“She didn’t,” said Oliver.
“She did,” said Mrs. Sowerberry.
“It’s a lie!” said Oliver.
Mrs. Sowerberry burst into a flood of tears.
This flood of tears left Mr. Sowerberry no alternative. If he had
hesitated for one instant to punish Oliver most severely, it must be
quite clear to every experienced reader that he would have been,
according to all precedents in disputes of matrimony established, a
brute, an unnatural husband, an insulting creature, a base
imitation of a man, and various other agreeable characters too
numerous for recital within the limits of this chapter. To do him
justice, he was, as far as his power went—it was not very
extensive—kindly disposed towards the boy; perhaps, because it
was his interest to do so; perhaps, because his wife disliked him.
The flood of tears, however, left him no resource; so he at once
gave him a drubbing, which satisfied even Mrs. Sowerberry
herself, and rendered Mr. Bumble’s subsequent application of the
parochial cane, rather unnecessary. For the rest of the day, he was
shut up in the back kitchen, in company with a pump and a slice of
bread; and, at night, Mrs. Sowerberry, after making various
remarks outside the door, by no means complimentary to the
memory of his mother, looked into the room, and, amidst the jeers
and pointings of Noah and Charlotte, ordered him upstairs to his
dismal bed.
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It was not until he was left alone in the silence and stillness of
the gloomy workshop of the undertaker, that Oliver gave way to
the feelings which the day’s treatment may be supposed likely to
have awakened in a mere child. He had listened to their taunts
with a look of contempt; he had borne the lash without a cry, for
he felt that pride swelling in his heart which would have kept
down a shriek to the last, though they had roasted him alive. But
now, when there were none to see or hear him, he fell upon his
knees on the floor; and, hiding his face in his hands, wept such
tears as—God send for the credit of our nature—few so young may
ever have cause to pour out before Him!
For a long time, Oliver remained motionless in this attitude.
The candle was burning low in the socket when he rose to his feet.
Having gazed curiously round him and listened intently, he gently
undid the fastenings of the door, and looked abroad.
It was a cold, dark night. The stars seemed, to the boy’s eyes,
farther from the earth than he had ever seen them before; there
was no wind; and the sombre shadows thrown by the trees upon
the ground, looked sepulchral and death-like, from being so still.
He softly reclosed the door. Having availed himself of the expiring
light of the candle to tie up in a handkerchief the few articles of
wearing apparel he had, sat himself down upon a bench, to wait
for morning.
With the first ray of light that struggled through the crevices in
the shutters, Oliver arose, and again unbarred the door. One timid
look around—one moment’s pause of hesitation—he had closed it
behind him, and was in the open street.
He looked to the right and to the left, uncertain whither to fly.
He remembered to have seen the wagons, as they went out, toiling
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up the hill. He took the same route; and, arriving at a footpath
across the fields, which he knew, after some distance, led out again
into the road, struck into it, and walked quickly on.
Along the same footpath, Oliver well remembered he had
trotted beside Mr. Bumble, when he first carried him to the
workhouse from the farm. His way lay directly in front of the
cottage. His heart beat quickly when he bethought himself of this;
and he half-resolved to turn back. He had come a long way though,
and should lose a great deal of time by doing so. Besides, it was so
early that there was very little fear of his being seen; so he walked
on.
He reached the house. There was no appearance of its inmates
stirring at that early hour. Oliver stopped, and peeped into the
garden. A child was weeding one of the little beds; as he stopped,
he raised his pale face and disclosed the features of one of his
former companions. Oliver felt glad to see him, before he went;
for, though younger than himself, he had been his little friend and
playmate. They had been beaten, and starved, and shut up
together, many and many a time.
“Hush, Dick!” said Oliver, as the boy ran to the gate, and thrust
his thin arm between the rails to greet him. “Is any one up?”
“Nobody but me,” replied the child.
“You mustn’t say you saw me, Dick,” said Oliver. “I am running
away. They beat and ill-use me, Dick; and I am going to seek my
fortune, some long way off. I don’t know where. How pale you
are!”
“I heard the doctor tell them I was dying,” replied the child,
with a faint smile. “I am very glad to see you, dear; but don’t stop,
don’t stop!”
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“Yes, yes, I will, to say good-bye to you,” replied Oliver. “I shall
see you again, Dick. I know I shall! You will be well and happy!”
“I hope so,” replied the child. “After I am dead, but not before. I
know the doctor must be right, Oliver, because I dream so much of
heaven, and angels, and kind faces that I never see when I am
awake. Kiss me,” said the child, climbing up the low gate, and
flinging his little arms round Oliver’s neck. “Good-bye, dear! God
bless you!”
The blessing was from a young child’s lips, but it was the first
that Oliver had ever heard invoked upon his head; and through
the struggles and sufferings, and troubles and changes, of his after
life, he never once forgot it.
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Chapter 8
Oliver Walks To London—He Encounters On The
Road A Strange Sort Of Young Gentleman.
