Whatever were Mr. Bumble’s intentions, however,—and no doubt they were of the best,—whatever they were, it unfortunately, happened, as has been twice before remarked, that the table was a round one; consequently, Mr. Bumble, moving his chair by little and little, soon began to diminish the distance between himself and the matron, and, continuing to travel round the outer edge of the circle, brought his chair in time close to that in which the matron was seated. Indeed, the two chairs touched; and when they did so, Mr. Bumble stopped.
Now, if the matron had moved her chair to the right, she would have been scorched by the fire, and if to the left, she must have fallen into Mr. Bumble’s arms; so (being a discreet matron, and no doubt foreseeing these consequences at a glance) she remained where she was, and handed Mr. Bumble another cup of tea.
“Hard-hearted, Mrs. Corney?” said Mr. Bumble, stirring his tea, and looking up into the matron’s face; “are you hard-hearted, Mrs. Corney?”
“Dear me!” exclaimed the matron, “what a very curious question from a single man. What can you want to know for, Mr. Bumble?”
The beadle drank his tea to the last drop, finished a piece of toast, whisked the crumbs off his knees, wiped his lips, and deliberately kissed the matron.
“Mr. Bumble,” cried that discreet lady in a whisper, for the fright was so great that she had quite lost her voice, “Mr. Bumble, I shall scream!” Mr. Bumble made no reply, but in a slow and dignified manner put his arm round the matron’s waist.
As the lady had stated her intention of screaming, of course she would have screamed at this additional boldness, but that the exertion was rendered unnecessary by a hasty knocking at the door, which was no sooner heard than Mr. Bumble darted with much agility to the wine-bottles, and began dusting them with great violence, while the matron sharply demanded who was there. It is worthy of remark, as a curious physical instance of the efficacy of a sudden surprise in counteracting the effects of extreme fear, that her voice had quite recovered all its official asperity.
“If you please, mistress,” said a withered old female pauper, hideously ugly, putting her head in at the door, “Old Sally is a-going fast.”
“Well, what’s that to me?” angrily demanded the matron. “I can’t keep her alive, can I?”
“No, no, mistress,” replied the old woman; “nobody can; she’s far beyond the reach of help. I’ve seen a many people die, little babes and great strong men, and I know when death’s a-coming well enough. But she’s troubled in her mind; and when the fits are not on her,—and that’s not often, for she is dying very hard,—she says she has got something to tell which you must hear. She’ll never die quiet till you come, mistress.”
At this intelligence the worthy Mrs. Corney muttered a variety of invectives against old women who couldn’t even die without purposely annoying their betters; and, muffling herself in a thick shawl which she hastily caught up, briefly requested Mr. Bumble to stop till she came back, lest anything particular should occur, and bidding the messenger walk fast, and not be all night hobbling up the stairs, followed her from the room with a very ill grace, scolding all the way.
Mr. Bumble’s conduct on being left to himself was rather inexplicable. He opened the closet, counted the tea-spoons, weighed the sugar-tongs, closely inspected a silver milk-pot to ascertain that it was of the genuine metal; and, having satisfied his curiosity upon these points, put on his cocked-hat corner-wise, and danced with much gravity four distinct times round the table. Having gone through this very extraordinary performance, he took off the cocked-hat again, and, spreading himself before the fire with his back towards it, seemed to be mentally engaged in taking an exact inventory of the furniture.
CHAPTER XXIV.
TREATS OF A VERY POOR SUBJECT, BUT IS A SHORT ONE, AND
MAY BE FOUND OF IMPORTANCE IN THIS HISTORY.
It was no unfit messenger of death that had disturbed the quiet of the matron’s room. Her body was bent by age, her limbs trembled with palsy, and her face, distorted into a mumbling leer, resembled more the grotesque shaping of some wild pencil than the work of Nature’s hand.
Alas! how few of Nature’s faces there are to gladden us with their beauty! The cares, and sorrows, and hungerings of the world change them as they change hearts, and it is only when those passions sleep, and have lost their hold for ever, that the troubled clouds pass off, and leave heaven’s surface clear. It is a common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid state, to subside into the long-forgotten expression of sleeping infancy, and settle into the very look of early life; so calm, so peaceful do they grow again, that those who knew them in their happy childhood kneel by the coffin’s side in awe, and see the angel even upon earth.
The old crone tottered along the passages and up the stairs, muttering some indistinct answers to the chidings of her companion; and being at length compelled to pause for breath, gave the light into her hand, and remained behind to follow as she might, while the more nimble superior made her way to the room where the sick woman lay.
