Oliver Twist—After the Edit

In this PDF version the original text is underlined; the remainder is Dickens's assumed compliance with “John Ross's” editorial notes

CHAPTER 1

Treats of the place where a male child was born ; and of the circumstances surrounding his birth

A thorn tree arched over the path across Fellgate Moor. The pitiless north wind keened through its bare branches, shaking them across the face of a gibbous moon. Its gnarled trunk afforded neither landmark nor shelter to the poor woman who laboured up that path, tricing her swollen but enfeebled body into the wind and keeping her leeward eye fixed on the light ahead—the only sign of human habitation in all that vast moorland waste. Nine months earlier that solitary thorn would have burst into blossom; then it would have made a cheerful bridal arch for that same woman. Indeed, it was not unlike the arch under which she had, at that very time, hoped to walk on her way into church and up to the very altar, there to seal in sacred vows the love she bore for one whose death had robbed her of that pledge. Your stern moralist would therefore say that its present deflowered state was most apt to her present condition—to which I reply that such a moralist had better hold his or her tongue, for an even sterner lesson is in store. When her feet wanted a good half-mile of the tall iron gates before which that solitary lantern swung in the wind, a bank of clouds scudded southward, extinguishing the moon and sprinkling a few tentative pellets of sleet among the heather and the dry, yellow sedge. The young woman had nothing for a coat beyond a half-rotten corn sack, which, with one corner folded into the other, she had draped over her head like a monk’s cowl. She bent even lower than the pains of her labour had already brought her, but the boisterous wind could lift the sleet as nimbly as if it were so much goosedown—a double cruelty when the melting of it on her skin was chill beyond bearing. Moments later, as the skies darkened to the black of pitch, the sleet turned to hail and rain. The hailstones, as big as pebbles, tumbled down with a ferocity that compelled her to link her fingers above and behind her head, where they accepted a bruising that would surely have stunned her and left her to die where she dropped. The rain, which now fell in gouts as thick as six-inch nails, soaked through the sacking in no time at all. She felt it run in icy rilles between her fingers, down her neck, into her clothing, seeking any flesh where some insignificant warmth yet lingered, chilling it to the point where death at last

1 seemed easeful. Two things, and two alone, kept one foot in front of the other over the last furlong of her three-hundred-mile trudge from autumn into winter: the lantern, with its promise of shelter, food, and warmth, and the child she might deliver there if only she reached the place in time. The dainty shoes that had brought her all that way disintegrated at last over those final yards. But her bare feet were by then too numb with the cold to feel the sharp chippings of millstone grit that shredded her soles beneath her. The Recording Angel himself could not have told you how she covered the final twenty paces. The lantern, swinging wildly in the gale and flaring up with each new gust, picked out the name above the gate in gleaming wet letters of iron: Fellgate District Union Workhouse—at the sight of which she let out an eldritch cry: “Mercy! Have pity!” and collapsed in a heap at the foot of the massive gatepost. If she had not accidentally clutched at the bell-pull as she fell, they would have found her there the following dawn, as cold as the stone of which the institution itself was built—colder than which it is not given to many stones to be. But the jangling of the bell was heard above the howling of the storm and so she was discovered, and brought at length into the room where such unfortunates were delivered. There an old crone in twelfth-hand clothes, her brain somewhat misty from an unexpected allowance of ale, alternately stretched her hands toward the hearth (where a minute glow of twigs and slack brown coal understudied a fire), and rubbed her knuckles in its feeble warmth. Every now and then she sipped from a handy green bottle, to keep alive the spirit engendered by the ale. In the rest of that gaunt stone chamber the air was distinguishable from that on the moor outside only by the moderation of its blast and its almost total lack of hail, sleet, or rain. As the porters stretched the unconscious woman upon the bed, this pauper female rose wearily to fetch Doctor Lydd, the parish surgeon. It was no heroic chore for the man lived in the workhouse, where he doled out physic and delivered babies by contract. He came at once, examined the poor woman, and rolled up his sleeves, saying, “So she wants to beat us to it!”—for the crown of the baby’s head was already born. The rest of it followed in a bag-o’-bones welter of tumbled red jelly. “Am I?” moaned the young woman as she surfaced briefly into consciousness. “You’re safely delivered of a fine young boy, my dear,” the good doctor replied. The woman breathed in short, shallow gasps but did not otherwise move, much less respond. “Bathe him.” Doctor Fell tied off the cord and handed the baby to the old crone. “ ’Tis nobbut cold watter,” she warned. “The sooner he gets used to it the better,” the doctor replied mildly. “Kill or cure is our motto here.” At the kiss of the icy water the baby gave out a howl that was enough to warn all hundred and sixty-three inmates of the house that their number had just been augmented by one. It also roused the young woman once more. Her eyes rolled this way and that, seeming to focus on nothing until at last they settled on the

2 gaunt, tired face of the surgeon. “Am I?” she asked again. “Are you what, my dear?” he replied. “Dying?” He smiled bravely rather than confirm her fears. “You wouldn’t be the first new mother to believe that. Let’s have no talk of dying with such a fine young man to call you mother! What’ll you call him, eh?” “Bless us!” the old woman put in as she laid the baby, still howling lustily, on the bed and swaddled him in a calico robe, now yellow with age and long service. Then, having fortified herself with a swig from the green bottle, she added, “When she’s seen as many winters as what I have, seetha, and dropped as many bairns as what I have ...” “And how many, pray, is that, Old Sal?” the doctor asked as he felt the baby’s pulse and examined its form for signs of abnormality. “Thirteen,” she replied complacently. “All reared?” “All dead, sir, ’cepting two as bides ’ere along of me in the workus ... why then she’ll know better than to talk of dying.” Uncomforted, the young woman raised her head an exhausting inch or two above the mattress and stretched a feeble arm toward her child. The surgeon laid the baby boy tenderly on her breast and covered them both with what had once been a blanket; in the same movement of his hand he pulled a louse from her neck and flung it toward the hearth. The woman planted a passionate kiss on her baby’s forehead and fell back in a swoon. Seconds later her breathing was forever stilled. For a moment neither onlooker moved. The anguish of death was, briefly, enough to overtop its commonplace, even in that grimmest of dwellings, whose inmates—even the most robust among them—are scarcely more substantial than the vapours of despair they daily breathe. “It’s over and done with her, Old Sal,” the doctor said. “Find a crib for the baby and lay her out before she grows stiff. If the little man cries, try him with a teaspoon or two of thin gruel. If he persists, do not hesitate but send for me.” As he was on the point of leaving he paused by the bed. “She was a good- looking girl,” he said. “She never told us what she wanted him called.” “Maister Bumble will do that for him, sir.” She cackled. “According to his famous system.” “Ah, yes! What was the last one called?” “Swubble. Nathan Swubble, poor mite.” “An N and an S. Then it’ll be something beginning with an O and a T. Obidiah Tomkins? Ormerod Trelawney? Well, well! We shall see.” He smiled at his flight of fancy and gazed again at the dead woman. A strange reluctance to leave her touched him. “Have you any idea where she came from?” “Nay, maister. She fell at the gate not an hour since. As to what they called her, I know not, but she was bound hither from a great way off by the look of her shoes. That I can vouchsafe.” “The old story!” The surgeon nodded and put on his hat. “No wedding ring, I see. Ah me! Goodnight, Old Sal.”

3 The crone bade him goodnight without taking her eyes off the corpse, for a stray breeze had just twitched at what had once been a fine silk blouse. The movement had revealed the glint of a filigree gold chain and she feared that if she but took her eyes off it, the bauble would vanish of its own accord—that is, before she had the opportunity to assist it in performing that selfsame trick. Behind her, the little baby cried lustily on. He would have cried a great deal louder still had he known what manner of existence (for none could call it life) now lay in store for him.

CHAPTER 2

Treats of Oliver’s growth, education, and board ; and how he asked for more

For the best part of a year Oliver Twist (not Obidiah Tomkins nor yet Ormerod Trelawney) was reared by hand—the back of the hand, the front, the side ... it was a matter of indifference so long as it led to the desired submission of that rebellious animal otherwise known as a human child. The workhouse authorities, heedful of the wee mite’s hunger and poverty, conveyed their anxieties to the parish authorities. With their customary dignity the parish authorities inquired in turn whether there was no female, presently luxuriating in their charity, who might supply the babe with comfort and nourishment. The workhouse authorities humbly begged to inform them there was not, at which the parish authorities, with their habitual tenderness for both children and the annual accounts, agreed that Oliver should be farmed away to Coldharbour, a branch-workhouse in the same union. There, on the wholesale principle, some two to three dozen other juvenile offenders against the poor laws were given leave to roll about the floor all day, happily unencumbered by too many clothes or too much food. Such gaiety did not come cheap. A full sevenpence-halfpenny a week was allowed for the rearing of each baby culprit; and all thirty farthings of it were paid directly into the hand of Mrs Mann, their parental superintendent—a mite for a mite, one could say. This widow of advancing years was, at first sight, well named, for there was little in her manner and appearance to suggest femininity. Square of build and jaw, dressed overall in black weeds, there was something about her that most people shunned; perhaps it was that suggestion of the Arctic which seemed permanently to attend her, for she was always resettling a great black shawl about her neck and shoulders, as if some biting wind were forever insinuating its icy fingers there. And yet, beneath those broad acres of black bombazine, there beat a wise and tender heart. For Mrs Mann knew what was good for children almost as well as she knew what was good for herself. She was sure, for instance, that a child’s frail stomach might easily bloat and be made uncomfortable on a full thirty farthings a week—quite unlike the stomach of a full-grown widow, accustomed to bloat over decades of practice. She was a student of that philosopher who swore that horses could live without food—and who would, indeed, have proved it if his silly horse, having survived a whole week on one straw a day, had not taken it into its head to expire on the very eve of graduating to a diet of air. Undaunted by his failure,

4 Mrs Mann, applied the identical philosophy to her little angels, treating their bodies like fine violins—that is, she fine-tuned the gut (and the diet) to the point where no more than eight and a half out of ten followed the trail of the professor’s horse into a better world, there to be gathered to fathers they had never known in this. Occasionally, when one forgotten child was discovered on turning up a bedstead or another scalded itself to death at the washtub (an opportunity wisely denied them twenty-nine days out of thirty), a meddlesome coroner’s jury might ask vexatious questions; but they were speedily checked by the evidence of both surgeon and beadle. Doctor Lydd would testify that on opening the infant he found nothing inside (which surprised none familiar with Mrs Mann’s dietary), and Mr Bumble, a devoted servant if ever there was one, would swear whatever the parish required. Their testimony was made the more credible by the periodical inspections the board carried out at the farm—always on the day after the beadle had been sent to warn Mrs Mann of the visitation; they never found the infants to be other than neat and clean and submissive. What more did people want? That Oliver Twist survived Mrs Mann’s tenderness for nine long years will come as some surprise; that he reached his ninth birthday small in stature and meagre in build will not. But nature or inheritance had planted a sturdy spirit within him, where it had found ample room for expansion—to such an extent, indeed, that he and two other young gentlemen of similar mettle had spent much of that day locked in the coal cellar, having dared to complain they were hungry. For this wickedness they were soundly thrashed before their incarceration. Mrs Mann was listening so avidly for the snivels and whimpers that would signal a further rebellion from them that she failed to notice the beadle’s arrival at her gate. “Eaay, Mister Bumble, sir!” she cried joyfully from her window while behind her she flapped a hand at Susan, the maid, and muttered over her shoulder at the girl: “Get Oliver and them two brats upstairs and scrubbed directly.” Aloud she added, “My heart alive, Mister Bumble, I was never more glad to see you.” Since she had never been particularly glad to see him before, it was but the smallest perjury. Had Mr Gillray ever set eyes on Mr Bumble, he must have caricatured him as a pear, or even as a pair of pears—a small one perched atop a large—for the profusion of his chins perfectly miniaturized the profusion of his bellies. Three wearisome miles stretched between Fellgate and Coldharbour and, though he had ridden with Mr Sowerberry, the undertaker, for all but a hundred paces, those hundred had taken their toll of his humour. It did not help that he would have to walk the entire way back again, either. Mr Bumble gave the bolted wicket gate a perfunctory shake before favouring it with a kick that only a beadle’s leg might manage. “Lor, Mister Bumble!” cried the good baby-farmer as she rushed in distress from the house. “What was I thinking of to leave yon gate bolted when I knew you were coming. ’Tis only to protect them dear bairns that I keep it so, sir.” She slipped the bolt, hiding her annoyance at the damage the beadle had done. “Walk in, sir, pray do, Mister Bumble.”

5 The curtsy she dropped might have melted the heart of a mere churchwarden but it left the beadle unmoved. Intruding no more than two of his bellies and one of his chins through the gate, he said, “Do you think it respectable and proper, Mrs Mann, to keep a porochial officer bent on porochial business connected with porochial orphans a-waiting at your gate? Must I remind you that—upon my recommendation—you are a porochial pensioner at sevenpence-halfpenny a head?” The widow hung her head, not so much in humility (though that is how she hoped the beadle might construe it) as to hide the contemptuous fury he might otherwise see in her eyes. “Why, Mister Bumble!” she cried. “What a power of words you have! And them bairns is in such awe of you I’ve scarce been able to quell their agitation all this day. But for that I’d surely have remembered to unbolt the gate agin your coming.” Mr Bumble had never doubted his oratory, nor his importance, and so, having displayed the one and vindicated the other, he relaxed. “Well, well, Mrs Mann,” said he, “I may have been a touch severe. Lead the way in for I have come on business and have aught to say.” She conducted him into her parlour, trying not to wince at the damage his hobnail boots were doing to its polished brick floor. She hastened with his chair before he could wreck it all the way to the window. And, with the ceremonial reverence that never failed to please him, she laid his beadle’s cocked hat and long pole on the table at his side. And he, being but a mortal after all, ran a complacent eye over them, and her, and the room, and he smiled. Then he took out a large bandana of the kind in which travelling men tie up all their worldly goods (and leave behind in workhouses when they pass beyond all such needs), and he mopped his brow of the perspiration those gruelling hundred paces had engendered. Even a master skinflint could not have failed to understand this ritual. Mrs Mann took his meaning at once. “Now don’t be offended at what I’m a- going to say,” she trilled. “You’ve had a champion walk or I’d not even mention it, but will you not revive yourself with a little drop of something, Mister Bumble?” “Not a drop!” The beadle brushed the very idea aside with a dignified wave of his hand—even as his eyes quartered the room for the faintest gleam of a bottle. “Not a drop.” “Oh, I think you will.” Mrs Mann smiled a woman’s knowing smile. “Just a sip to settle the dust? With a little cold water? And a lump of sugar?” Still finding no bottle, the beadle cleared his throat uncertainly. Having tantalized him long enough, she unlocked a cupboard and took down a bottle. “ ’Tis gin,” she said. “I’ll not deceive thee, Mister B. ’Tis gin. I’m obliged to keep some by me for the darling bairns, to mix up their Daffy’s elixir.” Licking his lips, Mr Bumble said, “And do you give the children Daffy, Mrs M?” “Eeay, but I’m a fool to myself—I know it.” She sighed. “But these silly, tender eyes of mine cannot bear to see them suffer when they’ve overeaten. ’Tis naught but senna with a little watered gin, but it’s champion for settling them, so it is.” Mr Bumble nodded admiringly as she set an ample glass before him. “Your

6 generous heart will never make you rich, Mrs Mann,” he said, “but it has already earned you mansions of gold in heaven—that I’ll stake my oath on. You are the milk of human kindness personified and I shall take the earliest opportunity of mentioning it to the board.” “I have a mother’s heart, see thee,” she replied, “though I never bore a bairn of my own.” Here a sour glance at the portrait of her late husband, glowering at them from the wall, allowed her visitor to understand that the fault had hardly been hers. “I drink your health with joy, ma’am!” The beadle raised his glass and downed a mighty swig. “And so to business,” he added with a smack of his lips as he took out an imposing leather notebook. “That child, Oliver Twist, is nine year old this day.” “Ah, bless him!” Mrs Mann scrubbed at her left eye with her coarse apron, hoping to inflame it to a suitable redness. “And, notwithstanding a offered reward of ten pound, which was later raised to twenty, no less, and notwithstanding the most superlative, I would even say supernat’ral, exertions by the parish”—here he stared modestly at his own fingernails—“not one word, not one syllable of his true name, nor that of his father, nor of his mother’s settlement, have we been able to learn.” “Why then, Mister B., he must be glad that one so literary as yourself was at hand to supply the want. ‘Oliver’ is a name far superior to his likely station in life, as also is ‘Twist,’ I dare swear. I’ve said it afore and I’ll say it again now—you are, indeed, sir, some kind of genius in that department.” “Well, well!” The beadle tilted his head with diffidence. “Perhaps I may be, ma’am.” He sank the last of his gin and waved away the offer of more. “But let us see the fortunate young man now. He is too old to linger on here. I must take him back with me to Fellgate.” Mrs Mann left the room directly, satisfied herself that as much encrusted dirt as could be removed in a single washing had, in fact, been removed, and then, disguised as a benevolent protectress, she brought him into the parlour. “Make a bow to the gentleman, Oliver,” she said. “He is the nearest to a father you will ever know, for it is to him you owe your lofty name.” While Oliver obeyed, she edged her way to a position behind the beadle’s chair. Mr Bumble assumed his most majestic voice to say, “Will you come along with me, young Oliver?” The little mite’s heart leaped up at the words. Still smarting from the punishment he had received that day, he was ready to declare he would go with hobgoblins rather than spend another night beneath that roof. But he understood why Mrs Mann had placed herself there, for, with one terrifying wag of a monitory finger, she let him know that his answer had better please her or his birthday torment would be doubled. And then he showed that nimbleness of mind and tongue which was to sustain him through many a future adventure. “Oh, sir,” he begged. “May dear Mrs Mann not come with me, too?” “Alas, no.” The beadle turned an approving smile toward the lady at his rear, though, fortunately for her, his abundance of chins prevented him from rotating far enough to see her clearly. “But,” he added, returning to the boy, “she may

7 come and see you from time to time.” The joy Oliver managed to show at this dire news would have gained him a place on any stage in the kingdom. To add a few tears when the old widow pressed him to her frigid bosom required much less skill; the memory of his recent thrashing at those same hands was enough. She gave him a thousand embraces and—what was a thousand times more welcome—a crust of bread and butter, lest a hunger-faint upon the road should show her up. And so, with his slice of bread in one hand and the beadle’s gold- braided cuff in the other, and his brown-shoddy parish cap upon his head, Oliver was led from that place, where no kind word nor tender look had ever lighted his infant years. And yet he burst into an agony of childish grief as the Coldharbour gate closed behind him—for he was now leaving, too, all he had known of human companionship. Even the companionship of misery is preferable to loneliness, and now a sense of his loneliness in the great wide world sank into the child’s heart for the first time. Fortunately that vast importance which Mr Bumble carried before him prevented him from taking strides much longer than Oliver’s own. But the good humour engendered by the gin soon wore off and then the boy’s whine of “Are we nearly there?” after every two furlongs made him curt and snappish. Arrived at Fellgate, Oliver asked if he might see the room where he was born. The request was met with a cuff about the ears before the beadle delivered him into the care of an old female inmate—Old Sal, as chance would have it. “Why, bless us, chiel!” she cried on hearing his name. “Tha’s not grown above six inches beyond what tha was the neet tha was born, I’ll swear. What do they feed thee on yonder at Coldharbour? Bread and kisses?” “Bread—sometimes.” Oliver eyed a loaf his sharp eyes had spotted, almost hidden behind a Bible on a shelf nearby. “And kisses of leather or birch.” “Aye, so I’ve heard tell.” She gazed at him fondly and ran her fingers through his curls. Had but one of her own boys lived, she thought, he might have been such an angelic starveling as this. She followed his eyes to the purloined loaf and said, “Aye, well, I suppose I can’t deny thee a slice.” As she cut it for him—a good, generous helping—she added, “Especially as tha’ll surely peach on me if I don’t!” But when she handed it to him, the shock in his eyes told her that no such thought had crossed his mind. Then she almost wept. “Eeay, lad, such innocence! Such deadly innocence! Tha must learn to look after theesen. For of one thing you may be sure—in all this wide world there’s no one else’ll do it for thee!” Having secured his first objective—the slice of bread—Oliver turned to his second. “Pray, ma’am,” he said in his Sunday School voice, “may I ask how you know what size I were when I were born?” “Why, bless you!” She tousled his hair again. “I were there. I helped deliver your mother of you. And what a lusty cry you gave on seeing the world you were about to enter!” Her smile turned sad, though, when she added, “Aye, and five minutes after that, I held your dear mother’s hand as she slipped beyond this vale of tears into the arms of a merciful God.” Oliver stopped eating and then swallowed hard, almost choking on the half-

8 chewed bread. “What was she ...?” he stammered. “I mean, was she ...?” “Was she pretty?” Old Sal rightly interpreted. “Aye, that she was. She had tramped her way north, nigh on three-hundred mile I should think, but her skin were as fair as a white swan’s wing and her hair, when it dried, as fine as silk. She were a fine lady—no doubt of it. Tha’rt the son of a fine lady, Oliver Twist—so be an honourable boy and do nothing to disgrace her!” Tears choked off any reply the poor lad might have made, but his heart was filled with a resolve to do as the old woman bade. And Old Sal, for her part, was so moved that she almost showed him the locket and rings she had—how may one put it delicately?—rescued from his mother’s warm but lifeless body. She might have done so, too—and have saved Oliver a great deal of anguish hereafter—if Mr Bumble had not returned at that moment, more peppery than ever, to tell him it was a board night and that the said board had decreed he was to appear before it. Oliver was still wondering what a ‘board’ might be when he felt the sharp knock of the beadle’s cane upon his head and the determined prod of its other end upon his back. His head was still ringing when the man ushered him into what was either a large room or a small church. In place of a congregation, however, was a long wooden table beseiged by ten rather grim-looking gentlemen. The two nearest him were thin as cadavers, and just about as jolly. The rest, though fat, had none of the joviality that often goes with the condition. The man at the far end of the table, in a chair much higher than the rest, was the fattest—and the least jovial— of all. “Make a bow to the board, boy!” Mr Bumble swept Oliver’s cap from his head with a cuff from behind. The board? The table of course! Oliver bowed to the table. “Name?” snapped the fat gentleman at the head of the board. That blow to his head had hurt; his eyes filled with tears. “The boy’s a fool,” said one of the cadavers nearest him. He had on a white waistcoat. “Boy!” said the head of the board. “Listen to me! You know you’re an orphan, I suppose?” Did he mean orpheling? That was what Susan, the maid at the orpheling farm, had always called them. “Orphan, sir?” he repeated uncertainly. “The boy is a fool,” the white waistcoat said. “Now, now!” the other reprimanded him mildly. Then, to Oliver again: “You know you have no father or mother and that you’ve been brought up by this parish, don’t you?” “Sir.” The boy swallowed heavily. “And,” put in another, a reverend gentleman by his collar, “for no better reason than that your mother could not go another pace when she chose to collapse upon our doorstep—and died before anyone could ask her where she came from, which made it impossible for us to send her back there?”

9 The piteous scene conjured by these words was too much for the poor mite, especially with Old Sal’s tale still fresh in his mind. He broke down completely then. “Cries at everything one says,” muttered the white waistcoat. “I hope you say your prayers every night like a Christian,” barked the reverend, “and pray for these gracious people who feed you and take care of you.” It did not cross his mind that only a Christian saint would have prayed for those who fed and clothed Oliver and his companions. “Well!” said the head of the table. “You have come here to be educated and taught a useful trade.” “In short,” added the white waistcoat, “you start picking oakum at six-o’clock tomorrow morning!” To think that education and industral training could be compressed into one simple, repetitive process! For this boon Oliver, assisted by a shove from the beadle, bowed low. Mr Bumble then hurried him away to a large, ill-ventilated ward, full of coughing old men in their twenties and thirties as well as a host of younger orphans, little older than himself. And there, on a bed of deal, with a few mungo rags to serve as a blanket, he sobbed himself to sleep—for even in this England the Poor Laws do not not forbid the poor to sleep. As Oliver was soon to learn, those wise and kindly men who had just promised him an education and a trade had further boons in mind. They had lately come to realize that the workhouses in their union, intended as temporary refuges for the unfortunate, had instead become palaces of entertainment for the poorer classes— taverns without tarrif, ever-open restaurants serving four meals a day all the year round, brick-and-mortar elysiums where it was all play and no work. It had to be stopped, of course—and, bah goom!, they were the men to do it! Henceforth each workhouse would offer its applicants a simple choice: quick starvation outside or a slower variety within. True, slow starvation would allow the poor time to realize that robbery or revolution would offer them a better chance of survival—but there was no need for one small board in an insignificant corner of the realm to carry the analysis so far. Better, then, to get on with the practical business. They therefore contracted with the water-works to lay on an unlimited supply. And the corn-factor was to furnish small quantities of oatmeal groats from time to time. And from this they were able to issue three meals of thin gruel each day, with, for variety, an onion twice a week and half a bread roll on Sundays. Their benevolence knew no bounds. Realizing that the cost of a petition for divorce in Doctor’s Commons was beyond the reach of any pauper, they undertook to divorce all married paupers for nothing. And they did away entirely with the irksome old system whereby a married man was compelled to support his family; instead they made him a bachelor, free as air! Ladies and gentlemen of every class for miles around came flocking to the union, eager to avail themselves of these benefits—only to retire disappointed on being told that the service was not available outside the workhouse walls. It was inseparable from oakum and gruel. This new system was in full steam throughout Oliver’s first six months at Fellgate. It was rather expensive to begin with, on account of increased payments to Mr Sowerberry, the undertaker, and to the needlewomen who had to take in the

10 paupers’ clothing as it began to flutter loosely on their shrinking forms. But the numbers of inmates were shrinking, too, and so the board was vindicated, not to say ecstatic. Oliver and his young fellows were fed in a large stone hall with a copper boiler at one end, out of which the master and two female paupers would ladle the gruel at mealtimes. As if in mocking promise, the curvature of this polished vessel shrivelled the reflected images of all who stood before it, as in a hall of mirrors, though here was a hall where laughter never dared to venture. Each boy received one porringer, no more, no less—except at high festivities, when they were doled two ounces and a quarter of bread beside. Even without the bread to mop around, the porringers never needed washing; nor did the spoons, nor any finger that might have caught a stray droplet from the ladle’s careless splash. The boys, to one side of the central aisle, and the girls, to the other, ate in silence. The master, a spindleshanks of a man with beady eyes and a probing nose, enforced it, striding the aisle, whacking his leather gaiter with a soft, whippy cane. But in truth his efforts were not needed, for when the gruel was devoured, which happened inside a minute, what could any child there do but stare at the copper as if he or she would devour both it and the very bricks that supported it? To make the diet more bitter still, the master and his minions would conduct a weekly mopping-up of all the loose food in the house, for fear that it might otherwise go bad and harm the paupers. The smell of roast beef and succulent capons, of potatoes and greens, of rich pastry-crust and gravy, would rise through the wards and wake the boys from their dreams of chop-houses and pastrycooks. And then, as the sweet scent of nectar will, they say, fetch a butterfly three miles upwind, so the aromas of these left-overs fetched the boys from their beds, one by one, until they were all gathered in silent yearning in the galleries above the dining hall. There they would press their little faces between the bars and gaze in wonder that the world whose staple was gruel could also yield such wondrous viands as those they saw on the groaning boards below. After just such a mouth-watering vigil, one young fellow, tall and strapping for his age (for his late father had owned a cook’s shop) eyed his companions with a wild and hungry stare and swore that, unless he had one more bowl of gruel a day, his hunger would compel him to eat one of them up. A council was held, palliasses were raided for straws, one of which was clipped short, and lots were cast to pick that brave lad who would go up to the master after supper the following evening and ask for more. Lumpkins and Simpkins and Potkins and Welkins and kindred kins of every kind drew straws that pulled out with a long and, to them, satisfactory tug. And so at length the hand was proffered to Oliver. All eyes were upon him as his trembling fingers wavered between this straw and that. The lad holding them tipped him a wink and tilted his head ever so slightly leftward. Oliver nipped the leftmost straw between thumb and forefinger. Oliver made his pluck. There was a gasp all about him as the straw came free at once. Little wraiths in tattered nightshirts vanished into the circumambient darkness. Alone in the

11 guttering light of the single candle Oliver stood shivering, staring in disbelief at the two inches of straw he had drawn. The following evening came. The gruel was served and devoured within the customary minute. A ghastly, unnatural silence fell as all eyes turned upon Oliver. But he discovered one more drop in his porringer and scraped at it desperately with his spoon. Then another. And another ... until the boy opposite gave him a kick that would have broken his shin had his foot been shod at the time. Oliver at last raised his eyes to the scene he had dreaded all that long and terrifying day: the master striding up and down on the dais behind the copper, whacking his gaiters with that soft and whippy cane. How the little fellow found the strength to rise to his feet was a miracle he could never explain—much less how he sidled along to the aisle. The eyes of thirty- seven little boys and forty-five little girls followed his every barefoot step over each half-acre flag. But he saw them not. The focus of his vision was now upon the copper; everything else about him—boys, girls, tables, walls, floor, and windows—seemed to dissolve in a sort of shimmering darkness. Soon it swallowed the master and the pauper women, too. He was alone in the universe, alone with the gruel. It hardly sounded like his own voice when he spoke the fateful words: “Please, sir, I want some more.” “What?” The master’s apoplectic face penetrated the shimmering blackness and hovered a furious inch from Oliver’s own. Full vision returned—and to such a supernatural degree that now he could actually see the fear that hedged him all about: fear in the pauper women’s eyes, in his own shrivelled reflection in the copper, in the silence that hung over eighty- two orphaned and pauper children. “Please, sir, I want some more.” This time there was no doubting the voice was his own. “Ha!” Lost for words the master seized up the ladle and felled poor Oliver with a single blow. Then, picking him up and pinioning the struggling body in his arms, he bellowed for the beadle. Luck was with Oliver to this extent: The board was, it so happened, sitting at that very hour; so, instead of being thrashed and shut in a coal-hole for days, Oliver was dragged by the ear and produced before them within minutes of uttering his useless request. “Asked for more?” thundered the head of the board. Mr Bumble, unable to repeat words so vile, nodded gravely. “That boy will be hung,” muttered the white waistcoat. “I do not understand,” the head continued. “Are you saying he asked for more after having consumed the ration allowed him by the dietary?” “He did, sir.” The beadle’s voice thundered portentously above Oliver’s bowed head. “I know that boy will be hung,” put in the white waistcoat. No one contradicted the prophecy.

12 Oliver was flung into a dank little cupboard known as ‘the fog locker,’ and the following morning a notice proclaiming: ‘£5 AND A BOY’ in extra-bold Egyptian Playbill type was pasted outside the gate. In short, anyone who wanted to apprentice a skinny little starveling to any trade, business, or calling whatsoever could take Oliver Twist with the parish’s blessing and five pounds beside. Chimney sweep? Scarecrow? Collier’s donkey? To what great heights or depths of industry would Oliver’s stars lead him next?

CHAPTER 3

Relates how Oliver Twist was very near getting a place, which would not have been a sinecure

A blustery wind gambolled over Fellgate Moor and would soon have chased every last ounce of soot from Mr Gamfield’s little donkey cart if he had not taken the precaution of placing it in two stout sacks of jute. That soot was worth sixpence to him when he sold it, a bucket at a time, to the gardeners of the town. He glanced often at those sacks, for they were all that stood between him and an empty belly that day; the two shillings he had earned for sweeping four chimneys at Moortop Farm were wanted in settlement of an immediate debt for six months’ worth of rotten vegetables and cabbage stalks for his donkey—else that poor beast must starve, too. It was a profound mystery to Mr Gamfield that a man of his profession could not grow rich. Half the world paid him to take the soot away from their houses; the other half paid him to deliver it to them by the bucketful. He earned coming and he earned going. Where was the flaw in such a money-raising scheme? Yet flaw there must be for he was by now five pounds in debt to his landlord, who had lately become most understandably pressing for its discharge. And, cudgel his brains as he might for some way of raising the wind, he could not come within five pounds of it. So he cudgelled his donkey’s brains instead—in particular when the creature, dreaming no doubt of rotten vegetables and cabbage stalks, failed to respond to his cry of “Whoa-back!” That magic cypher pasted on the workhouse gate—£5 AND A BOY—had caught the sweep’s eye in passing. The coincidental agreement between his debt and this offer seemed heaven-sent. He leaped from the cart, caught hold of the bridle, gave it a jerk that would have broken any jaw but a donkey’s, and turned the beast round. As chance would have it, Mr Wrungley, the gentleman in the white waistcoat who opined that Oliver Twist would one day hang, was at that same moment wheezing up the cobbled rise to the workhouse gate, unpunctual for a meeting of the board. He watched with some satisfaction as the sweep spelled the notice out to himself, letter by letter. As he drew near, the fellow turned to him and touched his fur hat. “This-here lad, sir,” he said in a bluff, businesslike manner, “as the parish wants to ’prentice.”

13 “Ay?” Mr Wrungley placed himself upwind of the man and gave him a condescending smile. “What of him?” “He’d not be too fat from overeating?” The gentleman merely laughed. “I mean, he’d be of a small, neat pattern—the very thing for cleaning out a register stove?” “The very thing,” Mr Wrungley agreed. “And I daresay the parish would have no objection to his learning a light, pleasant trade in a good, ’spectable chimbley-sweeping business?” “Walk in!” said Mr Wrungley with a smile as wide as a register stove. “The board will hear you directly, of that I’m sure.” Mr Limbkins, the chairman of the board, was less sanguine. “It’s a nasty trade,” he said. “Young boys have been smothered in chimneys before now,” put in the reverend gentleman. The number of deaths beneath the workhouse roof had lately exceeded the already disquieting average, and all who sat around that table were aware of an unwelcome degree of public interest. “Nay, but they only smother when the sweep uses damp straw to flush them out, maisters,” Gamfeld explained. “A boy is an obstinate, lazy creature, as I’m sure I need not tell any gentleman here! They’ll not think twice about lodging for an hour up a flue, daydreaming the precious hours away—nor even getting stuck fast to waste yet more time. But that’s where a blaze of tinder-dry straw is a champion remedy, see tha! They’ll drop like a plumb bob! And it’s humane, too. I’ll take the Bible on it. For even if they are truly stuck fast, a good roasting on the feet makes ’em struggle to hextricate theirsens.” Mr Wrungley laughed at this, but was swiftly checked by a glance from Mr Limbkins. The board then asked the sweep to retire to the far end of the room while they conferred, which they did in low murmurs. Even so, the phrases, “saving of expenditure” and “look well in the accounts” were so often repeated that Gamfield could not help hearing them. He was glad they had dwelled on deaths by smothering, something of which he had never been guilty on account of his preference for dry straw. Deaths by bruising, yes, and deaths by neglect, but these good gentlemen had fortunately not raked over those old ashes. So he was all the more astonished when the board called him back, only to tell him they rejected his proposal. However, as he suspected that memories of those recent deaths were on their minds—and had no desire himself to revive them further—he merely twisted his cap in his hands and walked slowly away. “Ye’ll not let me train the lad, then, gentlemen?” he asked as he reached the door. “No,” Mr Limbkins affirmed. “At least, as it’s a nasty trade, we might consider it if you took somewhat less than the five pounds offered. In a trice the sweep was back at the table. “What was you all thinking of then, gents?” he asked with an ingratiating smile. “Come! Don’t be too hard on a poor but honest working man. What’ll you give?”

14 “Three pounds ten should be plenty,” Mr Limbkins said calmly. “Plenty?” echoed Mr Wrungley. “It’s ten shillings too much.” “Come now,” said Gamfeld. “Say four pound, eh? Four pound and ’e’ll never fret you no more. There! Can’t say fairer nor that.” “Three pound ten,” Mr Limbkins said firmly. “Tell’ee what,” Gamfield suggested brightly. “Split the difference—three pound fifteen.” “Three-ten and not a farthing more,” said the implacable chairman. “Come, man,” Mr Wringley advised. “Take him, you fool! He’d be cheap to you at a shilling. The boy’s made for you. All he needs is a touch of the stick now and then, for the good of his soul. And he’s never been overfed.” There were smiles all round at this and the sweep, seeing he was beaten down, joined in with as much grace as he could muster. And so the bargain was made. During all these days Oliver Twist had divided his hours between the fog locker and, at mealtimes only, the orphans’ feeding hall. There each evening, at the precise hour and minute of his heinous crime, he was bent over the cauldron and, in the presence of all the young boys and girls, asked what it was he wanted. If he replied with silence, the master gave him a whack of that whippy cane to revive his memory. The same greeted any reply other than the restatement of the original offence: “Please, sir, I want some more!” “More?” the master would echo jovially. “Why so you shall, my little dear. You shall have six more—six of the best!” And thus, while his young fellows looked on in appalled silence, the master would flog him once again, just in case the memory of his wicked ingratitude should begin to fade from the collective memory. Small wonder, then, that Oliver was both surprised and delighted when, early one afternoon, Mr Bumble released him from the locker and gave him to Old Sal with instructions to wash him well and put him in a clean white shirt. “Is my punishment over at last?” he inquired of the old crone as she scrubbed him down. “I hope it may be, chiel,” she replied with more doubt than assurance in her tone. “Dry thissen now and we’ll fit thee in this nice clean shirt.” “It is a nice clean shirt, too,” he said, eyeing it gratefully. “Ay!” she warned. “Beware of them lad! Beware of them most when they’re most kind and soft to thee!” She had no time to expand on this warning for Mr Bumble returned at that moment bearing, in his own hands, a generous bowl of gruel and two ounces and a quarter of bread beside! It was, indeed, most kind—and most soft, too. But with Old Sal’s warning still echoing in his ears, little Oliver burst into tears. Mr Bumble was clearly intending to fatten him up—else how to explain this sudden generosity? But the only fattening-up he had ever heard tell of was the fattening-up of a farmer’s livestock, the ultimate purpose of which was too dreadful to contemplate—and enough to make any little boy cry. “Now then!” said the beadle in his gently pompous way. “Don’t make thy eyes all red, little mite! Tha’rt a-going to be made a ’prentice of!”

15 “ ’Prentice, sir?” asked Oliver. Was ‘prentice’ to ‘boy’ as ‘beef’ was to ‘ox’? “Aye, Oliver. The kindly, blessed gentlemen as is so many fathers to thee, since tha’st none of thy own, are a-going to ’prentice thee—although the expense to the parish is three pound ten! Eee! Three pound ten! Seventy shillings! One hundred and forty sixpences! And, not to put too fine a point on it, see-tha, eight hundred and ... er ... eight hundred, er ... a lot of pennies! Why that’s more than the parish gave dear Mrs Mann to keep you in vittles for two whole years! And all for a wicked orphan as nobody can love!” To Oliver the sum of three pounds ten shillings had, indeed, seemed a fortune— until Mr Bumble spoiled it by saying it had kept him in vittles for two years at Coldharbour; then he realized it was not so very generous after all. “Come! Wipe thy tears,” the beadle urged. “And don’t be spilling them into your gruel.” Nay, thought the lad, for there’s watter a-plenty there already! He was wise enough, however, not to share the observation with the present company. “Now,” Mr Bumble said as he conducted Oliver to the magistrates’ court, for them to sign his indentures, “all tha needs do, lad, is look happy. Smile, smile, and smile again! And when the beak asks thee will tha be ’prenticed, tell ’im tha’d like it very much indeed.” All this the little boy promised to do. “See tha does!” the beadle said. “For there’s no telling what dreadful retribution the board would impose, else.” Those portentous words accompanied Oliver into a small chamber to one side of the court anteroom, where he was locked up until needed. After an age, Mr Bumble, now minus his longstaff and cocked hat, thrust his head through the doorway and said, in a voice loud enough to carry back to the court, “Now, Oliver, my dear, come and stand respectfully before the fine gentlemen.” It was a large room with three tall windows down one side, dusty enough to exclude most of the daylight. Oliver did not know that he stood in the ‘well’ of the court, yet his view felt very like the one he might have from the bottom of that other sort of well, of the common or garden kind. Tall palisades of dark-stained oak hedged him all about, beyond whose rims he could now and then glimpse a powdered head, a bushy brow, a trembling and wrinkled hand. To his left, mere silhouettes against the grimy windowpanes, he could make out the orotund shape of Mr Limbkins and, beside him, one he had never seen before—a ragged, dishevelled giant of a man. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim illumination, this second, shambling creature took on an aspect more terrifying by the minute, with his black-pocked skin, his unkempt beard, and his wild, menacing eye. “Put him where we can see him,” an elderly voice commanded from beyond the palisades. Mr Bumble bent and lifted Oliver to his right shoulder, making it seem a familiar kindness, often played. “This is the boy, your worship,” he said, clasping the youngster with his left arm while his right hand forced his head to bow. “What there is of him.” The magistrate laughed at his own jest and nudged his companion awake. “I said, what there is of him,” he repeated. “Well,” he

16 continued, grave once more, “I suppose he is fond of chimney sweeping?” “Dotes on it, your worship!” cried Bumble, giving Oliver a sly pinch in case he thought of saying otherwise. “And he will be a sweep, eh?” “Why, if we was to ’prentice him to any other trade, even that of pie and pastrycook, he’d run away to Mister Gamfield here before the ink on his indentures was dry.” At this cue the sweep cleared his throat respectfully and took a small pace forward. Oliver stared at the man in horror; the truth of his merciful liberation from the fog locker was beginning to dawn on him at last. “That’s you, I suppose,” the magistrate said, drawing away from the fellow in distaste, even though twelve horizontal and six vertical feet separated them. “Will you feed the lad properly, treat him well ... all that sort of thing?” “Aye, well, when I says I will, I means I will,” Mr Ganfield replied. The magistrate nudged his companion, who had begun to snore lightly; the man awoke with a start and, peering about him for a moment, settled on the sweep. “You’re a rough speaker, friend,” he said. “But, er, you look honest and open- hearted.” “I am that!” the sweep said, with a smile that did not quite bear out his words. “Well, then,” said the first beak, “we might as well sign the boy over to you.” He picked up his quill and began a hunt for the inkwell, which he did not immediately find, since it lay right beneath his nose. He hunted in the most unlikely places, including the air all about him—which was how he came to notice the look of horror and dread on young Oliver’s face. But for that chance, the lad would have been hurried off to an early death in some neighbouring chimney and our tale must perforce have petered out here. The old gentleman laid down his pen. He stared at Mr Limbkins, who helped himself to a pinch of snuff in an attempt to seem unconcerned. By now, even the somnolent magistrate had noticed young Oliver’s pale and terrified countenance. “You look somewhat alarmed, boy,” he said. His kindly tone was too much for Oliver to bear; he felt his eyes welling with tears. He felt, too, Mr Bumble’s hands tighten their grip. The magistrate saw it and rapped out the word, “Beadle!” so fiercely that the poor man almost dropped his burden. “Your worship?” he stammered. “Put the lad down here”—he patted the edge of their desk—“and stand back yourself.” Bumble glanced at Mr Limbkins, who answered with a curt, angry nod. “Now, boy,” said the magistrate when Oliver was perched on the edge of their desk. “Tell us what’s the matter. Don’t be afraid.” Oliver, remembering Mrs Mann’s instructions to him on the day he was taken from Coldharbour, said, “Please sir, I don’t wish to leave Mister Bumble, sir.” The beadle smirked at this; and now he wished he had given the lad a full three ounces of bread earlier that afternoon. He would certainly slip him a penny—and make sure the other orphans heard of it—as soon as they left this building. And

17 for his part, Mr Limbkins gave a most audible sigh of relief. The magistrate smiled. “You like him so much, do you?” “Oh yes, sir,” the lad replied eagerly. “I don’t care if they locks me up again as soon as we gets back home. And I don’t care if they continues to whip me before all my fellows every night at supper, just so long as I mustn’t bid farewell to dear Mr Bumble.” “Well!” Bumble himself was a perfect mime of outrage. “Of all the artfullest and most designingest of orphans it was ever my sorrow to meet, Oliver, you are the most ... the most barefacedest of all!” “Hold your tongue, Beadle!” barked the second magistrate. Mr Bumble could not believe his ears. “I beg your worship’s pardon!” he cried belligerently. “Did your worship speak to me?” “Yes, hold your tongue!” came the crisp reply. Mr Bumble was stupefied. A beadle—a high porochial officer—had been ordered to hold his tongue! Had some moral revolution swept the country while he slept last night? The magistrates looked at each other. The magistrates nodded at each other. “We refuse to sign these indentures,” the first one said as he tossed his quill back in its tray. “I hope,” Mr Limbkins stammered, “that the ambiguous compliments of a mere child will not lead the bench to conclude that the parish is guilty of improper conduct?” The magistrate leaned toward his clerk. “Does any charge to that effect lie before us?” he asked. On being told there was not, he turned back to the parochial chairman and said, “Luck is with you, Mister Limbkins—this time—for we are not called upon to form an opinion. Now take the boy back to the workhouse and treat him kindly. He seems to want it.” To the beadle he added, “No more canings and no more fog-locker, eh? Be sure we shall inquire!” The two fine representatives of the parish ignored Oliver completely on their way back to the workhouse. After a thoughtful silence Mr Limbkins said, “We must find a sweep who does not kill off his boys so fast, Mister Bumble. That was our mistake. They could not attack that rascal Gamfield, not without a charge laid before them, so they turned on us.” But Bumble was still too stupefied to make any kind of reply. And next morning the good people of Fellgate were once again informed that Oliver Twist was To Let—and with a full £5 bonne bouche to sweeten the transaction. All except one particular chimneysweep might apply.

CHAPTER 4

Oliver, being offered another place, makes his first entry into public life

For days the parochial board could talk of little other than the problem of Oliver Twist; if there were any truth in the old wives’ tale, his ears would have turned white hot and melted off. In the end it was Mr Wrungley who proposed the most

18 acceptable answer. “What do we gentlefolk do,” he asked, “with a son when we can find no advantageous place for him, neither in possession, reversion, remainder, nor simple expectancy? Why, we send him off to sea!” “What?” cried Mr Limbkins. “Oliver Twist a midshipman?” “Nay!” was the scornful rejoinder. “A cabin boy. We can surely find him a place on some merchantman bound off for a good unhealthy port?” “Aye!” put in another. “We could send Bumble to Hull, to find a berth ...” “Hull trades with Hamburg and Holland,” Wrungley objected. “The little wretch might survive so short a crossing and return from there. Nay, Liverpool’s the place, see tha. Liverpool trades with all the world! We’ll surely find a captain there who wouldn’t refuse five pounds for a boy with no friends to raise awkward questions later.” And so it was decided that the beadle should go to Liverpool on this errand of mercy. The poor man was in a fury as he set off, for, if to go a hundred paces was an annoyance to him, what is one to say of a hundred miles!? But deliverance was at hand. He had not gone the smallest fraction of the way—that is, no farther than the workhouse gate—when who should he espy, staring at the bill, ‘£5 AND A BOY,’ pasted there, but the tall, gaunt, large-jointed figure of his old crony, the undertaker. “Liberal terms, Mister Sowerberry,” he exclaimed jovially as he stepped up to the gate. “Liberal terms!” And, just in case the man might think he was referring to the Union’s allowance for coffins, he tapped the bill with the knob of his longstaff. But, as it happened, the allowance for workhouse coffins was very much on the undertaker’s mind. “I’ve just taken the measure of the two pauper women who died last night, Mister Bumble,” he said, proffering a snuffbox wittily shaped into the miniature likeness of a coffin. “You’ll make your fortune from us yet, Mister Sowerberry.” The beadle buried his thumb and forefinger in the powder and retracted them with a generous helping. The undertaker tilted his head in a way to suggest that, while he did not wish to contradict the beadle, he was compelled to rebut the accusation. “The prices allowed by the board are very small, Mister Bumble,” he said. “So are the coffins, my friend!” Mr Bumble was far too august a personage to laugh out loud—though he came very close on this occasion. Mr Sowerberry, however, was not above laughing when off duty and he made up for the lack in Mr Bumble. “Well, well,” he said at length as he wiped his eyes, “there’s no denying that, since the new dietary has come in, the coffins are both narrower and less high than they formerly were.” “We must be thankful for such small mercies!” Bumble was excelling himself in his pleasure at the thought that he might not have to endure the discomforts of distant travel after all. Sowerberry was once again dutiful in his laughter. Yet he persisted: “All the same,” said he. “Well-seasoned timber is costly and the iron handles must come by canal all the way from Birmingham, for Sheffield’s prices since the recent

19 trade dispute are out of the question. Also—and it is an observation I have intended making for some time, sir—the recent harshness in trade has caused a number of shopkeepers and artizans to seek the shelter of the workhouse.” “And well I know it, Mister Sowerberry,” the beadle interjected with some feeling. “But what is that to you, pray?” “Why, sir, it is this—they lack the wild cunning and the unjustified stamina of your genuine pauper, who can live for ever on gruel and the occasional onion. They lose heart at once. They sicken and die while still well-fleshed. And let me tell you, sir, three or four inches over one’s calculation makes a great hole in one’s profits—which comes especially hard when those same profits must support a family like mine!” Mr Bumble, having no answer to this and being unwilling to admit he was powerless in the matter, sought to deflect the subject: “Speaking of those who can survive on gruel and the odd onion ...” He tapped the flysheet again and left the rest of the sentence unspoken. Mr Sowerberry had heard of the way the board had tried to argue down the sweep from the promised five pounds to a take-it-or-leave-it three pounds ten and he had no wish to suffer the same humiliation. Meanwhile he had noticed the new brass buttons on the beadle’s tunic and thought he saw a way to keep the man off his high horse. “My, my, Mister Bumble!” he exclaimed. “Are these the splendid new buttons I read of in the Fellgate Advertiser?” “Indeed, indeed they are, Mister Sowerberry.” The delighted beadle swelled out his chest for a moment by the painful expedient of sucking his belly inward. “Presented to you by the board, I believe?” “Aye—on New Year’s Day. The image is of the Good Samaritan healing the sick and bruised man.” Bumble smiled. “Happily so appropriate!” “New Year’s Day ...” It seemed to strike a chord with the undertaker. “Was that not the day they found whatsizname, Spriggs ...” Mr Bumble’s face darkened at the mention of the name but his companion was implacable: “Yes, Spriggs, that colourman who fell on hard times and died in the back doorway of the workhouse at midnight.” “Was it?” Bumble said distantly. “I really don’t recall ...” “Yes, surely,” the undertaker persisted. “The jury, I recollect, brought in a special verdict—‘Died from exposure to the cold and from want of the common necessaries of life’.” The beadle gazed up and down the road as if he expected help from some quarter. “And,” Mr Sowerberry concluded, “they added a rider that if the relieving officer had only ...” Mr Bumble exploded. “Tush! Such foolery. I’ll have you know, Mister Sowerberry that if the board were to attend to all the nonsense that ignorant jurymen talk, they’d never break off for sleep! Juries! Bah! Juries is ineddicayted, vulgar, grovelling wretches what haven’t no more philosophy nor political economy about ’em than that!” He snapped his fingers contemptuously—a gesture that would have been more impressive had he not been wearing heavy gloves. Feeling the want of gravity he continued: “I despise ’em, sir. And I only

20 wish we had a jury of the independent sort under yon roof”—he jerked a thumb at the workhouse behind him—“for a week or two. I’d soon cure them of their independent spirit!” He swept off his cocked hat, took a handkerchief from within its crown, and wiped away the sweat of his indignation. Then, feeling better, he resettled his hat and said, with a smile, “Well, what about the boy?” Mr Sowerberry smiled, being now almost assured he would not be cheated of a penny of the five pounds promised. “My feeling on the matter, Mister Bumble, is this,” said he. “Year-in, year-out I’ve paid my parish rate—which is more than could be said of a certain sooty gentleman known to us both. You might say I’ve paid a great deal toward the upbringing of this particular boy.” “I not only might say it, Mister Sowerberry, I do say it—and I’ll say it to any as asks my opinion on the matter.” “Then, in relieving you of the boy, and the full five pounds, I simply take back what I’ve paid for by installments all these years.” Bumble smiled a most genial smile, his passion quite forgotten. “We understand each other perfectly, my friend,” he said, throwing his arm about the man and sweeping him indoors to complete the necessary papers. At the board meeting that evening it was agreed within five minutes that young Oliver Twist should be sent to Mr Sowerberry that very moment, and that the undertaker should have him “upon liking”—a phrase which, in the case of a parish orphan-apprentice, means that if, upon a short trial, a master finds he can get a great deal of work out of the lad without putting too much food into him, he might then keep the little fellow for an indefinite term of years to do what he liked with. Oliver was once again hastened before the board and told that he was to go at once to serve as general-lad to a cofffin-maker and that if there was one word of complaint about him or if he came upon the parish once again, they’d send him away to sea, there to be knocked about the head or drowned at the captain’s whim. Oliver heard Mr Limbkins out in silence, bowed solemnly, and withdrew. “Well!” exclaimed Mr Wrungley. “Did ye see that! Not a trace of emotion there!” “A hardened young rascal if ever I saw one,” the reverend gentleman agreed. “He’ll be keelhauled yet!” opined Wrungley. “Keelhauled and then hanged at the yardarm!” And so Oliver, carrying all his worldly goods in a brown-paper parcel measuring half a foot square by three inches deep, once again found himself at Mr Bumble’s side, clutching the man’s magnificent gold-braided cuff, as he was led from one scene of suffering to the next. A biting wind, lightly peppered with snowflakes the size of salt-grains, whipped along Fellgate High Street, sending all indoors who had no business out. Every window was tight shut, every curtain drawn, for day had fled early that afternoon, chased off by towering storm-clouds of snow. To Oliver it was as if the very town shunned him, as if all the houses had turned their backs so as to leave his passing unremarked. Never before in his brief and lonely life (for he still wanted a few weeks for his tenth birthday) had he felt so cold and alone. He could not even see the beadle, for

21 the wind blew the skirts of the man’s tunic open and enshrouded the boy completely. Mercifully, they also hid his tears. As they drew near the coffin-maker’s shop, Mr Bumble thought it wise to see that the lad was in good order for inspection by his new master. “Oliver!” he barked. “Yes, sir?” His voice was weak and tremulous. “Pull that cap off your eyes! And hold up your head, sir!” It was too much for poor little Oliver. He did as he was bade but immediately burst into tears which neither snarl nor entreaty from the beadle could stem. “Well!” exclaimed the exasperated man. “Here’s a pickle! Of all the ungratefullest and worst-disposed boys as ever I seen, Oliver, you are the ...” “Oh no, sir!” Oliver sobbed, clinging to the hand that held the cruel longstaff. “Not ungrateful, sir—but lonely. Oh, so very lonely! Why does everyone hate me so? I will be good, sir, indeed, I will. But I am such a very little boy.” Poor Mr Bumble hardly knew what to say to this. A boy who had undergone nigh-on ten years of such rearing as Oliver had enjoyed ought, by now, to be reduced to a state of brutish stupidity and sullenness. Such fine feelings as he now displayed should have deserted him many years since. He could only stare at the boy in bafflement for a long moment, which he concluded by clearing his throat three or four times. He dabbed at a watery eye, brought on, no doubt, by the icy wind, and then, muttering something about a troublesome cough, told Oliver to dry his eyes. His voice was so mild that Oliver had to look twice to be sure it was Bumble’s. The undertaker had put up his shutters and was filling out his day-book by the light of an appropriately dismal candle. “Aha!” he cried, peering into the dark by the door. “Is it you, Mister Bumble?” “No one else, Mister Sowerberry,” replied the beadle. “And here I’ve brought the boy.” The undertaker lifted the candle above his head and said, “Hmpff!” Then, raising his voice, “Mrs Sowerberry, my dear! Will you have the kindness to come here a moment?” The good lady’s outline soon filled the doorway. Her jolly rotundity belied her true character, which was visible in her face as she stepped toward the light. For, whereas her husband had the crows’ feet of laughter beside his eyes, she had the grim parentheses of censure to bracket her wafer-thin lips; and in her eyes shone nothing but a vixenish cunning. “Dear me!” she exclaimed, looking Oliver up and down with distaste. “He’s very small.” “He is small, ma’am.” Mr Bumble looked Oliver over as if to suggest it was the little chap’s fault. “Aye, that he is—small. There’s no denying it. But look at it this way, Mrs Sowerberry, the lad will grow.” “Aye, I make no doubt of it, Mister Bumble—on our vittles and our drink! I’ve said it afore and I’ll say it again—there’s no saving in parish children. They always cost more to keep than they’re worth. However”—she tightened her shawl across her shoulders and withered her husband with a glance—“men always think they know best, so what may a mere female add?” She answered herself by

22 frowning at Oliver and adding, “Get downstairs, little bag o’ skin-and-bones.” Oliver, whose skin and bones had thawed out enough for him to feel a decided warmth rising up that same stairwell, needed no second bidding; he left them without a backward glance at either of his masters, old or new. “Here, Charlotte!” Mrs Sowerberry followed him down. “Has that Trip come home yet?” “Nay, mum. There’s a bitch looking for ...” The maid caught sight of Oliver and fell silent. “Then give this boy the scraps we set aside for the dog.” She cuffed Oliver in what she imagined to be a playful manner. “I daresay tha’rt not too dainty to eat them, eh?” Oliver was already trembling at the thought of meat. Real meat! His mouth watered and his eyes gleamed as Charlotte set a plate of fat, gristle, tendons, and bones before him. She was a comely wench and most feminine in figure, but Oliver had eyes only for that plate. Unable to believe his luck and fearful that this was some cruel jape, he looked for Mrs Sowerberry’s grim nod before he dared begin. Oh, reader! Have you among your acquaintance some armchair sage whose stomach turns ambrosia and nectar to gall, whose heart is of hammered iron and whose blood is of ice? Then tell him all heaven cries out that he might have seen how Oliver clutched at the plate of dainty scraps that had failed to tempt a dog to come home—and that he might further have witnessed the horrible avidity with which the boy tore the bits asunder. And warn him, too, that in the long durance of this life it would not go beyond Divine justice to arrange for him someday to eat that sort of meal himself—and with equal relish, too. Mrs Sowerberry looked on in silent horror at this fearful augury of Oliver’s future appetite. “Well,” she asked in trembling tones, “have you quite done?” She seemed to be offering him more! Oliver looked about the kitchen. The shelves were full of bottles and jars and there were bits of dried vegetation and other strange-shaped things hanging from the rafters, but no bread, no plates of viands. Charlotte gave him a barely perceptible wink and shook her head. “Aye,” he said. “And I should think so, too!” she snapped. “Come along of me, then.” She took up a dim, evil-reeking lamp and led him back upstairs. He could hear Messrs Bumble and Sowerberry laughing in the shop but the woman led him down the corridor to the workshop at the back. “Your bed’s under the bench there,” she said. “You’ll not be bothered by sleeping among the coffins, full or empty, I suppose? It’s of no consequence, anyway, for there’s nowhere else you may bed down. Come on! Come on! Don’t take all night!” She turned the wick down further still and then left him to his own devices.

CHAPTER 5

Oliver mingles with new associates. Going to a funeral for the first time, he forms an unfavourable notion of his master’s business

When Oliver opened the door of the lamp it cast a large rectangle of dim light over the macabre scene around him. A half-finished coffin stood on black trestles in the middle of the shop. Its shape was so unmistakable, so unlike any other box of wood, that a cold tremble passed through him and he almost expected some dismal, ghoulish form to rise from within, its eyes all staring and its skin a-glow with a pale, unnatural fire ... intent on driving him mad with terror. And beyond it, against the wall, was an irregular array of elm boards, cut to the same coffin shape. In that darkest of dim lights they loomed forward like tall, pale ghosts with their hands in their pockets. Coffin plates, elm chips, and shreds of black cloth littered the floor. A single picture graced the room—an oleo-chromo-lithograph showing two boy-mutes with very stiff neckcloths attending a mortuary door; in the distance a gleaming black hearse was approaching, drawn by four black horses crowned with hearse-feathers. Oliver thought the mutes looked splendid and wondered if he might not one day fill that same office for his new master. There was but one blessing in this workshop-bedchamber: It was directly over the kitchen and a great deal of the warmth of that room eventually found its way up from below. The disadvantage was that the heat brought out the sickly sweet smell of elm, which Oliver soon confused with the odour of death itself. As his eyes grew accustomed to the cheerless light, he saw that the shelf beneath the workbench where he was to sleep had been furnished with a flock mattress—a luxury he had never known in all his life. A helping of meat (and never mind that it had been intended for the dog), a warm bedchamber (and never mind the sickly odour), a flock mattress (and never mind what livestock it might harbour) ... had he perchance drifted into Paradise all unawares—a tainted Paradise, to be sure, and one fit only for unwanted, unloved orphan boys? The coffin on its trestles was answer enough. He made himself cosy beneath the bench and, in a sudden fit of boldness, blew out the light, thinking to extinguish the scene as well. To his dismay the rising moon sent fingers of silver through cracks in the shutters and, as his eyes grew accustomed to the new level of darkness, the outline of the coffin loomed over him, gaunt and menacing as before, and now as black as the pit. He scoffed at his fears, reasoned with them, yielded to them and wept, but all to no avail. There was nothing for it but to rise and lift the lid and reassure himself it was as empty as any frightened little boy could wish. He was on the very point of obeying this impulse when a novel thought came to him out of nowhere. His own mother had died in Fellgate Workhouse, nigh on ten years ago. Mr Sowerberry had been undertaker to the union for as long as any could remember—assuredly for many more years than ten. Therefore the coffin in which she had been conveyed to her last resting place (wherever that might be) must have been made in this very room! Why, it was certainly a replica of the one that held him in such terror—or had, until that moment, held him so. Suddenly its power to alarm him had gone. He could never have put the notion into words but his discovery of this link with his unknown mother, his birth, her death, his coming here of all places, and the outline of the coffin in which she still lay ... somewhere out yonder—these concatenations seemed to close a neat circle

24 in his mind and to bring him the first intimations of peace and hope he had known for as long as he could remember. And so, with his tousled head all silvered in the moonlight and a seraphic smile upon his lips, he fell into the deepest slumber. Moments later he was awakened by a fearful hammering upon the door and he opened his eyes to find the sunlight streaming in where, two heartbeats earlier, as it seemed, the moon had strayed. “Oppen t’door, see tha!” The cry briefly interrupted a stream of kicks at the front door. Oliver sprang to his feet, huddled into his clothes, and raced to the door, where the kicking was continuing without a pause. The moment he rattled the chain, however, the kicking ceased and the voice began: “About blasted time! Oppen it, I say!” “I will, sir, directly,” piped Oliver as he loosened the chain and struggled to turn the key, which seemed rusted in its lock. “I reckon th’art the new ’un, aye?” said the voice. “Yes, sir,” Oliver responded. “ ’Ow old, then?” “Ten, sir.” Oliver considered it the merest technical stretching of the truth. “Ah!” The voice sounded pleased. “Then I’ll whop thee when I get in, little work’us brat!” The speaker—or somebody out there—then began to whistle, a light, insouciant tune. Since Oliver had started almost every day of his life with a ‘whop’ of some kind, the threat did not make him run away and hide. But he turned the key at last with a trembling hand and a heavy heart. There was no one on the threshold. He poked his head out, looked up the street and saw no one there, either. Nor down the street. Nor directly opposite, unless you counted a big charity-boy, sitting on a mounting post between the footpath and the road. He was eating a slice of bread and butter, which he cut into wedges the size of his mouth with a clasp knife, slicing and devouring each one with great dexterity. “Beg pardon, sir.” Oliver addressed him. “Did tha knock?” “Nay,” replied the charity-boy scornfully. “I kicked.” “Art tha seeking a coffin?” he asked innocently. The charity-boy spat a crust into the gutter, a crust that Oliver would happily have eaten before it entered that malign-looking mouth. “It’s thee’ll be wanting a coffin if tha cuts such jokes with thy betters, Work’us!” he snarled. “Tha’st no idea who I might be, I reckon?” “No, sir.” “Why, I’m Noah ... that is, Mister Noah Claypole. And tha takes thy orders from me. Got it?” “Yes, sir,” Oliver replied eagerly, for Mister Noah Claypole was now advancing upon him in a most menacing fashion. “For a start, tha may take down yon shutters, you idle young ruffian.” The charity-boy combined a swift kick with an entry whose dignity would not have disgraced Mr Bumble himself; all that marred it were his large head, his small eyes, his red nose, and his yellow smalls.

25 Each shutter weighed twice as much as the boy and poor Oliver grew so exhausted and so faint for want of breakfast that he broke a window in taking the last one down. Noah came out to help him stack them then, but chiefly to assure him he’d “catch it good and hard” when the Sowerberrys were risen. Then, as if they had merely waited their cue in Noah’s gloating, the master and mistress rose, descended, and carried out Noah’s prophecy. “A month’s labour from this little bag-o’-bones won’t pay for that pane,” Mrs Sowerberry said with a scornful glance at her husband. “Parish children— pah!” “Down to breakfast, you!” Mr Sowerberry commanded Oliver with a severity he would dearly have loved to use upon his wife. Oliver entered the kitchen directly behind Noah Claypole, who had lingered at the foot of the stair to gloat over the lad’s chastisement. “Come near the fire, Noah, my dear,” Charlotte simpered. “See! I’ve saved thee a nice bit o’ bacon kept back from the maister’s breakfast. Oliver—shut that door before Mister Noah catches his death! And them bits on the cover of the bread pan—them’s for thee. And this dish o’ tea. Take ’em and sit on yon box—and make haste, for they’ll want thee above soon enough—d’ye hear?” “D’ye hear, Work’us?” Noah tipped back in his chair and dangled a dripping rind of bacon over his open mouth, glancing the while at Oliver to make sure he was tantalized by the sight. “Nay, leave t’lad alone, Noah, dear.” Charlotte had her own reasons for scolding Oliver at one moment and protecting him the next. “Leave it alone?” Noah echoed scornfully. “Aye, why not? Everybody else does. It’s father does. It’s mother does. And all its little brothers and sisters and other relations does. But I say it’s been let alone for far too long. Aye, Work’us, tha’st had thy own way far too long, but we s’ll soon cure that!” While the pair of them laughed heartily, Oliver chewed his stale bread and supped his sweet, thin tea, and comforted himself with the thought that it was a better breakfast than any he had ever enjoyed before—even if it wasn’t a big, chunky bacon rind dripping with fat. Nor was Charlotte as heartless as such episodes made her seem. Over the following weeks, whenever Noah had gone home, and she and the lad found themselves with no company but their own, she would put her feet up by the stove and loosen both her stays and her tongue. “The thing tha must understand about Noah, Oliver, my pet,” she said once, “is that he’s a charity-boy, not a workhouse child.” “Pray, what does that mean?” Oliver put in. “Why it means he can trace his family line all the way back to his father and mother—which is more than some hereabout can do!” She tousled his fair, curly hair to show she meant no asperity by stating the bald fact. “His mother’s a washerwoman and his father’s a drunken soldier who lost his leg in some battle and now drinks his pension of tuppence-farthing a day. So poor Noah is dressed on the charity of the alms committee—and you may imagine how the errand boys of the town, who stand but one rung above him on the Jacob’s ladder of life, have branded him. ‘Poor leathers!’ they shout. And, ‘Charity-charity-charity!’ And so

26 you see, little one, to have a ‘Work’us brat’ set beneath him for him to lord it over ... well, you was heaven-sent, as he must see it. D’you follow me?” “Charlotte?” Oliver replied. “Why do you like me when we’re alone and hate me when Mister Claypole is here?” “Nay, pet!” She laughed and gathered him into her arms, pressing him fiercely to her bosom—which, with the loosening of her stays, was ample and soft and warm. “I could be soft with thee—aye, soft as a sucking duck. But where would it profit thee, eh? For the softer I grew, the harsher he’d surely become—and double harsh to my singular soft. I tell thee—there’s a hard, vindictive streak in that young man as would only need a bit of softness on my part for him to let it loose on thee. Hard words from me fall off thy back like motes of dust, eh? No heavier, I warrant?” “Aye!” Oliver conceded with a giggle. “So I do it for thy protection, see? Never forget it.” She made to push him away but he clung to her for dear life, relishing the smell and softness of her, which, he supposed, must be very like the smell and softness of a mother—and in particular of the mother he had never known. He had been at the undertaker’s for the best part of a month when Mr Sowerberry spoke of him to Mrs Sowerberry at supper one night. “My dear,” he said. She stiffened at once, for whenever he spoke those particular words in that particular tone he was always trying to wheedle her into agreeing with some plan of his. “Me?” she asked. He looked about the room as if to ask who else he might mean. “You wish to share an opinion with me?” she asked in amazement. “As ever, my angel,” he sighed. “But I cannot think what I have done to deserve such an honour!” she exclaimed in mock alarm. “My dearest ...” he chided. “Mister Sowerberry wishes to express some mighty thought to an humble little nonesuch like me!” she told the ceiling. “I was only going to say, my precious ...” “Oh, water! Water! Quick! I faint! It is really going to happen at last. I am to be consulted on a matter of some gravity.” “Not at all!” Sowerberry forced a laugh. “It concerns little Oliver Twist, that is all. It is of no significance whatever. Forget I uttered a single syllable.” But now, of course, the good lady was consumed with curiosity. What could her husband have to say about that bane of her life, the parish orphan, who was eating them out of house and home, growing stronger and more brazen by the day, and doing nothing to earn his keep beyond minding the shop and cleaning the boots and sweeping the house and washing the windows and fetching the coals and ... oh, four dozen other petty services besides? And yet how, having nipped off her husband’s every overture, could she now prevail upon him to speak without herself seeming weak and foolish? “The new catalogue came from Watt’s, today,” he said. “Hmmph!”

