Oliver Twist. Volume 1 of 3

“What’s the matter here?” said the Jew, looking round.

“The girl’s gone mad, I think,” replied Sikes savagely.

“No, she hasn’t,” said Nancy, pale and breathless from the scuffle; “no, she hasn’t, Fagin: don’t think it.”

“Then keep quiet, will you?” said the Jew with a threatening look.

“No, I won’t do that neither,” replied Nancy, speaking very loud. “Come, what do you think of that?”

Mr. Fagin was sufficiently well acquainted with the manners and customs of that particular species of humanity to which Nancy belonged, to feel tolerably certain that it would be rather unsafe to prolong any conversation with her at present. With the view of diverting the attention of the company, he turned to Oliver.

“So you wanted to get away, my dear, did you?” said the Jew, taking up a jagged and knotted club which lay in a corner of the fire-place; “eh?”

Oliver made no reply, but he watched the Jew’s motions and breathed quickly.

“Wanted to get assistance, – called for the police, did you?” sneered the Jew, catching the boy by the arm. “We’ll cure you of that, my young master.”

The Jew inflicted a smart blow on Oliver’s shoulders with the club, and was raising it for a second, when the girl, rushing forward, wrested it from his hand, and flung it into the fire with a force that brought some of the glowing coals whirling out into the room.

“I won’t stand by and see it done, Fagin,” cried the girl. “You’ve got the boy, and what more would you have? Let him be – let him be, or I shall put that mark on some of you, that will bring me to the gallows before my time.”

The girl stamped her foot violently on the floor as she vented this threat; and with her lips compressed, and her hands clenched, looked alternately at the Jew and the other robber – her face quite colourless from the passion of rage into which she had gradually worked herself.

“Why, Nancy!” said the Jew in a soothing tone, after a pause, during which he and Mr. Sikes had stared at one another in a disconcerted manner, “you – you’re more clever than ever to-night. Ha! ha! my dear, you are acting beautifully.”

“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 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 laughed 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 genteel 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 changed places with them we passed so near to-night, 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!”

“Ay, 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 phrensy, 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 the 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 to-morrow, 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; and 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 soon fell sound asleep.

CHAPTER XVII

OLIVER’S DESTINY CONTINUING UNPROPITIOUS, BRINGS A GREAT MAN TO LONDON TO INJURE HIS REPUTATION

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, well-cured bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; and, 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 directly 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 on any account.

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 beadleism; his cocked hat and coat were dazzling in the morning sun, and 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, and 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 a parish care.

“Drat that beadle!” said Mrs. Mann, hearing the well-known impatient 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 spoken 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.