It was a bare garret-room, with a dim light burning at the farther end. There was another old woman watching by the bed, and the parish apothecary’s apprentice was standing by the fire, making a toothpick out of a quill.
“Cold night, Mrs. Corney,” said this young gentleman, as the matron entered.
“Very cold indeed, sir,” replied the mistress, in her most civil tones, and dropping a curtsey as she spoke.
“You should get better coals out of your contractors,” said the apothecary’s deputy, breaking a lump on the top of the fire with the rusty poker; “these are not at all the sort of thing for a cold night.”
“They’re the board’s choosing, sir,” returned the matron. “The least they could do would be to keep us pretty warm, for our places are hard enough.”
The conversation was here interrupted by a moan from the sick woman.
“Oh!” said the young man, turning his face towards the bed, as if he had previously quite forgotten the patient, “it’s all U. P. there, Mrs. Corney.”
“It is, is it, sir?” asked the matron.
“If she lasts a couple of hours, I shall be surprised,” said the apothecary’s apprentice, intent upon the toothpick’s point. “It’s a break-up of the system altogether. Is she dozing, old lady?”
The attendant stooped over the bed to ascertain, and nodded in the affirmative.
“Then perhaps she’ll go off in that way, if you don’t make a row,” said the young man. “Put the light on the floor,—she wont see it there.”
The attendant did as she was bidden, shaking her head meanwhile to intimate that the woman would not die so easily; and having done so, resumed her seat by the side of the other nurse, who had by this time returned. The mistress, with an expression of impatience, wrapped herself in her shawl and sat at the foot of the bed.
The apothecary’s apprentice, having completed the manufacture of the toothpick, planted himself in front of the fire and made good use of it for ten minutes or so, when, apparently growing rather dull, he wished Mrs. Corney joy of her job, and took himself off on tiptoe.
When they had sat in silence for some time the two old women rose from the bed, and crouching over the fire, held out their withered hands to catch the heat. The flame threw a ghastly light on their shrivelled faces, and made their ugliness appear perfectly terrible, as in this position they began to converse in a low voice.
“Did she say any more, Anny dear, while I was gone?” inquired the messenger.
“Not a word,” replied the other. “She plucked and tore at her arms for a little time; but I held her hands, and she soon dropped off. She hasn’t much strength in her, so I easily kept her quiet. I ain’t so weak for an old woman, although I am on parish allowance;—no, no!”
“Did she drink the hot wine the doctor said she was to have?” demanded the first.
“I tried to get it down,” rejoined the other; “but her teeth were tight set, and she clenched the mug so hard that it was as much as I could do to get it back again. So I drank it, and it did me good.”
Looking cautiously round to ascertain that they were not overheard, the two hags cowered nearer to the fire, and chuckled heartily.
“I mind the time,” said the first speaker, “when she would have done the same, and made rare fun of it afterwards.”
“Ay, that she would,” rejoined the other; “she had a merry heart. A many many beautiful corpses she laid out, as nice and neat as wax-work. My old eyes have seen them—ay, and these old hands touched them too; for I have helped her scores of times.”
Stretching forth her trembling fingers as she spoke, the old creature shook them exultingly before her face, and fumbling in her pocket brought out an old time-discoloured tin snuff-box, from which she shook a few grains into the outstretched palm of her companion, and a few more into her own. While they were thus employed, the matron, who had been impatiently watching until the dying woman should awaken from her stupor, joined them by the fire, and sharply asked how long she was to wait.
“Not long, mistress,” replied the second woman, looking up into her face. “We have none of us long to wait for Death. Patience, patience! he’ll be here soon enough for us all.”
“Hold your tongue, you doting idiot!” said the matron, sternly. “You, Martha, tell me; has she been in this way before?”
“Often,” answered the first woman.
“But will never be again,” added the second one; “that is, she’ll never wake again but once—and mind, mistress, that wont be for long.”
“Long or short,” said the matron, snappishly, “she wont find me here when she does, and take care, both of you, how you worry me again for nothing. It’s no part of my duty to see all the old women in the house die, and I wont—that’s more. Mind that, you impudent old harridans. If you make a fool of me again, I’ll soon cure you, I warrant you!”
She was bouncing away, when a cry from the two women, who had turned towards the bed, caused her to look round. The sick woman had raised herself upright, and was stretching her arms towards them.
“Who’s that?” she cried, in a hollow voice.
“Hush, hush!” said one of the women, stooping over her—“lie down, lie down!”
