Oliver Twist
picture-card, at a shilling at a time. Nobody accepting the challenge,
and his pipe being by this time smoked out, he proceeded to amuse
himself by sketching a ground-plan of Newgate on the table with the
piece of chalk which had served him in lieu of counters; whistling,
meantime, with peculiar shrillness.
“How precious dull you are, Tommy!” said the Dodger, stopping short
when there had been a long silence; and addressing Mr. Chitling. “What
do you think he’s thinking of, Fagin?”
“How should I know, my dear?” replied the Jew, looking round as he
plied the bellows. “About his losses, maybe; or the little retirement
in the country that he’s just left, eh? Ha! ha! Is that it, my dear?”
“Not a bit of it,” replied the Dodger, stopping the subject of
discourse as Mr. Chitling was about to reply. “What do _you_ say,
Charley?”
“_I_ should say,” replied Master Bates, with a grin, “that he was
uncommon sweet upon Betsy. See how he’s a-blushing! Oh, my eye! here’s
a merry-go-rounder! Tommy Chitling’s in love! Oh, Fagin, Fagin! what a
spree!”
Thoroughly overpowered with the notion of Mr. Chitling being the victim
of the tender passion, Master Bates threw himself back in his chair
with such violence, that he lost his balance, and pitched over upon the
floor; where (the accident abating nothing of his merriment) he lay at
full length until his laugh was over, when he resumed his former
position, and began another laugh.
“Never mind him, my dear,” said the Jew, winking at Mr. Dawkins, and
giving Master Bates a reproving tap with the nozzle of the bellows.
“Betsy’s a fine girl. Stick up to her, Tom. Stick up to her.”
“What I mean to say, Fagin,” replied Mr. Chitling, very red in the
face, “is, that that isn’t anything to anybody here.”
“No more it is,” replied the Jew; “Charley will talk. Don’t mind him,
my dear; don’t mind him. Betsy’s a fine girl. Do as she bids you, Tom,
and you will make your fortune.”
“So I _do_ do as she bids me,” replied Mr. Chitling; “I shouldn’t have
been milled, if it hadn’t been for her advice. But it turned out a good
job for you; didn’t it, Fagin! And what’s six weeks of it? It must
come, some time or another, and why not in the winter time when you
don’t want to go out a-walking so much; eh, Fagin?”
“Ah, to be sure, my dear,” replied the Jew.
“You wouldn’t mind it again, Tom, would you,” asked the Dodger, winking
upon Charley and the Jew, “if Bet was all right?”
“I mean to say that I shouldn’t,” replied Tom, angrily. “There, now.
Ah! Who’ll say as much as that, I should like to know; eh, Fagin?”
“Nobody, my dear,” replied the Jew; “not a soul, Tom. I don’t know one
of ’em that would do it besides you; not one of ’em, my dear.”
“I might have got clear off, if I’d split upon her; mightn’t I, Fagin?”
angrily pursued the poor half-witted dupe. “A word from me would have
done it; wouldn’t it, Fagin?”
“To be sure it would, my dear,” replied the Jew.
“But I didn’t blab it; did I, Fagin?” demanded Tom, pouring question
upon question with great volubility.
“No, no, to be sure,” replied the Jew; “you were too stout-hearted for
that. A deal too stout, my dear!”
“Perhaps I was,” rejoined Tom, looking round; “and if I was, what’s to
laugh at, in that; eh, Fagin?”
The Jew, perceiving that Mr. Chitling was considerably roused, hastened
to assure him that nobody was laughing; and to prove the gravity of the
company, appealed to Master Bates, the principal offender. But,
unfortunately, Charley, in opening his mouth to reply that he was never
more serious in his life, was unable to prevent the escape of such a
violent roar, that the abused Mr. Chitling, without any preliminary
ceremonies, rushed across the room and aimed a blow at the offender;
who, being skilful in evading pursuit, ducked to avoid it, and chose
his time so well that it lighted on the chest of the merry old
gentleman, and caused him to stagger to the wall, where he stood
panting for breath, while Mr. Chitling looked on in intense dismay.
“Hark!” cried the Dodger at this moment, “I heard the tinkler.”
Catching up the light, he crept softly upstairs.
The bell was rung again, with some impatience, while the party were in
darkness. After a short pause, the Dodger reappeared, and whispered
Fagin mysteriously.
“What!” cried the Jew, “alone?”
The Dodger nodded in the affirmative, and, shading the flame of the
candle with his hand, gave Charley Bates a private intimation, in dumb
show, that he had better not be funny just then. Having performed this
friendly office, he fixed his eyes on the Jew’s face, and awaited his
directions.
The old man bit his yellow fingers, and meditated for some seconds; his
face working with agitation the while, as if he dreaded something, and
feared to know the worst. At length he raised his head.
“Where is he?” he asked.
The Dodger pointed to the floor above, and made a gesture, as if to
leave the room.
“Yes,” said the Jew, answering the mute inquiry; “bring him down. Hush!
Quiet, Charley! Gently, Tom! Scarce, scarce!”
This brief direction to Charley Bates, and his recent antagonist, was
softly and immediately obeyed. There was no sound of their whereabout,
when the Dodger descended the stairs, bearing the light in his hand,
and followed by a man in a coarse smock-frock; who, after casting a
hurried glance round the room, pulled off a large wrapper which had
concealed the lower portion of his face, and disclosed: all haggard,
unwashed, and unshorn: the features of flash Toby Crackit.
