Oliver Twist
children in another corner; and in a small recess, opposite the door,
there lay upon the ground, something covered with an old blanket.
Oliver shuddered as he cast his eyes toward the place, and crept
involuntarily closer to his master; for though it was covered up, the
boy felt that it was a corpse.
The man’s face was thin and very pale; his hair and beard were grizzly;
his eyes were bloodshot. The old woman’s face was wrinkled; her two
remaining teeth protruded over her under lip; and her eyes were bright
and piercing. Oliver was afraid to look at either her or the man. They
seemed so like the rats he had seen outside.
“Nobody shall go near her,” said the man, starting fiercely up, as the
undertaker approached the recess. “Keep back! Damn you, keep back, if
you’ve a life to lose!”
“Nonsense, my good man,” said the undertaker, who was pretty well used
to misery in all its shapes. “Nonsense!”
“I tell you,” said the man: clenching his hands, and stamping furiously
on the floor,—“I tell you I won’t have her put into the ground. She
couldn’t rest there. The worms would worry her—not eat her—she is so
worn away.”
The undertaker offered no reply to this raving; but producing a tape
from his pocket, knelt down for a moment by the side of the body.
“Ah!” said the man: bursting into tears, and sinking on his knees at
the feet of the dead woman; “kneel down, kneel down—kneel round her,
every one of you, and mark my words! I say she was starved to death. I
never knew how bad she was, till the fever came upon her; and then her
bones were starting through the skin. There was neither fire nor
candle; she died in the dark—in the dark! She couldn’t even see her
children’s faces, though we heard her gasping out their names. I begged
for her in the streets: and they sent me to prison. When I came back,
she was dying; and all the blood in my heart has dried up, for they
starved her to death. I swear it before the God that saw it! They
starved her!” He twined his hands in his hair; and, with a loud scream,
rolled grovelling upon the floor: his eyes fixed, and the foam covering
his lips.
The terrified children cried bitterly; but the old woman, who had
hitherto remained as quiet as if she had been wholly deaf to all that
passed, menaced them into silence. Having unloosened the cravat of the
man who still remained extended on the ground, she tottered towards the
undertaker.
“She was my daughter,” said the old woman, nodding her head in the
direction of the corpse; and speaking with an idiotic leer, more
ghastly than even the presence of death in such a place. “Lord, Lord!
Well, it _is_ strange that I who gave birth to her, and was a woman
then, should be alive and merry now, and she lying there: so cold and
stiff! Lord, Lord!—to think of it; it’s as good as a play—as good as a
play!”
As the wretched creature mumbled and chuckled in her hideous merriment,
the undertaker turned to go away.
“Stop, stop!” said the old woman in a loud whisper. “Will she be buried
tomorrow, or next day, or tonight? I laid her out; and I must walk,
you know. Send me a large cloak: a good warm one: for it is bitter
cold. We should have cake and wine, too, before we go! Never mind; send
some bread—only a loaf of bread and a cup of water. Shall we have some
bread, dear?” she said eagerly: catching at the undertaker’s coat, as
he once more moved towards the door.
“Yes, yes,” said the undertaker, “of course. Anything you like!” He
disengaged himself from the old woman’s grasp; and, drawing Oliver
after him, hurried away.
The next day, (the family having been meanwhile relieved with a
half-quartern loaf and a piece of cheese, left with them by Mr. Bumble
himself,) Oliver and his master returned to the miserable abode; where
Mr. Bumble had already arrived, accompanied by four men from the
workhouse, who were to act as bearers. An old black cloak had been
thrown over the rags of the old woman and the man; and the bare coffin
having been screwed down, was hoisted on the shoulders of the bearers,
and carried into the street.
“Now, you must put your best leg foremost, old lady!” whispered
Sowerberry in the old woman’s ear; “we are rather late; and it won’t
do, to keep the clergyman waiting. Move on, my men,—as quick as you
like!”
Thus directed, the bearers trotted on under their light burden; and the
two mourners kept as near them, as they could. Mr. Bumble and
Sowerberry walked at a good smart pace in front; and Oliver, whose legs
were not so long as his master’s, ran by the side.
There was not so great a necessity for hurrying as Mr. Sowerberry had
anticipated, however; for when they reached the obscure corner of the
churchyard in which the nettles grew, and where the parish graves were
made, the clergyman had not arrived; and the clerk, who was sitting by
the vestry-room fire, seemed to think it by no means improbable that it
might be an hour or so, before he came. So, they put the bier on the
brink of the grave; and the two mourners waited patiently in the damp
clay, with a cold rain drizzling down, while the ragged boys whom the
spectacle had attracted into the churchyard played a noisy game at
hide-and-seek among the tombstones, or varied their amusements by
jumping backwards and forwards over the coffin. Mr. Sowerberry and
Bumble, being personal friends of the clerk, sat by the fire with him,
and read the paper.
At length, after a lapse of something more than an hour, Mr. Bumble,
and Sowerberry, and the clerk, were seen running towards the grave.
Immediately afterwards, the clergyman appeared: putting on his surplice
as he came along. Mr. Bumble then thrashed a boy or two, to keep up
appearances; and the reverend gentleman, having read as much of the
burial service as could be compressed into four minutes, gave his
surplice to the clerk, and walked away again.