“I’ll never lie down again alive!” said the woman, struggling. “I will tell her! Come here—nearer. Let me whisper in your ear.”
She clutched the matron by the arm, and forcing her into a chair by the bedside was about to speak, when looking round, she caught sight of the two old women bending forward in the attitude of eager listeners.
“Turn them away,” said the woman, drowsily; “make haste—make haste!”
The two old crones, chiming in together, began pouring out many piteous lamentations that the poor dear was too far gone to know her best friends, and uttering sundry protestations that they would never leave her, when the superior pushed them from the room, closed the door, and returned to the bedside. On being excluded, the old ladies changed their tone, and cried through the keyhole that old Sally was drunk; which, indeed, was not unlikely, since, in addition to a moderate dose of opium prescribed by the apothecary, she was labouring under the effects of a final taste of gin and water which had been privily administered in the openness of their hearts by the worthy old ladies themselves.
“Now listen to me,” said the dying woman, aloud, as if making a great effort to revive one latent spark of energy. “In this very room—in this very bed—I once nursed a pretty young creetur’, that was brought into the house with her feet cut and bruised with walking, and all soiled with dust and blood. She gave birth to a boy, and died. Let me think—what was the year again?”
“Never mind the year,” said the impatient auditor; “what about her?”
“Ay,” murmured the sick woman, relapsing into her former drowsy state, “what about her?—what about—I know!” she cried, jumping fiercely up: her face flushed, and her eyes starting from her head—“I robbed her, so I did! She wasn’t cold—I tell you she wasn’t cold, when I stole it!”
“Stole what, for God’s sake?” cried the matron, with a gesture as if she would call for help.
“It!” replied the woman, laying her hand over the other’s mouth—“the only thing she had. She wanted clothes to keep her warm, and food to eat; but she had kept it safe, and had it in her bosom. It was gold, I tell you!—rich gold, that might have saved her life!”
“Gold!” echoed the matron, bending eagerly over the woman as she fell back. “Go on, go on—yes—what of it? Who was the mother?—when was it?”
“She charged me to keep it safe,” replied the woman, with a groan, “and trusted me as the only woman about her. I stole it in my heart when she first shewed it me hanging round her neck; and the child’s death, perhaps, is on me besides! They would have treated him better if they had known it all!”
“Known what?” asked the other. “Speak!”
“The boy grew so like his mother,” said the woman, rambling on, and not heeding the question, “that I could never forget it when I saw his face. Poor girl! poor girl!—she was so young, too!—such a gentle lamb!—Wait; there’s more to tell. I have not told you all, have I?”
“No, no,” replied the matron, inclining her head to catch the words as they came more faintly from the dying woman.—“Be quick, or it may be too late!”
“The mother,” said the woman, making a more violent effort than before—“the mother, when the pains of death first came upon her, whispered in my ear that if her baby was born alive, and thrived, the day might come when it would not feel so much disgraced to hear its poor young mother named. ‘And oh, my God!’ she said, folding her thin hands together, ‘whether it be boy or girl, raise up some friends for it in this troubled world, and take pity upon a lonely, desolate child, abandoned to its mercy!’”
“The boy’s name?” demanded the matron.
“They called him Oliver,” replied the woman, feebly. “The gold I stole was——”
“Yes, yes—what?” cried the other.
She was bending eagerly over the woman to hear her reply, but drew back instinctively as she once again rose slowly and stiffly into a sitting posture, and, clutching the coverlid with both hands, muttered some indistinct sounds in her throat, and fell lifeless on the bed.
“Stone dead!” said one of the old women, hurrying in as soon as the door was opened.
“And nothing to tell, after all,” rejoined the matron, walking carelessly away.
The two crones were, to all appearance, too busily occupied in the preparations for their dreadful duties to make any reply, and were left alone hovering about the body.
CHAPTER XXV.
WHEREIN THIS HISTORY REVERTS TO MR. FAGIN AND
COMPANY.
While these things were passing in the country workhouse, Mr. Fagin sat in the old den—the same from which Oliver had been removed by the girl—brooding over a dull smoky fire. He held a pair of bellows upon his knee, with which he had apparently been endeavouring to rouse it into more cheerful action; but he had fallen into deep thought, and with his arms folded upon them, and his chin resting on his thumbs, fixed his eyes abstractedly on the rusty bars.