“How are you, Faguey?” said this worthy, nodding to the Jew. “Pop that
shawl away in my castor, Dodger, so that I may know where to find it
when I cut; that’s the time of day! You’ll be a fine young cracksman
afore the old file now.”
With these words he pulled up the smock-frock; and, winding it round
his middle, drew a chair to the fire, and placed his feet upon the hob.
“See there, Faguey,” he said, pointing disconsolately to his top boots;
“not a drop of Day and Martin since you know when; not a bubble of
blacking, by Jove! But don’t look at me in that way, man. All in good
time. I can’t talk about business till I’ve eat and drank; so produce
the sustainance, and let’s have a quiet fill-out for the first time
these three days!”
The Jew motioned to the Dodger to place what eatables there were, upon
the table; and, seating himself opposite the housebreaker, waited his
leisure.
To judge from appearances, Toby was by no means in a hurry to open the
conversation. At first, the Jew contented himself with patiently
watching his countenance, as if to gain from its expression some clue
to the intelligence he brought; but in vain.
He looked tired and worn, but there was the same complacent repose upon
his features that they always wore: and through dirt, and beard, and
whisker, there still shone, unimpaired, the self-satisfied smirk of
flash Toby Crackit. Then the Jew, in an agony of impatience, watched
every morsel he put into his mouth; pacing up and down the room,
meanwhile, in irrepressible excitement. It was all of no use. Toby
continued to eat with the utmost outward indifference, until he could
eat no more; then, ordering the Dodger out, he closed the door, mixed a
glass of spirits and water, and composed himself for talking.
“First and foremost, Faguey,” said Toby.
“Yes, yes!” interposed the Jew, drawing up his chair.
Mr. Crackit stopped to take a draught of spirits and water, and to
declare that the gin was excellent; then placing his feet against the
low mantelpiece, so as to bring his boots to about the level of his
eye, he quietly resumed.
“First and foremost, Faguey,” said the housebreaker, “how’s Bill?”
“What!” screamed the Jew, starting from his seat.
“Why, you don’t mean to say—” began Toby, turning pale.
“Mean!” cried the Jew, stamping furiously on the ground. “Where are
they? Sikes and the boy! Where are they? Where have they been? Where
are they hiding? Why have they not been here?”
“The crack failed,” said Toby faintly.
“I know it,” replied the Jew, tearing a newspaper from his pocket and
pointing to it. “What more?”
“They fired and hit the boy. We cut over the fields at the back, with
him between us—straight as the crow flies—through hedge and ditch. They
gave chase. Damme! the whole country was awake, and the dogs upon us.”
“The boy!”
“Bill had him on his back, and scudded like the wind. We stopped to
take him between us; his head hung down, and he was cold. They were
close upon our heels; every man for himself, and each from the gallows!
We parted company, and left the youngster lying in a ditch. Alive or
dead, that’s all I know about him.”
The Jew stopped to hear no more; but uttering a loud yell, and twining
his hands in his hair, rushed from the room, and from the house.
CHAPTER XXVI.
IN WHICH A MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER APPEARS UPON THE SCENE; AND MANY
THINGS, INSEPARABLE FROM THIS HISTORY, ARE DONE AND PERFORMED
The old man had gained the street corner, before he began to recover
the effect of Toby Crackit’s intelligence. He had relaxed nothing of
his unusual speed; but was still pressing onward, in the same wild and
disordered manner, when the sudden dashing past of a carriage: and a
boisterous cry from the foot passengers, who saw his danger: drove him
back upon the pavement. Avoiding, as much as was possible, all the main
streets, and skulking only through the by-ways and alleys, he at length
emerged on Snow Hill. Here he walked even faster than before; nor did
he linger until he had again turned into a court; when, as if conscious
that he was now in his proper element, he fell into his usual shuffling
pace, and seemed to breathe more freely.
Near to the spot on which Snow Hill and Holborn Hill meet, opens, upon
the right hand as you come out of the City, a narrow and dismal alley,
leading to Saffron Hill. In its filthy shops are exposed for sale huge
bunches of second-hand silk handkerchiefs, of all sizes and patterns;
for here reside the traders who purchase them from pick-pockets.
Hundreds of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs outside the
windows or flaunting from the door-posts; and the shelves, within, are
piled with them. Confined as the limits of Field Lane are, it has its
barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, and its fried-fish warehouse.
It is a commercial colony of itself: the emporium of petty larceny:
visited at early morning, and setting-in of dusk, by silent merchants,
who traffic in dark back-parlours, and who go as strangely as they
come. Here, the clothesman, the shoe-vamper, and the rag-merchant,
display their goods, as sign-boards to the petty thief; here, stores of
old iron and bones, and heaps of mildewy fragments of woollen-stuff and
linen, rust and rot in the grimy cellars.
It was into this place that the Jew turned. He was well known to the
sallow denizens of the lane; for such of them as were on the look-out
to buy or sell, nodded, familiarly, as he passed along. He replied to
their salutations in the same way; but bestowed no closer recognition
until he reached the further end of the alley; when he stopped, to
address a salesman of small stature, who had squeezed as much of his
person into a child’s chair as the chair would hold, and was smoking a
pipe at his warehouse door.
“Why, the sight of you, Mr. Fagin, would cure the hoptalmy!” said this
respectable trader, in acknowledgment of the Jew’s inquiry after his
health.
“The neighbourhood was a little too hot, Lively,” said Fagin, elevating
his eyebrows, and crossing his hands upon his shoulders.
“Well, I’ve heerd that complaint of it, once or twice before,” replied
the trader; “but it soon cools down again; don’t you find it so?”