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 hoptalymy!' 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 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 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 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!'
'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 concilitory 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.
'Your 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 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 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 stong 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.
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