Oliver Twist
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 highway. But
the turnpike-man gave him a meal of bread and cheese; and the old lady,
who had a shipwrecked grandson 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 door-step.
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
through, 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 head, and returned his steady look. Upon this, the
boy crossed over; and walking close up to Oliver, said,
“Hullo, 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 even
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 of 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 the
bluchers.
“Hullo, 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 com-pan-i-on.”
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 a beak’s order, it’s not straight
forerd, but always agoing up, and niver 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; acos 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 expedient 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.
“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 was a peculiar pet and
_protégé_ of the elderly gentleman before mentioned.
Mr. Dawkins’s appearance did not say a vast deal in favour of the
comforts which his patron’s interest obtained for those whom he took
under his protection; but, as he had a rather flightly and dissolute
mode of conversing, and furthermore avowed that among his intimate
friends he was better known by the _sobriquet_ of “The Artful Dodger,”
Oliver concluded that, being of a dissipated and careless turn, the
moral precepts of his benefactor had hitherto been thrown away upon
him. Under this impression, he secretly resolved to cultivate the good
opinion of the old gentleman as quickly as possible; and, if he found
the Dodger incorrigible, as he more than half suspected he should, to
decline the honour of his farther acquaintance.
As John Dawkins objected to their entering London before nightfall, it
was nearly eleven o’clock when they reached the turnpike at Islington.
They crossed from the Angel into St. John’s Road; struck down the small
street which terminates at Sadler’s Wells Theatre; through Exmouth
Street and Coppice Row; down the little court by the side of the
workhouse; across the classic ground which once bore the name of
Hockley-in-the-Hole; thence into Little Saffron Hill; and so into
Saffron Hill the Great: along which the Dodger scudded at a rapid pace,
directing Oliver to follow close at his heels.
Although Oliver had enough to occupy his attention in keeping sight of
his leader, he could not help bestowing a few hasty glances on either
side of the way, as he passed along. A dirtier or more wretched place
he had never seen. The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air
was impregnated with filthy odours.
There were a good many small shops; but the only stock in trade
appeared to be heaps of children, who, even at that time of night, were
crawling in and out at the doors, or screaming from the inside. The
sole places that seemed to prosper amid the general blight of the
place, were the public-houses; and in them, the lowest orders of Irish
were wrangling with might and main. Covered ways and yards, which here
and there diverged from the main street, disclosed little knots of
houses, where drunken men and women were positively wallowing in filth;
and from several of the door-ways, great ill-looking fellows were
cautiously emerging, bound, to all appearance, on no very well-disposed
or harmless errands.
Oliver was just considering whether he hadn’t better run away, when
they reached the bottom of the hill. His conductor, catching him by the
arm, pushed open the door of a house near Field Lane; and drawing him
into the passage, closed it behind them.
“Now, then!” cried a voice from below, in reply to a whistle from the
Dodger.
“Plummy and slam!” was the reply.
This seemed to be some watchword or signal that all was right; for the
light of a feeble candle gleamed on the wall at the remote end of the
passage; and a man’s face peeped out, from where a balustrade of the
old kitchen staircase had been broken away.
“There’s two on you,” said the man, thrusting the candle farther out,
and shielding his eyes with his hand. “Who’s the t’other one?”
“A new pal,” replied Jack Dawkins, pulling Oliver forward.
“Where did he come from?”
“Greenland. Is Fagin upstairs?”
“Yes, he’s a sortin’ the wipes. Up with you!” The candle was drawn
back, and the face disappeared.
Oliver, groping his way with one hand, and having the other firmly
grasped by his companion, ascended with much difficulty the dark and
broken stairs: which his conductor mounted with an ease and expedition
that showed he was well acquainted with them.
He threw open the door of a back-room, and drew Oliver in after him.
The walls and ceiling of the room were perfectly black with age and
dirt. There was a deal table before the fire: upon which were a candle,
stuck in a ginger-beer bottle, two or three pewter pots, a loaf and
butter, and a plate. In a frying-pan, which was on the fire, and which
was secured to the mantelshelf by a string, some sausages were cooking;
and standing over them, with a toasting-fork in his hand, was a very
old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was
obscured by a quantity of matted red hair. He was dressed in a greasy
flannel gown, with his throat bare; and seemed to be dividing his
attention between the frying-pan and the clothes-horse, over which a
great number of silk handkerchiefs were hanging. Several rough beds
made of old sacks, were huddled side by side on the floor. Seated round
the table were four or five boys, none older than the Dodger, smoking
long clay pipes, and drinking spirits with the air of middle-aged men.
These all crowded about their associate as he whispered a few words to