Oliver Twist
At this, the charity-boy looked monstrous fierce; and said that Oliver
would want one before long, if he cut jokes with his superiors in that
way.
“Yer don’t know who I am, I suppose, Work’us?” said the charity-boy, in
continuation: descending from the top of the post, meanwhile, with
edifying gravity.
“No, sir,” rejoined Oliver.
“I’m Mister Noah Claypole,” said the charity-boy, “and you’re under me.
Take down the shutters, yer idle young ruffian!” With this, Mr.
Claypole administered a kick to Oliver, and entered the shop with a
dignified air, which did him great credit. It is difficult for a
large-headed, small-eyed youth, of lumbering make and heavy
countenance, to look dignified under any circumstances; but it is more
especially so, when superadded to these personal attractions are a red
nose and yellow smalls.
Oliver, having taken down the shutters, and broken a pane of glass in
his effort to stagger away beneath the weight of the first one to a
small court at the side of the house in which they were kept during the
day, was graciously assisted by Noah: who having consoled him with the
assurance that “he’d catch it,” condescended to help him. Mr.
Sowerberry came down soon after. Shortly afterwards, Mrs. Sowerberry
appeared. Oliver having “caught it,” in fulfilment of Noah’s
prediction, followed that young gentleman down the stairs to breakfast.
“Come near the fire, Noah,” said Charlotte. “I saved a nice little bit
of bacon for you from master’s breakfast. Oliver, shut that door at
Mister Noah’s back, and take them bits that I’ve put out on the cover
of the bread-pan. There’s your tea; take it away to that box, and drink
it there, and make haste, for they’ll want you to mind the shop. D’ye
hear?”
“D’ye hear, Work’us?” said Noah Claypole.
“Lor, Noah!” said Charlotte, “what a rum creature you are! Why don’t
you let the boy alone?”
“Let him alone!” said Noah. “Why everybody lets him alone enough, for
the matter of that. Neither his father nor his mother will ever
interfere with him. All his relations let him have his own way pretty
well. Eh, Charlotte? He! he! he!”
“Oh, you queer soul!” said Charlotte, bursting into a hearty laugh, in
which she was joined by Noah; after which they both looked scornfully
at poor Oliver Twist, as he sat shivering on the box in the coldest
corner of the room, and ate the stale pieces which had been specially
reserved for him.
Noah was a charity-boy, but not a workhouse orphan. No chance-child was
he, for he could trace his genealogy all the way back to his parents,
who lived hard by; his mother being a washerwoman, and his father a
drunken soldier, discharged with a wooden leg, and a diurnal pension of
twopence-halfpenny and an unstateable fraction. The shop-boys in the
neighbourhood had long been in the habit of branding Noah in the public
streets, with the ignominious epithets of “leathers,” “charity,” and
the like; and Noah had borne them without reply. But, now that fortune
had cast in his way a nameless orphan, at whom even the meanest could
point the finger of scorn, he retorted on him with interest. This
affords charming food for contemplation. It shows us what a beautiful
thing human nature may be made to be; and how impartially the same
amiable qualities are developed in the finest lord and the dirtiest
charity-boy.
Oliver had been sojourning at the undertaker’s some three weeks or a
month. Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry—the shop being shut up—were taking their
supper in the little back-parlour, when Mr. Sowerberry, after several
deferential glances at his wife, said,
“My dear—” He was going to say more; but, Mrs. Sowerberry looking up,
with a peculiarly unpropitious aspect, he stopped short.
“Well,” said Mrs. Sowerberry, sharply.
“Nothing, my dear, nothing,” said Mr. Sowerberry.
“Ugh, you brute!” said Mrs. Sowerberry.
“Not at all, my dear,” said Mr. Sowerberry humbly. “I thought you
didn’t want to hear, my dear. I was only going to say—”
“Oh, don’t tell me what you were going to say,” interposed Mrs.
Sowerberry. “I am nobody; don’t consult me, pray. _I_ don’t want to
intrude upon your secrets.” As Mrs. Sowerberry said this, she gave an
hysterical laugh, which threatened violent consequences.
“But, my dear,” said Sowerberry, “I want to ask your advice.”
“No, no, don’t ask mine,” replied Mrs. Sowerberry, in an affecting
manner: “ask somebody else’s.” Here, there was another hysterical
laugh, which frightened Mr. Sowerberry very much. This is a very common
and much-approved matrimonial course of treatment, which is often very
effective. It at once reduced Mr. Sowerberry to begging, as a special
favour, to be allowed to say what Mrs. Sowerberry was most curious to
hear. After a short duration, the permission was most graciously
conceded.
“It’s only about young Twist, my dear,” said Mr. Sowerberry. “A very
good-looking boy, that, my dear.”
“He need be, for he eats enough,” observed the lady.
“There’s an expression of melancholy in his face, my dear,” resumed Mr.
Sowerberry, “which is very interesting. He would make a delightful
mute, my love.”
Mrs. Sowerberry looked up with an expression of considerable
wonderment. Mr. Sowerberry remarked it and, without allowing time for
any observation on the good lady’s part, proceeded.
“I don’t mean a regular mute to attend grown-up people, my dear, but
only for children’s practice. It would be very new to have a mute in
proportion, my dear. You may depend upon it, it would have a superb
effect.”