27 “Trade in Birmingham must be slack for the iron handles are down a halfpenny each.” “Hmmph!” “We must pray for the cold to return. I have three coffins ready in stock.” “Hmmph! Twist, did you ...” “Old Levinson doesn’t look at all well. I saw him breathless in the street this morning. That would be a very nice funeral to catch.” “Twist!” she barked. He frowned. “My dear?” “Twist! Confound your eyes, Sowerberry! Twist! And you heard me the first time!” The furrows deepened on his brow. “Twist?” he echoed in a mystified tone. Then “Ah!” And he raised his hands and laughed as men laugh at themselves when they forget something obvious. “Yes—Twist. All I was going to say is that he is turning into a very good-looking boy.” His wife was outraged. That such a fine anger, such a splendid acrimony, should lead to this—that the parish brat was “turning into a very good-looking boy”! It was insupportable. “Small wonder!” she exclaimed. “The quantities of food he eats! I’ve not yet caught that Charlotte at it but if ever ...” “There’s an expression of melancholy in his face, my dear,” the undertaker persisted. “Very interesting. He would make a delightful mute, my love.” Mrs Sowerberry was silent for once, trying her best not to seem interested. He continued. “I don’t mean a regular mute to attend grown-up people, my precious, but only for children’s practice. It would be very novel to have a mute in proportion. Depend upon it—it would have a most superb effect.” His wife drew a deep breath and held it. Her lips vanished into a thin line. Her tongue chased morsels of food among her teeth. “Aye ... well,” she said at length. “It’s a wonder to me that your great brain took so long to realize a fact so obvious.” By this she hoped to imply that she had reached the same conclusion weeks ago but, as one whose opinion was never weighed, she had not thought it worth the mentioning. (Truth to tell, the undertaker might never have hit upon the idea if Oliver had not taken to standing, all accidental-like, near the oleo-chromo-lithograph in the workshop, hoping he might notice.) He favoured his wife with an indulgent smile and said, “He shall come out with me on my very next call, my dove.” The occasion was not long in coming. Shortly after breakfast the following morning, Mr Bumble made his regal way into the shop, laid his longstaff and cocked hat upon the counter, and drew forth a large, leathern pocket-book, from which he extracted a small scrap of paper with a name written upon it. “Aha!” Sowerberry rubbed his hands before receiving the scrap. “An order for a coffin, eh?” The beadle nodded gravely. “First a coffin and then a porochial funeral, Mister Sowerberry.” “Bayton?” The undertaker frowned. “Never heard the name before.” Bumble sighed. “Obstinate people, I fear. Obstinate and proud.” He shook his

28 head at the waywardness of the world. Sowerberry glanced again at the address, Noggs’s Buildings—a tenement in the poorer part of Fellgate town. “Proud?” he sneered. “Sickening!” the beadle confirmed in his most portentous tone. “I would even say antimonial!” “Well!” The undertaker was suitably impressed. “Kept themselves to themselves.” Bumble seemed eager to labour the point. “They could have applied for relief at any time and we should have been only too happy ... but, there, there! We should never have heard of them but for the intervention of a neighbour-woman who sent for the parish surgeon on their behalf.” Sowerberry stirred uneasily at this. Was the woman yet dead or merely expected to die? The beadle’s next words set his mind at rest. “The surgeon was at his dinner so his ’prentice—young Gregory Huckle, you may know him?” Sowerberry shook his head. “I reared that lad myself—by hand. Very clever! Anyroad, he sent round some medicine in an old blacking bottle. But would they take it? Would they ...!” He choked off the word he might have said for fear it might fall on some female ear nearby. “Bayton, the husband, sends it back! Says it doesn’t suit his wife’s condition and she shan’t take it! Aye—good, strong, wholesome medicine as worked wonders on two Irish labourers and a collier only the week before—and a blacking bottle thrown in, all free—and he sends word back that she shan’t take it!” He was shivering now, with anger, and not (as some might have thought) from fear or the cold. “But the jury shall hear of this,” he vowed. “Every word. They died of pride and stubbornness, not the parish’s neglect. Let them just try to bring in their vaporous verdicts and ridiculous riders!” The undertaker heaved a sigh of relief. “So now she’s dead and we must bury her,” he said. “Aye. And the sooner the better.” Thus saying, Mr Bumble put on his cocked hat (back to front in a fever of parochial indignation), picked up his mighty wand of office, and flounced out of the shop. Oliver, meanwhile, had hidden himself at the very sound of the beadle’s voice, which brought back all his old terrors. But he need not have worried. Bumble was only too aware that the lad was still on trial; he would let sleeping dogs (and hungry parish orphans) lie until the indentures were signed for a full seven years and any threat of returning the boy to the parish was legally void. “Well now!” Sowerberry took up his hat. “Noah—shop! And you, Oliver, put on your cap and come along of me.” Noah scowled at this token of a growing closeness between master and boy. His little, beady eyes followed them out and his heart, or the organ that stood bail for it, plotted revenge. They walked through a fresh fall of snow up the prosperous High Street—an odd couple: the tall, cadaverous undertaker and the pretty, golden-haired boy at his side. Sowerberry greeted everyone they met and often paused for a chat. And after each parting he would murmur to Oliver some such comment as:

29 —Did’st hear yon wheeze, boy? That’s cancer of the throat, that is. (Spoken with a satisfied relish.) Or: —Eighty-six and the maiden roses still in her cheeks! That woman’ll live a century and more! (This spoken with a species of digust!) And so Oliver understood that their time-consuming chats (as it seemed) were, in truth, a vital part of his master’s business. Before they reached the end of the street, however, they struck off left down a narrow, dirty, miserable passage that opened on to a series of evil-smelling courts and alleys set higgledy-piggledy on the slope, with no particular plan. The houses that flanked them were tall but ancient; many had shopfronts, but all were boarded up and mouldering away. Here and there a house that had outlived its time a century ago was propped up with huge beams of wood; but even these crazy, leaning dens gave night shelter to the most wretched of all—those who lived but weeks away from death or from the mercies of the parish union. The kennel was choked to stagnation with ordure of every kind. The very rats, which here and there lay putrefying in its rottenness, were hideous with famine. The odd couple were eyed with sullen hostility by the few ragged men and women who ventured abroad in that biting cold. Sowerberry spoke to none but his restless eye took stock of them all nonetheless, compiling a mental almanack of parish funerals to come. Noggs’s Buildings had neither knocker nor bell-handle—not that it signified, for the door was wide open on one precarious hinge. “Now stay close by me, Oliver, and don’t be fritt,” the undertaker said as he stepped boldly into the dark interior. The lad felt heartened until his master added: “Them rats is much more afeared of thee than tha’rt of them.” They felt their way up a ricketty flight of stairs and paused at the landing, where Sowerberry rapped at one of the doors. It was opened by a girl of around thirteen. One glance over her head was enough to tell him they had arrived. He stepped in, with Oliver at his heels. Oliver smiled sympathetically at the girl and she smiled back though her eyes were red with weeping. There was no fire in the room; but the husband was crouching over the stove as if he could detect some residuum within of last year’s flames. An old woman, too, had drawn a low stool to the cold hearth and was sitting beside him. A bunch of ragged children sprawled disconsolately in one corner, huddled for warmth. Opposite them, in a shallow alcove and wrapped in a threadbare blanket, lay the object of their visit. Oliver shuddered and moved a step nearer his master. It may seem strange that a lad who had seen nine out of ten of his comrades die, and for whom death had been a daily attendant since before the age when memories begin, should still shiver at the sight of a corpse. And yet it was so. The utter, absolute stillness of a corpse is so unlike the stillness of a table or a stone that it would never lose its power to overawe and terrify him. The man’s face was thin and very pale; his hair and beard were grizzly; and his eyes were bloodshot. The old woman’s face was wrinkled; she had but two teeth left and they protruded over her under lip; but her eyes were bright and piercing in the gloom. Oliver was afraid to look at either; they seemed so like the rats he had

30 seen in the kennels outside. The man started up fiercely as soon as the undertaker approached the corpse. “Keep back, damn you! Keep back if you’ve a life to lose!” “Fiddlesticks!” said the undertaker calmly, for he was pretty well used to misery in all its forms. “Don’t talk daft!” “I tell thee!” The man stamped on the floor. “I’ll not have her put in’t ground. She’d not rest there.” “Not rest there?” Sowerberry echoed. “Nay. Yon worms’d only fret her—for there’s nowt to eat on them poor bones, see tha.” Sowerberry knelt and, fishing a tape from his pocket, took careful measure of the body. The poor have this consolation at least—that the undertaker is more diligent in measuring them than he is with a duke; for, when the parish buys the coffin, a shaving of half an inch can divide profit from loss. Meanwhile the distracted, half-mad husband spoke to the old woman, to Oliver, to his children, to the empty stove. “Aye, man, now you kneel to her. Kneel every one of you, I say, and mark my words. For I say she was starved to death.” “And you? What did you do?” Sowerberry asked calmly. “Me? I did what I could. I begged for her in’t streets—and all I got for my pains was clapped in’t gaol! And when I come out she were dying.” He sobbed. “She died in’t dark. In’t dark! With neither fire nor candle. She couldn’t even see our bairns’ faces though we heard her gasp out their names. I tell thee—all the blood in my heart has dried up, for they starved her to death. I’ll swear it before the God as witnessed it last neet—they killed her!” He held his head in his hands and rocked his body to and fro; his eyes stared wildly and foam gathered at the corners of his mouth. His terrified children huddled even closer together; the old woman, who had remained calm throughout, comforted them to silence with the threat of an upraised hand. The older girl, barely aware of her action, gripped Oliver’s arm. He pulled her hand tight to his side and patted it, feeling very much the little man. The old woman shuffled across to the undertaker. “She was my daughter, sir,” she said with an idiotic leer that was even more ghastly to behold than the corpse. “Now isn’t that a caution! That I, who gave birth to her and was a pretty woman then, should be alive and merry now—and her lying there all cold and stiff. I tell thee—’tis as good as any play!” “That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose,” Sowerberry replied indifferently as he prepared to leave. “Stop!” the woman shouted, clutching at his sleeve. “Will she be buried tomorn or when? I laid her out, so I must walk with her. Send me a cloak—there’s a dear! A good warm cloak, for ’tis bitter cold. And we should have cake and wine, too, by rights, before we set off. But eeay, never mind! Bread’ll serve as well. Send a loaf, eh? Shall us have bread, dearie?” “Aye, anything. Everything!” Sowerberry batted her hands off his sleeve and, drawing Oliver after him, hurried back below. At the third step the lad glanced back over his shoulder and gave the older girl one last smile; she tried to smile back but could not. In all his years on the mercy

31 of the parish he had never seen anyone so forlorn, and it was a measure of his own small rise in fortune that he could now make the comparison. When Mr Bumble heard of the husband’s ravings, he visited Noggs’s Buildings himself, in person, making sure plenty witnessed it, too. He brought with him a half-quartern loaf and a piece of cheese, pared to the point where the mould hardly showed. He was there, again, the following day, with four pauper-bearers from the union, having earlier called at the shop to collect the coffin. He brought another small allowance of bread and two old black cloaks for the mourners, to cover their rags. The children were to stay behind in charge of the older girl, who, it distressed Oliver to see, had spent much of the night in tears. The corpse was soon boxed and the lid screwed down to Sowerberry’s satisfaction. “Now, old lady,” he said as the cortège started down the stairs, “tha must put thy best foot forward. We’re a little bit late and it won’t do to keep the reverend gentleman waiting, will it!” To the bearers, on gaining the alley, he said. “Move lively, you men—quick as you like.” Thus encouraged, the four men trotted under their light burden, glad of the chance to warm themselves. Messrs Bumble and Sowerberry strode out smartly in front, with Oliver walking and trotting at their side, and the two mourners brought up the rear as best they could. Arrived at the churchyard, however, they discovered they need not have raced after all, for the clergyman had not yet arrived, and the clerk, reluctantly leaving the vestry-room fire for all of one long minute, said he had no idea when the man might see fit to attend. So they set the coffin down near the grave, which was in that corner of the churchyard dedicated to nettles and paupers, and waited. A misty drizzle was melting yesterday’s snow and they sought what shelter they could in the lee of an ancient yew. But it took more than a bit of damp to deter the ragged boys of the district, attracted to the churchyard by the excitement of an interment. They whiled away the time with noisy games of hide-and-seek among the ancient tombstones or by leaping back and forth over the coffin while struggling to avoid a fall into the shallow grave beside it. Bumble and Sowerberry, being old friends of the clerk, sat indoors by the fire with him and read the paper. Huddled into the yew, Oliver stared out at the miserable plot reserved for paupers’ graves. They must be pretty full by now, he reckoned, for the grave the sexton had opened for today’s ceremony, down as far as the previous coffin, was but three feet deep. What would they do then? Go back to the earliest grave and start again? They were easy enough to pick out for, what with the mouldering of the corpses and the rotting of their thin coffins—seven or eight in a stack, Mr Sowerberry had said—the earth that sealed them was already quite sunken-in. Suddenly the hair prickled all over his scalp for he realized that this must also be the very plot where his dear mother’s earthly remains had been laid to rest, now a full ten years ago! Oh, which one was it? Pulling his cape about him, he dashed out into the drizzle, darting and leaping over the graves and making all the urchins think he was set to join their merriment. But he passed them out and did not stop until he stood above those

32 sunken rilles in the weedy turf, one of which must contain all that could die of that darling woman he so longed to know—or, failing that, to know of. This one? Its grass was surely a little greener than the rest? A mark of that nobler dust beneath? Or this, less dimpled than its neighbours? Could it mean that her body, like that of other saints, lay uncorrupted still in the quiet earth? The frantic lad passed from one hollow to another, finding in each some tiny clue to suggest it was the one he sought. For an hour—while the reverend gentleman did not come—he sought for the one definitive sign that would rule out all the rest. And it was thus the young girl found him when, wondering at the delay, she came to inquire after her people. When he had explained its cause he told her, “At least tha’rt luckier than me ... er, what do they call thee?” “Katie. Katie Bayton. Luckier—me?” “Oliver Twist.” They shook hands, cold skin to cold skin, for neither had gloves. “At least tha’ll know where thy mother lies.” He nodded toward the shallow grave. “Mine lies here, too, but God alone knows where. The three men who buried her are in there, warming their hands at the fire, but they’d not tell me even if they knew—which I doubt. That’s their nature.” “She’s buried there,” Katie said quietly, pointing toward the grave less sunken than the rest.” “There?” Oliver was caught between joy and incredulity. “There,” she replied with the same quiet assurance. “How dost’a know?” “I just know some things.” Before she could dilate upon this astonishing claim, Mr Bumble, Mr Sowerberry, and the clerk came running toward the grave and, shortly after, the reverend gentleman appeared, wheezing and shrugging himself into his surplice as he drew near. Bumble gave as many of the urchins as his staff could reach a taste of its end, just to keep up appearances, while the clergyman rattled off as much of the burial service as could be squashed into four minutes. He ducked out of his surplice and tossed it at the clerk before he waddled off again— all without a Christian word to the mourners there. “Now, Bill!” Sowerberry barked at the sexton. “Fill up and top over!” It was done! The mourners drifted away. The urchins skipped off to misdemeanours new. The clerk deprived the two mourners of their cloaks, to their howls of protest, for they had not understood that the garments were merely on loan. The man fell down in an angry fit but a bucket of cold water soon revived him. Sowerberry lingered behind to present his bill to Bumble and conclude an interrupted conversation with the clerk. Oliver looked around for Katie and saw her by the lych gate in conversation with a portly, genial-looking gentleman—at least, his speech was animated and he smiled a great deal. At one point he chucked her under the chin and then pried open her mouth to inspect her teeth before stooping down, almost as if to smell her breath.

33 “Mister Sowerberry, sir,” he asked as they made their way toward the gate at last. “Who is that jolly gentleman talking with the pauper girl?” Sowerberry needed a moment or two to make them out and then—Oliver would almost swear to it—his cheek flushed with colour. “Why, he is a ... a ... a philanthropist!” he exclaimed. At that moment the ‘philanthropist’ took Katie by the arm and led her out to his carriage, which was waiting nearby. “And what is that, pray?” Oliver asked. “Will he be kind to her?” “And what is that to you?” “I ... I like her. I feel sorry for her.” “Ha!” Sowerberry peered down at him in amazement. “Bless my soul!” The carriage drove off into the misty drizzle, leaving Oliver with the strangest pang of loss. “Will he?” he asked forlornly. “Be kind to her?” “Oh, he’ll be very kind—depend upon it!” The undertaker stepped out, eager to get home and change into something dry. “He’ll feed her up and dress her in luxuries, never fear!” Oliver stared back over his shoulder in amazement, trying to penetrate the mist that had swallowed the carriage entirely, trying also to penetrate the unfathomable mysteries of this life—and wondering if he might ever have the fortune to meet such a nice philanthropist.

CHAPTER 6

Oliver being goaded by the taunts of Noah, rouses into action, and rather astonishes him

The weeks during which Sowerberry had Oliver Twist ‘upon liking’ drew to a close and, since the lad’s work as a mute was very much to the undertaker’s liking—and, what was more remarkable still, to that of Mrs Sowerberry as well— they signed the indentures and Oliver was formally apprenticed. The season was nice and sickly just then. Not even the oldest inhabitants of Fellgate could recall a period when measles, mumps, whooping cough, and chicken pox had been so rife, nor so fatal to infant existence. Coffins, as Sowerberry said, were ‘looking up’! Little Oliver, with his hat-band reaching down to his knees, headed many a mournful procession, to the ohs and ahs of all the mothers in town; for if ever they lacked a conception of the angelic state to which the little ones had been called, the solemn little mute with the pretty golden curls and the cherubic features was there to supply it. He accompanied his master on many an adult funeral, too—not so much as a mute, more as an acolyte, a scholar of that gravitas and full command of nerve so essential to a finished undertaker. Thus he had ample chance to observe the beautiful resignation and fortitude with which men and women of strong character can bear even their most grievous losses. Never was this more apparent than when some rich old lady or gentleman was laid to rest. For there, gathered around the grave, he would see all the sons and

34 daughters, grandchildren, nephews, and nieces—all conversing together with as much freedom and gaiety as if nothing untoward whatever had taken place, and as if the sexton were planting no more than a memorial tree. “And to think it was only last week,” Mr Sowerberry would comment to Oliver on their way home, “that those same folk were gathered around the old one’s deathbed, loud in lamentation of their inconsolable grief!” Husbands bore the loss of a wife with heroic calm, he noticed, too. Scarce had the last tear been wiped away than that same red eye was scanning the crowd for her surrogate. Widows wore their weeds as if determined to make them as becoming and attractive as possible. “But,” Sowerberry pointed out, “your widows don’t so often look for another match. When a woman has got the domestic treasury firm within her grasp, she’ll not yield it lightly to a second master.” And then he’d laugh and pat Oliver on the head and tell him it was a worry he’d never have to face. On those rare occasions when the lamentations persisted even after the grave was filled and topped over, Sowerberry would say, on their way home, “They’re chuckling now, little lad. They’ve got bellies full of seed cake and fortified tea, and there’s a crackle of lawyer’s parchment on the air. And so they’re chuckling now!” One thing impressed Oliver above all: Whether he was invited back to the tea or not, his master always discovered the executor or executrix of the estate and passed him the funeral bill—no matter how astonished or annoyed it made them to realize that the burial of a wealthy relation was not wine and roses all the way. “Always present the bill,” he would tell his young apprentice, “while the tear is in the eye. Once they’ve slept on it, and spent every last penny of their inheritance in their dreams, you’d be better employed fishing haddock from mountain streams than prying money out of them. Then they’d wish you’d lined the coffin with miller’s sacks dyed black, and had but a single arum lily, and left off the hearse feathers altogether, which got ruined in the rain!” In the matter of resignation in the face of suffering, Oliver took pattern from the bereaved he saw almost every day—for almost every other day, Mister Noah Claypole tormented him. The charity-boy’s jealousy at seeing the bonds of intimacy being forged ever tighter between little Work’us and his master was inflamed to a kind of madness. Charlotte did her best, lashing him with her tongue (in between a dozen winks and sly but privy smiles) and occasionally slapping his face—or, rather, slapping the lightest down upon his cheeks while he, part-hid from Noah behind her skirts, clapped hands to supply the sound of the assault. It was to little avail, however. Noah would still pull Oliver’s hair and nip his ears and trip him up and call him ‘sneak’ and promise to attend his hanging whenever that happy day might dawn. But Oliver, as I say, took pattern from others’ stoicism and let it all pass by. Naturally his silence was not at all to Noah’s liking, and so, one day when the pair were alone in the kitchen—Charlotte being abroad upon some errand—he devised a new twirl to his torture. “Work’us,” he said casually as they brawled over dividing a pound or so of mutton—the worst end of the neck—“how’s thy

35 mother these days?” Oliver swallowed hard but said nothing. Noah repeated the question, watching Oliver’s face the while like a sidling rat. Oliver, knowing very well how desperate Noah was to provoke him, still maintained his outward calm—all, that is, except for an almost imperceptible twitch of one nostril, which he found it impossible to suppress. It was enough for Noah. “How’s tha mother, Work’us?” he asked yet again. “Dead,” said Oliver curtly and much to his tormentor’s annoyance. “Oh, dead is she?” he sneered as if it were news to him. Then, pretending to a deeply sympathetic interest, he added, “And what did she die of, I wonder?” Now that Oliver had broken his silence he could not return to its refuge, so he came out fighting. “She died of something thee would never understand, Mister Noah Claypole.” “Oh?” The boy’s confidence rattled him. “And what might that be, pray?” “She died of a broken heart.” He had been determined not to cry and yet a tear now rolled down his cheek. “Ho!” Noah was delighted to have drawn blood. “Tol de rol lol lol! And right fol lairy, Work’us! What’s set thee a-snivelling then?” “Not you,” Oliver assured him. “So don’t go giving yourself airs!” “Not me?” Noah asked sarcastically. “Him then?” he pointed to an empty space, and then another. “Or him? Not me, indeed!” Oliver breathed in deeply and took a grip on himself. “What’s tha thinking on now, Work’us?” Noah asked, afraid of losing the initiative again. “I’m thinking tha’d best say no more to me,” Oliver responded quietly. “Best say no more!” Noah laughed. “Shut thy impudence, Work’us! I s’ll say what I please—and it pleases me to dwell on thy mother. She was a nice one, she was!” Oliver having found his way back to silence, realized it was best to stay there. “Tha knows what, Work’us?” Noah continued, “we’re all right sorry tha’rt an orphan, but it can’t be helped now. And tha couldn’t have helped it back then, neither. So we all pity thee very much. But the truth is, Work’us, that thy mother were a regular right-down bad ’un!” He spat out the concluding words with a venom that made Oliver look up. “What did you say?” he asked quietly. Delighted to have touched a nerve at last, Noah lay back in his chair, set his feet upon the table cloth, and repeated his insult. “A regular, right-down bad ’un, Work’us. And it’s a great deal better, Work’us, that she died when she did, else she’d have been at hard labour in Bridewell this very moment—or transported. Or hung—which is more likely nor either, come to think on’t.” Oliver was past the power of speech by now. Crimson with rage, he rose up, overthrew the table, and kicked the chair out from under his torturer. Noah, half- crouching and struggling to stay upright, was such an easy target that Oliver could not resist bunching his fist for one mighty blow and delivering it in the middle of that tiny red nose, almost lost in that big moon-face. Noah fell screaming to the flags. Oliver stood over him, eyes glowing with

36 triumph, chest heaving, fists still clenched. “Get up, tha great soft bully!” he sneered. “Tell me more about my mother, do!” For reply, Noah opened his mouth and screamed at the top of his voice: “Murder! Charlotte! Missus! Here’s the new mute a-murdering of me! Help! Help! The boy’s gone mad!” Charlotte, returning from her errand at that very moment, came racing down the stairs. She took in the scene at a glance and realized that Oliver was now beyond any protection she might give. If she sought to shield him now, her place was at the next hiring fair, not here. “Eeay, thou little wretch!” she screamed, seizing him with a force that astonished them both. “Tha little ungrateful, horrible, murderous villain!” And with almost every syllable she gave him a blow that half-hurt—and which, to Noah and to Mrs Sowerberry, who had now joined them, must appear to hurt entirely. Then Oliver, with the red tide of anger receding inside him, understood how parlous a situation he had allowed Noah to provoke him into occupying. If even Charlotte had to take sides so vehemently, then truly he had no friend left in all the world. In a desperate effort to protect him Charlotte flung her arms about him and gripped him tight, as if to prevent his escape. Meanwhile Noah, afraid to rise, in case Oliver did, indeed, still manage to escape, stayed on the flags and held him by the feet. Mrs Sowerberry, having neither pity nor scruple in such a matter, unsheathed her talons and clawed at Oliver’s pretty face, drawing fresh blood with every scratch. Noah at last found the courage to rise and set about his enemy, pummelling him chiefly about the kidneys. Charlotte took a new grip, which ‘accidentally’ had the effect of shielding Oliver’s face from further assault. Then, when exhaustion overcame them, they dragged him—six hands to one small body—to the coal hole, where they shot him inside and barred the door. He at once began to kick at the wood and yell to be let out. Mrs Sowerberry sank into a chair, gasping for air. “Mercy!” Charlotte cried. “She’s going off! A glass of water, Noah, dear— make haste!” The idiot drew the glass and poured it over her instead of holding it for her to sip from—but she revived soon enough then, and spoke as well as she could through a deficiency of breath and a more-than-sufficiency of water: “Oh, Charlotte—what a mercy we have not all been murdered in our beds!” “Mercy, indeed, mum,” the girl replied. Then, walking toward the coal-hole door, which Oliver was still threatening to demolish, she added, speaking very loudly: “I hope this’ll teach the master not to take in any more of these dreadful workhouse creatures. They’re born murderers and thieves from their very cradles on. Poor Noah! Look at the blood! He’d be dead now, mum, if I hadn’t saved him.” “Nay!” protested Noah, well aware that Oliver barely reached to his lowest waistcoat button. “The little villain took me by surprise, that were all.” But when his mistress looked at him and said in a voice unwontedly soft, “Poor Noah!” he put his wrists to his eyes and sniffed a bit.

37 Oliver was still kicking at the door and yelling to be let out. “Eeay!” Mrs Sowerberry wrung her hands in anguish. “What’s to be done? The master’s out a-measuring the corpses where that alehouse collapsed, and yon little devil will have that door destroyed on us inside ten minutes.” “Send for the town constable?” Charlotte suggested. “Or the millingtary?” Noah put in. “Nay!” A slow smile creased their mistress’s face as she bethought herself of Oliver’s old friend. “Fetch Mister Bumble, Noah. Bid him come directly and not to lose a minute. Never mind thy cap! Run! And hold a cold blade to that nose in case it breaks out in a fresh bleed.” He made the strangest picture: the Sowerberrys’ charity-boy running through the streets, his chops red with blood, wearing no cap, and pressing an open clasp- knife to the side of his nose. For sure, the good folk of Fellgate told one another, some great drama was afoot at the undertaker’s house.

CHAPTER 7

Oliver continues refractory

Noah Claypole ran through the streets as fast as his fat legs could carry him, not even pausing for breath until he reached the workhouse gates. There, however, he rested a long minute, gathering up a good bucketful of sobs and tears, before he felt in fit condition to rap in a loud and terrified manner at the wicket gate. His wild appearance certainly terrified the old pauper who answered his knocks. “Why, what’s got into the boy?” cried the ancient, drawing back sharply. “Mister Bumble! Mister Bumble!” cried Noah with well-affected panic and in tones so loud and agitated that they brought the beadle himself a-running, hatless and staffless, from the lodge nearby. “Eeay, Mister Bumble, sir!” Noah was suddenly and mysteriously breathless again. “It’s Oliver ... Oliver has ... he’s ...” “What?” exclaimed Bumble, a steely gleam of pleasure in his eyes. “Not run away? He hasn’t run away, has he, Noah?” To hear him speak you’d have thought it the thing he most desired in all his life. But his excitement turned to anger at the charity-boy’s next words. “Nay, sir. Not run away. But he’s turned wicious. He tried to murder me, sir.” He wished now that he had not stanched his blood nose so well. “And then he set about poor Charlotte—and would have killed her but for my intervention. So what does he do but turn upon the missus and try to murder her, instead! He has the strength of ten in his madness, sir. Eeay!” And, so saying, he doubled up in agony, writhing and twisting like nothing so much as an eel—which was, indeed, appropriate to his character. Bumble stood paralyzed, a man transfixed, unable to credit that a frail little waif like Oliver Twist could wreak such havoc on a big, fat boy and two powerful women—yet unwilling to question the news, either, for fear it should dwindle to a mere matter of slaps and cheeky words, which he could well believe it was.

38 Meanwhile, Mr Wrungley, who happened to be crossing the yard, was wondering why that fat, impudent boy was caterwauling so—and why the beadle did not rush indoors and return with his stick to give the creature something worth crying over. “Silence, fellow!” he boomed as he joined them. Then, to Bumble, “What is this?” “It’s a poor boy from the free-school, sir,” the beadle explained, “as works betimes for Sowerberry, the undertaker, where we got shot of Oliver Twist ...” “Ha!” Mr Wrungley cried out in foreboding at the name. “And now the little rascal has fair bid to murder poor Noah here.” “I knew it!” Wrungley cried in triumph. “Attempted murder, eh? The boy will hang! Didn’t I say as much, the minute I clapped eyes on him? That boy, I said, will hang!” “It’s not stopped there, sir,” Bumble went on. “He next attempted the life of Charlotte, a poor little kitchen maid.” “And the missus, next,” Noah put in, in case the beadle forgot. “And the master, too, I think you said, Noah?” Bumble thought he might as well fill out the whole ticket. “Er ...” Noah hesitated at telling a direct lie, but then inspiration struck. “The master was out at the time, sir, but Oliver threatened it. Aye, he said he would if he could.” “Would if he could, eh?” Wrungley echoed. “Why that’s as good as an attempt by my lights.” “Yes, sir,” Noah agreed. “And Mrs Sowerberry says, sir—what with the maister being away—can Mister Bumble be spared, sir, him and his cane, sir, to step up there directly and flog some obedience back into the boy, please, sir?” “With my blessing!” Wrungley said heartily. He smiled broadly and attempted to pat Noah’s head, though it was three inches taller than his own. “You’re a good, honest lad, I can see, so here’s a penny for you.” He turned to the beadle with a grin. “Bumble?” “Aye, sir?” “Don’t spare him!” “That I shall not, sir,” the man replied with relish. “Noah—slip within and ask the master for the loan of his cane. The one with the wax-thread end, which we keep for special wickedness. The one we call The Scorpion!” They all met again in the yard when the beadle had accoutred himself in his cocked hat and gloves. Noah handed over the cane and did a little skip of victory on the spot. “Beadle,” Wrungley cried after them as they stepped out by the gate. “Tell Sowerberry not to spare the lad either. He’ll get nothing out of him except by stripes and bruises!” The good folk of Fellgate watched in awe as the beadle strode down the street, looking neither right nor left, and thwacking that vicious-looking cane against his gaiters with every other step. And, like a clown at the tumbril’s tail, a dancing Noah Claypole dodged his every step. Nothing had improved in the Sowerberrys’ kitchen. Oliver kicked at the

39 coalhouse door with undiminished vigour and yelled to be let out as loud as ever. The circumstances of his assault, as related by the two frightened females, were so alarming that the beadle felt it prudent to exercise the power of his voice and office before essaying that of his right arm. Accordingly he gave the door a kick and, bending toward the keyhole, boomed in his deepest and most imposing voice: “Oliver!” “Lemme out!” yelled the boy. The beadle gazed in baffled horror at the three onlookers. “Do you know this-here voice, Oliver?” he boomed again. “Yes!” Oliver shouted back. Again he beseeched them with his eyes to tell him he was dreaming. “And ain’t you afraid of it, sir? Aint you a-quaking and a-trembling while I speak, sir?” “No!” Oliver shouted—and kicked at the door again. Shocked and dazed to the very marrow of his bones, Mr Bumble rose again to his full height and stepped back from the door. “The boy’s gone mad!” Mrs Sowerberry shrieked, not for the first time, nor even for the hundred-and-first. “It’s not madness, madam,” Bumble told her in tones of authority. “It’s meat!” “What?” exclaimed an amazed Mrs Sowerberry. “Meat, madam—meat!” was the stern reply. “You’ve overfed him, ma’am. You’ve raised a hartificial soul and spirit within him—which is something no pauper has a right to own. And all on account of meat! If you had kept the boy on gruel, ma’am, none of this would never have happened.” “Ah!” A penitent Mrs Sowerberry clasped her hands in an attitude of prayer and cast her eyes heavenwards. “We have been too liberal—I see it now!” There was a solemn moment while she prayed forgiveness for a crime no honest man could have laid at her door. Then, businesslike again, she turned to the beadle. “And now, Mister Bumble, ’tis your turn for liberality, I think! Lay it on thick, I say! Do not spare him.” “Ah, ma’am, as to that ...” Bumble licked his lips and glanced nervously at the other three. In a few short months Oliver Twist had clearly turned into a strong and vicious young man. And, to judge by the hammering from beyond the coalhole door, he was pretty well shod, too. And a good, strong boot, even on the foot of one so young, could modify the shape and colour of a man’s leg in moments, especially if that man were a stout and none too nimble beadle with seventeen stone of dignity to maintain. Poor Bumble! He could hardly seek the support of the very females he was there to defend. And as for relying on Claypole, he was of that big-fat-bully cast who would scream and run at the first little hurt—as, indeed, he had already proved. What was the poor beadle to do? What he did was draw himself up to his full height and assume his most portentous voice to advise that the wretched Oliver should be kept locked in the coalhole for a day or two until the meat was starved out of him. “Then, ma’am, take him out and feed him nothing but gruel for the next seven years.” When the good lady seemed rather inclined to argue for a swifter punishment,

40 he continued: “The boy comes of a bad family, Mrs Sowerberry.” “That’s what I told him,” Noah put in. Bumble shot him a contemptuous glance. “A bad family,” he insisted. “Doctor Lydd and Old Sal, who attended the woman’s lying-in, said that woman made her way to Fellgate against difficulties and pain that would have killed a truly respectable female weeks sooner.” Oliver, hearing these words through the cracks in the wood, began a barrage of kicks that would surely have demolished the door—if the undertaker himself had not returned at that moment. One look at the scene—the beadle with his cane, Noah with his blood nose, Mrs Sowerberry distraut, and Charlotte worried— coupled with Oliver’s cries and kicks from beyond the locked door told him all he needed to know. Without a word he crossed the kitchen floor and unlocked the door—giving Oliver such a surprise that, for a moment, he stood there, stupefied and blinking at the light. A moment was all Sowerberry needed to grip him by the ear and drag him out. “Well, here’s a pretty scene, eh!” He cuffed the boy hard. “And you’re a nice sort of fellow, ain’t you!” He cuffed him again. “He called my mother names.” Oliver pointed at Noah. “I never!” the charity-boy exclaimed, apparently forgetting his previous assertion upon that same subject. “What if he did, you ungrateful little wretch?” snapped Mrs Sowerberry. “She deserved whatever he said, and worse.” “She didn’t!” Oliver stamped his foot. “She did! She did!” Mrs Sowerberry poked her face at him. “It’s a lie!” Oliver looked from unpitying face to unpitying face—all except Charlotte’s, whose eyes were closed in dreadful foreboding. “Oh!” Mrs Sowerberry screamed, threw up her hands, sat down heavily, and burst into tears, taking no comfort from Charlotte’s flapping apron. Sowerberry had reasons enough to be well disposed toward Oliver. He had chosen the boy; his wife detested the boy; the boy brought in a good trade as a child mute; and, by Harry!, there was something innately likeable about the little chap! But there, weighing down the opposing pan in the scales of his domestic justice, was the large slice of tongue pie Mrs Sowerberry would serve him if he failed her now. He would be a brute, an unnatural husband, an insulting creature, a base imitation of a man, and so forth. “Take his right arm, Noah,” he said as he seized the left. Noah obeyed with unwonted speed and so, before Oliver had time to blink, he found himself pinioned and spread across the kitchen table by two fellows, each more than twice his size, while, behind him, Mr Bumble, having taken off his tunic coat, was rolling up his sleeve and making The Scorpion whistle with joy in anticipation of the cuts to come. “Me! Me!” an ecstatic Mrs Sowerberry cried as she budged her husband aside and tried her hardest to press Oliver’s arm right through the solid oak. “Pull his britches off! Let it bite his bare posteriors!” “No!” Sowerberry drew the line at that. To quell any further argument he added

41 in a significant tone, “The boy is older than you think. It would not be seemly.” A disappointed Mrs Sowerberry turned upon Bumble. “Come along, beadle! Enough of the overture. Let the drama commence!” Thwack! The Scorpion screamed through the air like some demented harpie and bit hard into the thin flesh of Oliver’s posteriors. The cloth of his breeches protected nothing but his dignity. He, a veteran of more swishings than he’d had bowls of gruel, clamped his teeth tight shut and fixed his eyes on Noah Claypole, who had leaned forward in the hope of seeing tears and grimaces. Charlotte turned away and hid her face in her apron. Mrs Sowerberry giggled with delight and cried, “Again!” Bumble tossed his head in a dignified fashion. “We allow the pain to soak, ma’am,” he replied. “Such is our professional term for it. The pain must soak away or it numbs the effect of a subsequent stripe.” But even as he spoke he delivered a second stinging cut, hoping that Oliver, beguiled by his professional lecture, would be taken unawares. If he was, he gave no sign of it. His teeth remained gritted, his eye fixed on Noah. The charity-boy, growing uneasy at Oliver’s stoicism, mouthed the phrase: “A regular, right-down bad ’un!” at him. Oliver’s stare was unblinking—and so it remained throughout the ordeal, which continued until twenty cruel cuts had been delivered. There would have been more if Mr Sowerberry had not at last stayed the beadle’s arm and said quietly, “Enough now!” Whereupon he took a still unprotesting, still dry-eyed Oliver by the arm and conducted him gently back to the coal-hole and locked the door upon him once again. Mrs Sowerberry, whose blood-lust had been well sated before the tenth cut fell, was subdued now; she stood staring at the table with head bent and downcast mien. Noah, the victim of many a stern thrashing himself, up at the charity- school, would have called quits at six—especially when the instrument was The Scorpion; he now stood pale and shaking, in ghastly awe at what he had unleashed. Mr Sowerberry gave Charlotte a gentle touch on the shoulder and said, “Assist Mrs Sowerberry upstairs, there’s a good girl.” Bumble alone was oblivious to the subdued atmosphere that reigned all about him. “Gruel, sir!” he barked as he left. “Morning, noon, and night—and let’s be done with meat!” Oliver was not released until it was time for bed; then he was sent above without any supper. When the house was quiet, Charlotte slipped from her attic, crept downstairs, and brought Oliver a slice of pie she had saved from her own supper together with some leftover bread and the scrapings of the plates. If she had any doubt of the boy’s hunger, the impetuous zeal with which he devoured every last morsel would have set her mind at rest. “I’m bound away, Charlotte, dear,” he said as he licked the last smearing of fat from his lips. “I cannot bide another day beneath the roof that shelters Noah Claypole—or there’ll be murder done, see tha.” “Aye,” she sighed. “I see. I do see. When?”

42 “Tomorn,” he replied. “Before cockcrow I’ll be up and gone.” “Where?” she asked next. “Who knows? I’ve seen the waggons pass on the Selby road. The first as will take me may take me where it will.” “And what’ll tha do? I’ve a few small savings put by ...” “Nay!” He put a finger to her lips. “But I’ll take the rest of this pie if it’s still in the larder!” He saw the girl’s face fall and knew she was thinking they would blame her for the disappearance. Then he took up a carpenter’s pencil and a scrap of paper on which some corpse’s measure had been written and, on its reverse, he laboriously wrote his name. Charlotte watched in fascination. “Who taught thee that?” she asked. He looked at it with pride. “I saw it on the indentures in the office drawer and I taught myself to copy it, see tha. I’ll leave this on the piedish, then they’ll not blame thee.” “Dear Oliver!” She brushed his cheek with her knuckles. “Ever thinking of others!” “I’ll always think of thee, Charlotte. No one’s ever done me any kindness— excepting Old Sal, a little, and thee, a lot. How do I write ‘Farewell’?” She guided his hand to write the word above his name. He relished the gentleness of her fingers just as he had relished touching her lips a moment earlier. “What’ll tha do?” she asked. “Tha knows a runaway ’prentice can be tooken up and transported?” He chuckled. “Then I must transport myself—a long way from here. Will they seek a runaway in London?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t hardly credit it. Still—what’ll tha do there?” “Whatever I must,” he replied simply. “I’m not hampered by any particular skill!” After favouring her with the bravest smile he drew breath and whispered, “Charlotte?” “Aye? I must go back to my attic.” “Before you go ...” “Aye?” “May I ...” “What?” “Touch thy hair?” “Eeay!” She giggled with embarrassment. “Tha soft little duck! What’s tha want to do that for?” “I’ve always wanted to do it. It looks so soft and shiny and lovely.” “Oh, go on, then!” Still embarrassed, she shook out her wavy locks and leaned toward him. “Be quick about it, now.” As a miser might run his fingers through his hoard of gold, as a farmer might plunge a hand among wheaten grains from the finest harvest of his life, as a milliner might tenderly fondle a length of the finest silk from far Cathay, so Oliver ran his fingers through and plunged his hand among and tenderly fondled Charlotte’s crowning glory. And she, watching the rapture spread across his

43 pitifully scarred countenance, was amazed that so much joy could be occasioned by something so petty. “May I kiss thee goodbye?” he asked, opening his eyes at length. “Just the once,” she said firmly as she lowered her lips to his. Oliver felt his heart turn a somersault inside his breast. He had known few moments of sweetness in his life but this was far beyond them all. He could have continued thus until cockcrow but Charlotte suddenly broke it off and drew away from him in some haste. “I’ll never forget thee, either, little scamp,” she whispered. There were tears coursing unashamedly down her cheeks.

CHAPTER 8

Oliver walks to London. He encounters on the road a strange sort of young gentleman

None of the waggons on the road that led south would so much as stop for the brave runaway, still less afford him the luxury of a free ride. But then, just when Oliver had given up all hope and was resigning himself to walking the hundred and eighty-odd miles between Fellgate and London, he had the good fortune to be taken up by a kindly gentleman, whose name he never learned. The carriage passed him and came to a halt a little way ahead; the gentleman stuck his head out of the window and studied the angelic little boy keenly as he drew closer. Oliver bade him good morrow and quizzed him with a hopeful eye; the man returned the salutation but wafted his hand to indicate that he should walk on by. When Oliver obeyed, the carriage passed him out again, and so the whole rigmarole was repeated—not once but twice more. On the third occasion, however, the man spoke to him at last—more, that is, than a simple good morrow. “You look tired and footsore, my little man,” he said. Oliver explained it was not his feet that were sore—not yet, at least—and he rubbed his posteriors ruefully to show what he meant. This excited an enormous interest in the gentleman, who said he had a sovereign remedy for such stripes at home and would gladly cure Oliver of his suffering—at which he opened his carriage door and invited the lad in. The carriage bowled southward most of that day, making for the gentleman’s home, which was just south of Peterborough. The man chatted gaily of this and that, quite captivating his little charge. He snoozed awhile and then woke up to share his hamper with the boy, giving him lavish helpings of cold meat and bread and pickles until Oliver thought he would just about burst. But when, toward the end of their journey, he quizzed Oliver more closely on his history and doings— and heard his new young friend was a runaway apprentice—why then his manner changed. There was no more talk of salves for sore posteriors then, nor of a sojourn at the gentleman’s home, either. Now, instead, his sole interest seemed to lie in transporting Oliver over the county boundary as swiftly as possible, to which Oliver did not in the least object. The kind gentleman wanted to see his stripes—“just to make sure,” he said—but Oliver, in a fit of bravado, declared they were nothing; and his friend-for-the-nonce did not insist.

44 And so it was that, as shades of evening fell, our young hero was unceremoniously bundled from the warm interior of the carriage and found himself standing beside a milepost that said, ‘London 85m.’ He had come more than half the distance in one day! Now if Dame Fortune would only arrange for two or three more kindly gentlemen with an interest in rubbing salve into his bruises to pick him up tomorrow and the following day, he’d be there before the bills for ‘Runaway Apprentice!’ could be printed! He turned into a meadow and settled himself to sleep under a haycock, to dream of the unfathomable strangeness of life. The strangest thing of all that day was the way the kindly gentleman had pressed a penny into his hand as they took their leave of each other, saying, “Remember, Oliver—we never met. You never saw me and I never set eyes on you!” What could he possibly have meant by such a direct contradiction of what they both knew to be the truth? He awoke tired and cold the following dawn, but, thanks to those generous helpings from the gentleman’s picnic basket, he still had his pie to sustain him— the quondam property of the Sowerberrys. He devoured it bit by bit all day, begging cups of water at cottage doors to wash it down. Several kindly folk gave him old crusts and scraps as well, so that when he slept beneath another haycock the following night, he had enough to sustain him most of the following day. And now he was but sixty-five miles from his Eldorado, the city whose streets were paved with gold. He covered a mere twelve miles the following day, for now his feet were truly sore. He took off his boots and hung them by the laces round his neck, preferring to walk barefoot and let the chafing heal; that delayed him, too. Also, crusts and scraps were not the same sort of fuel as one of Charlotte’s pies, not by any manner of means. The next day he awoke so hungry that he squandered the whole penny at once on a small loaf in the very first village he passed through, which, as it transpired, was the village of Eaton Socon, some way north of Cambridge. On being told this, Oliver could not resist a quip. “Well, missus,” he said to the baker’s wife as she tested the penny for its ring, “I have the gnashers to eat’n so I’d dearly love to have the cup of sweet tea in which to soak’n!” He gazed at her hopefully while she struggled not to laugh at his gay impudence. Eventually, still determined not to give way, she took him by the scruff of his neck and bundled him outside. He feared she was going to cast him into the gutter but instead she marched him a little way up the street. Then he feared she was going to clamp him in the stocks, for that was where she halted. There she held his face an inch or two from a printed notice and said, “Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest!” “I can’t read, mum,” he told her. “Well, for the sake of your own skin, learn those letters at least, for they say, ‘Beggars will be arrested’! Do you fancy a day and a night in the stocks?” Crestfallen, Oliver shook his head and tried to commit the shape of the words to memory. “Oh, come on, you little vagabond!” she exclaimed crossly and dragged him

45 back down the street with as little ceremony as she had shown in dragging him up it; but his reward was a cup of the sweetest tea he had downed in many a month. And so it went all that long day. Some were kind and gave him crusts. Others were cruel and served him nothing but kicks and curses. He knew he would have to get some more money somehow, so, when the next stagecoach passed him by—the Yorkshire Flyer, it was—he begged the outside passengers for halfpence. Several gentlemen took the asked-for coins from their pockets and one told him he should have them if he could keep up with them to the top of the next hill. Since it was only a furlong away, Oliver set off in pursuit confidently enough— though the boots, clanking about his neck, hampered him painfully. But he kept up well enough to hear the gentlemen laugh at his struggles and make shilling bets on his winning or losing. However, the horses were new and the coachman drove them hard, so as to keep up their momentum, with the result that Oliver lagged too far behind to satisfy the outsides. One shouted, “Idle young dog! You don’t deserve a farthing!” and they all put their halfpence back in their pockets—and instead took out shillings to settle their bets. He tried standing in the yard of an inn, where people were always coming and going. He hid his boots and made himself look as miserable as possible, by which he earned another penny before the housekeeper sent a pot-boy out to shoo him away. If he called at farms beside the way, begging for no more than the meal they fed their pigs or kine, they set the dogs on him. And many a housekeeper and tradesman uttered threats that included the most dreaded word in any language: beadle! And he was glad the woman in Eaton Socon had made him learn those printed words, for it saved him from opening his mouth in several other villages along the way. But then there was a good-hearted old lady who fed him a whole plate of cold meats and gave him two slices of carraway cake. “For me to carr’away?” he asked, truly thinking that was how it got its name, since he had never heard of, much less tasted, the eponymous seed. She laughed and gave him another slice to ‘carr’away’—just for his impudence. She told him she had a grandson, little older than him, who was shipwrecked on the far side of the world. “They say he’s drownded,” she said, “but I’ll not have it. He’s wandering the world barefoot, somewhere over there—just like you are here. So I hope Someone”—this with heavy stress and a glance at the ceiling above—“takes note of my charity and balances it out in the antipodes, see?” And there was an equally kind-hearted turnpike man, who gave him as much of bread and cheese as his shrunken stomach could accommodate—and then told him to be off sharp, before the rightful owner of the victuals returned! And so, between the cruelty or indifference of nine-tenths of mankind and the barm-heartedness of the tiny remainder, Oliver was spared the fate that overtook his mother on that journey of near-identical length a decade previously. On the seventh dawn of his outlaw-life, he limped at last into the little town of Barnet, which was but half a day’s walk from London. The shutters were all closed; the street stood empty, apart from a few stray dogs who had gathered, with wagging tails but little hope, beneath a cat, seated still and contemptuous upon a wall. Oliver curled up in the doorway of a boarded up public house—every other

46 building in the town seemed to be a public-house, he noticed—and waited for the sun to come and warm his weary bones. The sun duly came but all it did was send him back to sleep. He did not wake until a shadow fell across his eyes. He stirred lethargically but, by the time he had opened his lids and blinked away the rime of sleep, and yawned and stretched and looked about him, all he could see was a solitary man, some twenty paces off. A man, was it? Or was it a boy? He had on a man’s coat, it was true, but its sleeves were rolled up two or three times; and his stovepipe hat would have dropped to his shoulders if his cup-handle ears had not prevented it. He had the stature of a boy but all the air and manners of a man. He kept his hands deep in the pockets of his corduroy trousers and swung his shoulders rather than his arms when he walked. In short (and the word is appropriate here), he was altogether as roystering and swaggering a young gentleman as ever stood four feet six, or something less, in his bluchers. “ ’Allo, my covee, what’s the row?” he asked when he saw Oliver’s eyes upon him. “Row?” Oliver asked. He approached with that rolling, rollicking gait. “Racket. Game. What’s the game?” Oliver shook his uncomprehending head. “Hunger,” he said. “I’ve walked and begged my way these seven long days.” The boy-man sniffed. “Beak’s order?” Oliver shrugged. “Probably by now. I didn’t stay to hear it. I’m a ’prentice on the run.” “Ah!” There was a certain admiration in the other’s eyes. “You was walking the country! Not the wooden hill that never lets you down!” His fingers mimed the treadmill-walk upon his other arm. “Yer know—the hill they makes so small as to fit two dozen inside one stone jug!” Oliver chuckled at the little ruffian’s odd humour and said no, walking the country was bad enough. “You’re ’ungry, then,” the other went on. “Yer wants some grub, and yer shall ’ave it. I’m at a low-water mark myself just at the moment—only one bob and a magpie.” He showed the halfpenny but kept the shilling hid. “But what’s mine is yours and what’s yours is yer own. I’ll fork out and stump yer. On yer pins!” He helped Oliver to his feet. “And off we morrice!” He led the young boy to a nearby chandler’s shop, where he bought a fair few slices of ready-dressed ham and a half-quartern loaf, or, as he put it, a fourpenny bran. He immediately stuck his finger into the loaf and pulled out a quantity of its soft interior, from which exercise his fingers emerged amazingly clean, so that the rest of his hand seemed to be in mittens. He shared this plunder with Oliver and replaced it by stuffing the ham inside the loaf, which preserved it from the dust and other detritus in his pocket as he led Oliver back across the road to one of that multitude of alehouses, specifically, to a tap-room at the back of the premises. Here he commanded a pint of foaming porter to be brought, which he set before Oliver together with the ham-filled loaf. He refused all sustenance himself, saying he had already breakfasted well; but

47 he watched with the keenest interest while Oliver devoured the bread and swigged the porter. “Going to Lunnon?” he asked as the feast drew to a close. “Yes.” “Got any lodgin’s?” “Not yet, no.” “Scramble? The rowdy? The needful?” He gave up and said it plain: “Money?” Oliver shook his head. The strange lad whistled but asked no more questions. Oliver, feeling it was perhaps his turn, said, “Do you live in London?” He sniffed. “When I’m at ’ome, yes. I s’pose you’re looking for some ken tonight—a little nest where you may lay your weary head?” “I’ve not slept beneath a roof since I left Fellgate.” “Oh-oh!” The other wagged a warning finger. “No names!” He grinned and added, “Fellgate, eh?” as if committing it to memory. Oliver wondered what danger there was in revealing the name. “Talking of names,” he said, “mine’s Oliver. Oliver Twist.” “Oliver Twist, eh?” The lad sniffed and wiped his nose in his sleeve. “As to lodgin’s ...” “And yours?” Oliver insisted. “My, but you’re a caution! It’s Dawkins—Jack Dawkins—but you needn’t bother to learn it. Coves what knows me calls me ‘Dodger’—the Artful Dodger.” He swelled with pride as he announced the sobriquet. “Now, as to lodgin’s, I fink I know a gentleman, a very fine gentleman—a lord, no less—wot’ll give you lodgin’s, and never ask for no money, neither. Not if one of his pertickler cronies was to seek the favour of him.” “And you are a pertickler crony?” “Oh no!” The Dodger laughed. “He wouldn’t even know me! Why, if he was sitting where you are now, and the traps was to walk through that door, he’d swear on every drop of blue blood in ’is veins as he’d never clapped eyes on me in his life. No! He don’t know me at all!” “And he really is a lord? Sits in the House of Lords?” The Dodger laughed uproariously. “Bless us, yes!” he replied, choking with laughter once again. “Every single day! Sits on his throne there and passes motions like all the other lords of the realm!” Oliver laughed but hung his head. “You must think me pretty innocent,” he said awkwardly. He would have gone on to explain that it was the strangeness of London speech and the different way London people seemed to think that made him seem so, but the Dodger replied at once: “Lawks, no, but I don’t” he asserted. “Not pretty innocent but pretty and innocent—and don’t you do nothink to lose either asset, Master Oliver Twist. We all needs our assets in this life and them’s yours—prettiness and innocence. Don’t strive to lose ’em. Mark me now?” Oliver assured him that he did, indeed, mark him. The Dodger, for some reason connected with a hanging the following morning, did not wish to approach London before nightfall, so it was nearly eleven o’clock before they reached the turnpike at Islington. They crossed from the Angel into

48 St John’s Road, struck down the small street that ends by the Sadler’s Wells Theatre; on through Exmouth Street and Coppice Row; down the little court by the side of the workhouse there; across the classic ground that once bore the name of Hockley-in-the-Hole; thence into Little Saffron Hill; and so into Saffron Hill the Great, where, on sighting the watch, the Dodger scudded rapidly on, forcing Oliver to trot at his heels, which is not an easy thing to do in the dark—and more especially when the streets are paved, not with gold, but with mud, and plenty of it. He had little time, therefore, to look about him, but those few glimpses he gained did not encourage him to gaze longer. The filthy odours that hung on the air were signal enough as to what sort of neighbourhood they had reached, for they were the same as had assailed him on his way to Noggs’s Buildings in that part of Fellgate where death and the union vied for recruits, pretty much drawing each day’s skirmish. The long acre on the western bank of the now subterranean Fleet River, where saffron once had blown in the wind, had become a long, muddy wind between tall, ricketty buildings, each one of which would have fallen long ago (and should have fallen long ago) but for the uncertain support of both its neighbours. There were, Oliver noticed, a good many small shops selling amazingly pretty handkerchiefs, second-hand pocket books, and fobs. “Fences,” said the Dodger, noting his interest—which mystified the boy, for every shop crowded the footpath, with barely room for a shutter, much less a fence. To right and left the covered ways led to muddy courts and yards where, even at that hour, the children crawled and toddled among the filth, or simply lay about in bawling, brawling heaps. From knots of huddled houses, rose the caterwauls of drunken men and women, singing or bickering, cackling or screaming, as the mood and liquor took them. And then there were the hard men, the big, silent bullies, who slunk from doorways with their collars raised, looking sharp about them with the eyes of rats on a purpose before they vanished into the night on errands from which the insurance men in that City on the farther shore of the Fleet were the steadiest profiteers. Oliver was just beginning to turn over in his mind the choice between all this and the nearest parish union, when they reached the lower end of the street, where it changes its name (but not its character) to Field Lane. Here the Dodger kicked open a door, pulled his young friend smartly inside, kicked the door shut again ... and waited. “Now then!” cried a young voice out of the dark, from somewhere overhead. “Plummy and slam!” the Dodger replied. The password was accepted and now a candle gleamed at the farther end of the passage where they stood. By its dim light Oliver could discern the outlines of a precarious flight of stairs. A man’s head poked out through a doorway. “ ’Oo’s that wiv yer?” he asked brusquely. “A new little honnible fer Fagan.” “Where’s ’e from?” “Greenland! Is Fagan in?” “Yus, he’s a-sortin’ the wipes. Up you go!”

49 The man, and his candle, vanished. They groped their way upstairs in the dark. Oliver would never have managed it on his own, for the Dodger kept saying, “Skip this one ... foot by the wall, here ... stretch over two ...” and so on. “Why doesn’t someone mend the stair?” Oliver asked when they reached the first of the four floors above the ground. “They tried,” was the reply. “The traps did their best but the workmanship these days is somethink shocking. Not two days passed but it was all as bad as ever.” He laughed. When they reached the topmost landing Oliver, panting from the exertion, asked a further question: “And why does Mister Fagan not ...” But the Dodger clapped a hand to his mouth with a cry of, “Hush!” Oliver supposed they were about to be taken by authority or some ill-disposed rival of his friend’s, but all the Dodger said was, “Lord Fagan to his face. ‘Lord Fagan’ or ‘my lord.’ Plain Fagan’s all square among ourselves, but ‘lord’ when he’s about. See? Now what was you going to ask?” “Merely why he lives up here when there are so many empty rooms below?” The Dodger laughed. “Bless you, little Oliver. Fagan wouldn’t live here. Not for all his ancient lands and title. This house ain’t safe, see?” After experiencing the stairs, Oliver had no difficulty believing it. “Why, then, where ...?” he began. But the other was already tugging him toward a door at the end of the landing, which, on opening, proved to lead to a hazardous-looking footbridge. If Oliver had known that night what his eyes revealed the following day, he would rather have surrendered to the authorities at once than taken a single step upon it, for, as he then discovered, its rotting timbers were held together with a patching of rusted iron straps whose enfeebled rivets kept their place more by custom than by strength or reliability—as is the case, indeed, with so many old retainers. A fitful moon, struggling through a pall of smoke and sewer-mist off the Thames, revealed a brick-girt chasm, five floors deep, beneath them. Oliver hesitated. The Dodger, rightly suspecting the boy would run if he himself went first, gave him an amiable push. “Go on!” “Why not you?” Oliver asked, full of misgiving by now. “ ’Cos it only takes one at a time.” “And is there no other way into your noble friend’s house?” He laughed yet again so that Oliver wondered why his every word seemed so mirth-making. “If there was, my covee, we’d not be living here at all! No, the traps a’nt paid enough to fall five floors and stub their toes, so this suits us well enough. Go on!” He prodded Oliver in the back again. “You’ll soon be fed and snug.” But for that tempting prospect, Oliver would still have declined the honour of going first. He looked neither right nor left—and certainly not down!—and held his breath as he tiptoed across the teetering structure, letting out one huge sigh of relief when he gained the farther side. The Dodger, having crossed with the nimble assurance of a monkey, opened the door and led Oliver into a long, dark passage, where, at last, the boy saw light beneath a door. The Dodger paused before it and whispered, “A bit of larkey now!”—at which

50 he kicked open the door and cried, “All hold still in the King’s name!” There was a terrified scramble of what looked like dwarfs toward the window at the farther end of the room. A moment later Oliver saw they were not dwarfs at all but boys of his own age, all dressed, like the Dodger, in the cast-off clothes of men. When they saw who their intruder really was they returned to their places, some laughing ruefully, others shouting oaths incomprehensible to Oliver. One character alone had stood his ground—a tall, disdainful looking man, dressed, Oliver thought, in the oddest manner. He had seen something like it once in a book of funereal costumes Sowerberry had shown him, saying it was ‘caught dress.’ Where this gentleman—Lord Fagan, he presumed—had caught it Oliver could not imagine but it must have been a long time ago. It was not dirty, nor torn, nor patched; it was, quite simply, ancient—well worn-in and comfortable to his figure, which was elegant and slim. In his right hand he held a toasting fork, which he somehow invested with all the elegance of a royal sceptre. “My, oh-my, Dodger,” he drawled, “what a wag you are, sir. Pray come in—and introduce me to your little companion, do. Does he have a calling card to leave?” The Dodger shook his head and repeated the strange information that Oliver came ‘from Greenland.’ Then, with a toss of his head to dislodge his hat, he swiped off Oliver’s cap, and said, “Oliver, permit me to ...” “Precedence, laddie!” drawled Fagan. “Remember the precedence!” He drawled severely, which is not an accomplishment given to many. “Beg pardon, m’lud!” The Dodger tugged a cheeky forelock; his grin revealed he had merely been ‘trying it on.’ He started again: “Lord Fagan, may I have the honner to present Master Holliver Twist, lord of the manor of Fellgate Hall!” Out of the side of his mouth he added to Oliver, “Copy ’im!” nodding the while at Fagan, who was making an elaborate bow, with much circular waving of the hand. “Fellgate, eh?” Fagan said with interest; then, to the boys: “On with your tasks, my dears. Satan finds work for idle hands!” They laughed as they settled themselves again around the table, where their ‘tasks’ appeared to be the sorting of a large number of handkerchiefs, mostly of a very fine quality. In between making up bundles and tying them they relit their clay pipes and swigged at pewter cups full of strong spirits. “Fellgate,” the man repeated. “We had another young gentleman from Fellgate once.” The Dodger grinned and mimed a hanging, which did not please the man at all. With a withering glance at the lad he turned again to Oliver and continued: “Oliver Twist ... an O and a T. Do I recognize the system? I believe I do.” “Mister Bumble ...” Oliver began. But the other waved him to be silent. “A man of low pedigree. Tell me, Oliver, what is your pedigree?” There was a bull in the field beside Coldharbour, which, Mrs Mann once said, ‘had a pedigree.’ Oliver could not think what he and that creature might have in common, so he replied that he did not know he had one at all. “We all have a pedigree, Oliver, be it high (like mine) or low (like Bumble’s). Well, we shall see. And now you are hungry, I daresay? Dodger! Take the

51 sausages off the fire and pull up a chair for our honoured guest!” He passed the toasting fork to the lad and, himself, took a hot poker from the fire to mull a glass of ale with which Oliver might help each mouthful down. Not once did he take his eyes off Oliver, all the while the boy was eating. At the same time he and the Dodger conversed in low tones; the words, ‘pretty’ and ‘innocent’ were bandied several times. Whatever their context, Oliver was relieved to see that his arrival was greatly pleasing to the noble lord and master of this queer household—which was a welcome he had never previously experienced. From time to time, too, he glanced at the other boys, who were trying so hard to be men. Fagan noticed it. “They kindle your interest, I see,” he said with a smile. “We’re sorting them out for the laundress to collect, that’s all. And believe me when I tell you, Oliver, few handkerchiefs are ever so well laundered as these!” This remark sent the boys into paroxysms of laughter, which his lordship pretended to despise, saying, “Pay them no heed, young man. They are light- headed with the spirits, nothing more.” “Where do they come from, my lord?” Oliver asked. “The kerchiefs, I mean. So many!” “Why the boys make ’em, sir!” The reply provoked yet more merriment, which Fagan quelled with a stern grimace. He crossed the room and took up one of the kerchiefs, a beautiful square of the finest Egyptian cotton. “The work of Charley Bates, if I’m not mistaken?” He peered at it closely as he brought it back to Oliver. “Aye! Master Bates in every fibre!” The laughter this time was almost hysterical. Fagan ignored it as he tossed the cloth to Oliver. “Wouldn’t you like the skill to make such a fine handkerchief as that, Oliver?” “Oh yes, indeed, sir!” the boy assured him earnestly. By now some of the others were rolling about on the floor with the tears of helpless laughter streaming down their faces. Fagan continued to ignore them. “And so you shall, my pretty,” he said. “You shall make the finest ones of all. But not tonight. Tonight you must be tired beyond bearing, I should think? You’ll hardly need a gin and hot water to help you off to the land of dreams but, generous to a fault as I am, you shall have it nonetheless!” With the help of that excellent late-night medicine for little boys, Oliver was fast asleep within moments—and did not wake until quite late the following morning.

CHAPTER 9

Containing further particulars concerning the pleasant old aristocrat and his hopeful pupils

52 Lord Fagan, alone in the room except for the sleeping Oliver, was waiting for his coffee to heat. He paced the floor nervously, yet with a catlike silence, starting at every little sound from below. At one point he paused and frowned. The dust he had so carefully pasted into the countersink of one of the floorboard screws had been dislodged! Only one floorboard in the entire apartment—indeed, in the entire street—was secured by screws, which was why he had gone to such pains to hide them. Had the dust merely shrivelled and jumped from its seat under the impact of some particularly heavy boot? Or had some little devil deliberately dislodged it? There was only one way to find out. “Oliver?” he whispered over the sleepy-head. “Dear heart!” The boy slumbered on—or, at least, he gave every appearance of it. Not that he wished to dissemble, for he had already conceived the greatest liking for his new protector, but there is a state between sleeping and waking that looks like the former but has all the important characteristics of the latter; and Oliver was raised to precisely that state by his lordship’s whispering. Through near-closed eyes he watched while the man took a screwdriver from its drawer and, crouching over a floorboard near the window, carefully removed four screws, wincing when they squeaked and then pausing to take fresh stock of his, Oliver’s, possible wakefulness. Satisfied that he was sleeping still, Fagan reached into the floor-space and drew forth a cash-box very like the one Sowerberry had kept in the second drawer down on the right. The discovery that it was still locked afforded great satisfaction to his lordship. He carried it to the table, drew a little silver key on a chain from behind his silk cravat, and opened it reverently. His eyes gleamed with triumph at whatever lay within. Oliver’s curiosity had not long to wait unsated, for the man at once emptied its contents, piece by piece, upon the table: a gold watch and chain, another, another ... six in all; a loop of twine threaded through several dozen gold rings; brooches; bracelets; a fan studded all over with glittering stones. One of these trinkets, very small, must have had some fine script engraved upon it, for he carried it to the light and peered at it hard—without much success, it seemed. While returning from this brief expedition, going from light back into darkness, he glanced up and saw Oliver’s eyes wide open and fixed upon him. Quicker than the cat whose silence he had emulated earlier, Lord Fagan raced to the stove, seized up a large carving knife, and sprang to Oliver’s little cot before the astounded boy could move. “Awake, are we?” he thundered. “Awake and spying, eh?” The point of the knife quivered an inch from Oliver’s face. “No, sir! I mean, yes, sir,” he stammered. “I mean, I’ve just woken up, just this minute.” The words pacified the man somewhat; the knife wavered and moved away. “Just this minute?” he asked. “You were not awake an hour back?” “No, my lord!” The knife went down to just below his chin. “Swear it?” “I swear it, sir—on my mother’s grave, I swear it.” Lord Fagan tossed the knife up and caught it expertly after two full turns. “Mere sport, my precious!” He laughed. “Testing your bravery. You’ll do. Capital! And

53 now you’ll be wanting some breakfast, eh? Eat like a docker, evacuate like a cabhorse—that’s the secret of a happy life.” He noticed how Oliver’s eyes strayed toward the table. “Ah!” he went on. “You’ve noticed my pretty things!” He continued on toward the stove as if they were of no account at all. “Do you buy and sell such things, my lord?” Oliver said as he rose. “I sell them, yes, when they’ve gone quite cold. And they were bought, most of them—but not by me.” “I expect they cost a pretty penny,” Oliver said in a worldly, offhand tone, which he thought might impress the nobleman. His mouth watered as he held out his porringer, for the pot was full of real porridge—groats you could stand a spoon in at forty-five degrees and not see it waver! “They cost more than that, Oliver. They cost five young lives!” He had to shake the ladle vigorously to dislodge the contents into the boy’s bowl. “Five young lives like the ones you met last night.” “Yes, sir. By the by, where are they now—the Dodger and Bates and ...?” “At work, bless ’em! They’ll come back soon—then you shall see how diligent they are. But the fact I want to impress upon you, dear boy, is that not one of those five young champions peached on us! You’d never peach on us, either, would you, Oliver, dear?” “My life, no!” Oliver protested. Lord Fagan nodded sorrowfully. “And that’s what it would be, if you did, old chap—your life.” He smiled to show what a vague and distant threat it was. “Of course, they didn’t know where I keep my pretty things hid. None of ’em do, except you. That’s our secret—yours and mine—until I find new quarters for them. You understand?” “Most assuredly, my lord.” He smiled what he hoped was a most compelling smile. “My lord?” “You’d like another helping, I’m sure?” Oliver laughed and repeated his earlier answer with fresh emphasis: “Most assuredly, my lord!” “Now what were you about to ask of me?” Fagan said when he had doled out a second generous helping. “Do not think me impertinent, sir, but ... are you ... that is ...” His courage failed him at the last. But the man knew well enough what troubled him. “Am I a real lord?” Oliver nodded shyly, glad his benefactor did not take the question amiss. “What is a real lord, young man? A tenth-generation thief, that’s all!” Oliver stopped eating and stared at him open-jawed. “You don’t believe me?” Fagan continued. “Then let me tell you the way of it. Generation one: Assemble a band of marauders and ransack a piece of someone else’s country; carve it up among you. Generation two: Seek out and kill anyone whose ancestry might entitle them to the land you have usurped; build a castle; enslave the peasants. Generation three: Extend the castle; fight the grandsons of your grandfather’s comrades-in-infamy; try to extend your lands. Generation four: Learn to read and write; get lawyers to take land you cannot win by the sword. Generation five: Learn French and Latin; learn to dance; buy some virginals and

54 box your childrens’ ears until they can play the things. Generation six: Fall under the spell of an architect; tear the castle down; build a palace in its place; farm the state’s taxes, which is a form of legal theft. Generation seven: No more neighbouring land to seize so enclose the common land (more legal theft); close off the direct roads; build thousand-acre parks. Generation eight: No more common land to steal, so send your soldiers abroad to steal from others; call it an empire; exact tribute, make them buy your goods—not theft, oh no! Generation nine: Notice there’s a new class of prosperous commoners grown up all about you, some even richer than you; bad thing—very; sell them your daughters; sell them peerages. Generation ten: Notice your son and heir has developed dangerously republican and liberal tendencies; find a man of straw to break the entail and dispossess him of all lands, herediments, messuages, and lord-knows- what-else; leave him just the shell of the title! Yes, my boy, I am the Lord Fagan, rightful heir to ten generations of thieves. Ousted by a man of straw!” He bowed mockingly. “At your service! My but can’t you just eat! I hope you’ll start earning your keep as soon as maybe, Oliver. You don’t want to be a parasite all your life, do you?” “No, sir! My lord!” Oliver gulped. At that moment he would have done anything this kind and noble man asked of him—even take pattern from the man’s ancestors and turn thief. “There’s a basin of water in the room next door, together with the means for all your ablutions ...” “The throne?” Oliver laughed. “In the House of Lords!” “Did the Dodger tell you so!” Fagan said grimly. “Well, Oliver, you are a speedy copy, I’ll say that much. And it pleases me—I’ll say that, too.” When Oliver returned from the ‘House of Lords,’ there was no sight of the cash box and trinkets. In the corner of his eye he saw that the countersinks for the screws were once again plugged with dust. The reason for this, no doubt, was that the Dodger and Charley Bates had meanwhile returned, “Well met, Oliver!” Fagan cried. “Do come and see how diligent these two lads have been, dear fellow. What have you brought, Dodger?” The lad sniffed and gave that characteristic ‘out-o’-my-way’ shrug of his right shoulder. “Couple o’ pocket-books,” he said casually. “Let’s see ’em. Well-lined, I trust?” “Pretty well.” With the same insouciant air he tossed the pair upon the table, one of green calf, the other of red morocco. His lordship inspected them. “Not as heavy as one might expect,” he said, favouring the lad with a cold stare. “I think trade in the City should be heavier than this.” Then, remembering Oliver, he added, “But fine workmanship, eh. An ingenious leather-man, don’t you think, Oliver?” “Very!” said Oliver, who would be the world’s simplissimus by now not to know what business Lord Fagan and his little ‘academy’ were about. The other two started to laugh, but were silent when he added, “I should think his fingers fly at the work so an onlooker might hardly see them move!” Fagan laughed and tousled his head. “A quick copy!” he said again. The Dodger winked at him and said, “That’s my covee! Welcome aboard the

55 Jolly Roger!” “Ah, but where does she sail, matey?” Oliver asked—having picked up a little of the seafarer’s argot among the older workhouse inmates. “Not to Greenland, I’ll be bound!” Fagan threw back his head and roared with a most unaristocratic laugh at this; he threw an arm around Oliver’s shoulder and gave him a delighted hug—which, the boy noticed, did not please the Dodger one small bit. And, to continue the maritime metaphor, he was beginning to grasp that the fragile craft of his own life and person had, all unwittingly, sailed into dangerous waters, uncharted waters, filled with submerged rocks and teeming all about with sharks. He resolved then and there, amid the hugs and smiles and laughter, to escape it upon the first opportunity that offered—but, of course, to play the willing game meanwhile. “Were you at the execution, lads?” Fagan asked as he poured out a cup of coffee for each. By way of an answer, Charley Bates disgorged half a dozen wipes from his numerous pockets. “There ain’t nothink what distracts a man so out of guarding ’is pockets than the sight of four men, a woman, and two boys all a-kicking and a- twitching at the rope’s end ...” “Eatin’ a hoyster and a hartichoke for breakfast!” the Dodger interrupted with a laugh. “It’s the demeanour of the two boys that particularly interests me,” Fagan said. “They died with dignity, I trust. Silent dignity?” Bates licked his lips and glanced at the Dodger; clearly there was some doubt. “Answer!” Fagan slammed a fist down on the table, making all the jugs jump. The Dodger sniffed. “They wept, my lord. They shivered a deal.” “But no last words to the parson?” Fagan looked as if he would shake the truth out of the lads if they did not answer. “No—we can walk the streets by daylight again,” the Dodger replied. “And why should they peach? Would it have shortened the drop by a single inch?” Fagan relaxed and smiled again. “No, dear chap. Of course it wouldn’t. Not an inch. Remember that Charley ... and you, too, Oliver—if ever you stand on the gallows trap (which God forfend!)—peaching don’t shorten the drop an inch!” Fagan did not know it, for ten years’ schooling in the art of the stony face ensured that nothing showed in Oliver’s countenance, but his warning had just about trebled Oliver’s resolve to jump ship from the Jolly Roger at the first likely port of call; meantime, therefore, he must seem to be three times as willing and tractable a recruit as they could desire. He stroked the red morocco with one lazy but inquisitive finger. “I wonder how even the nimblest fingers could lift such an item from a gentleman’s pockets without his being aware of it?” he mused, almost as if to himself. Fagan smiled and was on the point of answering when they heard the sounds of someone approaching from outside. Then Oliver had a first-hand demonstration of how pocket-books and wipes could vanish into a gentleman’s pockets—a lord’s pockets, indeed—as if of their own accord, without his lordship’s hands even seeming to move. “Only us!” cried two female voices from without.

