Oliver Twist
“Hem!” said Mr. Bumble, summoning up all his native dignity. “These
women at least shall continue to respect the prerogative. Hallo! hallo
there! What do you mean by this noise, you hussies?”
With these words, Mr. Bumble opened the door, and walked in with a very
fierce and angry manner: which was at once exchanged for a most
humiliated and cowering air, as his eyes unexpectedly rested on the
form of his lady wife.
“My dear,” said Mr. Bumble, “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Didn’t know I was here!” repeated Mrs. Bumble. “What do _you_ do
here?”
“I thought they were talking rather too much to be doing their work
properly, my dear,” replied Mr. Bumble: glancing distractedly at a
couple of old women at the wash-tub, who were comparing notes of
admiration at the workhouse-master’s humility.
“_You_ thought they were talking too much?” said Mrs. Bumble. “What
business is it of yours?”
“Why, my dear—” urged Mr. Bumble submissively.
“What business is it of yours?” demanded Mrs. Bumble, again.
“It’s very true, you’re matron here, my dear,” submitted Mr. Bumble;
“but I thought you mightn’t be in the way just then.”
“I’ll tell you what, Mr. Bumble,” returned his lady. “We don’t want any
of your interference. You’re a great deal too fond of poking your nose
into things that don’t concern you, making everybody in the house
laugh, the moment your back is turned, and making yourself look like a
fool every hour in the day. Be off; come!”
Mr. Bumble, seeing with excruciating feelings, the delight of the two
old paupers, who were tittering together most rapturously, hesitated
for an instant. Mrs. Bumble, whose patience brooked no delay, caught up
a bowl of soap-suds, and motioning him towards the door, ordered him
instantly to depart, on pain of receiving the contents upon his portly
person.
What could Mr. Bumble do? He looked dejectedly round, and slunk away;
and, as he reached the door, the titterings of the paupers broke into a
shrill chuckle of irrepressible delight. It wanted but this. He was
degraded in their eyes; he had lost caste and station before the very
paupers; he had fallen from all the height and pomp of beadleship, to
the lowest depth of the most snubbed hen-peckery.
“All in two months!” said Mr. Bumble, filled with dismal thoughts. “Two
months! No more than two months ago, I was not only my own master, but
everybody else’s, so far as the porochial workhouse was concerned, and
now!—”
It was too much. Mr. Bumble boxed the ears of the boy who opened the
gate for him (for he had reached the portal in his reverie); and
walked, distractedly, into the street.
He walked up one street, and down another, until exercise had abated
the first passion of his grief; and then the revulsion of feeling made
him thirsty. He passed a great many public-houses; but, at length
paused before one in a by-way, whose parlour, as he gathered from a
hasty peep over the blinds, was deserted, save by one solitary
customer. It began to rain, heavily, at the moment. This determined
him. Mr. Bumble stepped in; and ordering something to drink, as he
passed the bar, entered the apartment into which he had looked from the
street.
The man who was seated there, was tall and dark, and wore a large
cloak. He had the air of a stranger; and seemed, by a certain
haggardness in his look, as well as by the dusty soils on his dress, to
have travelled some distance. He eyed Bumble askance, as he entered,
but scarcely deigned to nod his head in acknowledgment of his
salutation.
Mr. Bumble had quite dignity enough for two; supposing even that the
stranger had been more familiar: so he drank his gin-and-water in
silence, and read the paper with great show of pomp and circumstance.
It so happened, however: as it will happen very often, when men fall
into company under such circumstances: that Mr. Bumble felt, every now
and then, a powerful inducement, which he could not resist, to steal a
look at the stranger: and that whenever he did so, he withdrew his
eyes, in some confusion, to find that the stranger was at that moment
stealing a look at him. Mr. Bumble’s awkwardness was enhanced by the
very remarkable expression of the stranger’s eye, which was keen and
bright, but shadowed by a scowl of distrust and suspicion, unlike
anything he had ever observed before, and repulsive to behold.
When they had encountered each other’s glance several times in this
way, the stranger, in a harsh, deep voice, broke silence.
“Were you looking for me,” he said, “when you peered in at the window?”
“Not that I am aware of, unless you’re Mr.—” Here Mr. Bumble stopped
short; for he was curious to know the stranger’s name, and thought in
his impatience, he might supply the blank.
“I see you were not,” said the stranger; an expression of quiet sarcasm
playing about his mouth; “or you have known my name. You don’t know it.
I would recommend you not to ask for it.”
“I meant no harm, young man,” observed Mr. Bumble, majestically.
“And have done none,” said the stranger.
Another silence succeeded this short dialogue: which was again broken
by the stranger.
“I have seen you before, I think?” said he. “You were differently
dressed at that time, and I only passed you in the street, but I should
know you again. You were beadle here, once; were you not?”
“I was,” said Mr. Bumble, in some surprise; “porochial beadle.”
“Just so,” rejoined the other, nodding his head. “It was in that
character I saw you. What are you now?”
“Master of the workhouse,” rejoined Mr. Bumble, slowly and
impressively, to check any undue familiarity the stranger might
otherwise assume. “Master of the workhouse, young man!”
“You have the same eye to your own interest, that you always had, I
doubt not?” resumed the stranger, looking keenly into Mr. Bumble’s
eyes, as he raised them in astonishment at the question.