At a table behind him sat the Artful Dodger, Master Charles Bates, and Mr. Chitling, all intent upon a game of whist; the Artful taking dummy against Master Bates and Mr. Chitling. The countenance of the first-named gentleman, peculiarly intelligent at all times, acquired great additional interest from his close observance of the game, and his attentive perusal of Mr. Chitling’s hand, upon which, from time to time, as occasion served, he bestowed a variety of earnest glances, wisely regulating his own play by the result of his observations upon his neighbour’s cards. It being a cold night, the Dodger wore his hat, as, indeed, was often his custom within doors. He also sustained a clay pipe between his teeth, which he only removed for a brief space when he deemed it necessary to apply for refreshment to a quart-pot upon the table, which stood ready filled with gin and water for the accommodation of the company.
Master Bates was also attentive to the play; but being of a more excitable nature than his accomplished friend, it was observable that he more frequently applied himself to the gin and water, and moreover indulged in many jests and irrelevant remarks, all highly unbecoming a scientific rubber. Indeed, the Artful, presuming upon their close attachment, more than once took occasion to reason gravely with his companion upon these improprieties: all of which remonstrances Master Bates took in extremely good part, merely requesting his friend to be “blowed,” or to insert his head in a sack, or replying with some other neatly-turned witticism of a similar kind, the happy application of which excited considerable admiration in the mind of Mr. Chitling. It was remarkable that the latter gentleman and his partner invariably lost, and that the circumstance, so far from angering Master Bates, appeared to afford him the highest amusement, inasmuch as he laughed most uproariously at the end of every deal, and protested that he had never seen such a jolly game in all his born days.
“That’s two doubles and the rub,” said Mr. Chitling, with a very long face, as he drew half-a-crown from his waistcoat-pocket “I never see such a feller as you, Jack; you win every thing. Even when we’ve good cards, Charley and I can’t make nothing of ’em.”
Either the matter or manner of this remark, which was made very ruefully, delighted Charley Bates so much, that his consequent shout of laughter roused the Jew from his reverie, and induced him to inquire what was the matter.
“Matter, Fagin!” cried Charley. “I wish you had watched a play. Tommy Chitling hasn’t won the point, and I went partners with him against the Artful and dum.”
“Ay, ay!” said the Jew, with a grin, which sufficiently demonstrated that he was at no loss to understand the reason. “Try ’em again, Tom; try ’em again.”
“No more of it for me, thankee, Fagin,” replied Mr. Chitling; “I’ve had enough. That ’ere Dodger has such a run of luck that there’s no standing again’ him.”
“Ha! ha! my dear,” replied the Jew, “you must get up very early in the morning to win against the Dodger.”
“Morning!” said Charley Bates; “you must put your boots on overnight, and have a telescope at each eye, and a opera-glass between your shoulders, if you want to come over him.”
Mr. Dawkins received these handsome compliments with much philosophy, and offered to cut any gentleman in company for the first picture-card, at a shilling 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 till his laugh was over, when he resumed his former position and began another.
“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’ll 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; mighn’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 up stairs.
The bell rang 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 to retire, 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 unshaven, the features of flash Toby Crackit.
“How are you, Fagey?” said the 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, Fagey,” 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 ——! 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; and then, ordering the Dodger out, closed the door, mixed a glass of spirits and water, and composed himself for talking.
“First and foremost, Fagey,” 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; and then, placing his feet against the low mantelpiece, so as to bring his boots to about the level of his eye, quietly resumed.
“First and foremost, Fagey,” 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. D—me! the whole country was awake, and the dogs upon us.”
“The boy!” gasped the Jew.
“Bill had him on his back, and scudded like the wind. We stopped to take him again 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 of 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 possible all the main streets, and skulking only through the byways 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, there 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 pickpockets. 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 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; and 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 lookout 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?”
Fagin nodded in the affirmative, and pointing in the direction of Saffron Hill, inquired whether any one was up yonder to-night.
“At the Cripples?” inquired the man.
The Jew nodded.
“Let me see,” pursued the merchant, reflecting. “Yes; there’s some half-dozen of ’em gone in that I knows. I don’t think your friend’s there.”
“Sikes is not, I suppose?” inquired the Jew, with a disappointed countenance.
“Non istwentus, as the lawyers say,” replied the little man, shaking his head, and looking amazingly sly. “Have you got anything in my line to-night?”
“Nothing to-night,” said the Jew, turning away.
“Are you going up to the Cripples, Fagin?” cried the little man, calling after him. “Stop! I don’t mind if I have a drop there with you!”