Mrs. Sowerberry, who had a good deal of taste in the undertaking way,
was much struck by the novelty of this idea; but, as it would have been
compromising her dignity to have said so, under existing circumstances,
she merely inquired, with much sharpness, why such an obvious
suggestion had not presented itself to her husband’s mind before? Mr.
Sowerberry rightly construed this, as an acquiescence in his
proposition; it was speedily determined, therefore, that Oliver should
be at once initiated into the mysteries of the trade; and, with this
view, that he should accompany his master on the very next occasion of
his services being required.
The occasion was not long in coming. Half an hour after breakfast next
morning, Mr. Bumble entered the shop; and supporting his cane against
the counter, drew forth his large leathern pocket-book: from which he
selected a small scrap of paper, which he handed over to Sowerberry.
“Aha!” said the undertaker, glancing over it with a lively countenance;
“an order for a coffin, eh?”
“For a coffin first, and a porochial funeral afterwards,” replied Mr.
Bumble, fastening the strap of the leathern pocket-book: which, like
himself, was very corpulent.
“Bayton,” said the undertaker, looking from the scrap of paper to Mr.
Bumble. “I never heard the name before.”
Bumble shook his head, as he replied, “Obstinate people, Mr.
Sowerberry; very obstinate. Proud, too, I’m afraid, sir.”
“Proud, eh?” exclaimed Mr. Sowerberry with a sneer. “Come, that’s too
much.”
“Oh, it’s sickening,” replied the beadle. “Antimonial, Mr. Sowerberry!”
“So it is,” acquiesced the undertaker.
“We only heard of the family the night before last,” said the beadle;
“and we shouldn’t have known anything about them, then, only a woman
who lodges in the same house made an application to the porochial
committee for them to send the porochial surgeon to see a woman as was
very bad. He had gone out to dinner; but his ’prentice (which is a very
clever lad) sent ’em some medicine in a blacking-bottle, offhand.”
“Ah, there’s promptness,” said the undertaker.
“Promptness, indeed!” replied the beadle. “But what’s the consequence;
what’s the ungrateful behaviour of these rebels, sir? Why, the husband
sends back word that the medicine won’t suit his wife’s complaint, and
so she shan’t take it—says she shan’t take it, sir! Good, strong,
wholesome medicine, as was given with great success to two Irish
labourers and a coal-heaver, only a week before—sent ’em for nothing,
with a blackin’-bottle in,—and he sends back word that she shan’t take
it, sir!”
As the atrocity presented itself to Mr. Bumble’s mind in full force, he
struck the counter sharply with his cane, and became flushed with
indignation.
“Well,” said the undertaker, “I ne—ver—did—”
“Never did, sir!” ejaculated the beadle. “No, nor nobody never did; but
now she’s dead, we’ve got to bury her; and that’s the direction; and
the sooner it’s done, the better.”
Thus saying, Mr. Bumble put on his cocked hat wrong side first, in a
fever of parochial excitement; and flounced out of the shop.
“Why, he was so angry, Oliver, that he forgot even to ask after you!”
said Mr. Sowerberry, looking after the beadle as he strode down the
street.
“Yes, sir,” replied Oliver, who had carefully kept himself out of
sight, during the interview; and who was shaking from head to foot at
the mere recollection of the sound of Mr. Bumble’s voice. He needn’t
have taken the trouble to shrink from Mr. Bumble’s glance, however; for
that functionary, on whom the prediction of the gentleman in the white
waistcoat had made a very strong impression, thought that now the
undertaker had got Oliver upon trial the subject was better avoided,
until such time as he should be firmly bound for seven years, and all
danger of his being returned upon the hands of the parish should be
thus effectually and legally overcome.
“Well,” said Mr. Sowerberry, taking up his hat, “the sooner this job is
done, the better. Noah, look after the shop. Oliver, put on your cap,
and come with me.” Oliver obeyed, and followed his master on his
professional mission.
They walked on, for some time, through the most crowded and densely
inhabited part of the town; and then, striking down a narrow street
more dirty and miserable than any they had yet passed through, paused
to look for the house which was the object of their search. The houses
on either side were high and large, but very old, and tenanted by
people of the poorest class: as their neglected appearance would have
sufficiently denoted, without the concurrent testimony afforded by the
squalid looks of the few men and women who, with folded arms and bodies
half doubled, occasionally skulked along. A great many of the tenements
had shop-fronts; but these were fast closed, and mouldering away; only
the upper rooms being inhabited. Some houses which had become insecure
from age and decay, were prevented from falling into the street, by
huge beams of wood reared against the walls, and firmly planted in the
road; but even these crazy dens seemed to have been selected as the
nightly haunts of some houseless wretches, for many of the rough boards
which supplied the place of door and window, were wrenched from their
positions, to afford an aperture wide enough for the passage of a human
body. The kennel was stagnant and filthy. The very rats, which here and
there lay putrefying in its rottenness, were hideous with famine.
There was neither knocker nor bell-handle at the open door where Oliver
and his master stopped; so, groping his way cautiously through the dark
passage, and bidding Oliver keep close to him and not be afraid, the
undertaker mounted to the top of the first flight of stairs. Stumbling
against a door on the landing, he rapped at it with his knuckles.
It was opened by a young girl of thirteen or fourteen. The undertaker
at once saw enough of what the room contained, to know it was the
apartment to which he had been directed. He stepped in; Oliver followed
him.
There was no fire in the room; but a man was crouching, mechanically,
over the empty stove. An old woman, too, had drawn a low stool to the
cold hearth, and was sitting beside him. There were some ragged