56 “Bet and Nancy!” the Dodger said in a voice heavy with relief. The two lads sat down again as the young ladies entered—but Fagan’s cry of, “Manners, lads, manners!” brought them swiftly to their feet again. “Miss Nancy! Miss Bet!” his lordship cried with every appearance of delight. “Pray allow me to present to you Master Oliver Twist, the latest member of our crew, who has walked several hundred miles to join us.” Oliver bowed and shook hands with them both. The young women giggled. Miss Nancy held fast to his hand when the shaking was done. “You may present him to me at any hour, my lord,” she said admiringly. She raised a hand and touched his cheek, and then his golden curls, just as he remembered Charlotte doing—and Katie Bayton, the pauper girl from Noggs’s Buildings. “Such pretty innocence,” she murmured. “Are you as innocent as you look, little man? How old are you?” Oliver remembered something an Irish pauper had told him once. “They say it’s a dog’s life in the workhouse, Miss Nancy,” he replied, “and that a dog lives seven years while a man or woman lives but one. So then, to answer you straight, I am full seventy years of age!” Nancy had a silvery laugh, which induced Oliver to feel most warmly toward her. “He’s a proper caution, Lord Fagan,” she said, letting go the boy’s hand at last. “And small-boned, too.” She felt the width of his shoulders and body while he giggled at her tickling inspection. “He’d slip like soap through any scullery light. Bill will like to hear of this!” “Not a word to Bill, hark’ee!” Lord Fagan held a threatening finger, shivering with passion, an inch from Nancy’s nose. And a very pretty nose it was, too, Oliver thought, turned up in a most engaging way and sprinkled with the dearest little freckles. “This pretty innocence is not to be squandered on one of his nocturnal hunts for Sheffield plate, zinc statuary, and diamond paste!” Oliver thought he had never seen anyone so impressively menacing, not even Mr Bumble at the height of his vexation. Then, as his lordship had suddenly toyed with the knife, earlier, passing from hazard to jest in a trice, so now he laughed and chucked the frightened Nancy under the chin, calling her darling and other sweet names, as if he had merely been testing her bravery, too—a suggestion which the sudden pallor of her cheeks denied. “And now to school!” he exclaimed. Five pairs of eyes stared at him in blank astonishment, for ‘school’ was to them as ‘Timbuktoo’ to any scholar—beyond the edge of the known world. “The boy needs his lessons,” Fagan went on. “Despite his nimble wits.” And he stuffed his pockets with snuff box, note-case, spectacle-case, and handkerchief, hung a watch on a guard-chain round his neck, and stuck a mock-diamond tiepin below the real one in his cravat. After which he took up the toasting fork and, buttoning his coat tight about him, began to pace the room as any gentleman might walk the streets at any hour of the day—that is, looking about him all the time, ever-alert for pickpockets. Bet took a seat near Oliver but Nancy and the lads joined in, walking behind his lordship, whistling, gazing far off into the clouds, inspecting their fingernails ...

57 anything but ‘lifting’ the pocketed valuables. Fagan held the toasting fork at the ready, intending to stab it sharply into any hand that had the misfortune to make itself known to him. From time to time he would pause and peer into the fireplace or the bay where Oliver had slept last night, making pretend it was a shop window; but still the little gang bided its time. Then the Dodger took up a position against the wall, leaning nonchalantly against it, cleaning the nails of his left hand with those of his right and looking as if his thoughts were somewhere north of Barnet. As Fagan approached, still all eyes and ears, the Dodger looked up as if a friend across the street had just called out to him. “ ’Allo, me ol’ covee!” he cried, waving to this imagined friend and starting toward him at precisely that moment which would bring him into impetuous contact with the ambling Lord Fagan, almost bowling him over. It could have been a lesson in good manners, in contrition, in embarrassment, in concern to make amends, for never would Oliver have imagined that a rough young fellow like the Dodger could have apologized so profusely, cursing himself for a clumsy oaf, and obligingly dusting down his victim’s coat of (you would think) half a ton of glue and feathers. Meanwhile, of course, with the speed one sees (or, more precisely, does not see) at the point of a rapier, Charley Bates relieved him of every item Fagan had so carefully hidden in so many different places about his person. But then came the surprise—and the true lesson of this brief dumb crambo—for Fagan rounded on poor Bates with a snarl: “Caughtcha, me lad! Thought you’d escape me, hey?” Then, looking in triumph about the room: “Constable!” The Dodger, master of many a guise, immediately transformed himself into the most august constable one could imagine. Oliver shrieked with laughter to see his half-pint imitation of the full constabular quart—puffing out his chest, tugging his invisible moustachioes, swinging his transparent truncheon, and dropping his voice to his bluchers to say, “Now, then, my lord, what seems to be the trouble eeyar? Caught a young pickpocket in the act, have we?” Nancy came to sit beside Oliver. “Isn’t he good!” she murmured. “Was Bates meant to get caught?” Oliver asked. “Watch!” was all the reply she would vouchsafe to that. Oliver watched—and with mounting amazement—as the ‘constable’ turned out Bates’s pockets, one by one, finding nothing in them but a penny, a crust, a bacon-rind, a bit of string, a rabbit’s paw ... and other such impedimenta as any lad of fourteen might carry about. The ‘constable’ scratched his head. “I think as someone here owes someone else not ten miles off a decided apology, my lord!” And how they all laughed as ‘my lord’ grovelled before the little urchin in a most fulsome act of contrition. “But!” Fagan cried, throwing off his imposture at its flood. “But—Oliver—tell me do, where is the loot, eh? Who has it?” Oliver quite taken aback by the suddenness of the question, did not know what to say. He turned to Nancy with a quizzical look, begging her to signal him some clue. But before she could respond in any way at all, Fagan cried out: “Good boy! My, but ain’t he quick! Show him, Nancy, do.”

58 At which the young woman lifted her skirt—which was not such an immodest action as those three words must make it seem, for she had an identical top-skirt on beneath it—but there, sandwiched between them, some in drawstring pockets, others hung on hooks, was every item Bates had dipped. “Good lad!” Fagan gave the Dodger a hug. “Good lad!” It was Bates’s turn next. Then Nancy, divesting herself of the plunder, said, “All right, my lord. We’ll take the word for the deed.” “Ah, Nancy!” Fagan smiled though Oliver could see he was vexed. “Such a fastidious young lady!” “In such a demanding world!” she countered. “We could show young Oliver that, too, if you wish?” “Yes!” said the Dodger. “Yes!” cried Bates. And back went all the plunder, here and there about his lordship’s person; and back he went to the imaginary street. “Good evening, lamplighter!” he cried, pretending to watch the man at his work. Then, looking about him with an air of relief, “That’s better. My, I feel safer now!” After he had sauntered about a couple of times, Nancy emerged from an alcove, smiling like a cat and moving with a curiously snakelike motion. “Evening, Charley!” she cried—not to Charley Bates but to the sauntering lord. “Got the time?” His lordship halted and, as actors do when they must seem to converse upon the stage, muttered, “Wiltshire rhubarb ...” half a dozen times. What he did next made the hair prickle on Oliver’s neck, for he put his hand to her mouth, opened it, and inspected her teeth; then he bent close as if testing her breath for sweetness! Little Katie Bayton! How odd she should have crossed his mind not ten minutes since! But his flesh crawled as the significance of that ‘kindly old gentleman’s’ action in the misty graveyard began to dawn on him at last. “Watch!” Bet dug him with her elbow, having noticed that his attention was straying. He was just in time to see the Dodger relieving Fagan of all his valuables and passing them to Bates, all in the twinkling of an eye. Indeed, it was all so fast that, without the forewarning, he doubted he’d have noticed it at all. Nancy said something to his lordship that made him reach for his wallet, which was the first moment he discovered the theft. But by then, Bates and the Dodger were seated beside Bet, applauding Nancy’s thespian accomplishments. “What about ‘on and off the omnibus’?” Bates suggested next. But Fagan said enough was enough for one day; first-class villainy, like first- rate wine, should be sipped in small doses. At this Bet asked if there was any danger of her finding a small nip of medicinal gin somewhere about the house, as she’d been feeling distinctly queasy around breakfast-time lately, and a bit of gin might flush her troubles away. The gin was produced without danger, or with no more than customarily attends a convivial glass or two, or three. The conversation turned to great trawls of the past. The Dodger dipped a hundred gents undetected ’twixt one noon and supper;

59 Charley Bates dipped a constable of a watch the constable had dipped off a drunkard only the previous night; Nancy reminisced over several variants of the cupboard trick, each of which left a chastened gentleman barely decent in his combinations, too embarrassed (and too afraid of his wife) to lay any charge against a young woman who had, in any case, long since vanished through the double-sided cupboard that gave the trick its name. Nancy loved married men, she said, but only up to a point—the point, that is, when she did the vanishing trick, along with their note-cases and jewellery! Bet went to the House of Lords, saying she thought the gin had worked. She returned looking a great deal more cheerful—so much so that she suggested a night ‘up West,’ to which the other three youngsters agreed readily enough after Fagan had given the two young men ten shillings each. “The labourer is, indeed, worthy of his hire,” he drawled. Ten shillings each was clearly more than they were used to receiving, but, from their glances, Oliver understood the beneficence was intended to impress him. When he was alone again with his lordship, he asked if they had gone ‘up West’ to work. “Only if they come across something both likely and safe, dear chap,” was the reply. “And may I go out with them when next they go to work, my lord?” Oliver was thinking that if he could walk, all unsuspected, a mile or so from here, then, in the heat of the moment, when their mark was being dipped, he could vanish as securely as any pocket-book or wipe. Fagan stared at him a longish while before replying, “We’ll see. You have such a cast of pretty innocence, dear fellow. I’m sure it can be put to some better use. You’re not eager to dance the tread-on-air like those two poor little boys at this morning’s execution, are you?” Oliver put a protective hand about his own neck and said a heartfelt no. “Well, one false move while you’re dipping a pocket and that’s the fate for you—as it was, indeed, for them. I tell you, we get through more boys here than a dog has fleas. So I think we may try to find something safer and more profitable for you. But meanwhile—no harm in starting to learn! Tell me, is my handkerchief still sticking out of my pocket?” “No, my lord,” replied Oliver, keeping a solemn face. Fagan, stung with surprise, glanced down and saw that, indeed, the kerchief whose corner he had slyly (as he supposed) tweaked to show, not ten seconds earlier, had gone. He stared at Oliver, who grinned at last and, reaching for his lordship’s lapel, pretended to produce it from beneath the fold—though in fact it was in his hand the whole time. It was another trick he had learned off an old comedian in Fellgate union. And what an excellent school for life that dismal institution was proving to be, after all! For, when the forces of the righteous had done nothing but seek to crush his spirit from the very hour of his birth, who could blame him for wavering when all the kindness he had ever seen came from the other side? Fagan laughed with genuine admiration and gave him a shilling for his

60 nimbleness—which generosity almost made Oliver reconsider his rash plan to run away at the first opportunity.

CHAPTER 10

Oliver becomes better acquainted with the character of his new associates; and purchases experience at a high price. Being a short but very important chapter in this history

For some time thereafter, while Lord Fagan pondered the conundrum of how best to exploit his newest recruit’s transparent innocence, Oliver stayed at home—that is, at the only lodging he had ever known where ample food and kind words flowed like water—and applied himself to picking out from handkerchiefs those marks that had such a depressing effect upon their price. For what gentleman with the initials M. E., let us say, wishes his laundress to see a bold J. R. sewn into the hem? Lord Fagan, when he was not abroad on this or that mysterious errand, took every chance to initiate Oliver into the ways and speech of genteel society. Being an excellent mimic, the boy could soon say, “How the boughs do sough above yon cow, I trow!” with such niceness that no duchess would raise an eyebrow to hear him. He taught the boy the letters of the alphabet and the sounds they make and gave him penny dreadfuls to practise on. He learned, too, that “Dull men eat very brown bread,” by which he was never to forget that dukes, marquisses, earls, viscounts, barons, and baronets make up the orders of the peerage. With stolen cutlery he learned to set a table, even for a nine-course mayoral banquet, if need arose. He learned the names of wines, the forms of address, the tables of precedence, and a smattering of cuisine French. He got by heart the ranks of servants in a great household and whether the laundress-in-chief was seated above or below the second nursemaid in the servants’ hall. Fagan was relentless, pressing ever onward when Oliver was sure his brain was about to burst. Night after night he went to bed with his head in a conflagration of questions, such as, which bishop was ‘Very Reverend’ and which ‘Right Reverend’—was it protestant or Roman catholic? And did the knife with the twirly end go outside the blunt one with the rounded tip or not? But, by some strange form of cognitive seepage, the day’s facts somehow percolated through the swaddling of slumber and his mind was ready for more by the following dawn. And the more Fagan stretched it, the more it seemed to expand and make room for yet more. Behind this furious pedagoguy his lordship was perfecting an ever-sharper plan to infiltrate his newest recruit into great households, not as a regular servant but as one of those peripatetic bands who hire themselves out to augment the regulars on great occasions. Every summer, for instance, nine-tenths of the kingdom’s leading families, titled or patrician, came up to Town for the season, which is between mid-April and the rising of Parliament in August; they brought with them enough servants for their daily use but hired in supernumeraries for their buffet-balls and grand dinners.

61 An angelic little innocent, such as Oliver would outwardly seem, sleeping by invitation, as it were, within the premises, would be worth ten dozen starvelings who could, in Nancy’s phrase, ‘slip like lard through a scullery window’! Such at least were his lordship’s preliminary thoughts upon the matter. And, such was his love of the aristocracy which had rejected him, that he taught, so to speak, a parallel catechism of contempt for its present examplars. “The only decent Duke of Norfolk,” he said, “was the eleventh, Old Jockey, even though he never washed. The present holder goes about like a vagrant. Besides, the Norfolks are Catholics, so you may ignore them. The Duke of Somerset is just preposterous. Born Seymour, he changed it to St. Maur. He thinks potatoes and boiled mutton a feast. His chef started life as a shepherd. His Grace of Hamilton is plain mad. Employs a hermit to live in his park. Paid eleven thousand for an Egyptian sarcophagus from Thebes, for his own burial—and it’s too small! They’ll have to chop him off at the knees. The Beauforts are good country squires—solid bone from the neck up, mud from the knee down, and nothing but gross appetite in between. You may safely despise all the Scotch dukes—a vile lot, the Scotch. And ignore the only Irish duke, too—Leinster. An amiable ape who’d brush your coat for you if you but asked him nicely. Marlborough, the first duke of that title, betrayed every monarch and country that ever employed him. And when they married into the Spencers they united with the least principled family in English life.” And so the tour of the kingdom’s aristocracy continued; by the time it had finished, hardly a peer of the realm was worth his sable, ermine, or beaver— except, to be sure, the dispossessed Tenth Baron Fagan of Ballycumber, a peer of Irish creation! “Pray, my lord,” Oliver felt obliged to ask, “why does the king not take all these titles away—if these people are as ...” “King?” Lord Fagan snapped. “What king? Not that pretender who presently sits upon the throne of this dear old country? The Duke of Buccleugh should be our king. He’s Monmouth’s heir. Charles did marry Lucy Walters and so Monmouth was the rightful successor—and Buccleugh’s his heir. Dreadful man, but never mind.” Many an hour was whiled away in homilies of a similar vein, which ensured that, while Oliver acquired a knowledge of Society’s ways, he did not by any means fall under its spell—as happens to so many as they climb Society’s ladder, rung by slippery rung. It was precisely the effect Fagan intended and he was increasingly well pleased with his apt little pupil. He would have been less so, however, if he had known what other effect his passionate homilies had in that same observant young mind. Oliver had survived where nine out of ten of his fellows had gone to an early and unmarked grave by his habit of silent questioning, and of speculating over his immediate future. Outwardly he might seem to acquiesce in whatever course others determined for him—being sold to a chimney-sweep, for instance, or to an undertaker; but inwardly his mind was ever-alert for little ways to better the bare course that others had decreed. Thus he had stood near that oleo-chromo- lithograph in Sowerberry’s workshop until the old fellow had ‘spontaneously’ hit

62 upon the notion of making him a mute, and thought himself a very clever chap for so bright a wheeze. Now, too, even as he delighted in his lordship’s interesting if eccentric pedagoguy, he was impelled to wonder at its purpose. That it would be contrary to law, was certain. That it would be highly dangerous to him, was equally beyond doubt. And that Fagan would shed no tear nor lift a finger to assist him if his plans went awry was most certain of all. His lordship’s question to the Dodger and Charley Bates on the morning their two young comrades-in-villainy had been hanged—did they die in silent dignity—had made the deepest impression on Oliver’s mind. And, as if that were not enough to contend with, Oliver had witnessed enough near-lunacy at Fellgate to be able to sniff the difference between mere crankiness, such as most grown-ups suffer from in one department or another of their minds, and outright monomania; he had no doubt but that his lordship’s obsession with the rottenness of the peerage, and thus of the Society that had formed around and about it—by which he gave his criminal activities a veneer of that nobility he could not find among the Nobility themselves—was the most prime example of monomania he had ever encountered. Not that he knew the word ‘monomania’ itself, of course, but the instinct to survive is the knack of knowing such things without the benefit of verbal intermediation. The way he put it to himself, in his private cogitations, was that Lord Fagan had ‘come off his castors a bit.’ His life was thus an exquisite balance between the desire to stay and learn so many things of indisputable utility and the desire to put as many streets as possible between himself and this most dangerous puppeteer of homeless young gentlemen like him. If he had known that the Dodger was to make the decision for him—and not at all to his advantage, either—he would have taken to his heels much earlier. From that first morning on, when he saw how Fagan hugged Oliver, the Dodger had regretted introducing the boy into their den. And the way his lordship kept finding gold in the youngster, when he never found anything more treasured than brass in the rest of them, only served to heighten his antipathy. However, he, too, was a master of dissembling and so managed to hide his antipathy, even from the sharp-eyed Oliver himself. He let several months go by, in which he and Bates and the other boys did the dirty and dangerous work out there in the streets while Fagan and Oliver stayed safe indoors, removing the marks of ownership, cataloguing the booty and deciding when it had ‘cooled’ enough to go on sale; and at the end of that time he set to work on Oliver’s natural curiosity, asking him if he did not wonder how he and the other boys—occasionally helped by Bet and Nancy—acquired the wipes and other goods. Oliver reminded him of the pantomime they had put on for his benefit on his first day aboard, but the Dodger told him it was nothing when compared with the excitement of a genuine dip. He also noted how Oliver’s interest always pricked up at the mention of the two girls, especially of Nancy. It was a sort of puppy love, to be sure, for the boy was as yet too young to feel the raging of the real thing, but it could prove just as useful from his point of view. Nancy, for her part, was both flattered and amused at Oliver’s blushes and his tonguetied responses to

63 her questions; also, as a passed mistress in the arts of self-preservation, she saw Fagan’s especial interest in the boy and, suspecting he might grow up to knock the Dodger into third place—from second-officer to bosun, so to speak—did nothing to discourage Oliver’s liking for her. The Dodger hinted to her that Oliver probably didn’t believe she contributed much to the business in which they were all engaged—that she was just a pretty face to distract a gentleman’s attention while he and one of the boys did all the real work. After that it was plain sailing. To Oliver, of course, it seemed not just an opportunity to flatter Nancy’s desire for him to see her at work but also a heaven-sent chance to escape the thieves’ den and make more legitimate use of his newly acquired knowledge, which would be more tender of his neck even if less kindly to his pocket. At last his lordship yielded to Oliver’s hints, Nancy’s blandishments, and the Dodger’s sneers that the boy was dangerously untested in the fire. With some misgiving, therefore, he consented to Oliver’s attendance upon them, one bright morn in early summer, as they went about their work—but he was to walk at least a dozen paces behind them, to stand on the farther side of the road while they were committing the thefts, and to walk well ahead of them on their return. Oliver had walked abroad with Fagan many a time, for not all his lordship’s excursions were darkly secret; he knew his way about Field Lane and Saffron Hill the Great as if they were his native haunts. The coming of summer had done nothing to improve it in salubriousness, for, though the ground was drier underfoot, the heat provoked a greater decomposition of the filth that blocked the kennel and the still air held it where a winter’s wind might have wafted it up to Westminster, where its message might have done some good. Up Saffron Hill they strolled, Oliver keeping a dutiful dozen paces behind, for his lordship had spies all up and down that street, who would surely remark, all unawares, that they had seen the four of them together. Instead, it was: “Good morrow, Master Twist! Keeping an optic on the crew today, are we? Does Lord Fagan suppose they’re holding something back?” To which Oliver would laugh and say it was something of that sort. Between Great and Little Saffron Hills the Dodger turned left into Hatton Wall, then right into Back Hill and so up into Hockley-in-the-Hole. They passed several ladies and gentlemen who seemed, to Oliver, absorbed enough in the displays of local shopkeepers to make excellent marks, but the Dodger ignored them all. On into Townsend Lane they strolled, again ignoring a lady and gentleman, temptingly lost in the Available-for-Service columns of the Morning Post. And so, by a most circuitous amble, they came finally to Clerkenwell Green (though Clerkenwell Muddy-Brown would have been more apt that day). And there, at last, the Dodger selected a mark worthy of their talents—a respectable looking gentleman with a powdered head and gold spectacles. He was dressed in a bottle-green coat with a black velvet collar, wore white trousers, and carried a smart bamboo cane tucked under his arm. He was deep in a book he had taken from the stall outside the bookseller’s shop at the corner of the Green and Steward’s Court, hard by the Welch School and almost opposite the Watch House. And there he stood, as much at ease as if he sat in his favourite elbow-

64 chair in his own study. There being no need for Nancy on this occasion, she walked across to join Oliver, who was leaning impudently against the wall of the Watch House. He was glad of it, for it just allowed him time to say, “I’m legging it, Nancy. No, don’t try to speak. Just listen. This is but the road to the scaffold and I’ll have none of it. I’ll not peach on any—except those who come after me, seeking to drag me back. Tell them I said so—and farewell!” “No, Oliver!” she exclaimed as he edged away toward Aylesbury Street at the farther end of the Green. “Don’t be a fool! Fagan would never let you swing. Don’t you see ...” But it was too late. Oliver, having walked a dozen or so paces, took to his heels and ran. “Oliver!” Nancy cried in anguish, as if her very heart had gone with him. The Dodger, distracted from his quarry by her cry, then did a most singular thing: He laughed! A laugh of triumph it was, too, suggesting they had at last arrived at the conclusion toward which he had been schemeing all these months. Throwing caution to the winds, he snatched the gold spectacles from the gentleman’s face, kicked him in the shins (quite ruining his white trousers in the process), took his pocket-book and silk handkerchief, and then (hardly pausing to fling his booty at Nancy in passing), set out in pursuit of Oliver, crying “Stop thief!” at the top of his voice. “No, Dodger, no!” the girl called after him. “Fagan’ll kill yer!” And it is a measure of her distress that she called that name aloud, which otherwise never passed their lips where any might overhear. “Stop thief!” It is music to the citizen’s ear! The tradesman leaves his counter, and the carman his wagon; the butcher throws down his tray, the baker his basket, the milkman his pail, the errand-boy his parcels, the schoolboy his marbles, the pavior his pickaxe, the child his battledore. Away they run, pell-mell, helter- skelter, slap-dash; tearing, yelling, and screaming; knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls; and streets, courts, and squares re-echo with the sound. “Stop thief! Stop thief!” The cry is taken up by a hundred voices and the crowds accumulate at every turning. Away they fly, splashing through the mud, and rattling along the pavements. Up to the windows it flies; out run the people; onward bears the mob. A whole audience deserts Punch and Judy in the very thickest of their plot and, joining the rushing throng, swell the shout and lend fresh vigour to the cry: “Stop thief! Stop thief!” “Stop thief! Stop thief!” There is a passion for the hunt implanted deep in every breast. One wretched, breathless child, terror in his looks and agony in his eye (for Oliver saw well enough now how the Dodger had turned the tables on him), large drops of perspiration streaming down his face, strains every nerve, stretches every sinew, to gain some way on his pursuers ... and still they follow on his track, greeting his failing strength with whoops and screams of joy. “Stop thief! Stop that boy!” A burly labouring man steps from an alehouse door. Oliver is a dozen yards

65 away, with the crowd hard on his heels by now. The labourer bunches up his fist, which he merely holds in Oliver’s path, since the boy is running so fast. A bag of cobblestones could not have broken his lips, smashed his nose, swollen his eyes, and blackened his face more effectively. He was stopped at last! The crowd piled up around him, each newcomer struggling with all the rest for just one glimpse. “Stand aside!” some cried. “Give him air!” “Air!” Others laughed. “I’d give ’im six foot of air—beneath ’is feet!” “Where’s the gennleman ’e dipped?” “Why ’e’s ’ere, a-comin’ dahn the street. Make way for the gennleman! Make way!” “Is this the boy, sir?” “Gaah! ’Course it is! Why bovva to ask?” That was the Dodger’s contribution, speedily taken up by Charley Bates. Nancy, meanwhile, had set off to return to Fagan’s loft, carrying the booty and resolved to say all had been well when she had left the three and that her coming back had been the Dodger’s idea. Oliver lay unconscious, covered with mud and dust, bleeding from his nose and lips. They thrust the old gentleman into the front rank of the tight little circle around him and asked again, “Is this the thief, sir?” The old gentleman stared down in dismay. Without his glasses he really could not be sure. All he could make out were the hazy lineaments of a small boy who was bleeding rather badly about the face. Still, he was the boy who ran away. Why would he have done that if he had been innocent? “Yes,” was his sad reply. “I’m afraid it is the boy.” “Afraid!” the Dodger said, provoking laughter from the crowd. “My, that’s a good un!” “I done that, sir!” The labourer stepped forward proudly. “I stopped the little vermin. See! Cut me knuckles for me pains!” He cleared his throat and gazed meaningfully at his empty palm. The gentleman stared at him in contempt. “A creature your size could have stopped him without hurting him.” Oliver began to stir himself awake. The Dodger, on seeing it, whispered, “Vamoose!” and he and Charley Bates slunk off down different courts, making their way home to Fagan’s loft. “I’ll do it again for two pins,” the man swore. At that moment a large policeman, realizing that the arrest had been made (the arrest of Oliver’s forward motion, that is), that all danger to his own person from the little fellow had passed, and that an arrest (in the official sense) was going begging to someone’s credit, decided it might as well be to his. “Nah, then!” he roared as he bullied his way through the crowd. “Move along, if you please.” The multitude let him through but ignored his injunction. “Come on, you!” He stooped and seized Oliver by the collar. “On yer feet!” “But it wasn’t me!” Oliver struggled to say through cut and swollen lips. “It was two other boys who I never saw before in my life.” “There were two boys,” the old gentleman said uncertainly.

66 “Yeah! And the other one’s vamosed—scarpered, as they say in their own speech—carrying off your valuables, sir. Oh, I know all their tricks! Come on, you!” His arm was growing tired of holding poor Oliver up, which was something the boy’s legs could scarcely manage as yet. “Oh, don’t hurt him!” cried the old gentleman. “Oh, no!” the constable assured him. “I won’t hurt him” And he tore Oliver’s jacket by way of proof. “Come on! This won’t do. Will you rest on your own pins, you young devil!” Oliver, still barely able to stand, was dragged, lurching and stumbling through the streets, heading for the police magistrate’s court, which was then obligingly in session. As many of the crowd who could manage it raced ahead and trotted in a sidelong fashion, glancing as much backward as they dared, staring at Oliver, hoping to see how a boy of ten might face into the prospect of dancing on air at the corner of Newgate and Old Bailey one morning very soon.

CHAPTER 11

Oliver discovers that a protector of property is no great protector of persons

If the mob had wanted a good long time in which to gloat over Oliver’s presumed fate and congratulate one another on their hand in it, they were greatly disappointed, for the police magistrate’s court lay a mere three or four streets away in Mutton Hill, which, with Townsend Lane, forms the western end of Clerkenwell Green; Oliver and the three thieves had passed it not ten minutes earlier! Or passed near to it, to be precise, for it was to be found in a dirty little courtyard through a low archway off Mutton Hill. This courtyard was known as Love Court, which name, to those familiar with the perversity that makes ‘Saffron Hill’ of one of London’s most nefarious alleys, gives adequate notice of what to expect in the line of mercy and charity there. Their way—the constable’s way, Oliver’s way, the old gentleman’s way, and the way of as many as could squeeze through the arch—was blocked by a stout man with a bunch of whiskers on his face and a bunch of keys in his hand. “What’s all this, then?” the fellow asked carelessly. “A young fogle-hunter dropped in his tracks,” replied the constable. The man turned to the gentleman. “And are you the injured party, sir?” The gentleman stared back in amazement, for if anyone there could be called injured it was surely the little boy. “The gennleman as was robbed?” the turnkey said patiently. “Well, I was assuredly robbed, but I begin to doubt that this was the boy who actually took my property. I’d rather not press the case.” The fellow sucked a tooth. “Must go before the magistrate now, sir. His worship will be disengaged in but half a minute.” He closed a great hand around Oliver’s neck. “Now, young gallows! In yer go!” So saying, he unlocked the door to a stone cell beside the entrance to the court and took the boy inside. There he searched him and, finding nothing, came back

67 out and locked the door. The old gentleman looked almost as rueful as Oliver as the key grated in the lock. He felt for his handkerchief, momentarily forgetting it had gone, and found instead the book that had been the innocent cause of his inattention. With a shock he realized he had run off without paying for it, in pursuit of the thieves, of course. So he was a sneak-thief, too—even more surely than the boy! The boy ... Yes, the boy. There was something in his face. Not so much his features (for the bully’s fist had altered them out of recognition), but in his eyes, in the light that shone out of them. And in his voice, too—that piping treble—it had chirped with a maddeningly appealing lilt that was also dreadfully familiar. And in the carriage of his head ... “Bless my head!” he murmured as he strolled around that narrow courtyard. “Where have I seen something like that before?” To escape the attention of the mob he retired into the police-court, seeking refuge in the witness anteroom, where he curled himself up in a dark corner and called up before his mind’s eye a vast amphitheatre of faces over which the dusky curtain of the years had fallen. It was not easy to lift that shroud. There were the faces of friends and the faces of foes and the faces of many that had been almost strangers ... of young girls in the full bloom of life who were now old women ... faces that the grave had closed upon but which the mind, magical in its power, could still dress in their old freshness, calling back the lustre of the eyes, restoring the brightness of the smile, the beaming of the soul through its mask of clay, and whispering of beauty from beyond the tomb. He saw them all, how they smiled, talked, gazed, moved their heads, carried themselves; but not one among them could he match to that strange familiarity he still could sense in what little he had seen of the boy. He was aroused from his reverie by a respectful touch on the shoulder from the turnkey. “Now, sir. Your case,” he said. “Not mine,” the gentleman assured him, but by then he was already being ushered into the imposing presence of the renowned Mr Fang. The magistrate’s office was adapted from the front parlour of an earlier private house, a parlour with a panelled wall. Mr Fang sat behind a bar at the farther end; and on one side of the door was a wooden pen, on whose rail a man might lean but inside whose bars a boy was a mere caged animal—as the gentleman saw to his dismay, for the child with the disturbingly familiar features was already there, trembling and swaying from faintness and clutching at the bars to hold himself up. Mr Fang was a lean, long-backed, stiff-necked man of middling size and with no great quantity of hair; what little remained to him grew chiefly at the back and sides. His face was stern and rather flushed. A wag had once said of him that, if he had not been so well known for ‘liking a drop,’ he might have brought an action for libel against his own countenance—and won heavy damages, too. The gentleman bowed respectfully and advanced to the magistrate’s desk, where he proferred his card, on which was engraved in proud black copperplate: C. Brownlow Esq., The Laurels, Goodson Road, Pentonville. “That is my name and direction, sir,” he murmured and withdrew with a polite inclination of the head while he waited to be questioned.

68 Mr Fang was deeply engrossed in a leading article of the Clerkenwell Vindicator, which was ridiculing some recent decision of his and commending him, for the hundred and fiftieth time, to the special and particular attention of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, so he was in no mood to be trifled with. “Who are you?” he asked bluntly. Mr Brownlow, greatly startled, pointed to his card. The magistrate tossed it aside contemptuously, saying, “Officers! Who is this fellow?” “My name, sir”—he spoke slowly and in the tones of a gentleman—“is Brownlow.” He glanced about him and spoke generally to the court officers: “Permit me to inquire the name of the magistrate who, under the protection of the bench, offers so gratuitous and unprovoked an insult to a respectable person?” “Officer!” Mr Fang threw his paper aside, too. “What’s this ranting fellow charged with?” “He’s not charged at all, your worship,” replied that worthy. “He appears against the boy, your worship, sir.” The magistrate knew it perfectly well, of course, but it was an amusing jest to play, and a safe one, too. “In that case, swear him,” he snapped. “Before I am sworn, I must beg leave to say one word,” Mr Brownlow interjected, “and that is, that I never, without actually experiencing it, I never would have believed that a magistrate could ...” “Hold your tongue, sir!” Mr Fang barked. “I will not, sir!” cried the gentleman. “You shall, sir—and upon this instant, or I’ll have you ejected. You’re an insolent, impertinent fellow—I knew as much the moment I clapped eyes on you.” “What? What?” Poor Brownlow looked as if he’d burst before long. “Swear him!” Fang shouted at his clerk. “I’ll not hear another word.” Mr Brownlow controlled his anger sufficiently to reflect that, while it would do his temper much good to continue, he might only injure the boy by giving it scope; so he submitted to being sworn at once. “Now, constable, what’s all this?” Fang asked before the old man had finished swearing in. The policeman, aware of Brownlow’s doubts, related the bare facts of the arrest; said he had searched the boy and found nothing; and that was all he knew of the matter. “Witnesses?” snapped Fang. “None as I’ve brought, your worship.” The magistrate stared at his desk in sullen silence awhile; then he rounded in a mercuric passion on Brownlow, crying, “Well, sir, do you mean to state your complaint or do you not?” “I ... why, I ...” The old gentleman was taken aback. “You’ve been sworn,” Fang reminded him, “and if you now stand there, refusing to give evidence, then I shall start to swear, sir. I shall say ...” Brownlow never heard what word he might have used, for both the clerk and the jailer were seized by nasty coughing fits at just that moment—and the clerk

69 dropped a heavy legal tome, besides. Then, with many interruptions and repetitious insults, the old gentleman contrived to state his case; observing that, in the flurry of the moment, he had pursued the boy because he saw him running, not because he was the actual thief. Further, he hoped that, even if his worship should believe the boy to be connected with the thief in some way, he would nonetheless deal with him as leniently as justice would permit. “He has been grievously hurt already,” he said in conclusion. “And I fear—I really do fear—that he is gravely ill from his injuries.” “Oh, yes? I dare say!” Fang sneered. Then, turning toward Oliver’s cage: “Come now, you young vagabond—none of your fainting tricks here! What’s your name?” Oliver struggled to reply but his tongue would not obey. The courtroom seemed to be turning and tumbling all around him. “What’s your name, you scoundrel,” Fang demanded. “Officer, what’s his name?” The jailer bent low and murmured in as kindly a voice as he dared, “What’s your name, boy? It’s best to give it, you know.” “Water!” Oliver whispered through his parched lips. At least, he thought he managed to whisper the request. The jailer straightened. “Says his name’s Walters, your worship. Tom Walters.” “Too ashamed to speak it out loud, eh? Don’t blame him! Where does he live?” The man bent to Oliver’s level again. “Where he can, your worship,” he said. “Has he any parents living?” Again, the jailer hazarded his guess. “He says they both died in his infancy, sir.” At this, Oliver raised his head and managed to articulate his cry for all to hear: “Water!” “Stuff and nonsense!” Fang roared, shaking the motheaten end of a feather quill at him. “Don’t try to make a fool of me!” “I think he really is pretty ill, your worship,” said the officer. “I know these raggle-taggles better,” Fang assured him. “Oh, take care of him, do!” Brownlow cried. “He’ll fall down—look!” “Stand away from him, officer!” cried Fang. “Let him fall if that’s what pleases him.” Oliver, being left, in both senses of the word, duly fell. The officers of the court and Brownlow stared at one another but none durst move to help for fear of increasing the poor boy’s torment. “I knew he was shamming,” Fang remarked complacently. “Let him be. He’ll soon tire of this imposture.” “How do you propose to deal with the case, sir?” asked his clerk. “Summarily. If he wasn’t the principal, he won’t hang. Not this time. Three months at hard labour. Clear the office.” Brownlow looked on in dismay, wringing his hands as the constable and jailer carried out the still unconscious boy, but just then an elderly man of decent appearance, though poor, came rushing into court. “Stop!” he cried. “Don’t take him away! For pity’s sake stop a moment!” He clutched a hand to his chest and paused to regain his breath.

70 “What’s this,” Fang cried out angrily. “Turn the fellow out! Clear the court!” “No, Mister Fang!” the man replied. “I shall speak. I will not be turned out, for I saw it all—from first to last. I keep the bookstall where this gentleman was robbed. I demand to be sworn. And you, Mister Fang, must hear me out!” Fang, mindful of that cursed leader in the day’s paper, realized that the matter had now gone beyond the hushing-up stage. “Swear the fellow,” he growled, with ill grace. “Now, man—speak your piece!” “I saw two ragged boys,” he said, “but neither of them was this one.” “Was he there, though?” “He was. On the far side of the Green, leaning against the old Watch House and talking with a young woman. I was watching them when I should have been minding my own stall and my own customer—but there it is. My eye was on them. The boy here made some remark to the young woman and then turned and ran. He was running before the gentleman was robbed ...” Fang was now in a high old rage. “Confound you, fellow—why did you not come here sooner?” he demanded. “I hadn’t a soul to mind the shop. They all joined the hue and cry. I got nobody until five minutes back and then I came as fast as I could.” Fang looked for chinks in the armour of this tale and, finding none, turned on Brownlow, instead. “So—reading were you! Lost in a book, eh?” “This very tome, sir.” Brownlow held it up. A cunning light crept into the magistrate’s expression as the probable sequence of events unfolded themselves in his mind’s eye. “Oh, and is it paid for?” he asked. “Not yet, sir.” Brownlow was somewhat shamefaced. “Not yet?” Fang echoed sarcastically. “Oh, and I suppose the boy who stole your handkerchief and pocket book has not offered you a fair price for them, yet! A nice sort of gentleman you have turned out to be, sir—preferring a charge against a poor, innocent boy who’s lost both parents and has nowhere to sleep while you have a whole fistful of goods obtained by larceny!” He turned to the bookseller. “I suppose you won’t press a charge?” He shook his head. “Only against the gentleman’s pocket, sir. And, as I know his notecase has gone, his credit’s good enough with me.” He smiled at Brownlow, who accepted the courtesy with a stiff nod, for he was still fuming at the magistrate’s words. Fang, however, did not intend to let him go so lightly. “You may count yourself a fortunate man, Brownlow, that you are not a-standing in that dock. Let this be a lesson to you, my man—or the law will overtake you yet! The boy is discharged. Clear the court!” “Damn me!” Brownlow was spluttering with rage. He had borne the magistrate’s ill-bred contumely with stoic calm until now, but this was too much. “Damn me!” he roared, advancing on Fang in a most menacing fashion. “Clear the office!” cried the magistrate, terrified to realize he had gone a mile too far. “Officers, d’ye hear? Clear the office!” Between them, with many an appeasing gesture and whispered word of caution, the two principal officers managed to get Brownlow outside before he did either

71 himself or his tormentor an injury. And there his apoplexy evaporated entirely, to be replaced by pity at the sight of the still unconscious boy, lying untended on the flagstones. His shirt was unbuttoned, a fever moistened his brow though his face was deathly pale and a cold shudder convulsed his puny frame. “Poor boy! Oh, you poor boy!” The kindly old man bent him over him. “Call a coach, somebody! Pray do so directly!” A coach was obtained and the constable carried Oliver out and laid him tenderly upon one seat. Mr Brownlow sat himself opposite and was about to give his directions when the bookseller poked his head inside and asked if he might come, too. “Of course! Bless me, my dear friend!” Brownlow cried. “I owe my liberty to you!” The other cleared his throat meaningfully as he seated himself at the old gentleman’s side. “Yes, and eighteen pence beside! I’ve not forgotten. Don’t trust me, eh?” “It’s not that, sir. I feel I have some interest in the boy and I wish to see him well settled, that is all.”

CHAPTER 12

Tenderness and affection attend Oliver for the first time in his life. A portrait exerts a strange influence

The Dodger and Bates walked at a stiffish pace—but not so stiff as to attract much attention—directly from the scene of Oliver’s arrest to the relative security of Fagan’s eyrie. Now that the excitement of the chase had worn off, the Dodger was beginning to discover all sorts of catches in his clever scheme to be rid of the hated Oliver and resume his number-one place in Fagan’s favour—flaws that his eagerness had hitherto glossed over. Fagan had invested time, teaching, and money in Oliver Twist. Fagan did not undertake such a venture out of any quixotic impulse. Fagan must have had plans, great plans, for the boy. Fagan did not like even his smallest plans to be thwarted; his rage at losing Oliver on his first day out was going to be something quite dreadful to behold ... From these musings it was but a short step to the conviction that Fagan was going to kill him for his carelessness—yes, even for his carelessness. If Fagan had the faintest idea that he, the Artful Dodger, had brought about Oliver’s removal to prison deliberately, he would not simply be killed but dismembered, inch by slow and painful inch. The Dodger, the great, cocksure little man-of-the-world, began to tremble, to sweat, to be sick to his stomach. As they neared the end of Saffron Hill, he stopped and pulled Charley Bates into an archway. “Listen!” he hissed. Now that they were no longer observed, Bates gave way to the laughter that had convulsed him—silently—ever since Oliver’s arrest. Furious, the Dodger seized him by the lapels and thrust him hard against a crumbling cob wall. “Whoss so funny?” he yelled. “We’re in Queer Street,

72 covee—’case you don’t know it!” “I can’t ’elp it!” Bates cackled. “I can’t, honest! To see that poor little b— splitting away at that pace, sliding round corners, banging into posts—and me with the wipe in me pocket, singing out arter ’im—‘Stop Fief!’—oh, my eye!” He dissolved in convulsive laughter yet again. Disgusted, the Dodger let him go and stood with his back to him, staring into the filthy little court behind the arch. “Fagan’ll kill us,” he murmured. “We gotta have a story!” These words did more to sober up Bates than any physical shaking might have done. “Whoi?” he asked. “Fink! Use yer noddle! He was priming up little Oliver fer somethink, wasn’t he! Teachin’ ’im all them things. Fagan don’t do that fer love, does ’e! We’ve been and gawn and lost ’im his prime investment—that’s what you’ve done, Charley Bates!” “Oh no!” The colour drained from the boy’s face. “No, Dodger—no! You ain’t pinning that tail on this donkey! I never kicked the bleeder in the shins—so’s he’d look up and know he was bein’ dipped. I never done that! That was you!” The Dodger touched the tip of Bates’s nose and smiled a cruel smile. “You say that again and you’re a dead man, Charley Bates. You say that to Fagan and, so ’elp me Gawd, I’ll take you along of me. Now listen—we need a story, you and me. And we stick to it no matter what, right? We hangs togevver or, sure as you’re a fool, Fagan will hang us separately.” Five minutes later they sauntered into Fagan’s eyrie, the Dodger first, Bates close behind. The Dodger was swaggering extra-bravely, a sneer on his face, a challenge in his eye, and his tongue swelling out one cheek. Nancy was not there. What, the Dodger wondered, had she told Fagan? “Where’s the boy, dear chap?” Fagan asked at once. You’d never know from looking his lordship in the eye. He could smile even as he was slipping a knife between your ribs; he could show overwhelming surprise at events, even in the middle of carrying out his own deeply premeditated scheme. The Dodger drew a deep breath and said, “The traps ’ave got ’im—and that’s all abaht it!”

It was most singularly fitting that Oliver’s way out of Clerkenwell, by coach with his benefactor, Mr Brownlow, should directly retrace his way into it, on foot with the Dodger, who had proved a benefactor of quite a different stripe; the pity was that he lay all that while unconscious, unable to see it or to appreciate the journey’s aptness. Up Coppice Row they bowled, into Exmouth Street, past Sadler’s Wells, and so by way of St John’s Road to the Angel at Islington; from there it was but a furlong’s drive along White Lion Street to the quiet, shady backwater of Goodson Street, where they stopped at last before a neat house in its own small grounds, partly shielded from the street by the laurels that gave the property its name. There Mr Brownlow, assisted by the bookseller, conveyed Oliver indoors and handed him into the care of the housekeeper, Mrs Bedwin, to bathe (at least by way of a lick and a promise) and put to bed, for he was now in a high fever. This

73 duty discharged, the good old gentleman paid off the bookseller and sent him back in the coach. For many days thereafter, Oliver remained insensible to the world and the goodness of his new friends. The sun rose and sank, and rose and sank again, and many times after that, and still the boy lay shivering in his uneasy bed, while all the flesh he had put on under Fagan’s ambiguous care fell away from his bones, melted by the dry and wasting heat of fever. The worm in the grave does not his all-consuming work more surely than does this slow, creeping fire upon the living frame. And yet it passed before it finished him quite. Weak, thin, and pallid, he awoke at last from what had seemed to him a long and troublous dream, in which his mother had come and gone, come and gone, always fading to a mist when he called to her most loudly. Feebly he raised himself enough to rest his head upon his trembling arm, and looked anxiously about. “Why ...” he wheezed. “Where am I?” Faint though his voice was, the bed-curtains were immediately drawn back and he saw a motherly old lady, very neatly and precisely dressed, standing anxiously over him. “Hush, my chickabidee,” she crooned softly. “You must lie quiet or you’ll bring on the fever again—and you have been very ill. Lie down again, there’s a dear.” Gently she eased his head back upon the pillow, which she plumped up around him before smoothing back his hair. Her gaze was so kind and loving he could not help stretching out his wasted, trembling hand and drawing hers down around his neck. “Bless us!” cried Mrs Bedwin, for it was she. “What a soft, pretty little fellow you are!” The boy closed his eyes and smiled. “You spoke of your mother ...?” The lady said hesitantly. “Is she ... I mean, ought we to ...?” “She is in heaven,” Oliver said, still not opening his eyes. Inwardly he strained to recapture those fleeting images of her, which had both sweetened and tormented his spirit at the height of his fever. “Ah.” Mrs Bedwin fell to silence. “And yet I feel she came to me here. I feel her all about me, somehow.” He opened his eyes then. “Though I cannot see her.” Mrs Bedwin said nothing. She wiped her eyes and rubbed her spectacles, vigorously, before going to fetch her little charge a cooling drink of milk. Then she repeated her warning that he was to lie quiet or he would be ill again. A moment later, as it seemed to him, Oliver was awakened from the dark of slumber to the dark of evening, which was pierced by the light of a single candle. The actual occasion of his awakening was the loud ticking of a large, important- looking gold watch, presently held in the large hand of an important-looking gentleman. The other hand was holding his wrist and counting the feeble, thready pulse he had at last managed to locate therein. “Well, you are a great deal better, are you not, my little man!” he said. “Yes, I thank you, sir,” replied Oliver.

74 “I knew it!” the man rejoined. “And you’re hungry, I warrant!” But Oliver’s stomach turned a little queasy at the mere thought of food. “Not very, sir,” he said hesitantly. “No, you’re not. I knew that, too. He is not hungry, Mrs Bedwin.” The good lady inclined her head, hoping to show that she thought the doctor a most wise and learned man—rather than perjure herself by saying as much. “Sleepy. You’re sleepy, eh?” “Well, sir ...” Oliver was once again reticent. “I have just slept these many hours.” “Not sleepy!” the doctor cried triumphantly. “I knew it! Neither sleepy nor thirsty, eh?” “Well, sir,” Oliver repeated diffidently, “I believe I could drink just a little bit.” “Hah—precisely as I thought, Mrs Bedwin! Capital! I believe Mister Brownlow may visit him tomorrow. He has been plaguing me these days past. You may give our young patient some weak tea, ma’am, and some plain toast. No butter. Don’t keep him too warm, but be careful to see he does not get too cold. That is all, I think.” His boots creaked in a most important and expensive manner as he left. “Weak tea!” Mrs Bedwin exclaimed scornfully as she brought him a plate of nourishing broth from which all solid matter had, nonetheless, been strained. It had been bright for hours when he opened his eyes again the following day; he felt cheerful and happy at last, for he belonged to the world again. And now Mrs Bedwin brought him a bowl of broth so nourishing that, had it been diluted three-hundred-fold, it would have furnished an ample meal for at least three hundred and fifty paupers in the Fellgate Union. Oliver was still too weak to walk but Mrs Bedwin had him carried downstairs to her own little housekeeper’s room, where she sat him by the fireside and propped him up with pillows. The sight of him so well restored to health was too much for her, after all the anxious hours she had gazed into that same sweet face, quite sure that the end was not far off. She could not prevent herself from weeping for joy, dabbing her eyes and blowing her nose, and saying, “Pay me no heed, my dear, I’m just a silly old woman with more heart than sense. There! It’s over with now. We mustn’t let Mister Brownlow see I’ve been crying or that would never do. He’s coming to see you soon, you know.” “You are very kind to me, ma’am—and so is he.” “Well, never you mind that, my lamb. Goodness, have you finished your broth already! You’ll soon be eating us out of house and home.” All the while she had been talking, and he had been eating, Oliver had been unable to take his eyes off a portrait that hung on the wall opposite—a likeness of a young female in the full flower of her womanhood, with rosy cheeks, bright, merry eyes, and ... and what? And a strange sense of familiarity, almost as if he had seen her before and could not quite remember where. The old woman followed his gaze. “Are you fond of pictures, Tom?” Oliver thought she had made a slip of the tongue, but he was too polite to point it out. “I hardly know, ma’am.” He could not take his eyes off the canvas. “I have seen so few. But I do like that lady. She has such a mild, beautiful face.” “Oh, well, as to that,” was the dismissive reply, “painters always make ladies

75 out to be prettier than they are, or they wouldn’t get any custom, d’you see. The man who invented this new machine for taking likenesses ought to have known that. It will never succeed.” “A likeness.” Oliver savoured the word. “Is that a likeness, ma’am?” “Well ...” She looked up from her needlework. “It’s a portrait, anyway. Whether or not it is a good likeness ...” “Whose, ma’am?” Oliver interrupted eagerly. “Why, really, my dear, I don’t know. Nobody known to me—nor to you, I shouldn’t wonder. It’s hung there as long as I’ve been in this house. It has quite taken your fancy, hasn’t it!” He swayed his body from side to side, as far as he could reach. “Her eyes follow me wherever I move,” he remarked. “They do say that’s the mark of a good portrait—the eyes follow you all about the room. But I don’t know how she can be looking at you, for her eyes seem to be directly upon me, now that you mention it.” “I feel my heart beating,” Oliver said. “It’s not just that she’s looking at me— it’s as if she wants to speak to me, too—but cannot!” “Heavens child!” Mrs Bedwin rose and took away his empty bowl. “This is some lingering remnant of your fever, surely. Here—let me move your chair where you may no longer see her.” Since Oliver continued to see the picture in his mind’s eye, as clearly as if it were still before him, he thought it better not to argue. In any case, there came a soft tap at the door and, at the housekeeper’s invitation, Mr Brownlow walked in. He strode across the carpet, tipped his spectacles (a new pair) up on his forehead, thrust his hands behind the skirts of his dressing gown, and bent to take a good long look at Oliver. The emotion that had choked his housekeeper not ten minutes earlier now overcame him—too. Unknown to her, and assuredly unknown to Oliver, he had often come a-tip-toe into the sick room and gazed at the lad by the light of the candle left to keep the slumbering night-nurse awake— which she never was. He had, in fact, hired her for her propensity to catnap, which afforded him the luxury of those silent visitations to his little fosterling. So his emotion now, on seeing Oliver so well again, was not to be wondered at. He cleared his throat heartily and sniffed with extraordinary vigour, mumbling the while something about having contracted a cold or a cough. Mrs Bedwin hoped he was not suggesting that any of his linen had been damp, for she had made sure it was all well aired. He said he thought his napkin at last night’s dinner had been just a trifle damp—but it was of no moment whatever. To Oliver he asked, “And how do you feel, young man?” “Very happy, indeed, sir,” replied Oliver. “And very grateful to you and ... Mrs Bedwin, did I just hear you call her?” “Well, there’s no fault in your hearing, at least! Have you been fed some slops?” “Broth!” exclaimed an outraged Bedwin. “Eeurgh!” He pulled a face and then, with a wink at Oliver, added, “A couple of glasses of port wine would have served him a great deal better, eh, Tom?” There was that name again! “But sir—my name is Oliver,” he told them.

76 “Oh?” Brownlow scratched his chin. “Oliver Walters, eh?” “No, sir—Twist. Oliver Twist.” “Bless me, what an odd name! Then what made you tell the magistrate your name was Tom Walters?” Oliver frowned. “Magistrate?” he asked uncertainly. Brownlow struck his own forehead as men do when they acknowledge an error. “Of course! You have no notion of what happened, have you! Let me recall it for you. You were in Clerkenwell Green, leaning against the wall of the old Watch House, talking to a very pretty young woman—heh! heh!—or so the bookseller described her. And then you ran off toward Aylesbury Street, shortly after which, two desperate young rogues stole my glasses and money and handkerchief. And, in the general hue and cry, I suppose, you, being already a-running, were mistaken for the thieves.” Oliver raised his hands to his lips, his nose, his cheeks ... “Yes,” Brownlow said. “I see the memory is returning. Try not to think of that part of it, but do you remember the magistrate’s court?” Oliver closed his eyes and screwed up his features. “I was in a cage? I wanted a drink.” “And you told the magistrate your name was Tom Walters.” At that, Oliver opened his eyes and smiled. “No sir, I could not have done that, for my name is Oliver Twist—and I have done nothing to make me ashamed to say as much.” Brownlow, greatly exercised at this direct contradiction of what his own ears had heard that day, stared sternly into the little boy’s eyes—but was met with so frank and truthful a gaze that he could only scratch his chin again and mumble, “Some mistake, then.” But the secondary effect of this intense scrutiny was to remind him, yet again, of that haunting sense of familiarity that stole over him every time he peered closely at Oliver’s face. “You are not angry with me, sir,” Oliver asked anxiously. “No—to be sure!” Embarrassed, Brownlow looked away, and, as it happened, his eyes traversed directly from Oliver’s to those of the pretty young lady in the portrait on the wall above and behind. What he saw there made his heart beat suddenly in treble tides and forced him to sit down heavily on the nearest chair.

CHAPTER 13

A dark and dangerous gentleman introduces himself. Nancy seeks a little brother she never had

“The traps have got him?” Lord Fagan repeated the Dodger’s words in a voice so calm that one who did not know the man would think his interest in the matter was but slight. “The traps have got him? What—got young Oliver? Our latest little comrade in arms? Our valued associate? You took him out on his first

77 venture into the world, and ...” “He legged it!” The Dodger had resolved to hold his tongue, which was usually the best defence against his lordship’s anger, for when it came to words he could dance circles round them all, but he could stand the catechism of rhetorical questions no further. “Say?” Fagan frowned. Bates, glad to see their master rattled, added his voice. “Legged it, my lord— just like wot the Dodger sez.” “Took off like a slipped hare!” The Dodger grasped back the reins of the conversation. “We didn’t even dip nobody.” “Then what did Nancy bring just now?” And so, without tipping his hand, the Dodger now knew that Nancy had been and gone again—and had said nothing about Oliver’s hooking it. He felt considerably more confidence as he replied: “She brung the only dip we done today—a fat old cove by the bookstall in Clerkenwell Green. He never even seen us, but he knows he’s been dipped—don’t ’e, Batesy?—looks around, sees the honnible Holiver doing the vanishing act, like a shot off a shovel, and sets up the hue-and-cry. We follers on—what else could we do? You’d thank us, I don’t think, if we was to come home and say we got no idea what become of ’im ...” Fagan seated himself and arranged the folds of his clothing elegantly—which was not always a good sign. “I’d like rather less of the self-justification, if you please, Dodger, and rather more direct narrative. The facts, boy—they’re the only thing that can excuse you in this lamentable business.” “Tell his lordship, Bates,” the lad said haughtily. “I am not to be trusted ’ere, it seems.” “We follers the hue-and-cry,” Bates agreed. “Like wot Dodger says. The boy don’t go far. There’s a big bully stops ’im by the Pewter Platter Inn. Fist like a granite sett. Taps claret—buckets of it. Then that big, fat constable wot don’t mind arresting unconscious villains under three foot tall steps forward ... and we steps backward ... and that’s all about it. He legged it, my lord! Oliver legged it afore Dodger and me laid a finger on that goose—honest!” Fagan stared at him balefully. “I wish you wouldn’t use words like that, Bates— ‘honest’! What does it mean when it trips off a tongue like yours?” Never had Bates wanted more ardently to show his tongue to the man; never had he resisted the attempt more valiantly than then. “So it’s not our fault?” The Dodger needed to hear the actual words spoken. Fagan, in a most uncharacteristic display of petulance, seized up a pewter pot and hurled it at the lad’s head. Some of the ale it contained spattered the two youngsters but most of it, and the pot itself, splattered and smashed against the door—just as it was opened by a big, burly villain of about five-and-thirty, in a black velveteen coat, soiled drab breeches, lace-up half-boots and grey cotton stockings, which encased a sturdy pair of legs (of that kind which seems somehow incomplete without iron fetters to garnish them). He had a brown hat on his head and a dirty belcher handkerchief around his neck, with the long, frayed ends of which he smeared the beer from his face—revealing a broad, heavy countenance with a beard of three days’ growth, and two scowling eyes, one of which

78 displayed parti-coloured signs of a recent altercation. “What the devil’s this, my lord?” he cried, giving the title less respect than most others would have dared. “Can’t hold our liquor, eh? Throwing it around, are we? We must be in the flush! Come in, yer sneakin’ varmint!” This last was addressed to a white, bandy-legged terrier with a touch of Staffordshire bull somewhere in his pedigree—smooth-haired except for the twenty-odd places where its face and body were scratched and torn. The dog scooted past its owner, faster than a boot could fly—and with good reason—and found sanctuary beneath a window bench, where it lay growling from time to time, gazing malevolently out at the four people in the room, as if wondering which to bite first. The black patch over its left eye—a feature of one of the breeds in its motley ancestry—lent a piratical look that was entirely appropriate. “He’s developing good taste, Mister Sikes,” Lord Fagan drawled. “You should leave him in your hovel when you come a-visiting here. These salubrious surroundings are giving him airs.” The bully bunched his fists. “Heirs, is it, Fagan? I’ve a mind to cut you off in that line. And less of the ‘mister,’ if you please. You never mean good by it.” “Well, well, Bill! All I said was that the dog is beginning to realize you are not the dandiest company between here and Newgate—and where would he learn such good taste, if not here? You seem out of sorts?” “I seem out of sorts!” He laughed and tried to recruit the two young ’uns to join him; but they knew they were not yet out of the woods and so kept their peace. “You’re throwing pots at the boys’ heads and I’m out of sorts! Well, if I am, it’s nothing a glass of spirits won’t mend.” Fagan obliged him, not taking his eyes off the man for a moment. He drank it greedily and said, “I’m looking for a boy—a darkman’s budge to crack a ken.” The Dodger and Bates stared pointedly at the ceiling. “Not you!” Sikes said scornfully. “A boy as’d slip like lard through a scullery winder.” “Ah, that Nancy!” Fagan said admiringly. “Such an effectual little gossip! Why, she’s a veritable quidnunc to the cracksmen of London—a mock-Maecenas to second-hand screwsmen.” “Never mind all that, Fagan. Where is ’e?” Lazily, Fagan drew a sovereign from the pocket of his brightly embroidered waistcoat and tossed it carelessly on the table. “That’s waiting for the person who can answer your question, Bill. My young gentlemen and I were debating the very point when you invited yourself in.” And, pocketing the coin again (out of respect for present company), he went on to share with their guest the account he had just received of those same two young gentlemen. “And the thought that nags me, Bill,” he concluded, “is that young Oliver, even without meaning to, may say that which will get us into trouble.” Sikes threw back his head and laughed. Then, banging the table for more gin— which was swiftly furnished him—he told his lordship it served him right. “Ah, Bill!” Fagan said with every outward appearance of affection. “If ever I were in trouble I should turn at once to you—for even if you could not help, you

79 would simply overflow with sympathy.” Then, somewhat stonier of countenance, he added, “The trouble is, Bill, that, if the game was up with me, it would also be up with a good many more as I could name here and might name there. And, though it is true that a man may only hang once, you would hang a great deal quicker and a great deal nastier than me.” He smiled, as a man might smile in explaining the workings of a clock or the causes of the tides to a child—as if it were nothing of any personal connection with him. For a minute or so the only sound in that room was Bill Sikes’s sterterous breathing, interrupted from time to time by a deep draught of spirits. “Someone must find out wot’s been done at the police office,” he said at last. “Gad, Sikes!” Fagan thumped the table in admiration. “Aristotle must thank the gods daily that you and he were born so many centuries apart—else none would ever have heard his name! ‘Someone must go and find out wot’s bin done at the p’lice office’! Capital!” Sikes ignored the jibe. “If he hasn’t peached and Fang has committed him, we’re easy till he comes out again. Then he must be tooken care on. You must get someone to him. The question is: ’oo?” Fagan merely smiled and stared at him. Sikes stared back as if he did not understand the silence. “The question is,” his lordship murmured, “ ’oo has the most to lose?” “You have your amusing moments, my lord,” the thief said coldly, “but this is not one of ’em.” He looked at the Dodger. “Me?” The lad simply laughed. “How long d’you think they’d leave me standing outside one of them cells? Talk sense!” Sikes looked at Bates, who said, “Same ’ere,” and relit his pipe. Fagan put a hand to his ear and said, “Hark! I hear footprints! The tread of angels unless these old ears deceive me.” A few moments later Bet and Nancy arrived, declaring themselves to be dying of thirst and wondering if anyone was ‘going for a dip’? “Someone is certainly going for a dip,” Fagan said as he poured them a generous glass each of something to take the chill off a bright summer’s day. “And for something more precious than wipes or watches, purses or pocket- books. So, who’s the lucky volunteer?” Bet drew breath to speak but Nancy plucked at her sleeve and asked her if she’d taken leave of her senses. “Ah, Nancy!” Fagan was all admiration again. “You have the nimblest wit of all. Want to reserve all the honour and glory to yourself, eh? Well, so you shall, my pet, my petal!” Nancy did what Bill had earlier done—threw back her head (except that hers was pretty and curly-locked) and laughed. She supposed that was all the answer she need give—until she looked about her and saw the expressions on her companions’ faces—or expression, rather, for it was singularly one and singularly expressive of their opinion that, whatever risky and nefarious ‘dipping’ his lordship had in mind, the honour should, indeed, be hers alone. “No!” she cried, rising and backing toward the door; her determination may be guessed at by the fact that she abandoned a tumbler of gin-toddy that was near

80 three-fifths undrunk. A low word from Sikes put the mongrel between her and the door. At the same time Fagan rose and went to his store of fine clothes that were, as yet, too warm for the season, having been recently stolen by absconding servants and sold for a profit of an infinite percentage. “Come now, Nancy,” he said jovially. “It is inevitable, so you might as well enjoy it. I’ve always said you were the finest little actress as never trod the legitimate boards. You could have played Covent Garden inside rather than outside.” Bates laughed at this; it was Bates’s day for seeing the funny side of things— even of the most serious menace to his own life and person. “Bates doesn’t believe me,” Fagan went on. “So here’s your chance to cock a snook at all such skepticks, my dear.” At which he offered her a pretty dress and bonnet, the sight of which stifled her immediate objections and induced her to ask, albeit reluctantly, what was expected of her. “Why, my sweet”—he held the dress against her person, where it made the one she had on look pretty sorry—“I expect you to succeed in triumph where Bet might simply scrape by, where those two young gentlemen would come away at the gallop and with their tails between their legs, and where Mister Sikes would probably swing.” Bill gritted his teeth at this prognostication but, knowing the importance of persuading Nancy to this commission, he bit his tongue and kept silent for once. The concluding word of Fagan’s homily sent a shiver down Nancy’s spine, but the flattery of the rest was enough to pique her curiosity to know more. “And you?” she asked pugnaciously. “Me, my angel? Well, that is where I differ from your very good friend, who is sitting facing me, here. I do not keep a dog, or dogs, in my case”—he looked all about him with a smile in case they failed to take his point—“I do not keep dogs and then go abroad and bark myself. This will suit you very well, I believe. Slip next door and try it on. No obligation to purchase, as you often say to the gentlemen while the Dodger goes to work.” “I only want to see what it looks like on,” Nancy warned them as she stepped outside the door. Another word from Sikes sent the dog to guard the stairhead. By the time Nancy returned—looking every inch the demure young lady, straight out of finishing school—Fagan had prepared a basket of apples and a meat pie, part-covered with a clean white napkin, which rounded off the imposture to perfection. He draped it over her arm, tucked her curl-papers under her bonnet, and then held up a mirror in which she could admire herself, arrayed in the beauty of unaccustomed innocence. “And what must I do?” she asked when she had done giggling at the effect. “Why, this, my pearl.” Lord Fagan held up a toast rack, at just the height of a grille on the door of the clink, and whispered, “Oliver? Oliver, my dear little brother, are you within?” He lowered his bit of stage property and bowed. “Only you will do it so much better, darling one!” Nancy had not survived so many years free of the character-improvements offered by every house of juvenile correction without developing a very sharp wit.

81 She knew, though not a single direct word was spoken, what was now expected of her. Calmly she set down the basket, unpinned her bonnet, and would have unbuttoned her bodice, too, if Fagan had not said, “Only up to the office, sweetie.” Nancy did not exactly say she wouldn’t; she merely let slip that she’d be blessed if she would. Fagan remarked upon it as a sign of her innately good breeding, that she would not hurt his feelings by offering a direct refusal. “I’ll not do it,” she said then. “So it’s no use trying to jaw me on, my lord!” “What d’ya mean, woman?” Sikes growled. “Just what I says, Bill,” she replied calmly. “You’ve never been up before Fang,” the bully reasoned. “No one up there knows yer.” “No! Nor I don’t wish them to, neither. So it’s rather more no than yes with me, Bill.” “She’ll go, Fagan,” Sikes said confidently. “No, she won’t—Fagan,” she echoed him cheekily. “Yes, she will, Fagan!” Sikes insisted heavily. And he was right. By dint of threat, promise, and blandishment the peer and the bully overcame her scruples, one by one, until—if only to escape their combined assault—she caved in and agreed. “Give her a door-key,” the Dodger put in suddenly. “She’ll look more respectable.” Fagan found an old key and hung it on Nancy’s finger. He surveyed the effect and turned to the Dodger. “Every now and then, Jack Dawkins,” he said, “just when even the most reasonable man might conclude that you are as useful as a millstone to a drowning man, you say something that redeems you utterly.” The Dodger smiled the sort of smile you see on people’s lips when they are about to be sick—apologetic, queasy, fearful; a lad could live very happily if he never received a compliment from Lord Fagan—such, at least, was his philosophy. “Now, then, Nancy—give us a twirl before you go!” “Oh, my brother! My poor, dear, sweet, innocent brother!” Nancy swallowed and strained and concentrated her thoughts until a tear—a genuine little diamond of a tear—trembled on each lower eyelid. “What has become of him? Where have they tooken him? Oh, do have pity and tell me, gentlemen! Please! If you please, kind gentlemen! And call your hound off, Bill, ’cos I’m away while the mood is on me!” At the door, however, she paused as a new thought struck her. “Mercy!” she cried, flattening her hand across her breast. “Here’s me, a sweet, innocent young lady, about to brave the streets all alone and without the protection of a gentleman!” And with another giggle she was gone. “She’s a clever girl, me boyos!” Fagan said to his young gentlemen. “Clever and loyal! Dodger! Polish up that name they gave you—dodge ’er for us and see she practises her charms on the right gentlemen!” Pausing only to take up a small piece of mirror-glass, with polished edges that would not cut his hands or pockets, the Dodger swaggered out after the girl.

82 Nancy looked behind her in every shop-window that afforded her the chance, but her pursuer, polishing up his nickname as his master desired, was much too clever for that. He knew every window between Ratcliffe and St Giles that would allow a backward glimpse and so, whenever Nancy approached this or the next one, he was already in some door-arch or alley-way, quizzing her in his little looking-glass. He was glad to see she kept her word and made her way as directly as possible to the police-court, through the narrow arch off Mutton Lane. Since his skin was more valuable than hers (in the estimation of one of them, anyway), he would have peached on her to Fagan if he had to, but he would have done so with a heavy heart. He could not follow her into the aptly misnamed Love Court, of course, for it offered no hiding place other than the dark interior of the half-dozen cells to which it afforded access. But he crept as close under the arch as he dared and, holding his mirror at the requisite angle, watched her in that, instead. She tapped softly with the key at one of the cell doors, and listened. No sound came from within, so she coughed and listened again. Still there was no reply. “Nolly, dear?” she ventured at last, and in a voice on the verge of tears. “Nolly?” It so happened that there was no one within but a miserable, barefoot criminal who had dared to play the flute for pennies—rather than filch purses or fatten on the charity of local ratepayers. On having proof of this dastardly crime, Mr Fang had told him that, since he had so much breath to spare, he might as well spend it in a wholesome manner upon the treadmill. This fiend in human form, aghast at the confiscation of his flute, had not breath enough left to answer the knock and Nancy’s soft impeachment. Disappointed, she passed on to the next door, behind which languished another of these vile and dangerous felons—a ragged man who had begged for the good ratepayers’ charity directly on the pavement, without involving them in the elephantine apparatus of the Poor Laws; and a costly apparatus it is, too, when the price of bricks, bars, bribes, and beadles is added in. “Is there a little boy here?” she asked with a preliminary little sob, ready to turn on the full waterworks at the first pipe of Oliver’s reply. “No, God forbid!” groaned the wretch within. Her hunt drew blank at the next cell, too, for it housed the worst sort of criminal of all—a man who had sold tinware without a licence to sell so much as a used horseshoe nail; such defiance of the Stamp Office had to be stamped out before it brought the entire panoply of the state—parliament, the army, the church, yea, even the monarchy itself—crashing down about our ears. As that was the last of the cells in which prisoners were held on their progress to prison, Nancy had no recourse but to approach the officer of the court, who had been so taken by the grace of her movements that he had forborne to interrupt her inquiries. “I haven’t got him, my dear,” he said before she could utter so much as an ahem!—for he had, naturally, overheard her piteous inquiries at each cell door. She wrung the sreet-door key in anguish and begged to be told where he was, then.

