Oliver Twist (22 page)

“Am I!” said the girl. “Take care I don’t overdo it. You will be the worse for it, Fagin, if I do; and so I tell you in good time to keep clear of me.”

There is something about a roused woman—especially if she add to all her other strong passions, the fierce impulses of recklessness and despair—which few men like to provoke. The Jew saw that it would be hopeless to affect any further mistake regarding the reality of Miss Nancy’s rage and, shrinking involuntarily back a few paces, cast a glance, half imploring and half cowardly at Sikes, as if to hint that he was the fittest person to pursue the dialogue.

Mr. Sikes, thus mutely appealed to, and possibly feeling his personal pride and influence interested in the immediate reduction of Miss Nancy to reason, gave utterance to about a couple of score of curses and threats, the rapid production of which reflected great credit on the fertility of his invention. As they produced no visible effect on the object against whom they were discharged, however, he resorted to more tangible arguments.

“What do you mean by this?” said Sikes, backing the inquiry with a very common imprecation concerning the most beautiful of human features, which, if it were heard above only once out of every fifty thousand times that it is uttered below, would render blindness as common a disorder as measles: “what do you mean by it? Burn my body! Do you know who you are, and what you are?”

“Oh, yes, I know all about it,” replied the girl, laughing hysterically and shaking her head from side to side, with a poor assumption of indifference.

“Well, then, keep quiet,” rejoined Sikes, with a growl like that he was accustomed to use when addressing his dog, “or I’ll quiet you for a good long time to come.”

The girl laughing again, even less composedly than before, and darting a hasty look at Sikes, turned her face aside and bit her lip till the blood came.

“You’re a nice one,” added Sikes, as he surveyed her with a contemptuous air, “to take up the humane and gen—teel side! A pretty subject for the child, as you call him, to make a friend of!”

“God Almighty help me, I am!” cried the girl passionately; “and I wish I had been struck dead in the street, or had changed places with them we passed so near tonight, before I had lent a hand in bringing him here. He’s a thief, a liar, a devil, all that’s bad, from this night forth. Isn’t that enough for the old wretch, without blows?”

“Come, come, Sikes,” said the Jew, appealing to him in a remonstratory tone, and motioning towards the boys, who were eagerly attentive to all that passed; “we must have civil words; civil words, Bill.”

“Civil words!” cried the girl, whose passion was frightful to see. “Civil words, you villain! Yes, you deserve ‘em from me. I thieved for you when I was a child not half as old as this!” pointing to Oliver. “I have been in the same trade, and in the same service, for twelve years since. Don’t you know it? Speak out! Don’t you know it?”

“Well, well,” replied the Jew, with an attempt at pacification; “and, if you have, it’s your living!”

“Aye, it is!” returned the girl, not speaking, but pouring out the words in one continuous and vehement scream. “It is my living; and the cold, wet, dirty streets are my home; and you’re the wretch that drove me to them long ago, and that’ ll keep me there, day and night, day and night, till I die!”

“I shall do you a mischief!” interposed the Jew, goaded by these reproaches; “a mischief worse than that, if you say much more!”

The girl said nothing more; but, tearing her hair and dress in a transport of passion, made such a rush at the Jew as would probably have left signal marks of her revenge upon him, had not her wrists been seized by Sikes at the right moment; upon which, she made a few ineffectual struggles, and fainted.

“She’s all right now,” said Sikes, laying her down in a corner. “She’s uncommon strong in the arms, when she’s up in this way.”

The Jew wiped his forehead and smiled, as if it were a relief to have the disturbance over, but neither he, nor Sikes, nor the dog, nor the boys, seemed to consider it in any other light than a common occurrence incidental to business.

“It’s the worst of having to do with women,” said the Jew, replacing his club, “but they’re clever, and we can’t get on, in our line, without ‘em. Charley, show Oliver to bed.”

“I suppose he’d better not wear his best clothes tomorrow, Fagin, had he?” inquired Charley Bates.

“Certainly not,” replied the Jew, reciprocating the grin with which Charley put the question.