But as the Jew, looking back, waved his hand to intimate that he preferred being alone; and, moreover, as the little man could not very easily disengage himself from the chair, the sign of the Cripples was, for a time, bereft of the advantage of Mr. Lively’s presence. By the time he had got upon his legs the Jew had disappeared; so Mr. Lively, after ineffectually standing on tiptoe, in the hope of catching sight of him, again forced himself into the little chair, and, exchanging a shake of the head with a lady in the opposite shop, in which doubt and mistrust were plainly mingled, resumed his pipe with a grave demeanour.
The Three Cripples, or rather the Cripples, which was the sign by which the establishment was familiarly known to its patrons, was the same public-house in which Mr. Sikes and his dog have already figured. Merely making a sign to a man in the bar, Fagin walked straight up stairs, and opening the door of a room, and softly insinuating himself into the chamber, looked anxiously about, shading his eyes with his hand, as if in search of some particular person.
The room was illuminated by two gas-lights, the glare of which was prevented by the barred shutters and closely-drawn curtains of faded red from being visible outside. The ceiling was blackened to prevent its colour being injured by the flaring of the lamps; and the place was so full of dense tobacco-smoke, that at first it was scarcely possible to discern anything further. By degrees, however, as some of it cleared away through the open door, an assemblage of heads, as confused as the noises that greeted the ear, might be made out; and as the eye grew more accustomed to the scene, the spectator gradually became aware of the presence of a numerous company, male and female, crowded round a long table, at the upper end of which sat a chairman with a hammer of office in his hand, while a professional gentleman, with a bluish nose and his face tied up for the benefit of a toothache, presided at a jingling piano in a remote corner.
As Fagin stepped softly in, the professional gentleman, running over the keys by way of prelude, occasioned a general cry of order for a song; which having subsided, a young lady proceeded to entertain the company with a ballad in four verses, between each of which the accompanyist played the melody all through as loud as he could. When this was over, the chairman gave a sentiment; after which, the professional gentlemen on the chairman’s right and left volunteered a duet, and sang it with great applause.
It was curious to observe some faces which stood out prominently from among the group. There was the chairman himself, (the landlord of the house,) a coarse, rough, heavy-built fellow, who, while the songs were proceeding, rolled his eyes hither and, thither, and, seeming to give himself up to joviality, had an eye for every thing that was done, and an ear for everything that was said—and sharp ones, too. Near him were the singers, receiving, with professional indifference, the compliments of the company, and applying themselves in turn to a dozen proffered glasses of spirits and water tendered by their more boisterous admirers, whose countenances, expressive of almost every vice in almost every grade, irresistibly attracted the attention by their very repulsiveness. Cunning, ferocity, and drunkenness in all its stages, were there in their strongest aspects; and women—some with the last lingering tinge of their early freshness almost fading as you looked, and others with every mark and stamp of their sex utterly beaten out, and presenting but one loathsome blank of profligacy and crime—some mere girls, others but young women, and none past the prime of life—formed the darkest and saddest portion of this dreary picture.
Fagin, troubled by no grave emotions, looked eagerly from face to face while these proceedings were in progress, but, apparently, without meeting that of which he was in search. Succeeding, at length, in catching the eye of the man who occupied the chair, he beckoned to him slightly, and left the room as quietly as he had entered it.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Fagin?” inquired the man, as he followed him out to the landing. “Wont you join us? They’ll be delighted, every one of ’em.”
The Jew shook his head impatiently, and said in a whisper, “Is he here?”
“No,” replied the man.
“And no news of Barney?” inquired Fagin.
“None,” replied the landlord of the Cripples; for it was he. “He wont stir till it’s all safe. Depend on it that they’re on the scent down there, and that if he moved he’d blow upon the thing at once. He’s all right enough, Barney is, else I should have heard of him. I’ll pound it that Barney’s managing properly. Let him alone for that.”
“Will he be here to-night?” asked the Jew, laying the same emphasis on the pronoun as before.
“Monks, do you mean?” inquired the landlord, hesitating.
“Hush!” said the Jew. “Yes.”
“Certain,” replied the man, drawing a gold watch from his fob; “I expected him here before now. If you’ll wait ten minutes, he’ll be——”
“No, no,” said the Jew, hastily, as though, however desirous he might be to see the person in question, he was nevertheless relieved by his absence. “Tell him I came here to see him, and that he must come to me to-night; no, say to-morrow. As he is not here, to-morrow will be time enough.”
“Good!” said the man. “Nothing more?”
“Not a word now,” said the Jew, descending the stairs.
“I say,” said the other, looking over the rails, and speaking in a hoarse whisper; “what a time this would be for a sell! I’ve got Phil Barker here, so drunk that a boy might take him.”