83 “Why, the gentleman took him,” the man replied. “Gracious heavens—what gentleman?” Nancy would have said a great deal more if the officer had not cut her short with a, “Wait here!” and withdrawn indoors. Convinced she had been tumbled-to, Nancy began to edge toward the arch, much to the Dodger’s consternation. And if the officer had not shouted again for Nancy to wait—and in tones that convinced her he meant no harm—he assuredly would have been tumbled-to. As it was, Nancy turned back and he made good his escape. He was thereby prevented from witnessing a brief scene in which the officer returned and handed her the card Mr Brownlow had given in to Mr Fang, and which the magistrate had tossed aside so contemptuously; nor did he see her secrete it beneath her bodice before she made further inquiry as to the particular circumstances in which Oliver was handed into the kind old gentleman’s custody. The Dodger, having seen none of this, as I say, was even more admiring of her astuteness in taking a route back to Fagan’s eyrie that was three times the length of her walk to Love Court. All that way, Nancy’s mind seethed with the possibilities that arose out of this new and quite alarming intelligence. Fagan would have to move—that was certain. The best that could be hoped for was that Oliver had not been shamming a fever, that he truly was as ill as he had seemed when they carried him out, unconscious, to the coach. There would then be the lapse of a day—and possibly of many days—before he could blab, or even let drop some innocent remark that would nonetheless lead the forces of the law to the end of Saffron Hill the Great. When at length she arrived back among her friends (the Dodger having skipped ahead of her at the last), she shared with them the fruits of these cogitations—all except, that is, the name and directions on the card she had been given. Not even when Bill Sikes remarked that none would sleep easy till the boy was found. Why she withheld those important particulars she could not easily have explained; insofar as she settled the matter in her own mind, it was to say that, since his lordship had to move lodgings, anyway, Oliver could lead the entire constabulary of London—and all the Beefeaters in the Tower, too—to Fagan’s hideaway and find nothing but a few torn, unsaleable wipes to bear out his tale. “Bill is right, good people!” Lord Fagan was packing up his belongings even as he spoke. “Nancy, you did well, very well. You may keep the clothes on your back and much profit may they bring you! Now there’s no time to lose. Dodger— fetch a handcart. Charley—go and talk to the coachmen round Mutton Lane. There can’t be too many who carried an unconscious boy today. You know where we’re moving—the old crib in Newgate—within earshot of the execution bell, which will help to keep us all on our toes, I should hope! Bill!” “I’m not ’ere already!” Sikes exclaimed, rising unsteadily to his feet. Until he saw Fagan quietly panicking, he had not realized quite how dangerous their situation now was, and how little time they had in which to mend it. Nancy and Bet went off about their business, or trade; Sikes kicked his dog downstairs and fell half the way after it. Bates and the Dodger went to do his lordship’s bidding. Only then did Fagan unscrew the floorboards for the last time and recover his box of pretty things.

84 As he clutched it to him, hunting about for somewhere to hide it, pro tem, there was a loud knock at the door and someone attempted to break the bolt. “What?” cried an alarmed Fagan. “Who’s there?” “Me.” It was the Dodger’s voice. “I’ll kill you!” Fagan shouted as his heart, having missed two beats, made up for it with four. “Is Oliver to be kidnapped to the other ken, Nancy wants to know?” “Yes!” Fagan shouted. “Of course. Only make it safe. Wherever she can lay safe hands upon him—she, you, Bates, anyone!—find him out! Find him out! And bring him to me. That’s all.”

CHAPTER 14

Grimwig reveals a strange dietary. Nancy plays a new suit

The next time Oliver took a bowl of broth with Mrs Bedwin he was disappointed to observe that the painting of the pretty lady had been removed. The good housekeeper, noticing the movement of his eyes, said, “Ah! It’s gone, you see.” Oliver sighed and asked why. “It has been taken down, child, because Mr Brownlow said that, as it seemed to worry you, perhaps it might hinder your getting well, you know.” “Oh, no, indeed. It didn’t worry me, ma’am,” Oliver said. “I liked to see it. I quite loved it.” “Well, well!” said the old lady soothingly, “you get back on your feet as fast as ever you can, dear, and it shall be hung up again. There—that’s a promise.” Oliver did not wish to argue with someone who had been so kind to him so he said no more for the present, though he felt sure his sadness to see it gone would do far more to hinder his recovery than would the strange excitement he felt stirring within him when he had last seen the likeness. Meanwhile, Mrs Bedwin was telling him all about her family and how they had fared since her good kind husband had died, six-and-twenty years ago; her amiable and handsome daughter was married to an amiable and handsome man and they lived in the country; her dutiful son was clerk to a merchant in the West Indies and wrote beautiful letters home four times a year. She told him of the scrapes and petty adventures of their childhoods, and so Oliver gained a notion of what life would have been like for him had his mother not died but instead had lived in such harmony with his father, whoever that mysterious man might have been. Seeing his sadness and correctly divining its cause—and tutting at herself for being such a thoughtless creature—she changed the subject immediately, brought out her playing cards and got him to help her dust them with fresh French chalk, which allowed her to explain the business of suits, court cards, jokers, aces, and tricks. From which it was but the shortest step to his first lesson in the excellent game of cribbage, which he learned as fast as she could teach him until it was time to ‘walk the wooden way to Bedfordshire,’ as she expressed it for his amusement.

85 His laughter at her conceit brought a pang to the good lady’s heart for she had good cause to know how swift is childhood’s end and how precious is each such golden moment. Long after Oliver was asleep she stood at his bedside, gazing at his dear little head, longing to stretch forth a hand and play with his curly locks, and wondering at the transformation that had come over the household since Oliver’s entry into it. Oliver dreamed of a garden in the country, an orchard, a bough with a swing. He sat in the swing and laughed merrily as a lady pushed him higher and higher. He thought she was Mrs Bedwin but when she had pushed him hard enough, she came round to stand before him and then he saw it was the pretty lady in the picture. Over the days that followed had had many more such happy dreams, some by night, some of the waking sort, and all inspired by Mrs Bedwin’s tales of her own children and the halcyon days of their infancy. He thus acquired, so to speak, a childhood of the imagination, which, while it did not supplant the horrors of the one he had actually endured, did much, nonetheless, to efface its scars. They were happy times, those days of Oliver’s recovery. Everything was so quiet, and neat, and orderly, everybody so kind and gentle. After the harsh noise and turbulence in which he had always lived and moved, it seemed like heaven itself. As soon as he was fit enough to get out of his nightshirt and dressing gown by day, Mr Brownlow ordered a complete new suit, and a new cap, and a new pair of shoes for him. “What shall I do with these?” he asked, pointing to his old ones, which, as he had been Lord Fagan’s favourite, were still quite serviceable. “Whatever you like,” the old gentleman told him. And so he gave them to one of the housemaids, who had been especially kind to him, with instructions to sell them and keep the money for herself. To give away money like that, even if not directly in coin, made him feel a very grand little man, especially when he thought what he would have done for a penny, a mere six months earlier. It so happened that, about the same time, Nancy took it into her head to investigate Oliver’s new home and circumstances—all without revealing herself or the true nature of her interest, of course. She lived in a world where all was deception, where to tell an unnecessary truth was like exposing an artery to a savage dog, and her world was filled with savage dogs. She knew—or guessed— that there must be one or two genuinely kind old gentlemen in the world who would treat little Oliver as this Brownlow man had done; but for each one of them she would think there must be hundreds whose motives were not the ones they wore on their sleeves. Some impulse within her, which she would rather not own, much less investigate, nonetheless urged her to discover whether Brownlow was that one exception among the hundreds. One early morning that summer found her standing near the corner of Goodson and White Lion streets, wondering how best to proceed, when she noticed a rag- and-bone man—a ‘totter’ as they call them—going totting from door to door. He was not known to her, and was therefore probably not from Clerkenwell. If he were, he would not serve the plan that was even then forming itself in her mind,

86 for Lord Fagan was a grandee among the criminals of that neighbourhood and would soon have the man’s tale out of him. With her heart in her mouth—lest Oliver should glance out of a window and spy her there—she pulled her shawl around her face and sauntered across the road to where the totter’s handcart stood. She picked among the scraps idly until the man came back from his latest trawl, which was at The Hollies, next door to The Laurels. “ ’Lo?” he said, making half a question of the word. “Do I know you, miss?” She favoured him with her prettiest smile. “Not lest you come from Ratcliffe Highway.” He shook his head and said, “Holloway, me.” He nodded at his cart. “See anything as takes yer fancy? I could let yer ’ave it cheap, seeing as I’d not have the fag of carrying it ’ome.” “Not really,” she admitted. “I’m looking for a suit for me little brother, something serviceable in the grey or green line ...” And she went on to describe the suit Fagan had given Oliver to wear. He shrugged his regrets at being unable to assist her and went to try his luck at the tradesman’s door of The Laurels. Nancy walked away with all deliberate sloth (which would equate to a lawyer’s idea of ‘all deliberate speed’), hoping against hope. She was not disappointed. “Oi!” the man called out as he emerged on to the street once more. “It must be one of your clear-voyant days,” he added as she drew near. “Ain’t this the werry article as wot you described?” “Pretty much,” Nancy agreed, fondling it with amazement. “How did they have it for sale? It doesn’t look like the sort of suit a boy in that fine household would wear.” He told her the identical thought had crossed his mind, and he had assumed it came from a nephew or little brother of the servant who sold it him; but he always inquired deeper as one had to be so careful of handling stolen property. Nancy looked shocked at the very thought of it. The man went on to explain that the household had adopted an orphan boy—“because his little angel’s face so closely resembled a picture they had in the house”—and that these cast-offs were the clothes in which they had found him; they had since bought him a lovely new suit of green. Nancy, having described the clothes so minutely, could hardly refuse them now. Indeed, she paid for them gladly, for her nimble wits had already devised a plan that would convince Lord Fagan she was ever on the alert for any sign of the boy, but which would not bring him one whit closer to his goal of recapturing Oliver. Meanwhile, as the boy himself was daily recovering in strength and spirit, Mr Brownlow was less wary of upsetting him and reversing his convalescence. And one afternoon, when Oliver would normally have been beating Mrs Bedwin at cribbage—which he now did quite regularly—he was instead required to wait upon his benefactor upstairs in his study. Brownlow found him surveying the ranks of books on the lowest of his library shelves. “Ah, Oliver!” he exclaimed. “There are a great many books, are there not.” “I never saw so many.” Oliver shook his head in wonderment. “You shall read them all in time,” the man promised. “If you are good, that is,

87 and treat them well. Reading them is better than staring at their bindings in most cases—though I confess there are books of which it can be said that their bindings are the finest part. Should you prefer to write books, rather than read them, I wonder?” Oliver thought the matter over carefully. At length he said, “I think it might be very easy to write a book, sir—a story book, at least.” Brownlow chuckled and bade him sit down and explain himself. “Well, sir,” said Oliver gravely, “a story book is all lies from beginning to end, is it not? It tells of things that never were. And lies are much easier to think of than the truth.” Brownlow frowned; this reasoning did not please him and his tone was more severe when he bade Oliver explain further. “You see, sir,” the boy went on, “if a man is a pastrycook, then he is a pastrycook, and there’s an end to it. To say he is a postman is a lie, or a clerk, or a beadle, or an undertaker, or a chimney-sweep, or any other sort of tradesman at all. And yet, since there must be hundreds of trades, it is easier to hit upon one by chance than to strive after the sole, single truth about him. That is all I meant.” Brownlow’s face softened and he laughed at this simple view of the author’s trade as a liar. “Consider this, though, Oliver,” he said. “The first lie may be easy enough. Fetch down a list of trades and stick a pin in it at hazard. Hey presto—’tis done! But once you have decided your man is—what did you say?—a beadle, why then you cannot have him going about in your next chapter with a tray on his shoulder and ringing a bell to the cry of hot muffins! Nor, in the next, can he stow away his sticks and brushes and his bags of soot at the end of a hard day’s work. Instead you must know the ins and outs of a beadle’s life and work, from the sound of his longstaff on the cobbles to the design of the brass buttons on his tunic! D’ye see, m’boy?” “The Good Samaritan,” Oliver murmured and gave a little shiver. “I beg your pardon?” An alarmed Mr Brownlow wondered if the fever were returning. Oliver shook himself, as if reviving from a half-waking bad dream, which, in a sense, he was. “Nothing, sir,” he replied. “I recall the brass buttons of a beadle I once knew.” “And they portrayed the Good Samaritan?” Oliver nodded. “They were given him especially by the board. He was very proud of them.” Brownlow, still fearing that the fever was not as distant as Oliver’s robust words made it seem, pressed him no further. “I think I should like to be a gentleman’s valet, sir,” Oliver prattled on—hoping the old gentleman would take the hint, for, as the reader will readily understand, he had not formed so high opinion of the world as to imagine it could contain people whose kindliness was permanent and who would indulge him in such delightful idleness for ever. “And in time I should become his under-butler and then his butler.” “Bless me!” Brownlow laughed at this new flight of fancy. “Pray what do you know of such things, child?”

88 Oliver told him. In a torrent of words, all designed to show how useful an adjunct he would be to any respectable household, he disgorged himself of almost everything Fagan had taught him in the valet-butler line. “My, my!” Brownlow exclaimed when he had finished. He took off his spectacles and wiped them, as a cure for his bewilderment. “You are a living vade-mecum to high society, my boy! I can see I shall have to acquire a wife and two daughters, all presentable at court, to make full use of all your learning! Grant me a week or two, pray? Such assets cannot be acquired overnight, you know!” They both laughed at this pleasant phantasy, or phantastic pleasantry, and no more was said on the subject for a while. But it left poor Mr Brownlow in a quandary, for where might a young man whose acquaintance with a beadle was so close as to let him know about the man’s brass buttons and the reason for their uniqueness—where might he learn the workings of a ducal palace inside-out? He would have sent Oliver back to Mrs Bedwin’s parlour then if the maid had not come to tell him that Mr Grimwig, a particular friend of his, had called. “Is he coming up?” Brownlow inquired. “Yes, sir. He first asked were there any muffins in the house; and when I told him yes, he said he had come to take tea with you.” “Shall I go down to Mrs Bedwin, sir?” Oliver asked, when his benefactor said that his friend was to be admitted. “No, stay!” Brownlow told him, for, truth to tell, he rather wanted to show off his little foundling, as if he were some kind of valuable acquisition. At this point in the narrative it is only fair to warn the reader that the said Mr Grimwig suffered from an affliction of the heart. It was not the sort of affliction love poets write about; nor could the great and learned Dr Laennec have discovered it, even with the finest of his new auscultation tubes; for the organ in question was, in a word, soft. A dozen times a day it melted in this or that sentimental impulse, which induced in its owner a countervailing strictness, for, like many a settled bachelor, getting on in years, he was thoroughly ashamed of his infirmity and adopted a grim, staccato manner to mask it; also, I regret to say, he had a tendency to strong and violent exclamations, chief among which was a promise to eat his own head if this or that prediction of his should fail to occur—a picture so distasteful that readers of a nervous disposition will, I know, thank me for explaining its provenance first. He was a stout old gentleman who walked with the aid of a thick stick, being rather lame in one leg. He was dressed in a blue coat, striped waistcoat, nankeen breeches and gaiters, and a broad-brimmed white hat turned up with green. A small-plaited shirt-frill protruded from his waistcoat; and a long steel watch- chain, with nothing but a key at its end, dangled loosely beneath it. The ends of his white neckerchief were twisted into a ball about the size of an orange. The variety of shapes into which his countenance was twisted defy all description. He had a knack of screwing his head on one side when he spoke and of glancing out of the corners of his eyes at the same time—which reminded one of the mannerisms of a parrot. It was thus that he stood, on the threshold of Brownlow’s study, holding forth a hand, in whose upturned palm lay a small and very guilty-looking piece of orange peel.

89 “Orange peel!” he barked. “The surgeon’s friend! Isn’t it marvellous! One can’t even visit a friend’s house without encountering it on his doorstep. What is the world coming to, I ask?” “Come in, old friend!” Brownlow laughed. “Come and see ...” But Grimwig had not done. “I’ve slipped on orange peel before, sir. I know it will be the death of me one day. It will, sir. If not, I’ll be content to eat my own head!” Neither death would be pretty to observe, Oliver thought, though he said nothing. “Hallo, what’s this?” He pretended to notice Oliver at last, though his eyes had taken in the boy from the first. He bent and peered at him as he might inspect a specimen of pond life. “This is young Oliver—Oliver Twist. The boy I spoke of—with the fever.” “I thought you said his name was Tom Walters.” Brownlow looked embarrassed. “A misunderstanding,” he murmured. “Oliver Twist, eh?” Grimwig held out the offending orange peel. “Not Orange Twist? We haven’t been twisting the peel off oranges and throwing it on front doorsteps, have we?” Brownlow replied for Oliver, who seemed overawed. “Of course he hasn’t. Come, take off your hat and sit down and be pleasant to him. I know you have it in you.” When Grimwig had, grudgingly, complied, he went on: “And what’s this about ‘the surgeon’s friend’? Orange peel?” “Mock me not!” Grimwig exclaimed impressively. “The surgeon who lives at the corner of my street? Sends out his boy with a basket full of peel, and ...” “You’ve seen him?” Grimwig scowled and shook his head. “Too clever! But it’s him—I know it!” “How so?” “Take last night. A poor young lady, passing my door, slipped on some orange peel, no bigger than this.” Again he waved the offending litter. “And where’s the first place she looks as she picks herself up off my railings? Eh? The very first place? Why—to the surgeon’s red lamp, shining at the corner house. I threw up my window at once, of course. Shouted to her: ‘Don’t go near that man—he’s an assassin!’ And so he is. If he isn’t ...” And here he banged his stick on the floor, which, with him, often substituted for the auto-cannibalistic threat itself. He turned again to Oliver and said, “So, this is the boy, eh?” “That is the boy,” Brownlow assured him proudly. Grimwig wondered what to say next and finally hit upon: “And how are you, boy?” “A great deal better, I thank you, sir,” Oliver told him. Which exhausted the entire stock of conversation that Grimwig reserved for boys —polite conversation, at least. Brownlow, sensing that his friend was less impressed with Oliver’s good looks and charm than he had hoped—and being certain the man was about to express such feelings aloud, directed Oliver to go down and tell Mrs Bedwin they were ready for tea. “And muffins,” Grimwig said. “And here!” He held out the orange peel for

90 Oliver to take. “You may have this back, too.” Oliver hesitated, thinking that to accept the peel after such an invitation would be to accept the impeachment, too. But Mr Brownlow nodded at him, indicating it would be all right, and so he did as both men had bidden him. “A handsome little boy,” Brownlow said when Oliver had gone. “I don’t know,” his friend replied pettishly. “Don’t know?” “A boy is a boy. Peas in a pod. I only recognize two sorts: mealy boys and beef- faced boys.” “And which is Oliver?” “Mealy. The surgeon’s boy I told you of—he’s beef-faced. Round head, red cheeks, horrid, glaring eyes. His whole body seems forever to be bursting out of his clothes. He has the voice of a pilot and the appetite of a wolf.” He shuddered. “The wretch!” “Well, Oliver is not like that, so you may set your mind at rest.” “He is not,” Grimwig conceded, but then added: “He may be even worse.” Brownlow’s nostrils flared slightly and his lips compressed to a narrow line, which Grimwig, watching aslant as always, seemed pleased to have provoked. “Worse, I say.” He pressed the point home. “Where does he come from? Who is he? What is he? He’s had a fever? Tut! What of it? Fevers do not purge the soul nor are they confined to the virtuous, are they? Villains have fevers, too, don’t they? When I was in Jamaica there was a man who murdered his master. To my own certain knowledge the wretch had had six fevers but he wasn’t recommended for mercy on account of it. Fiddlesticks!” Brownlow was now too vexed to be certain of giving a civil answer, so he contented himself with hoping that Bedwin would not be long with their tea. “And muffins,” Grimwig reminded him, adding, “I hope she counts the plate at night.” “Why, pray?” Brownlow asked frostily. “Well, if she don’t find a teaspoon or two missing one sunshiny morn, I promise you I’ll ...” Bang went the stick again. The maid came with the tea and, behind her, walked Oliver with the muffins—a conjunction that so gladdened Grimwig that he was, for the rest of his visit, very nearly civil to the boy. Near the end of it he turned to Oliver with something close to a smile and said, “Well, young sir, when are we to be favoured with a full and true account of the life of Master Oliver Twist, eh?” Oliver drew breath to give it him at once, with both barrels as it were, or both lungs, at least; but Brownlow intervened hastily. “Tomorrow,” he said. “In the morning, eh, Oliver? At ten o’clock, shall we say?” Oliver glanced ruefully at Mr Grimwig, whom he would dearly have loved to satisfy at once, but he accepted his master’s arrangements and begged their leave. “See that hesitation?” Grimwig crowed as the door closed on the retreating boy. “Now he knows you’ll press him for the truth, he hesitates! He’ll not come near you tomorrow morning, mark my words! He is deceiving you.” “Dear old friend!” Brownlow patted his arm in a kindly, patronizing manner, having decided that silent anger was the wrong response.

91 “He is deceiving you!” Grimwig repeated. “If he is not, why then, I’ll ...” And down went his stick, one more time. At that moment Mrs Bedwin came in with a parcel of books that the bookseller’s boy had just delivered—the same bookseller whose testimony had set Oliver free. “Oh, hold him at the door, Bedwin,” her master exclaimed. “There are some to go back.” “He’s gone, sir,” the good woman replied. “Then call after him. Why didn’t he wait for the money for these? Does he think his master’s a tailor, or what?” Out in the street, Oliver ran one way, the scullery-maid the other, but the errand- boy had gone. “Dear me!” Mr Brownlow was vexed when he heard of it. “And I particularly wanted those books to be returned tonight!” “Send the honest young Oliver Twist with them,” Grimwig suggested slyly. “He will surely deliver them—and the payment—quite safely ... surely?” “Yes, do let me take them, sir!” Oliver was eager to prove his honesty to the suspicious old gentleman. If Brownlow had not been intent upon the same object, he would never have consented to let Oliver out alone, with the evening drawing on, and the boy himself so recently recovered from a fever. “I’ll run all the way there and back, sir,” Oliver added. “Hmmm!” Grimwig murmured as he tapped his fingers and stared innocently out of the window. “You shall go, my dear,” Brownlow promised. “The books are on the chair beside my bed. Fetch them here.” When Oliver returned with the parcel, his master smoothed his hair and straightened his collar. “You are to say,” he told him, “that these are books I am returning and that here is the four pounds ten I owe him.” He showed Oliver a five-pound note before tucking it into the boy’s inside breast pocket. “Now how much change will there be?” “Ten shillings, sir,” Oliver repliied. Grimwig banged his stick yet again but said no word. All the way down the stairs Mrs Bedwin kept repeating the name of the bookseller and the directions and the streets he was to avoid between here and there—little knowing that Oliver could have found his way there in the dark (having already done so, most of the distance, with the Dodger) and that, of all places in London, the bookseller’s at the corner of Steward’s Court and Clerkenwell Green was burned into his memory and would stay there to his dying day. “I’ll be ten minutes!” Oliver called as he set off. “Bless us!” Mrs Bedwin trotted after him and tugged his cap a little straighter. “A Derby winner couldn’t get there and back in twenty.” Upstairs, Grimwig was expressing a similar notion, though for a different purpose. “Twenty minutes,” he said, taking out his alderman and setting it on the whatnot

92 beside him. “Half an hour,” Brownlow said. Misgivings were already beginning to overlie his confidence—not for Oliver’s honesty but rather for his safety out there. “It’ll be dark when he gets back.” “Oh!” Grimwig sneered. “You really expect him back, do you?” “I do,” Brownlow snapped. “He has a new suit of clothes on his back, a valuable parcel of books under his arm, and a five-pound note in his pocket—and you still expect him back? I tell you, Brownlow, he’ll fly at once to his old friends, the thieves who robbed you on Clerkenwell Green. And what a merry laugh they’ll have at your expense! If that boy comes back in half an hour—in half a year!—why then, sir, I assure you most solemnly: I’ll eat my head!”

CHAPTER 15

Oliver falls from Paradise to Purgatory. Grimwig spares the reader a most guruesome feast

Nancy took Oliver’s old suit to Alfred Timms, a used-clothing seller who had a stall on Windmill Hill, opposite the White Bear. There she did something she had never done before in her life—she gave away her own property, it being legally acquired, and immediately bought it back again. The manner of this astonishing lapse from her own moral standards was thus: She slipped the suit among a great heap of used clothing and then, pretending to discover it there, cried out, “Why, here’s the very thing!” Timms showed no surprise—which meant either that he believed the suit to have been there all along or that he was a world’s champion at masking any emotion he might feel. Nancy inclined to the former explanation. The man asked four shillings and accepted two, which pleased Nancy best of all, for it was precisely what she had given the totter from Holloway; a penny more (or less) would mean that one of the two men had got more than level value. “Where did you get it?” she asked innocently—precisely as she would have done if she had truly spied Oliver’s suit there among the oddments on the stall. Timms frowned, bit his lip, rolled his eyes upward. “It’s hard to say,” he told her at last. “We swops all the time, see. I got stuff as don’t move ’ere so I takes it down Spitalfields or, as it may be, up Saint Giles’s, and we does a swop, see?” “And where was your last swop?” He eyed her suspiciously. “Whossit to you?” She laughed gaily. “Nothing to me, but I’m buying this for Lord Fagan—a little present for one of his boys as dodged a gentleman what owed me ten bob—and got it off of him, too. But you know his lordship! He don’t want his boys going out in stolen suits as would land them in the clink. So, if I can’t tell him where this come from, he’s as like as not to come up here hisself and do the asking. See?” “Saint Giles’s!” Timms exclaimed very firmly, for, to be sure, a personal

93 inquiry from Lord Fagan was the last thing he would welcome. “You’re certain about that?” “ ’Course I am! I remember it perfickly. I could take yer to the very man as what swopped with me.” He made a mental note to slip up to St Giles’s that same evening and buy the man a drink. “That’s a relief, then!” Nancy exclaimed as she made off with her bundle. “Not much!” the man muttered under his breath as he watched her go. She went directly to Lord Fagan’s new lodgings, which were in the back kitchen of a house in Ball Yard, off Giltspur Street, just south of the big, open-air meat- market in Smithfield. These lodgings were new to Fagan only in the sense that he and his little thieves had newly arrived there; in fact, they were just one of several possible lodgings he maintained as potential bolt-holes in time of travail, both north and south of the Thames. When Nancy had started working for him, at the tender age of thirteen (which was a decade ago by the calendar but a century when measured by the yardstick of experience), this had been her first lodging, so she could have found her way there even on the darkest night. “See what I’ve brought you, my lord!” she exclaimed as she threw the suit down with a flourish before him. “Isn’t it a clever girl as can keep her eyes skinned and spot an article like that among a hundred others on old Timms’s stall!” A slow, delighted smile spread across his lordship’s face; if it wasn’t for that streak of bitter cruelty within him, Nancy thought, a girl could almost lose her heart. No! A woman could, she meant. A mere girl could lose it all too easily— hadn’t she proved it in her time! “You are a clever girl, Nancy,” he murmured; his voice was like a caress from a silky, perfumed hand. “I have never doubted it for a moment. Indeed, I’ve often said you are too clever at times. But this is not one of them. How much did you pay him?” “A quid.” Her eyes danced merrily, for she knew he would not believe it—nor did she intend him to. “Very likely!” he sneered. “Two bob is more the mark—and I’d have got him down to eighteen pence. However ...” He took out a sovereign. “It might be worth the other eighteen bob to know where he acquired them?” “I know that, too,” she said, reaching for the coin. His ice-cold eyes dwelled in hers awhile, even as his lips continued to smile; she suppressed a shiver and struggled with herself to stare him out. “Very well.” He relinquished the coin at last. She pocketed it before she told him: “He did a swop with a totter up Saint Giles’s. I would have pressed him for more but I feared it would only rouse his curiosity—which I think you’d sooner do yourself, if it must be done at all, that is.” Fagan stared ruefully at the pocket where his coin had vanished. “Sometimes, Nancy,” he said, “the difference between good and too good lies on a knife-edge. Beware of knife-edges, pet, if you wish to see this year out.” She shivered again but kept up an outward bravado. “I reckon it means Oliver’s up West somewhere, my lord,” she said. “Don’t you? I’ve not worked much up West this year. I was thinking of moving on, so ... what d’you say? Bet can bait

94 for the Dodger and Batesy while I’m gone.” He shook his head dubiously. “She’s not as pretty as you, my petal—though I’ll arrange to cancel out the difference if you ever tell her I said so! She doesn’t lure the gentlemen’s eyes so surely as you.” He moved his hand as near her as he could without provoking her to draw back, and he outlined, with a sculptor’s hand, the lures to which he had referred. “You’d be amazed what difference a better dress, some artful padding, and a bit of paint can make,” Nancy assured him. “But it’s up to you. Bill wouldn’t mind me working up West, I know.” “Oh?” Fagan was alert to the suggestion that further revelations might follow this somewhat cryptic assertion. Nancy glanced over her shoulder, as if afraid she might be overheard. Then she lowered her voice to say, “He’d be glad if I was to case a West End crib for him. He’s losing his taste for country work. Peckham, Dulwich, Ealing, Hounslow, Willesden ...” She named the towns and villages outside London where Bill Sikes had lately ‘burst a ken’. “He don’t fancy the long march no more, see. He wants to walk round the corner, put up a jacob, scoop the loot, and be back home, snug in his bed, all inside the hour. And if he could stay in his nightshirt all along, so much the better.” Fagan licked his lips and stared at her uncertainly. “I hope you don’t think I’m singing off the wrong sheet, my lord,” she added. “I know he’s a particular friend of yours. But a habit of laziness could be dangerous to more than him, I think.” “You think right, Nancy—and you do right, too, to let me know.” “You won’t say I told you? He’d kill me if he knew.” He stared at her reproachfully. “You ask if I would peach, Nancy? Tut, tut!” Nancy knew not only that he would peach but that he actually did so, whenever a boy or girl became more of a liability than an asset, or when he needed to throw a sop to the traps. Once, in a rare, unguarded moment, he had said, “Why murder anyone when you can get the law to do it for you?” Nonetheless she kept her silence. “So—do I work up West or not? Keep me eyes skinned for the brat?” she asked. Fagan weighed the matter before he replied. “Not if it encourages Sikes to think he can risk his neck—which is the same as your neck and mine, my dear—in easy back-jumps just round the corner. Allow me to ponder this matter further, eh? There is a house to crack in Chertsey—a particular house.” He chuckled strangely at this. “Oh yes! A very particular house, which I had reserved to him.” “Chertsey! He’ll be happy as a lark to walk the forty miles there and back, I don’t think!” But Nancy did not prolong their discourse. Her purpose was, of course, to divert Fagan’s search for Oliver away from the districts immediately around Clerkenwell, which, since the kindly gentleman had been on foot, would be the natural place in which to seek him out. Why she felt so agitated upon the point she could not easily have said. In her circles a soft heart was as crippling as a missing foot or the loss of an eye, so she excused it to herself in more practical ways. Oliver’s arrival among them had upset the delicate balance of allegiance

95 and deception that had previously held them all together. The Dodger had been most put-out of all, and when the Dodger was put-out, Batesy was put-out, too. And when both the Dodger and Batesy were put-out, she and Bet were made to suffer—which then put Bill out of sorts. And so, no matter what splendid plans his lordship might have contrived, concerning Oliver’s future, they were not worth the rupture of those fragile bonds that held the rest of them together. Thus she assured herself she was free of that most dangerous taint: a gentle heart. That assurance was put to the test a week or so later, when she was out walking with Bill Sikes, going from public house to public house in search of a man who owed him money. It was the same evening that Oliver was sent to the bookseller, with a new suit, a parcel of books, and a five-pound note—and all to prove his honesty to Mr Grimwig. Oliver took the short cut down Bridewell Walk and onward through the alley beside the Quaker Workhouse, at the sight of which he fell into the contemplation of his own happiness. Thus distracted, he missed the turning into Clerkenwell Close, which would have brought him directly to the Green, and continued onward, instead, into Peartree Court—emerging into Rag Street at precisely the moment when Bill and Nancy came out of the Peartree Inn, having once again drawn blank. Nancy spotted Oliver at once. The thoughts that sped through her mind in the next twinkling of one of her merry eyes could fill an entire chapter; here it is enough to say that, in her world, people were either the quick or the dead—quick in their wits, that is. The main burden of her thinking was that, since Bill had seen Oliver only once or twice—in old castoffs and in the gloom of Lord Fagan’s former eyrie—he was unlikely to have recognized this rosy-cheeked little angel in his brand-new suit. She therefore turned away from Oliver and, pointing to one of the numerous little courts that opened into Townsend Street, some forty paces away, cried, “There!” “Wot?” her beau asked gruffly, cursing his mongrel in the same breath, for the creature was showing an inexplicable reluctance to get within reach of his master’s boot. “Hinks,” she said, naming their quarry. “Went up the yard by the Fox and Swan.” “Come on, yer brute!” Sikes aimed a savage kick at the creature, just as it was contemplating a dash for the road. What with Nancy’s urgent tugging at his arm and his cur’s reluctance to join the party, the delay stretched to the point where Oliver, whistling a happy little tune, passed them by in the middle of the street. Even then, Bill did not recognize the boy; what he did recognize, however, was an easy mark carrying an armful of books of some value. “There’s money,” he chuckled, giving a confidential nod in Oliver’s direction. Nancy, realizing the game was up—for, even if Bill did not recognize the boy at once, he soon would—had no choice but to save her own skin now. Vowing to do her best to protect Oliver in the dismal times that now beckoned him, she cried out, “Oliver! Oh, my dear little brother!” and ran forward to throw her arms about him before he could escape. “You’re mad to come back here!” she whispered as

96 soon as she held him tight. “Don’t!” he shouted, struggling to escape. “Let me go! Help me, someone!” Passers-by paused on their errands; people began to emerge from nearby doors; windows were thrown wide along upper storeys. “Oh, Oliver! We’ve found you at last! Where have you been, you little wretch? You’ve no idea what suffering you’ve caused at home—running away like that!” In her eagerness to cover her earlier ‘failure’ to recognize the boy, she overdid the hysterical welcome she now gave him—so much so that a kindly couple asked a butcher’s boy to run and fetch a doctor; but the butcher’s boy, (who was more of the lounging than of the lungeing persuasion and whose hair was sleeked down with suet, which he did not wish to disarrange by any excessive exertion) gave his opinion that it was not necessary—a proposition which Nancy immediately supported by moderating the frenzy of her welcome for her ‘lost brother.’ “Oh, come home directly, you cruel boy!” she said. The kindly woman asked her what was the matter. “Oh, ma’am!” Nancy touched her arm in a brief token of thanks for her solicitude. “He ran away, near a month ago, from our parents, who are hard- working and respectable people, and went and joined a set of thieves and low characters. He’s almost broken his mother’s heart, I can tell you.” “Oh, you wretch!” exclaimed the woman. “Go home, you little villain!” cried her husband. “I’m not!” Oliver protested. “I haven’t got a mother or father. This woman’s not my sister. I live just up the road there, on the charity of Mister ...” “Oliver!” Nancy was alarmed that Bill would hear and remember the name and directions. “How can you brave it out so! Just see how brazen a liar they have made of him!” “Nancy!” Oliver was in tears by now, enough to break her heart. “How can you tell such lies!” “See!” she crowed triumphantly. “He knows me! He calls me by my name.” Bill, who had held back until he was sure of the temper of the crowd, came forward at last and gave Oliver a mighty cuff about the head, which sent his cap flying. “Oliver,” he roared. “Come ’ome to your poor mother wot’s near to death with worry for yer!” “I don’t belong to them. This brute is a cracksman and this woman is a ...” “Be quiet, you wretched boy—if you know what’s good for you!” Nancy shrieked. “Oh, but they’ve taught him well, good people.” “He looks innocent.” One lady among the crowd was wavering. “ ’Course he does!” Sikes told her scornfully, as if explaining the addition of one and one. “They’re not going to pick a rat-faced boy with shifty eyes, are they! Here, Oliver, what’s this?” He snatched the bundle from under the boy’s arm. “Books? You never read a book in your life. Been thieving them, ’ave yer?” “No! I was on my way ...” “Paid for, are they?” “No. That’s what I was ...” “Not paid for! Ho—now you’ll try to brazen it out, I suppose. On your way to return them, wos yer!” He laughed at the very absurdity of such a notion.

97 “Yes!” Oliver cried, but his protestations were drowned in the laughter of those who had been persuaded by Sikes’s sarcasm. “Help!” he shouted, seeing his position was hopeless. “ ’elp? Yes, I’ll ’elp yer,” the man crowed. And he dealt Oliver a stout blow on the back of his head with one of the books. “That’s right!” called a man from a garret window high above them. “That’s what they need. It’s the only way of bringing them to their senses!” These sage words from on high were enough to swing the crowd entirely against poor Oliver. The more he struggled, the worse he made his guilt seem to the onlookers, and the easier he made it for Nancy and Sikes to carry him off. Their following petered out about halfway down Turnmill Street, leaving Oliver silent and alone with his two captors. “Nancy?” he began plaintively after a while. “Shut up!” she snapped. Then, “Bill, where’s Bullseye?” While Sikes cursed the dog and called him to follow, Nancy bent and whispered to Oliver, “If you make a fuss, darling, we’re both looking at deadmans. Come along quiet and I’ll see no harm befalls you—right?” He nodded and sniffed back a tear—though whether it was of sorrow for his new predicament or gratitude for her promised protection even he could probably not have told you.

* * *

The fishtails burned brightly at The Laurels, Goodson Road, Pentonville; Mrs Bedwin stood by the open door; the maid had run to the end of the street twenty times and more to discover any sign of the dear little boy. And Messrs Brownlow and Grimwig sat in the study, playing a half-hearted game of chess while they waited. Grimwig was being very noble, considering the number of occasions on which he forbore to point out that his head—on this occasion at least—was safe from the gastronomic fate he had promised to inflict upon it if Oliver returned.

CHAPTER 16

Is Oliver a liar, a thief, a devil … from this night forth?

Oliver ran ahead with Bullseye, both of them being eager to stay beyond the reach of Sikes’s boot; but that was as far as their companionship in misery extended. The boy could have run right away at any moment, being smaller and nimbler than either of his captors. He considered the possibility most carefully. Sikes would be impeded by his fondness for the jug and bottle (which, though Oliver was not to know it, of course, was his principal reason for wishing to avoid out- of-town burglaries of late); Nancy, though fleeter of foot, would be hampered by her capacious skirts. But then there was Bullseye. The dog suffered neither disadvantage and would soon bring his attempt at freedom to an inglorious end.

98 Escape would have to bide its time. A short while later he thought that time had come. The narrow streets and courts gave out on to the wide-open acres of Smithfield, the city’s central market for cattle and meat. And though the stalls and shambles were all closed and shuttered at this hour, there would be sufficient in the way of ox-ears, tripes, and unpalatable offal lying around—and enough stray dogs feasting upon it—to distract Bullseye into eating such delicacies or otherwise fighting over them; either diversion would allow Oliver to make his escape in the darkness and the developing mist. But Sikes, who had escorted many an unwilling young ‘fagger’ to a cracking job, was astute enough to know it, too. “Take Nancy’s hand,” he commanded gruffly as soon as they reached the first shuttered stall, where Bullseye started to sniff and lick among the cobbles. When Oliver hesitated, the girl ran forward to grasp him. “Don’t even let it cross your mind!” she warned him in a low murmur. “Not yet.” Sikes grabbed his other arm, almost jerking it out of its socket. “Now listen, you,” he growled. “We’ll like as not meet a trap or two before we’re safely lodged. And yer may think as singing out to them will gain yer freedom back. And so it might. It might, indeed. But take heed now as you’ll gain it for the loss of a leg, aye and maybe a hand or an arm as well. For I can run, and Nance can run, but Bullseye would risk a thousand traps for a mouthful of well-fed little boy! Why, he could introduce his jaws to each other through your wrist as quick as he could snap a bluebottle—which you’ve seen ’im do, I’m sure. But, my little lord”—he bowed with mock servility—“I leave the choice to your own good sense. Never let it be said as I took away all yer freedoms!” And he laughed in congratulation of his own wit as they set out to cross the market square. They did not, as it happened, meet any constables but, halfway across the square, a sound fell on their ears that struck even greater dread into the hearts of two of them. In deep, sonorous strokes the clock on St Paul’s began to tell the hour of eight. Nancy stopped in her tracks. “Oh, Bill!” she said in a low voice, full of dread. “Wot?” he asked impatiently, though he knew well enough what troubled her, for Newgate Gaol stood but a furlong away to the south. And, just in case he missed the point, the chorus was taken up by more distant chimes—from St Giles’s, St Andrew’s, and St Botolph’s Without—all confirming the dreaded hour. “Wot?” he repeated brusquely. “Twelve hours to go!” she said. “Twelve cramped, dirty, miserable hours—I wonder can they hear it?” “ ’Course they can!” he sneered. “When I was inside, Bartlemy time it was, I could ’ear every blasted tin whistle and penny trumpet down the fairground. ’Course they can ’ear it!” “Poor fellows,” Nancy said. “Oh, Bill—such fine young men! What a waste!” “Yeah!” he sneered. “That’s all you women think of—fine young men! Well, they’re as good as dead already, so don’t waste no tears on ’em.” Oliver glanced up at Nancy’s face, visible in the feeble light of the moon, and

99 saw she had blanched as pale as milk. Shortly after that they turned in at Ball Yard and headed for what Oliver took to be an empty, abandoned, and derelict old house. A wooden board, nailed askew on the door, proclaimed that the property was for sale; it looked as if the proclamation had stood there for many a year. Sikes cocked an ear and glanced all about them before giving Nancy the nod; she reached through a knothole and tweaked something within. From far off came the jangle of a bell. The three of them stood back, out of the shadow of the house. Oliver had the sensation of being spied upon but he saw no movement at any of the darkened windows, all of which were tight-shuttered from within. A moment later the door opened, as silently as if its bolt and hinges had been lately oiled, and Bill grabbed the boy by the collar and bundled him indoors without ceremony. Nancy slipped in behind them and shut the door with a muttered, “Who is it?” Oliver’s doubts upon the identical question were resolved the moment this invisible keeper of Hell’s gate opened his mouth and said, “Welcome ’ome, young ’un! I just knowed you wouldn’t be able to stay away from us fer long! Ouch! Help!” Oliver had lashed out silently with his boot and caught him a painful one on the shin. The Dodger, for it was he, did not at once retaliate; he had a fleeting suspicion his assailant might, in fact, have been Sikes—partly because he would not have believed Oliver to be capable of such ingratitude after all he had done to help the lad, and partly because Sikes was well capable of kicking anybody in London, except Lord Fagan, of course, on nothing more than his own slight whim. “Was that you, Bill?” he asked in a wounded tone that was nonetheless respectful. “He’s too drunk to kick an elephant in daylight,” Oliver replied. “Who do you think it was!” Despite the risk to himself, he thought his best chance of escape was to get everybody as angry as possible and, he hoped, flying at one another’s throats; he would then take the chance to bolt. “Cut it aht!” Sikes roared. “Any more of this and you’ll both feel my toecaps. Is his lordship at ’ome? Is ’e receiving callers with double-knocks this evening?” “ ’E is, Bill. And right glad ’e will be to receive this evening’s plunder. More’n what ’e was wiv the last lot, I shouldn’t wonder.” Sikes might well have been unable to kick an elephant by day but his instinct for locating things in the dark was unimpaired—as he now proved by locating the Dodger’s neckerchief and hauling the lad off the ground by it. “Whaddya mean?” he growled. Nancy took a chance to run her fingers through Oliver’s curls, to soothe him and assure him, silently, of her help whenever it did not compromise her health. “Nah then, Bill,” the Dodger pleaded. “Don’t let’s keep his lordship waiting, eh? You know what he’s like.” “Yeah!” his captor sneered. “And you know what I’m like when little snotties drop remarks like that without explaining them! Are you saying as Fagan has cause for complaint with the swag I brung?” “A trivial excess of tin and spelter, Bill—that was all. A small want of gold. A

100 slight deficiency of silver. A trifling lack of bronze.” “Right!” Sikes dropped him like a ratcatcher’s sack. The phrases were so unlike those the Dodger might employ, and so like those his master would let fall without even thinking, that he knew their author at once. “We’ll soon sort this aht—where is ’e?” “This way, Bill.” The Dodger, pleased to be free, skipped ahead into the pitch- black passage. “Fetch a light!” Sikes stood his ground. “If our respectable little guest was to tread on Bullseye in the dark, I wouldn’t answer for the ... the ... the whotsit of his limbs.” “Integrity,” Oliver murmured. “Health. Soundness ...” His contemptuous list was cut short when he was almost felled to the floor by yet another violent blow from the burglar. “Shut your snout when your elders and betters is speaking!” Sikes roared. “You should learn to respeck them as knows more’n what you’ll ever learn.” Dodger reappeared at that moment with a lighted candle in a battered old tin stick. By its light he led them safely—safe from Bullseye’s jaws, that is—down several passages until Oliver was sure they were no longer in the building by which they had entered, and might not even be in its immediate neighbours, either. He did not see Oliver close-to until they paused at last before a door with light creeping out at its threshold and the sounds of happy banter coming from within. The moment he saw Oliver’s fine new suit he burst out laughing and, throwing open the door with a flourish, cried, “Make way! Make way, I say, for his lordship, the Duke of Fang’s Court!” Lord Fagan was never taken by surprise, except when it suited him to seem so; it did not suit him now. He comprehended the scene at a glance and, taking the Dodger’s words for his cue, advanced upon Oliver with outstretched arms and a smile. “Your grace!” he exclaimed, bowing low. “Forgive my manservant his ignorance.” He managed to cuff the Dodger in passing, as he stood upright again. “What’s the correct address for a duke?” he snarled. When the Dodger said nothing, seeming to prefer a surly and reproachful stare to a verbal reply that might earn him another blow, Fagan said, “Tell him, Oliver.” “ ‘Duke’ if you know him socially. ‘Your grace’ if you don’t. ‘My Lord Duke’ in a letter ...” “All right, precious. You’ve forgotten nothing during your exile in Egypt. I’m glad to see it—but even more glad you’ve decided to return to the promised land.” The Dodger, who had hoped that Oliver would have lost his place as Fagan’s little hero, nursed his bruised leg and wounded pride in sulky silence, vowing a terrible revenge whenever the chance arose to wreak it without incriminating himself. His lordship’s next words cheered him up, however. “We’re delighted to see you looking so well, my dear,” he said. “Artful! Give him another suit—the one Nancy brought.” He smiled at Oliver. “We don’t want to spoil your lovely Sunday best, do we! You really should have written, my dear. We’d have decked the walls and got up quite a banquet to welcome you home.” Meanwhile, the Dodger was eagerly stripping poor Oliver of his finery. And

101 Charley Bates, not to be deprived of all the fun, was replacing it, item by item, with the suit Nancy had brought home. “Say thank-you to Nancy, Oliver, my dear,” Fagan told him. “She knew you’d be home one day and she knew you’d be pining for the clothes that pompous old windbag stole from you.” Oliver, remembering what pains it had cost him to defend his mother against the shallow sneers of Noah Claypole, determined to hold his peace; yet, oddly enough, his ability to do so —not to rise to the offered bait—seemed only to please his lordship the more. “Aren’t you going to thank the dear, kind girl?” Fagan persisted. Oliver turned to Nancy. “The maid told me she sold them to a rag-and-bone man from Holloway. How did you find him?” “My, oh my, Oliver, my dear!” Fagan threw up his hands in admiration. “What a perfectly apt question. A good question. A pertinent question! Holloway, eh! Answer him Nancy, there’s a dear.” He was mistaken to indulge his own sarcasm so proudly and at such length, for, though Nancy had been alarmed at Oliver’s question, the prolonged interval gave her time to compose herself and her reply. She strode over to a rack on which a couple of dozen items of stolen clothing were airing and turning cold. “Bayswater?” she asked, touching a cape. “St John’s Wood?” A fine lady’s hat. “Mayfair?” A ball-gown. And so forth, until an angry Fagan told her to stop. She then said, “It’s no great art, my lord, for a boy’s suit to gravitate from Holloway to Alfred Timms’s stall in Windmill Hill by way of Saint Giles’s, I think.” And so the risk of exposure—of her lie about finding Oliver’s old suit—was put behind her; even so, it had been an awkward moment. She hoped Oliver might hold his tongue in future, or talk of other things. “ ’Ere!” the Dodger cried in triumph as he flourished the fiver Mr Brownlow had placed in Oliver’s inside pocket, which he was rifling with professional gusto. “Mine, I think!” Fagan snatched it from him before he even saw the man make a move. “Mine!” cried Sikes, making an unsuccessful grab for the paper. “No, my dear,” Fagan assured him. “The boy is mine and so is his property. But you may keep the books—which I see you still have under your arm.” “I’ll ’ave that paper, Fagan, or Nancy and me’ll take the boy back to Rag Street where we found ’im.” He dropped the books on the table and held out his hand with unsteady menace. Fagan considered his own best interests—which is as much to say that he breathed, for the two actions were synonymous with him. To spin the matter out he turned to Oliver and, with every show of sincerity, asked him his opinion in the matter. Oliver, knowing all the parties almost as well as he knew himself by now, said, “Obviously, my lord, I want you to keep the money so that Mister Sikes and Nancy will take me back and set me free where they found me.” Fagan acknowledged his observation with an ironic dip of his head. “But,” the boy continued, “it is just as obvious to me that you will not let that

102 happen. Then again, I can understand why you don’t wish Mister Sikes to have so much loose money all at once.” “ ’Ere!” Sikes, suspecting he was being insulted, bunched up his fists but did not know whom to threaten more. Fagan smiled at Oliver as a teacher might smile at his star pupil. “Go on,” he said. “Why should Mister Sikes not have this money now?” “Because, my lord—if you’ve told me once, you’ve told me a thousand times— he is a drunken sot. He’ll spend it on fortified wines and spirits ... and when it loosens his tongue he’ll become a danger to us all.” “Why ... you ...” Sikes grew even more bellicose though he still did not know which of them to strike—Fagan for saying such things or Oliver for repeating them. “Quiet, Bill,” Fagan said soothingly. “Don’t you understand what he’s trying to do? He wants to make us fall out. You strike me. The Dodger and Batesy come to my aid. Nancy pitches in for you. His grace throws that ham at the dog—oh yes, Oliver, I saw your eye upon it!—and makes a run for it in the confusion. It could work, too, if one of us is foolish enough to let him twist us to his will.” Once again he smiled encouragingly at Oliver. “You were well named, your grace, and it was a valiant try, but not quite clever enough for me. Not nearly clever enough for me. So—what next, eh?” Oliver sighed and seated himself at the table. “If you are really so clever, my lord,” he said. “I think you will take the fiver—and the books—wrap them up, and get the Dodger to leave them on the old gentleman’s doorstep, ring the bell, and run.” Sikes, Nancy, the Dodger, and Bates all burst out laughing—until his lordship waved them to be silent. “Now that does interest me, Oliver, dear,” he said. “Why should we do anything so foolish and risky as that?” “So that he will know I didn’t steal them. He’ll think I ...” “Oh, my dear!” Fagan could not resist a stab of sarcasm—his favourite form of wit. “Sensible as we are of your grace’s honour, it would be too high a price to pay.” Outside, loud enough to be heard over their laughter, St Paul’s chimed the hour of nine—in which it was soon joined by those of St Giles’s, St Andrew’s, and St Botolph’s Without. “Now it’s only eleven hours,” Oliver murmured. “That is a high price, too, my lord.” Several of them tried to laugh again but without Fagan to lead them it was but queasy and half-hearted. Oliver continued calmly: “You leave the books and the fiver there—and my new suit, come to think of it—and he’ll assume I’ve run away of my own free will. He’ll weep a bit but he’ll leave me be. He won’t come looking.” “And if we fail to do as you suggest?” Fagan leaned forward and fixed the boy with a most penetrating stare. Oliver did not flinch. “He’ll know I’m held against my will, somewhere. And he’ll not rest until he’s tracked me down.” Fagan’s eyes narrowed. “Then why are you telling me this, my dear? Don’t you

103 want him to track you down? I think you do!” Oliver shook his head. “Even more than that, I wish him to know I am honest. You cannot hold me for ever, my lord. Sooner or later I shall give you the slip. If the gentleman knows I am honest, I may then return to him.” In truth, Oliver had no great hope that Mr Brownlow would come searching after him with quite such fervour as he was suggesting. Mrs Bedwin would never believe ill of him, of that he was certain; but he suspected that the sour friend, Grimwig, would pour enough poison into his kind master’s ear to turn the man against him. That is why, from his point of view, the stolen goods simply had to be restored to their owner. “Even if he does come a-hunting after us,” Fagan argued, “we are well hidden, my dear.” Oliver remembered a psalm that had impressed him mightily on the previous sabbath, all about people trying to hide from the wrath of God. “No, my lord,” he replied. “There is no mountain high enough, nor ocean deep enough, nor wilderness barren enough for you to ...” “All right!” Fagan waved him angrily to silence. Then he repeated himself in a milder tone. “All right. The boy has an argument, Bill, and a good one, it seems to me. We must think of all the ways in which our avarice might lead us to the end of a rope—and not take so much as one single step down any of them.” “Garn!” Sikes exclaimed scornfully, having listened with growing impatience. “This old gennleman wot’s taken the boy in—’e’s nothing but a soft-’earted psalm-singer. ’E won’t raise no hue and cry after the boy—for fear ’e’d be obliged to prosecute and get ’im lagged when ’e’s found. We’re safe enough.” “I still insist that we make no decision now,” Fagan said. “Why, there ain’t no boy in England is worth more than a fiver and the value of them books and clothes. I don’t care what you’ve planned for ’im ...” The rest of his words were cut short by the sight of Oliver’s heels as he raced toward the doorway and then through it. “Dodger!” Fagan said. The Dodger needed no second bidding to go after his little enemy. Bates went with him, unbidden, and Fagan was only a pace or so behind. Sikes whistled up Bullseye, who had gone to sleep by the stove. “Keep back the dog, Bill!” Nancy cried, springing to the door and barring it. “He’ll tear the boy to pieces.” “And if he does?” Sikes replied as he gripped her by the wrists. “Serve ’im right. Stand back, gel, or I’ll split your ’ead in two.” “I don’t give a fig for that, Bill. See if I care!” she shrieked as she struggled with the man. “The dog shan’t tear down that child—not unless you kills me first.” “Don’t think I wouldn’t!” he roared as he broke Nancy’s grip on the door and flung her across the room. The moment he opened the door, though, Fagan reappeared and he had to call the dog off again. “It sounds as if they’ve got him,” his lordship said, nodding his head back toward the dark passage. “What’s going on here?” Sikes rolled his eyes and pointed them at Nancy. “The girl’s gone mad, I should

104 think.” “Oh, no she hasn’t!” Nancy advanced on them belligerently, still pale and breathless from the scuffle. “And don’t you think it, my lord!” “Then hold your tongue,” Fagan said quietly. Nancy had never seen him so angry. He always spoke with that same quiet menace when his temper was up. But she was committed past all caring by now. “I’ll speak my piece,” she insisted, trying to moderate her tone to level with his. “Whenever I’ve a mind to it.” Dodger and Bates returned at that moment, dragging a furiously struggling Oliver between them. “So, my dear!” Fagan grabbed Oliver’s nose and pinched it until the tears sprouted in the boy’s eyes. “You’re no longer happy in our promised land, eh? You want to run away!” He started dragging Oliver, who was still pinned tight by the Dodger, toward the table. “Wanted to get assistance! Wanted to call the police! We must cure you of these dreadful impulses!” And, stretching Oliver over the table, he reached among the rafters overhead for his cane, which was very like the Scorpion that had given the master of the Fellgate workhouse such authority. But he inflicted no more than one sting of it to Oliver’s posteriors before Nancy ran forward, wrested it from his hand, and flung it into the fire with a force that sent several glowing coals out into the room. “I won’t stand by and see this done, Fagan!” she cried. “You have my permisssion to wait in the passage.” Fagan was calmly reaching for a second cane. “You’ve got the boy. What more would you have? Let him be, I say.” “Or ...?” “Or I’ll put that mark on you as will bring me to the gallows before my time— so help me God!” Her nostrils flared, her face was livid, her bosom heaved with an agitation her words could barely express. “Why, Nancy!” Fagan was amused. “Such skill—as I’ve said before—should get you inside Covent Garden. Charles John Keane shall hear of you!” “Sneer all you like, my lord!” Nancy’s eyes flashed dangerously. Her breath came in passionate shivers. “But if you think this is just acting, then harm one hair of the boy’s head and you’ll soon see how wrong you are!” Fagan tried to stare her out, but Sikes, whose fuze was shorter, burst out in a rage all his own: “ ’Ere! Whadd’ya mean by this, gel? D—n my eyes! Ain’t you a-fergetting ’oo you are—and wot you are?” Nancy rounded on him, too. “Oh, yes! I know all about that, Bill! I know what I am—and I know who made me so.” “Well, hold your tongue, then!” Sikes missed the sarcasm of her reply. “Or I’ll lay you quiet for a good long time, so I will.” Nancy laughed at his obtuseness, even more wildly than before. Stung by it, yet not grasping her meaning at all, Sikes continued: “And you’re a nice one, I must say, after wot you done up Rag Lane this evening, to come all gentle and lovey with the boy. Wot a friend you got here, eh, Oliver!”

105 “As God is my witness, I am!” Nancy shrieked. “And I wish now as I’d been struck dead in the street or had changed places with them as lies in the clink tonight, counting Saint Paul’s chimes—rather than have me lend a hand in nabbing the boy and bringing him here.” “Nancy ...” Fagan, alarmed at her passion and fearing they might have to take care of her tongue, tried to conciliate her. But she turned on him, raging as ever. “He’s a thief, a liar, a devil ... all that’s bad, from this night forth. Isn’t that enough without cuffs and blows?” “There is nothing that cannot be gained with a civil tongue, my dear.” “ ‘A civil tongue, my dear’?” She aped him so accurately that Dodger and Bates had to throttle their laughter for the sake of their own skins. “A civil tongue, you ... you villain? I thieved for you when I could barely lisp your name. And I’ve been in the same trade and the same immoral service ever since. Isn’t that so? Speak!” Fagan smiled thinly. “For you, my petal, it is neither trade nor service. It is a living—and the only one you’re ever likely to know.” “Oh, yes!” Nancy exclaimed bitterly. “It is my living. And the cold, wet, filthy streets are my home. And you are the fiend that drove me to them, long ago—and will keep me there, day and night, until I die.” “Until you ... die?” Fagan emphasized the word as if it suggested possibilities he had not previously considered. “Just so!” He smiled at her at last. Unable to bear his taunting any longer, Nancy rushed at him, all talons out, ready to ‘put the Ten Commandments on his face,’ as they say in circles like hers. But Sikes, who had been expecting such an attack for some time, was too quick for her. With one blow of his stick he felled her to the ground, where she lay, motionless, hardly seeming to breathe. Fagan leaned over her and said, “Tut-tut, Bill! You haven’t, I hope?” Sikes turned her body over with the cap of his boot. The Dodger let go of Oliver and opened one of her eyelids. Her pupils shrank at the light. He put his knuckles near her lips and felt the soft moisture of her breath. “Like a babe!” He grinned all round. They all breathed a sigh of relief—most especially Oliver. As for the others, those who live in the shadow of an untimely death do not like to be pushed so near its brink. To make the point, Fagan picked up the stick with which Sikes had come so near to taking Nancy’s life. He ran his delicate fingers over the ugly, gnarled knob of it. “One day, Bill,” he said, “this will be your undoing. There’s no moderation in you, Bill—it’s gallop or stand still.” He tapped the man’s chest gently but firmly with the knob. “If this and your temper ever gets you into trouble, my dear old friend, just remember this—it got you into trouble, Bill, not us. Don’t come looking for help from us!”

CHAPTER 17

A parochial dignitary seeks five guineas but is disappointed of ten

106 Mr Bumble emerged one morning early from the workhouse gate, and walked, with portly carriage and commanding steps up Fellgate High Street. He was in the full bloom and pride of beadlehood; his cocked hat and coat were dazzling in the morning sun, and he clutched his staff with the vigourous 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 grand for utterance. Certainly he did not stop to utter them to any small shopkeeper or passer-by along his way, no matter how deferentially they greeted him; he merely returned their salutations with an airy wave of his hand. And thus he continued out into the countryside, where, though his hauteur relaxed somewhat, he did not sink into his usual vile temper at the necessity of taking so long a promenade for so small a service. “Oh, drat that beadle!” exclaimed Mrs Mann, the infant-farmer, when she heard her visitor once again doing his best to demolish her gate. “At this time in the morning! Why can he not simply leave his little billy-doo and go?” And out she rushed to spare her property, crying, “Lawk, Mister Bumble, only think of its being you! Eay but it is a pleasure—that it is. Come into the parlour, sir, if it please thee.” “Mrs Mann,” said Mr Bumble, who did not merely sit upon or drop himself into a seat, as common people might, but let himself gradually and slowly occupy it. “Mrs Mann, ma’am, good morning.” His slow progress into the chair allowed time for his wandering eye to fix itself upon the cupboard where the medicine for the little dears’ Daffy was kept Mrs Mann began their accustomed ritual. “Now don’t be offended at what I’m a-going to say, Mister Bumble. But you’ve had a hardy walk or I’d not even mention it, but will you not revive yourself with a little drop of something, Mister Bumble?” “Not a drop!” And so on and so forth, until he was once again at ease with a glass of gin, sugar, and water at his side. Yet still he sighed. “A porochial life, Mrs Mann,” said he, “is not a bed of roses.” The good lady started and sat on the edge of her seat; when the beadle spoke thus it meant either that he had some lamentable news to impart concerning her, such as a reduction in her allowance, or, by contrast, some extremely pleasing news touching upon himself, which he wished to belittle for fear of being asked a favour in the emotion of the happy moment. “That indeed it isn’t,” she rejoined apprehensively. “A porochial life, ma’am,” he continued, tapping his staff where it lay upon the table, “is a life of worrit and vexation and hardihood. How-hevver ...” he sighed magnanimously, “all public characters of any prominence must suffer such prosecutions.” Mrs Mann, still undecided, raised her hands in blessing and gazed with what, in her, might pass for sympathy.

107 “Well may you sigh, Mrs Mann,” he cried—whereupon she obliged, and evidently to his satisfaction, for he at once came to the point: “I am bound off for London, ma’am!” “Lawk, Mister Bumble!” Her anxiety was merely increased at these tidings, for they understood each other’s little ways well enough by now and she did not relish the prospect of breaking in a new beadle at her time of life. Please God it was only for a visit, she thought—and her prayer was immediately answered: “To London, ma’am. With two paupers as ain’t ours but hail from some place by the name of”—he had to think a moment—“Clerk-in-well. Aye! Clerkinwell. They dispute it, of course and refuse to cough up, so the board has appointed me—me, Mrs Mann—to depose upon the matter at the Clerkinwell quarter- sessions.” “Eay!” Mrs Mann smiled in relief. “But those buttons of yours will shine there, Mister Bumble—and they won’t be all that shines, I’m thinking!” The beadle brushed one of his buttons idly, fondly. “I may not bring my hat and staff, alas, for their authority ends at the union bounds, but none may stop me wearing this coat, I think. And as to shining in that court, aye, I doubt not but that the clerks in the Clerk-in-well Union will find themselves well in trouble before they have done with me!” “Eay but don’t be too down on them, Mister Bumble,” the lady said archly. “You’re a terror to all when you’re roused, as many have affirmed to me.” “The Clerkinwell Union has brought it upon themselves, ma’am,” he replied complacently. “And if the Clerkinwell Union finds that they come off rather second-best to me, then the Clerkinwell Union has only themselves to thank for it. The coach departs at noon today.” “You’re going by coach, sir?” Mrs Mann was surprised. “I thought paupers were always sent back in carts?” “Only when they’re ill, ma’am. As a kindness to them, see’tha. The rain washes down the contagion and the wind blows it away. Besides”—he threw in a crafty smile—“the coach has tendered below the carter and will take these two very cheap—less, indeed, than it would cost the board to keep them here and bury them. I only hope they don’t choose to expire upon the way, just out of spite to us.” When he had laughed a sufficient tribute to his own excellent wit, he sipped his refresher and became solemn once more. “We are neglecting our porochial business, ma’am. My little billy-doo.” He produced a handful of gold and silver, all wrapped up in a sheet of paper upon which the account was set forth. “Thirty- nine infants at sevenpence-ha’penny for four weeks ... four pounds, seventeen shillings, and sixpence, I believe? A receipt, if you please?” Mrs Mann had the paper already written, correct to the last penny. She scooped the money up and passed it lovingly from hand to hand before locking it up in a tin box and putting it in a drawer, which she also locked. Only then did she remind him of the two little angels who had passed away that week—which ought to have led to a reduction of one shilling and fourpence. “I must keep my numbers up, sir,” she told him. “My domestic economy depends on numbers.” The beadle promised to see what he could do. A woman had given birth to twins

108 that week and was now close to dying, so hope was not lost. “They are easy got, ma’am,” he concluded philosophically. “Is there any news of our runagate apprentice, Mister Bumble?” She had heard certain tittle-tattle concerning a savage flogging that had induced the little wretch to cut and run, and she thought her guest had settled in altogether too much for his comfort and too little for hers. “Not a word, ma’am!” He replied boldly enough and yet, she noticed, he ran a finger inside his cravat as if to loosen it. “They say as Sowerberry’s in dispute with the board over the return of part of his five pounds?” “Aye, ma’am, so he is. And he shall return it if he knows what’s good for him.” “Such a pity there’s no other undertaker this side of ...” she began. But he interrupted her in a voice trembling with the passion of a man who has been deeply wronged. “He refuses the refund on the ground that I am to blame for the boy’s absconding. I, ma’am! I what obliged them out of the pure softness of my heart! They fed me a tale, ma’am, as I’ve said to their faces. That Noah Claypole—why he’s naught but a cowardly bully. Dear little Twist never reached higher than his belt-buckle. How could I have believed the little lad could have done half the things Claypole swore to? I was swayed by her tears—that’s how. That Mrs S. is inclined to hysterics—as all her neighbours will tell you. I’d never have laid a finger on the dear little fellow but for her tears and Claypole’s whining. Poor little Oliver! Poor mite! If I could but make amends to him, I’d go down on these knees, Mrs Mann.” He downed the rest of his glass in one gulp and wiped from the corners of his lips the flecks of foam that passion had painted there. “You’ve a soft heart right enough, Mister Bumble,” the lady sighed, contriving to give him an admiring smile, for fear that her eyes would reveal her true conviction—that it was not his heart that suffered from softness but another organ, somewhat to the north of it. “Some would call it a fault in a beadle but the paupers of this union will bless you for it—and intercede for you, I’m sure, on that dread day when we must all account for our actions.” “You are kind, ma’am,” Bumble allowed complacently. “It takes one to know one, as they say.” “Why!” she concluded. “You’ve sent that many paupers ahead to intercede for you, I’ve no doubt but that your name already glows with stars in that Infallible Book up there!” And so, fortified by the good lady’s kind words, Mr Bumble returned to his quarters, exchanged his cocked hat for a simple round one, and set out to escort the two unwanted paupers back to their rightful lodgings in the Clerkenwell Union. The board of that union knew very well that the two paupers in question were theirs by right, though it was a right they would gladly have waived in favour of any other union in the kingdom. They had gambled on the unwillingness of the Fellgate board to pay the cost of shipping the paupers home, merely on the chance of winning their suit at the quarter-sessions; but when they saw their bluff had been called, they yielded readily enough and so denied Mr Bumble his day in

109 court. In truth, the beadle had not been looking forward to parading his blunt Yorkshire ways and voice before the metropolitan crowds, so he was glad to be spared the ordeal—and glad, too, in that he now had a blank slate on which to scribble his own account of his triumphs in the box, a slate unsullied by the smallest humiliating memory. So he withdrew to the inn where he had put himself up for the night and ordered a temperate dinner of oysters, steaks, venison pie, and porter; and while he consumed this daintiest repast, he wrote upon the vast stage of his mind, a courtroom drama such as either Keane, father or son, would have been proud to play. In this new version of history, the enemy union had hired the talents of two of London’s most eminent QCs, but, for all their sophistical metropolitan rhetoric, they had been no match for the simple, bluff, stone-hard common-sense of a true- born Yorkshireman; good, honest Bumble had, in his own vernacular, ‘wiped the floor’ with them —and, magnanimous to a fault, he had bought them a commiserational drink in a local hostelry afterward. He added the expense to his notes, then and there, feeling sure the board would not grudge him such liberality in his moment of triumph on their behalf. Then, realizing it was now as good as paid for, anyway, he retired to the snug with a glass of gin-and-hot-water, which he placed upon the chimney-piece, and settled himself to read the local newspaper. It will come as no great surprise to learn that his eyes were immediately attracted to a bold heading in Egyptians:

FIVE GUINEAS REWARD!!!

But imagine his surprise when he read on:

Whereas a young boy, named Oliver Twist, absconded, or was enticed, on Thursday evening last from his home, at Pentonville; and has not since been heard of. The above-mentioned reward will be paid to any person who will give such information as will lead to the discovery of the said Oliver Twist, or tend to throw any light upon his previous history, in which the advertiser is, for many reasons, warmly interested.

Further paragraphs gave a full description of Oliver’s dress, person, and appearance, with the name and directions of Mr Brownlow at the foot. With trembling hand Mr Bumble smoothed the paper, held it toward the light, and read it several times over. His excitement may be gauged by the fact that, when he departed for Goodson Road, Pentonville, some five minutes later, he left his glass, still untasted, upon the chimney-piece! “Is Mister Brownlow at home?” he inquired of the maid who opened the door. “I don’t know,” she replied. His barbarous (to her) accent induced her to add in confusion, “Who shall I say where you come from?” “It’s concerning young Oliver Twist,” he replied. “Come in! Come in!” cried an excited Mrs Bedwin, who had been listening from her parlour door. “I knew we should hear of him! Poor dear! I was certain of

110 it—bless his little heart! Come up, sir! Come up! I know my master will be as eager to hear your news as me.” Her excitement was, as it were, a fingerboard to the beadle, assuring him that these kind people wished to hear nothing of Oliver but that which was good. Also, to be sure—since it was patently obvious that the boy had spent some time among them—he may have let drop one or two incautious remarks about the cruel and heartless beadle whose merciless flogging had induced him to abscond from his apprenticeship. He was, therefore, most concerned to correct that lamentably false impression. His resolution, however, was shaken by the words that greeted him as soon as he entered the room. The good housekeeper preceded him, crying out in her elation, “Oh, sirs! Here’s a good gentleman who’s come to tell you all about dear little Oliver! Oh my! My heart’s all a-flutter. I forgot to ask his name!” “Bumble, gentlemen.” The beadle stepped in grandly, handing his round hat and cane to Mrs Bedwin before giving a little bow. “Mister Bumble, your humble servant.” “A beadle!” cried one of the gentlemen in a triumphant sort of tone. “A parish beadle or I’ll boil my head and eat it.” The other gentleman was grave. “Pray, Grimwig,” he said, “please do not interrupt just now.” To Bumble he said, “Take a seat, will you?” Bumble sat himself with all his customary dignity and faced them. Grimwig’s manner, which suggested they were expecting to hear ill of the boy, had, as I say, shaken his determination to speak only honeyed words. He decided to say nothing of any moment until he was more sure of their wishes in the matter. Mr Brownlow moved the lamp so that it cast a brighter light upon their visitor’s countenance, and said in a rather severe tone, “Now, sir, you have come in response to my advertisement?” “Aye, sir. Aye.” “ ‘Aye-aye, sir’?” Brownlow half-echoed the reply. “Are you a nautical man?” “He’s a beadle!” Grimwig could not help crowing. “You are a beadle, are you not, good fellow?” “I am a porochial beadle, gentlemen. I accept the impeachment with pride.” “Of course you are!” Grimwig nudged his friend with his elbow. “He doesn’t need his cocked hat and staff. He has a beadle writ all over him!” “To his very buttons!” Mrs Bedwin murmured, for she was standing at his side and her sharp eyes had noticed the Good Samaritan design of which Oliver had told her, when he first revived from his fever. She also recalled several other things he had said, later in his convalescence, concerning this gentleman; and her warm feelings began to cool rapidly. Mr Brownlow held up his hand impatiently, feeling unable to command his friend to silence before inferiors. “Do you know where the boy is now?” he asked. Not the poor boy ... the wretched boy ... the dear little boy, Bumble noted with chagrin. Just the boy. It gave him no guide whatever. “No more than nobody,” he admitted with a sigh. The gentleman showed signs of impatience. “Well, what do you know about him?” he asked. “Speak up, my friend!”

