the five-pound note at that instant, it is doubtful whether the sally
or the discovery awakened his merriment.
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“Hallo! What’s this?” inquired Sikes, stepping forward as the
Jew seized the note. “That’s mine, Fagin.”
“No, no, my dear,” said the Jew. “Mine, Bill, mine. You shall
have the books.”
“If that ain’t mine!” said Bill Sikes, putting on his hat with a
determined air; “mine and Nancy’s, that is, I’ll take the boy back
again.”
The Jew started. Oliver started too, though from a very
different cause; for he hoped that the dispute might really end in
his being taken back.
“Come! Hand over, will you?” said Sikes.
“This is hardly fair, Bill; hardly fair, is it, Nancy?” inquired the
Jew.
“Fair, or not fair,” retorted Sikes, “hand over, I tell you! Do you
think Nancy and me has got nothing else to do with our precious
time but to spend it in scouting arter, and kidnapping, every
young boy as gets grabbed through you? Give it here, you
avaricious old skeleton; give it here!”
With this gentle remonstrance, Mr. Sikes plucked the note from
between the Jew’s finger and thumb; and looking the old man
coolly in the face, folded it up small, and tied it in his neckerchief.
“That’s for our share of the trouble,” said Sikes; “and not half
enough, neither. You may keep the books, if you’re fond of
reading. If you ain’t, sell ’em.”
“They’re very pretty,” said Charley Bates, who, with sundry
grimaces, had been affecting to read one of the volumes in
question, “beautiful writing, isn’t it, Oliver?” At sight of the
dismayed look with which Oliver regarded his tormentors, Master
Bates, who was blessed with a lively sense of the ludicrous, fell
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into another ecstasy, more boisterous than the first.
“They belong to the old gentleman,” said Oliver, wringing his
hands; “to the good, kind old gentleman who took me into his
house, and had me nursed, when I was near dying of the fever. Oh,
pray send them back; send him back the books and money. Keep
me here all my life long; but pray, pray send them back. He’ll
think I stole them; the old lady—all of them who were so kind to
me—will think I stole them. Oh, do have mercy upon me, and send
them back!”
With those words, which were uttered with all the energy of
passionate grief, Oliver fell upon his knees at the Jews feet; and
beat his hands together, in perfect desperation.
“The boy’s right,” remarked Fagin, looking covertly round, and
knitting his shaggy eyebrows into a hard knot. “You’re right,
Oliver, you’re right; they will think you have stolen ’em. Ha! ha!”
chuckled the Jew, rubbing his hands; “it couldn’t have happened
better, if we had chosen our time!”
“Of course it couldn’t,” replied Sikes; “I know’d that, directly I
see him coming through Clerkenwell, with the books under his
arm. It’s all right enough. They’re soft-hearted psalm-singers, or
they wouldn’t have taken him in at all; and they’ll ask no questions
after him, fear they should be obliged to prosecute, and so get him
lagged. He’s safe enough.”
Oliver had looked from one to the other, while these words
were being spoken, as if he were bewildered, and could scarcely
understand what passed; but when Bill Sikes concluded, he
jumped suddenly to his feet, and tore wildly from the room,
uttering shrieks for help, which made the bare old house echo to
the roof.
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“Keep back the dog, Bill!” cried Nancy, springing before the
door, and closing it as the Jew and his two pupils darted out in
pursuit. “Keep back the dog; he’ll tear the boy to pieces.”
“Serve him right!” cried Sikes, struggling to disengage himself
from the girl’s grasp. “Stand off from me, or I’ll split your head
against the wall.”
“I don’t care for that, Bill, I don’t care for that,” screamed the
girl, struggling violently with the man; “the child shan’t be torn
down by the dog, unless you kill me first.”
“Shan’t he!” said Sikes, setting his teeth. “I’ll soon do that if you
don’t keep off.”
The housekeeper flung the girl from him to the farther end of
the room, just as the Jew and the two boys returned, dragging
Oliver among them.
“What’s the matter here!” said Fagin, looking round.
“The girl’s gone mad I think,” replied Sikes savagely.
“No, she hasn’t,” said Nancy, pale and breathless from the
scuffle; “no, she hasn’t, Fagin; don’t think it.”
“Then keep quiet, will you?” said the Jew, with a threatening
look.
“No, I won’t do that, neither,” replied Nancy, speaking very
loud. “Come! What do you think of that?”
Mr. Fagin was sufficiently well acquainted with the manners
and customs of that particular species of humanity to which Nancy
belonged, to feel tolerably certain that it would be rather unsafe to
prolong any conversation with her, at present. With the view of
diverting the attention of the company, he turned to Oliver.