Master Bates, apparently much delighted with his commission, took the cleft stick and led Oliver into an adjacent kitchen, where there were two or three of the beds on which he had slept before; and here, with many uncontrollable bursts of laughter, he produced the identical old suit of clothes which Oliver had so much congratulated himself upon leaving off at Mr. Brownlow‘s, and the accidental display of which to Fagin, by the Jew who purchased them, had been the very first clue received of his whereabout.

“Pull off the smart ones,” said Charley, “and I’ll give ‘em to Fagin to take care of. What fun it is!”

Poor Oliver unwillingly complied. Master Bates, rolling up the new clothes under his arm, departed from the room, leaving Oliver in the dark and locking the door behind him.

The noise of Charley’s laughter, and the voice of Miss Betsy, who opportunely arrived to throw water over her friend and perform other feminine offices for the promotion of her recovery, might have kept many people awake under more happy circumstances than those in which Oliver was placed. But he was sick and weary; and he soon fell sound asleep.

 

IT IS THE CUSTOM ON THE STAGE, IN ALL GOOD MURDEROUS melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes in as regular alternation as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing. bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron, her virtue and her life alike in danger, drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other; and just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard, and we are straightway transported to the great hall of the castle, where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all sorts of places, from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company, carolling perpetually.

Such changes appear absurd; but they are not so unnatural as they would seem at first sight. The transitions in real life from well-spread boards to death-beds, and from mourning-weeds to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling; only there we are busy actors instead of passive lookers-on, which makes a vast difference. The actors in the mimic life of the theatre are blind to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous and preposterous.

As sudden shiftings of the scene, and rapid changes of time and place, are not only sanctioned in books by long usage, but are by many considered as the great art of authorship—an author’s skill in his craft being, by such critics, chiefly estimated with relation to the dilemmas in which he leaves his characters at the end of every chapter—this brief introduction to the present one may perhaps be deemed unnecessary. If so, let it be considered a delicate intimation on the part of the historian that he is going back to the town in which Oliver Twist was born, the reader taking it for granted that there are good and substantial reasons for making the journey, or he would not be invited to proceed upon such an expedition.

Mr. Bumble emerged at early morning from the workhouse gate, and walked with portly carriage and commanding steps up the High Street. He was in the full bloom and pride of beadlehood; his cocked hat and coat were dazzling in the morning sun; he clutched his cane with the vigorous tenacity of health and power. Mr. Bumble always carried his head high, but this morning it was higher than usual. There was an abstraction in his eye, an elevation in his air, which might have warned an observant stranger that thoughts were passing in the beadle’s mind, too great for utterance.

Mr. Bumble stopped not to converse with the small shop-keepers and others who spoke to him, deferentially, as he passed along. He merely returned their salutations with a wave of his hand, and relaxed not in his dignified pace until he reached the farm where Mrs. Mann tended the infant paupers with parochial care.

“Drat that beadle!” said Mrs. Mann, hearing the well-known shaking at the garden-gate. “If it isn’t him at this time in the morning! Lauk, Mr. Bumble, only think of its being you! Well, dear me, it is a pleasure, this is! Come into the parlour, sir, please.”

The first sentence was addressed to Susan; and the exclamations of delight were uttered to Mr. Bumble as the good lady unlocked the garden gate and showed him, with great attention and respect, into the house.

“Mrs. Mann,” said Mr. Bumble, not sitting upon or dropping himself into a seat, as any common jackanapes would, but letting himself gradually and slowly down into a chair; “Mrs. Mann, ma‘am, good morning.”

“Well, and good morning to
you,
sir.” replied Mrs. Mann, with many smiles, “and hoping you find yourself well, sir!”

“So-so, Mrs. Mann,” replied the beadle. “A porochial life is not a bed of roses, Mrs. Mann.”

“Ah, that it isn’t indeed, Mr. Bumble,” rejoined the lady. And all the infant paupers might have chorused the rejoinder with great propriety if they had heard it.