111 ‘Speak up!’ Aye, but how? “I’ll wager it’s nothing to his credit,” the other one said. “Eh? You’ve nothing good to say of him. If you have ...” Thump! went his stick on the floor. Bumble risked a portentous nod of his head at this, keeping a foxy eye on the other gentleman to see whether this hint of confirmation pleased the man or no. The gentleman frowned but nodded his head, as if accepting that bad news was more or less inevitable. “You see!” Grimwig was now openly triumphant. “Didn’t I say it from the beginning! The boy was no good! Go on, sir. Tell us all!” Mrs Bedwin drew breath to object at this but her master’s raised hand silenced her—for the moment. Bumble, thus encouraged, now told them of Oliver’s low birth and vicious parents—both of whom he had had cause to know with regret ... of how the Fellgate Union had lavished food, clothing, care, and education upon him and how he had repaid it with treachery, ingratitude, and malice ... and how, when put out to learn a useful trade, he had repaid his new masters by a cowardly and sanguinary attack on another lad in the house and then had run away, after stealing a whole meat pie—to say nothing of the clothes on his back. Mr Brownlow’s face grew longer and longer during this unbridled attack. Grimwig would have crowed again had his friend not silenced him with a monitory finger and inquired of Mr Bumble if he had some means of identification. “How do I know you are who you say you are?” was how he expressed it. “For all I know, you may be some wily fellow sent by the gang who abducted him, with the express purpose of causing me to cease my inquiries!” With an impressive gesture the beadle produced the papers he had brought with him to London, in anticipation of his having to appear at the quarter-sessions. Brownlow scanned them with a heavy heart. “I fear it is all too true,” he said mournfully. “I had my doubts when he told the court his name was Tom Walters and then confessed to me it was Oliver Twist. He was a plausible little rogue.” “Fiddlesticks!” Mrs Bedwin could no longer restrain her tongue. “Mrs Bedwin!” her master exclaimed in a mixture of consternation and annoyance. The beadle interrupted their exchange with a polite little cough; he dry-soaped his hands and gave an ingratiating little smile. “Ah, yes!” Brownlow went to his desk and extracted a five-pound note and a couple of half-crowns. “I give you this reward with a heavy heart, Mister Bumble,” he said. “I’d gladly have paid three times as much to hear something good of the boy.” The poor beadle went pale about the gills to hear what riches the nasty gentleman with the name of Grimwig had caused him to throw away. “Ah, well, sir ...” he began diffidently. “There’s no person in all the world so vile that nothing to his credit may be ...” “Fiddlesticks!” Mrs Bedwin cried again. “Oliver Twist was a good, good little boy!” “Mrs Bedwin,” her master said. “Your boundlessly maternal heart must excuse this otherwise unpardonable insolence. The ‘good little boy’ was an impostor.”

112 “It cannot be, sir,” she pleaded. “It simply cannot be!” “What d’you mean?” he rejoined, equally energetically. “Have we not just heard a full account of him—and what a thorough-paced little villain he has been all his life!” “Ah ... well ...” Bumble thought he saw a second chance. But Mrs Bedwin now had the disputational bit between her teeth. “I would never accuse a parish beadle of circulating a deliberate falsehood, sir,” she said. “But I beg this gentleman to consider whether he has not confused Oliver’s supposed parents with two others of such vicious habits! Ask him—was Oliver not a foundling whose mother died—name unknown—on the night he was born! Ask Mr Bumble to describe his patent system for naming foundlings after consecutive letters of the alphabet!” Bumble turned pale at this. Young Oliver had clearly loosened his tongue to no small degree in his hours in the housekeeper’s company. “It is true, sir ...” he began hesitantly. “That you have just told us a pack of lies?” Grimwig interrupted furiously— angry, no doubt, at the prospect of trying to consume a dish through a mouth that lay on that same plate. “Why, er, no, sir!” Poor Bumble was desperate to earn the remaining ten guineas on offer—but not at the cost of revealing himself as a perjurer. “Well, did you know the boy’s parents or did you not?” “I did, sir!” He took out his bandana and mopped his brow. “But they came to us under false names—which we only found out after the mother died and the father bolted. So I had to name the boy Oliver Twist by my own system.” “They gave false names!” Grimwig exclaimed happily. “See! It’s in his blood. ‘Tom Walters,’ forsooth!” “I will never believe it, sir,” Mrs Bedwin said calmly—seeing that her previous agitation had done little to advance her and Oliver’s cause. “Bah! You old women never believe anything but quack-doctors and servants’ story-books,” Grimwig sneered. “He was a dear, grateful, gentle little child, sir,” she retorted evenly. “I know what children are, sir—and have done these forty years. And people who can’t claim the same, shouldn’t claim anything at all. There—that’s my opinion!” Grimwig’s only reply to this—he being a bachelor of more than forty years— was an angry smile. She turned again to her master, determined to talk him out of his opinion of Oliver. But she uttered no more than a word or two before he halted her with an imperious hand. “Never let me hear that boy’s name again,” he said. “Never! Not on the smallest pretence! You may go now, Bedwin—and believe me when I say I am in earnest. The boy is dead to this house from this day forth!”

CHAPTER 18

Eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves; but his lordship and the Dodger prove an exception

113

For some weeks after his violent recapture—weeks that seemed to drag like years—Oliver maintained his resistance. Lord Fagan continued outwardly kind and full of patience toward him, thereby managing to imply that he was the wounded party and that Oliver, once the veil of his intransigence was lifted from his eyes, would soon come round to their way of thinking; then, indeed, they would all be one happy family—as the Fates clearly intended. As to the game of happy families, Fagan also realized that his seeming exclusion of the Dodger from the innermost circle of his favour, which had, in truth, been no more than a taking-for-granted of the lad’s loyalties, had contributed to the disaster of Oliver’s capture and the swish of Death’s great scythe so close to all their heads. It must not happen again! And so he enlisted the Dodger’s help in bringing Oliver round. “Be kindly and confidential with the boy,” he advised. “Clink your coin beneath his nose—he’s not indifferent to the sound of it, as I hope you’ve noticed. Work on him, bit by bit, Artful! Show him you’re worthy of that name!” And as for Bates, he told the lad not to laugh at Oliver any more—not to his face, anyway; and to back the Dodger in everything; and to look admiringly at Oliver any time his virtue seemed to weaken. “Wot d’yer want ’im for, anyway, my lord?” Bates asked. “Couldn’t yer get two dozen boys off of the pavements round Covent Garden any night of the week?” Fagan patted him amiably on the head. “Try it, Batesy,” he said. “You bring me one who looks half so angelic as our friend Oliver, and there’s an unclipped guinea in it for you! But you won’t, you know. You’ve seen how he’s melted Nancy’s heart—and it’s the same with all the ladies. When that boy’s bent to our purpose, he could finger a lady’s bag without her knowing it, then tap her on the arm and smile at her with those big, innocent eyes, and tell her he saw the crime committed, and ask should he pursue the wretches that committed it. And he could return five minutes later, all flushed and out of breath, and give her back her own property, and walk away with her freely given reward! And where’s the crime in that—when the victim herself will swear black and blue it was someone else! He’ll be the new Jonathan Wild—you’ll see! We’ll all be able to retire from work and take to crime for pleasure!” And, especially for the Dodger’s comfort, he added, “That’s why I want this boy so much —not because I think he’s the spider’s ankles nor the bee’s knees.” Thus encouraged, his two young workers took to dropping in on Oliver in his prison cell (which his room might just as well have been) at the end of a busy day’s work. They jingled carelessly with the money Lord Fagan had given them for their pains and boasted of the steaks they would devour, the drinks they would swig, the pipes they would pufff, the bets they would win at cock-fights and dog- fights, and the girls who’d flock around them while they still had the flash. “Polish my boots for me, young’un, there’s a pell,” Dodger would say. “There’s no one puts a shine on ’em like wot you do.” Oliver complied readily enough with such requests, which were the Dodger’s way of bestowing especial favour. He was beginning to realize that compliance— or apparent compliance—with their schemes might bring him that chance of

114 escape which blunt resistance never would achieve. “Will you be going out with Nancy?” Oliver asked innocently as he worked away at the boots, which were still on the Dodger’s feet. “Nancy’s out of favour,” Bates told him. But the Dodger had noticed how the tips of Oliver’s ears had blushed when he spoke her name; he now saw a chance to push the matter further. “His lordship blames her for giving you such high-and-mighty ideas,” he said sadly, managing to imply that he knew it wasn’t true, and so did Oliver, but only some demonstration that Oliver had put those same ideas behind him would satisfy the stern old aristocrat. Bates caught the drift, too. “She’s working so hard these days,” he added. “Trying to get back in ol’ Fagan’s good books.” “Pretty nigh skin and bone, she is,” Dodger put in. “Poor old Nance!” Then, brisk again, “What shall we bring you back tonight, Oliver, my dear? A slice of venison pie, eh? Some cold roast quail’s legs? A tub of winkles, all alive-o?”—for the other way to quicken Oliver’s interest, they had noticed, was to talk of the most succulent, mouth-watering foods they knew. After each of these stimulating little conversations Oliver was always most obligingly pensive. One day he said, as they were withdrawing, “I think I should like to see dear Nancy, soon—to thank her for standing up for me but also to tell her she should not strive on my behalf any longer.” The Dodger, never one to let a chance pass over the arm, replied at once: “But isn’t that what all of us is doing, Oliver, my dear—striving on your behalf? Who brings in the geld that buys your wittles, eh? Batesy, Nancy, and me—that’s who. But I’m sure as his lordship will let her see you—parasite though you are to us.” He winked confidentially, as if to guarantee it personally, adding, “The fact is, she’s been to see that Mister Brownlow, wot advertised a five-guinea reward for finding you.” In his excitement Oliver was just on the point of blurting out, ‘So she’s going to take me to him and claim the money!’ when the Dodger’s penetrating stare made him realize he was being tested. So, mastering his true emotions as only one who had suffered so many reverses and privations could manage, he forced a look of anguish on to his countenance and said, “She’s not ... not going to take me back there, is she?” The Dodger’s eyes narrowed for he was unconvinced. “Why not? Don’cher wanna go back?” Oliver knew he could not make so absolute a switch, not all in one leap, said falteringly, “Well ... yes ... of course I do—in a way. I mean, I was happy and comfortable there. But I couldn’t go back and face them—not now.” He buried his face in his hands. “They’d always be thinking, ‘Is he going to vamos again? ... What did he do with that fiver and those books?’ And so on. I couldn’t face them and never have their trust.” “So ...” The Dodger felt it time to pop the ultimate question. “You’re one of us for good?” Oliver’s expression suggested that this final piece of logic had not actually

115 occurred to him before now. His smile was wan and his face pale as he nodded and said, “I suppose I am!” They brought Nancy to him the following day. She almost fell into the room in her eagerness to see him. She flung both arms around him and kissed him passionately on the lips, which made more than the tips of his ears burn red, for the flush consumed his entire countenance. She saw it and laughed, managing to whisper between the merry peals that every word was being overheard by the four sharpest ears in London, which he took (and rightly so) to mean the Dodger’s and Fagan’s. “They’re feeding you well, young man,” she said as she sat beside him. “Fattening me up!” he said glumly, thinking a little insubordination would lull their eavesdroppers into believing he was unaware of their vigil at the door—or in the room above—or wherever they were. “Don’t say that, darling!” She sighed. “You’ve been to see Mister Brownlow?” he asked eagerly. There were no happy smiles from her in response to this—not that Oliver had expected them, for he knew very well that Fagan would never have let Nancy see him if her news was good; but he had to maintain his pretence that he was still, to some extent, the little innocent the Dodger had befriended that morning in Barnet a few months earlier. Lord, was it only a few months?! “I didn’t ’zackly see the gentleman himself,” she replied. “Mrs Bedwin, then? The housekeeper.” “Nor her. To tell the truth, Oliver, I didn’t get farther than the maid.” “Did Fagan send you? I hope you haven’t got yourself into more trouble on my behalf, Nancy. That was why I asked to see you—to tell you I am more or less resigned to becoming one of Fagan’s crew.” “I’m glad to hear it, darling,” she said, though the anguish in her countenance said otherwise. “Yes, Fagan sent me. Give me a basket of messages and a street- door key and you’d never know me from a respectable miss! He sent me to Goodson Road, just as he sent me after you to Fang’s court that day. But—as I was saying—I got no farther than the maid, for, no sooner did I speak your name than the girl turned pale as ashes and came out upon the step, and shut the door behind her to say as your name was never to pass anyone’s lips in that household—on pain of instant dismissal. Oliver’s instinct at hearing this was to cry out in anguish and collapse into floods of tears; but he was, by now, accustomed to interposing his will, like some sergeant-at-arms, between his instincts and his actions—and then to force himself into doing the very opposite. “Well,” he said, swallowing heavily and fighting back his tears, “I suppose I must say I’m glad to hear it.” “You are?” Nancy was quite deceived by his charade, though she sat a mere foot or so from him. “In my innermost heart, no,” Oliver felt it safe to admit. “I was happier there than ever before in my life—and happier than I ever will be again. I cannot deny it. But I think such happiness is not intended for people like you and me, Nancy, dear—don’t you? And to know that dear Mister Brownlow and dear, dear

116 Mrs Bedwin have spurned me utterly”—the crack in his voice at this point owed nothing to his thespian arts—“makes it easier for me to face the truth about myself.” “Which is ...?” Nancy was awestuck at his self-control in the face of the news she had dreaded imparting. “You remember what Fagan told you that night? When he said that what you do is neither a trade nor a service but a living?” “Yes!” Her tone was bitter. “And it’s true.” “True of me, too, Nancy. The Dodger and Batesy have helped me see it. Dipping and dodging—that’s my way of life from now on.” He sighed. “Ain’t you afraid?” she asked. He nodded. “Of one thing. D’you know what?” She shook her head. “I’ve made such a parade of my righteousness, Nancy, I’m afraid Lord Fagan will never believe I’ve learned to see things as he sees them. Will you tell him for me? Or should I ask the Dodger?” He risked scratching his eye—which is what the Dodger, with his eye to a crack in the wainscot, assumed he was doing; Nancy, however, perceived it, correctly, as a wink. “Oh, I think they’ll recruit you now, my dear,” she said. “But be warned— they’ll put you to some test first of all.”

CHAPTER 19

Sikes is engaged to complete the education of Oliver

It was one of those summer nights that presage autumn—chill, damp, and windy, a night that had grown uncommonly dark an hour or more too soon. It was as if the very elements knew the odious Lord Fagan walked abroad and so paraded themselves in suitably cold and sombre mood. His lordship emerged from his den, looked all about him, pulled up his collar to hide at least half his face, and buttoned his greatcoat tight about his lean frame. Behind him the Dodger locked and chained the door again. Not until Fagan heard the last bolt shoot and the last chain rattle did he step away from his own threshold. He still did not trust Oliver farther than the boy could cast a shadow, but tonight was the night on which he would, as it were, nail the little fellow—‘blood’ him, as a huntsman would say— and make him one of the crew for ever. At the end of Giltspur Street he averted his eyes from the grim walls of the Newgate Gaol, and the even grimmer scaffold abutting its northern face, where, in the Dodger’s grim jest, many an ’oister and many an ’earty-choke had been eaten for breakfast. Bowing his head, he turned left into Newgate Street and made off at a smart walking pace for Whitechapel and Spitalfields. Mud lay thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the streets; a gentle but persistent rain fell down, washing everything, cleansing nothing; railings, bollards, everything he touched felt cold and clammy to his fingers. Bent against the rain, hiding his countenance from the curious, Fagan came to resemble the

117 very opposite of all that the word ‘aristocrat’ conjures up; he seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and darkness through which he now moved, crawling forth by night in search of some carrion-meal. He kept his course through many winding and narrow ways, until he reached Dog Lane, which took him up to Bethnal Green. There he turned left, back toward the City, and soon became involved in the mazes of mean and dirty streets which abound in that sprawling, teeming quarter. He was, however, too familiar with the area to be in the least bit bewildered, either by the darkness of the night or by the intricacies of the way. He hastened on through several alleys and streets; and at length turned into one, lighted only by a single lamp at its farther end. At the door of a house in this street he knocked. It was answered by one who, though she knew him, did not reveal herself, choosing instead to cower against the wall and avert her face as he passed. He bade her no greeting, nor did he remark on her behaviour; instead, he went directly upstairs and put his ear to one of the doors on the first landing. A low growl from within assured him he had found the place. “It’s Fagan, Bill,” he said, throwing open the door; but he paused on the threshold, for Bullseye was still growling. “Bring your body in, then,” Sikes grumbled. “And you, you stupid brute, don’t you know the devil when he’s got his greatcoat on?” His speech was slurred. The cur hung its head and retired to its place before the fire, nearer to Nancy than to its master’s boot. “Ah, Nancy!” Fagan had not expected to find her there and his surprise could be heard in his tone. “It’s not exactly gay weather, my lord,” she replied, not turning to him but keeping her eyes on the glowing coals. But then, having established the coldness of her shoulder, she took her feet off the fender and pushed back her chair to make room for their visitor. Fagan, being no longer warmed by the vigour of walking, and not yet warmed by the heat off the fire, shivered. “Give ’im something to drink, Nancy!” Sikes commanded. “Burn my body, make haste, gel! It makes me ill to see ’im shivering there, like a ghost fresh risen from the grave.” “It’s not the sight of me that makes you ill, Sikes,” Fagan said as Nancy fetched a bottle of superior brandy from the cupboard. She let him see the pencil mark— the tideline, as he called it—before she poured his glass. Then he drew a new mark and dated it, too. This was his private bottle, to be consumed by him alone. Sikes had once, in desperation for liquor, taken a small glass and replaced it with weak tea, which was something he would never do again; now he would sooner drink vitriol than risk touching a drop of his lordship’s brandy. “Well, the sickness has its own cure, my lord,” the man said as he held out his glass to Nancy for more of the gin he had been drinking all evening. “Here’s to oblivion!” Fagan pointedly refrained from joining the toast. “Here’s to eels, divers, and snakes, Bill!” he said, offering a toast of his own. A smile that lacked no more than three teeth cracked the thief’s face. “To

118 snakes!” He drank off the glass in one gulp and held it out for yet more. “I’m in need of a snake, Fagan.” His lordship leaned forward, holding his glass where the fire would warm it. “The Chertsey job,” he murmured. “Tell me about it.” “Blow the Chertsey job,” the man replied. “I’m talking about Park Lane, and even that’s far enough from Bethnal Green. So, now we know the Pentonville cove ain’t gonna come looking for the brat no more, I’m moving back up Holborn way. Maybe Saint Giles.” “The Chertsey job, Bill,” Fagan said with quiet insistence. “Lovely plate. An old maid and a slip of a girl and two idiot menservants. Secluded grounds. No gaslighting. I want to hear about the Chertsey job.” “I’ll tell yer abaht the Chertsey job,” Sikes raised his voice menacingly. “Chertsey is forty miles from London ...” “Nineteen by road.” “From Charing Cross, which is three miles from ’ere.” “There’s the new railway to Weybridge. Chertsey’s only a couple of miles from there. We must keep up with the wonders of our age, Bill. The railways will make a new factory-system of burglary, which is now but a cottage industry. London cracksmen will loot Southampton and Southampton mill bens will clean out London—and the traps won’t know where to go looking!” “Oh yus!” Sikes was not in the least seduced at the prospect so glowingly painted by their visitor. “A snakesman and a snake on a late-night train to Weybridge ain’t gonna wake no one’s curiosity, is it! I don’t think!” Lord Fagan’s shrug implied that the argument was fruitless rather than lost. “The advantage of a nineteen-mile walk, Bill, is that it allows plenty of time for the head to clear.” And, in case the man failed to take his meaning, he lifted his glass in a further toast. “Here’s to clear heads, Bill!” The paltry sip of brandy he then permitted himself was a further hint to the other—which Bill’s scowl showed he had taken—not that it stopped him from quaffing his glass in one, as before. “We are on the spree tonight!” Fagan observed crossly. “I suppose this means you’ve done nothing about the Chertsey crib?” “Nothing, is it?” Sikes echoed belligerently. “I s’pose Toby Crackit hanging about the place fer two weeks ain’t nothing!” “To any purpose, though, Bill? To any purpose?” “ ’E can’t get none of the servants into line,” Sikes muttered. “Not either of the two men?” “That’s wot I’m tellin’ yer.” “And none of the females. There’s a cook and a maid, isn’t there? Good old Toby? Smart, flash young Toby? Can’t get any of the women over?” “Can’t get over the women, can’t get the women over!” “Has he tried, Bill? Has he really tried? Did you light that fire in him that would ...” “He wore sham whiskers! And a canary waistcoat that’s turned every female head in the Mile End Road!” “And waxed moustachioes? And a pair of military trousers—sparing your blushes at the word, Nancy, my dear!”

119 “Yes, yes!” Sikes responded impatiently. “ ’E tried the lot! And not a nibble did ’e get back.” Nancy, who would normally have laughed at his lordship’s wit, continued to hug her knees to her chin, all curled-up in her chair and gazing into the fire. “Out of sorts, my dear?” Fagan asked, giving her a gentle nudge in the arm. She sighed. “I told you, my lord, I’m not at all gay tonight.” “Would fifty extra shiners help?” She darted an astonished glance at him, only to see he was making the offer to Bill, not her; the misunderstanding was intentional, to be sure. Fifty pounds was more than he had ever offered her—or anyone else in their circle—for anything. If he was frying fish tonight, the one in the pan must be a whale. She returned her gaze to the fire but from then on she only made it seem she was lost in her own idle dreams. “Fifty!” Sikes laughed at the absurdity of it. “Fifty!” Fagan snapped impatiently. The other stopped laughing abruptly; a sly, distrustful look crept into his eye. “ ’Ere!” he exclaimed. “Wot’s your game now?” “Big game, Bill,” Fagan assured him. “The biggest. Did you look at the Chertsey crib yourself—as I asked?” “Asked!” Sikes echoed sarcastically. “Yes, I like your manner of asking, my lord!” “Did you?” The other glanced at Nancy. Fagan had the impression that if the woman had not been there, Sikes would have risked a lie. “Yerss, I did,” he admitted grudgingly. “Night before last. Me and Toby. Cost a bob on the coach ...” “Never mind that. By harry, Sikes, when you’re in liquor there’s no man more cussed on this side the gallows! What did you find?” Sikes squared his shoulders and attempted to rise. “ ’Oo sez as I’m in lickah?” he demanded. “I do. What did you find?” He abandoned his attempt to rise and slumped back in his chair, where he hacked his throat and spat a thumping quid into the fire. “No one else in London would dare say as much to me,” he grumbled. “What did you find?” Fagan repeated in exasperation. “We finger-tipped all the door panels and shutters. I never saw nuffink like it— the crib’s barred up of nights better’n Newgate Gaol.” He sniffed disdainfully. “But there one bit they forgot. We could crack it there, safe and soft, all right.” “Where?” Fagan leaned forward eagerly and took another small sip of brandy. “You’ve seen the place?” Fagan nodded. “Well, you know where you cross the lawn, and ...” He paused and the wary look returned. “Never mind,” he said. “I know where—and that’s all as matters.” “You and Toby?” “Me and Toby —and ...” He grinned. “A centre-bit and a boy.” “A boy!” Fagan clasped his hands in triumph. “Those are the magic words, Bill—the words that are worth the extra fifty shiners to me.”

120 “Oliver,” Nancy murmured. Fagan chuckled, none too pleasantly. “Why, Nancy! You may not be gay tonight but you are surely bright! Yes—Oliver!” “No!” Sikes said firmly. “Fifty glistening ones, Bill!” “Not for five-hundred, Fagan. I’ve never trusted that boy and I never will. You want ’im for ’is looks—I know that. I don’t question you there. But what good are ’is looks in the pitch-black midnight, snaking through a breach in the Chertsey crib?” “None whatsoever,” Fagan agreed cheerily, which rather disconcerted the burglar. “I want him blooded to the trade. He’s a very moral little fellow, young Oliver Twist. Lord knows where he acquired it, for it certainly wasn’t in the orphans’ baby-farm, nor in the workhouse! But once he’s done the snake for you, Bill, he’ll feel the scar of it on his soul for ever. And then he’s ours! He’s crossed the threshold. He’s home with us, and we need never bolt the door again—not against his escape, at least. And that’s worth fifty to me. D’ye see my point now, Bill?” “So I’m to blood ’im for yer, eh! Why should I do all yer dirty work while you stop ’ome, all ...?” “You won’t be doing it for me, Bill.” Fagan smiled. Sikes frowned. “You’ll be doing it for fifty little golden friends—which is five hundred bottles of oblivion to you. After the deed is done.” Sikes, trapped between avarice and foreboding, stared moodily into the dying fire. “Bleedin’ Juvenile Delinquent Society!” he murmured. “The bane of our lives,” Fagan agreed airily; he knew that he needed only to bide his time now. “I used to get good boys off of Ned Harker, the chimbley-sweep. ’E kept ’em nice and small, did Ned. Let ’em out by the job—’til he got lagged. Then the Juvenile Delinquent Society takes the boy away, from a trade where ’e woz earning good money ...” “Not for himself,” Nancy put in. He stared at her in exasperation, as a learned professor might stare at an interloper who had just pointed out that two and two make four. “ ’Course it wasn’t for ’isself—you stupid cow! Where woz I? Oh yus—they takes ’im away and learns ’im to read and write. And then they goes and ’prentices ’im. And then ’e’s lost to us for ever. And so they go on. And so they go on!” His eyes flashed with anger and drops of spittle showered the air before him. “We must be thankful for small mercies, Bill.” Fagan said mildly. “Small mercies? I’d like to see one!” “The Juveile Delinquent Society has a very small income—which I would call a small mercy. The charitable and indulgent Englishman prefers to give his loose change to horse-trough societies and humane attempts to outlaw dog-fights and cock-fights. And more power to them, say I! And what say you, Bill?” The man sniffed. “I never thought all that much about it, but I suppose you’re ...”

121 “No! About the boy!” The frown returned to Sikes’s brow. “I dunno, Fagan. I’d like to oblige you, and I can’t deny as I’d like them fifty shiners. But!” He paused impressively. “The boy’s untried. Never snaked before.” “But he’s bright, Bill!” Fagan tapped his brow. “He’s got more up there than even Nancy. And he’s just the size you want, I’m sure.” Sikes could not deny it, so he did not even try. After a silence he said, “If I does take ’im—and I only sez if, mind —if I does, and ’e goes wrong, ’e won’t be coming back, not outside of a wooden box. As long as that’s understood?” Fagan turned to watch Nancy half-way through this warning, as soon as its drift became clear to him. Not by a flicker of an eyelid nor the faintest pause in the even rise and fall of her breathing did she betray any emotion at hearing the threat. And yet, for some reason he could not have put into words, Fagan could not bring himself to believe that she was once again as trustworthy as she once had been—before Oliver had come among them, in fact. He turned to Sikes and said, “I understand that, Bill. But there’s something you should understand, too. If I am willing to pay you fifty to take him along, then I must have great hopes of the boy. Great hopes, Bill. And great would be my anger if he did come back in a box. These are thoughts to weigh in your mind as your finger closes on the trigger out there in Chertsey, eh? Eh?”

CHAPTER 20

Oliver studies the lives and gruesome deaths of great criminals

The weather continued dismal all that following day. After they had breakfasted together, the Dodger, Bates, and Bet went off to work. Lord Fagan watched Oliver intently at that moment. “I see your eyes follow them out, precious,” he said, “and I’ll wager you wish the rest of you might follow, eh?” Oliver’s only response was a shy smile; he did not believe a more fervent affirmation would be believed, or he would have made it. “So you shall, dear. Very soon now,” his lordship promised, smiling to himself. By that, Oliver understood he was to start pressing his master to explain this enigmatic pledge. “Shall I?” he asked excitedly. Neither a yes nor a no rewarded him. Instead, Fagan launched upon a more discursive explanation. “Well now, Oliver,” he said, “it is time to tell you certain things—things I would say to no one else—things I shall deny saying if ever you violate this confidence and tell the others. But you won’t do that, will you!” Oliver’s heart was already beating a little faster as he shook his head and held his breath to hear more. “I know you won’t,” Fagan assured him, “for you stand to lose too much by it, if you do. I am no longer as young as I was, Oliver, but I have lived through some lucky years—ah, yes!” He hooked a finger round the side of his cravat and made a

122 jocular pantomime of a hanging. “They’ve never been able to do that to me—and not for want of trying, either! ‘Luck’ is what some would call it, but I know better. ‘Judgement’ is what I call it—discretion, horse sense, wisdom. Do you follow me, my boy, or do you think I ramble.” “No, my lord!” he answered fervently; and, indeed, he found he enjoyed the challenge of keeping up with such mercurial thoughts, so fleetingly expressed. “Life, Oliver—for the likes of us, we who have been told we are not wanted by them—life is like a harum-scarum sleigh ride through an icy wilderness. Our way is beset by wolves. And the knack of surviving, young man, is to have the ‘luck’—or judgement—to know when to feed the wolves. And whom to sacrifice. Are you still at my heels, Oliver?” “At your feet, master,” the boy replied with fervour. Fagan laughed and patted his head. “I shall not be disappointed in you,” he said. “I feel it in my bones. Well, to continue: For some years past another devil has ridden my back—apart, that is, from a fear of death by wolves. It is a fear of death by natural causes, which must come to us all in the fulness of time—even to you, my dear, though you have barely started to live as yet. So I don’t expect you to understand it.” Oliver, eager to show he did, indeed, understand it, said, “Fear of meeting ...” and he pointed a finger Heavenward. Fagan laughed again and shook his head. “No! As to that, I’ll take my chance alongside every other sinner—by which I mean I expect to find myself in some pretty exalted company, with bishops and princes first and the likes of Dodger and Nancy some thousands of miles down the line! But now I do ramble! It is not fear of death and Judgement that heaps me, Oliver; it is the question of who comes after? Who steps into my shoes? Who keeps good order?” He fixed his young charge with a penetrating stare and Oliver, whose heart had been going double-tides, suddenly felt it drop a beat or two. He did not dare utter the words but Fagan said them for him. “Yes, dear boy—you!” “Oh, no, sir!” His lordship’s eyes narrowed. “Is this modesty or aversion?” “I ... I hardly know, sir!” Oliver stammered. Aversion he certainly did feel; and yet, if he were entirely honest with himself, he could not deny that a little thrill passed through him at the old aristocrat’s implied promise. “Then accept my word on it,” Fagan went on, “because I do know. Just as I know what’s passing through your mind this minute—and has been there from the moment Nancy brought you back. You’re wondering how soon the moment will come when you can show us your heels and shake off the dust of this hovel for ever!” In a moment Oliver’s spirit sank as deep as they had ever been. All his clever deceit had gone for nothing! Now Fagan would never give him the chance he so desperately sought. He drew breath to protest that he could no longer even recall the last time he thought of escape, but Lord Fagan held up a hand to silence him. “Don’t deny it, Oliver. Of course you want to escape! What possible inducement could hold you here—except, perhaps, the one I am now offering you? You are not like Dodger or Bates—nimble little alley-rats though they are. You’ve got a

123 brain, my boy. You couldn’t read more than a word or two when the Dodger brought you here first. And how long were you in Pentonville? A couple of months? And now you can read—and make a passable go at writing, too. Oh yes, you’ve got brains.” He smiled with satisfaction, as if he had not merely observed this characteristic in Oliver but had somehow nurtured it, too. “And you’ve got patience, into the bargain, which, in some circumstances, is even more important than brains. How long is it now since you told Nancy you had come to heel? Three weeks? A month?” Oliver made his jaw drop, made his eyes go wide as two saucers. “You were listening, my lord?” he asked in horror. This time Fagan roared with laughter and told him he was ‘a good ’un,’ but he didn’t deceive him, oh no! “Of course you knew I was listening,” he said. “And the Dodger, too. We heard every word. The Dodger’s been at me daily ever since—when am I going to put you out on the dipping game? When are you going to start earning your keep? That sort of question. He has no patience, you see? But I have. I’ve been waiting for you to break—and ask me those same questions, too. But oh, no! Not you! Much as you wanted to. Much as your little heart was bursting to ask—amn’t I right?” Oliver risked the smallest nod of confirmation. “But why didn’t you?” Fagan had intended the question rhetorically but as he drew breath to answer it himself, Oliver put in, “Because it would have awakened all your old suspicions, my lord.” The other swallowed the answer he had been about to give and, instead, said, “Pray continue.” “I asked myself what the Dodger would do in my situation, and I decided he would be very happy to stay safe at home and pick monograms out of wipes and polish up stolen plate for sale. So I bowed my head and said nothing.” Fagan spread both hands before his protegé, much as an advocate might point too some overwhelming physical evidence and let it mutely plead his case. “And do you still think of taking leg-bail at the first opportunity?” “I’m not sure, my lord,” was the frank reply. “Perhaps not at the first opportunity.” His master smiled wryly. “A more affirmative reply I should not have believed. Well, I can’t keep you imprisoned here for ever, nor here, nor elsewhere. So, like you, I must take my chance. There is no honour among thieves, Oliver, and yet there may be honesty of a sort, I think—brutal, like everything else. And, to be brutally honest with you, let me tell you this—that I would sacrifice you, even you, to save my own neck. And I would expect you to do me the same favour in reverse circumstances. But, short of that extreme, we shall hang together like father and son ...” “For fear of hanging separately?” Oliver suggested. “Ah, my boy—you have become a student of English history, too!” Oliver blushed, for he had hoped to pass the witticism off as his own. “But let us now turn to present business. The Ancient Druid, they say, had to lie

124 on his back all one midwinter night, in a watery ditch, with a hundredweight of stone on his chest, while he composed an epic poem with a rigid and complex rhyme and metre. The knight errant had to prostrate himself naked all night, on the cold stone of a chapel floor, praying for purity of spirit, stoutnesss of heart, and strength of muscle and nerve. By these ordeals they proved their worthiness. Can you guess why I am telling you these things, Oliver?” Whatever small glow of pleasure his lordship’s earlier words might have aroused in Oliver’s breast, it was quite extinguished by his concluding question. “The time for my ordeal ...” he ventured haltingly. “... is come.” Fagan confirmed. “What must I do?” the boy asked woodenly. “Walk twenty miles—or ride as much of the way as you can—snake in through some skylight, panel, or small window—make no sound—open the door to two fierce gentlemen—keep cave while they help themselves (and help keep the insurance world afloat)—note every single item they take (all without giving the slightest appearance of doing so, mind)—come away with them, nice and quiet— and then tell me all about it. I think you may guess who one of the two gentlemen may be.” “Bill Sikes!” Oliver replied bitterly. Fagan nodded. “Ordeals are not meant to be pleasant affairs, my dear.” “Will he be sober?” “The other gentleman will see to that—Toby Crackit. He’s keeping an eye on the crib. You’ll join him in some ken nearby.” “And the dog?” “Will bide at home with Nancy. She’ll call for you this evening and take you to him. You’ll spend the night there and set out before dawn tomorrow morning. Why so pensive, my precious?” Oliver raised a solemn pair of eyes to his master’s face and said, “After this, I shan’t be able to go to the traps. I’ll really join the pirate crew, at last.” “You could turn queen’s evidence?” Fagan suggested lightly. “And brand myself both criminal and traitor!” Fagan dipped his head in acknowledgement of this truth. “However,” he said, “if you are still thinking of taking leg-bail from us, I would advise you not to do it while under the control of Mister Sikes. The word ‘control’ and that man’s temper do not fit well together! He would not think twice before putting a bullet through your brain—which would be a great sorrow to me, for, as I have said, I think that same brain could take you far, Oliver.” He smiled, and Oliver smiled back. “Best to be a clever pirate, then!” he said. “That’s my boy! And remember—the cleverest of all never get caught!” He bowed with mock civility, as if to introduce himself. “And so,” he said, “to while away the hours between now and when Nancy calls, may I suggest some improving literature?” At this he produced from under the leg of an old chair—or, rather, from where the leg once had been—a stout volume entitled The Lives and Gruesome Deaths of Great Criminals. On the title-page his lordship had struck out the word ‘Great’ and substituted ‘Stupid.’

125 Oliver settled to read—with but casual interest at first, yet, later, with complete absorption. Here were tales of dreadful crimes that made the blood run cold—of secret murders that had been committed by the lonely wayside, and bodies hidden from the eye of man in deep pits and wells, which would not keep them down, deep as they were, but had yielded them up at last, after many years, and had so maddened the murderers with the sight that, in their horror and remorse, they had confessed their guilt and ‘yelled for the gibbet to end their agony.’ Too, he read of men who, lying in their beds at dead of night, had been tempted (as they admitted) and led on, by their own bad thoughts, to crimes and violations that could be concealed only by such dreadful bloodshed as it made the flesh creep and the limbs quail to think of. Or so the anonymous author asserted; he was, however, somewhat coy in his detail, contenting himself with the assurance that, were he to divulge each minute scandal, the sallow pages themselves would turn red with gore and the words would seem like some whispered warning from the spirits of the unquiet dead—the never-to-be-quiet dead—to those who still trod the strait and narrow path of virtue among the living. Oliver knew well enough why Fagan had given him the book to read, for the emendation ‘Stupid’ was well merited. Its preaching was so crude, its inquisition into the criminals’ motives so pat and shallow, that, his master intended, he, Oliver, would see through it all, young as he was, and so learn to sneer at all moral tracts, even those of a less picayune character. Alas for his lordship’s intentions, Oliver read each chapter as comedy; and laughter, as any comedian could have told him, can prick the pomposity of a solemn message even while it sustains the underlying moral. In short, Oliver could simultaneously laugh at murderers who yelled out their pleas to be hanged and yet hold fast to the certitude that he had to escape Lord Fagan’s seductive patronage at the earliest opportunity—and never mind Mr Sikes and his loaded pistol.

CHAPTER 21

Our young hero is no longer a-quikin’ and a-tremblin’ in his boots

Nancy came bustling into the room, shivering with the cold. She delivered herself of the opinion that winter must have shouldered autumn aside that year, for she had never known it so ‘parky’ so early. Lord Fagan handed her a glass of sweetened gin toddy and invited her to warm her bones before she set off again. In all this time she avoided Oliver’s eye, though she had bade him a “Hallo, Nolly!” cheerfully enough. “The boy knows what’s expected of him, pet,” Fagan assured her. Then, at last, she looked at her young friend. “And ain’t you a-quakin’ and a- tremblin’ in your boots, sir?” she asked. Oliver recognized this echo of Mr Bumble’s question to him when he was locked in the Sowerberrys’ coal cellar—a tale he had told her on a previous visit. “No!” he replied, as vehemently as he had replied to the beadle on that unforgettable evening.

126 Fagan, not being privy to the original tale, saw only evidence of some past little intimacy between them, which roused all his old suspicions about Nancy’s loyalties where Oliver was concerned. “He is resigned to joining us at last, my dear,” he vouched. “Better than resigned,” Oliver put in. “I wish it with all my heart.” Nancy, for all her native guile, could not entirely hide her astonishment at this. “But it’s true,” he added. “I’m cooped up here like a bird in a cage.” “And you want to fly free?” she asked. “Not in the open heath, my dear. Not where the wild hawks hover. But ... what’s the word for a very big bird cage, where there’s room for men to walk and birds to fly?” “An aviary,” Fagan said. “Yes—I want to join his lordship’s aviary,” Oliver said. “Where men walk and we little birds fly!” He mimed the dipping of pockets that separated the two activities. Fagan laughed approvingly. Nancy joined in. “Well, here’s a turn-up for the books!” she exclaimed. “Nolly’s one of us at last—and of his own free will!” She rounded on him, pretending to be severe: “You took your time, little man!” “But he’s all the more fast in his purpose, Nance. Amn’t I right, Oliver?” “Your lordship never spoke a truer word,” the boy assured him. Shortly thereafter, Nancy tossed off her glass and, buttoning her coat tight aroud her once more, advised Oliver to bring two sets of underwear and a good cape if he didn’t wish to catch his death. But outside it was raining hard enough to chill the hardiest spirit. Nancy relented and flagged down a hansom cabriolet. The driver told them it would be double fare to Bethnal Green, for he’d never cop a punter back from there. Nancy’s reply was not repeatable here—nor was the driver’s response to her. Sufficient to say that once the temperature of the circumambient air had been raised by ten or more degrees, entirely thanks to the volumes of ‘hellfire’ and related words that passed between them, she settled for fare-and-a-third, or one shilling and fourpence. And even then, though they sprinted the three yards between the shop awning that had sheltered them and the cab that now assumed the same duty, they were as wet as a full minute of ordinary English rain would have rendered them. The driver whipped his horse to a gallop before his passengers could even draw the blinds, throwing them all in a heap. Oliver relished the touch of her and clung tight to her arm long after he had found a secure lodging at her side. “You are my best friend in all the world, Nance,” he told her. “My bestest best friend, indeed.” It was easy to say such things in the dark. “As you are mine, Nolly, dear.” She hugged his arm tightly to her side. “I still could kill myself for what I done that day. I was afraid Bill would see you and he’d know for sure I’d ...” “Shush, do!” he told her. “I never blamed you beyond that same night, when you saved me from a flogging back there. You did the very least you had to do.” She put her head tenderly to his and gave a jocular little push. “I’m glad you’re

127 with us, though. We must ...” “I’m with you, Nance. If you weren’t one of us, I’d cut and run tonight, so help me God!” “Not when Bill’s around!” She clutched his arm urgently and squeezed until it hurt. “Please—promise me that! Fagan’s put the fear of the gallows on him if he so much as harms a hair of your head. But Bill won’t heed it once his temper’s up.” “Nor when he’s in liquor,” Oliver added. “Well, you know him so,” she replied glumly. “Promise, now?” “I promise.” “Cut your throat and hope to die?” “On my mother’s grave, Nance. Stronger than that I cannot go.” After a solemn moment he added, “Why do you stay with Sikes?” “He’s a good protector,” she said, with little fervour. “No one cheats me after one look at him. And he brings in steady money, drunk or sober, for he’s still one of the best cracksmen in London—else Fagan’d have no truck with him at all. A girl could do worse. I want for nothing with him—except a little loving tenderness.” Impulsively Oliver reached his arms up around her head and held her tight while he kissed her passionately on the cheek—just as he had kissed Mrs Bedwin and pretended she was his mother. But, somehow, he could not pretend that with Nancy; she remained the lovely, loveable, loving girl she always was. “Silly!” she said at last, giving an embarrassed laugh and fending him off—but half-heartedly at best. “You’re not ... married to Bill, are you?” he asked nervously. “Bless us!” Nancy laughed at the very idea. “Why? What’s it to you?” “Because—when I’m old enough, Nance—I should very much like to annexe up to you.” He expected another ‘Bless us!’ at this but all he got was a shocked silence. “Nance?” he prompted. He heard her swallow heavily before she spoke. “Are you proposing to me, Nolly, dear?” she asked in a voice that was barely audible above the noise of the elements. “I suppose I must be,” he replied. “Do say you will!” “No lady says she will—nor yet that she won’t—not right away—not even if her heart is bursting with love and gratitude and every bit of her wants to shout yes and dance along the rooftops. Which is the best answer you’ll get out of me tonight.” Then, just in case he had the slightest lingering doubt of her true feelings, she leaned forward and kissed him warmly on the lips. The taste of gin put him in mind of Sikes and he asked if she couldn’t curb his drinking a little. Her reply was that when a girl was annexed up to a man like Bill, a pint of gin in his veins was a very good friend after the candle was blown out— which she would not explain, despite his many entreaties. “Did ’e come quiet?” was Sikes’s first question as Nancy thrust Oliver indoors. “Like a lamb,” she assured him.

128 “I’ll give ’im lamb!” the man snarled. “Come ’ere, you!” Oliver remembered Fagan’s words about undergoing ordeals to prove one’s mettle, and so he went forward with heavy spirit but no sign of hesitation. Sikes pulled off the boy’s cap and threw it in a corner; then he sat down heavily by the table and manhandled Oliver to a standing position in front of him. “Know wot this is?” He took up a pocket-pistol that lay upon the table. “Yes,” Oliver said. “Then watch!” continued the man. “This ’ere is powder. That there’s a bullet. Feel it! Hard, ain’t it?” Oliver agreed that it was. “And this ...” He held up a rough circle of felt cut from an old hat. “Wadding,” Oliver said. Sikes smiled, but not in admiration. “ ’E knows, Nancy!” “He knows a lot, Bill,” she agreed. “Y-e-e-s-s!” Sikes ran a malevolent eye over the boy. “Maybe ’e knows too much! Too much fer our peace of mind—which is saying, too much fer ’is own good. And that’s what this is for!” He waved the pistol under Oliver’s nose. “First I puts in the paah-der, see! Then the bullet. Shakes it dahn, good ’n tight. Rams in the wadding to finish—see? To ’old it all in place.” In a flash his free hand snaked out and grasped Oliver at the scruff of his neck. “Now I ’old you in place, boy!” He laughed at the rhetorical neatness of his words as he pressed the barrel to Oliver’s temple. “Lissen—an’ lissen good!” he said in a low growl. “If you speaks a word—one word, mind—when we’re out of doors tomorrah, that bullet will be in yer head without further notice. ’Ceptin’ when I speaks direct to you an’ seeks a reply. So, if yer does decide to speak wivaht my leave, speak a prayer, for them words will be yer last!” When he saw that Oliver was suitably pale and trembling (and for once the boy did not have to dissemble to seem so afraid), he relented and, moderating his severity until it was no more than his customary vile-tempered snarl, said, “Get to yer kip, nah. And sleep as sound as whatever yer can, for we’re up at five tomorrah!”

CHAPTER 22

A long and pleasant walk in the country ends in a confusion of powder and shot

It was a cheerless morning, blowing and raining hard when Sikes and Oliver emerged into the street. The rain had teemed all night and the kennels overflowed into large pools of standing water along every road. Far off to the east, over Dagenham Marshes, there were the faint glimmerings of the coming day, but they aggravated rather than relieved the gloom of the scene, the sombre dawn only serving to pale the dim street lighting without shedding any warmer or brighter tints upon the wet housetops or the dreary streets. None stirred abroad into that inhospitable daybreak; the windows remained close-shuttered. Street after street was empty, and Oliver was glad that his surly companion neither said nor did

129 anything to spoil the silence. By the time they turned into the Bethnal Green Road, however, day had fairly broken. Many of the lamps were already dowsed; a few country waggons were slowly toiling on toward the city; and now and then a stage-coach, its livery shrouded in mud, rattled briskly by. The driver of one flicked a punishing lash upon a heavy waggoner who, by driving on the wrong side of the road, endangered his arrival at the appointed office a quarter of a minute after his appointed time. The public houses were already open, their windows ablaze with bright fishtails of gaslight. By degrees, other shops were unshuttered and a few early risers began to be encountered. Then came straggling groups of labourers going to their work; then men and women with fish baskets on their heads, donkey-carts laden with vegetables, chaise-carts filled with livestock or swaying carcasses of meat, milk-women with their pails, and, at last, an unbroken concourse of people trudging out with various supplies for the eastern suburbs. As they drew near the City the hubbub and the traffic increased, swelling at last to a roar and a bustle in the streets between Shoreditch and Smithfield. By then the day was as bright as it was likely to get and another busy London morning was well begun. From Bishopgate Without, Sikes turned into Sun Street and thence by Crown Alley, with its quaint orchard and vegetable plot—a relic of early Georgian London—to Finsbury Square. From that point on the sound and feel of the district was uncannily familiar to young Oliver, though he could swear he had never trod a single paving stone there before. On down Chiswell Street they trudged, into Barbican and Long Lane, and so at last to most familiar ground—Smithfield Market, a mere half-mile north of Lord Fagan’s ken. But what a different scene it was from the shuttered and deserted acres he had witnessed on that evening when Sikes and Nancy had reclaimed him to Fagan’s crew! Today was market day and the ground was ankle-deep with filth and mire; a pungent steam off the reeking bodies of the cattle mingled with the eternal London fog and hung heavily between the chimney pots. The central, cast-iron pens and as many temporary ones as could be fashioned from hurdles and scrap were packed with sheep or pigs; tied to posts at the gutter-side were long lines of beasts and oxen, three or four deep. Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers, and vagabonds of every low sort were mingled in one dense mass. The whistling of the drovers, the barking of dogs, the bellowing and plunging of oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grunting and squealing of pigs; the cries of hawkers, and the shouts, the oaths, the quarrelling on every hand; the ringing of bells and the roar of voices, boisterous in the bars and snugs of every public house; the crowding, pushing, driving, beating, yelling, and whooping; and the unwashed, unshaven, dirty figures that ceaselessly darted to and fro, bursting out of or vanishing back into the throng—all combined into one kaleidoscope- cacophony that bewildered a person’s thoughts and stunned the senses. As they passed the exit into Giltspur Street, Oliver gazed half-longingly toward Fagan’s hideaway in Ball Yard. Sikes, guessing at his thoughts, gripped him by the arm and said, “Aye! You’re wondering why I didn’t just collect you on my

130 way this morning ...” “No, I’m not,” Oliver replied. “I know what a careful man we both work for.” The ruffian did not like this reminder that he worked today at Fagan’s command; he gripped Oliver all the harder and hastened him on toward Holborn Hill by way of Hosier Lane—thus passing within a stonesthrow of Fagan’s earlier ken in Saffron Hill, too. There, glancing at the clock on St Andrew’s Church, Sikes saw it was already hard upon seven—at which he stepped out even quicker, forcing Oliver to trot at his side. He kept up this gruelling pace for the next mile or more, through the St Giles rookery, Soho, and numerous lanes and alleys north of Piccadilly; he seemed to have an aversion to main highways, where, to be sure, the chance of meeting a peeler with a clear field of view was greatest. Indeed he did not begin to slacken his pace until they passed Hyde Park Corner and were well out upon the road to Kensington. Here he had the good fortune to spy an empty waggon heading their way; the legend ‘J. Edwards, General Haulier, Hounslow’ was painted upon its side. And now Sikes revealed a side of his character that Oliver had never yet seen— the bully-turned-sycophant. In tones unctuous enough to make the flesh of one who knew him creep, he begged the driver to give them a lift as far as Isleworth, which would save their boots eight miles of wear and tear. “Why, jump up!” cried the fellow genially. “Is that your boy?” “He is, ain’t you, Ned?” Sikes touched the pistol in his pocket, which he considered a subtle and ingenious way of securing the boy’s compliance. “Well, I see your father walks too quick for you, young Ned, so hop aboard!” Oliver, knowing how easily this expedition might end in disaster, wanted the man to remember him as surly and uncooperative; ‘an unwilling lad if ever I seed one, yer honner,’ would serve him well from any witness box. So he complied, but with a scowl that would at any other time have marked him as the living image of the man who had just claimed to be his father. And he sat in sullen silence, hiding his delight at the chance to rest his legs, as village after village passed by: Kensington, Hammersmith, Chiswick, the road to Kew Bridge, Brentford ... all came and went. At last, at the Coach and Horses, just short of Hounslow, the driver set them down and pointed out the Isleworth road. “Goodbye, boy!” he called out as he set off again. Once more, Oliver merely scowled—for which he received a box on the ears from his ‘dear old dad.’ J. Edwards, General Haulier, Hounslow, he said to himself, committing the name to memory. Sikes led him several miles in a generally southward direction, as he could tell by the sun. They passed many a fine gentleman’s house, of which Sikes was a wondrous vade mecum. “Here’s Saint Magaret’s,” he would say, “home to the Earl of Cassilis. His dogs are getting old. He may be worth a visit soon ... and Twickenham Park—Joseph Todd esquire ... a fine collection of gold plate and trophies but the Crown Jewels would be easier ...” Sir George Pocock, Bt; the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe; the Hon. Mrs Lionel Damer; the Baroness House; Sir Jonathan Wathen Walter, Bt; the Earl of Waldegrave; and numerous members of the Upper Ten Thousand—all were correctly placed and assessed to the last purloinable guinea in a narrative which so

131 beguiled little Oliver that he almost forgot the felonies, potential or actual, toward which it tended. More practically, he thought that if ever he escaped Lord Fagan’s clutches and sought service in a noble household, he could do no better than start in the centre of Twickenham and work his way outward. They came at last to a considerable village, which Sikes seemed reluctant to enter at that hour of the day. Oliver assumed it to be Hampton, from a name written pretty large on a coach works at its fringe. They snoozed beneath some trees until evening. The sun drew forth a fine haze from the rain-sodden fields of yesterday; lingering on the breezeless air it lent an aura of magic to the fine houses and gardens all about. One of them, Hampton House, had, according to Sikes, been the home of the great actor David Garrick and then of his widow for many a year; but everything worth lifting had been sold on her death, about fifteen years earlier. He spoke as if that had been the Golden Age of his trade. As evening drew on, Sikes rose and led Oliver to a decrepit public house with a defaced sign-board, where he ordered a dinner. It was a low-ceilinged room spanned by a great oak beam and with high-back benches ranged toward the fire. These were occupied by rough men in smock-frocks, drinking and smoking in silence, staring and occasionally spitting into the fire. Sikes settled among them, dragging Oliver beside him, and stretched out his legs to dry his boots. They had cold cuts and mashed cabbage, helped down with mild ale and trenchers of bran bread, after which Sikes smoked several pipes. Oliver passed the time in studying an angler’s map of the nearby Thames, hanging framed upon the wall. He traced the latter part of their odyssey and noted that they were still several miles short of Chertsey. Then, overcome by fatigue and tobacco smoke, he fell into a doze. He was awakened by a most unusual noise from Sikes’s lips; it formed the words, “Let me buy you a drink, matey”—a combination Oliver had never thought to hear from that particular source, even though they were spoken to a smocked yokel who appeared to have some dificulty in focusing his gaze. A complete explanation for the unprecedented offer came next: “I hear tell as you’re bound off for Lower Halliford?” “Low-er Hall-i-ford,” the man replied ponderously. Sikes nodded to the serving girl, who placed a tankard of ale before each of them, saying, “And something for the boy?” “A cordial, if you please, miss,” Oliver put in before Sikes could order something stronger. If he could keep his wits while Sikes lost his ... The ruffian glared at him but was too intent upon fishing the yokel to countermand the order. “Fast!” the yokel said. “Eh?” Sikes responded. “My horse.” “Ah! Fast, is he? I’ll warrant you keep him well.” “Nothing behind him, see.” The fellow nodded as if he had just delivered the judgement of Solomon. “No load? All delivered? So he’ll fly like the wind, eh! Let’s drink to him!” Sikes fitted action to words, which induced the yokel to do likewise. “Me and the

132 boy,” he continued sadly, “we’d probably hinder you too much?” “Hinder me?” The man’s eyes sought for his questioner a while before finding him. “If you were to oblige us with a lift to Lower Halliford. He may be the finest horse in Middlesex but our weight would hinder him—or perhaps not?” “Hinder him?” the man roared angrily. “Why he’ll fly like the wind. Lower Halliwell, you say? ’Stronery! Goin’ there meself! ‘Strornery! Want a lift, do’ee?” “Only if it won’t encumber you or your horse, my friend. Let’s drink to him again!” And so they did. “Who d’ye know in Lower Halliwell?” he asked, though the name came out more like: ‘Looer Herllwerll’ spoken upon a switchback drawl. Sikes, who was already a little under the weather, replied with alcoholic honesty, “We’re going on to Cher ...” “To Shepperton,” Oliver put in swiftly. “To try the fishing from the Angler’s Rest there.” Sikes glared at him again but could not deny that Oliver had just saved him from a blunder. “Shepperton!” the yokel roared. “Well, I c’n take yu’z fur as Looer Herllwerll. Thass wur I’m goin’, y’know!” “Is it, ecod!” Sikes winked at Oliver. “What luck! Who’d’ve thought it!” The fellow put an arm around Sikes. “Lemme buy these drinks,” he mumbled. “Becky!” But Becky informed him that the gentleman then in his embrace had already furnished the necessary. “Yurra pell!” The man tried to kiss Sikes on the neck. “I’ve always held ye in th’ighess’ regaaard!” “All pells together!” said Sikes, half rising to escape the man’s clutch. “One more bumper for the horse!” They drained their tankards and staggered toward the door, Sikes doing his best to support his fuddled friend, who kept repeating, “Yurra bess pell I evva had ... bess pell I evva had ... bess pell I evva had ...” all the way to the yard, where the fine beast whose health had just been so liberally toasted was champing at the bit to be off home once more. Indeed, the ostler thought it wise to come out and hold him until the merrymakers were safely aboard. The two passengers climbed up without delay but their benefactor tarried at the animal’s flank to sing his praises to the world and defy the ostler to name a better. And when the man finally gave the creature its head, you would think that the spirits which had been drunk to him inside the tavern had somehow found their way into his sinews, for he rose upon his hind legs, threatened to hoof several parlour windows to sherds, and set off from standing at a right gallant pace, rattling through the village like a fire-engine on salvage rates. The night had turned cold and the sun-warmed fields sent out a claggy mist that rendered the countryside dank and dreary once more. When the horse had run off his impatience and settled to a more reasonable trot, the yokel fell asleep. Sikes,

133 too, was somewhat the worse for wear and so Oliver took over the reins without protest from either. As they drove through Sunbury the clock on the church struck seven. The light from the ferry-house window streamed across the road and threw a more sombre shadow among the branches of an ancient yew, stirring gently in the night breeze over the huddled graves beneath it. Somewhere near by water was falling over a sluice. Combined with the soughing breeze, it seemed to Oliver like quiet music for the repose of the dead. It was the sort of night on which death and thoughts of death were ever-near. A mile beyond the village they reached Lower Halliford, where the horse turned of its own accord toward Walton-upon-Thames. Oliver, remembering the local geography as he had gleaned it from the angling map, reined the creature to a reluctant halt and, pressing the leathers into the hands of the sleeping yokel, woke up Sikes and told him they had to walk from here on. He leaped down and went to hold the horse’s head. Coughing and grumbling, the bully followed him down and stood, in the middle of the road, looking about him in a flustered manner. “This way,” Oliver said, taking his sleeve for a change and dragging him toward the Shepperton road. “ ’Ere!” Sikes exclaimed as he began to regain his senses. “ ’Ow d’ya know yer way ’ereabouts so well?” He made a grab for Oliver’s wrist as he spoke. But the boy shook himself free and said there was no need for that. “If I’d wanted to scarper—as they say—I’d have done it while you and that oaf were both snoring.” Sikes tried to box his ears but missed him in the dark and almost fell; after which he decided to pose no further risk to his bones and his dignity. He contented himself with repeating his question as to Oliver’s surprising knowledge of the locality. “Don’t trouble your head about that, Bill,” was the boy’s reply—after carefully moving out of range. “I know lots of things as would astonish you.” “Yeah?” the man sneered, not realizing that Oliver was inducing him to bandy insults as if he were little older than the boy, if at all. “Such as?” “Such as where his lordship keeps his special trinkets, what they are, and what they’re worth.” Sikes was silent as they trudged on into the mud and darkness, through dismal lanes and over cold, open wastes. “Is that all?” he asked at length. The lights of some distant town or village were beginning to twinkle through the nearer hedgerows. “No,” the boy answered mildly. “What then?” the man was forced to ask. “I know what he gets when he sells the trinkets you bring him—how much more it is than what he allows to you.” Sikes made a grab for him, a successful one this time, and, lifting him clear off the ground, brought Oliver’s face to within inches of his own. “ ’Ow much, yer little varmint?” he demanded. Oliver drew a deep breath and did his best to suppress a shiver. “That’s valuable

134 information, Bill,” he replied. “The sort that only pells may share—and you ain’t been much of a pell to me, Bill, now have you!” “ ’Ow much?” the man roared, losing control of himself in his fury. A rush was kindled in a cottage to their left, whose very existence neither of them had until then suspected. A man opened a casement and called out, “Who’s there?” Sikes took to his heels and ran, heedless of Oliver’s weight. He stopped only when he had no breath to run another yard. By then the lights of the distant village were pretty close—and, from their reflection upon the water, Oliver could see they were once again by the banks of the Thames. In which case, the village could be none other than Chertsey itself; they must have passed through a darkened Shepperton without even knowing it and were at last within half a mile of their destination. “I knows yer little game!” Sikes sneered when he had recovered his breath. “Yer wants ter make me shout out and blow our crack ... bring the watch down on us—ain’t that it?” “No, Bill,” Oliver replied calmly, “that ain’t it. Our lord and master would only make you take me out to snake for you on some other darkmans work, so I’m as keen as you to wash the Chertsey mud off our heels.” “Why are yer tellin’ me all this, then?” “Insurance, Bill. For all I know, Lord Fagan has commissioned you to do me in after I’ve helped you crack this crib.” “Do yer in!” Sikes laughed. “I know it’s not likely,” Oliver admitted. “But (disagree with me if you wish) somehow, whenever Fagan’s as sweet as a sugar-loaf to me, I begin to fear for my life, don’t you?” The man did not renew his laughter; indeed, a rather sudden silence, a contemplative sort of silence, seemed to have claimed him. “And then I begin to feel the need for insurance, don’t you?” Oliver sharpened his question. It goaded Sikes into exclaiming, “ ’Ow does it give yer insurance—provoking me to strangle yer? Mocking me with secrets yer won’t pass on?” “Won’t pass on now, Bill—not at this moment—not when you could do me in if such was Fagan’s commission to you. Oh no—not now, Bill!” “When, then?” Oliver heard the man’s nails rake among the stubble of his chin and he knew he had him tamed—for the present. “When I’m safe and snug back in Lunnon, Bill,” he promised. “But not a minute before.” “Oh yus! And what guarantee do I ’ave then as yer’ll keep yer word?” “Because that’s when we’ll need each other most pertickler, Bill—more even than what we do now. So—do we crack this crib at once or what?” “No!” The man came to himself and an awareness of their surroundings. “We’re looking for a ruined house below the bridge.” “Then it cannot be far.” Oliver stepped out once more and, sure enough, after a couple of hundred paces, they came to Chertsey Bridge, a stout structure of seven stone arches not yet sixty years old; and there by its footings stood a dark,

135 dismantled house, to all appearance unoccupied. “Are we to meet Mister Toby Crackitt here?” Oliver inquired lightly. Sikes grabbed him roughly by the lapel. “And whaddyer know of ’im?” he asked. “Only what two open ears have learned, Bill,” the lad replied. “Well, burn my body, but I think it’s two more than two,” the man replied in an ominous tone. “What of it if we are?” “Only this—there is no need for Mister T. C. to know I am anything other than one of your regular frightened waifs from his lordship’s Jolly Roger, now is there?” There was more scratching among the stubble before Sikes haltingly agreed. “ ’Oo are yer?” he asked. “Imp or demon or devil—for boy yer ain’t!” In a voice more sad than forceful Oliver replied, “I am that imp who survived the Coldharbour baby farm, Bill, where nineteen out of twenty die. I am that demon who walked alive out of Fellgate Union, where most who enter come out in their box. And I am that devil who will survive Lord Fagan’s tender mercies— for which, I think, I will need many friends!” Sikes, being unable to deny the assertion, gave a gruff bark of assent, put a hand to the latch, and raised it with a gentle click. But the noise was enough to arouse the same Toby Crackitt, somewhere within. “Hallo!” he called in a loud, hoarse voice. “Stow that row!” Sikes replied urgently as he bolted the door behind them. “And show us a glim!” “A glim, Barney! A glim!” the other shouted at some third party of that name. “Wake up, if it’s not too much trouble!” And he hurled something heavy and unbreakable at the poor fellow—an iron candlestick, in fact. A moment later there was a shuffling of feet and that same candlestick, now bearing a light, emerged from a doorway at the end of the passage, closely followed by Barney himself. “Bister Sikes, sir!” he cried with apparent joy. “Cub id, sir, cub id!” “Step lively, you!” Sikes, enjoying Oliver’s injunction to treat him like one of Lord Fagan’s waifs, thrust the boy roughly ahead of him. “Or I’ll step lively on you!” Oliver scuttled across the room, which was low and dark and barely heated by an atrociously smoky fire. He seated himself on one of three broken chairs and took stock of his surroundings and new companions. Barney, with the broken nose, looked as if he might once have been a fairground boxer—and as if his time in the ring had done as much to improve his brains as it had his features. The other occupant, Toby Crackitt himself, was more interesting. He lay, smoking a long clay pipe, at full length upon a battered old couch with his legs much higher than his head. He was dressed in a smartly cut snuff-coloured coat with large brass buttons, an orange neckerchief, a coarse, staring, shawl-pattern waistcoat, and drab breeches. His hair, what little there was of it about his head and chops, was dyed reddish and tortured into long, corkscrew curls that seemed to invite constant petting from his large, dirty fingers, which, in turn, were ornamented with big, flashy rings. He seemed inordinately fond of his polished

136 topboots, for he could hardly drag his eyes away from them. “Hallo?” He frowned at Oliver. “What’s the cat brought in, then?” “One o’ Fagan’s.” Sikes, standing in the hearth, stamped the mud from his boots and tried to fan the smoke up the chimney. “Wud of Bister Fagad’s lads,” Barney repeated. “Pretty boy!” Toby murmured. “He could dip any old maid in a chapel. That face is his fortune, I’ll go bail.” “No doubt. Very likely.” Sikes had had enough of Oliver, directly or indirectly, for one day. “Is there any danger of drink and wittles hereabout, or must we crack the crib starving?” “Success to the crack!” Barney cried as he placed a bottle of spirits and some scraps of food upon the table. “I’ll drink to that!” Toby sprang to his feet with surprising agility and joined Sikes at the festive board. The pair of them downed a hearty glass and smacked their lips with fiery satisfaction before they tucked into the ‘wittles.’ “ ’Ere, younker!” Toby tossed Oliver a crust and poured him out a liberal glass. “Oh, please, sir, I’d rather not, sir, if it’s all the same to you, sir,” the boy responded in tones that suggested Lord Fagan had snatched him from some cathedral choir school not two days earlier. But when Sikes rose and glowered at him, he swallowed the tot in one—or so it appeared to them in that dim, smoky light; they did not see him empty most of it back into the glass and surreptitiously spill it out upon the floor a moment later. The banquet over, they all settled for another long snooze, Toby back on his couch, Sikes across the table, Oliver in his chair. Barney stretched out on the floor by the hearth and, between catnaps, stirred himself to feed the fire. He must also have been listening for some distant chime for it was precisely half-past one when he rose for the last time and went over to impart the fact to Toby Crackitt—who leaped to his feet with the same agility he had earlier displayed. Bill Sikes was pretty smartly awake, too, and both men were soon swaddling their necks and chins in large, dark shawls, over which they drew their waistcoats. Barney meanwhile went to a cupboard and returned laden with implements, which he placed in their pockets at their direction. “Barkers for me, Barney,” said Toby Crackitt. Barney produced the pistols and assured him they were the ones he had loaded himself earlier that day. “And the persuaders?” Toby asked next. “Got ’em,” Sikes put in. “Crapes ... keys ... centre-bits ... darkies ...” The catechism continued as one implement after another was carefully stowed where it would not clink against a fellow. It finished with the hanging of a small crowbar from a loop inside the skirt of Sikes’s greatcoat. “Now!” cried Toby. “Bring them bits of timber, Barney. That’s the time of day!” Barney brought a cudgel to either man and busied himself in fastening on

137 Oliver’s cape. “Come ’ere!” Sikes held out his hand, which Oliver grasped at once, swaying as if he were still fuddled with the drink. “Take t’other one, Toby,” he added. “See if we can trot some sobriety back into the varmint.” Barney, now at the door, announced that the coast was clear; whereupon the two robbers sallied forth, half-carrying Oliver between them. The moon was down and the night was now as dark as could be. The mist off the Thames and the marshy ground about them had increased and the atmosphere was now so damp that Oliver’s hair and eyebrows were dripping with moisture before they had finished crossing the bridge. They halted briefly on the farther bank and listened. The river gurgled beneath them. An owl shrieked from somewhere downstream, on Chertsey Mead. Dogs barked and answered one another, here and there about the village—but not as dogs bark when startled by interlopers. “Clear,” Sikes whispered. “Slap through the village, then. None will see us tonight. And you—young ’un—not a peep or you’re deadmans!” He shook Oliver roughly to stress the words he could still only whisper. On they went, through the village and out on the road for Staines. A dim light shone here and there behind a few curtained windows, but no curtain stirred and no fresh ones were kindled. As they left the village behind them the church of All Saints struck two o’clock. A little way out they turned left; Oliver could dimly discern the darker outline of a hill against the dark of the sky. A couple of furlongs along this lane they arrived at a detached house surrounded by a high wall. With his customary agility Toby Crackitt gained the top of it in no time. “The boy now,” he said, reaching down with his hand. Sikes hoisted Oliver under the arms and, a moment later, he and Crackitt were lying tumbled in the grass on the farther side of the wall. Sikes had somewhat more of a struggle to surmount the obstacle but he joined them, panting, after a while and they began to steal cautiously toward the house. Sikes paused only long enough to kindle a dark-lantern, which he then stuffed into one of his capacious pockets. Halfway up the lawn Oliver fell to his knees, crying in his best chorister-treble, “Oh, for God’s sake let me go! Let me run away and die in the fields. I will never come near London—never, never! Oh! Pray have mercy on me and do not make me steal. For the love of all the bright angels that rest in heaven, have mercy upon me!” Sikes knelt beside him and, offering his mouth to the little lad’s ear, whispered hoarsely, “Enough! You go too far!” Drawing forth his pistol, he placed it to Oliver’s temple. A moment later Oliver was ready to agree that he had, indeed, carried his parade of innocence a shade too far, because Toby Crackitt brushed the pistol aside, saying, “No noise now, Bill. It will not serve us here.” At which he seized up the boy and, covering his mouth with the grubbiest hand Oliver had ever been forced to taste, growled in his ear, “Say but another word and I’ll finish you off myself, you little cur! You’ve a neck as scrawny as any pullet—and I’ve wrung a good

138 few of them in my time.” All this while he dragged Oliver toward the house. When they stood in its shade he went on, “Pry open that shutter, Bill, as soft as you can. Little cocky here is game enough now, I’ll engage. Ain’t yer, laddy? We’ll say no more about it. I’ve seen more seasoned lads of your age tooken the same, just for a minute or two, of a cold winter’s night.” Sikes, having a grimmer and more comprehensive understanding of Oliver’s outburst, said nothing and contented himself with plying the crowbar as effectually and as silently as possible. Under his capable persuasion it soon yielded, swinging quietly open upon its hinges to reveal a small lattice window some five feet above the ground—the sort that might betoken a scullery or a brewhouse. It was so small that few would think it worth the expense of defending it more securely; but Oliver was smaller—otherwise, to be sure, he would not have been there at all. And a man of Sikes’s artistic capabilities made short work of opening it, again without a sound. “Nah listen, you!” He crouched, bringing his face to Oliver’s height. “When ye’re inside, yer goes straight up them steps as yer’ll see before yer—gorrit?” Oliver nodded. “An’ along the passge to the front door.” “Half way down the passge,” Toby put in, “you’ll see three chairs. Take up the one nearest the door, for you’ll need it to stand on and undo the top bolt.” “Gorrit?” Sikes repeated. “If there’s a dog?” Oliver asked. “He’s floating past Hampton Court this werry minute, I shouldn’t wonder,” Toby put in with a laugh. “And the servants won’t have wondered why the hound’s gone missing this particular night?” Oliver asked. “And they won’t be standing-to, ready for an intruder?” “It’s a risk we must take,” Sikes told him gruffly. “We?” Oliver insisted. “Oi!” Toby cried suspiciously. “Is this the lad wot whimpered about angels in heaven not five minutes since? Come on, give ’im the lantern!” He braced himself back-to-the-wall and made a stirrup of his hands. Sikes picked up Oliver once more and, standing on Toby’s stepping stirrup, thrust the boy in through the tiny opening. As soon as Oliver was inside the burglar whispered, “It’s a direct line and I’ll ’ave yer in me sights all the way. Step a yard out of that line and, though I swing fer it, I’ll drop you as dead as a doornail.” From the very beginning of this criminal venture, Oliver had realized that his safest course was to fly upstairs and alert the members of the household as to what was going on while they slept; nothing that Sikes had just said made him deviate his intentions to the smallest degree. Imagine, then, his fury when, having got only half way to the foot of the stair, and not having deviated an inch as yet from his straight-line path, Sikes nonetheless carried out his threat! There was a loud bang behind him, a searing pain in his side, and the hall was filled with a fog and the acrid reek of burned

139 powder. “You!” he yelled at the burglar. “You! You!” And, hefting a candlestick that, in normal times, would have been twice too heavy for him, he ran back to the scullery, intent on doing what mischief he could to the treacherous coward without. As he crossed the threshold of the little room, however, he became aware that Sikes was shouting, too: “Back, lad! Back! We’re tumbled-to! Give us yer hand! Quick!” And there was no reek of powder there, where it ought to have been strongest of all! Oliver realized at once that he had been winged from inside the hallway; also that no bricks, and very little distance, now lay between him and the continuing peril to his life. He was then most eager to grasp Sikes’s hand and let himself be drawn back to that dubious safety without. In twisting his way through the narrow opening he stole a backward glance and saw two men hastily but not very skillfully recharging the blunderbuss with which they had shot him a moment earlier. “God, how the boy bleeds!” Sikes cried when he felt how wet his hands and Oliver’s clothes had become. The loss of blood took its effect on Oliver, too, for he soon found himself unable to run ... then to walk ... then even to stand. All was confusion as he slipped into unconsciousness. Somewhere a bell was pealing loudly. There was a further volley of shots from farther down the drive. Cries. Flashing lamps moving in the undergrowth. And then a cold, deathly feeling crept over him and he saw and felt no more.