“Now, Bill!” said Sowerberry to the grave-digger. “Fill up!”
It was no very difficult task, for the grave was so full, that the
uppermost coffin was within a few feet of the surface. The grave-digger
shovelled in the earth; stamped it loosely down with his feet:
shouldered his spade; and walked off, followed by the boys, who
murmured very loud complaints at the fun being over so soon.
“Come, my good fellow!” said Bumble, tapping the man on the back. “They
want to shut up the yard.”
The man who had never once moved, since he had taken his station by the
grave side, started, raised his head, stared at the person who had
addressed him, walked forward for a few paces; and fell down in a
swoon. The crazy old woman was too much occupied in bewailing the loss
of her cloak (which the undertaker had taken off), to pay him any
attention; so they threw a can of cold water over him; and when he came
to, saw him safely out of the churchyard, locked the gate, and departed
on their different ways.
“Well, Oliver,” said Sowerberry, as they walked home, “how do you like
it?”
“Pretty well, thank you, sir” replied Oliver, with considerable
hesitation. “Not very much, sir.”
“Ah, you’ll get used to it in time, Oliver,” said Sowerberry. “Nothing
when you _are_ used to it, my boy.”
Oliver wondered, in his own mind, whether it had taken a very long time
to get Mr. Sowerberry used to it. But he thought it better not to ask
the question; and walked back to the shop: thinking over all he had
seen and heard.
CHAPTER VI.
OLIVER, BEING GOADED BY THE TAUNTS OF NOAH, ROUSES INTO ACTION, AND
RATHER ASTONISHES HIM
The month’s trial over, Oliver was formally apprenticed. It was a nice
sickly season just at this time. In commercial phrase, coffins were
looking up; and, in the course of a few weeks, Oliver acquired a great
deal of experience. The success of Mr. Sowerberry’s ingenious
speculation, exceeded even his most sanguine hopes. The oldest
inhabitants recollected no period at which measles had been so
prevalent, or so fatal to infant existence; and many were the mournful
processions which little Oliver headed, in a hat-band reaching down to
his knees, to the indescribable admiration and emotion of all the
mothers in the town. As Oliver accompanied his master in most of his
adult expeditions too, in order that he might acquire that equanimity
of demeanour and full command of nerve which was essential to a
finished undertaker, he had many opportunities of observing the
beautiful resignation and fortitude with which some strong-minded
people bear their trials and losses.
For instance; when Sowerberry had an order for the burial of some rich
old lady or gentleman, who was surrounded by a great number of nephews
and nieces, who had been perfectly inconsolable during the previous
illness, and whose grief had been wholly irrepressible even on the most
public occasions, they would be as happy among themselves as need
be—quite cheerful and contented—conversing together with as much
freedom and gaiety, as if nothing whatever had happened to disturb
them. Husbands, too, bore the loss of their wives with the most heroic
calmness. Wives, again, put on weeds for their husbands, as if, so far
from grieving in the garb of sorrow, they had made up their minds to
render it as becoming and attractive as possible. It was observable,
too, that ladies and gentlemen who were in passions of anguish during
the ceremony of interment, recovered almost as soon as they reached
home, and became quite composed before the tea-drinking was over. All
this was very pleasant and improving to see; and Oliver beheld it with
great admiration.
That Oliver Twist was moved to resignation by the example of these good
people, I cannot, although I am his biographer, undertake to affirm
with any degree of confidence; but I can most distinctly say, that for
many months he continued meekly to submit to the domination and
ill-treatment of Noah Claypole: who used him far worse than before, now
that his jealousy was roused by seeing the new boy promoted to the
black stick and hat-band, while he, the old one, remained stationary in
the muffin-cap and leathers. Charlotte treated him ill, because Noah
did; and Mrs. Sowerberry was his decided enemy, because Mr. Sowerberry
was disposed to be his friend; so, between these three on one side, and
a glut of funerals on the other, Oliver was not altogether as
comfortable as the hungry pig was, when he was shut up, by mistake, in
the grain department of a brewery.
And now, I come to a very important passage in Oliver’s history; for I
have to record an act, slight and unimportant perhaps in appearance,
but which indirectly produced a material change in all his future
prospects and proceedings.
One day, Oliver and Noah had descended into the kitchen at the usual
dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton—a pound and a half
of the worst end of the neck; when Charlotte being called out of the
way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Noah Claypole, being
hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly devote to a
worthier purpose than aggravating and tantalising young Oliver Twist.
Intent upon this innocent amusement, Noah put his feet on the
table-cloth; and pulled Oliver’s hair; and twitched his ears; and
expressed his opinion that he was a “sneak”; and furthermore announced
his intention of coming to see him hanged, whenever that desirable
event should take place; and entered upon various topics of petty
annoyance, like a malicious and ill-conditioned charity-boy as he was.
But, making Oliver cry, Noah attempted to be more facetious still; and
in his attempt, did what many sometimes do to this day, when they want
to be funny. He got rather personal.
“Work’us,” said Noah, “how’s your mother?”
“She’s dead,” replied Oliver; “don’t you say anything about her to me!”