“So you wanted to get away, my dear, did you?” said the Jew,
taking up a jagged and knotted club which lay in a corner of the
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fireplace; “eh?”
Oliver made no reply. But he watched the Jew’s motions, and
breathed quickly.
“Wanted to get assistance; called for the police; did you?”
sneered the Jew, catching the boy by the arm. “We’ll cure you of
that, my young master.”
The Jew inflicted a smart blow on Oliver’s shoulders with the
club; and was raising it for a second, when the girl, rushing
forward, wrested it from his hand. She flung it into the fire, with a
force that brought some of the glowing coal whirling out into the
room.
“I won’t stand by and see it done, Fagin,” cried the girl. “You’ve
got the boy, and what more would you have?—Let him be—let
him be—or I shall put that mark on some of you, that will bring me
to the gallows before my time.”
The girl stamped her foot violently on the floor as she vented
this threat; and with her lips compressed, and her hands clenched,
looked alternately at the Jew and the other robber: her face quite
colourless from the passion of rage into which she had gradually
worked herself.
“Why, Nancy!” said the Jew, in a soothing tone, after a pause,
during which he and Mr. Sikes had stared at one another in a
disconcerted manner; “you—you’re more clever than ever tonight.
Ha! ha! my dear, you are acting beautifully.”
“Am I!” said the girl. “Take care I don’t overdo it. You will be
the worse for it, Fagin, if I do; and so I tell you in good time to
keep clear of me.”
There is something about a roused woman, especially if she add
to all her other strong passions, the fierce impulses of recklessness
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and despair, which few men like to provoke. The Jew saw that it
would be hopeless to affect any further mistake regarding the
reality of Miss Nancy’s rage; and, shrinking involuntarily back a
few paces, cast a glance, half-imploring and half-cowardly at Sikes,
as if to hint that he was the fittest person to pursue the dialogue.
Mr. Sikes, thus mutely appealed to, and possibly feeling his
personal pride and influence interested in the immediate
reduction of Miss Nancy to reason, gave utterance to about a
couple of score of curses and threats, the rapid production of
which reflected great credit on the fertility of his invention. As
they produced no visible effect on the object against whom they
were discharged, however, he resorted to more tangible
arguments.
“What do you mean by this?” said Sikes, backing the inquiry
with a very common imprecation concerning the most beautiful of
human features, which, if it were heard above, only once out of
every fifty thousand times that it is uttered below, would render
blindness as common a disorder as measles: “what do you mean
by it? Burn my body! Do you know who you are, and what you
are?”
“Oh, yes, I know all about it,” replied the girl, laughing
hysterically; and shaking her head from side to side, with a poor
assumption of indifference.
“Well, then, keep quiet,” rejoined Sikes, with a growl like that
he was accustomed to use when addressing his dog, “or I’ll quiet
you for a good long time to come.”
The girl laughed again, even less composedly than before; and,
darting a hasty look at Sikes, turned her face aside, and bit her lip
till the blood came.
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“You’re a nice one,” added Sikes, as he surveyed her with a
contemptuous air, “to take up the humane and genteel side! A
pretty subject for the child, as you call him, to make a friend of!”
“God Almighty help me, I am!” cried the girl passionately; “and
I wish I had been struck dead in the street or had changed places
with them we passed so near tonight, before I had lent a hand in
bringing him here. He’s a thief, a liar, a devil, all that’s bad, from
this night forth. Isn’t that enough for the old wretch, without
blows?”
“Come, come, Sikes,” said the Jew, appealing to him in a
remonstratory tone, and motioning towards the boys, who were
eagerly attentive to all that passed; “we must have civil words—
civil words, Bill.”
“Civil words!” cried the girl, whose passion was frightful to see.
“Civil words, you villain! Yes, you deserve ’em from me. I thieved
for you when I was a child not half as old as this!” pointing to
Oliver. “I have been in the same trade, and in the same service, for
twelve years since. Don’t you know it? Speak out! Don’t you know
it?”
“Well, well,” replied the Jew, with an attempt at pacification
“and, if you have, it’s your living!”
“Aye, it is!” returned the girl, not speaking, but pouring out the
words in one continuous and vehement scream. “It is my living;
and the cold, wet, dirty streets are my home; and you’re the
wretch that drove me to them long ago, and that’ll keep me there,
day and night, day and night, till I die!”
“I shall do you a mischief!” interposed the Jew, goaded by these
reproaches; “a mischief worse than that, if you say much more!”