CHAPTER 23

Two august officials of the Fellgate Union contemplate a bright future

The night was bitter cold. The snow lay on the ground, frozen into a hard, thick crust, so that only the heaps that had drifted into byways and corners were stirred by the sharp wind that howled through the Fellgate streets. As if in a fury that it could not play with more, the blast roused each heap in a savage cloud, whirled it into a thousand misty eddies, scattered it, dropped it, picked it up again ... Bleak, dark, and biting cold, it was a night for the well housed and fed to draw around a bright fire and thank God they were at home—and for the homeless, starving wretch to lay him down and die. Many hunger-worn outcasts close their eyes in our inhospitable streets at such times, who, let their crimes be never so heinous, can hardly open them in a less forgiving world. Such was the night on which Mrs Corney, the matron of the Fellgate workhouse, sat herself down before a cheerful fire in her own private room and cast a complacent eye over a small round table, which supported a tray, which, in turn, had lately supported a meal of a size and variety adequate to support one of her figure and position. And yet there had been a spectre at her feast, and it touched on that very thing, too—her position. For, as a king may long to be an emperor, and an emperor to

140 become a god, so even a humble workhouse matron may yearn to be a slightly less humble workhouse mistress. Such an ambition had, indeed, been simmering in Mrs Corney’s ample bosom full many a year. But, although there was only one object in its path, that object had been as high and broad as Snowdon—namely, the obstinate and determined bachelordom of Mr Slout, the workhouse master. One object did I say? Nay, there were two; the second being the fact that no female, be she never so gifted, never so qualified, never so proficient, could become workhouse mistress in her own right. Why this should be, none could rightly say; and yet the very roofs of the town would rise upon gales of laughter at the very suggestion that it might be otherwise. And so Mrs Corney, being more determined to work with the world’s prejudice than to change it, had done all in her considerable power to ambush Mr Slout’s affections in the hope that he would bear her up to that station, so obviously, so rightfully hers. And her labours had not gone in vain. Over this past year she had twice brought him to the brink of a proposal—for their union, as it were, within their Union. But the metaphorical flutters of his heart had engendered palpitations of a more physical kind and brought her to the sad prospect of laying aside her trousseau in order to lay out her master. And now, third time unlucky, Mr Slout lay dying—not in his own workhouse, to be sure; though it had ample facilities for the care of the pauper sick, it lacked those finer amenities required for the care of their betters. In short, he was in a parochial private room in the Fellgate Infirmary; and she, Mrs Corney, had all the labours of his office without the honours attendant upon it. True, she had the assistance of dear Mr Bumble. Dear Mr Bumble? Well, perhaps not. She sighed. Like all men he had his good points and his bad. He was not possessed of the brightest intellect and yet he had the keenest sense of his own self-preservation; no man she knew outshone him there. His person was not the most attractive nor his linen the cleanest; but what he saved in laundering he must have placed in the bank—which, none could deny, was all to his credit. He was, as they say, ‘fond of a drop’; yet, by that very token, one might also say he was not one of your sour, teetotal abstainers; nor did he spend his own fortune on drink when there was an undertaker or an apothecary—or any tradesman who might need his favour—to do the office for him. And those savings, too, must stand to his credit in one of the Fellgate banks. And now, with the fast-approaching end of poor Slout, it had crossed her mind once or twice (or, since she was an honest woman, a hundred-and-once or a hundred-and-twice) that none stood in better place for preferment to the mastership than dear Mr Bumble. The only mark against him, which Mr Limbkins or Mr Wrungley might advance, would be his habit of filling that space in his skull where intellect should reside with mere native guile, instead. However—and here she rubbed her hands gleefully at the thought—if it could somehow be noised abroad that she was to be permanently at the former beadle’s side, joined there by God, never by man to be put asunder ... why, then the objection would lapse. Not even Mr Wrungley could claim she lacked intellect enough for the two of them. She rubbed her hands so vigorously that she incautiously upset upon herself the

141 little kettle then boiling merrily upon her hearth; and, though she carried as many layers as this bitter winter forced her to wear during her unavoidable tours of the unheated workhouse, the water that trickled through them was still hot enough to bring a cry of pain to her lips. By the merest chance, Mr Bumble was at that moment standing outside her door, polishing the mud from his toecaps and beating the powder-snow from his greatcoat and hah-ing upon his St Christopher buttons to brighten them with a rub of his sleeve ... and all those other things men do before confronting a female upon whom they have designs. Let it be said at once that Bumble’s designs were as honourable as could possibly be (considering the man who entertained them). He, too, had noted poor Slout’s decline, which had directed his thoughts, as if by magic, toward the impending vacancy. But he had gone a step further than Mrs Corney, for he had made tentative inquiries of Mr Wrungley as to the board’s likely deliberations upon a successor; and that man had left him in a state of considerable certainty that, whoever the lucky fellow might be, the board would never again countenance a single man, when they might gain the services of a wife for the same salary and the combining of two separate rooms into one small apartment. On gaining this intelligence, Bumble’s inclination had immediately turned to Mrs Mann, who, though she had never been so immodest as to encourage any advances, had not, like Mrs Corney, gone ahead of him, as it were, erecting barricades and topping them with broken glass. But a moment’s thought had convinced him that a queen of her own small realm would not lightly abdicate so as to become the consort of the king in one only slightly larger. Then, indeed, he bethought himself of dear Mrs Corney. Who better to fill that deficiency in his own candidature than the woman whose salary the board would also save by his union with her! In other ways, however, the prospect of that same union did not please. True, many years ago, when they were both younger and more wholesome, he had tried to pay her court. But she had eyes only for Slout and had left him in no doubt as to her low opinion of (and thus attraction toward) him, a mere parochial beadle. Lately, however, as the master had gone into a decline, he had caught her eyeing him a time or two—and once she had even smiled! But, as against that, he could not deny that her brain was a very simple affair and it might not have occurred to her that, regardless of personal attraction or antipathy, their destinies were golden if his gold adorned her finger, negligible if she persisted in her neglect of him. So now he must see what cause his polished toecaps and sparkling St Christophers could plead for him. And (with apologies for this necessary excursion) it was at that moment that he heard Mrs Corney’s cry of angry pain and rushed in, a Sir Galahad to her distress. “Why, Mrs Corney, ma’am!” he exclaimed in bewilderment when he found her standing before her fire, holding a wet patch of her dress clear of her nether person. “Oh, drat that kettle, Mister Beadle, sir!” she cried in her vexation. “Ha! I mean Mister Bumble, to be sure. Oh, the sting of it!” Bumble, seeing she was neither injured nor menaced, wagged a waggish finger

142 at her. “Ah, Mrs Corney, Bumble I shall be forever. But beadle? Well, that is a res nullyus, as our friends in wigs like to term it.” He placed a solemn finger to his nose and tapped it a gentle time or two. “Oh, Mister Bumble!” Her eyelids fluttered. “As ever, you leave me far behind you. Speak plain, I pray.” “First, ma’am, are you hurt? May I fetch some female to help you? I felt sure you were set upon by some of the villains we are forced to entertain under this roof.” “I am not hurt, Mister Bumble—more surprised than hurt, indeed. That wretched little kettle!” “Small enough for one, ma’am, but not for two!” Her smile at this remark was enigmatic enough to encourage him further. “May I close the door?” he asked next. Oh, such a bold question to pose a respectable widow! If she said yes, would he not think she was encouraging his advances? If she said no, would it not seem that she distrusted his honour? When he thought he had racked her long enough, Bumble said, “I shall do it without leave, see tha, for ’tis a bitter night. You’ll not think the worse of me for it?” “What?” she replied in amazement. “When it was yourself that opened it—and with the highest motives, too? I should be a monster of ingratitude to complain. Sit you down, pray, and stretch those magnificent boots toward my humble little fire until the warmth is back in your bones.” “Well, well, never mind me, Mrs Corney, ma’am,” he said as he set down his tricorn hat and staff. “It is you we must consider. Will you not take a chill from the dampness of your dress?” “Lord, Mister Bumble!” She lifted her apron and fanned her face, pretending to take his meaning amiss. “I mean,” he cried eagerly, “should you not take some physic, prophylactive, as they say, or, in plain Yorkshire, to ward it off.” “Never a drop!” she exclaimed on the threshold of outrage. “In the top shelf of the cupboard behind you.” As he fetched it, she added, “ ’Tis peppermint with a little something. How long it has stood there I have quite forgot. I hope it has not gone off.” He poured her a generous measure and topped up the cup with what was left of the hot water. “There, ma’am,” said he, passing it to her tenderly. “We cannot have our beloved matron fall ill. The paupers and orphans would surely suffer and grieve.” “The paupers and orphans?” she murmured as she took her first hearty sip; her questioning tone somehow suggested that the list was incomplete. “And ...” Bumble ventured. He would have ventured more if, at that very moment there had not come a peremptory knock at the door. “Yes?” Mrs Corney barked in a voice that made even Mr Bumble quake. “What is it?” A withered old pauper woman poked her head into the room and sought for the

143 matron through broken spectacles that were held in a home-made wire frame. “If tha please, mistress,” she quavered, “Old Sal is a-going fast.” “Well, what’s that to me?” Mrs Corney snapped. “I can’t keep her alive, can I?” “Nay, mistress,” replied the other. “There’s none as may do that. But she’s troubled in her mind, see tha. She’s dying hard and she swears she has that to tell thee as thou must be told. She’ll never die quiet till tha come, mistress, that I’ll swear. Good evening, Mister Bumble, sir. Unseasonable weather!” The beadle considered it beneath his dignity to respond with more than the smallest inclination of his head. Mrs Corney, muttering invectives against old crones who couldn’t even die without annoying their betters, began a search of her chamber. She unlocked all three drawers in her tallboy, searched them perfunctorily but apparently found nothing she wanted. She also unlocked her seaman’s chest but her search of it also proved fruitless. “If you’re seeking your shawl, ma’am, it’s here on your chair,” Bumble found the courage to say. She burst into laughter at that and said she’d lose her own head if it weren’t glued on. She was about to lock up the drawers again when, looking at the beadle, she asked if he’d still be there when she returned. With unwonted gallantry he replied that he would, though each minute would seem an hour. More practically, he added that he would bide for news of Old Sal’s death and then go to Sowerberry with an order for her coffin and funeral. At that she departed, advising him to take some of her ancient physic himself as a prophylactic (she stressed the correct pronunciation) against the cold of such a walk through the town. Left to himself he took a generous draft of her gin-and-peppermint before taking equally generous advantage of her having left her valuables unlocked. He counted her teaspoons, weighed her sugar-tongs, squinted at the hallmark on the creamer; he felt the quality and quantity of her linen, shuddering a little at the volume implied by her busk; he lifted the iron cash-box, which she had not left unlocked, and shook it—producing a most satisfactory rattle and clink of coins; he bent over her furniture and peered minutely, looking in vain for veneers that purported to be solid wood; and finally he gazed about the room and satisfied himself in a general way that he could find a very comfortable billet in such a snug, well furnished chamber. He did a little dance upon the spot, the sight of which would have astonished any who knew him, and then settled by the fire to enjoy her physic while he awaited her return.

CHAPTER 24

An ancient crone requites an old debt to Oliver and passes to her reward

She was an apt messenger of death who had summoned Mrs Corney from the snug warmth of her parlour. Hannah was her name, or the only name she had kept

144 through all her years. Now her starveling body was bent by age, her limbs trembled with a palsy, and her features were distorted into a mumbling leer. As she hobbled ahead of the mistress, the toes of her tiny boots peeped out alternately beneath the hem of her dress, like a pair of tiny black rats trotting a brace of mincing steps to each of the matron’s bold strides. Every now and then she dipped one shoulder and half-turned about, as if she doubted the woman were managing to keep up; then she would give a little oh! of surprise and trot a triplet to make up the way she had lost. As they approached the stairway to the room where Old Sal lay dying, Mrs Corney lost all patience and, seizing the lantern from her, pushed past and left her to follow as best she could. It was a bare garret, with a dim light burning at the farther end. There was another old crone watching by the bed; and the parish apothecary’s apprentice was standing by the dimly glowing fire, plying his pocket-knife in an attempt to turn an old quill into a new toothpick. “Cold enough, Mrs Corney,” he said as the matron entered. “Indeed, sir, indeed.” She dropped a four-inch curtsy, which was more than his due—except that the apothecary had influence with the board. “You should insist on better coals from your contractors,” he said, pausing to try and break a barely glowing lump with the rusty poker. “These will hardly do for a cold night.” “Had I but the power, then I should so insist,” she replied. “But such is the board’s choosing—as if our places here were not already quite hard enough!” A moan from Old Sal interrupted them. “Ha!” From the surprise on the young man’s face as he turned to look toward the bed you’d have imagined he’d forgotten the dying woman entirely. “It’s all U.P. there, I’m afraid, Mrs Corney.” “Do you say so, sir,” she replied as Hannah entered the room and went at once to join her companion at Old Sal’s side. “If she lasts out the hour—two at the most—I shall be surprised. Every part of her system is breaking up, all at the one time. Is she still breathing, old ladies?” They leaned over her, listened, and assured him she was—just. “Then perhaps she’ll just drop off in her sleep. It would be kindest so. Put the light where it’ll not disturb her—down on the floor.” Hannah shook her head, disagreeing with this nice prediction. Disgruntled, Mrs Corney settled as near to the fire as she could and pulled her shawl about her shoulders, thinking it must be a cold room, indeed, where even the finest merino wool took a chill off the air. The apprentice, having completed the transformation of quill into toothpick, planted himself in front of the only remaining area of fire and made loud, grisly use of the implement for the next ten minutes, while Mrs Corney winced in silence and wished Old Sal were already consigned to that unmentionable place for which she was surely destined. What could such a withered and useless old hag have to impart that would be of the slightest value or interest to her? When the young man realized he was merely exchanging bits of feather between his teeth for bits of apple core and skin, he heaved himself away from the

145 glow, wished the matron joy of her vigil, and left. He had not walked a pace before Hannah and her companion, Anny, were at the hearth, crouching low and reaching their hands toward the reluctant coals. As if to welcome them, a flare of gas burst out, throwing a sudden, ghastly light upward into their shrivelled faces. “ ’Tis like Parson Rumbold’s sermons,” Hannah giggled. “All light and no heat!” They cackled heartily until the matron told them to stow it. In truth, she was not so annoyed by this intrusion as she might have been on any other night. By leaving her drawers unlocked she had given that Bumble all the chance he’d ever need to assure himself of her dowry; by leaving them unlocked and bringing the key here with her, she had ensured he would await her return no matter how long Old Sal took in dying; and by leaving him with a full bottle of her peppermint ‘physic,’ she ensured he would be in a mellow humour, inclined not to be stubborn, when she rejoined him there. No ... all in all, she was quite content to command his presence but evade his company for an hour or two at Old Sal’s behest. Anny gave her a surreptitious glance before pulling out an old, battered snuffbox, from which she shook a few grains into the palm of Hannah’s hand and a few more into her own. Then, greatly daring, she offered the same to the matron, who seemed lost in her thoughts. When Mrs Corney became aware of what was being offered her, she rejected it indignantly and asked how much longer she’d have to wait. “Not long, mistress,” Hannah assured her. “We have none of us long to wait for this dark messenger.” “Will the pair of you attend her funeral tomorrow if she dies tonight?” the matron asked. Slightly bewildered at the question they said they very well might. Mrs Corney laughed sharply and responded that, in that case, they ‘very well might’ not bother coming back from the graveyard—adding that the board would get a better deal off old Sowerberry for three-in-one than for three separately. It was the sort of joke that goes down better among the board and its servants than among their ultimate customers but the two old dears laughed dutifully and fell back upon snuff and whispers. “Who’s that?” cried a hollow voice from the bed. Old Sal had somehow raised herself upright and now sat with her arms outstretched and fists clenched toward them. The long shadow, cast by that lantern down on the floor, reached across the ceiling and shivered above their heads. “Hush, pet, hush!” Hannah trotted to her side and slipped an arm about her shoulders. “Lie down now—there’s a good girl!” “Lie down? Never! Not while I’m alive.” Old Sal drew a shallow breath between each word. “Is matron here?” “I am here.” Mrs Corney rose to her feet with all the dignity of her high office. “Come here!” Old Sal plucked at her image. “Nearer! I must whisper it in your ear.” The matron bent over her at last and turned an obliging ear to the crone’s

146 parched lips. Old Sal drew breath to speak, but then her eye fell upon the other two. “Turn them out,” she wheezed. “Out with them! Make haste!” Hannah and Anny protested that she was wandering in her mind and was too far gone to know her own best and dearest friends, but Mrs Corney pushed them brusquely from the room, shot the bolt, and returned to the bedside. “Now listen,” murmured the dying woman. “Listen. Are you there?” “I’m here. I’m listening—and it had better be something worth hearing or you’ll meet your Maker without so much as a shroud!” Old Sal ignored the threat. “In this very room,” she said, “in this very bed, I once nursed a pretty young miss as was brought within the gates with her feet all cut and bruised with walking, and all soiled with dust and blood. She was deliverd of a boy-child and then she died. Oh ... what was the year?” “Never mind the year,” the matron cut her short. “What of the woman? And the child?” “What about her?” the crone echoed. “Aye, what about her? I know!” She sat straight and her face suddenly flushed; her eyes almost started from her head. “I know! I robbed her, so I did.” “After she died?” “Aye. The doctor thought she died—and so she did, soon after—but she revived long enough to kiss the bairn again. It was gold.” “The bairn was gold? What nonsense is this? Oh!” Mrs Corney clutched the old one’s arm. “The thing you stole —that was gold! What was it? Where is it now?” “She said that if the boy lived, the day would come when he would not blush to hear her named. Aye, she said that. She charged me keep it till the boy could ...” “Keep what? This thing of gold? What was it?” “Aye. Keep it till it might be of service to him. But when he come back from that Mrs Mann at Coldharbour ... he’d growed so like her ... like his mam ... such an angel ...” The words trailed off as she closed her eyes. She would have fallen back if Mrs Corney had not supported her. She opened her eyes again and said. “I have not told you all, have I?” “You’ve told me nothing yet,” the other responded sharply. “Or nothing of the slightest utility. What boy was it—can you remember that?” “So like his mother! I should have given it back to him then. But I gave him bread instead and kept it to mesenn, see tha. He’s well born and bred, that boy— and it showed in him!” “His name, you old dolt? His name?” How she prevented herself from shaking the creature to death she did not know. “Oliver!” she murmured, and closed her eyes again. “Twist! Oh, I remember Twist—as does the beadle—as does the board! And you have something of his, you say? Something of gold? And you wish me to give it to him? You know I will.” But she was already addressing a dead woman. In the fury of her frustration she flung the lifeless body back upon the paliasse. Old Sal’s right arm, which all this while she had clutched to her breast, fell at an angle, with the hinge of her elbow just inside the mattress and her arm poking out beyond the edge of the bed. The hand opened ...

147 Mrs Corney was already on her feet and had turned to depart when something dark and huge seemed to menace her from above. She flinched as she looked up, cowering behind an upraised arm; but then she almost laughed to see it was only a shadow. And she did, indeed, laugh—though not too loudly, knowing what ears were pressed tight against the door—when she saw what manner of thing it was that cast the shadow above her. Had she but known that the menace it had seemed to offer had no seeming about it at all, she would have left it dangling where it was, scintillating and golden in that dreary garret. “Well, mistress?” Hannah asked when she unbolted the door again. “Stone dead!” the matron replied. “And ...?” “And nothing! Nothing to tell after all!”

CHAPTER 25

Two august officials of the Fellgate Union plan a bright future together Bumble had counted the spoons, inspected the creamer, weighed the cashbox, and explored the furniture half a dozen times before he heard the sounds of Mrs Corney’s return in the passage outside; she seemed to be in some agitation. There was no doubting it the moment she entered the room—gasping for breath and with a hand to her breast as if to still its palpitations. “Mrs Corney, ma’am!” The beadle bent over her where she had half collapsed into her chair. “What is it? What has happened?” “Oh, Mister Bumble, sir—I am so put out, I cannot begin to tell you!” “Put out? Put out, ma’am? Why, who could have dared ...” His voice trailed away as unspeakable possibilities crossed his mind. “Why ... if any one of them vicious paupers has so much as ...” “It’s too dreadful to think of!” She shuddered. “Then try not to think of it, ma’am,” he advised solicitously. “But I can’t help it—that I can’t.” “Then take something, dear lady—a thimbleful of your peppermint cordial?” “Not a drop! Well ... a thimbleful, did you say?” He was already pouring it out, after which he diluted it with hot water and held it tenderly to her lips. She took it from him with a feeble word of thanks and turned her face from the cruel light. “Come and sit here where I may see you, Mister Bumble. It would give me great pleasure.” Her reason for facing away from the light are not hard to guess; she was no longer in the flush of girlhood, and the dark, by enlarging her pupils, would make her eyes seem large and mysterious, or so she hoped. Mr Bumble’s reasons for complying were also pretty straightforward: her flabby, bewhiskered silhouette was to be preferred to the hirsute chalk cliff discovered under direct lighting; also, speaking of hair, the endearing little kiss-curl he kept plastered upon his forehead would show up to great advantage if he had the limelight, instead. Bumble was

148 never backward when invitations to step into the limelight were flying about. “Oh, but I’m better already!” she exclaimed as soon as he was seated before her. “Now tell me, dear Mrs Corney, was it one of them despicable wretches as ’as upset thee?” he asked. “Why?” She smiled archly. “What will tha do if it were?” Their lapse into the more intimate ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ (or ‘tha’) of popular speech was noted with satisfaction by each but was commented upon by neither. Bumble stretched forth his hands, as murderers do in stage melodramas, and wrung an imaginary neck with force enough to make him tremble all over; his cheeks flushed and his eyes almost popped from their sockets. “With these very hands,” he said impressively at last—coyly adding a hesitant, “my dear lady.” “Eay, Mister Bumble!” She sniffed and, plucking a dainty handkerchief from her cuff, dabbed it to her eye. “Oh! Oh!” Now the man was all confusion. “I should not have done it before your very eyes—thoughtless wretch that I am ...” But she was already waving his protestations away, saying, “Not that ... it isn’t that, dear man.” “Pray, what, then?” he entreated earnestly. “You are clearly upset, and ...” “It was the strength you showed, Mister Bumble. Without a second thought for your own safety you rushed in to defend my honour! You make me realize what a weak, defenceless creature I am and what a great, gaping lack it is in my life that I have none so stout as you—I mean stout-hearted, to be sure—none so stout- hearted as you always at my side to shield me.” “Ah ...” He coloured and stared at his boots. She watched him cautiously until she judged it right to add, “Except by the accident of your calling upon me—as tonight, for instance. I see I have grown careless in my thinking—I mean, believing myself to be a strong-minded woman of independent spirit and well able to fend for myself.” In a sad, wan little voice she added the afterthought: “I suppose I must thank you for exposing my fallacy!” Bumble was now fairly certain no pauper had violated, or even offered to violate, her person; his opinion of them was pretty low but not so low as all that. He therefore felt safe in repeating his promise, this time in verbal form, saying he’d do it at once if she’d but say the word. This time, laughter answered where tears had gone before. “Bless you, dear Mister Bumble! A thousand times! I have never felt so safe as I do here and now, with your gallant offer of protection. But ’twas nothing of that sort, truly. I am ashamed now to have made such a song and dance of it.” “Then what could so have put you out, pray?” “Why, it was merely that I waited what seemed an eternity up there in the cold, by a fire that would have chilled the tropics, in the company of two detestable old hags who should have saved us their upkeep ten years ago if they weren’t so stubborn and selfish ... and all for what? Nothing!” “Nothing?” “Nothing, Mister Bumble. She muttered some rigmarole about a boy who lodged here once—I’ll not say his name for I know it’s highly displeasing to you ...”

149 “Twist!” The beadle exploded. “Hush, now, hush!” she urged. “Take another glass of my cordial. It has kept excellently, don’t you think?” “What had she to say of Twist?” he demanded, adding in a more casual tone, “Not that I’m too curious to know.” “Nothing! That’s why I were so put-out. She said she laid out his mother, the night she bore the boy, and died within the hour. She said she saw the boy again when he returned from Coldharbour and remarked how like his mother he had grown.” “And that was all?” Bumble had the strongest feeling that the honest answer was nay; but Mrs Corney replied, “Aye! I fancy there was more—a lot more—but the old harridan died before she could speak it. A double frustration to me—first to sit there waiting like that and then to be cheated of anything other than sorrowful ramblings when at last her ladyship condescends to speak! Was I wrong to be so put-out?” Again she fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Tha were not wrong, dear lady,” he replied stoutly. “These paupers have not the dimmest notion of the pains they put us to, nor the strains we endure to make their lives pleasant and comfortable—even in their last hours. I suppose I should go and let Sowerberry know we need an old woman’s shell.” “Five foot four by the mark on the bed,” Mrs Corney said, referring to a new system whereby paupers were put to die on beds that Sowerberry had marked in inches down the frame—to save his making a special trip merely to run a tape over them. Despite his latest words, the beadle made no move. Instead he stirred the fire, threw on another shovelful of good-quality coal, and drank a grateful draught of peppermint-and-a-little-something. “This is a very comfortable room,” he said. “Aye—’twill suffice for one,” she replied. He nodded toward the farther wall. “Knock a door through there and ’twould suffice very nicely for two.” Mrs Corney breathed deeply two or three times, with an odd sort of flutter at each inhalation; but she made no other response. Bumble crossed and uncrossed his legs. “I hear poor Slout is worse tonight.” He sighed. “I wonder should I warn Sowerberry that a somewhat grander interment is in the offing?” “Well,” she answered casually, her tone suggesting they might be discussing the politics of some remote antipodean community, “the sad death of that splendid man, whom I have admired and respected this many a year, is something that ought to set all our minds to work. And I mean no disrespect to the poor master.” After another dainty sip of her cordial she added, as if it were apropos, “And two minds are better than one, or so they say.” “Two at anything is better than one,” Mr Bumble replied lugubriously. “Something troubles you, dear man,” she said bluntly. “Not many would notice it—but then not many know you as well as what I do. Know ... and admire, dare I say. And if the person you may unburden your trouble to is not sitting here, looking at you this minute, then I don’t know where else you’ll find her!”

150 “Find her! Aye!” He dared to reach out and pat her hand warmly—and she, equally, dared not to pluck it away in maidenly fright. “What is a man to do! A man who has lost his heart and secretly pledged his soul to a fair conqueror who ...” “Why, he is to speak plain, my dear. He is to speak without fear.” “Ah, but she would be a noble woman who would understand his scruple, my dearest friend!” She laughed. “She will never understand it at all without some slight expansion as to its nature?” Her tone made a question of her bald statement. “Then it is this, ma’am—that ground which the ache of love prompts him to occupy is already seized and held by the twin demons of Base Advantage and Self-Interest. To be blunt at last, the post of master is one for which this man is both ambitious and qualified, save in one respect—to wit, that the board will not tolerate the expense of appointing a bachelor. But this man has long cherished a secret passion for the one lady who, out of all other ladies in the kingdom, is most qualified to become mistress of the workhouse at his side and, I will add, mistress of his soul as well! In a just world, indeed, she’d be made workhouse mistress in her own right—and whatever husband she happened to have about her would be made master, willy nilly, on her apron strings, as it were ...” “Oh! Dear Bumble, dear Bumble!” The good lady lifted her own apron again, as at his prompting, and fanned her blushing cheeks. “You put such thoughts into my head, my dear! Thoughts that have lingered, as it were, just outside the light of conscious speaking ... thoughts I have hardly dared entertain ...” “Then here’s another,” he interrupted in some agitation. “Suppose the board were to appoint a complete outsider—a married outsider! What need then of a matron, eh—with all the expense of her wages, her coals, her candles, her board, her lodging?” “Ha!” She managed to turn deathly pale, mainly by the expedient of dropping her apron and pressing her hand so tight as to constrict the arteries at her throat. Bumble fell to his knees at her side and clutched her hand between his. “But now,” he declared with passion, “tha sees my dilemma, my dearest—for I am that man. Yes! All these years I have longed for that sweetest and tenderest of unions with thee, but how may I now declare it when Base Advantage and Self-Interest are there behind me, leering at you over my shoulder, whispering the foul calumny that I think of none but myself?” “Oh, my dear Bumble!” She leaned forward awkwardly and rested her head on his shoulder. “I hardly know which moves me more deeply—thy affection for my most unworthy person or the nobility of soul that has prevented thee from declaring it until now, when both of us are in peril—when thy worthy ambition is as much in jeopardy as is my very place beneath this roof.” Bumble managed to find her ear and kiss it without flinching. “ ’Twas the thought of thee losing thy place as finally goaded me to speak,” he murmured. “Dearest man!” She managed the reciprocal service for him. “And to think such thoughts never once crossed my mind!” “I would not have it otherwise. Mrs Bumble—as I hope I may soon address thee,” he said as he stumbled to his feet once more.

151 “It cannot come soon enough for me, Bumble, dear,” she simpered, “as I hope I may call thee already!” “A man who takes a wife who could reason and scheme to such a vile degree takes a scourge to his bosom and a rod to his back. And now I should go to Sowerberry’s. Five foot four, I believe you said?” Each endured the briefest of kisses and favoured the other with the widest of smiles before, with one last glass to fortify him against the bitter night outside, he set forth on his errand. Twist! he thought as he stepped out into the dark, into the biting wind and the flurrying snow. Oliver Twist! Why did the boy seem to haunt him so? And would he ever be free of him? It was odd, the effect he seemed to have on all who met him—except, to be sure, those who were paid to harden their hearts to all kinds of mawkish sentiment. That Brownlow fellow was clearly grieving at his loss, almost as if Twist had been his son—his housekeeper, too; yet the boy had been under their roof a mere matter of months. Sowerberry, also! There was a man as inured to softness as a man could be, thanks to his profession—or so you’d think. Yet Twist had somehow got beneath his defences. But for that Noah Claypole’s cowardly sneers, Twist might very well have become the son that Mrs Sowerberry had never given him. (And Bumble still had not forgiven Master Claypole for his part in the events that had led to Twist’s absconding last year.) And now there was Old Sal upon the list, as well! Turning up like that after so many months, already three-fourths dead, yet desperate to impart ... what? Something important, no doubt of it. Something important about young Twist, too. What could it have been? He was sure his bride-to-be knew more than she had said, and—to be fair to the man—he did not greatly resent her lack of candour on the point; in the post he soon hoped to occupy, with her at his side, he would far prefer a wife who was discreet to a fault than one who, under the emotion of such a scene as had just passed between them, would blab all. He decided he would try to get that Charlotte on her own at Sowerberry’s ... to fish her for more information about young Twist. That final decision must explain the joyful gleam in his eye when he applied it to the Sowerberrys’ shutters and witnessed the disgraceful scene within. The shop was closed and dark, and no amount of knocking—not even with the parochial staff—would bring an answer there. But when he went round into the yard and applied his eye, as stated, to a crack in the shutters, all was explained. The Sowerberrys must be abroad somewhere in the town—or else the wretched Claypole would never have seated himself at their table, soiling their linen, dining off their plate with their silver, and swilling their wine from their crystal—all the while being waited on by a most unhappy-looking Charlotte. The beadle went farther down the yard, down the steps to the kitchen-airy, and tried the latch of the door. It opened. With a silence that owed more to cunning than to exercise, he crept upstairs and halted outside the dining-room door. “Oysters!” Claypole was saying. “There’s a fresh bucket came today and I means to eat my share.” “Oh, Noah, I dursn’t. It’s more than my ...” “Noah what?” he demanded.

152 “Noah, dear!” “That’s better. And don’t you forget it again!” “Ow!” The wretch had obviously pinched her sharply or hurt her in some equally cowardly way, for she now began to cry. “Stow that!” he sneered. “Oysters, I say!” “But they’ll surely notice,” she pleaded. “And what shall I tell them then?” “Whatever you like,” was the nonchalant reply. “ ’Ceptin’ the truth, o’ course, ha ha! You tell ’em the truth an’ I’ll just ’appen to let drop as ’ow you ’elped daaarlin’ lickle Oliver Work’us scarper wiv their wittles!” “Oh, please, Noah dear!” She was in tears again. “Ask anything of me but to thieve their oysters—for either way I shall lose my place.” “Anything?” he echoed lightly. “Well now, there is one oyster as you could let me taste as they wouldn’t miss. One wiv a beautiful, delicate beard, I shouldn’t wonder ... Give us a kiss first!” At that point Bumble burst in upon them with the most dreadful cry of rage. “Say that again, sir, and I’ll flay you alive!” Charlotte gave a cry of relief and flung her arms about him, pouring out thanks to God that he had come to save her. “Speak, sir!” the beadle commanded. Claypole did not speak; he whimpered and whined, instead. He whimpered that he didn’t mean to do it. He whined that Charlotte was always a-kissing of him, much to his distaste. And he howled when the beadle sent Charlotte for the cane and gave him a dozen of the strokes the coward had been so happy to assist him in doling out to young Twist. He howled all the way home, with Bumble’s last words ringing in his ears: “Every time I come a-visiting your master here—and you know how often that is—I shall inquire as to your good behaviour of young Charlotte, here. And my further treatment of you, Claypole, will depend upon her report. And you may depend on that!” Once again poor Charlotte burst into tears, this time of gratitude. When Bumble had calmed her down and helped her clear away the guilty remains of that disgraceful feast, he settled amiably by the kitchen fire and accepted a tankard of spiced, mulled ale, which the girl was sure her master would wish her to offer. “Ah, Charlotte!” he exclaimed. “What times we have seen between these four walls, eh!” If ‘we’ signified him and her, the only times—or time—Charlotte could think of was the chastisement of Oliver. “The boy?” she asked nervously, knowing how it still irked the beadle. “The boy!” he confirmed. “Funny!” Charlotte, emboldened, went on. “That old woman ...” She hesitated again. At once Bumble was all ears—though he did not show it, not by the flicker of an eyelid nor the tensing of a single muscle. “Old Sal?” he replied carelessly. “The one who assisted at Twist’s birth and laid his mother out an hour

153 afterward?” “Was that it?” Charlotte asked. “And what of her?” “She come by here today, looking for the boy.” “Did she, now!” “Aye! I were scrubbing t’front passage when she practically fell through t’door! I thought as she’d picked t’undertaker’s as a fit place to die, for she looked as if every breath was like to be her last.” “Did she say what she wanted the boy for?” He sipped his ale and glanced at the clock as if he were merely asking questions to pass the time. “Nay, sir. She just said, ‘The boy! The boy!’ And I said, ‘What, missiz—Noah Claypole?’ And she said, ‘Nay—the boy!’ So I says, says I, ‘Twist, tha means? Oliver Twist?’ And she smiles and says, ‘Aye—Twist. I knew his mother!’ And that were all she’d say—‘I knew his mother’—until I made her understand he wasn’t ’ere no more. Then she said she’d best see t’matron, instead. And off she went!” “Did she show you anything? Perhaps she had some keepsake or letter or something from Twist’s mother—they often do, tha knows. ’Specially the ones as lays ’em out.” “Funny you should say that, Mister Bumble. I’d not of mentioned it else, but she kept one hand clenched tight—like that!” She held a fist, white at each knuckle, beneath the beadle’s chin. “D’you think she held something—or was it just the palsy of age?” Bumble stifled a convincing yawn. “I think she held something, sir,” Charlotte replied dramatically. “And something of value, too!” “Really?” Bumble laughed as people do at wild or impossible exaggerations. “Laff if you will, Mister Bumble, sir,” she said airily. And again she put a clenched fist near him—but this time with the fingers and palm facing him. And she put her little-finger nail to the crack between the second and third finger. “But I spied a glint just there as wasn’t lead, nor pewter, nor tin!” “Gold?” Bumble still maintained his tone of tolerant unbelief. “I’ll not say gold,” Charlotte replied enigmatically. “I’ll just say neither lead nor pewter nor tin.” “Well, well!” Bumble drained his tankard and rose again to his feet. “Porochial duties call and your master and mistress don’t look like returning soon. So I’ll just ask you to tell them as a shell is wanted for an old woman, about five foot four ...” “Not ... not Old Sal!” Charlotte put both hands to her mouth. “Don’t fret yourself, my dear. It comes to us all in time.” He gave her a genial pat on the head. “You’re a kindly man, Mister Bumble, sir,” she said with a little catch in her voice. “I’ll own there’s times I’ve thought otherwise, but what you did with that Claypole—that’s lifted me from purgatory, so it has.” “It’s what we’re put on this world for, Charlotte,” he replied. “To be good and kind to one another and to help out where we can. I think I may even have helped out little Oliver Twist, see tha—ungrateful as he ever was to me!”

154 And he went on to describe his visit to Mr Brownlow, painting in white and pink all that had been black about it. Charlotte believed half of it but she took good note of Brownlow’s name, and of Pentonville, where Bumble said he dwelled. “Aye!” the beadle concluded with a sigh. “Help others wher tha can—live your life by that precept, Charlotte, and you’ll not go far wrong.”

CHAPTER 26

His lordship asserts his authority over his demesne

Lord Fagan was like a cat on coals all that day after the Chertsey robbery—or after the night on which the robbery ought to have taken place. The arrangement had been for Sikes, Toby Crackitt, Barney, and the boy to lie up in the derelict house by the bridge, lighting no fire and showing no face, while the hue and cry passed over them toward London. Then, when the agitation had died down, the three men would emerge and make their separate ways home, passing themselves off as ordinary tramping labourers; Oliver, of course, would return as he went, with Sikes. So, even if all had gone as smoothly as could be, the earliest they might be expected to return would be two full days after the burglary; and yet Fagan, who had endured more such waiting periods than even he could recall, was, on this occasion, agitated beyond bearing. The Dodger tolerated his restlessness as long as he could but left at last, scowling and saying he knew where he could get a good job breaking stones and carrying them up mountains for a farthing a day. Charley Bates went with him, saying he, too, would prefer even that sort of labour to being left alone with his lordship in such a mood. Fagan became slightly calmer once they were gone. He bolted the door behind them, stuffed paper in the cracks of the shutters, and took out his ‘pretty things’ from their hidey hole and gloated at his possession of them. Yet even this, which was otherwise his favourite solo game, held no magic for him that day. At last, after replacing them with all his usual care, he put on his greatcoat and braved the crisp evening air of late autumn. The cold seemed to clear his brain as he strode up Giltspur Street toward the open space around Smithfield. Oliver had been too much on his mind lately, he decided. He was neglecting the other parts of his business; he was getting out of touch. He would go to the Cripples, the favourite public house and music hall of all who dwelt along Saffron Hill; and there he would stand a few drinks, call in a few favours, and generally take up the reins of power again in this his suzerainty. Maybe Nancy would be there; it was a pet place of hers when Sikes was away. Maybe she would have some news of him—especially if harm had come to Oliver, for then she would hear of it first from Sikes’s lips, and he, Fagan, never. The thought spurred him to an even livelier pace. Just before Smithfield he turned off into Cock Lane and thence into Snow Hill, treading the very pavement (if not the actual ordure that garnished it) that Oliver

155 and Sikes had trod some thirty-six hours earlier. Unlike them, however, he turned north into Field Lane when he arrived at Holborn Hill, where St Andrew’s church struck half-past six. Field Lane is that narrow, dismal alley leading directly into 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 pickpockets. Hundreds of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs outside the windows or flaunting from the door-post; 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. Fagan was both supplier and patron to most of them—which accounted for the easy tokens of recognition that passed between him and them as he strode on by without stopping, a matter of nods and winks, of a minutely raised finger, and even, once or twice, the faintest of faint smiles. One man alone was bold enough to speak—a small, stout chap who had somehow managed to squeeze his broad posterior into a child’s arm-chair and who sat outdoors at the northern end of the lane, smoking a long clay pipe. “Why, my lord!” he called out jovially. “The sight of you would cure the hoptalmy, I declare.” “Aye,” his lordship replied. “This neighbourhood had grown a mite too warm. I’ve come to see how well it has cooled. What’s the breeze?” “Nothing as would make a wave,” was the jovial reply. “And nothing as would make so much as a ripple as far as your lordship is concerned.” “That’s good to hear, Jago.” Fagan guessed from his manner that the man had more to impart, so he sat upon the shutter, which was let down to form a stall, and offered a pinch of snuff, which Jago accepted eagerly. “Seen my boys?” Fagan asked; he was far more interested in Nancy’s whereabouts, of course, but he did not wish to alert the fellow by making that his first question. “They’ve not been selling wipes here,” Jago said quickly. “I’m sure they haven’t, old chap,” Fagan replied amiably. “Or else you’d have told me of it the moment I came within earshot, eh?” “Just so.” Jago relaxed—until his lordship rapped out his next question: “But have they been trying to sell there? Or there? Or there?”. At each repetition of the word he jabbed his finger at a different shop, all of them in the ‘revived wipes’ trade. Jago sniffed, “Well, I believe I saw a pair very like them seeking to trade with Old Mumbles—without joy to them, I may add.” “And so I should hope! Well, well—boys will be boys, eh?—which is the same as saying boys will be chastised.”

156 “As to your other boy ...” Jago added cautiously. “Yes?” Fagan took out his watch, much as to say that tidings of Oliver were of little importance. “Does the name ‘Monks’ signify, my lord?” His lordship did not twitch a muscle; anyone would have thought he had never so much as imagined the existence of such a name, never mind any man who might have owned it. “As the name of a vocation, yes,” he said. “As a patronymic, no. Why do you ask?” “Only this, my lord—a gentleman, and a proper gentleman he is, too, by that same name has gone up and down Saffron Hill this day, asking at every door in every alley and yard if a boy by the name of Oliver Twist had ever lodged there or if they knew his whereabouts now.” Fagan masked his agitation behind a small ritual with his snuff, offering a second helping to Jago afterward. “A gentleman?” he mused. “Silver cane. New silk hat. No crease in his trouser legs. Kid gloves of a lavender colour. Astrakhan coat. Oh yes—a gentleman, every inch.” “And asking after Oliver Twist by name! Now that is a most singular circumstance for the name is not known at Fang’s police court—only at the house in Islington where he lodged.” “Brownlow!” Jago said. “ ’Twas in the papers—five shiners reward. That would fix the name powerfully in many a mind hereabout! Not that Mister Monks is out for the fiver.” “Something bigger?” Jago nodded. “My oath on it. If you were interested in meeting the gentleman yourself, now ...” He let the rest of the sentence hang, forcing his lordship to snap, “Yes?” “Why, my lord, I believe you might very well find him at the Cripples—and Mister Sikes, too, I’ll be bound.” A knot of panic tied itself in Fagan’s vitals at this latter intelligence—though he took care to remain as outwardly cool as ever; but if Sikes truly was at the Cripples, then something must have gone drastically wrong at Chertsey. Nor was that all. For if Sikes were now drunk, and imagining himself a buyer and seller of flesh—specifically the flesh of one Oliver Twist—then the fat was truly in the fire. “Sikes?” Fagan echoed. “You saw him, too, did you?” “I saw his moll go in there, which is usually the same thing.” “Well, I’m much obliged to you, Jago,” Fagan said. Then, just in case the fence had caught some fleeting nuance in his, Fagan’s, response to this news, he forced himself to linger, when every fibre within him would run up the hill toward the Three Cripples, to give it its full name, and beat the idiot Monks senseless. “What a rich and challenging life we live in this quarter of the great metropolis, Jago!” he said. “Indeed, my lord.” Jago stirred nervously, for many a man had found himself fighting or pleading for his life when Lord Fagan started on one of his ‘philosophical’ turns. “Who is this man Monks, for instance?” he went on. “Do I go to meet him all

157 unprepared? I do not!” “Nor I shouldn’t think so.” Jago swallowed heavily and prayed for rain. “Could he be Oliver’s long-lost father, perhaps?—now a gentleman by purchase—come to claim his chip off the block? He could, I think.” Fagan laughed. Jago shivered. “Well, Jago ... if his price be right—why not? Everything has its price—eh, Jago?” Jago tried desperately to think of someone he might have betrayed recently— and to his lordship’s annoyance—but no one came to mind; he forced his hands to relax, for his finger-nails were in danger of drawing blood from his palms. “Or,” Fagan continued calmly, “could he be connected with the workhouse where Oliver grew up to be such a fine young fellow? A beadle, come to enforce the letter of the law?” Fagan chuckled at that. “A beadle disguising himself as a fine gentleman with lavender-coloured gloves—striding up and down Saffron Hill, intent on enforcing the law!” Jago managed a laugh, though in a high falsetto, quite unlike his usual voice. “Why, my lord, it would make a fine comedy in the little theatre upstairs, eh?” He nodded toward the Cripples, hoping his noble companion would take the hint. “Why, the laughter alone could stretch it out to three acts.” “It would stretch it out like a hanged man’s neck, Jago!” The poor fellow shuddered. “Or,” Fagan continued as before, “is he some other relation—a kinsman to Oliver’s late mother, perhaps? And perhaps he stands to inherit a fortune if she died sans progeny, DSP, as the genealogists put it? So what is his game, eh? Is Oliver to be snuffed out like a candle flame? Does Monks think I am the man to do that?” “He orter know better!” Jago said fervently. “A man with my history, what? Cheated out of my inheritance by just such a swindling kinsman, eh?” His eyes started and foam began to fleck the corners of his lips; Jago wondered if it would be politic to offer a clean wipe. “But you see what I mean about interesting times, Jago? What a provocative conundrum that would pose to a man like me! Should I remove Oliver, for a fee, and rely on Monks to pay it? Or pretend to remove Oliver, for a fee ... let Monks inherit ... and then turn him into the goose who must keep on laying the golden eggs? Either that or have his calumny exposed! Or—finally, Jago—should I confess the whole plot to Oliver, expose Monks at once and have him transported, then rely on Oliver to pay up like a good fellow? Which should I do, eh, Jago? Give me your best advice, old friend.” He placed his arm around the other’s shoulder. “Why, you’re shivering, poor fellow! Are you cold?” “N-n-no, my lord!” Jago assured him. “A glass of sperrit’ll steady it.” “Your advice, then?” Fagan persisted because he wanted to make sure the man never again so much as mentioned his interest in or connection with anything to do with the idiot Monks. “Well, my lord,” Jago responded, still shivering mightily. “I should think as none of the answers to your conundrum will please you.” “Indeed? And why not?” “Why, because all rely on others to do the right thing—the which, as you’ve

158 told me many a time, is never a happy sittiwation.” “But Oliver,” Fagan pointed out, “is as reliable as the Greenwich ball.” “In his present character, I make no doubt. But you and I—if I may presume?— you and I have both seen how the inheriting of a fortune can change a person out of all recognition. The Oliver who came of age and walked into, say, ten thousand guineas would not be the same as the bright, obedient little dear we know today.” “Jago!” Fagan clapped him warmly on the shoulder—at which he let out a tiny shriek. “What a wise counsel you are, to be sure. I can see I must consult you more often. I think I could not have unravelled this conundrum without you!” “You couldn’t?” Jago asked in amazement; he was just beginning to believe that Fagan meant every word and intended him no harm after all. “Indeed, I could not. You have helped me formulate it thus: If there’s a fortune in it somewhere, then Fagan wants his own considerable portion of it; and he wants it under his own exclusive control before any scheme is set in motion.” “Is that what I said?” “In all but the actual words—you did. I’ll bring you a selection of my best tomorrow.” He rose and walked the short distance up Saffron Hill to the Cripples. Jago rose, shut up shop, and went indoors to lie down in the dark awhile, until the shivering fit passed. But even when Fagan gained the dark, smoke-laden interior, he did not immediately rush upstairs, where the true heart of the house beat its iniquitous nightly rhythm. Instead he nodded to the barman and went to a favoured seat in the private bar. He needed time to ponder the terms on which he could possibly continue to collaborate with this lunatic Monks and his plans for Oliver Twist.

CHAPTER 27

Nancy hides outside inside and hears of a new threat to Oliver’s happiness

The upstairs 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 save its colour from being injured by the flaring of the lamps; and the place was so filled with 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 door his lordship held open, an assemblage of heads, as confused as the noises that greeted his ear, could be made out. Among them were two which assured him that all was in order and that the evening was progressing along its customary lines: Colley Cruft, the chairman of these jollifications (and landlord of the Cripples), sat in his usual place at the head of the table, banging his gavel between acts; and George Kipple, a tall, professional-looking gentleman with a bluish nose and his face bound in a handkerchief for the benefit of his toothache, was there to provide a jingling accompaniment on a piano whose inner workings were as well lubricated with ale as were most of the performers and audience.

159 “She was poor but she was honest, / Victim of the squire’s whim ...” sang the soubrette. Lord Fagan immediately recognized the voice as Nancy’s, though she disguised her accent behind the simpering tones of the Ruin’d Maid—a great favourite with the crowd. “First ’e loved ’er, then ’e left ’er, / An’ she lawst ’er maiden name.” By the time she reached this latter line, the smoke had cleared enough for her to recognize the newcomer and her voice momentarily faltered. Fagan responded with an elaborate bow. Cruft, a coarse, rough, heavy-built fellow whose little piggy eyes quartered the room as a hawk quarters her territory, never resting, handed his gavel to his deputy and came to greet his noble guest in person. The rabble parted as he picked his way among them. When Monks had first encountered these people, Fagan wondered, what had he made of them then? Every vice, in almost every grade, was expressed in their countenances, compelling the attention by their very repulsiveness. Cunning, ferocity, and drunkenness in all its stages were there, in their strongest aspects; 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. “Right welcome, my lord.” Cruft inclined his head in deference. “Nancy’s here, I see—but no Bill.” Fagan came directly to the point. “The girl’s on edge tonight—drunk on nothing, as they say. Phil Barker’s here tonight—over in the corner, see?” His lordship saw—and the man thus named saw him in return; his face divided in a ghastly rictus that must deputize for a smile. Fagan honoured him, too, with a genial bow. “The price on his head’s gone up to ten guineas,” Cruft added. “Is it time to sell, I ask myself?” “Not yet, Cruft. ’Twill go higher yet, depend on it. Besides, his shoes still have good leather to wear out in someone’s service and it may as well be ours. Is that all you have for me? I hear extraordinary tales of a man called Marks.” “Monks. Yes, I thought you might, my lord.” He inclined his head toward a private snuggery at the back of the room. “Is he fretful? How long has he cooled his heels in there?” Cruft shook his head. “Boil my bones if they weren’t already cool—just like every other part of him. As cool a customer as ever I saw.” The comparison would have impressed anyone who did not actually know Monks, for the landlord had surely seen many a cool customer in his time. “Did he say what he wanted with the boy?” The other shook his head. “Only his whereabouts. But you may be sure he’ll open up to you, my lord, once you tell him you have the little fellow.” “If I tell him!” Fagan tapped the side of his nose and started to move toward the snuggery. “One final question, good landlord—was there ever a trace of a

160 northern accent in his speech?” Cruft considered the matter and replied that there was not. “Indeed,” he added, “he spoke as refined and genteel as what your lordship does.” “ ’Tis the rich as gets the gravy / And the poor as gets the blame!” Nancy concluded her song at that moment and looked around the entire company for applause, seeking it from all except Fagan, by which he knew she was keeping something from him—either something she had done or something she had planned to do. “Well, well!” Fagan opened the snuggery door without knocking. “Have I the honour of addressing Mister Monks?” he inquired in his best aristocratic drawl. But the moment the door closed behind him his attitude changed entirely. “You drivelling fool!” he snarled. “What the deuce d’you mean by going up and down Saffron Hill, caterwauling the name of Oliver Twist to the rooftops?” “Got you hopping, my lord,” Monks said calmly. Cruft was right; the man could do a good impersonation of icy calm. “You may have ruined everything,” Fagan said. “Listen! No—I said listen! When you engage me to to a job, you leave it to me! If it takes twenty years, no matter—you leave it to me! You do not, after a mere month or two, take it upon yourself ...” “A mere month or two? I like that, I don’t think!” He leaned forward belligerently. “What did I ask of you? To get Oliver on a treadmill, or transported, or hanged. How long does that take the noble Lord Fagan to achieve? Isn’t it almost a weekly accomplishment of yours?” “Have a care, sir,” Fagan said menacingly. “Well, isn’t it?” Fagan peeled off his gloves slowly and laid them on the table, placing them just so beside Monks’s lavender ones. “If you simply wanted the boy got out of the way ...” he began. “Yes!” Monks insisted. “That is the top and bottom, the start and finish, the be- all and end-all of what I wished—to get him out of the way without actually killing him. I would not have that on my conscience. If the lords of oyer and terminer saw fit to hang him, well and good. That would be on their consciences, not mine. But all I required of you ...” “No, sir—by Hades—you shall listen! It is not a question of what you required of me, but rather of what I required of you! And what I required of you was to leave the business to me.” “And what have you done, eh?” “I have done what you required of me.” “Eh?” Monks slumped forward a little and stared at him. “I have done what you required of me,” Fagan repeated. “It is over. Oliver is blooded. From this hour forth he is a creature of shame, a citizen of the night. What more do you require?” “Oh.” Monks was chastened, but he soon rallied. “Why was I not informed?” “I am informing you now.” “Then why was I not informed sooner?” “It only happened last night.”

161 “Ah! Then why did it take you so long?” “Because there is good blood in the boy! Whence it comes I am at a loss to discover. But it took time to bend his pride to our will. And besides ...” “Yes?” Fagan looked about them as if seeking something. “Port!” he exclaimed. “I knew there was something misssing. May I offer you some port?” He reached out nonchalantly with his stick and hammered twice upon the door. The porter answered his knock at once and brought in his lordship’s own special port decanter and two sparkling glasses. “You will enjoy this, Monks.” Fagan nudged the decanter toward him. “Just as I know you will enjoy the manner in which Oliver was blooded. Finesse, Monks! These things must be done with finesse or we of the superior classes—you and I—we forfeit our right to leadership.” He poured himself a generous draught and held it up in a toast: “To Golden Grove!” Monks, who had half-raised his glass to join him, let it fall again so violently that the contents spilled out upon his lavender gloves “D—l take it, sir! What may you mean by that?” Fagan continued to smile. “I see the name means something to you.” “What name? Golden ... what?” “Come, sir! It is a name that haunts your nightmares.” “I have never heard it in my life!” “Nor the name of Maylie? Mrs Maylie? And her adopted niece Rose—whose maiden name was Fleming?” Monks started up, knocking his chair over in his haste. “Who told you these names?” he cried. “You did, my dear chap.” Fagan laughed heartily and drank his solo toast. “As good as, anyway. It took very little further inquiry to establish your real name— Mister Edward Leeford! The, er, connection—and I do not use the word lightly— between a certain other Leeford and a certain other Fleming was child’s play after that.” He chuckled. “And the child’s name was Oliver!” “But I was so careful ...” Monks spoke more to himself than to Fagan as he reclaimed his seat. “That was your greatest mistake, old boy,” Fagan told him. “When people are as careful with me as you were, I always wonder why. And I do not sleep at all well while that question remains unanswered. But you disappoint me, nonetheless. I was sure you’d be amused at my choice of crib for little Oliver to crack.” “And what if he’s caught?” “But that is the whole beauty of it. If the crack goes well, he returns to us a branded criminal—a snakeman’s snake. If they are taken, well, you have landed your fish at one swoop and must forgo the joy of letting me play him—but it is a small sacrifice. And if Oliver alone is caught within the house, my cracksman and his mate leg it home—and who will hand Oliver over to the traps—eh?” He grinned as one who waits for a dimwitted friend to catch up with his cleverness. Monks was not so obliging. “What if they shield him, instead—take pity on him—refuse to hand him over—swear it was not him?” Fagan shook his head. “My man has orders to plug him if they have to run. He

162 will bear that wound which will not let them lie. Besides, it has never happened— not once in the quarter of a century I have been at this lay. During that time I should say some three dozen little boys have been shot or taken when snaking into a crib. It is almost as fatal as going up chimneys after soot. And not one of ’em managed to get himself fostered by the good people he would have robbed of all their plate! Good people with plate and jewelry and lord knows what else beside (this lord knows, anyway) are queer about such matters. So come! Drink to the Golden Grove, eh? It had to be. No other crib offered quite such finesse. Golden Grove!” “Golden Grove,” a reluctant Monks joined in. “That is a good port!” “Sufficient unto the day, then!” Fagan picked up his stick and started to draw on his gloves. “You may settle with me at any time now.” “When the bird is in the hand,” Monks replied. “Either our hand or the law’s.” Fagan shrugged. He had ways of making people pay their debts, ways that Monks would never dream of. As he stretched the leather down between his fingers, his eye was caught by a fleeting movement on the wall facing him. It should have been an exterior wall to the building and was, in truth, constructed to resemble such a wall. It had what purported to be an outside window—a window so old that its sash had long since been painted to a seal, which, in turn, rendered its closed shutters unreachable. But, as Lord Fagan and very few others outside the public house itself knew, there was, between this simulation of an external wall and the real one, a narrow passage where an eavesdropper or a Peeping Tom might squeeze—or even, as Fagan now suspected, a Peeping Thomasina, with her eye to a crack in the false shutter and her ears straining to catch what sounds came out by the ventilator brick in the wall nearby. To postpone his departure a little, and to allow Thomasina to make good her escape, he said, “May I ask—what school did you go to, old bean?” “Harrow,” Monks said proudly. “Harrow.” The echo was flat, devoid of recognition—which came a moment later. “Ah yes—Harrow!” “You’ve heard of it?” Monks asked sarcastically. “Just!” Fagan replied with a smile. “When I was at Eton I do remember some fellow mentioning the place on one occasion. Queer cove!” Outside, as he expected, he found Nancy sitting at—or rather, sprawling across—a small table, right by the curtain that concealed the door to the secret passage. As he approached she raised her head, squinted at him through eyes that seemed unable to focus, raised an unsteady glass of watered gin to toast him, and spilled most of it on the table and floor. “Well played, Nancy, my darling,” he said as he drew up a chair and sat opposite her. “Now I want you to sit up and pay me the closest attention. You see the gentleman who has followed me out of the snug and who is now threading his way toward the door? Do as I say, Nancy—I know you’re as sober as I am!” Reluctantly the girl complied. “What of him?” she mumbled, blinking as if the dim light hurt. “He has worried me with his talk of Mrs Maylie adopting our own dear Oliver. I

163 cannot think it likely but we must be ready for such an outlandish upsetting of our plans.” “Our plans?” She pretended he had lost her understanding but he inclined his head toward the concealed door. “It’s all right, my dear!” He patted her arm soothingly as she drew breath to protest. “I know very well that Cruft set you there to listen—he’s the only one with the key. What threat did he offer to make you agree to it?” She drew a fingernail down her cheek, leaving a white line that slowly flushed again with her natural colour—or the natural colour that gin may bring to a maiden cheek. “I wasn’t going to tell him the truth, anyway,” she said. “And, of course, I was going to tell you.” “Good girl! Of course you were. Well, you may tell him the truth now—word for word, as close as you recall it.” “But why?” The permission amazed her. “Because he can see you talking to me here, now, and so he won’t believe a word of it. But to get to business —your part in the business. We’ve got to find out more—more about Oliver, more about Monks, more about Mrs Maylie and her adopted niece. But let’s start with Oliver. Remember that reward—the five guineas Brownlow offered?” “What of it?” “It would help us very much to know if anybody tried to claim it—even more if some lucky person did claim it.” He eyed the ceiling briefly. “You yourself never tried, I suppose? Let me refresh your glass, by the way. You spilled rather a lot in your thespian enthusiasm just now.” He signalled the porter before she could say yea or nay. “Did you go there?” he repeated. She shook her head. “Only the once, Fagan—which was at your behest. And that was before the reward was posted, so look elsewhere if you’re sniffing out treachery.” “Bill, then? The Dodger? Charley Bates? And who was that ragman you got Oliver’s suit back from?” She knew he was testing her, of course, but she merely smiled; did he truly think she was to be caught out so easily? “Alfred Timms,” she said. “The very man! It could be so many people, you see, Nancy. So what I want you to do, my dear—which a girl of your thespian abilities should be able to accomplish almost in her sleep—what I’d be more grateful than I can say, if you would be so kind, is to don your sweetest bonnet, your most modest dress, your most innocent air, and call again at old Brownlow’s house ...” “Oh no, Fagan! Please—ask anything but that!” “Patience! Hear me out. Tell them that after he vamosed from them he lodged for a while with you—that is you, your dear father and mother and sisters and brothers—and that you all took him into your hearts, while he, the wretch, simply took you in. He did a moonlight flit from you, too, taking with him a purse of money and some ... oh, what shall we say?” “A pile of books?” “Capital! It shows his pattern! Say that despite his betrayal of your kindness, you still preserve a soft spot for him in your hearts. And so, since they—Mister

164 Brownlow’s household—posted a generous reward for information about the boy, you wonder if anything came of it. Did anyone call with news of him? Press them on that. We must know who that person was and what information he had for them—or thought he had, at least. We must have something new to pacify Monks if this caper out at Chertsey goes sour on us.” A nod from the girl signified her complete acceptance of the commission. The porter set a fresh glass of gin before her but, as she was about to lift it to her lips, Fagan pressed it down upon the table. “One other thing,” he said. “Monks will not quit the neighbourhood now—of that I feel certain. If you could also just see your way to ... how shall I express it delicately?” “Take him in hand?” she said coldly. “Show him the country?” “You’re the best and brightest I ever had on the distaff side, Nancy,” he said, taking his hand off her glass at last. “You deserve a night of oblivion, I think.” He motioned to the porter to leave the whole bottle.

CHAPTER 28

Oliver, wounded and near dying, finds new friends to protect him

“Wolves tear your throats!” Sikes muttered, grinding his teeth. “I wish I was among some of you; you’d howl the hoarser for it!” As he growled his curses, with the most desperate ferocity his desperate nature was capable of, he rested Oliver’s wounded body across his bended knee and turned his head for an instant in the hope of getting a shot at one, at least, among what sounded like a small army of pursuers. What with the mist and the darkness, there was little to be made out; but the loud shouts of the men and the barking of dogs from all around the neighbourhood—as well as some directly involved in the chase, resounded in every direction. “Here, Jack! The long grass is all bent over.” “I hear one of ’em yonder, Charley!” “This way, Jim! Tell Arthur to join us here!” “Pete! Bring them dogs up ’ere this minute!” “ ’Oo are yer a-calling Pete, Mister Giles? This is Brittles—don’cher reckonize me?” Sikes waited to hear no more. He knew he durst not leave Oliver behind or he’d answer to Lord Fagan with his life, or something almost as dear; and yet he could not bear the boy’s weight alone—not if he wished to outrun Jack, Charley, Jim, Arthur, and the rest, to say nothing of the dogs. Throwing caution to the winds he called out to Toby Crackitt: “Stop, you white-livered hound! Stop where you are. I’ve still got my pistol loaded!” He hoped his voice might be taken for one of his pursuers in all that confusion. Curiously enough, though, all sounds of pursuit ceased directly upon his mention of his loaded pistol. Crackitt, not quite satisfied he was beyond the range of a pistol-shot from his

165 companion, returned at once, exclaiming that he had presumed Sikes to be ahead of him. “Bear a hand with the boy,” Sikes growled, raising his arm against the sky to show his pistol. “And don’t play booty with me!” Crackitt still hesitated. He might have complied if, at that moment, he had not espied two men climbing over the gate into the field where he and Sikes were halted. They did not seem very fit, as men go, nor were they particularly menacing—but they were in command of two dogs, which they now let slip. “It’s all up, Bill,” he cried, thinking he would prefer to take his chance on a wild shot in the dark from his friend than the certainty of a pair of lurchers at his throat. “Drop the kiddy and show ’em your heels!” Over his shoulder he added, “Like me!” Sikes gnashed his teeth, glanced wildly about him, and arrived at a similar self- preserving conclusion—that Fagan’s ire, terrible as it might be, could not out- terrify the prospect of an ærial dance at Newgate. With another foul curse he threw Oliver against the hedge, covered him as much as he could with the boy’s own cape, and then doubled back along the hedge in the opposite direction, hoping to lead them away from the spot where Oliver lay. At its end, where it met another hedge at right angles, he was so inspired by his flight that he cleared it in a single bound—unfortunately discharging his pistol in the act. If he had only paused to observe its effect upon his pursuers, he would have turned about, recharged the weapon, and advanced upon them, firing and recharging as he came. Even that single shot, fired at a distance of two furlongs, halted the little army in its tracks. “Jack? Pete? Arthur?” cried Mr Giles in tones of dwindling conviction. “It ain’t no use, Mister Giles, sir,” said Jack M’Donagh, one of his two companions. “They’ve tumbled to us.” “Tumbled to us,” agreed the other, who had earlier identified himself as Brittles. “And now,” M’Donagh added, “they’ll turn on us, firing and recharging as they come.” He called in the dogs, which were his to command. “Pincher! Neptune! Come, sirs! To heel!” The two dogs, who had, in fact, been rioting after a hare until that pistol shot made them think twice about moving anywhere at all, were only too pleased to obey their master’s summons. “What is your opinion, then, M’Donagh?” Mr Giles inquired. “My opinion, sir, is that I’d feel a great deal more secure in my person if that person had two solid feet of masonry between it and any pistol that might chance to find itself in the immediate neighbourhood.” “A great deal happier,” Brittles agreed. “Hold your tongue, boy!” Giles snapped as all five of them, counting in the dogs, turned and hastened for home. “Just because you’re afraid!” Since Brittles had celebrated his thirtieth birthday some months earlier, he might have taken greater exception to the contemptuous diminutive ‘boy’—which was clearly untrue—than to the accusation of cowardice—which equally clearly was not; but all he said was, “I ain’t.”

166 “You are,” asserted Giles. “You’re a walking falsehood, Mister Giles.” “You’re a living lie, Brittles.” “I think,” M’Donagh interrupted, pausing long enough to compel their attention, “as we’re all afraid.” “Speak for yourself, sir,” Giles expostulated. “I do not know the meaning of the word ‘fear.’ Why, in my youth ...” “I do speak for myself, Mister Giles. It’s natural and proper for us to be afraid, circumstanced as we are ...” “I was never circumstanced,” Brittles put in. By now they were climbing back over the gate. The sight of the lane beyond—a ribbon of safety hedged on either side with a darkness that concealed a thousand places of concealment—put them to flight in earnest. What a thunder of boots on metal it was! What a flying hail of muddy specks from flashing heels! And what a hazard to sight and life, as three men with pitchforks vied with two frightened dogs for the centre-line, farthest from the menace of those tall dark hedgerows! They did not pause until shortness of wind outweighed the shortfall in spirit. It was also the place where they had left their lantern swinging in a bough—in the hope of drawing the burglars’ fire. “How wonderfully wise we were,” panted Mr Giles. “Discretion is not merely the better part of valour, it is the whole of it.” “Aye,” Brittles chimed in. “The whole of it!” M’Donagh begged to be informed as to how Mr Giles had reached this most agreeable conclusion. “Why, man,” Giles replied, “what I would not have done to those scoundrels if we had caught up with them!” And here he made several vicious lunges with his pitchfork to prove his point. “I should have been put in irons for murder, I’m sure.” “And so you should be, Mister Giles,” Brittles asserted. He and M’Donagh then agreed that they had also been prepared to do the most dreadful things to any of the villains who might have suffered the misfortune to fall into their hands; this was very generous of M’Donagh, at least, for he was not one of the household, being only a travelling tinker who had mended a few pots and pans and had begged leave to sleep in the stables overnight. They then fell to wondering at which decisive point their murderous spirit had deserted them. “ ’Twas the gate!” said Mr Giles. “The gate it was,” Brittles agreed. “Aye,” M’Donagh put in. “I confess I experienced a great flow of excitement until that moment when I put my hand to the bar of that gate to climb over it ...” “... and heard that brute cry out his foul oaths and menaces ...” Giles said. “... and wave his pistol about. I saw a pistol. I’m sure I saw a pistol. Did you not see a pistol?” Giles and Brittles agreed wholeheartedly that they had seen a pistol. “But it was not the sight of the thing that cooled my temper,” Giles added as they set off once more for home and glory. “ ’Twas something in that very gate, I

167 know.” “I know,” said Brittles. “Something in the iron rod that binds it across the top bar.” “Acts like a galvanic conductor,” M’Donagh assured them, and—he being a man of iron, as it were—his two friends were pleased to accept his assurances on the point. “My parents did not wish me to be circumstanced,” Brittles concluded. “They did not believe in it.” When they reached the gates of Golden Grove, something of their former valour returned—thereby adding weight to Giles’s theory that gates played a greater part in the ebb and flow of human courage than the world had hitherto supposed. “Ecod!” cried Giles as they strode up the path. “Did you see that brute of a boy I winged? What a hulking great gawk it was!” “A gawk if ever I saw one,” Brittles added. “It’s a wonder he ever squeezed through that tiny scullery window,” M’Donagh said, more in admiration than disbelief. “They feed ’em on tallow and bobbin grease,” Giles informed him in a tone that suggested he was equal to all the tricks that nefarious criminals might employ. “Makes their skin more slippery than an eel’s.” “There’s not much in this world more slippery than the skin of an eel,” Brittles remarked. “Of course, I could have dropped him stone dead,” Giles went on. “Oh, yes. I could have put a bullet between his eyes such that not even Mister Brunel and his finest chronometer-gauge could have said which eye was the closer.” “Like two bowls tying on a jack,” Brittles explained. “But,” M’Donagh guessed, “you just wanted to wing him—bring him to earth— to make him blab on his pals, eh?” “M’Donagh,” Giles replied, “you are a man of great perspicacity. It must come of your meeting with so many varieties of people in your wandering life. I feel inclined to invite you indoors, to join us for a cup of something warm and cheerful.” And, since they were by the kitchen door at that very moment (which, incidentally, had not been locked or bolted all that night), the matching of action and words was easily accomplished. “Mister Giles!” came a peremptory cry from the stairhead. “Is that you? Take care if it is not—I have a loaded gun.” “ ’Tis I, right enough, Mrs Maylie. Come back, along of Brittles and the tinker, M’Donagh, for fresh ball and powder.” “They got away from you, then!” “I winged one, ma’am—a great brute of a fellow ...” “A gawk!” Brittles confirmed. “... who’s lying in a ditch somewhere, I’ll be bound. We’ll track him down, never fear. We’ll follow his trail, whether he were alive or dead when he made it.” “Mister Giles could track a sparrow across bricks,” Brittles informed M’Donagh in an undertone. “Well, very well, but don’t linger in the kitchen now. You need have no fear for

168 Miss Rose and me—nor cook and Betsy. The locks are stout and we are well armed. You hear me now?” “Yes, ma’am. We shan’t linger in the kitchen, never fear!” Under his breath Giles added (as they gathered up several bottles of ale and a corkscrew), “We’ll linger in the stables instead. There’s no point staggering about in the dark and the rain, falling into ponds and twisting our ankles and catching our deaths of cold.” “Or of bullets,” Brittles added. “I’ve heard of villains who’ll pretend to leg it,” M’Donagh informed them, “merely to draw off all the able-bodied, stout-hearted men in the household—lure them out into the fields, see?—while they return and loot the premises at their leisure. Aye—and take advantage of the ladies in their unprotected state, as well! So my advice, Mister Giles—if you’re not too proud to take it—is to pretend to withdraw from the house but to go no farther than the stables, and there mount guard against the villains’ return.” “Mister Giles is a proud man,” Brittles remarked, “and comes from a proud lineage, too.” “I do,” Giles snapped impatiently. “I can’t deny it. Yet I hope and trust I’m not too proud to heed good advice when it is freely offered.” “For nothing,” Brittles said. And so they mounted guard in the hayloft, where an attic-door directly overlooked the house from every angle (apart from the front and both sides) and its ancient timbers gave peepholes enough to let three men watch without risking the smallest revelation of their presence. But, as events were to prove, there were two drawbacks to M’Donagh’s otherwise excellent notion: hay and ale—a deadly combination that led to snores loud enough to alarm the horses and set the dogs whimpering. It must have been this latter circumstance—the evidence that ferocious hounds were loose—that kept the burglars from making a second attempt upon the property; otherwise, their absence owed nothing to the three who had braved the discomforts of the hayloft (and the sore heads attendant upon quantities of ale) to ensure it. Meanwhile, Oliver lay motionless and insensible on the spot where Sikes had abandoned him. Morning drew on apace. The air became sharper and more piercing as its first dull hue—the death of night rather than the birth of day— glimmered faintly in the east. Objects that had looked dim and menacing to him as they drew near the house last night gradually resolved into their familiar shapes and lost their terror. Not that Oliver was conscious to observe it, helpless as he was on his bed of clay. The rain fell in a heavy, merciless patter among the leafles hedgerows all about. At length, stirring in his sleep, he let out a cry of pain that, while it did not bring him fully awake, gave him the first fuddled intimations of his piteous state. His left arm, rudely bandaged in a shawl, hung heavy and useless at his side; and the shawl was saturated with his blood. He tried to rise but could not, achieving no more than a sitting posture. From this he was able to discover that he was half in a ditch, with the water only inches from him, at the edge of a dismal, empty field; the memory of how he came there had not yet returned. Each small movement brought a groan of pain to his lips. Trembling in every

169 joint, he made his first attempt to stand. All he succeeded in doing was to pitch himself forward, prostrate once more, among the trampled grass and mud; and there, for a moment, he fell back into that same stupor in which he had passed most of the night now fled. But at least he was out of the ditch, whose rising waters had threatened to drown him. As he lay there, panting from even so slight an exertion, a sort of creeping sickness at his heart warned him that if he continued to lie there, he must surely die. By what miraculous power or agency he was enabled to do it, he could not have said, but he managed, after several more vain attempts, to struggle to his knees, then to one knee, then, groggily, at last to his feet. He stood there awhile, swaying as he fought the dizziness that threatened to drop him yet again. His first step was that of a drunken man; his second was little better; his third was almost his last for it brought him back to the brink of the ditch, which was now, in effect, a little Thames. But he swerved in the nick of time and, with his head drooping from exhaustion, staggered in a zigzag line across the field, stumbling onward he knew not whither. There was a gap in the hedge where someone had recently broken out. He lurched toward it and fell through, only to find himself now standing in a lane, deserted in either direction and nothing to choose between them. He turned west, away from the dawn, knowing somewhere at the back of his emerging consciousness that London lay to the east and that London was full of menace for him. As he stumbled onward a host of confusing ideas came crowding on his mind. Sikes! He remembered him—and the man called Crackitt. Were they here still? Was he walking between them? The clutch of that villain’s hand about his wrist was as real as if ... well, as if it were real. He had to shake his arm several times to convince himself it was all in his imagination. This produced a sudden stab of pain near his shoulder and, with it, the sudden sharp memory of a pistol shot—a blinding flash in a darkened house and the choking reek of burned powder. Lights, shouts, dogs barking, an alarm bell clanging, wet grass and mud underfoot, Sikes’s arms about him ... Sikes snarling ... then silence; just the pitterpat of raindrops. Bit by bit his memory returned. Ahead of him now he saw a house, at no great distance. If he could but reach it, he was saved, for surely they would pity his condition and take him in? If not ... well, it would be better to die in human company than out here in the wet and cheerless fields. He summoned his little remaining strength for one last effort and bent all his faltering steps toward its gates. Its gates! Golden Grove, they proudly announced to the world, the adjective on one, the substantive on the other. Why, this was the very house Sikes had brought him to last night! He peered cautiously between its bars and saw the spot on the grass where he and Crackitt had rolled after their leap from the wall. For an instant he forgot the agony of his wound and the closeness of death, thinking only of flight. Flight? His weary body could scarcely stand! And even if he were in the full vigour of his youthful frame, whither might he fly? He saw he had but one hope of life, and that lay with the mercies, tender or not, of those who dwelt at the top of the drive beyond this gate.