“Aha! But it’s not Phil Barker’s time,” said the Jew, looking up. “Phil has something more to do before we can afford to part with him; so go back to the company, my dear, and tell them to lead merry lives—while they last. Ha! ha! ha!”
The landlord reciprocated the old man’s laugh, and returned to his guests. The Jew was no sooner alone, than his countenance resumed its former expression of anxiety and thought. After a brief reflection, he called a hack-cabriolet, and bade the man drive towards Bethnal Green. He dismissed him within some quarter of a mile of Mr. Sikes’s residence, and performed the short remainder of the distance on foot.
“Now,” muttered the Jew, as he knocked at the door, “if there is any deep play here, I shall have it out of you, my girl, cunning as you are.”
She was in her room, the woman said; so Fagin crept softly up stairs, and entered it without any previous ceremony. The girl was alone, lying with her head upon the table, and her hair straggling over it.
“She has been drinking,” thought the Jew, coolly, “or perhaps she is only miserable.”
The old man turned to close the door as he made this reflection, and the noise thus occasioned roused the girl. She eyed his crafty face narrowly, as she inquired whether there was any news, and listened to his recital of Toby Crackit’s story. When it was concluded, she sunk into her former attitude, but spoke not a word. She pushed the candle impatiently away, and once or twice, as she feverishly changed her position, shuffled her feet upon the ground; but this was all.
During this silence, the Jew looked restlessly about the room, as if to assure himself that there were no appearances of Sikes having covertly returned. Apparently satisfied with his inspection, he coughed twice or thrice, and made as many efforts to open a conversation; but the girl heeded him no more than if he had been made of stone. At length he made another attempt, and, rubbing his hands together, said, in his most conciliatory tone,
“And where should you think Bill was now, my dear—eh?”
The girl moaned out some scarcely intelligible reply, that she could not tell, and seemed, from the half-smothered noise that escaped her, to be crying.
“And the boy, too,” said the Jew, straining his eyes to catch a glimpse of her face. “Poor leetle child!—left in a ditch, Nance; only think!”
“The child,” said the girl, suddenly looking up, “is better where he is than among us: and if no harm comes to Bill from it, I hope he lies dead in the ditch, and that his young bones may rot there.”
“What!” cried the Jew, in amazement.
“Ay, I do,” returned the girl, meeting his gaze. “I shall be glad to have him away from my eyes, and to know that the worst is over. I can’t bear to have him about me. The sight of him turns me against myself and all of you.”
“Pooh!” said the Jew, scornfully. “You’re drunk, girl.”
“Am I?” cried the girl, bitterly. “It’s no fault of yours if I am not! you’d never have me anything else if you had your will, except now;—the humour doesn’t suit you, doesn’t it?”
“No!” rejoined the Jew, furiously. “It does not.”
“Change it, then!” responded the girl, with a laugh.
“Change it!” exclaimed the Jew, exasperated beyond all bounds by his companion’s unexpected obstinacy, and the vexation of the night, “I will change it! Listen to me, you drab! listen to me, who with six words can strangle Sikes as surely as if I had his bull’s throat between my fingers now. If he comes back, and leaves that boy behind him,—if he gets off free, and, dead or alive, fails to restore him to me, murder him yourself if you would have him escape Jack Ketch, and do it the moment he sets foot in this room, or, mind me, it will be too late!”
“What is all this?” cried the girl, involuntarily.
“What is it?” pursued Fagin, mad with rage. “This—When the boy’s worth hundreds of pounds to me, am I to lose what chance threw me in the way of getting safely, through the whims of a drunken gang that I could whistle away the lives of,—and me bound, too, to a born devil that only wants the will, and has got the power to, to——”
Panting for breath, the old man stammered for a word, and in that one instant checked the torrent of his wrath, and changed his whole demeanour. A moment before, his clenched hands grasped the air, his eyes had dilated, and his face grown livid with passion; but now he shrunk into a chair, and, cowering together, trembled with the apprehension of having himself disclosed some hidden villany. After a short silence, he ventured to look round at his companion, and appeared somewhat reassured on beholding her in the same listless attitude from which he had first roused her.
“Nancy, dear!” croaked the Jew, in his usual voice. “Did you mind me, dear?”
“Don’t worry me, now, Fagin!” replied the girl, raising her head languidly. “If Bill has not done it this time, he will another. He has done many a good job for you, and will do many more when he can; and when he can’t, he wont; so no more about that.”
“Regarding this boy, my dear?” said the Jew, rubbing the palms of his hands nervously together.
