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 he 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 hanged 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 hopes 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 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 that wary old gentleman.
The Jew, smiling hideously, patted Oliver on the head, and 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 with 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. The rooms upstairs had great high wooden
chimney-pieces and large doors, with panelled walls and cornices to
the ceiling; which, although they were black with neglect and dust,
were ornamented in various ways. From all of these 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 would remain there, listening and counting the hours, until the
Jew or the boys returned.
In all the rooms, the mouldering shutters were fast closed: the bars
which held them were screwed tight into the wood; the only light
which was admitted, stealing 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 this, 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 housetops, blackened
chimneys, and gable-ends. Sometimes, indeed, a 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 lived
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 (to do
him justice, this 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; 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 laps, he applied himself to
a process which Mr. Dawkins designated as ‘japanning his
trotter-cases.’ The 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 sign, 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, looking up. ‘It’s a the--;
you’re one, are you not?’ inquired Oliver, checking himself.
‘I am,’ replied the Dodger. ‘I’d scorn to be anything 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.
‘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 good many ladies and gentlemen,
claiming to be out-and-out Christians, between whom, and Mr. Sikes’
dog, there exist 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 go 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?’
‘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 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.
‘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.
‘Something in this way, old feller,’ said Charly. 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.’ Master Charley 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 means which they themselves 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 fogels
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-handkechers 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! 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 aquirements. 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 moral long hard-working
days; and that he ‘wished he might be busted if he warn’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. After some more jokes on the
same subject, they 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. 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, he was
now slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would
blacken it, and change its hue for ever.