170 He pushed against it. It swung open. He tottered across the lawn, climbed the steps to the door it had been his commission to open from within, not five hours earlier, and knocked his loudest knock. And at that achievement his strength failed him at last, and he sank against one of the pilasters of the little portico, heedless of the world once again. While he had been staggering about the lanes, Giles, Brittles, and M’Donagh were in the kitchen again, recruiting their energies after the strenuous night they had suffered while protecting Mrs Maylie and the three other females of the household—her niece Rose, cook, and Betsy, the maid. They were, in fact, regaling the latter pair with every little detail of their selfless bravery in that cause. First, however, Mr Giles had to explain to the newcomer, M’Donagh, that, as butler, it was not his habit to admit to too great a familiarity with the humbler classes of servant; instead, he was rather wont to deport himself with lofty affability, which both gratified them and reminded them of his superior position in society. “However,” he concluded, “death, fire, and burglary make all men equal.” “And women, too,” Brittles put in. But cook and Betsy begged them to get to the substance of the matter—the routing of the fiends who had put them all in peril of their lives. “It was half-past two.” Giles ran his fingers down the insides of his lapels in a manner that would not have seemed out of place had he been a sarjeant in the Court of Common Pleas. “Or it could have been three,” Brittles said. “When I heerd a noise,” Giles continued, ignoring him. “A noise!” Cook gave a little start and asked Betsy to shut the door; Betsy asked Brittles, who asked M’Donagh, who at once attempted to clear his ears of some obstruction. “A noise,” Giles repeated. “So I listens and hears nothing further. So I says to meself, ‘It was all illusion, Mister Giles. Go back to sleep like a good fellow.’ The which I did.” And, to asssist their picture of events, he drew a corner of the tablecloth over his shoulder and closed his eyes. “What sort of noise?” Betsy asked. “A busting noise,” Giles told her. “Like drawing a knife-blade across a nutmeg-grater,” Brittles added. “It might have been so by the time you awoke,” Giles sneered. “But when my provenence was all that stood between ye and judgement, ’twas a busting noise. So I turned down the clothes”—here he rolled back the tablecloth—“and listened!” “Lor!” exclaimed cook. “Lor!” echoed Betsy. They drew their chairs closer together—but not their lower and upper jaws. “ ’Twas now quite apparent. ‘Someone,’ I says, ‘is busting in. And I fear for that poor Brittles, who might suffer to have his throat slit from right ear to left ear and die without his ever knowing it’.” All eyes turned to the poor man, who now understood that any further

171 interruption to the narrative would merely postpone his own rescue from such a horrible end. “So I tosses aside the clothes”—Giles flung off the tablecloth—“gets softly out of bed, and draws on a pair of ...” “Mister Giles!” exclaimed a horrified cook. “There are ladies present!” “... of shoes,” the butler insisted with a satisfied twinkle in his eye. “Picks up me loaded ’buss, which always comes upstairs with me, along of the basket of plate, and tiptoes to Brittles’s room, to wake him and give him the chance to die alongside of me in your protection, ladies—which chance I know he would never have forgiven me for denying him. If I had.” “Was he frighted?” Betsy gazed admiringly at Brittles. “Not a bit of it!” Giles replied. “Why, he was as cool and calm as what ... er, pretty near as calm as what I was.” “I should have died on the spot if it had been me,” the maid gasped. “That’s on account of your being a poor, weak female,” Brittles said comfortingly. “Which is why we are here to protect ye.” “You never spoke a truer word, Brittles.” Giles was eager to regain the narrative. “But we, being men, took the dark lantern as Brittles keeps a-burning o’ nights, and crept down the stairs to the hall. And there a great bully of a boy faced me, ladies, with such menace in his eyes as I couldn’t describe ...” “Show us!” cook said, having been impressed by his pantomime with the tablecloth. Giles obliged by rising to his feet, placing his hand dramatically before his eyes to simulate the dark cloak of night, and staggering a pace or two across the kitchen flags before taking his hand away and confronting, in mime, this ‘great bully of a boy’—whereupon, without hesitation, he raised his imaginary blunderbuss and pulled the trigger. At which point came Oliver’s peremptory knock at the front door, and the whole company almost fell out of their skins in fright. Giles ran back to his chair and was glad of its support. Cook and Betsy screamed. “It was a knock,” Giles said. “A single knock.” Brittles looked at Betsy, whose place it was to answer single knocks at the front door—though never at that hour of the morning. “And so early, too!” Betsy said. “It quite makes a poor, weak female glad there are so many men to protect her, Brittles.” “Quite so!” Giles said hastily. “And if Brittles should require a witness to his remarkable bravery, then here stands a volunteer in that service.” Good as his word he rose to his feet and gave Brittles a tentative push toward the door. “And another!” M’Donagh rose and placed himself a foot or two in rear of the butler, giving him a push, in turn. They called up the dogs—a sealyham who blundered into things and a pomeranian who kept well behind him for fear of being blundered into—and sent them into the hall just ahead of the intrepid Brittles. The intrepid Brittles bent and pinched the animals’ tails to make them bark before he positioned himself well behind the door. M’Donagh, cook, and Betsy followed, placing themselves upon the stair immediately behind the reassuring

172 bulk of the butler. Too late Giles realized his mistake in not volunteering to open the door himself, for now Brittles would be safely behind it while he would be left standing there, the first animate object on which the caller’s eye would fall. “Wait!” he cried—but too late. He held his breath as the door swung open. “A boy!” cried cook. “Bless us! A boy who’s met with an accident.” She pushed past Giles but he pushed past her in turn and, seizing Oliver by his unhurt arm and a leg, hauled him roughly within, banging the door shut after him. “Why, Mister Giles!” cook exclaimed. “I’m amazed at your unkindness, handling the poor child so roughly!” Giles was about to explain that this was one of the burglars—at which he hoped to bask in the glory of their praise, and that of his mistress and her ward, too, at capturing him dead or alive—when he glanced again at the little fellow and saw him, as it were, through their eyes ... the eyes of soft-hearted females. He was hardly the ‘great bully of a boy’ whose portrait he had just painted for them so vividly in word and mime! “Is that a gawk, Mister Giles, sir?” Brittles asked. That settled it! “No, it is not!” he replied with great certainty. “It is a poor wanderer who has met with some mishap.” Then inspiration struck him. “I felt sure, the moment I saw him lying there, he was not one of that party which raided us. He’s far too small, bless him, far too small. But I know what did happen—oh yes! It’s clear as daylight to me, now. He met with our ruffians last night, was fired upon by them in their fear that he might be one of us, and has since wandered, wounded and half crazy, throughout the night, only finding us when bright aurora led his steps hither.” “That’s dawn,” Brittles told M’Donagh. “Mister Giles?” cried a young girl’s voice from the stairhead. “What is going on down there? Have those thieves returned?” “No, Miss Rose,” he replied. “We were soon too many for those rogues! This is a poor wandering boy who must have met with their flight and been sent on his way with a bullet wound for his temerity.” “Oh!” The young lady descended at once, in a manner that spoke more for her greatness of heart than her ladylike upbringing, which she had, nonetheless, received of her aunt in full measure. “Let me see! Oh, the poor mite! He looks at death’s door. Bear him upstairs, do, Brittles, and put him in the spare bedroom beside my own.” “Bear him upstairs,” Brittles said, taking them two at a time with Oliver in his arms. “Lor, what a night it has been and no mistake!”

CHAPTER 29

Two professional gentlemen engage in the healing of Oliver’s body and soul

Breakfast was ever an equable, unruffled occasion at Golden Lodge and that on the morning after the break-in was no exception. The breakfast room was

173 handsome, though its furniture showed more of old-fashioned comfort than of modern elegance—and the same might be said of Mr Giles, who was now dressed with scrupulous care in a full suit of black. He took his station half way between the sideboard and the table; with his body drawn up to its full height, his head thrown back and inclined the merest trifle to one side, his left leg advanced, and his right hand thrust into his waistcoat while his left hung at his side, grasping a waiter—he resembled nothing so much as a man not wholly indifferent to his own importance. Of the two ladies upon whom he attended, one—Mrs Maylie—was advanced in years; yet the high-backed oak chair in which she sat before her well-spread table was not more upright than she. Dressed with the utmost nicety and precision, in a quaint mixture of bygone costume, with some slight concessions to the prevailing taste, which rather served to point the old style pleasantly than to mar its effect, she sat in a stately pose, with her hands folded on the table before her. Age had but little dimmed the brightness of her eyes, which she kept attentively fixed upon her much younger companion. The younger lady—her niece Rose—was in the lovely bloom and springtime of young womanhood, not yet past seventeen. Cast in so slight and exquisite a mould, so mild and gentle, so pure and beautiful, that earth seemed not her element, nor its rough creatures her fit companions. The intelligence that shone from her deep blue eye, and was stamped on her noble brow, seemed scarcely of her age or of the world; and yet the changing expression of sweetness and good humour, the thousand lights that played about the face and left no shadow there, above all, the smile, the cheerful, happy smile, were made for Home, for Fireside Peace, for Domestic Bliss. Rose was at that moment engaged in the little offices of the table—separating char from toast, butter from marmalade, and the like. Chancing to raise her eyes as her aunt was regarding her, she playfully put back her hair, which was simply braided on her forehead, and filled one beaming look with such a gush of affection and artless loveliness that blessed spirits might have smiled to behold her. “And how long has Brittles now been gone to fetch the constable?” Mrs Maylie asked. “An hour and twelve minutes, ma’am.” Mr Giles referred to his silver watch, which he drew forth upon a black ribbon. “He is always slow,” she said. “A slow boy,” the butler agreed. “He gets worse instead of better.” Betsy came in at that moment. Rose started up in alarm; the change in her was quite extraordinary. “Something’s wrong!” she exclaimed in anguish. “No, miss. The little mite is breathing deep and regular—and fast asleep, bless him. But I left his side because I thought as you ought to know as Mister Losberne is coming up the road. Why, there he is now!” Mr Losberne was the local surgeon, a short, fat gentleman of middling age. And, indeed, at that moment they heard the crunch of his tyres and the clop of his pony’s hooves upon the gravel below the window.

174 “Go and let him in at once, girl,” Mrs Maylie said. To Rose she added, “How swiftly ill tidings do travel!” Betsy was not half way to the front door when the surgeon, having thrown his reins at M’Donagh and let himself indoors, rushed past her and burst into the breakfast room, almost sending the butler flying. “I never heard of such a thing!” he exclaimed. “Oh, my dear Mrs Maylie—and Miss Rose, too—bless my soul—in the middle of the night—I never heard of such a thing!” He shook hands with each of them, twice, and Giles, once, saying, “Well done! Stout fellow! Capital man!” Then he drew up a chair and asked how they all were. “You ought to be dead, positively dead, after such a fright. Why didn’t you send word? Bless me, my man would have come on the instant; and so would I; and my assistant, too; or all your good neighbours, I’m sure, under such circumstances. Dear, dear! So unexpected! In the silence of the night, too!” “It is the custom in these parts, Mister Losberne,” Rose informed him solemnly. “Indeed, I have never heard of that country where they burgle at noon and send advance notice of it in the twopenny post.” “Ah, Miss Rose!” He laughed nervously. “You have your customary wit as well as your wits about you, I see. Good! Good!” “Excitement must agree with me, doctor, for I cannot remember feeling better. But there is one upstairs who urgently requires your care.” “Ah, to be sure,” he replied; then, to Giles, “Your handiwork, I believe?” “Bless me, no, sir,” the man replied uneasily. “The fellow I shot was a big, ugly brute of a boy. How he squeezed through that tiny window I’ll never know— though I saw a man in a circus once ...” “Yes-yes,” the surgeon snapped. “Show me! Ladies, your servant.” He bowed. “I doubt I shall be long upstairs. Now show me this window.” All he said when he saw the little square through which Oliver had barely managed to fit was, “Hmmm! A big, ugly brute of a boy, eh?” He said it again when he saw the unconscious Oliver—and yet again when he saw the bullet-graze below his left armpit. He remained with the boy a great deal longer than he had predicted, and longer, too, than either of the ladies below had expected. They, however, were diverted toward the end of their long vigil by the equally unannounced arrival of the Reverend Melpomenus Trigg, who was as eager to minister to the souls of the two ladies as the good doctor had been to prescribe physic for their corporeal persons; and, like his predecessor, he was disappointed of the office, finding them as robust in mind and spirit as he had ever known them. “Ah, Miss Rose,” he said, having paid his respects to her aunt, “you are verily at that age when, if ever angels be, for God’s good purposes enthroned in mortal shape, they may, without impiety, be supposed to abide in such as yours.” “Well, chaplain,” she replied, being quite inured to his flatteries by now, “you put me in mind of that fox which, snatching at the bird in the mouth of his reflection—which he spied in a puddle—let the real bird go free.” “Why, Miss Rose, what can you mean?” he inquired in an aggrieved tone though he was ready to excuse her sharpness by reference to the strains she must have undergone that night.

175 “Only this, sir,” she replied, “that whatever you may see of angels in me is but the palest reflection of what you would see in the child who lies above—if, indeed, the angels have not already called him into their company.” “Do you say so, Miss Rose?” “I do, Reverend Trigg.” “Then I believe it without question. Is it possible my services may be required as well as those of the good Surgeon Losberne?” “He will tell us soon enough, I trust,” said Mrs Maylie. And for the next while they spoke of general parish matters, of burglaries, of the iniquities of railways, of a strange rain of frogs in the Forest of Dean ... in short, of all those things which people discuss when they have little in common and nothing whatever to say. They were rescued shortly—though it seemed right ‘longly’ to the two ladies— by the welcome return of Losberne, who stood at the door, saying, “This is a most extraordinary thing, Mrs Maylie. Your servant, chaplain.” “Yours, sir,” rejoined that worthy. “He is not in danger?” cried Rose at once. “Why, that would not be at all extraordinary—under the circumstances. Though I don’t believe he is.” “What is so extraordinary then, pray?” her aunt asked. “His agitation. His state of mind. He needs rest yet he will not rest. He is burdened in his mind and he will unburden himself—to you, Miss Rose.” “To me?” Rose exclaimed in amazement. “But he does not know me.” “He knows all that a child who is troubled in conscience needs to know—that you are kind and gentle and understanding ... for he was only half unconscious this morning when you bade Brittles carry him up and place him in the bed next to your room.” “Troubled in conscience, eh?” the chaplain put in. “Should I, perhaps ...?” He glanced uncertainly at Rose. “We will all attend him,” Mrs Maylie said firmly. “Since it seems likely this boy will mend himself beneath my roof, I wish to know what sort of creature it is. Then we have Reverend Trigg for his conscience, Surgeon Losberne for his health, and you, Rose, dear, to listen and—perhaps—speak for him in time.” “Ah!” Losberne cried in admiration. “You already have an intimation of his tale, ma’am.” “The moment you spoke of his ‘conscience,’ sir. It is not a commodity notoriously found in boys of that age. Come—let us tarry no more!”

CHAPTER 30

Oliver recounts his story; a chaplain is reminded of the seals of the confessional

In one way at least, Oliver was glad of his bodily weakness as the four grown-ups filed in and took their places beside his bed, for it prevented his starting up in

176 alarm and crying out that they were too many and all crowding far too close. The surgeon he already knew; and Rose he knew by voice. He smiled at her as she and the others were named for him. “Are you more comfortable now, little man?” she asked. “More comfortable, I think, than when we opened the door to you earlier this morning!” “Is it still that same morning?” he asked. She nodded and smoothed his pillow. “What is your name, child?” Mrs Maylie asked. “Let us start with that.” “Oliver,” he replied. “Oliver Twist.” “Bless us—what an astonishing name!” exclaimed the Rev. Melpomenus Trigg. “It is not mine by right but it is the only one I know.” Oliver explained briefly the circumstances of his birth and how he came by his name. “But first ...” he said, becoming agitated enough to worry Rose, who took up his hand and squeezed it tenderly. “First,” he said, calm again, “I must confess that I was the boy who was slipped into this house last night by two men who supposed I should creep to the front door and let them in—for what purpose you may easily guess.” “Their names, little chap?” The chaplain took out a notebook and pencil. “I will tell you, sir,” Oliver replied, “but not yet.” “D’you say so?” the man responded, mightily put-out at Oliver’s coolness. “You say these men supposed you would let them in?” Rose asked, so as to rescue him from further inquisition. “Yes, miss. But—on the memory of my dear departed mother I swear it—it had been my intention from the start of the whole business to run straight upstairs and wake whoever slept in the house and tell them what was afoot ... even though one of those men, standing at that little window by which he put me in, had his pistol trained upon me, every step I took inside the house. If I had not been shot instead, by some person on the stair, I should have done it, too. Why else would I have returned here this morning? And surely the position of the bullet in the panelling or wall would show I was already one or two treads up the stairway?” The four stared blankly at each other; none had thought to discover where Giles’s near-fatal bullet had lodged after winging the intruder. “Oh, please say you believe me,” Oliver cried, “or I am abandoned by all sides!” “I believe you,” Rose said at once. The other three said nothing, though Mrs Maylie smiled a kindly if somewhat provisional smile. “You must tell us more,” the chaplain said severely. “Much more. Start at the beginning and give us names and places—items into which we may inquire.” Haltingly at first, but gathering strength from heaven knows where, Oliver told them all he could remember—of Mrs Mann and the Coldharbour baby farm, of the Fellgate Union and his asking for more, of his near-apprenticeship to Gamfield the sweep and his brief stay at Sowerberry’s, of Claypole’s brutality and Charlotte’s kindness, of his flight to London and his falling-in, all innocently, with ‘the Artful Dodger.’ He did not name Jack Dawkins by his rightful name, nor any of his other criminal associates. Lord Fagan was ‘the Cap’n’ and his

177 entourage ‘the crew.’ Sikes was ‘Pop-eyes’ and Bullseye, ‘the Cur.’ Saffron Hill was ‘Holborn-way’ and all else ‘near Newgate Gaol.’ He told them of dear Mrs Bedwin and kindly old Mr Brownlow—and how they must think he had let them down. The only particular he omitted was Nancy’s part in recapturing him for ‘the Cap’n’; for he could see she had no choice once Sikes had recognized him that evening. Nancy alone among his criminal associates he named, describing her many little acts of kindness to him and explaining that she was his reason for not naming the others to them just yet; for if they were taken, she would not escape the gallows. And, despite all the wickedness into which she had been forced—and from an age in childhood when the Law (but no sane man or woman) assumes she should have known better—she deserved a finer life than that. So, if they wanted a felon for last night’s outrage, they must either take him now—or wait until he mended and could get word of her peril to Nancy before he would give up the rest. A long, perplexed silence greeted the conclusion of this narrative. “Ah!” said the chaplain at last; “what a solemn thing it is to hear in a darkened room the feeble voice of a sick child recounting such a weary catalogue of evils and calamities, which hard men have brought upon him!” Rose said, “It has made me aware that an angel must also be a most practical creature to survive in a world of wickedness.” But Rev. Trigg was not to be stopped at a single main verb. “Oh!” he continued; “if when we oppress and grind our fellow-creatures, we bestowed but one thought on the dark evidences of human error, which, like dense and heavy clouds, are rising, slowly it is true, but no less surely, to Heaven, to pour their after- vengeance on our heads; if we heard, but one instant, in imagination, the deep testimony of dead men’s voices, which no power can stifle and no pride shut out; where would be the injury and injustice, the suffering, misery, cruelty, and wrong, that each day’s life brings with it!” Oliver fell asleep at last during this, the chaplain’s second sentence. After a pause the doctor murmured, “Amen to that!” Then, after clearing his throat of no particular obstruction, “We are left impaled, however, upon the horns of a dilemma—which we may profitably discuss in, ah, another place.” He nodded at the sleeping boy and made the first tiptoe steps toward the door. Rose was now on the horns of a second dilemma—whether to stay and watch over Oliver or to join in the others’ deliberations as to his future; she elected for the latter course and set Betsy to resume her former vigil. “Our dilemma,” said Mr Losberne when they were assembled around the morning-room fire, “is that the constable has been sent for and may arrive at any hour ...” “Or any day,” Mrs Maylie observed drily, “if Brittles is up to his customary mark!” Mr Giles interrupted them at that moment to say that Brittles had returned while they were upstairs and that the local constable, suspecting ‘a London job,’ had deemed it best to send for the Bow Street men. “That gives us a little more time, at least,” the doctor said. “Mister Giles— before you go—you are quite sure it was a big boy you almost killed last night?”

178 The accusation implied in the question startled the poor man. “Why, sir—I told you—as big and as ugly a brute as I’d never wish to see again ...” “Yes, well, you almost made certain of that, didn’t you! At all events, it could not have been little Oliver?” “Oliver?” The butler frowned. “Ah, yes, of course—you are not to know that the little fellow has given us his name: Oliver Twist. It was not little Oliver whom you tried to kill last night?” Giles drew himself up to the full height of his considerable dignity. “If it was, sir, he has found the trick of starving himself to half his size in under five hours— which trick, sir, might make him the envy of many.” The surgeon could hardly miss this reference to his own girth, and yet he smiled. “Good man,” he said. “Capital fellow!” “You may go, Mister Giles,” Mrs Maylie said. “And now!” said the doctor when they were alone once more, “we must decide what we shall do about young Master Twist.” “Surely,” the chaplain said, “if he were to repeat his most moving story to these runners from Bow Street, they will be as moved by it as we and will rather commend him for taking the first brave steps along the road to redemption?” “Most assuredly they will not, sir!” Losberne informed him tartly. “They will have him in fetters before he reaches the words ‘runagate apprentice’!” “That shall never happen,” Rose said quietly. “But, ah, see here!” The Rev. Trigg attempted to loosen a collar that suddenly felt as if it were fashioned from steel. “I cannot imperil my immortal soul —we cannot imperil our immortal souls with a lie.” “Instead we must imperil his mortal life with the truth?” Rose asked in a shocked tone. “If, indeed, it be the truth, Miss Rose,” the cleric replied. “There is One above who is the Infallible Judge of that—and, if our present laws, which are given to us by the wisest heads in the kingdom, down all the centuries ... if those wise laws decree a premature curtailment of his earthly sorrows, why, then he will meet that Infallible Judge and inherit his state of eternal bliss all the sooner!” He smiled all round at this happiest of conclusions. “Here’s a new melody!” the doctor murmured. “Not a bit!” the chaplain retorted. “Upstairs I spoke in the abstract, of justice in the land of Sion, when the New Jerusalem is built. Here I speak of England in this Year of Grace.” “If you breathe a word of Oliver’s story to anyone after this, Reverend Trigg,” said Rose, “I shall not answer for my actions. But you may depend upon it ...” “Niece! Niece!” Mrs Maylie held up a hand and smiled a compelling smile—at least, it compelled Rose to silence. Then, turning to the chaplain: “Do you recall the little man’s first words, Reverend Trigg? After he had described the circumstances in which he acquired his name but before he told us anything of his life?” “Why yes, ma’am,” the man replied. “I remember them quite distinctly. He told us he was the lad the burglars slipped through the scullery ...” “He told us?” Mrs Maylie laid a questioning stress upon the word.

179 “Yes, ma’am. Told us quite straightforwardly. I heard him clearly and so, I’m sure, did you.” “I surely did!” she exclaimed stoutly. “Indeed, I believe I heard more than you.” She turned to the surgeon. “Doctor Losberne! Without any prompting from me as to the boy’s actual words, can you say what sentence of his prefaced his tale?” The doctor now had a good idea of what the astute old lady was driving at. “I can, most assuredly, ma’am,” he said with a broad smile. “The precise words—if memory serves me correctly—were, ‘Before I tell my tale, I must confess I was that boy whom the thieves slipped in through the scullery window ... et cetera, et cetera.’ I heard him clearly, Reverend, and so, I’m sure, did you!” “And is not confession a rite of our church?” Mrs Maylie asked before the uneasy chaplain could respond. “And is it your habit to go straight from the confessional stool to the Bow Street Runners? Those among your parishioners who may be eager to make their peace with God would be most interested to hear of it!” The hapless cleric looked at each implacable face in turn. Then he gazed over their heads, as if he might pluck unseen help from out of the air. At last he said, in a voice far less certain than before, “Yet how may I stand here and listen to others perjure themselves over the boy?” “Why!” Losberne chuckled. “The answer to that is simple —don’t!” “Eh? Don’t what?” “Don’t stand here! Go about the good parochial works from which these unhappy events have distracted you! Carry nourishing tracts to the starving! Pray over cases of mumps and sprinkle Jordan’s water over measles!” “Now, now, dear Doctor Losberne, you go too far.” Mrs Maylie’s rebuke was spoken in a kindly enough tone but the light in her eye was as the glint of cold steel. The surgeon conceded with an apologetic dip of the head. “That was uncalled for, Trigg,” he said. “I have seen patients recover after a prayer from you when all my physic has failed. There now—that’s my confession for you, too.” If the wily doctor had contrived both the insult and his apology for it (and who is to say that he did not?), he could not more effectually have snubbed out the fuze on the bomb that had threatened to explode among them. The chaplain dipped his head in magnanimous acceptance, adding that he, too, had seen a box of pink pills work all the wonders he had expected from his prayers; adding also that he could do more good abroad in the parish than there by that comfortable fire in that most congenial company. And so the first of several immediate threats to Oliver’s life and liberty was averted. But there was little celebration at Golden Grove; the shadow of Bow Street still hung over all.

CHAPTER 31

Two terriers from Bow Street sniff a rat but they find they cannot nip it in the bud

180

Bull and Taylor, they were called. “And before any wit takes it into his or her head to say so,” Bull told cook, M’Donagh, and the two menservants in the kitchen, only moments after they arrived, “a tailor—as you know—is for taking measures of things and a bull—as you may also know—is for charging. And that’s what we do—take measures and make charges. We’ve heard all those jokes already.” A moment or so earlier, Rose had watched them dismount from their dogcart and a shiver of apprehension had run all through her at the sight. They put her in mind of two pugilists she had seen standing outside a booth at a fair one afternoon. They stood their ground four-square and looked about them with a haughty menace, breathing steam through their nostrils, and slowly cracking their knuckles, one by one. After a brief survey of the house, during which they noticed at once the mark of the ball on the banisters at the foot of the stairs, they asked for the servants to be brought one by one to the morning room, beginning with whoever had fired that shot. Mr Giles stuck to his story about winging a great gawk of a lad the previous night. Bull said it was, indeed, very strange. He and Taylor had stopped for directions at a public house in Hampton and had been told of a rough, wild-eyed man (and here Rose, her aunt, and the doctor thought at once of ‘Pop-Eyes’) and a fair little boy who had gone tramping through in the direction of Chertsey. And, with the assistance of the ostler at that place, they had interviewed a farm carter who could place them on the road at Halliton, half an hour later, which was even nearer. “And,” said Taylor, “they claimed to be bound for Shepperton, which is nearer still to Chertsey—though none could recall seeing them there this morning.” “Howsome-ever,” Bull took up the narrative with a smile, “we spied a ‘derry,’ as they calls it—a derelict house, to you and me, ma’am—at the foot of Chertsey Bridge ...” “On the farther side,” Mrs Maylie said. “I know it. It was the toll house on the former bridge. What of it?” “What of it, ma’am?” Taylor replied. (It seemed their habit to speak alternate lines, like the two halves of a Greek chorus.) “Why, this! Mister Bull and I had coldish hands by then ...” “Which is not to be wondered at in such inclement weather,” Bull interjected. “And yet,” Taylor resumed, “we were able to warm our hands above the ashes there!” “By courtesy of three grown men in boots and a little boy who had spent a part of the night there—leaving around half-past one, to judge by the fire.” “Three grown men and a boy,” Taylor echoed, “as we ascertained from marks in the floor and the mud beneath the bridge ...” “... which was not affected by the rain,” Bull concluded. “So now we have traced them to within a mile or so,” Taylor pointed out, thereby confirming the sensation that both Mrs Maylie and her niece had already begun to experience—that of a noose tightening about them all and ultimately

181 closing around the neck of that dear little boy, now sleeping so trustfully upstairs, unaware of any further threat to him. “And now,” said Bull—it being his turn—“if Mister Giles and his assistant, Brittles, will be so good as to accompany us outdoors while the light holds, we shall seek further evidence in the fields all about.” They departed, smiling the sort of smile that left at least one observer—Rose— wishing they had kept their faces straight. The moment they were out of doors, she raced upstairs to Betsy’s room in the attic, pausing only to take a pair of opera glasses with her. She watched the two sleuths at work, insofar as the trees and intervening hedgerow permitted a clear sight of them; and what she saw was enough to convince her that they would find Oliver’s footprints out there, too, in some places as sheltered from the rain as under Chertsey Bridge. And then it would all be up with him. Unless ... The hair stiffened at the nape of her neck. Would she dare? Could she carry it off? Her first instinct was to call Betsy, to bring her Oliver’s boots. But she knew the poor girl would be easily broken down by Taylor or Bull, if one of them had the smallest suspicion of what she, Rose, was about to do. And so she must do it all on her own, with no one—not even dear Aunt—being privy to the act (which, she could not doubt, was a criminal one). Luck was with her. She stuck her head round the door of the spare room, where Oliver lay, and put a finger to her lips to indicate that Betsy was not to stir. “All’s well?” she whispered. The maid nodded and Rose left her in peace once more. During this brief interval she had noted that Oliver’s boots lay drying in the hearth where they had been put that morning. She went directly to the box room where, by the greatest good fortune, she and her aunt has lately assembled a parcel of good cast-off clothes and boots for the deserving poor of the parish—charitable donations from their friends all about. She was sure that among them she had spied a pair of boots a half an inch or so larger than the ones Oliver had worn, yet not too large for him, withal. Her memory did not deceive her. Hiding them in her workbasket she went back to the sickroom and warned Betsy that the two officers would wish to interview her soon after they returned to the house. “Oh, lawks, miss! What on earth shall I tell them.” “The truth, Betsy. The truth never hurt anyone.” With some irony she reflected that, until this day, she would have believed that maxim with all her heart! But now that same tender organ had other preoccupations. “And if they asks summat as I doan’t know?” “Why, then, you have my leave to giggle and tell them straight that you do not know.” She did not add that, of all the giggles she had ever heard, Betsy’s was the most aggravating by a mile—and that she had never thought she’d bless her for it, since the pair of inquisitors would soon tire of hearing it.

182 The moment she was alone she took the replacement boots from her workbasket, compared them with Oliver’s, found them a satisfactory five-eighths longer, and thrust the incriminating pair into the heart of the fire. Though they burned with a merry crackle, she was not satisfied until she had lifted up several burning lumps with the tongs and buried the pair beneath them. Then, she carried the substitutes to the water pitcher and dipped them, rubbing the water well into the dry leather until they looked as if they had been soaked last night and merely cleansed of all mud. As she placed them on the hearth she heard the sounds of the men’s return—the opening and shutting of doors, the stamping of boots, and the blowing of hot breath on cold fingers—or, rather, the cries of satisfaction that followed the warming. She went over to the bed and smoothed a curl on Oliver’s forehead. “I don’t like leaving you all alone up here, little darling,” she murmured, barely above a whisper. “But who knows what may happen if I am not down there to prevent those two Bow Street men from running you down?” Her first question to the policemen on arriving at the foot of the stair was, “Have you any business with Betsy, the maid, my good men? If not, I should like her to sit in the sickroom above. We have a sick child in the house, as I suppose you know?” “Indeed, we know it, Miss Rose,” Bull replied, with heavy emphasis. “Indeed, we were most interested to hear of it,” Taylor added. “Not least the mode of his arrival among you.” Bull turned to his colleague. “Little fair-haried boy? Angelic appearance? Small enough to fit a window? Collapsed on the front step? Weak from loss of blood? A wound beneath the arm as might have been made by a bullet ...” “It was made by a bullet,” Mr Losberne put in—greatly to their annoyance, for he had thrown them within sight of the post. “Sir?” Bull frowned. “I said it was made by a bullet. Which of those half-dozen words is causing you trouble? I shall happily translate, if ...” “The question is—whose? Which pistol fired it?” “But that is surely no mystery?” the doctor said. The two officers exchanged superior smiles. “The gentleman sees no mystery, Bull,” said Taylor. The doctor said, “It was one of the three grown men who took part in the burglary, of course.” “There were only two,” Mr Giles put in, proud of having taken part in the outdoor investigation that had established the fact. “Two and a boy.” “Dear me!” the doctor cried. “At Hampton it was one and a boy. At Chertsey Bridge it was three and a boy. And here, a mile farther on, they have finally decided to become two and a boy. How assiduously they adapt their numbers to fit whatever evidence you pick up at each place, my good fellows! I’m sure you will feel most obliged to all three—or two—or one—of them when you finally run them—or him—to earth!” For the first time the two officers appeared uncomfortable. “Whatever about

183 that,” Taylor mumbled, “we must interview the boy and hear his tale.” “But I have told it you, in essence. If you wish to know it in full: He was abroad between here and the village. He was shot at by one, or two, or three men. The men were running away from here, or from this corner of the parish. He lay stunned in a ditch for most of the night. He recovered as dawn broke. He staggered, more dead than alive about these lanes and eventually arrived at the front door here, where he knocked and asked for help. I attended him as soon as I heard of it. What more can you seek to know that will assist you in tracing the three men already mentioned? Or is it now two? Or are we back to one?” The doctor’s cunning in breaking Oliver’s tale down into single sentences will be apparent when, on inspection, it transpires that each such statement, taken alone, is no more and no less than the literal truth. After this, it will come as no ssurprise to learn that neither policeman felt like challenging the doctor head-on; not even Bull was so eager to live up to his name as that. Nonetheless, they felt they could not depart without achieving some sort of interview with the wounded boy. Taylor cleared his throat with some diffidence and said they would still like a word with the boy. After all, if he was shot by the burglars during their escape, he was at, the very least, a witness in the case. “He saw nothing,” Losberne assured them. “It was pitch dark. He merely heard them in the lane.” “Then at least he can place them somewhere between here and Chertsey at a certain time,” Bull pointed out with a smile. “Men have been hanged on more slender threads than that!” To Rose’s alarm, the doctor yielded. “By all means interview him, then,” he said. “You clearly suspect him of playing some part in the burglary. And if you are right, you may save the hangman a job.” Taylor put out a hand to stay his colleague, who was already making for the door. “Pray, what may you mean by that, doctor?” he asked. “Only that he is as close to death now as any child I’ve seen—any who has survived, that is. Even the most considerate interview, by stirring up the most dreadful and frightening of memories—especially of something so recent as this—might be all it needs to nudge him into the other group—the ones who did not survive. However ...” He dry-soaped his hands in the gesture Pilate must have used. “That is only my humble opinion as a doctor. You, with your understandably more robust view of human nature, are at liberty to disagree— though it is my opinion, I think, that will carry more weight with the coroner.” No single word could have been more calculated to halt them in their tracks than ‘coroner.’ They stopped and stared at each other uncertainly. “There is surely one way to settle the matter without disturbing the little chap?” Rose said. “And what might that be, miss?” Bull asked with condescending gallantry. “I presume you found his footprints preserved somewhere out there in the fields?” “Oh, yus!” Taylor laughed conceitedly. “A cobbler could fashion the very pair from the prints we found.”

184 “Then see if Oliver’s match them! His boots are drying on the hearth upstairs. Mister Giles, ask Brittles to fetch them here, if you please!” Her aunt and the doctor stared at her as if she’d lost her wits, for what would more certainly tie Oliver to the crime than the test she had proposed? Only her calm smile prevented them from countermanding the order and improvising some reason why the trial should be abandoned. For once, both officers missed these cross-currents—whose detection was their stock-in-trade and the source of many a past forensic triumph. Bull was far more interested in the name she had just let slip; and Taylor, ever sensitive to his companion’s moods, had eyes only for him. “Did you say Oliver, miss?” Bull asked as Brittles left to carry out the commission. “That is the little chap’s name—Oliver Twist.” “Hah!” The man closed his eyes and clapped the back of his head as if he had been stung. “Twist! Oliver Twist! Why does that name ring a bell? I have seen it up.” “Me, too,” Taylor chimed in. “Five guineas reward ... a boy named Oliver Twist ... Oh, I can see the poster now as if it were before my very eyes!” “A runaway apprentice?” Taylor murmured. “It would explain his walking abroad in the small hours.” Those who had heard Oliver tell his tale knew precisely what they were hunting after; if they hesitated, it was only to test their explanation for loose ends that might lead to, ‘the Cap’n’ and ‘Pop-Eyes’ by another route. Mrs Maylie was the one to brave the waters first. “It was a notice put up by a gentleman called Brownlow. Oliver Twist is an orphan and Brownlow had befriended him. Oliver was waylaid by thieves on his way to the bookseller with some valuable books for return. He was afraid to go back. He has not been back since. But that is the notice you saw, Mister Bull. I am sure of it.” Taylor was about to remark that, for an infant at death’s door, this youngster had been amazingly communicative, but Brittles entered at that moment carrying Oliver boots—or his new boots, as they should rightly be called. With an exclamation of triumph, Taylor took out his notebook and a carpenter’s rule. His smile said it almost as clearly as the actual words: ‘Now we have the little d—l!’ The fading of that same smile said it even more clearly: ‘He’s not our man, after all!’ He did not believe it and so he took the measure again, and yet again. Bull did not believe it, either, and repeated the measurements for himself. Finally, as if it closed the door for good, Taylor pointed to a place where a stud was missing on the right boot—from which the onlookers assumed that the little boy’s bootmarks out there in the fields had evinced no such defect. They returned the boots, apologized for any inconvenience they may have caused, passed another half hour in taking statements and noting down a number of measurements pertaining to the events of the previous night, and then left to spend a disappointed night at some local hostelry, apologizing once more for their

185 necesssary intrusion. “Well done, Miss Rose!” the doctor said when they were alone again. “The boots! That was the stroke of a genius.” “Yes, Rose, dear!” Her aunt’s smile was sweet enough but there was a caustic edge to her voice. “When you fall in love—which must soon happen, I suppose— I can see I shall have to watch you far more carefully than I had intended.” “Too late, dear Aunt!” Rose laughed gaily. “I have already lost my heart! And, by your leave, I shall return to him at once.” At the door she paused and laughed again. “But by all means come and watch me as carefully as you like. My lover is not the most communicative of mortals at present! And besides, he has not shaved!”

CHAPTER 32

Oliver expresses a wish to visit old friends but gains no answer

Oliver’s ailings were neither slight nor few. In addition to the pain and slow healing attendant upon the bullet wound, his exposure to the rain and cold had brought on fever and ague, which lingered on and off for weeks and left him sadly wasted. But the combined effects of Doctor Losberne’s good cheer (and perhaps his physic, too), Mrs Maylie’s quiet and well-ordered household, and, above all, the devoted and loving care of Rose, gradually put his fever to flight and restored some of the flesh to his bones. Nor was the Rev. Melpomenus Trigg long absent. Now that the opportunity to perjure his immortal soul no longer presented itself, the obstacle to his attendance had evaporated, while the inducement to it—the enchanting person and presence of Miss Rose—was stronger than ever. Full many an hour he sat at Oliver’s bedside, ‘in the company of two angels,’ as he liked to put it, speeding the child’s recovery with uplifting sentiments. “Ah, dear Oliver!” he would ejaculate. “Soon you will recruit your strength to the point where you will be able to say a few tearful words as to how deeply you feel the goodness of these two sweet ladies. How ardently you must already hope that, when you grow strong and well again, you may do something to express your gratitude—something that will let them see the love and duty that now fills your breast—something, however slight, to prove to them that their gentle kindness has not been cast away, but that the poor boy whom their boundless charity has rescued from the misery and squalor of his former ways is eager to serve them with his whole heart and soul.” The effect of such sentiments, repeated in a thousand variations over the days and weeks, was as startling as any physic, though its modus operandi was quite different. “Is dear Reverend Trigg coming today?” Oliver asked one day. “I expect so, darling.” Rose sighed. “Such a good, well-meaning gentleman. Only I do sometimes wish ...” “What?” “Oh ... nothing.”

186 “I wish I might get up today—just while he is here—and that we could walk in the garden in the sunshine.” “Why so, dear?” she asked with a knowing little smile. “Well, to be sure, I shall never tire of his uplifting sentiments, but I fear the flowers in this wallpaper will droop if they overhear many more. I think the real ones in the garden may prove themselves more robust.” Whereupon she laughed and told him he should study one day for the diplomatic service. Then an unaccountable sadness crept into her eyes at the mention of these two last words. The Rev. Melpomenus Trigg was as delighted at the prospect of a chaperoned walk with the object of his affections as ever he had been to sit with her in Oliver’s sickroom; and why not?—in either case he could talk at her through the boy. His homilies thus continued their remarkable work of improvement, encouraging Oliver to eat like a cabhorse, to run ahead when they walked, to fill the air with whatever prattle came into his head—which Rose rather encouraged, since every cubic inch thus claimed by Oliver was automatically denied the good chaplain, who seemed haunted by the notion of service. Every idle hour Oliver enjoyed in recuperating his strength should, by Trigg’s lights, be compensated by two in some future but as yet shapeless form of service. “I could buttle,” said Oliver at length, having thought profoundly as to his qualifications for service of any kind. “Eh?” exclaimed the chaplain, which was his shortest speech on record. “Not yet, to be sure,” Oliver went on. “But dear Mister Giles is no longer young and that time must come when he will rise into grateful retirement. Then I may buttle in his place.” Rose laughed merrily at this dream, at which the chaplain, who had been about to expunge that word from Oliver’s personal lexicon, and rather severely, too, laughed heartily, instead. “Meanwhile,” Oliver continued after giving Miss Rose a complicit little smile, “I could train him up in the best modern practice. Diplomatically, don’t you know. He has been sadly misinformed as to the ordering of the cutlery and glass for different courses. And if he should object, I shall tell him it is entirely at your suggestion, sir—and that I earn my place, like him, by service to our two mistresses.” “Well now, see here, there are other ways, you know.” The chaplain had an uncomfortable premonition that his well-intentioned exhortations might lead to disharmony in this most harmonious of households—a consequence quite opposite to the one he intended. “I shall tell him that a brief talk with you will explain it so much better than I ever could,” Oliver added, half musing to himself. “I expect he will withdraw his objections then, without even the need to trouble you.” When Rose was tucking him up in bed that night she hid her smiles and put on her severest frown. “Now, Oliver,” she said. “That is quite enough chaplain- baiting, for one year at least!” “I?” he responded, beating Trigg’s record for shortness of speech by one letter.

187 “You know very well what I mean. Reverend Trigg is a good man ... at heart ... underneath all his ... his—you know what I mean.” Oliver, seeing his behaviour had genuinely troubled her, was serious at once. “I do wish to serve you and Mrs Maylie, Rose,” he said. “Sometimes I lie here, thinking of all your goodness to me, and it makes me cry ...” “Now, now! Hush, there’s a dear, or you’ll set me off, too.” “I am grateful and I do wish to serve you in any way I can ...” “And so you shall!” She ran her fingers through his curls, and smiled a tremulous smile as, with her other hand, she wiped some obstruction from the corner of each eye. “But you must not make us think we are kind to you, merely to reap a tenfold reward in your later service. If we are kind to you, it is because we cannot be kind to every little boy and girl whom this world scorns and abuses—and yet we must start somewhere. So we do it as much for our own self- esteem as for you. There now! Off to sleep with you—before you drive me to trespass on ... on ...” “On chaplain’s ground?” Oliver suggested. She smiled down at him but it was more wistful than amused. “You have an old head on young shoulders, Oliver. The world has put it there and now none can take it away.” “What d’you mean?” She sighed. “Many things! You make me feel I might confide in you more than I otherwise might, for instance.” “Yet you fear I should break your confidence? God knows I have little enough cause to shield ‘the Cap’n’ and ‘Pop-Eyes’ and yet I do.” “Yes. I sometimes wonder if you are entirely wise there—to tell absolutely no one, I mean. But we must talk of that another time.” She eyed him in a somewhat speculative fashion and, though she knew he ought to sleep, she could not forbear asking one more question: “You mean—when you say you shield them for Nancy’s sake—that is the truth but not the whole truth?” He nodded. “I shield them, too—for the while—because they took me in when most of the more respectable world gave me nothing but gruel and kicks ...” “Mister Brownlow?” she suggested. “Had I simply knocked at his door as I walked into London, would he then have taken me in? Would I even have seen him or he, me? These are hard questions and I should never ask them to his face. But I think the answer would be no. Yet the Cap’n took me in, fed me, clothed me, taught me to read and write—a little, anyway.” “For his own nefarious ends.” “True, but he did it when none other would. Do you understand—even now?” “What, dear?” She frowned. “What it feels like”—he patted his breast—“in here when you know what is the right thing to do but you also know it means starving to death—and there before you stands a smiling, kindly man offering food, shelter, warmth, companionship ... and all he asks in return is that you apply your nimble little fingers to the task of unpicking monograms from handkerchiefs and filing crests off watches and snuffboxes. Death or dishonour, Rose! Have you thought much of death? I have.”

188 The girl shivered. “We must talk of this another time, old-head-on-young- shoulders! I should have said a nursery rhyme instead.” Then, on a sudden inspiration, and in hope of leaving him in a less sombre mood, she said, “Should you like to see Mister Brownlow, again?” The spontaneous light of joy in his eyes was all the answer she required; but Oliver was swift to hide it. “I should like to see him,” he replied, “but he will never admit me again.” “If Doctor Losberne were to drive you there, to Pentonville, in his dogcart, and go ahead of you into the house to let the good man know he wrongs you with his suspicions ...?” And at these words Oliver was too delighted to speak. He flung his little arms around Rose’s neck and showered her with kisses. Then she stayed at his side as darkness fell, singing his favourite songs— Barbara Allen and Still growing—until he was asleep. In truth, he fell asleep in the middle of the third verse of the first ballad, but she pretended not to notice. By the following week he was well enough for Doctor Losberne to carry out the impromptu promise Rose had made on his behalf. It was a warm, bright spring morn with scarcely a breeze, and the barometer announced Set Fair. “No one can possibly fall ill on such a fine day,” he announced grandly— though he had, of course, left his practice in the hands of his able assistant. “Come, Oliver! Let us see how much of the way you recall!” They got no farther than Chertsey Bridge before the boy called out, “There’s the house, the derelict house, the one where Pop-Eyes and the other man laid up until half-past one!” “It doesn’t look quite derelict to me,” the doctor remarked. “Shall we go and see what’s what? D’you feel up to an extra little adventure on our way?” He pulled his cob to the side of the road and gave him his nosebag before taking the steep path down to the old tollhouse. His knock was answered by an old, hunchback cripple who said, very curtly, “Whaddya want?” “Don’t take that tone with me, my good man,” Losberne responded, bristling. “Don’t you know who I am?” “No—nor don’t want to, neither.” He spat a thumping quid on his side of the half door. “I’m the health officer for this union.” He turned to Oliver and added, “That’s quite true, by the way.” To the man he continued: “I can walk into your house any time I want, without so much as a by-your-leave. And if I don’t like what I see, I can have the habitation condemned. What d’you say to that!” The fellow’s attitude changed at once. “But sir,” he whined, “good, kind sir! I have no other place to go. I keeps ’ouse as well as what my affliction permits ...” “Ah, but you do have somewhere else to go—the union in Staines ...” “I’m sorry I was short with your honour, boss. I thought as you might be burglars, see.” “Ah yes—burglars!” The doctor was delighted to take up the word. “You are troubled a great deal by burglars, I expect—considering the state of your windows and shutters! How long have you lived here?” “Twenty-five years, sir—and never so much as seen a burglar, nor had whiff of

189 one, neither. But there’s always a first time, isn’t there!” “For everything, good man.” Losberne gave him a knowing, confidential sort of smile. “And I suppose that when two burglars lay up here at the back end of the winter just gone, with some species of caretaker and a boy—I suppose that was the first time such a thing ever happened, too?” The cripple licked his lips and looked all about, as if for escape or rescue; since neither seemed in the offing, he drew a deep breath and replied, “Such a thing never happened, sir—not here. Not in the twenty-five years I’ve ...” “And if this boy here could describe to you every chair, every table, every shelf, every andiron beneath this roof ...” the doctor said, interrupting the man’s protestations. But the smile that greeted his implied threat was enough to tell him that none of the domestic arrangements Oliver had seen had survived the upheavals and rearrangements that must have followed on the less-than- triumphant conclusion of the robbery. He realized he ought to have thought of that before. “Come, Oliver,” he said, holding out his hand and preparing to retreat with what dignity he still could muster. “We shall learn nothing here.” “Goodbye, sir! Goodbye ... Oliver!” The hunchback chuckled at their departing backs. “I am a fool, Oliver,” Losberne said as they struggled back up the path. He said it again as he took away the nosebag and remounted their chariot—and again as he clucked the horse to a gentle trot. “I am a fool. Did you know that, Oliver? I am a fool. That man will find some way to get intelligence of this to your former, er, associates. I have put your life in danger ...” And for the next five minutes Oliver found it useless trying to respond; the man did all but tear out his hair, rend his clothes, and stop at the nearest farm for some sackcloth and whatever they could spare in the way of ashes. “It may be, sir,” Oliver managed to interject when the most luxurious portion of self-recrimination was spent, “that you could not have done a wiser nor more useful act.” “No, no!” cried the other. “You seek to solace me, in the goodness of your heart. But I will not be comforted. I shall not be comforted. I am a fool. A rash, impetuous fool and there’s an end to’t!” “See it from the Capn’s point of view,” Oliver continued, as if the doctor had not spoken. “Pop-Eyes and the other burglar return empty-handed and without me. They say they left me dead in a ditch. The Cap’n moves his lodgings to another house of safety—of which he has several, as I know. He scans the papers for news of my death—but then, what papers bother to announce the death of a foundling in a ditch! There is no hue and cry—he is safe! But what now? The cripple at the bridge gets word to him that Oliver is alive and well! Alive and well—and still no hue and cry? Well, bless the boy! He may have found a better life for himself but he compassionates his old friends enough not to peach on them!” “And there’s an end to it?” Losberne hoped against hope, for Oliver’s reading of the situation had calmed him wonderfully. Oliver shrugged, much as to suggest it might not have been quite as neat and

190 tidy as he had said. “Perhaps Pop-Eyes is less certain—he and I lost no love between us! ‘Get the boy back!’ he urges. ‘Force him to some criminal act that will make him ours for ever...’” “But that is what they tried already!” the doctor pointed out. “And, you may be sure, the Cap’n will point it out and rub it in! No, the Cap’n—whose word ultimately rules them all—will say let sleeping dogs lie. The one most certain way to direct the feet of Bull and Taylor toward them would be to snatch me back from the bosom of a family, and their friends, none of whom would let me go so lightly.” “Especially”—Losberne, having recovered his equanimity completely, now had a cunning gleam in his eye—“if one among that circle knew the true names and probable directions of your ‘Cap’n’ and his pop-eyed lootenant!” Oliver nodded. “Rose hinted as much to me last week and I have thought of it since,” he admitted. “Well?” The doctor encouraged his confidence with an expectant lift of his eyebrows. Sadly Oliver shook his head. “No, you are right.” He was only a little crestfallen. “I am not that one. Heaven knows what I and my impetuous nature would do with such a secret! See how I blundered into that encounter by the bridge! What if your three bullies had still been there! I have a single-shot pistol and you have nothing! What a risk I took! Ah me!” “Mister Giles says you have acted on impulse all your life, doctor,” the boy told him, “and it has earned you the respect and esteem of all who know you—besides gaining you many friends, all of whom would lay down their lives for yours. But, I say—what a glorious day it is!” There was no more self-immolation from Losberne after that. Instead they passed the journey in a helter-skelter of conversation, during which Losberne learned more than he thought possible of how the wealth of the nation is redistributed through the channels of thievery and fencing, while Oliver learned as much as many would think desirable of the marvellous interdependence of heart and lung, kidney and liver, bone and muscle and nerve—to say nothing of food and the digestive tract, which last was, needless to say, most interesting of all to him. And so, in what seemed like next to no time at all, they drew into Goodson Street, Pentonville. How eagerly Oliver scanned each house as they passed, much as a sailor’s eye greets each landmark on his way upriver to his home port. Soon he would see dear Mrs Bedwin again! How he would fly into her arms and bury his face in that dark, capacious bosom! And what tears of joy she would weep to see him and clasp him there once again! And good Mr Brownlow, to be sure— once the kind Doctor Losberne had made it clear he was not the ingrate he must seem—how he would cough and clear his throat and take off his spectacles and wipe them! And Mr Grimwig, too—oh, he would surely be there, for was it not muffin time! How he would gnash his teeth and offer to dine off his own head if he were not proved right in the end! “There is the house!” he cried at last.

191 “Bless me, boy,” the doctor said in a bewildered tone. “First you show me a derelict house that’s tenanted. Now it’s a tenanted house that’s empty!” As Oliver wiped the tears of joyful euphoria from his eyes and peered more closely at the place, he saw that, indeed, the shutters were all closed and that a To Be Let sign, with an agent’s address, was pasted upon one of them inside. They descended, nonetheless—Oliver close to tears—and knocked at the house next door, where the servant told them that Brownlow had left two weeks earlier on a voyage to the West Indies ... whether to visit or to stay, he could not say. And his housekeeper? She had gone with him for she had a son out there. Also that irascible gentleman who was a great friend of Mr Brownlow’s—he had accompanied them, too. Grimwig—that was the name! “Not two weeks since!” Losberne mused as they descended the steps again. “The bookseller!” Oliver exclaimed when they were back in the dogcart, for he was eager to find at least one living, honest soul who might corroborate any part of his story. “Home!” exclaimed his companion. “Chertsey, home, and beauty—and away from this confounded London!” “The bookseller is not too far out of our way,” Oliver said. “We shall leave him in peace,” the doctor said firmly. “I fear we should arrive at his stall only to discover he had dropped dead of a heart attack not two hours since!”

CHAPTER 33

Nancy follows in Oliver’s footsteps and makes the identical discovery

The imaginary conversation which Oliver had ascribed to Lord Fagan and Sikes was not too far from reality—as was only to be expected from an alert young boy with perfect vision and hearing, who had lived among them, on and off, for nigh on a twelvemonth. Fagan had moved yet again, to a new den this time, in the St Giles rookery. He had at first been beside himself with fury at Sikes for his bungling—especially for his legging it without even making certain whether Oliver were alive or dead. And he did, indeed, scan the papers, including some he got sent up on purpose from Staines, Walton, and other towns in western Middlesex. They mentioned the burglary at Golden Grove, of course, and gave glowing accounts of the heroism displayed by the butler, his boy, and a travelling tinker who had, by the purest chance, been lodged there that night with his two fierce bloodhounds. They also printed interviews with two intrepid officers from the famous Bow Street Runners, mention of whose names brought a great sense of relaxation to his lordship and a broad smile to his lips. The paper reported their opinion that the burglary was the work of one Conkey Chickweed; but, as Fagan and everyone else of the thieves’ fraternity knew, Conkey never rose higher than a runner to illegal bookmakers and was, moreover, retired and coughing himself to death in Yarmouth.

192 “Though mind you,” Fagan said when Sikes laughed at this wild guess from officers Bull and Taylor, “if Conkey had cracked this crib, he’d have made a better job of it than you and Crackitt. He could hardly have done worse!”—which soon erased the smile from Sikes’s lips. But of Oliver, or of any boy either found dead in a ditch or turning up with a wounded arm at some nearby dispensary, there was no word. “ ’E’s dead, I tell yer,” Sikes swore. “And not done by one among us—so we’re clear.” “And if he’s alive, Bill?” Fagan asked. “He who knows so much about you and about me? He who has the eyes of a hawk and the brain of ten of you—oh yes, don’t protest otherwise for you know it’s the truth! And he who has the habits of a squirrel—what if he’s alive and has talked his way into the heart of some old dear—as you very well know he could—what then?” “Snatch the tyke back, I say,” Bill growled. “Do the job again, prop’ly this time, but also closer ’ome. Chertsey was too far. We was all too fatigued ...” “Aye! From lifting tankards, most likely!” “A nice little home job, somewhere up west—now that’d fit the bill a treat. Wouldn’t it—not ’arf! It’d fit this Bill, I dare tell yer!” But Fagan was not even listening. Thinking aloud he murmured, “We’ll wait a week or two—or six or seven, considering he may be dying all that while from his wounds—or recovering from them, as the case may be—and if there’s no hue and cry, why, we’ll move back to Saffron Hill and send Nancy out Chertsey way to make her usual discreet inquiries.” Then, speaking directly to the burglar and cutting across his self-serving ramblings: “She’s a good girl, Bill—worth more to us than ten others of her sort ...” “You’ve got the ten-times table on your mind today,” Sikes sneered. “Be good to her, Bill. Don’t hit her more than you can help.” By treating the burglar to the usual mixture of threat and cajolery, Fagan also managed to pacify himself a little. And then, the more he thought about it, the more he realized it might be no bad thing if Oliver had survived and had, indeed, been taken under the wing of some kindly old maid of the type whose wings were just made for little angels like him to creep under. It would suit him, Fagan, very well in his dealings with Monks. He had been uneasy ever since that man had made his proposition. Fagan always felt uneasy when he had a choice of only two courses—to do something or not to do it; in fact, they were but two aspects of a single choice. He was far happier when he had half a dozen possibilities to choose among, for then he could keep the whole world guessing. Hadn’t he come away from that meeting wishing there were some way of hiding Oliver for a season, putting him away in a box like one of his ‘pretty things’—until he was clearer in his mind about what to do with the lad? And so, was not Oliver’s possible survival under an old maid’s wing a most fortuitous circumstance? Some weeks after this, and shortly after Oliver’s visit to London with Doctor Losberne, Nancy managed to hold herself sober enough, for long enough, for the pallor of indulgence to quit her cheek. Then ... a little red oxide to simulate the apples of the young innocent she was to personate ... a little belladonna in the eyes

193 to make them large and appealing ... and she was ready to bluff her way in Goodson Street, Pentonville. At last she had a use for the card that Mr Brownlow had proffered to Fang and which the magistrate had cast aside so contemptuously, for what could bolster her story better than that an official of the court had trusted her with it? The house looked brighter than she remembered it, with new curtains in the windows and new spring flowers in tubs on either side of the door. When she handed in the card, the maid invited her at once to step into the lobby and wait while she called the housekeeper. Nancy hugged herself with delight as she accepted the invitation. “Ah ... er, Miss Brownlow?” The housekeeper, a tall, angular woman with a fresh, open countenance, advanced uncertainly toward her down the passage; clearly she thought Nancy was Brownlow’s daughter (for who else would hand in a gentleman’s card but his daughter) and was mystified she had been left behind. “Why, no, ma’am!” Nancy assumed her best stage accent. “I was hoping I’d be able to see Mister Brownlow. I was trusted with his card by an official of ...” “But Mister Brownlow no longer lives here, my dear,” she replied. “He has gone to the West Indies—to Jamaica, I believe—he and his housekeeper, both.” “Ah!” Nancy thought quickly. “Then I must trespass on your kindness, ma’am—if you will be kind, that is?” “I’ll do my best.” The woman smiled. “Come, sit in my parlour. Have you walked far? Will you take some lemon cordial—we have some freshly made?” Nancy expressed her gratitude and followed the housekeeper to her parlour. And there, while they waited for the maid to bring the cordial, she explained how her family had, some two months ago, befriended a young orphan boy named Oliver Twist; and how, ten days ago, he had disappeared as mysteriously as he had arrived; nothing was stolen but he had simply vanished; they had made inquiries, of course, and had then discovered that something of the same sort had happened to Mr Brownlow with the selfsame boy! Moreover, Mr Brownlow had gone to the trouble of advertising a five-guinea reward for any information pertaining to young Oliver. At that the woman, thinking she had caught Nancy’s drift, smiled sympathetically and said she would have a long walk—and an even longer swim—ahead of her if she intended claiming the five guineas. Nancy laughed and said it was nothing of that kind; she had just called to see if any person had answered that advertisement. If they had, she would have been most eager to know what they said about the dear little fellow. The maid brought their cordials at that moment. “Here’s the gel who may answer you,” the housekeeper said. “Tillie? You were in service here during Mister Brownlow’s time, too, were you not?” The maid curtsied and said she had been. And then, in response to further questions, she vouchsafed that a man called ‘Bundle,’ a parochial beadle from some northern town, had called with information concerning the orphan’s early years—and had given him the blackest character imaginable. “There you are, Miss ... Miss ...?” the woman said. “Sadler,” Nancy said. “I cannot believe it, though. He was the sweetest little

194 boy—with just enough of the mischievous imp about him to keep the angels from claiming him as theirs.” The tear that brimmed in her eye at the memory owed little to laudanum and nothing whatever to her gift for acting. “No more could we, miss,” Tillie said. “He was a little darling. But it’s funny you should speak of him just now. The footman next door told me a fair-haired little boy very like our Oliver was here last week—or the week before, it was— asking after Mister Brownlow ...” “Alone?” Nancy asked eagerly. “No. In the company of a portly gentleman with a red face and jolly whiskers, he said.” “And did he know—this footman—did he know Oliver by sight?” “No, but he described him to the last little curl. The boy was heartbroken to hear of Mister Brownlow’s and Mrs Bedwin’s departure. Heartbroken.” “Well!” Nancy smiled wanly at the housekeeper and took her first draught of cordial. “I must not trespass further. Some kindly gentleman has got him now, so that’s a mercy. I just wonder how longer he’ll stay this time!” For ever, she thought to herself. If I have any hand in it. “Thank you, Tillie,” the housekeeper said. “Well, this is an amazing tale! Do you really suppose there is an angelic little orphan boy going about London, working his way into good people’s hearts, staying a month or two, and then moving on? It is such an uncommon and extraordinary thing to do.” Nancy shrugged to show her complete accord with the tenor of the question. “I could understand it,” she said, “if anything went missing along with him. But no—his little bed was neatly made and all the clothes we’d bought for him—all neatly laid out in a pile ... as if he supposed that would do in place of a letter!” She dabbed her eye and whispered, quite genuinely, “Oh, but I do miss him so!” The cordial soon revived her, though, and, taking back Mr Brownlow’s card and repeating her thanks several times, she was escorted to the door by Tillie. As they reached the threshold the maid said, “A funny thing about that Bundle man ... seeing you to the door, miss, brings it all back for I was the one who saw him out that night, too. On his way he says to me, standing right where you’re a-standing now, he says, ‘Yon Oliver weren’t so black as what I painted ’im, see tha!’ “ She giggled and excused her attempt at a northern accent. “Anyway, he told me there was plenty to Oliver’s credit as he could of mentioned. He’d given the bad side first so as to be rid of it, like. I didn’t trust the man.” She shivered to reinforce her judgement. “He was the sort as’d say whatever you wanted as long as he saw advantage in it to himself. He was most anxious I should call him back if Mister Brownlow should change his mind—for the master had hardened his heart entirely against the little lamb by then.” “Ah!” Nancy seized upon the words. “So he gave you directions how to reach him!” “Only for a night or two more—while he stopped in London. He was at ... I don’t expect you’re familiar with the area. He was at the White Horse down in Clerkenwell ...” And she went on to give the closest directions—to Nancy! She who could have walked there blindfold, on her hands, in the dark! She blessed her luck, too; she had induced many a half-drunken idler to finish the job and empty

195 his purse at the bar of the White Horse; so she’d have no difficulty in acquiring whatever information or memory they might retain of this ‘Bundle’ person. Parochial beadles from remote northern towns did not cross their doorstep every day of the week! Nancy thanked her and immediately went next door to quiz the footman. The man, who at once introduced himself as Thomas Smiley, saw a pretty girl and took his chance. He said he could not possibly be spared from his duties at that moment, but he’d be free to meet her at any respectable chophouse or theatre that same evening at eight. And so it was arranged. Nancy agreed the more readily because she knew that Fagan had not finished with Oliver, one way or another— meaning either his way or Monks’s—and that if she wanted to stay close enough to protect the little chap, a ‘songbird’ close by the house to which Oliver might return at any moment would be highly convenient to Fagan. And a ‘songbird’ who might call her, Nancy, out at any moment, taking her away from Bill and Fagan on approved business, would be highly convenient to her. He was a good man, Tom Smiley—so good that she suffered pangs of conscience at deceiving him. He was the first young man—indeed, the first man of any age—who made her feel another way of life was possible. She did not, however, allow herself to become so maudlin that she forgot to extract from him all that he knew, between one mutton chop and the next. For the most part he merely corroborated what Tillie had already told her; but then he said, “Just as your Oliver and the gentleman were leaving there was a little argument between them. The boy wanted to call on some bookseller—most insistent, he was.” (And that was when Nancy felt certain beyond all doubt that the boy was none other than Oliver, himself!) “But the gentleman was insistent, too—and since he had the reins, he was the one who ruled. ‘Chertsey, home, and beauty!’ he says—and off they went!” When Nancy related these discoveries to Fagan—together with the names of Fellgate and Bumble, which she got from the waiter at the White Horse—she put herself right back at the top of his list. “You’re a star, my little lady,” he cried, sweeping up her hand and planting his most elegant kiss upon it. He did not add that he already had other proofs of her honesty, for the old crippled hunchback at the bridge had, only the day before yesterday, sent in his report of the encounter with one Doctor Losberne and a boy he called ‘Oliver.’ “So he is alive and well and living in Chertsey after all!” Fagan murmured, pretending it was surprising news to him. “And he has not peached on us, Fagan,” she pointed out. “If he had, your name and Bill’s would be pasted up on every wall from Tottenham to Hackney.” “Nor will he ever peach on us, my dear,” his lordship replied; but to himself he added, until it should suit him to! Aloud he continued, “One more commission I would ask of you, my dear.” “To go to Chertsey?” she guessed. “Heavens, no! Or not yet, at least. No, it is simply this—to go tomorrow evening to the Cripples and bring Monks, if he’s there, to the old ken in Saffron Hill—you know the one.”

196 “You think it safe?” He smiled. “As you yourself said, my dear, neither my name nor Bill’s adorns a single wall in London!” He reached across and patted her arm. “Oliver is a good little pell to us, my dear. While he does not peach, I’ll do him no harm—that much I promise you.” “What of Monks, then?” she asked. He smiled. “A tedious tour of some remote northern town will do him no harm, I think. What was that name you mentioned?”