“Don’t scruple to answer freely, man. I know you pretty well, you see.”
“I suppose, a married man,” replied Mr. Bumble, shading his eyes with
his hand, and surveying the stranger, from head to foot, in evident
perplexity, “is not more averse to turning an honest penny when he can,
than a single one. Porochial officers are not so well paid that they
can afford to refuse any little extra fee, when it comes to them in a
civil and proper manner.”
The stranger smiled, and nodded his head again: as much to say, he had
not mistaken his man; then rang the bell.
“Fill this glass again,” he said, handing Mr. Bumble’s empty tumbler to
the landlord. “Let it be strong and hot. You like it so, I suppose?”
“Not too strong,” replied Mr. Bumble, with a delicate cough.
“You understand what that means, landlord!” said the stranger, drily.
The host smiled, disappeared, and shortly afterwards returned with a
steaming jorum: of which, the first gulp brought the water into Mr.
Bumble’s eyes.
“Now listen to me,” said the stranger, after closing the door and
window. “I came down to this place, today, to find you out; and, by
one of those chances which the devil throws in the way of his friends
sometimes, you walked into the very room I was sitting in, while you
were uppermost in my mind. I want some information from you. I don’t
ask you to give it for nothing, slight as it is. Put up that, to begin
with.”
As he spoke, he pushed a couple of sovereigns across the table to his
companion, carefully, as though unwilling that the chinking of money
should be heard without. When Mr. Bumble had scrupulously examined the
coins, to see that they were genuine, and had put them up, with much
satisfaction, in his waistcoat-pocket, he went on:
“Carry your memory back—let me see—twelve years, last winter.”
“It’s a long time,” said Mr. Bumble. “Very good. I’ve done it.”
“The scene, the workhouse.”
“Good!”
“And the time, night.”
“Yes.”
“And the place, the crazy hole, wherever it was, in which miserable
drabs brought forth the life and health so often denied to
themselves—gave birth to puling children for the parish to rear; and
hid their shame, rot ’em in the grave!”
“The lying-in room, I suppose?” said Mr. Bumble, not quite following
the stranger’s excited description.
“Yes,” said the stranger. “A boy was born there.”
“A many boys,” observed Mr. Bumble, shaking his head, despondingly.
“A murrain on the young devils!” cried the stranger; “I speak of one; a
meek-looking, pale-faced boy, who was apprenticed down here, to a
coffin-maker—I wish he had made his coffin, and screwed his body in
it—and who afterwards ran away to London, as it was supposed.”
“Why, you mean Oliver! Young Twist!” said Mr. Bumble; “I remember him,
of course. There wasn’t a obstinater young rascal—”
“It’s not of him I want to hear; I’ve heard enough of him,” said the
stranger, stopping Mr. Bumble in the outset of a tirade on the subject
of poor Oliver’s vices. “It’s of a woman; the hag that nursed his
mother. Where is she?”
“Where is she?” said Mr. Bumble, whom the gin-and-water had rendered
facetious. “It would be hard to tell. There’s no midwifery there,
whichever place she’s gone to; so I suppose she’s out of employment,
anyway.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the stranger, sternly.
“That she died last winter,” rejoined Mr. Bumble.
The man looked fixedly at him when he had given this information, and
although he did not withdraw his eyes for some time afterwards, his
gaze gradually became vacant and abstracted, and he seemed lost in
thought. For some time, he appeared doubtful whether he ought to be
relieved or disappointed by the intelligence; but at length he breathed
more freely; and withdrawing his eyes, observed that it was no great
matter. With that he rose, as if to depart.
But Mr. Bumble was cunning enough; and he at once saw that an
opportunity was opened, for the lucrative disposal of some secret in
the possession of his better half. He well remembered the night of old
Sally’s death, which the occurrences of that day had given him good
reason to recollect, as the occasion on which he had proposed to Mrs.
Corney; and although that lady had never confided to him the disclosure
of which she had been the solitary witness, he had heard enough to know
that it related to something that had occurred in the old woman’s
attendance, as workhouse nurse, upon the young mother of Oliver Twist.
Hastily calling this circumstance to mind, he informed the stranger,
with an air of mystery, that one woman had been closeted with the old
harridan shortly before she died; and that she could, as he had reason
to believe, throw some light on the subject of his inquiry.
“How can I find her?” said the stranger, thrown off his guard; and
plainly showing that all his fears (whatever they were) were aroused
afresh by the intelligence.
“Only through me,” rejoined Mr. Bumble.
“When?” cried the stranger, hastily.
“Tomorrow,” rejoined Bumble.
“At nine in the evening,” said the stranger, producing a scrap of
paper, and writing down upon it, an obscure address by the water-side,
in characters that betrayed his agitation; “at nine in the evening,
bring her to me there. I needn’t tell you to be secret. It’s your
interest.”
With these words, he led the way to the door, after stopping to pay for
the liquor that had been drunk. Shortly remarking that their roads were
different, he departed, without more ceremony than an emphatic
repetition of the hour of appointment for the following night.
On glancing at the address, the parochial functionary observed that it
contained no name. The stranger had not gone far, so he made after him
to ask it.
“What do you want?” cried the man, turning quickly round, as Bumble
touched him on the arm. “Following me?”
“Only to ask a question,” said the other, pointing to the scrap of
paper. “What name am I to ask for?”