Oliver Twist
occasion. This man was a returned transport, and his name was Kags.
“I wish,” said Toby turning to Mr. Chitling, “that you had picked out
some other crib when the two old ones got too warm, and had not come
here, my fine feller.”
“Why didn’t you, blunder-head!” said Kags.
“Well, I thought you’d have been a little more glad to see me than
this,” replied Mr. Chitling, with a melancholy air.
“Why, look’e, young gentleman,” said Toby, “when a man keeps himself so
very ex-clusive as I have done, and by that means has a snug house over
his head with nobody a prying and smelling about it, it’s rather a
startling thing to have the honour of a wisit from a young gentleman
(however respectable and pleasant a person he may be to play cards with
at conweniency) circumstanced as you are.”
“Especially, when the exclusive young man has got a friend stopping
with him, that’s arrived sooner than was expected from foreign parts,
and is too modest to want to be presented to the Judges on his return,”
added Mr. Kags.
There was a short silence, after which Toby Crackit, seeming to abandon
as hopeless any further effort to maintain his usual devil-may-care
swagger, turned to Chitling and said,
“When was Fagin took then?”
“Just at dinner-time—two o’clock this afternoon. Charley and I made our
lucky up the wash-us chimney, and Bolter got into the empty water-butt,
head downwards; but his legs were so precious long that they stuck out
at the top, and so they took him too.”
“And Bet?”
“Poor Bet! She went to see the Body, to speak to who it was,” replied
Chitling, his countenance falling more and more, “and went off mad,
screaming and raving, and beating her head against the boards; so they
put a strait-weskut on her and took her to the hospital—and there she
is.”
“Wot’s come of young Bates?” demanded Kags.
“He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he’ll be here
soon,” replied Chitling. “There’s nowhere else to go to now, for the
people at the Cripples are all in custody, and the bar of the ken—I
went up there and see it with my own eyes—is filled with traps.”
“This is a smash,” observed Toby, biting his lips. “There’s more than
one will go with this.”
“The sessions are on,” said Kags: “if they get the inquest over, and
Bolter turns King’s evidence: as of course he will, from what he’s said
already: they can prove Fagin an accessory before the fact, and get the
trial on on Friday, and he’ll swing in six days from this, by G—!”
“You should have heard the people groan,” said Chitling; “the officers
fought like devils, or they’d have torn him away. He was down once, but
they made a ring round him, and fought their way along. You should have
seen how he looked about him, all muddy and bleeding, and clung to them
as if they were his dearest friends. I can see ’em now, not able to
stand upright with the pressing of the mob, and draggin him along
amongst ’em; I can see the people jumping up, one behind another, and
snarling with their teeth and making at him; I can see the blood upon
his hair and beard, and hear the cries with which the women worked
themselves into the centre of the crowd at the street corner, and swore
they’d tear his heart out!”
The horror-stricken witness of this scene pressed his hands upon his
ears, and with his eyes closed got up and paced violently to and fro,
like one distracted.
While he was thus engaged, and the two men sat by in silence with their
eyes fixed upon the floor, a pattering noise was heard upon the stairs,
and Sikes’s dog bounded into the room. They ran to the window,
downstairs, and into the street. The dog had jumped in at an open
window; he made no attempt to follow them, nor was his master to be
seen.
“What’s the meaning of this?” said Toby when they had returned. “He
can’t be coming here. I—I—hope not.”
“If he was coming here, he’d have come with the dog,” said Kags,
stooping down to examine the animal, who lay panting on the floor.
“Here! Give us some water for him; he has run himself faint.”
“He’s drunk it all up, every drop,” said Chitling after watching the
dog some time in silence. “Covered with mud—lame—half blind—he must
have come a long way.”
“Where can he have come from!” exclaimed Toby. “He’s been to the other
kens of course, and finding them filled with strangers come on here,
where he’s been many a time and often. But where can he have come from
first, and how comes he here alone without the other!”
“He”—(none of them called the murderer by his old name)—“He can’t have
made away with himself. What do you think?” said Chitling.
Toby shook his head.
“If he had,” said Kags, “the dog ’ud want to lead us away to where he
did it. No. I think he’s got out of the country, and left the dog
behind. He must have given him the slip somehow, or he wouldn’t be so
easy.”
This solution, appearing the most probable one, was adopted as the
right; the dog, creeping under a chair, coiled himself up to sleep,
without more notice from anybody.
It being now dark, the shutter was closed, and a candle lighted and
placed upon the table. The terrible events of the last two days had
made a deep impression on all three, increased by the danger and
uncertainty of their own position. They drew their chairs closer
together, starting at every sound. They spoke little, and that in
whispers, and were as silent and awe-stricken as if the remains of the
murdered woman lay in the next room.
They had sat thus, some time, when suddenly was heard a hurried
knocking at the door below.
“Young Bates,” said Kags, looking angrily round, to check the fear he
felt himself.
The knocking came again. No, it wasn’t he. He never knocked like that.
Crackit went to the window, and shaking all over, drew in his head.
There was no need to tell them who it was; his pale face was enough.
The dog too was on the alert in an instant, and ran whining to the
door.
“We must let him in,” he said, taking up the candle.