“The boy must take his chance with the rest,” interrupted Nancy, hastily; “and I say again, I hope he is dead, and out of harm’s way, and out of yours,—that is, if Bill comes to no harm, and if Toby got clear off, he’s pretty sure to, for he’s worth two of him any time.”
“And about what I was saying, my dear?” observed the Jew, keeping his glistening eye steadily upon her.
“You must say it all over again if it’s any thing you want me to do,” rejoined Nancy: “and if it is, you had better wait till to-morrow. You put me up for a minute, but now I’m stupid again.”
Fagin put several other questions, all with the same drift of ascertaining whether the girl had profited by his unguarded hints; but she answered them so readily, and was withal so utterly unmoved by his searching looks, that his original impression of her being more than a trifle in liquor was fully confirmed. Nancy, indeed, was not exempt from a failing which was very common among the Jew’s female pupils, and in which, in their tenderer years, they were rather encouraged than checked. Her disordered appearance, and a wholesale perfume of Geneva which pervaded the apartment, afforded strong confirmatory evidence of the justice of the Jew’s supposition; and when, after indulging in the temporary display of violence above described, she subsided, first into dulness, and afterwards into a compound of feelings, under the influence of which she shed tears one minute, and in the next gave utterance to various exclamations of “Never say die!” and divers calculations as to what might be the amount of the odds so long as a lady or gentleman were happy, Mr. Fagin, who had had considerable experience of such matters in his time, saw, with great satisfaction, that she was very far gone indeed.
Having eased his mind by this discovery, and accomplished his twofold object of imparting to the girl what he had that night heard, and ascertaining with his own eyes that Sikes had not returned, Mr. Fagin again turned his face homeward, leaving his young friend asleep with her head upon the table.
It was within an hour of midnight, and the weather being dark and piercing cold, he had no great temptation to loiter. The sharp wind that scoured the streets seemed to have cleared them of passengers as of dust and mud, for few people were abroad, and they were to all appearance hastening fast home. It blew from the right quarter for the Jew, however, and straight before it he went, trembling and shivering as every fresh gust drove him rudely on his way.
He had reached the corner of his own street, and was already fumbling in his pocket for the door-key, when a dark figure emerged from a projecting entrance which lay in deep shadow, and, crossing the road, glided up to him unperceived.
“Fagin!” whispered a voice close to his ear.
“Ah!” said the Jew, turning quickly round, “is that——”
“Yes!” interrupted the stranger, harshly. “I have been lingering here these two hours. Where the devil have you been?”
“On your business, my dear,” replied the Jew, glancing uneasily at his companion, and slackening his pace as he spoke. “On your business all night.”
“Oh, of course!” said the stranger, with a sneer. “Well; and what’s come of it?”
“Nothing good,” said the Jew.
“Nothing bad, I hope?” said the stranger, stopping short, and turning a startled look upon his companion.
The Jew shook his head, and was about to reply, when the stranger, interrupting him, motioned to the house before which they had by this time arrived, and remarked, that he had better say what he had got to say under cover, for his blood was chilled with standing about so long, and the wind blew through him.
Fagin looked as if he could have willingly excused himself from taking home a visiter at that unseasonable hour, and muttered something about having no fire; but his companion repeating his request in a peremptory manner, he unlocked the door, and requested him to close it softly, while he got a light.
“It’s as dark as the grave,” said the man, groping forward a few steps. “Make haste. I hate this!”
“Shut the door,” whispered Fagin from the end of the passage. As he spoke, it closed with a loud noise.
“That wasn’t my doing,” said the other man, feeling his way. “The wind blew it to, or it shut of its own accord; one or the other. Look sharp with the light, or I shall knock my brains out against something in this confounded hole.”
Fagin stealthily descended the kitchen stairs, and, after a short absence, returned with a lighted candle, and the intelligence that Toby Crackit was asleep in the back-room below, and the boys in the front one. Beckoning the other man to follow him, he led the way up stairs.
“We can say the few words we’ve got to say in here, my dear,” said the Jew, throwing open a door on the first floor; “and as there are holes in the shutters, and we never shew lights to our neighbours, we’ll set the candle on the stairs. There!”
With these words, the Jew, stooping down, placed the candle on an upper flight of stairs, exactly opposite the room door, and led the way into the apartment, which was destitute of all moveables save a broken arm-chair, and an old couch or sofa without covering, which stood behind the door. Upon this piece of furniture the stranger flung himself with the air of a weary man, and the Jew drawing up the arm-chair opposite, they sat face to face. It was not quite dark, for the door was partially open, and the candle outside threw a feeble reflection on the opposite wall.