O liver reached the stile, at which the by-path terminated;
and once more gained the high-road. It was eight o’clock
now. Though he was nearly five miles away from the
town, he ran, and hid behind the hedges, by turns, till noon,
fearing that he might be pursued and overtaken. Then he sat
down to rest by the side of the milestone, and began to think, for
the first time, where he had better go and try to live.
The stone by which he was seated, bore, in large characters, an
intimation that it was just seventy miles from that spot to London.
The name awakened a new train of ideas in the boy’s mind.
London!—that great large place!—nobody—not even Mr.
Bumble—could ever find him there! He had often heard the old
men in the workhouse, too, say that no lad of spirit need want in
London; and that there were ways of living in that vast city, which
those who had been bred up in country parts had no idea of. It was
the very place for a homeless boy, who must die in the streets
unless some one helped him. As these things passed through his
thoughts, he jumped upon his feet, and again walked forward.
He had diminished the distance between himself and London
by full four miles more, before he recollected how much he must
undergo ere he could hope to reach his place of destination. As
this consideration forced itself upon him, he slackened his pace a
little, and meditated upon his means of getting there. He had a
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crust of bread, a coarse shirt, and two pairs of stockings, in his
bundle. He had a penny too—a gift of Sowerberry’s after some
funeral in which he had acquitted himself more than ordinarily
well—in his pocket. “A clean shirt,” thought Oliver, “is a very
comfortable thing, very; and so are two pairs of darned stockings;
and so is a penny; but they are small helps to a sixty-five miles’
walk in wintertime.” But Oliver’s thoughts, like those of most
other people, although they were extremely ready and active to
point out his difficulties, were wholly at a loss to suggest any
feasible mode of surmounting them; so, after a good deal of
thinking to no particular purpose, he changed his little bundle
over to the other shoulder, and trudged on.
Oliver walked twenty miles that day; and all that time tasted
nothing but the crust of dry bread, and a few draughts of water,
which he begged at the cottage doors by the roadside. When the
night came, he turned into a meadow; and, creeping close under a
hay-rick, determined to lie there, till morning. He felt frightened at
first, for the wind moaned dismally over the empty fields; and he
was cold and hungry, and more alone than he had ever felt before.
Being very tired with his walk, however, he soon fell asleep and
forgot his troubles.
He felt cold and stiff, when he got up next morning, and so
hungry that he was obliged to exchange the penny for a small loaf,
in the very first village through which he passed. He had walked
no more than twelve miles, when night closed in again. His feet
were sore, and his legs so weak that they trembled beneath him.
Another night passed in the bleak, damp air, made him worse;
when he set forward on his journey next morning, he could hardly
crawl along.
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He waited at the bottom of a steep hill till a stage-coach came
up, and then begged of the outside passengers; but there were
very few who took any notice of him; and even those told him to
wait till they got to the top of the hill and then let them see how far
he could run for a halfpenny. Poor Oliver tried to keep up with the
coach a little way, but was unable to do it, by reason of his fatigue
and sore feet. When the outsiders saw this, they put their
halfpence back into their pockets again, declaring that he was an
idle young dog, and didn’t deserve anything; and the coach rattled
away and left only a cloud of dust behind.
In some villages, large painted boards were fixed up warning all
persons who begged within the district, that they would be sent to
jail. This frightened Oliver very much, and made him glad to get
out of those villages with all possible expedition. In others, he
would stand about the inn-yards, and look mournfully at every one
who passed, a proceeding which generally terminated in the
landlady’s ordering one of the post-boys who were lounging about,
to drive that strange boy out of the place, for she was sure he had
come to steal something. If he begged at a farmer’s house, ten to
one but they threatened to set the dog on him; and when he
showed his nose in a shop, they talked about the beadle—which
brought Oliver’s heart into his mouth—very often the only thing
he had there, for many hours together.
In fact, if it had not been for a good-hearted turnpike-man and a
benevolent old lady, Oliver’s troubles would have been shortened
by the very same process which had put an end to his mother’s; in
other words, he would most assuredly have fallen dead upon the
king’s pathway. But the turnpike-man gave him a meal of bread
and cheese; and the ‘old lady, who had a shipwrecked grandson
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wandering barefoot in some distant part of the earth, took pity
upon the poor orphan and gave him what little she could afford—
and more—with such kind and gentle words, and such tears of
sympathy and compassion, that they sank deeper into Oliver’s
soul, than all the sufferings he had ever undergone.
Early on the seventh morning, after he had left his native place,
Oliver limped slowly into the little town of Barnet. The window
shutters were closed; the street was empty; not a soul had
awakened to the business of the day. The sun was rising in all its
splendid beauty; but the light only served to show the boy his own
lonesomeness and desolation, as he sat with bleeding feet and
covered with dust, upon a doorstep.
By degrees, the shutters were opened; the window-blinds were
drawn up; and people began passing to and fro. Some few stopped
to gaze at Oliver for a moment or two, or turned round to stare at
him as they hurried by; but none relieved him, or troubled
themselves to inquire how he came there. He had no heart to beg.