“Isn’t there any help for it?” asked the other man in a hoarse voice.
“None. He _must_ come in.”
“Don’t leave us in the dark,” said Kags, taking down a candle from the
chimney-piece, and lighting it, with such a trembling hand that the
knocking was twice repeated before he had finished.
Crackit went down to the door, and returned followed by a man with the
lower part of his face buried in a handkerchief, and another tied over
his head under his hat. He drew them slowly off. Blanched face, sunken
eyes, hollow cheeks, beard of three days’ growth, wasted flesh, short
thick breath; it was the very ghost of Sikes.
He laid his hand upon a chair which stood in the middle of the room,
but shuddering as he was about to drop into it, and seeming to glance
over his shoulder, dragged it back close to the wall—as close as it
would go—and ground it against it—and sat down.
Not a word had been exchanged. He looked from one to another in
silence. If an eye were furtively raised and met his, it was instantly
averted. When his hollow voice broke silence, they all three started.
They seemed never to have heard its tones before.
“How came that dog here?” he asked.
“Alone. Three hours ago.”
“Tonight’s paper says that Fagin’s took. Is it true, or a lie?”
“True.”
They were silent again.
“Damn you all!” said Sikes, passing his hand across his forehead. “Have
you nothing to say to me?”
There was an uneasy movement among them, but nobody spoke.
“You that keep this house,” said Sikes, turning his face to Crackit,
“do you mean to sell me, or to let me lie here till this hunt is over?”
“You may stop here, if you think it safe,” returned the person
addressed, after some hesitation.
Sikes carried his eyes slowly up the wall behind him: rather trying to
turn his head than actually doing it: and said, “Is—it—the body—is it
buried?”
They shook their heads.
“Why isn’t it!” he retorted with the same glance behind him. “Wot do
they keep such ugly things above the ground for?—Who’s that knocking?”
Crackit intimated, by a motion of his hand as he left the room, that
there was nothing to fear; and directly came back with Charley Bates
behind him. Sikes sat opposite the door, so that the moment the boy
entered the room he encountered his figure.
“Toby,” said the boy falling back, as Sikes turned his eyes towards
him, “why didn’t you tell me this, downstairs?”
There had been something so tremendous in the shrinking off of the
three, that the wretched man was willing to propitiate even this lad.
Accordingly he nodded, and made as though he would shake hands with
him.
“Let me go into some other room,” said the boy, retreating still
farther.
“Charley!” said Sikes, stepping forward. “Don’t you—don’t you know me?”
“Don’t come nearer me,” answered the boy, still retreating, and
looking, with horror in his eyes, upon the murderer’s face. “You
monster!”
The man stopped half-way, and they looked at each other; but Sikes’s
eyes sunk gradually to the ground.
“Witness you three,” cried the boy shaking his clenched fist, and
becoming more and more excited as he spoke. “Witness you three—I’m not
afraid of him—if they come here after him, I’ll give him up; I will. I
tell you out at once. He may kill me for it if he likes, or if he
dares, but if I am here I’ll give him up. I’d give him up if he was to
be boiled alive. Murder! Help! If there’s the pluck of a man among you
three, you’ll help me. Murder! Help! Down with him!”
Pouring out these cries, and accompanying them with violent
gesticulation, the boy actually threw himself, single-handed, upon the
strong man, and in the intensity of his energy and the suddenness of
his surprise, brought him heavily to the ground.
The three spectators seemed quite stupefied. They offered no
interference, and the boy and man rolled on the ground together; the
former, heedless of the blows that showered upon him, wrenching his
hands tighter and tighter in the garments about the murderer’s breast,
and never ceasing to call for help with all his might.
The contest, however, was too unequal to last long. Sikes had him down,
and his knee was on his throat, when Crackit pulled him back with a
look of alarm, and pointed to the window. There were lights gleaming
below, voices in loud and earnest conversation, the tramp of hurried
footsteps—endless they seemed in number—crossing the nearest wooden
bridge. One man on horseback seemed to be among the crowd; for there
was the noise of hoofs rattling on the uneven pavement. The gleam of
lights increased; the footsteps came more thickly and noisily on. Then,
came a loud knocking at the door, and then a hoarse murmur from such a
multitude of angry voices as would have made the boldest quail.
“Help!” shrieked the boy in a voice that rent the air. “He’s here!
Break down the door!”
“In the King’s name,” cried the voices without; and the hoarse cry
arose again, but louder.
“Break down the door!” screamed the boy. “I tell you they’ll never open
it. Run straight to the room where the light is. Break down the door!”
Strokes, thick and heavy, rattled upon the door and lower
window-shutters as he ceased to speak, and a loud huzzah burst from the
crowd; giving the listener, for the first time, some adequate idea of
its immense extent.
“Open the door of some place where I can lock this screeching
Hell-babe,” cried Sikes fiercely; running to and fro, and dragging the
boy, now, as easily as if he were an empty sack. “That door. Quick!” He
flung him in, bolted it, and turned the key. “Is the downstairs door
fast?”
“Double-locked and chained,” replied Crackit, who, with the other two
men, still remained quite helpless and bewildered.
“The panels—are they strong?”
“Lined with sheet-iron.”
“And the windows too?”
“Yes, and the windows.”