“A porochial life, ma‘am,” continued Mr. Bumble, striking the table with his cane, “is a life of worrit, and vexation, and hardihood; but all public characters, as I may say, must suffer prosecution.”

Mrs. Mann, not very well knowing what the beadle meant, raised her hands with a look of sympathy, and sighed.

“Ah! You may well sigh, Mrs. Mann!” said the beadle.

Finding she had done right, Mrs. Mann sighed again, evidently to the satisfaction of the public character, who, repressing a complacent smile by looking sternly at his cocked hat, said:

“Mrs. Mann, I am a-going to London.”

“Lauk, Mr. Bumble!” cried Mrs. Mann, starting back.

“To London, ma‘am,” resumed the inflexible beadle, “by coach. I and two paupers, Mrs. Mann! A legal action is a coming on, about a settlement; and the board has appointed me—me, Mrs. Mann—to depose to the matter before the quarter-sessions at Clerkinwell. And I very much question,” added Mr. Bumble, drawing himself up, “whether the Clerkinwell Sessions will not find themselves in the wrong box before they have done with me.”

“Oh! you mustn’t be too hard upon them, sir,” said Mrs. Mann, coaxingly.

“The Clerkinwell Sessions have brought it upon themselves, ma‘am,” replied Mr. Bumble; “and if the Clerkinwell Sessions find that they come off rather worse than they expected, the Clerkinwell Sessions have only themselves to thank.”

There was so much determination and depth of purpose about the menacing manner in which Mr. Bumble delivered himself of these words that Mrs. Mann appeared quite awed by them. At length she said:

“You’re going by coach, sir? I thought it was always usual to send them paupers in carts.”

“That’s when they’re ill, Mrs. Mann,” said the beadle. “We put the sick paupers into open carts in the rainy weather, to prevent their taking cold.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Mann.

“The opposition coach contracts for these two, and takes them cheap,” said Mr. Bumble. “They are both in a very low state, and we find it would come two pound cheaper to move ‘em than to bury ’em—that is, if we can throw ‘em upon another parish, which I think we shall be able to do if they don’t die upon the road to spite us. Ha! ha! ha!”

When Mr. Bumble had laughed a little while, his eyes again encountered the cocked hat; and he became grave.

“We are forgetting business, ma‘am,” said the beadle; “here is your porochial stipend for the month.”

Mr. Bumble produced some silver money rolled up in paper, from his pocketbook and requested a receipt, which Mrs. Mann wrote.

“It’s very much blotted, sir,” said the farmer of infants; “but it’s formal enough, I dare say. Thank you, Mr. Bumble, sir, I am very much obliged to you, I’m sure.”

Mr. Bumble nodded blandly, in acknowledgement of Mrs. Mann’s curtsey, and inquired how the children were.

“Bless their dear little hearts!” said Mrs. Mann with emotion, “they’re as well as can be, the dears! Of course, except the two that died last week. And little Dick.”

“Isn’t that boy no better?” inquired Mr. Bumble.

Mrs. Mann shook her head.

“He’s a ill-conditioned, wicious, bad-disposed porochial child that,” said Mr, Bumble angrily. “Where is he?”

“I’ll bring him to you in one minute, sir,” replied Mrs. Mann. “Here, you Dick!”

After some calling, Dick was discovered. Having had his face put under the pump, and dried upon Mrs. Mann’s gown, he was led into the awful presence of Mr. Bumble, the beadle.

The child was pale and thin; his cheeks were sunken, and his eyes large and bright. The scanty parish dress, the livery of his misery, hung loosely on his feeble body; and his young limbs had wasted away like those of an old man.

Such was the little being who stood trembling beneath Mr. Bumble’s glance, not daring to lift his eyes from the floor, and dreading even to hear the beadle’s voice.

“Can’t you look at the gentleman, you obstinate boy?” said Mrs. Mann.

The child meekly raised his eyes, and encountered those of Mr. Bumble.

“What’s the matter with you, porochial Dick?” inquired Mr. Bumble, with well-timed jocularity.