They conversed for some time in whispers; although nothing of the conversation was distinguishable beyond a few disjointed words here and there; a listener might easily have perceived that Fagin appeared to be defending himself against some remarks of the stranger, and that the latter was in a state of considerable irritation. They might have been talking thus for a quarter of an hour or more, when Monks—by which name the Jew had designated the strange man several times in the course of their colloquy—said, raising his voice a little,
“I tell you again it was badly planned. Why not have kept him here among the rest, and made a sneaking, snivelling pickpocket of him at once?”
“Only hear him!” exclaimed the Jew, shrugging his shoulders.
“Why, do you mean to say you couldn’t have done it if you had chosen?” demanded Monks, sternly. “Haven’t you done it with other boys scores of times? If you had had patience for a twelvemonth, at most, couldn’t you have got him convicted and sent safely out of the kingdom, perhaps for life?”
“Whose turn would that have served, my dear?” inquired the Jew, humbly.
“Mine,” replied Monks.
“But not mine,” said the Jew, submissively. “He might have become of use to me. When there are two parties to a bargain, it is only reasonable that the interest of both should be consulted; is it, my good friend?”
“What then?” demanded Monks, sulkily. “I saw it was not easy to train him to the business,” replied the Jew; “he was not like other boys in the same circumstances.”
“Curse him, no!” muttered the man, “or he would have been a thief long ago.”
“I had no hold upon him to make him worse,” pursued the Jew, anxiously watching the countenance of his companion. “His hand was not in; I had nothing to frighten him with, which we always must have in the beginning, or we labour in vain. What could I do? Send him out with the Dodger and Charley? We had enough of that at first, my dear; I trembled for us all.”
“That was not my doing,” observed Monks.
“No, no, my dear!” renewed the Jew, “and I don’t quarrel with it now, because, if it had never happened, you might never have clapped eyes upon the boy to notice him, and so led to the discovery that it was him you were looking for. Well; I got him back for you by means of the girl, and then she begins to favour him.”
“Throttle the girl!” said Monks, impatiently.
“Why, we can’t afford to do that just now, my dear,” replied the Jew, smiling; “and, besides, that sort of thing is not in our way, or one of these days I might be glad to have it done. I know what these girls are, Monks, well. As soon as the boy begins to harden, she’ll care no more for him than for a block of wood. You want him made a thief: if he is alive, I can make him one from this time; and if—if—” said the Jew, drawing nearer to the other,—“it’s not likely, mind,—but if the worst comes to the worst, and he is dead——”
“It’s no fault of mine if he is!” interposed the other man, with a look of terror, and clasping the Jew’s arm with trembling hands. “Mind that, Fagin; I had no hand in it. Anything but his death, I told you from the first. I wont shed blood; it’s always found out, and haunts a man besides. If they shot him dead, I was not the cause; do you hear me? Fire this infernal den!—what’s that?”
“What!” cried the Jew, grasping the coward round the body with both arms as he sprung to his feet. “Where?”
“Yonder!” replied the man, glaring at the opposite wall. “The shadow—I saw the shadow of a woman, in a cloak and bonnet, pass along the wainscot like a breath!”
The Jew released his hold, and they rushed tumultuously from the room. The candle, wasted by the draught, was standing where it had been placed, and shewed them the empty staircase, and their own white faces. They listened intently, but a profound silence reigned throughout the house.
“It’s your fancy,” said the Jew, taking up the light, and turning to his companion.
“I’ll swear I saw it!” replied Monks, trembling violently. “It was bending forward when I saw it first, and when I spoke it darted away.”
The Jew glanced contemptuously at the pale face of his associate, and, telling him he could follow if he pleased, ascended the stairs. They looked into all the rooms; they were cold, bare, and empty. They descended into the passage, and thence into the cellars below. The green damp hung upon the low walls, and the tracks of the snail and slug glistened in the light; but all was still as death.
“What do you think now?” said the Jew, when they had regained the passage. “Besides ourselves, there’s not a creature in the house except Toby and the boys, and they’re safe enough. See here!”
As a proof of the fact, the Jew drew forth two keys from his pocket; and explained, that when he first went down stairs he had locked them in, to prevent any intrusion on the conference.
This accumulated testimony effectually staggered Mr. Monks. His protestations had gradually become less and less vehement as they proceeded in their search without making any discovery; and now he gave vent to several very grim laughs, and confessed it could only have been his excited imagination. He declined any renewal of the conversation, however, for that night, suddenly remembering that it was past one o’clock: and so the amiable couple parted.