บทที่ บทที่ 26 · IN WHICH A MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER APPEARS UPON THE SCENE; AND MANY

. 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 was possible, all the main

streets, and skulking only through the by-ways 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, 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 pick-pockets.

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 who 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; here, 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 look-out

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. Pointing in the direction of Saffron

Hill, he inquired whether any one was up yonder tonight.

“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

tonight?”

“Nothing tonight,” 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

public-house in which Mr. Sikes and his dog have already figured.

Merely making a sign to a man at the bar, Fagin walked straight

upstairs, 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 from 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 more. 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 gentleman 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 everything 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 drunkeness in all its stages,

were there, in their strongest aspect; and women: some with the last

lingering tinge of their early freshness almost fading as you looked:

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. “Won’t 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 won’t

stir till it’s all safe. Depend on it, 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 tonight?” 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

tonight. No, say tomorrow. As he is not here, tomorrow 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!”

“Ah! 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. Fagin crept softly upstairs, 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, cooly, “or perhaps she is

only miserable.”

The old man turned to close the door, as he made this reflection; the

noise thus occasioned, roused the girl. She eyed his crafty face

narrowly, as she inquired to his recital of Toby Crackit’s story. When

it was concluded, she sank 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 the 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?”

The girl moaned out some half intelligible reply, that she could not

tell; and seemed, from the 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.”

“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 the 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. “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 the power to, to—”

Panting for breath, the old man stammered for a word; and in that

instant checked the torrent of his wrath, and changed his whole

demeanour. A moment before, his clenched hands had 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 villainy. After a

short silence, he ventured to look round at his companion. He 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 won’t; 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, Bill’s pretty sure to be safe; for Bill’s worth two of Toby

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 anything you want me to do,”

rejoined Nancy; “and if it is, you had better wait till tomorrow. 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 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

dullness, 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 was 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 having accomplished his

twofold object of imparting to the girl what he had, that night, heard,

and of 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. 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. “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 on 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: remarking, 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 visitor at that unseasonable hour; and, indeed, 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!”

“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. After a short absence,

he returned with a lighted candle, and the intelligence that Toby

Crackit was asleep in the back room below, and that the boys were in

the front one. Beckoning the man to follow him, he led the way

upstairs.

“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 show lights to our neighbours, we’ll set

the candle on the stairs. There!”

With those words, the Jew, stooping down, placed the candle on an upper

flight of stairs, exactly opposite to the room door. This done, he led

the way into the apartment; which was destitute of all movables 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 sat

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; the

door was partially open; and the candle outside, threw a feeble

reflection on the opposite wall.

They conversed for some time in whispers. Though 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 interests of both should be consulted; is it, my

good friend?”

“What then?” demanded Monks.

“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 on

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 won’t 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. It showed them only the empty staircase, and their own white

faces. They listened intently: 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. “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; the tracks of the snail and slug

glistened in the light of the candle; 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 downstairs, 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.