And there he sat.
He had been crouching on the step for some time, wondering at
the great number of public houses (every other house in Barnet
was a tavern, large or small), gazing listlessly at the coaches as
they passed trough, and thinking how strange it seemed that they
could do, with ease, in a few hours, what it had taken him a whole
week of courage and determination beyond his years to
accomplish, when he was roused by observing that a boy, who had
passed him carelessly some minutes before, had returned, and was
now surveying him most earnestly from the opposite side of the
way. He took little heed of this at first; but the boy remained in the
same attitude of close observation so long, that Oliver raised his
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head, and returned his steady look. Upon this, the boy crossed
over; and, walking close up to Oliver, said:
“Hollo, my covey! What’s the row?”
The boy who addressed this inquiry to the young wayfarer, was
about his own age; but one of the queerest-looking boys that
Oliver had ever seen. He was a snub-nosed, flat-browed, common-
faced boy enough; and as dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see;
but he had about him all the airs and manners of a man. He was
short for his age; with rather bow-legs, and little, sharp, ugly eyes.
His hat was stuck on the top of his head so lightly, that it
threatened to fall off every moment—and would have done so,
very often, if the wearer had not had a knack of every now and
then ,giving his head a sudden twitch, which brought it back to its
old place again. He wore a man’s coat, which reached nearly to his
heels. He had turned the cuffs back, half-way up his arm, to get his
hands out of the sleeves, apparently with the ultimate view of
thrusting them into the pockets of his corduroy trousers; for there
he kept them. He was, altogether, as roystering and swaggering a
young gentleman as ever stood four feet six, or something less, in
his bluchers.
“Hollo, my covey! What’s the row?” said this strange young
gentleman to Oliver.
“I am very hungry and tired,” replied Oliver, the tears standing
in his eyes as he spoke. “I have walked a long way. I have been
walking these seven days.”
“Walking for sivin days!” said the young gentleman. “Oh, I see.
Beak’s order, eh? But,” he added, noticing Oliver’s look of
surprise, “I suppose you don’t know what a beak is, my flash compan-i-on.”
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Oliver mildly replied, that he had always heard a bird’s mouth
described by the term in question.
“My eyes, how green!” exclaimed the young gentleman. “Why,
a beak’s a madgst’rate; and when you walk by beak’s order, it’s not
straight forerd, but always a-going up, and nivir a-coming down
agin. Was you never on the mill?”
“What mill?” inquired Oliver.
“What mill! Why, the mill—the mill as takes up so little room
that it’ll work inside a stone jug; and always goes better when the
wind’s low with people, than when it’s high; a-cos then they can’t
get workmen. But come,” said the young gentleman; “you want
grub, and you shall have it. I’m at low-water mark myself—only
one bob and a magpie; but, as far as it goes, I’ll fork out and
stump. Up with you on your pins. There! Now then! Morrice!”
Assisting Oliver to rise, the young gentleman took him to an
adjacent chandler’s shop, where he purchased a sufficiency of
ready-dressed ham and a half-quartern loaf, or, as he himself
expressed it, “a fourpenny bran;” the ham being kept clean and
preserved from dust, by the ingenious expedience of making a
hole in the loaf by pulling out a portion of the crumb, and stuffing
it therein. Taking the bread under his arm, the young gentleman
turned into a small public-house, and led the way to a tap-room in
the rear of the premises. Here, a pot of beer was brought in, by
direction of the mysterious youth; and Oliver, falling to, at his new
friend’s bidding, made a long and hearty meal, during the progress
of which, the strange boy eyed him from time to time with great
attention.
“Going to London?” said the strange boy, when Oliver had at
length concluded.
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“Yes.”
“Got any lodgings?”
“No.”
“Money?”
“No.”
The strange boy whistled; and put his arms into his pockets, as
far as the big coat sleeves would let them go.
“Do you live in London?” inquired Oliver.
“Yes. I do, when I’m at home,” replied the boy. “I suppose you
want some place to sleep in tonight, don’t you?”
“I do, indeed,” answered Oliver. “I have not slept under a roof
since I left the country.”
“Don’t fret your eyelids on that score,” said the young
gentleman. “I’ve got to be in London tonight; and I know a
’spectable old gentleman as lives there, wot’ll give you lodgings for
nothink, and never ask for the change—that is, if any gentleman
he knows interduces you. And don’t he know me? Oh, no! Not in
the least! By no means. Certainly not!” The young gentleman
smiled, as if to intimate that the latter fragments of discourse were
playfully ironical; and finished the beer as he did so.
This unexpected offer of shelter was too tempting to be
resisted; especially as it was immediately followed up, by the
assurance that the old gentleman referred to, would doubtless
provide Oliver with a comfortable place, without loss of time This
led to a more friendly and confidential dialogue; from which Oliver
discovered that his friend’s name was Jack Dawkins, and that he
