to
his own home, determined, if the boy had no parents, to adopt him as his
own son.
II
OLIVER'S ADVENTURES
While Oliver was resting in such good hands, very strange things were
occurring in the house of Fagin. When the Artful Dodger told him of the
arrest the Jew was full of anger. He had intended to make a clever thief
of Oliver and compel him to bring him many stolen things; now he had not
only failed in this and lost the boy's help, but he was also afraid that
Oliver would tell all about the wicked practices he had seen and show
the officers where he had lived. This he thought was likely to happen at
any time, unless he could get the boy into his power again.
Something had occurred, too, meantime, that made Fagin almost crazy with
rage at losing him. It was this: A wicked man--so wicked that he was
afraid of thunder--who went by the name of Monks, had come to him and
told him he would pay a large sum of money if he could succeed in making
Oliver a thief and so ruin his reputation and his good name.