CHAPTER 34

Rose confesses to Oliver and reveals a stain upon her natal name

Doctor Losberne’s egregious error in blundering without thought into the old tollhouse by Chertsey Bridge weighed on his mind for several days. The old cripple’s concluding words—“Goodbye ... Oliver!”—spoken with that sinister intonation, seemed to grow more menacing with every mental repetition. At last he screwed his courage to the sticking place and confessed his crime to Mrs Maylie. But the good lady laughed at his fears and said they were of little consequence, now. “Have you forgotten?” she asked. “It is that time of year when my niece and I pack up our water-colour boxes and repair to the cottage in Essendon. We shall take Oliver with us, of course—if you think him well enough to travel a whole day?” The doctor was so relieved at this prospect that, even if the journey had put Oliver’s recovery back by a week (which he was sure it would not), he would have advised it above all other expedients necessary to the boy’s health. Oliver, having walked most of the way from Yorkshire to London, would happily have travelled a thousand miles as long as he could do it inside the the comfort of a coach—or, as on that memorable day, in an open landau. It was nowhere near a thousand miles, of course, nor even a hundred, but more like forty along the road they took—which meandered in a generally north-easterly arc around the hub of London. The first part of their journey was over ground that had since become very familiar to Oliver—to Isleworth and on to Brentford, which he had walked with Sikes and then driven over with Doctor Losberne. From there, however, they struck north, to Hanwell, thence to Greenford, and so up to Harrow-on-the-Hill, where they stopped for luncheon at the King’s Head in the High Street; from there it was downhill among little parks and pheasant manors to Stanmore; thence through leafy lanes across rolling farmland to South Mimms. A century earlier they might have gone directly across country from there to Essendon, continuing their north-easterly way; but enclosures had since usurped the common land and now the high brick walls of great estates barred their passage and turned the roads aside. So they had no choice but to go north again, to Hatfield, and strike out south from there on the road back into London via Potter’s Bar. This part of the way was familiar to Oliver, too, for he had walked it on the

197 afternoon before his fateful meeting with the Artful Dodger in Barnet ... was it only a year ago? Rose noticed his sudden, unwonted silence, for he had prattled merrily most of the way. “Growing tired, little man?” she asked. He shook his head and, with a shy smile, explained that he had been along this stretch of the road once before. “Of course!” she cried. “Yorkshire to London—you would. This is the Great North Road—England’s mighty spine. Well, well!” She gave his hand a squeeze. “It is as if one great loop in your life has been closed. Then, you were poor, wretched, starving, and footsore ...” “Now,” he concluded for her, “I have wealth beyond measure. But my treasure is such that no thief in the night may take it away, and that is the best sort of treasure to have, you know.” “Aunt, dear,” Rose said. “Do you suppose we were entirely wise to permit dear Reverend Trigg to improve Oliver’s writing and reading?” “Talking of which,” Mrs Maylie replied, adroitly stepping around the question, “I have written to Mister Cornforth, engaging him to continue Oliver’s education. He will be glad of the honorarium and Oliver, I know, will be glad of the improvement.” “Yes, Oliver!” Rose laughed gaily as she pressed the tip of his nose with the tip of her finger. “Just think! When you might be wandering aimlessly about the fields, pocketing worms and birds’ eggs, pulling down hayricks, calling for help from places of concealment ... and all the other things little boys do—not to mention swimming in the river that flows at the bottom of our garden, or lazing about in the punt—instead of all these tedious pastimes, I say, you will spend many happy hours at your Euclid, your French grammar, your Latin parsing, your algebra ...” “And my biology!” Oliver interrupted with a cunning smile. “Shall I explain once again how the liver and intestines conspire to turn ugly sheep and pigs and cows into pretty young ladies?” “Pax! Pax! You wretched boy!” Rose laughed and stopped her ears. “I should like someone to explain to me how a respectable doctor conspires with no one but himself to turn a pretty little boy into a wretched beast! Aunt—do make him stop.” “Stop it both of you!” Mrs Maylie said. “I don’t know which is the greater baby.” “Oh, we’re not babies.” Rose threw her arms around Oliver and hugged the breath out of him. “We’re brother and sister, aren’t we, Nolly! You never had a sister and I never had a brother—not by marriage, anyway. So that’s what we are—brother and sister by ... by ...” “By our own choice,” Oliver gasped. “Yes,” Rose said. “By our own choice.” Her aunt felt her brow and said, “Someone is going to drink a cup of feverfew and go straight to bed when we arrive—and a rather tired little boy is going directly to his bed, too.” By now they were four or five miles out of Hatfield and here they came to a turn

198 that enabled them to continue their generally north-easterly progress to Essendon, now a mere three miles distant. Through the village they drove, down the hill on the road that leads past the watermill to the banks of the winding River Lea. Half way down, Rose gave out a cry of delight and clasped her hands together in a prayer of thanks for their safe arrival. Oliver, following her gaze, could only wonder if, in the last few minutes, they had somehow passed through Heaven’s gates without his noticing it. For there before him, down in the valley bottom, nestling in a little bend of the river, was the most beautiful country cottage he had seen in all his wanderings. The evening sun, pouring up the river valley, struck its rose-clad walls almost horizontally, reflecting a lambent fire off the tiny leaded windows and making the old brickwork seem to glow with some sort of shimmering inward life. “Happy, Oliver?” Mrs Maylie asked. “Will you be happy here?” “Oh ... ma’am ...” He was lost for words. “Is it anything like your imagining?” Rose asked next. “I knew there were such places,” he murmured. “All my life, I knew such a place must exist.” Shortly after their arrival, however, Rose complained of feeling cold; she even began to shiver. Her aunt then fulfilled her promise, making her drink an infusion of feverfew and sending her straight to bed. “Feed a cold and starve a fever,” she said to Oliver. Next day, the fever had passed but Rose felt too weak to rise. Oliver explored the fields about and returned with an armful of wild flowers to grace her bedroom. The following day she was well enough to sit on a swing seat in the garden, while Oliver pushed it with his foot and read her favourite poems to her. And the day after that, she being quite her old self again, he took her out into the fields, past Woolmer’s Park and Cole Green to Panshanger, showing her all the secret places he had discovered, where the finest wildflowers blew. All around them, Spring was in full spate. The air was heavy with the drone of bees, speeding from flower to flower, eager to replenish the depleted honeycombs of winter. Birds dashed wildly by with twigs and moss in their beaks, either restoring last year’s abandoned nests or building anew where some unfeeling hedgecutter had unhoused them; and those not so engaged sat their twigs and sang their hearts out in their duels for territory. “Ah me!” Oliver sighed as they wended their happy, homeward way. “If only we humans could learn from these, our little feathered bretheren ...” “Oliver!” Rose interrupted him, making his name rise almost an octave on a long-drawn-out warning note. “Stop it this instant!” He chuckled but moments later was serious again. “Rose?” he said. “Is this more foolishness?” she asked. “No. But you don’t need to answer if you’d sooner not.” “Go on,” she said cautiously. “Are you in love?” She did not respond; indeed, for a moment he wondered if he had merely imagined he had asked the question. Perhaps it had been too direct, too immediate? He tried again: “Have you ever been in love, Rose, dear?”

199 “Why do you ask?” Her voice was so quiet he barely heard her. “Because the poems you like best all seem to be about secret love and love that can never be.” She nodded grimly. She sighed. “We think we can guard our most secret secrets,” she mused. “We lock them away in our hearts and think no one can see them there. But we give ourselves away all the same—without even knowing it. You have the eyes of a hawk and the ears of an owl, Nolly—do you know that?” Her arms being full, she contented herself with a nudge of her elbow. “So you are in love?” he said. “And the persistence of an earwig!” she added with a laugh. Then, serious again, she halted and turned to engage him eye-to-eye. “Listen, darling,” she said, “if I tell you, you are to promise me, on your most solemn honour, never to breathe a word of it to another living soul. Promise?” “Promise.” “No, that’s not enough. Say it out in full.” “I promise never to breathe a word of what you are about to tell me to another living soul. Who is he?” As they resumed their stroll a sad smile parted her lips and a faraway look stole into her eyes. “He is the most handsomest, most kindest, most generousest, most mostest-of-all-good-qualities sort of man that a girl could ever hope to find in the one she loves. That’s who he is!” “Have I met him?” “If you had, you would know him at once from what I have just said. No, dear, you have not met him—yet. But you may. And soon, for he usually visits the cottage while we are here.” “I know his name,” Oliver said. “Yes,” she replied. “I didn’t imagine this was some idle question that fell out of the blue! Go on!” “You painted his likeness last summer. It stands in a silver frame beside your bed—and I have seen the way you look at it. Does he love another—is that why you feel so sad?” “I don’t know,” she replied awkwardly; her manner suggested her reply was a little way east of the truth. “But he and I will never marry—that I do know.” “Because of the laws of con-sang-something—you know—that page in the Book of Common Prayer?” “Consanguinity?” She laughed. “No, it is nothing of that sort. In fact, he and I are not related at all.” Oliver frowned. “But he is Mrs Maylie’s son—and you are her niece ...” “Only by courtesy. Did you not know that?” He shook his head in amazement. “Yes! My dear aunt—who is mother and father to me—adopted me from an old peasant couple when I was seven. But I was not their daughter, either. My real surname is Fleming. My aunt had it changed to Maylie by deed poll. My mother died when I was five and my father followed her three years later, leaving us with next to nothing. That was when the peasant couple took me in. Mrs Maylie adopted me as her own a year later.”

200 “It was lucky you had no brothers or sisters,” Oliver said. She hesitated. “Yes?” he prompted her. She was slow to respond. “Now this is something I would not tell another living soul, Oliver. But I must tell you. I see it clearly now—I must tell you.” She drew a heavy breath and continued, “D’you remember when you told us something of your history—that first morning? Remember when you told us of your mother and her lack of a wedding ring? Don’t blush, my dear—not in front of me—for I had a sister once in precisely that situation. Agnes was her name. That is why I wept when you told us of your mother—I wept for her and Agnes, both, you see!” “Where is she now?” asked Oliver, excited at the thought he might meet someone so like his mother, in situation, at least—and talk with her, and meet her child, if it had lived, and ... not be so alone in the world. “Alive or dead?” Rose replied. “I do not know. Agnes was, as I say, precisely in your mother’s situation. She was much older than me—twelve years older, to be exact. She was mother to me after Mama died.” She heaved a deep sigh. “Dear, dear Agnes! She was so beautiful. Her eyes! Actually ...” She tilted her head and surveyed Oliver critically; then, telling him not to be alarmed, she laid aside her flowers and used the flat of her hands to mask parts of Oliver’s face. “She had eyes something like yours! I suppose it will make you frightfully conceited, but you have beautiful eyes, too. Anyway—that was Agnes.” Rose stooped and gathered up her bouquet again, saying, “She was a good young woman, too, Oliver—despite her misfortune. The man she loved was already married—to an odious woman ten years older than him. His father forced him into the alliance when he was little more than a boy ...” “What was his name—the one she loved who was married?” “Edwin something. I probably knew his surname once, but I’ve forgotten it. Anyway, Edwin went to Rome to get the marriage anulled—d’you know what that means?” “Was he a Catholic, then?” “No, she was. They were married in a Catholic chapel. Anulment is like saying the marriage never existed at all; that it was all a mistake. The marriage would have been anulled, too—perhaps it was—I don’t know. They don’t tell six-year- old girls much in that line! But the fact that Edwin’s father forced him into it would let them annul the marriage.” “But he didn’t come back to England?” Oliver guessed. “He died in Rome. And my father died in Chepstow—we were living in Chepstow then—he died almost in the same week, I think—leaving us penniless, as I said.” “And Agnes just left you?” “No.” Rose frowned as if searching for some elusive memory. “I don’t know if I dreamed this or if it really happened. I seem to remember a lady in black—an old, rather grim woman who came to our cottage one day. Agnes sent me out to play while she and the old woman had a long talk. Then Agnes hugged me and cried all night ... and when I woke up in the morning, Agnes was gone and there was this peasant woman and her husband—Goronwy and Evan Evans ...” She

201 shuddered at the very mention of the names. “And they took me away. They said I was to be brought up as a field girl, to labour for daily hire on the farms—because no one would ever want to marry me, because of my older sister’s disgrace. I think that was the only true word they ever spoke to me! But I was only there one year and then Mrs Maylie adopted me. I think some money changed hands, but it would be indelicate to ask, of course.” She gave a self-deprecating little shrug. “And that is all I know of my history.” They walked on in silence while Oliver digested these startling revelations. “I can guess what you’re thinking, Nolly,” she said at length. “We are brother and sister, you and I—in our histories at least!” “But then you are free to marry Henry Maylie,” Oliver said. “Indeed!” There was an astonishing bitterness in her tone. “My heart is free to marry him. And—for all I know—his is as free to marry me. And there is no legal bar. But the world, Oliver—the world!” He shook his head. “I don’t understand.” “No!” She sighed again. “Of course you don’t. If the world could only take pattern from your simplicity! But the world—the world in which dear Henry is destined to move—is a harsh, spiteful, unforgiving place. Better he should have a millstone around his neck than a wife with my history—or lack of it! Can you not hear the whispers? ‘Father died in penury ... sister fled in shame ... reared by peasants ... such a pity ... such a promising young man otherwise!’ You see! Marriage to me would be Henry’s ruination, Nolly, my dear little brother. So he must never know of my feelings for him.” Oliver was silent awhile, wondering if a promise not to breathe a secret also covered shouting it or singing it or even sneezing it, if it could be managed. Meanwhile, Rose, suddenly realizing what prospect her revelations might have raised in Oliver’s mind concerning his own advancement in the world, hastened to repair the damage. “It is so different for a man!” she exclaimed. “Your mother and father are both unknown, but you could rise to be prime minister and all sneers about your origin would fall away to silence.” But Oliver, with all the unworldly assurance of a boy his age, had not even considered his own situation at all; he had been running his mind back over those far-off events as Rose had described them. “Rose?” he said at last. “What now?” she replied, pretending to have wearied of the subject. “Why did that couple foster you? Someone must have paid them, otherwise ... well, it’s not what usually happens to orphans and foundlings—believe me as one who knows only too well!” She came to a halt once more and turned him to face her. “Nolly!” she exclaimed in a kind of wonder, staring at him, now in one eye, now in the other. “What?” he asked uncomfortbly. “What is wrong with me? A surfeit of happiness—that’s what! An unwillingness to inquire too deeply into unhappy things! But you are quite right. Someone must have paid the Evanses. The black widow? Then it wasn’t a dream! I never thought to question it. But you see it at once, little eagle! Little hawk! It is a mystery.”

202 “Not all mysteries require to be solved, Rose, dear.” Oliver now regretted having stirred so deep. She put her head on one side and looked at him in an accusing fashion. “You don’t believe that for one moment,” she said. “And nor do I! My dear aunt will be able to tell me—only I must pick my moment. Say nothing yourself, please— there’s another promise I must extract from you! I must choose the moment. Phew!” She laughed and shook her curls as they resumed their homeward walk. “What a journey your simple little question—am I in love?—has led us!” A moment later they turned the final bend and the cottage came in sight. “There’s your aunt!” Oliver’s keen eyes spotted her at once. “Up that ladder by the willow—see?” “Bees!” Rose began to run—awkwardly because of her arms-full of flowers. “Bees?” Oliver asked, trotting to catch her up. “There must have been a swarm—so early, too! We did not take enough honey from them last autumn. But she should not go up that ladder to take it.” They ran in silence most of the way. Just before they reached the gate, Oliver, speaking disjointedly between gasps for breath, said, “Rose?” “Yes?” “I’m, glad, we, know, about, each, other, now!”

CHAPTER 35

A gentleman in lavender gloves blunders into Sowerberry’s—and out again

Monks, being ever the cautious man where his own nefarious business was concerned, did not go directly to the workhouse where, according to Lord Fagan, this beadle called Bumble might usually be found; instead he decided to visit the undertaker first, partly to learn what he could of Oliver during his brief while there, but mainly, of course, to discover all that could be remembered of the boy’s mother—how soon she had died after her arrival; how many inmates and attendants had had the opportunity of talking to her; what names she might have given; who had laid her out; whether any memento or personal keepsake had been about her body then; where she was buried ... and so forth. For these delicate inquiries he had decided to pose as a clerk to some attorneys who had, for many years now, been seeking to settle an estate in favour of the young orphan. Such a person would, quite naturally, seek out every surviving proof of young Oliver’s origins. But still, as a cautious man, he lingered outside the undertaker’s shop, taking the measure of the place and seeing who went in and out. And therein lay his first error, for his loitering afforded Charlotte the opportunity of observing him awhile—him and his lavender gloves. She was polishing the front glass before going out to do her daily marketing. He was there when she left, with her empty basket over her arm, and he was still there when she returned ten minutes later, weighed down with groceries. On noticing her approach, he crossed the street and accosted her with a

203 perfunctory tip of his hat-brim. “Have I the honour of addressing Miss Sowerberry?” he asked, smiling what he supposed was an engaging smile. “Lawks, no!” the girl exclaimed. “I’m nobbut the tweeny to Mrs Sowerberry. The missiz’ll not be agate yet awhile. Why?” She hefted the basket on to her hip and stood her ground. “Oh dear. Let me see. I don’t wish to tarry if this is not the place I seek. Tell me—was there recently a parish apprentice here by the name of Oliver Twist? A little fellow with bright, flaxen curls?” Charlotte could not have said why she distrusted the man, but that particular ssentiment toward a fellow citizen had never been stronger in her breast. She shook her head, the way some people do when lost in thought; he might take it for a no, if he wished. “We have a charity boy, right enough, by the name of Noah Claypole. Tall, with lank black hair.” “I see.” Monks was beginning to wonder how reliable Fagan’s information was. “Perhaps this Noah Claypole could tell me something of the boy?” “Tha mun wait a goodly bit, then, see tha. He doesn’t generally get here while ten. After lessons at t’charity school. And now, if tha’ll excuse me, some of us has work to do.” Monks watched her flounce indoors and then turned away, despondent. But as he passed the yard gate he saw a tall boy with lank black hair sweeping down the cobbles. Young Master Claypole had obviously arrived early that morning. “Mister Claypole?” he asked, stepping into the yard. “Mister Noah Claypole?” Ten minutes later, Mister Noah Claypole came strutting into Charlotte’s kitchen and danced a little jig. “Oh my!” he exclaimed. “Didn’t I just show him! What? I shouldn’t think so!” “Who?” Charlotte asked curtly. Since Mr Bumble’s kind intervention she no longer had to bend the knee to Noah. “The genn’leman seeking news of little Work’us, that’s ’oo!” “Tha never let on nowt?” she asked anxiously. “ ’Course I didn’t!” was the scornful reply. “Do’st think I’m soft as a suckin’ duck?” “You didn’t?” Charlotte could not believe her ears. “What? And let him give that Work’us a thousand pounds? I love my cabbage but I’ve not turned green yet!” “A thousand pounds? What are you talking about? Who’s going to give Oliver a thousand pounds?” “Yon fella—Mister Monks. Works for some lawyer that’s been trying these ten years and more to wind up an estate—and there’s a thousand pounds in it for Work’us. I can just see ’im coming back ’ere with top ’at and silver cane, lordin’ it over Sowerberry and us. What? Ta very much!” He chuckled slyly. “Lucky ’e never stopped thee to ask, eh! Tha’d ’ave told ’im straight out!” “Ah, well!” Charlotte smiled and shrugged as if to suggest that the events surrounding Oliver’s departure were all long ago and far away by now. “What’s done is done,” she said. “What did tha tell him? Tha must have said owt.” “I told ’im to seek out Bumble ...” He frowned suddenly. “That were funny. ’E already knew about Bumble. ‘The beadle?’ ’e says. So I put ’im straight there.

204 And off he goes like a dog with two tails. Bumble’ll soon let ’im know what manner of little rogue he’s seeking to enrich!” “That’s that, then!” Charlotte took out a rolling pin and floured the table. “Now I’ve got bread to barm, so I’ll thank thee to leave us in peace. And if Jupiter’s coat isn’t shining fit to see your face in for that little girl’s funeral this morning, you’ll catch it hot and strong, my lad!” Scowling but now powerless to threaten her with any serious harm, Claypole returned to his chores in the stable. As for Charlotte, she accomplished her work with exemplary speed; no teacher in a school for cooks and domestics could have shown her pupils a swifter nor a more effectual manner of working; Mrs Sowerberry would have been astonished had she only risen in time to see it. Then, setting the stock to simmer and the salt bacon to soak, Charlotte put on her outdoor clothes and left a note to say she had gone to buy needles and thread—which was a curious thing to write, since she very soon passed three haberdashers without deviating and seemed, if anything, rather more intent on reaching the workhouse, instead.

CHAPTER 36

A false lawyer in lavender gloves throws away a fortune

Mr Bumble sat in the workhouse parlour, with his eyes moodily fixed on the cheerless grate, whence, as it was early summer time, no brighter gleam proceeded than the reflection of certain sickly rays of the sun which were sent back from its cold and shining surface. A paper fly-cage dangled from the ceiling, to which he occasionally raised his eyes in gloomy thought. “Aye,” he murmured, addressing the heedless insects who seemed fascinated by the gaudy network, “how honeyed the perfume it lays on the air to trap ye, eh! How it entices ye in! And oh, what a bitter, arsenical feast awaits ye once ye enter that perfumed bower! Ah me! But at least in your case the end is quick. Your end is more merciful than mine, believe me, my little black buzzing friends. If fly- cages had been invented by the female of my species, you’d be ten years a- dying—ten long years and more!” “What?” It was the voice of the late Mrs Corney, now the early Mrs Bumble, wife of the workhouse master. “Talking to ourselves, are we? The first sign of madness, they say. Though I never talked to myself before I married you—and that was an act of full-grown madness if ever there was one! Have you no work to do? Have you already bullied every man, woman, and child beneath this roof today?” Mr Bumble rose from his chair, for, to tell the truth, he did not like it when his fair conqueror, the new captain of his soul, towered above him with her fists on her hips like that. “I am cogitating, Mrs Bumble, ma’am,” he replied. “And I shall cogitate as and when the mood takes me. Now pray look me in the eye!” He had a particular purpose in this somewhat strange request; the eye he begged her to fathom was capable of turning itself into an eagle-fierce orb at the slightest

205 beetling of his brow; and when Bumble beetled the brow, paupers trembled, they fell to their knees, they bent their stubbornness to his will. “In the eye, ma’am, if you please,” he repeated. Alas for him, the smallest sort of beetling may be sufficient to quell a pauper, who, being but lightly fed, is in no high condition to withstand it. But even the most fearsome scowl of which Mr Bumble was capable had no effect on his good lady—or no such effect, rather, for it did cause her to raise her chin and laugh to the heavens. Yes—laugh! On hearing this most unexpected sound Mr Bumble looked at first incredulous, then amazed—after which he sank back into his chair and assumed his former state of gloomy pensiveness. “And now you’ll sit there snoring all day, I suppose!” she said. “I am going to sit here for as long as I think it proper to sit here, ma’am,” rejoined her yokemate. “And, although I was not snoring, I shall if I please. I shall snore, gape, sneeze, laugh, or cry as the humour strikes me—such being my prerogative.” “Your pre-rog-a-tive!” sneered Mrs Bumble with ineffable contempt. “I spoke that word, ma’am,” observed Mr Bumble mildly. “The prerogative of the man is to command.” “Oh is it, now!” she exclaimed. “And what, pray, is the prerogative of the woman?” “To obey, ma’am.” He spoke kindly, as to a child—though Mr Bumble could not have told you the last occasion on which he had done that to any child. “Your late (and fortunate) husband should have taught it you; and then, perhaps, he might have been alive now. I wish he were, from the bottom of my heart.” Mrs Bumble realized at once that, in the bitter matrimonial war that had raged between them ever since they had tied that knot no human agency could untie (an Act of Parliament not quite falling into that category, as any poor man could vouch for), this would prove the decisive battle. Whichever of them won this round would have the whip-hand henceforth. She would begin with a feint— though not a faint (which would, nonetheless, have been quite within the bounds of her prerogative as a wife). Accordingly, she flung herself in the chair beside him, lifted her apron over her face (to disguise the lack of irrigation it was about to undergo) and cried bitterly that he was a hard-hearted brute. But the man was waterproof. Like washable hats of beaver, which only improve in the rain, his nerves had been rendered stouter and more vigorous by showers of tears from countless indigent females and children, and, indeed, from men as well; to him each drop that fell did nothing but swell the reservoir of his own power. Tears were but tokens of that power. He looked upon his good lady with eminent satisfaction, which was the nearest he could come to affection for any but himself, and begged her not to cease her music, for such it was to his ears. “Crying opens the lungs, ma’am,” he assured her. “It washes the countenance, exercises the eys, and softens down the temper. I rejoice in it, ma’am—so cry

206 away!” Having given her the benefit of this profound advice he deemed it best to quit her company while still out ahead, for he, too, had some intimation that all their future dealings would be influenced by this same encounter. He rose, took his hat (no longer his magnificent tricorn, alas, but a simple master’s stovepipe) from its peg, set it on his pate at a rather rakish angle, thrust his hands into his pockets, and sauntered, whistling a self-satisfied little ditty, toward the door. Mrs Bumble, who had only tried tears as the least troublesome form of assault, was not in the least averse to something more physical—as Bumble was not long in discovering. His first intimation of it was a sort of hollow sound, followed by a sudden chill about the scalp, followed by the dull thud of his hat hitting the door ahead of him. Confirmation came next as her left arm closed about his throat from behind while her right hand and fist rained down slaps and blows upon everything that was his above it. For variety she scratched his cheeks and tore out tufts of his hair—at which she continued until she deemed he had suffered both punishment enough for his offence and warning enough never to repeat it. After that she pushed him over a chair, which sent him sprawling headlong, and, folding her arms across her cold but ample bosom, dared him to speak to her of his ‘prerogative’ just one more time, on pain of her repetition of this lively response. Mr Bumble thought it best to ignore the invitation for the nonce. “Get up!” she commanded. “Get out there and make yourself useful—or d’you want to see me try something desperate?” He rose with a most rueful countenance, wondering what ‘something desperate’ might be. He retrieved his hat and edged toward the door. “Are you going?” she yelled. “Certainly, my dear, certainly!” He fairly skipped toward the door in support of his assurance to her. “The last thing I intended was to—I’m going, my dear. You are so very ... changed that I—Yes! Yes! I am gone!” She stooped to straighten the carpet, which would give him the chance to use his legs without her losing any face. He took that chance immediately, leaving her mistress of the field. But, once outside, with the familiar sight of paupers cowering away from him at his approach, something of the old bully returned. He boxed several ears and told himself he’d be d—d if he’d meekly go about the house, now that she had commanded it. No, by thunder! He’d go out about the town, just as in the days when he had ‘porochial’ authority to do so! He’d pass the time of day with whomsoever he pleased. He might even drop into a public house and ease the pain of his bruises with a draught or two of something comforting! It would serve her right if he returned in an inebriated condition! It would serve her even more right if he were reprimanded for it by the board, for it would reflect on her, as well. And if he were ever dismissed for drunkenness, what would she do, eh? She’d lose her place as well! Then she’d just see to what level her ptarmigan ways had reduced her! Before he could put even the first step of this ingenious revenge into action, however—in fact, he had got no further than cuffing the boy on the gate hard enough to make his ears bleed—when he found his way barred by a tall

207 gentleman whose countenance proclaimed a marked fixity of purpose, a gentleman, Bumble thought at once, not to be trifled with. A gentleman with lavender gloves. “I see I have the honour to address Mister Bumble,” he said, giving a slight bow and a meaningful glance at the boy’s bleeding ear. “You have that honour, sir,” the master informed him. “What of it?” “Do I detain you on some business?” the man asked, stepping aside to allow Bumble to proceed if he would. “Or perhaps I may prevail upon you to join me in the snug of some local hostelry? I have business which—as we lawyers say— ‘may prove to your advantage’! My card.” “Edward Monks, eh?” Bumble said. Monks bowed again, less mockingly this time. Having failed to enlist the cooperation of Noah Claypole with his talk of a large legacy, he had decided to play Bumble more cautiously, keeping his business vague until he had the measure of the man. The man gave the first sign of that measure by the eagerness with which he fell in with the suggestion of a drink and something ‘to his advantage.’ He led Monks directly to the Black Swan—or the ‘Mucky Duck,’ as local wags had renamed it—and accepted a foaming tankard of their best ale. “My business,” Monks said immediately, “concerns an orphan boy that once lived beneath your roof. Tell me—does the name Brownlow mean anything to you?” “Mister Brownlow of Goodson Road, Pentonville?” Bumble’s eyes lit up; here was a chance to redeem his mistake and get the ten guineas that man had promised for a good report of little Twist! “The same,” Monks confirmed. “Then it’s dear little Oliver Twist you mean!” Bumble smiled artfully to show the man he was already a step ahead. “Dear little Oliver Twist, eh?” Monks frowned. “That was hardly the impression you left behind you at that house, Mister Bumble!” “Aye, well, see tha—as I said to yon maid on the way out. I spoke all the bad part about the lad first. To get it out of the way, see? There’s good and bad in everyone, Mister Monks—as you and I, who work in our different branches of the law, will readily attest to. But they never gave me a chance to speak owt good of the poor little bairn. What is it you wish to know?” Monks decided he had the mark of his man and now knew just how to play him. “Well,” he said, “as to reports of Oliver’s character, good or bad, they must wait the proper identification. You see, Mister Bumble, if Oliver’s mother had not died in giving him life—if she had only waited another month—she would have come into such a legacy that would have let her and the child live in comfort for the rest of their lives. Comfort, did I say? Luxury, more like it!” He leaned close and almost whispered the words—so as to make them all the more impressive: “She’d have had enough money to silence every tongue that might have spoken of her shame!” “By ...!” exclaimed Bumble, though he was unable to think of an adequate substantive to grace his preposition.

208 “Just so, Mister Bumble,” Monks continued. “She would have been a target for every impecunious duke in the realm!” “And it’s all to come down to Oliver?” asked an incredulous Bumble. Monks, paying out the line before playing him, merely nodded. “I always knew as there were owt special about yon lad,” Bumble mused. “Not your common clay. You could not treat him like the others—leastways, I could not. I always trett him special—as he’ll no doubt vouchsafe. Er ... has he said owt about me?” “Oh, dear me, Mister Bumble! You are a man of vigorous action, I make no doubt. Sup up, man—there’s plenty more water in the tap, ha ha! But we lawyers cannot go blundering into things in that way. First things first, sir! And first we must establish that your Oliver Twist is Master Fleming, which was his mother’s name. You did not know it? I see by your face you did not know it. But you also see, I hope, why we must take this course one jump at a time?” He paused impressively before continuing: “Was your Oliver Twist our Master Fleming, then? To whom might the mother, Miss Fleming, have spoken before she died? The doctor? The apothecary or his apprentice? The matron or some old woman set to attend her? Think hard, man—a substantial reward rests upon your answer!” “Reward?” Bumble almost let his tankard fall to the ground. “Of course. And Master Oliver, too, will no doubt show his gratitude when the inheritance is secure.” “How much?” “I’ll come to that in due course. Let me meanwhile continue to jog your memory. Who was present at Miss Fleming’s death? Who laid her out? Who measured her? Did they notice any significant mark—such as this?” He pushed down his cravat on the right side of his neck and showed a brown patch of skin about the size of a half-sovereign—a mole, as it were, somewhat spread out. “That sort of thing.” He made a pause before adding—as if it were the most insignificant afterthought—“Or some memento? A locket? A bracelet? Rings? Naturally, I understand there is little or no hope of it. Dying women do not arrive at workhouse doors laden down with gold! But if there were such tangible proof—something independent of fallible human memories ... well! The reward I could offer for that would be substantial indeed!” By now Bumble could hardly contain his excitement. His desire to see justice done at last to dear little Nolly would have astonished dear little Nolly himself, if he could have seen it. “To answer your questions, sir,” he replied with all the gravity of his former office, “Doctor Lydd, the parish surgeon, was with her until she died. If she had imparted anything of note, he would have wrote it down in the day register—which I know he did not. As to who laid her out, it was a hag who went by the name among us of Old Sal and she died in that very same bed not three months back ...” A bitter, angry frown creased Monks’s brow at this. “But!” Bumble, who had noticed the other’s disappointment, was happy to seem his saviour. “By the happiest of chances my good lady wife, who has long been matron of the establishment at whose gates you made my acquaintance just now,

209 was with Old Sal in the hour of her passing. And I believe—mind, I only say believe—that she had some communication with the hag, germane to your inquiries!” “A bracelet? Ear-rings?” Monks was rapacious in his eagerness. “I say no more,” Bumble replied mysteriously. “But if you will return tomorrow at ...” “No, d—n you!” Monks came dangerously out of his shell in his frustration. “I’ll speak to her now or you’ll find me on the London coach—taking my fifteen guineas reward with me. The choice is yours!” The choice was no choice at all. Bumble scampered ahead of his new benefactor as well as his tipsy legs and ample girth permitted—all the way back to the workhouse gates. (It was about this time that Charlotte was taking down her cloak and setting out in search of ‘needles and thread.’) He took out a penny at the gates and gave it to the boy whose ear he had boxed, saying it was for his pain and he had not meant to chatise so hard. “You keep them in order, do you, Mister Bumble?” Monks asked in a tone of mild surprise. “Despite your being such a softie?” “Softie, am I?” Bumble was outraged. He looked about him for some means to prove he was the hardest man since Herod. It happened that some loud laughter reached their ears at that moment, emanating from the women’s workroom. In a sudden fury he opened the door and rushed in, knocking to the ground the first woman he saw and striking at several others, shouting, “We have time for laughter, eh? We think life in a workhouse fit for levity? Well, let me assure you hussies ...” “Mister Bumble, sir, what is the meaning of this intrusion?” Bumble quailed. It was the voice of his wife! “Why, my dear,” he began, “I had no idea you were here.” “You had no idea I was here?” She looked around at the ‘hussies’ with a smile that promised some sport. “Well I have no idea why you are here!—unless it is to show to these ladies how a man with true humility in his heart behaves!” The laughter that greeted this riposte was so identical to the mirth that had prompted Bumble’s attack in the first place that he knew it, too, had been aimed at him and that Mrs Bumble had been amusing them with tales of his folly and backwardness. “Who is that person?” she asked with a sneer. By now Monks had full measure of the workhouse ‘master,’ and, having no desire to let the man speak for him, stepped forward and introduced himself. He spoke aloud of Oliver Twist but approached her closely and murmured for her ears alone something about ‘a substantial reward.’ At that, the matron admonished her ‘ladies’ to be diligent and, taking Monks by the arm, swept out of the room without so much as a glance in her husband’s direction. He nonetheless trotted at her heels, all the way up to their apartments. “I’ll tell you about it afterwards,” she said, trying to slam the door in his face. But Monks put out a hand to stop her. “Your husband must be present,” he said with an apologetic smile. “The law requires it—to prevent collusive corroboration, you see.”

210 She could barely have told you what ‘corroboration’ meant, much less its aspect in a collusive guise. Reluctantly she agreed to let her husband enter. “But you will sit over there and listen,” she snapped. “Speak when you are spoken to. Oh, Mister Monks, I wish you had come direct to me! That man is a ball and chain to my ankle.” “That is entirely between your good selves,” Monks said judiciously, and he went on to repeat the questions and explanations he had given to her husband at the ‘Mucky Duck.’ And she, to show how well matched they were, their quarrel notwithstanding, immediately asked, “How much?” And here Monks showed his amazing grasp of all that is dark in venial in the human soul; for, instead of palming her off with vague talk of ‘a substantial reward,’ he merely smiled and, taking out a large, leathern purse—the old- fashioned kind with a drawstring at its neck—and counted the gold from it, sovereign by sovereign. He counted five and placed them in a little pile before her; then five more, which he treated the same; then five more ... and five again. All this time she had not moved; she had hardly blinked an eyelid. But now, when the count reached twenty, she did that one thing he had been waiting for—she shifted excitedly in her chair and drew a deep, involuntary breath. He counted out five more and stopped. The purse was now empty but he had other coins concealed about him and would have gone on if she had not given herself away like that. “That, Mrs Bumble, is what I am authorized to pay for any mementoes.” “But they’re worth more than that!” she exclaimed. He pounced like a tiger. “Ah! So you’ve seen them! Perhaps you’ve had them valued, even?” “You see, my dear ...” Bumble began. “Hold your tongue, sir!” she shrieked. “He shall not catch me again!” She stared belligerently at the ‘lawyer.’ “When it comes to questions of catching, Mrs Bumble,” he told her, “it is the present holder of those trinkets who must be wary. To be caught with them is theft, which is to say, death by hanging. So it’s a simple choice between a very nasty, humiliating, public death and twenty-five pounds in gold—and no questions asked, no statements to the police, no recriminations, no unpleasantness of any kind.” He turned to Bumble and added jovially, “Even someone who knows someone who possesses such stolen property is liable for the same penalty.” “Leave him out of it!” she snapped. “You’ll deal with me. I have the things you seek.” She linked her two brawny arms around the five little towers of gold and was about to scoop them toward her when Monks grabbed both her wrists in a vise-like grasp. “You have events out of their proper sequence, ma’am,” he said icily. “First the trinkets, then the reward!” She rose with all the dignity she could muster and went to the bedroom, taking care to lock the door against discovery. After what seemed an unconscionable time, she unlocked the door and returned. “There!” she said, throwing a screw of wax paper on the table. “I think that is what you seek.”

211 With trembling fingers Monks folded open the paper to reveal ... a locket, made of gold, with a gold-filigree chain, containing two small locks of hair, one flaxen the other middling brown—and no portrait—good! ... and, on unscrewing the paper further ... two rings, one blank, the other inscribed with the expected name—Agnes! “It is, indeed!” he crowed. “It is all I seek. And now ma’am—and you, too, sir—it is a condition of this reward that you neither speak of these events nor communicate word of them in any other way until and unless you are called upon to vouch for them in the Court of Chancery—which, I may say, is most unlikely, for there is no one left to challenge the bequest ...” “And dear little Oliver?” Bumble put in. “He will come to see us here?” “I’m sure he will,” Monks said, making for the door. Now that he had the ‘trinkets’—which he put back in their paper and secured in the now-empty purse—he seemed eager to be gone. And Mrs Bumble seemed in no mood to delay him for she offered him no tea nor refreshment of any kind. “I’m relieved that all is now legal again, my dear,” Bumble said when he had gone. “What are you talking about, you bloated fool?” she snapped. “Legal?” “Well—Mister Monks, you know—a lawyer ...” “A lawyer, my eye! If that man’s a lawyer, I’m a ribbon on a maypole!” “But he said ...” “Never mind what he said! Show me the lawyer who hands out twenty-five pounds of his client’s money without taking a receipt! Show me another who gathers such evidence as lockets and rings without taking notarized depositions as to how we came by them—who passed them on to us and how did she acquire them from Oliver’s dying mother!” “But then, my dear, why should he go to so much trouble to get them? I do not understand.” “Of course you don’t, you great booby! Monks is out to destroy that evidence— it’s as plain as the nose on your face (than which few noses are plainer, I may say!) —he’s the one who stands to inherit if Oliver gets pushed to one side. Well—good luck to him, I say. I don’t care, one way or t’other. All I know is that we’ve got rid of some incriminating trinkets—for we could never have sold them without risking inquiry—and never have explained our possession of them if it had ever come to light. But twenty-five golden sovereigns is wonderfully anonymous!” She looked up and saw him shaking his head in perplexity. She smiled then, as magnanimous victors can afford to smile. “Never mind, Bumble, dear,” she said. “Come—give me a kiss and be friends again, eh? You were a good man to bring him to me, I’ll credit thee for that. And I finished him off well and truly. You’ll not want in life, Bumble, as long as you heed my word!” At that same moment Charlotte was standing by the gate, passing the time of day with the boy whom Bumble had almost killed with amazement—or with the unforced gift of a penny, which amounts to the same thing. When she heard that a man very like the man she sought was at that moment conferring with the master,

212 she decided to wait. But when she saw him emerge from the workhouse door, all her earlier misgivings about him returned. He simply did not look like a lawyer acting for an infant client. When would such a lawyer do a little hop, skip, and jump on emerging into the sun, even from such a dreary place as that? When would he clack his heels together at the height of his jump? And when would he toss a leather pouch in the air and bounce it off his arm and catch it again like some mountebank juggler? So, rather than tell him all she knew, she waited for him to recognize her—and recollect himself again to his proper dignity—and she merely said she had been coming to tell Mr Bumble of his presence in the town and to try to persuade him to a meeting. But, now that she saw her errand was happily redundant, she would bid him good-day and hasten home once more. He gave her a sixpence for her thoughtfulness—and tossed in another penny to the boy on the gate for all his pains, too—before setting off at the jauntiest pace to celebrate his good fortune. That Charlotte immediately broke her word, and discreetly followed him instead, will surely be forgiven her on that day when all our truths and lies are thrown into the balance—especially when it is added that she would have returned his sixpence at once if only she could have managed it without arousing his suspicions. As for her own suspicions, they were by now as aroused as suspicions can possibly be. She had not Mrs Bumble’s analytical reasons for knowing the man to be an impostor but that same womanly instinct for such things assured her of it nonetheless. So she was not in the least surprised to see that, instead of making for the town’s only hôtel—or the only one fit for a gentleman—or for the coach to Leeds, whence he could get a night-mailcoach to London—he turned into Bridge Street and sauntered down to the bank of the River Fell. And there, half way over the bridge for which the street was named, he paused awhile, resting his elbows on the parapet and gazing upstream, breathing deep draughts of air, and behaving in every way like a man who has just escaped a hanging and finds life sweeter than he had ever imagined it to be. She was so engrossed in his pleasure that she almost missed the moment when he let the leather purse fall to the waters below; in fact, she, having concealed herself on the downstream side of the bridge, did not really believe he had done it until she saw the thing emerge, still half-afloat on her side. She looked at him again and saw that he was walking on, not looking to see whether it sank or no— perhaps not even caring. But Charlotte knew, what Monks did not, that old Jack Wherriman set his eel nets not too far downstream, at the old bridge, which lay just around a little bend that put them out of sight from the ‘new’ bridge (as it had been called for a mere three hundred years). The old bridge had stood there since early mediæval days and was now considered safe only for pedestrians. Charlotte took to her heels and sped as fast as she could down the lane that flanked the river between the two bridges. At the bend she began shouting: “Oh, Mister Wherriman! Dear Mister Wherriman! Help me please, or my life is gone!” “Why ... what, girl? What ails thee that tha’rt agate and so hasty?” he cried as he

213 came running from his little shed, where he smoked his catch each day. “Why it’s Charlotte Mercer, isn’t it? Sowerberry’s cook and tweeny?” “Aye!” She did not stop until she reached him, whereupon she turned about and saw, with delight, that the purse had not quite sunk and had just turned the corner in the stream. “Yon purse! Eee, if tha can only catch it up for me, tha’ll save me being skinned alive! It’s got valuables in it, see that—as were left by carelessness on a corpse—and I was to return them to the family, when a dog barked at me on the bridge and gave me such a turn as they fell from me hand. Please! Lend us a long net ...” But the good fisherman was already striding out to the planks from which he lifted his nightly catch. And there, set upon two old gutter-nails hammered between the ancient stones, was his longest keep net—with which he was able to scoop up the purse just before it went under. If Monks had only removed the wax paper, which (as she later discovered) had trapped the air inside, or if he had not tied the thong so tight in his eagerness, it might have gone under much sooner and rolled all the way down to the German Ocean. “What’s in it?” The eel-man asked craftily as he brought it back. “Why, er, I don’t know,” she replied truthfully. Then, rallying, “And I’m sure I ought not to know, either, for it’s private to the family. It’s between them and Mister Sowerberry. But,” she added on a sudden inspiration, “I’ll tell thee what’s in it for thee!” And she produced the sixpence Monks had given her. “I’ll not grudge thee that for saving my hide.” “Nay, lass!” He passed her the soaking package without further ado, pushing the coin away, too. “Give us a kiss and all’s well.” Blushing scarlet, she did as he asked—thinking it the closest thing to kissing a kipper she’d ever known—and then ran off to her sister’s house, which was only two streets away. “I mun get it dried, now,” she explained over her shoulder as she ran. When she arrived at the house her sister said, “Well, you’re a stranger and no mistake! Charlotte, is it?” Charlotte laughed and threw her arms about her. The sister, whose name was Jenny, laughed, too. “I knew tha were about due,” she said. “There a letter come for thee—from the attorney to yon Brownlow.” Charlotte, who had also had hopes of a reward from Mr Brownlow for a favourable opinion of Oliver, had written to him immediately after Bumble had told her of that episode in London—or as soon as a cousin of hers in London had discovered Mr Brownlow’s full directions. “What’s it say?” she asked. “Ee, I’ve not oppened it—’tis directed to thee.” “Oh aye!” Charlotte could plainly see that the wax had been sheared and clumsily melted together again. “But,” Jenny continued, “I’d not fall off a chair in amazement if it didn’t say as Mister Brownlow had gone to Jamaica last back-end and will be coming home to London again this month or next! What’s in yon purse?” “Let’s see, shall us?” The contents of ‘yon purse’ brought a united gasp of amazement from both their

214 throats. “What’s to do now?” Jenny asked in a voice close to a whisper. “I’ll not claim to understand that much,” replied Charlotte, snapping her fingers. “But it’s to do with little Oliver Twist—that much I do know. How or why is a mystery, but these are as much to Oliver’s gain as they are to the loss of that man Monks, who thought he gained by casting them away.” “Still,” Jenny said. “What’s to be done with them? Tha’st no notion where Oliver’s to be found.” Charlotte thought the matter over. “I’ll tak’ them to Mister Sowerberry,” she said at last. “He always had a softer spot for Nolly than she ever did. I shall get him alone and tell him all I know. And he can write to these attorneys of Mister Brownlow’s and explain it in ways I could never think of. Aye—that’s what I’ll do!”

CHAPTER 37

A wild-eyed lunatic in lavender gloves finds his plans impossible to carry out

As the spring days lengthened into early summer, the rural idyll continued beside the River Lea at Essendon. Oliver recruited all his strength—and then expended it in swimming; running through the fields and woods; being Blackbeard the Pirate, Robinson Crusoe, or Sir Walter Raleigh, as the mood took him; helping the dairymaids at milking-time at the farm across the way; opening and closing the gate on to Bayford Common for halfpence and farthings (by which he made several chums of his own age and mischievous inclination); and, betimes, filling his head with sums and spellings and the gory gamut of England’s kings and queens. How he found time for it all was a wonder to Rose and her aunt, but he was never late to a meal nor long at it, either. And yet he found time to help with the household chores as well—making the beds, drying the glasses, turning the mangle for Mrs Glore, who came to do their washing once a week, and carrying Rose’s water-colour box and sketching easel out with her when she wanted to paint from nature. So it might have continued all summer if Rose had not gone down with another little ague one evening, about six weeks after her first bout. Again, Mrs Maylie brewed a decoction of feverfew and sent her early to bed. But this time it failed to have the desired effect. By morning the girl was delirious. Her tongue had swollen to the point where it threatened to choke her, so Oliver sat by her, mopping her brow, and turning her to one side or the other whenever she attempted to lie on her back. At nights they hired a nurse from the village to do the same. For two days she lay unconscious, her condition neither improving nor growing worse. Her aunt was, understandably, distracted with the worry. Dr Lemon, the local man, seemed competent enough and was always very positive in his

215 bulletins, but Mrs Maylie longed for the reassurance that only Dr Losberne could provide, for he had known her from infancy. At last, on the fourth day, when Rose lingered on in her wasting condition, still neither better nor worse, her aunt sat at her bureau and wrote a letter begging him to come. In fact, she wrote two letters and brought them both to Oliver, though she held the second one back at the last moment, saying, “Perhaps it would be best to wait and see what dear Doctor Losberne says, first.” Oliver saw that its cover bore the name of Henry Maylie, Esquire, with directions in Westminster, but he said nothing for the moment. “Now this,” she said, handing him the letter for Dr Losberne, “must go by express on horseback, direct to Chertsey. Not the twopenny post, you understand?” “By express on horseback—direct to Chertsey,” he repeated. “The innkeeper at the Salisbury Arms will arrange it for you. Here is my purse. Run directly across the fields—through Rye End and past the lime kiln ...” “You need not tell me the path, Mrs Maylie!” Oliver assured her. “No, of course not. Forgive me—I’m beside myself. Off with you then, as fast as your heels can fly!” As swift as an arrow’s flight, he ran. He was young Lochinvar ... he was bringing the news from Ghent to Aix ... he was, ah, whoever brought the news from Marathon ... not Hercules but one of those fellows with the funny names. It was a whole guinea to carry a letter by express rider to Chertsey; Oliver could hardly believe his ears—but he thought he might have discovered the way to make a fortune once he grew up. There were still a few coppers left in the purse and he toyed for a moment with the idea of buying a sherbet and saying that the express had been a guinea and twopence; but then he thought of poor, dear Rose lying there, perhaps at death’s door, and Mrs Maylie failing to let Henry know— even after she had written the actual letter. So, as he happened to have the stub of a pencil in his pocket, along with some bacon rind, a bit of carrot, and two short lengths of string, he went to the post office and begged a piece of card from the mistress there. He went back to the Salisbury Arms, where there was a broad window sill of just the right height for him to use as a writing desk, and there—with much headscratching and sucking of the pencil lead, he composed a brief message to the man Rose loved so passionately, telling him she was slightly unwell but would recover swiftly if she could but see him. He signed it and added a footnote asking Henry not to reply to him and not to mention this card when he came, because his mother had not wished to disturb him. On the other side he wrote the directions he had seen on Mrs Maylie’s unsent letter. He was about to carry this back to the post-office and garnish it with a twopenny stamp when one of his new chums from the village told him the Yorkshire Flyer was due at any moment and if he wanted a good laugh, he should stay close by the Salisbury Arms and watch it drive into the yard. Oliver replied, rather grandly, that he had seen the Yorkshire Flyer so many times that one more would hardly add to his stock of remembered amusements. He spoke truly, too, for the Flyer was a daily coach (or six coaches that ran up and

216 down the Great North Road continuously, making one each day at any given point) and one or other of its manifestations had passed him each day on his epic journey south. “Ah,” said his chum, “but have you seen it try to drive at speed through that arch?” Oliver looked at the arch and said he doubted it could be done at all. “Yet it can,” said the other. “Only if the driver goes at it full-square-on. He comes down the middle of the road, full pelt, see? And he turns at the last minute and goes straight in. The horses know. They’re all ready for it. But the outsiders aren’t—and they bang their heads fearfully on the arch. It’s such jolly fun, Olly- olly-oh—you’re a fool if you don’t stay to see it.” Indeed, now that Oliver came to think of it, those mean-spirited outsiders who promised him pennies and refused to pay up had been on the Yorkshire Flyer, so—yes—he would stay to see the fun. He had not long to wait for the barking of the dogs at the northern end of the town announced that the Flyer was already passing them there. Up the dusty road they thundered—six large horses cantering toward the end of their stage, eager to be in their stalls, knowing that a cornucopia of oats and hay—and all the water they could drink—would soon be theirs, to say nothing of a vigorous rub-down from the company’s ostlers. The post-horn blew, just in case some severely deaf person had failed to notice the commotion, and then the magnificent coach was almost level. “Ha-a-a-a!” cried the coachman, giving a little flick to the reins, which was all the horses required by now to tell them when to turn. Round they came, the leaders galloping diagonally, like perfect dressage horses, while those in the rear cantered in a half-pass, which brought them into a line perpendicular to the road in a trice. Oliver swore the coach lurched round on two wheels only; even if it didn’t, a man could have put his foot beneath the inside tyres and not feel the slightest pressure from it. And, just as his chum had predicted, the outsiders were so busy holding on and looking to the side to find a soft place on which to jump that several of them took a most fearful rap on the head from the arch as the coach thundered beneath it. Oliver and the other urchins jumped up and down, laughing for joy, and calling out, “Encore!” as the vehicle screeched to a halt in the yard. The commotion and the sudden lurch to the right brought the insiders to the windows—among them the quondam ‘lawyer,’ Edward Monks, still flushed with triumph from his Yorkshire jaunt. When the fun was over, Oliver raced off to the post office, put a twopenny stamp on his card, and handed it in. He was out again and heading for the fields before Monks could catch up with him; but the man saw that Oliver came out of the post office; so he dashed in there and called out to the post-mistress, “Oliver Twist? He forgot his cap up at the Salisbury. Was that him in here just now?” “Yes sir!” the woman was startled into saying. “Tell them to drop it in here. We’ll see it gets back to Essendon.” Monks tried desperately to think of some plausible reason for asking the exact direction but could not; so he thanked the woman and left. On the pavement

217 outside he kicked himself. How easy it would have been to say, ‘Esssendon? But that’s where I’m going myself—how extraordinary!’—and then it would have been so natural to ask for his exact direction. But it was too late now. Oliver was still in sight, less than half a mile down the road. Monks decided to abandon his luggage, which he could collect from the company’s office at any time, and follow the boy home. At least he would know where he lodged. He set off after him at a brisk trot. Oliver meanwhile had tired of running; even Lochinvar must have slowed to a walk at times, he told himself. Then, while crossing the field near the lime-kiln, he came upon such a perfect little paddock of wildflowers that he simply had to stop and gather them; somehow he felt that the very act of writing to Henry Maylie must already have brought some improvement to Rose’s condition. There was a kind of sympathy between lovers that transcended time and space; he was sure of it. Indeed, he was amazed that Henry had not already come down from Westminster as fast as a coach could carry him, in response to that mysterious power. Perhaps he did not truly love her! That was another reason to bring him down to Essendon, so that he, Oliver, could inspect the man closely and decide for himself if he were a true lover or merely trifling with Rose’s affections. “Young man!” The voice came from some way up the path Oliver had just taken, between the Great North Road and this paddock. There was something chilling about it, something of the night—and few other boys his age were as sensitive to such things as he, and with excellent reason, too. “Sir?” he cried, craning his neck to make the man out among the shrubs and thorns that skirted the path and half-obscured his view. He stood his ground, ready to drop his armful and run; already his brain was seething with pictures of the countryside between here and home as he searched his memory for paths through low-boughed woodland and holes in hedges through which a boy might squeeze and leave a man running for the nearest gate. For that reason, the size of the man when the path turned the corner and brought him fully into view, was reassuring; already Oliver could think of a dozen paths where he could leave this fellow cursing his height and the breadth of his shoulders. “Sir?” he said again. The man said nothing but continued to stare at Oliver as if he could hardly believe his eyes. “Your name?” he said at last. “I mean you no harm but I must know your name.” Oliver had never heard those words, ‘I mean you no harm,’ spoken with less sincerity. His name rose to his throat but simply refused to be uttered. Quick! he thought. Some other name! Sikes? No! Dawkins? No! What was the name Rose had told him—her name before Mrs Maylie adopted her? Fleming! That was it! “Fleming, if it please you, sir,” he said. The man started back as if Oliver had stabbed at him with a sword. “If it please me!” he echoed incredulously. “Don’t say it has all been for nothing! Your Christian name? You did not say ...?” What had Rose called her father? Gus? Augustine? He had it! “Augustus, sir,” he replied. “Augustus Fleming—whether it please you or no!”

218 “Ha!” He took off his hat and clutched at his hair, staring all about them in a distracted manner. “You know! You know all! And your mother’s name?” That was easy. Poor Rose’s sister, whose history was so like his own dear mother’s! “Agnes, sir,” he said. “Agnes Fleming, of course.” If he had thrown a vial of corrosive sublimate in the man’s face, his words could not have produced a more marked effect. “Too late!” he cried, staggering back and then stumbling in a random walk among the flowers. “All for nothing! Or ...” He paused and looked up. Suddenly he was as calm as he had earlier been distraught. “Perhaps not, after all,” he said slowly. A sly smile twisted his features as he looked all about them. There was no one in sight. It would be safe! Watching the man’s face reflect these musings, Oliver had no doubt but that the man intended him harm—a great deal of harm—perhaps the greatest harm one man can inflict upon another. He flung the flowers at the man’s face and ran for the farther paddock railings as fast as his legs would carry him. But for those railings he would have got clean away; but there was sheep paling at the bottom, which prevented his slipping beneath the lowest rail, and, in trying to climb over, he was slowed down sufficiently for the man to catch up, grab him by the scruff of his shirt, and haul him back roughly—so much so that they both fell sprawling on the ground. The man was upon him like a barrel of bricks, pinning him to the ground with his body and knees and reaching for his tiny throat with his great big hams of hands. The pressure and the pain were enormous. The man was clearly a lunatic; his eyes were almost popping out of his head and—yes—there were flecks of foam on his lips. Hydrophobia! The man was rabid! The afternoon sky above him dissolved in clouds of blackness—blackness that shone, like specks of polished soot—specks that swarmed like bees and eventually blotted out all light. He recovered consciousness after what seemed like hours, though in fact he could not have been out for more than half a minute. The man was standing a little way off, watching him with a curiously vacant stare. “I cannot do it,” he said simply. Keep him talking, Oliver thought. But say nothing to upset him! “Because of that innate goodness which is in you as it is in all men,” he said, rubbing his neck and gathering his legs beneath him ready to stand up and make another dash for it. “Heavens!” he cried. “A prig into the bargain! No, Augustus Fleming, I cannot do it because my luggage is at the Salisbury and I asked the postmistress who you were. I have barred myself! But I shall be ready for you next time. I shall not make the same mistake again!” Oliver rose to his feet and turned his head this way and that, listening to the sinews in his neck as they clicked back into place; he still had to keep the man pacified. “You may say so, sir.” He smiled. “But I still believe there is enough goodness in you to make you draw back from the brink.” The man stooped and gathered the flowers Oliver had thrown at him. As he

219 handed them over he said, “Count yourself lucky this time. Be off with you now.” Oliver needed no second bidding! When he started that homeward run his mind had been full of the words by which he would try to convey this extraordinary event to Mrs Maylie; but by the time he arrived at the little cottage he had calmed down sufficiently to realise that she had troubles enough—and that an encounter with a madman, which had come to nothing, after all, was not something he should bother her with just then. “You were a long time,” Mrs Maylie called out when she heard his footfall on the lane. “It was worth it, though,” he replied, holding up his flowers. “Look!” “They are beautiful,” she said in an abstracted manner, for, naturally, she had little enough thought for anything other than Rose. “How much was the express?” “A guinea and twopence,” he said. “No, I asked how much was the express—not the express and the sherbet!” She smiled. “Didn’t I tell you to get yourself a sherbet while you were there?” Oliver shook his head. “Well, I meant to—so that’s all right!”

CHAPTER 38

The arrival of an ardent young gentleman brings disfavour down upon Oliver

All that following day Oliver was especially attentive to his books, to such an extent that Mrs Maylie began to feel sure he was sickening for something; a day- long devotion to Euclid, the third declension, and the consequences of the Treaty of Paris does not seem natural in a young boy. But Oliver had his own excellent reasons for it. The window where he was accustomed to sit commanded an excellent view of the road leading down the hill from Essendon—the road Henry Maylie would have to come by unless he went a very long way round. If, on the other hand, he, Oliver, continued with his usual pastimes, he knew there would be a hundred occasions when he would not be able to resist making his way to some point along that road and gazing up the hill in anticipation, which the observant Mrs Maylie would surely notice. “You are surely sickening for something,” she said for the tenth time when she brought him a glass of milk at eleven o’clock and found him with his nose still apparently stuck in his books. Then she glanced out of the window, noticed what an excellent view of the road it offered, and gave a little laugh—her first for many a day. “Oh, little man,” she said, ruffling his curls. “Now I understand—you’re waiting for him, aren’t you!” Oliver blushed at being found out and stammered, “How d’you know, ma’am?” “Well, it takes no very great power of deduction, I’m sure,” she replied. “You carried my letter to him to Hatfield yesterday; you are as concerned as I for Rose’s recovery; what is more natural than that we should both be on tenterhooks for his arrival?”

220 “Ah ... that,” Oliver said. “Yes, to be sure.” This was such a disjointed reply that Mrs Maylie thought her first diagnosis might not be so wide of the mark, after all. She drew up a chair and sat at Oliver’s side. “Listen to me, child,” she said quietly. “Death is no stranger to you, I know. You have seen more of it in your dozen years than I in all my fifty. But no amount of familiarity can dull its pain when one we love is taken from us. Rose is in God’s hands now, and if He should decide to keep her, then, desolate though we may be, we must never forget it is His will. He will have a reason for it though, ponder as we might, we may never fathom it. Do you know what I shall think if Rose is taken from us? I shall think that, had she lived, the ague would have left her blind, speechless, and enfeebled in her wits—the merest outer shell of the Rose we have known and loved. And though, of course, we should have continued to love and tend her while she lived, we should have lost our Rose just as surely as if she had died all at once. It would be a death spread out over the years—a truly living death. So if He takes her to His infinite bosom now, it will be to spare us that life-long agony. That is what I shall think.” “I think Rose will live, ma’am,” he said. “Doctor Losberne will know how to heal her.” “Well!” She bent and kissed him on the brow. “I wonder which of us has the simpler faith?” The doctor arrived shortly after luncheon. Oliver had never seen such a change in a man; the jolly, sociable gentleman with the red cheeks and the ever-ready smile was hidden somewhere inside a grave, solemn fellow with pallid cheeks and a face a mile long. Without standing on ceremony he went at once to Rose’s bedside where he took her pulse, felt her brow, observed the condition of her eye, put his ear, in turn, to her shoulderblades and listened to her heart and breathing, and then, to the old woman’s surprise, examined her hands minutely. “Ha!” he exclaimed. “I have it! Has she been playing at milkmaids again—like last year?” “She took Oliver to the farm over the way, yes. I think it was the very first day after our arrival.” “And the dairymaids let them try their hands at milking, I suppose?” “I’m sure they did.” “Then here you see the result, ma’am!” He held out Rose’s left hand and showed her a blemish just below the knuckle of the finger known as Davy Gravy in the old nursery rhyme. It was circular, about the size of a little-finger nail, slightly raised, with a white margin and a bloodshot heart. “It is a form of tuberculosis,” he said. Mrs Maylie’s hand shot to her throat. “Not ... not consumption? Oh, please—not that!” Losberne smiled and patted her arm reassuringly. “To the contrary,” he replied. “This form of tuberculosis is to consumption what Doctor Jenner’s cowpox is to the smallpox. If Rose survives it she will be happily immune to the infirmity you named just now.” “If she survives, you say?” He nodded, grave once more. “Tonight will tell. She is approaching the crisis. I

221 will stay by her until morning.” He noticed Oliver standing shyly by the door. “Ah, young man!” he cried. “No marathon was ever more useful than the one you ran yesterday. Well done! Rose will owe her life to you, no doubt upon’t. You know what feverfew is, I expect?” “Yes, sir.” “Then out you go and pick me some fresh!” “But I must not neglect my studies,” the boy replied, mainly to explain for Mrs Maylie’s benefit why he might still be sitting at that window after he returned with the herb. “Now, now!” she said as she went with him to find him a clean basket. “You may drop all that or I shall begin to suppose you’ve done something wicked and are seeking to distract me from discovering it.” She turned and fixed him with a piercing eye. “You haven’t done anything wicked, have you?” “No, ma’am.” He gazed back with his most innocent smile. “The length of time you took on your way home—you weren’t in some neighbouring orchard with your young cronies, picking crabs and cherries?” “No, ma’am. You saw the flowers I brought home.” “Yes, well, they’re as easy got as forbidden fruits—but not nearly so much fun, eh! Off with you now!” Oliver stayed in the lane between the cottage and Essendon, for fear that Henry might arrive while he was away elsewhere and, despite his postscript plea, say something that would give him away. And his foresight was rewarded when, just as he had filled his basket with fresh herbs, a handsome young man in a gig with the Maylie badge on its side came bowling down the hill. “Mister Henry! Mister Henry, sir!” he cried, waving to flag the man down. Henry cried whoa and pulled hard on the brake, coming to a halt in a small cloud of dust. “Oliver?” he said, looking back. “Young Master Twist?” “Yes!” Oliver panted as he caught up. “Hop aboard!” He reached down a gloved hand to help Oliver up. “What’s that? Something for cook?” “No, sir.” Oliver continued to grip his hand. “For Rose. Doctor Losberne is here.” The blood drained from his face as he took in this dire news. Then he reached for the brake lever and his whip, clearly intending to outdo all records over the last two furlongs. But Oliver stayed his arm. “She is insensible at the moment, sir, and the house is kept very quiet.” “Right ... so ... yes ... you are right.” He held the brake against the downhill and let the horse walk instead. “So that is why you wrote as you did,” he said. “I had some inkling of it, I must confess. I thought no one would send after me for a mere chill—especially when I was already engaged to come down next Friday.” “Oh.” Henry darted him a surprised glance. “That was a guilty little monosyllable, young Twist! I suppose we should introduce ourselves. Henry.” He cradled the reins a moment and held out his free right hand. “Sir.” Oliver shook it solemnly. “Henry will do, Twist—or would you prefer Oliver?”

222 “Twist, I think.” It sounded more manly when Henry spoke it. “So tell me, Twist, how bad is it with Rose?” Oliver repeated what he had heard Dr Losberne telling Mrs Maylie, half an hour earlier. “Tonight will decide, eh?” Henry said, biting his lip too hard in his anxiety. “Why did my mother not send for me two days ago!” he added bitterly as he rubbed the tender spot. “She did write, actually,” Oliver told him. “She almost gave me the letter to post yesterday—which is how I knew your directions. But then she said it would be best to wait until the Doctor had seen her.” “Ah, I see it now!” The bitterness of his tone intensified. “Oh yes, I see her game!” “I’m sure she meant it for the best,” Oliver said. “The best advantage! The best advancement—yes! I should never have forgiven her if my darling had died before ...” Oliver waited for him to complete the sentence and then prompted him: “Before ... what?” “Never mind. Here we are now. There’ll be time enough to tell you all, I’m sure. I expect we’ll bunk together tonight—and I doubt if we’ll fall asleep too quickly!” He handed his horse and gig into the care of the gardener’s boy and rushed at once indoors, crying, “Where is she? I must see her!” He ran past his mother, who stood amazed at the parlour door; to her he said no more than, “I have a crow to pluck with you later, dearest Mama! Let me see her first!”—this as he raced down the passage to the bedrooms at the end. He was met—indeed, barred—at the door by Dr Losberne, who put a finger to his lips and whispered, “Not now, dear Henry. She sleeps and has no fever at this moment, but the slightest disturbance could change all that. I shall not let you near her until I can see you are calm again. Now go and pluck that crow with your mother. I believe I know its hue already!” “Black!” Henry cried ominously as he flung back up the passage to where his mother was still standing—looking accusingly at Oliver. “Is this where that twopence went, you wretched boy?” she asked. The hanging of his head was all the confession she needed. “Wretched boy?” Henry cried, seeing Oliver’s little secret was exposed. “He is my friend for life!” “Yes,” she replied grimly. “Of that I make no doubt. But it will be a long time before I call him friend again! How dare you, sir!” She shivered with fury, which was made doubly furious by her inability to raise her voice; little drops of spittle sprayed from her lips. “You knew I wrote to him. You saw me withdraw the letter. I even told you my reasons for doing so ...” “Pardon me, Mama,” her son said icily, “but you did not.” She turned upon him in amazement. “Do you say so, sir? Do you brand your own mother a liar?” He faced her calmly. Oliver could see that out there, in that great big mysterious world, he was not a man to be trifled with. “I say that if my mother makes herself

223 a certain cap, and if that cap fits, then she should wear it. Your reason for not sending me that letter were ...” Dr Losberne came up the passage at that moment, with a face every bit as angry as Henry’s. “If you cannot keep your voices down,” he hissed, “I must insist you go out of doors—and not merely into the garden, either. Go and roar your heads off in the fields!” Henry looked at his mother; she looked at him; they both thought of Rose, who was as dear as life itself to each; and their expressions softened. “I think we may speak of it without anger, don’t you?” Henry said in the quietest voice. “There is nothing to talk about, darling.” Her reply was equally soft—but that iron firmness was there, still, behind all the velvet. “You know why I did not send for you, and you know that a hundred barristers could not persuade me to do and think otherwise. To talk would be futile. So let us agree to differ—and to differ in silence. Oliver! Go! Begone! I don’t wish to see you until supper-time—not that you will share that meal. You shall go to bed hungry. You have displeased me more than I can say.” Oliver turned about and went outside, hiding his tears with a brave toss of his head and a defiant squaring of his shoulders. “Tough little fellow,” Henry said admiringly. “At his age I should have blubbed my eyes out.” “At his age, Henry?” his mother echoed sarcastically. “You have some years to go before you reach Oliver’s degree of maturity.”

CHAPTER 39

That same ardent young gentleman reveals to Oliver the depth and breadth of his love

Oliver went first into Hatfield where he asked the postmistress if a man had made any inquiries about him there the previous day. He had to jog her memory, saying it was just after the Yorkshire Flyer arrived; then she remembered a tall, broadly built gentleman with lavender gloves coming in and asking for him—something about leaving a cap behind. “He asked for me by name?” Oliver pressed her. “Oliver Twist—yes,” she replied. He thanked her and walked back to the cottage looking even more thoughtful than he had on his way out. In fact, he almost walked indoors again in his abstraction, but he recollected himself at the last moment and, instead, went across the road to the farm, where he helped the dairymaids with their butter- churning and cheesemaking and, later, with the milking, too. He did not go hungry that day, nor did he lack for comforting hugs, for he was a favourite with the two girls, who were sad to see him so out of sorts. Before going home he went out into the fields and picked yet more fresh feverfew and a posy of flowers as well—a peace-offering to Mrs Maylie, though he had a good suspicion it would take more than corncockles and buttercups to win her round again.

224 On his homeward way he met the gardener’s boy, who told him that the doctor had spent the afternoon asleep while the missus and her son had both sat at Rose’s side. Oliver stole indoors, left the flowers on Mrs Maylie’s pillow, and crept silently to bed. He awakened again when Henry joined him. “How is she?” he asked at once. “No different,” Henry replied despondently as he settled himself with many a sigh. “Losberne’s with her now, so she couldn’t be under better care.” Then, forcing a little brightness, he added, “But see here, Twist, I meant what I said, this morning—friend for life and all that.” “Why wouldn’t your mother send for you herself?” Oliver asked. “I say! Do you wear silk nightshirts?” Oliver giggled. “It’s one of Rose’s cast-off chemmies. Your mother almost did send for you, you know. Even when she took the letter back, I could see she was still in two minds.” “Don’t you think she was rather hard on you?” “If you think that, you don’t know what ‘hard’ really means, Henry. If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to.” “Before any of that,” Henry replied, turning on his back and linking his arms behind his head, “tell me one thing: What gave you the idea to write to me at all?” “I don’t know what you mean,” Oliver replied uncomfortably. “Don’t you? The words are plain enough, I should have thought. Something—or someone—gave you the idea that I would be especially concerned at Rose’s illness.” “Well ...” His awkwardness deepened. “You did grow up as brother and sister, more or less ...” “The very opposite—ye gods! Is that what you think? I was going on fifteen when aunt adopted her. You’re just two or three years off that age yourself— weren’t you nine when you moved from baby-farm back to workhouse?” “You know about that?” “My mother does occasionally write to me, you know! I had a long, long letter from her after the break-in at Chertsey. I almost feel that the Cap’n and Pop-Eyes are among my acquaintance! But, as I was about to ask—how much interest will you be taking in an eight-year-old girl when you reach the grand old age of fifteen? Not much, I warrant!” “Not much,” Oliver agreed. “Then, again, I was away at school and ’varsity all the while she was growing up, except for the vacations, of course. We spent many holidays under this old thatch. But I ask you—a twenty-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl! What have they in common? She wanted to paint pictures of little birds and all I wanted was to hit them with my catapult and slingshot! Then I left ’varsity and went away to our legation in Paris ... then Saint Petersburg ...” “You’ve been to America?” Oliver asked excitedly. “Russia, old chap. Turn left out of the Foreign Office door, otherwise you will end up in America, which, for me, is a delight yet in store.” “Russia?” Oliver mused. “Did you shoot bears?”

225 “I shot a bear,” he confirmed. “And I had my razor stolen by some Russian peasants, who turned it into an ikon—there! Not many Englishmen can make such a boast—or not many who have survived to tell of it!” “Tell me now!” Oliver snuggled deeper into the feather mattress and pulled the sheets tightly around his neck. “Another time, old fellow. You’re forgetting something.” “What?” “You were just about to tell me what made you so eager to let me know of Rose’s illness that you went dead against my mother’s express wishes.” “I thought you and she were like brother and sister. I didn’t realize you hardly knew each other.” “Hand on heart?” Oliver shook his head stubbornly in the dark. “It’s all I can say.” “Ah!” he exclaimed. “We are getting somewhere now. Let me ask you directly. Did Rose herself ever say anything to you that would lead you to think I would be particularly concerned?” “What sort of thing?” Henry chuckled. “Are you hoping to be a barrister when you grow up, young ’un? You should think about it. To be blunt—has she ever told you that I love her?” “No-o-o.” Oliver drew the word out cautiously. “Or that she loves me?” Oliver cleared his throat awkwardly. “Even if she had,” he replied, laying stress on the conditional, “d’you think it would be honourable to pass such confidences on?” “I’ll give you a guinea.” “Why can’t you just tell her? I would. If I loved a girl, I’d just walk straight up to her and take her by the hand and tell her. Why can’t you do that?” He laughed drily. “I will,” he said. “I’ve played my mother’s game too long. All right—I’ll tell you about that.” He cleared his throat awkwardly. All at once Oliver knew that he was going to talk about the shame that befell Rose’s sister Agnes—and that he would be annoyed if he later learned that he, Oliver, had known the story anyway. So, hastily, he said, “It’s about Rose’s sister, isn’t it—Agnes!” “You know!” “Yes.” “My goodness! What has she not told you, then? Or”—a note of cunning crept into his voice—“what has she told you?” “She is greatly influenced by your mother ...” