Oliver Twist (17 page)

If I wanted any further proof of the strictly philosophical nature of the conduct of these young gentlemen in their very delicate predicament, I should at once find it in the fact (also recorded in a foregoing part of this narrative) of their quitting the pursuit when the general attention was fixed upon Oliver, and making immediately for their home by the shortest possible cut. Although I do not mean to assert that it is usually the practice of renowned and learned sages to shorten the road to any great conclusion (their course indeed being rather to lengthen the distance, by various circumlocutions and discursive staggerings, like unto-those in which drunken men under the pressure of a too mighty flow of ideas, are prone to indulge), still, I do mean to say, and do say distinctly, that it is the invariable practice of many mighty philosophers, in carrying out their theories, to evince great wisdom and foresight in providing against every possible contingency which can be supposed at all likely to affect themselves. Thus, to do a great right, you may do a little wrong; and you may take any means which the end to be attained will justify, the amount of the right, or the amount of the wrong, or indeed the distinction between the two, being left entirely to the philosopher concerned, to be settled and determined by his clear, comprehensive, and impartial view of his own particular case.

It was not until the two boys had scoured with great rapidity through a most intricate maze of narrow streets and courts, that they ventured to halt beneath a low and dark archway. Having remained silent here just long enough to recover breath to speak, Master Bates uttered an exclamation of amusement and delight and, bursting into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, flung himself upon a door-step, and rolled thereon in a transport of mirth.

“What’s the matter?” inquired the Dodger.

“Ha! ha! ha!” roared Charley Bates.

“Hold your noise,” remonstrated the Dodger, looking cautiously round. “Do you want to be grabbed, stupid?”

“I can’t help it,” said Charley, “I can’t help it! To see him splitting away at that pace, and cutting round the corners, and knocking up again the posts, and starting on again as if he was made of iron as well as them, and me with the wipe in my pocket, singing out after him—oh, my eye!” The vivid imagination of Master Bates presented the scene before him in too strong colours. As he arrived at this apostrophe he again rolled upon the doorstep, and laughed louder than before.

“What’ll Fagin say?” inquired the Dodger, taking advantage of the next interval of breathlessness on the part of his friend to propound the question.

“What?” repeated Charley Bates.

“Ah, what?” said the Dodger.

“Why, what should he say?” inquired Charley, stopping rather suddenly in his merriment; for the Dodger’s manner was impressive. “What should he say?”

Mr. Dawkins whistled for a couple of minutes, then, taking off his hat, scratched his head, and nodded thrice.

“What do you mean?” said Charley.

“Toor rul lol loo, gammon and spinnage, the frog he wouldn‘t, and high cockolorum,” said the Dodger, with a slight sneer on his intellectual countenance.

This was explanatory, but not satisfactory. Master Bates felt it so, and again said, “What do you mean?”

The Dodger made no reply, but putting his hat on again, and gathering the skirts of his long-tailed coat under his arm, thrust his tongue into his cheek, slapped the bridge of his nose some half-dozen times in a familiar but expressive manner, and turning on his heel, slunk down the court. Master Bates followed, with a thoughtful countenance.

The noise of footsteps on the creaking stairs, a few minutes after the occurrence of this conversation, roused the merry old gentleman as he sat over the fire with a saveloy and a small loaf in his left hand, a pocket-knife in his right, and a pewter pot on the trivet. There was a rascally smile on his white face as he turned round, and, looking sharply out from under his thick red eyebrows, bent his ear towards the door, and listened.

“Why, how’s this?” muttered the Jew, changing countenance; “only two of ‘em? Where’s the third? They can’t have got into trouble. Hark!”

The footsteps approached nearer, they reached the landing. The door was slowly opened; and the Dodger and Charley Bates entered, closing it behind them.

 

“WHERE’S OLIVER?” SAID THE JEW, RISING WITH A MENACING look. “Where’s the boy?”

The young thieves eyed their preceptor as if they were alarmed at his violence, and looked uneasily at each other. But they made no reply.

“What’s become of the boy?” said the Jew, seizing the Dodger tightly by the collar, and threatening him with horrid imprecations. “Speak out, or I’ll throttle you!”