The girl said nothing; but, tearing her hair and dress in a
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transport of frenzy, made such a rush at the Jew as would
probably have left signal marks of her revenge upon him, had not
her wrists been seized by Sikes at the right moment; upon which,
she made a few ineffectual struggles, and fainted. “She’s all right
now,” said Sikes, laying her down in a corner. “She’s uncommon
strong in the arms, when she’s up in this way.”
The Jew wiped his forehead and smiled, as if it were a relief to
have the disturbance over; but neither he, nor Sikes nor the dog,
nor the boys, seemed to consider it in any other light than a
common occurrence incidental to business.
“It’s the worst of having to do with women,” said the Jew,
replacing his club; “but they’re clever and we can’t get on, in our
line, without ’em. Charley, show Oliver to bed.”
“I suppose he’d better not wear his best clothes tomorrow,
Fagin, had he?” inquired Charley Bates.
“Certainly not,” replied the Jew, reciprocating the grin with
which Charley put the question.
Master Bates, apparently much delighted with his commission,
took the cleft stick, and led Oliver into an adjacent kitchen, where
there were two or three of the beds on which he had slept before;
and here, with many uncontrollable bursts of laughter, he
produced the identical old suit of clothes which Oliver had so
much congratulated himself upon leaving off at Mr. Brownlow’s;
and the accidental display of which, to Fagin, by the Jew who
purchased them, had been the very first clue received of his
whereabouts.
“Pull off the smart ones,” said Charles, “and I’ll give ’em to
Fagin to take care of. What fun it is!”
Poor Oliver unwillingly complied. Master Bates, rolling up the
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new clothes under his arm, departed from the room, leaving Oliver
in the dark, and locking the door behind him.
The noise of Charley’s laughter, and the voice of Miss Betsy,
who opportunely arrived to throw water over her friend, and
perform other feminine offices for the promotion of her recovery,
might have kept many people awake under more happy
circumstances than those in which Oliver was placed. But he was
sick and weary; and he soon fell sound asleep.
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Chapter 17
Oliver’s destiny continuing unpropitious, brings a
great man to London to injure his reputation.
It is the custom on the stage, in all good murderous
melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes in as
regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of
streaky bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down
by fetters and misfortunes; in the next scene, his faithful but
unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song. We
behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a
proud and ruthless baron, her virtue and her life alike in danger,
drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the
other; and, just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest
pitch, a whistle is heard, and we are straightway transported to
the great hall of the castle, where a grey-headed seneschal sings a
funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all
sorts of places, from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in
company, carolling perpetually.
Such changes appear absurd; but they are not so unnatural as
they would seem at first sight. The transitions in real life from
well-spread boards to deathbeds, and from mourning weeds to
holiday garments, are not a whit less startling; only, there, we are
busy actors, instead of passive lookers-on, which makes a vast
difference. The actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind to
violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling,
which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once
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condemned as outrageous and preposterous.
As sudden shiftings of the scene, and rapid changes of time and
place, are not only sanctioned in books by long usage, but are by
many considered as the great art of authorship—an author’s skill
in his craft being, by such critics, chiefly estimated with relation to
the dilemmas in which he leaves his characters at the end of every
chapter—this brief introduction to the present one may perhaps
be deemed unnecessary. If so, let it be considered a delicate
intimation on the part of the historian that he is going back
directly to the town in which Oliver Twist was born; the reader
taking it for granted that there are good and substantial reasons
for making the journey, or he would not be invited to proceed
upon such an expedition.
Mr. Bumble emerged at early morning from the workhouse
gate, and walked with portly carriage and commanding steps, up
the High Street. He was in the full bloom and pride of beadlehood;
his cocked hat and coat were dazzling in the morning sun; he
clutched his cane with the vigorous tenacity of health and power.
Mr. Bumble always carried his head high; but this morning it was
higher than usual. There was an abstraction in his eye, an
elevation in his air, which might have warned an observant
stranger that thoughts were passing in the beadle’s mind, too
great for utterance.
Mr. Bumble stopped not to converse with the small shopkeepers and others who spoke to him, deferentially, as he passed
along. He merely returned their salutations with a wave of his
hand, and relaxed not in his dignified pace, until he reached the
farm where Mrs. Mann tended the infant paupers with parochial
care.
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“Drat that beadle!” said Mrs. Mann, hearing the well-known
shaking at the garden gate. “If it isn’t him at this time in the
morning! Lauk, Mr. Bumble, only think of its being you! Well, dear
me, it is a pleasure, this is! Come into the parlour, sir, please.”
The first sentence was addressed to Susan; and the
exclamations of delight were uttered to Mr. Bumble, as the good
lady unlocked the garden gate, and showed him, with great