Mr. Fagin looked so very much in earnest, that Charley Bates, who deemed it prudent in all cases to be on the safe side, and who conceived it by no means improbable that it might be his turn to be throttled second, dropped upon his knees, and raised a loud, well-sustained, and continuous roar—something between a mad bull and a speaking trumpet.

“Will you speak?” thundered the Jew, shaking the Dodger so much that his keeping in the big coat at all, seemed perfectly miraculous.

“Why, the traps have got him, and that’s all about it,” said the Dodger, sullenly. “Come, let go o’ me, will you!” And, swinging himself, at one jerk, clean out of the big coat, which he left in the Jew’s hands, the Dodger snatched up the toasting-fork, and made a pass at the merry old gentleman’s waistcoat which, if it had taken effect, would have let a little more merriment out than could have been easily replaced.

The Jew stepped back in this emergency with more agility than could have been anticipated in a man of his apparent decrepitude, and, seizing up the pot, prepared to hurl it at his assailant’s head. But Charley Bates, at this moment, calling his attention by a perfectly terrific howl, he suddenly altered its destination, and flung it full at that young gentleman.

“Why, what the blazes is in the wind now!” growled a deep voice. “Who pitched that ‘ere at me? It’s well it’s the beer, and not the pot, as hit me, or I’d have settled somebody. I might have know’d, as nobody but an infernal, rich, plundering, thundering old Jew could afford to throw away any drink but water—and not that, unless he done the River Company every quarter. Wot’s it all about, Fagin? D—me if my neck-hand kercher an’t lined with beer! Come in you sneaking warmint; wot are you stopping outside for, as if you was ashamed of your master! Come in!”

The man who growled out these words was a stoutly built fellow of about five-and-thirty, in a black velveteen coat, very soiled drab breeches, lace-up half boots, and grey cotton stockings, which inclosed a bulky pair of legs, with large swelling calves—the kind of legs, which in such costume, always look in an unfinished and incomplete state without a set of fetters to garnish them. He had a brown hat on his head and a dirty belcher handkerchief round his neck, with the long frayed ends of which he smeared the beer from his face as he spoke. He disclosed, when he had done so, a broad heavy countenance with a beard of three days’ growth, and two scowling eyes, one of which displayed various particoloured symptoms of having been recently damaged by a blow.

“Come in, d’ ye hear?” growled this engaging ruffian.

A white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty different places, skulked into the room.

“Why didn’t you come in afore?” said the man. “You’re getting too proud to own me afore company, are you? Lie down!”

This command was accompanied with a kick, which sent the animal to the other end of the room. He appeared well used to it, however; for he coiled himself up in a corner very quietly, without uttering a sound, and winking his very ill-looking eyes twenty times in a minute, appeared to occupy himself in taking a survey of the apartment.

“What are you up to? Ill-treating the boys, you covetous, avaricious, in-sa-ti-a-ble ole fence?” said the man, seating himself deliberately. “I wonder they don’t murder you! I would if I was them. If I’d been your ‘prentice, I’d have done it long ago, and—no, I couldn’t have sold you afterwards, for you’re fit for nothing but keeping as a curiosity of ugliness in a glass bottle, and I suppose they don’t blow glass bottles large enough.”

“Hush! hush! Mr. Sikes,” said the Jew, trembling; “don’t speak so loud.”

“None of your mistering,” replied the ruffian; “you always mean mischief when you come that. You know my name: out with it! I shan’t disgrace it when the time comes.”

“Well, well, then—Bill Sikes,” said the Jew, with abject humility. “You seem out of humour, Bill.”

“Perhaps I am,” replied Sikes; “I should think
you
was rather out of sorts too, unless you mean as little harm when you throw pewter pots about as you do when you blab and—”

“Are you mad?” said the Jew, catching the man by the sleeve, and pointing towards the boys.

Mr. Sikes contented himself with tying an imaginary knot under his left ear, and jerking his head over on the right shoulder—a piece of dumb show which the Jew appeared to understand perfectly. He then, in cant terms, with which his whole conversation was plentifully besprinkled, but which would be quite unintelligible if they were recorded here, demanded a glass of liquor.

“And mind you don’t poison it,” said Mr. Sikes, laying his hat upon the table.

This was said in jest; but if the speaker could have seen the evil leer with which the Jew bit his pale lip as he turned round to the cupboard, he might have thought the caution not wholly unnecessary, or the wish (at all events) to improve upon the distiller’s ingenuity not very far from the old gentleman’s merry heart.

After swallowing two or three glasses of spirits, Mr. Sikes condescended to take some notice of the young gentlemen; which gracious act led to a conversation in which the cause and manner of Oliver’s capture were circumstantially detailed, with such alterations and improvements on the truth as to the Dodger appeared most advisable under the circumstances.

“I’m afraid,” said the Jew, “that he may say something which will get us into trouble.”

“That’s very likely,” returned Sikes with a malicious grin. “You’re blowed upon, Fagin.”

“And I’m afraid, you see,” added the Jew, speaking as if he had not noticed the interruption, and regarding the other closely as he did so—“I’m afraid that, if the game was up with us, it might be up with a good many more, and that it would come out rather worse for you than it would for me, my dear.”

The man started, and turned round upon the Jew. But the old gentleman’s shoulders were shrugged up to his ears, and his eyes were vacantly staring on the opposite wall.

There was a long pause. Every member of the respectable coterie appeared plunged in his own reflections, not excepting the dog, who by a certain malicious licking of his lips seemed to be meditating an attack upon the legs of the first gentleman or lady he might encounter in the streets when he went out.

“Somebody must find out wot’s been done at the office,” said Mr. Sikes in a much lower tone than he had taken since he came in.

The Jew nodded assent.

“If he hasn’t peached, and is committed, there’s no fear till he comes out again,” said Mr. Sikes, “and then he must be taken care on. You must get hold of him somehow.”

Again the Jew nodded.

The prudence of this line of action, indeed, was obvious; but, unfortunately, there was one very strong objection to its being adopted. This was, that the Dodger, and Charley Bates, and Fagin, and Mr. William Sikes, happened, one and all, to entertain a violent and deeply-rooted antipathy to going near a police office on any ground or pretext whatever.

How long they might have sat and looked at each other, in a state of uncertainty not the most pleasant of its kind, it is difficult to guess. It is not necessary to make any guesses on the subject, however; for the sudden entrance of the two young ladies whom Oliver had seen on a former occasion, caused the conversation to flow afresh.

“The very thing!” said the Jew. “Bet will go; won’t you, my dear?”

“Wheres?” inquired the young lady.

“Only just up to the office, my dear,” said the Jew coaxingly.

It is due to the young lady to say that she did not positively affirm that she would not, but that she merely expressed an emphatic and earnest desire to be “blessed” if she would—a polite and delicate evasion of the request, which shows the young lady to have been possessed of that natural good breeding which cannot bear to inflict upon a fellow-creature the pain of a direct and pointed refusal.

The Jew’s countenance fell. He turned from this young lady, who was gaily, not to say gorgeously attired, in a red gown, green boots, and yellow curl-papers, to the other female.

“Nancy, my dear,” said the Jew in a soothing manner, “what do you say?”

“That it won’t do; so it’s no use a-trying it on, Fagin,” replied Nancy.

“What do you mean by that?” said Mr. Sikes, looking up in a surly manner.

“What I say, Bill,” replied the lady collectedly.

“Why, you’re just the very person for it,” reasoned Mr. Sikes: “nobody about here knows anything of you.”

“And as I don’t want ‘em to, neither,” replied Nancy in the same composed manner, “it’s rather more no than yes with me, Bill.”

“She’ll go, Fagin,” said Sikes.

“No, she won‘t, Fagin,” said Nancy.

“Yes she will, Fagin,” said Sikes.

And Mr. Sikes was right. By dint of alternate threats, promises, and bribes, the lady in question was ultimately prevailed upon to undertake the commission. She was not, indeed, withheld by the same considerations as her agreeable friend; for, having recently removed into the neighbourhood of Field Lane from the remote but genteel suburb of Ratcliffe, she was not under the same apprehension of being recognized by any of her numerous acquaintance.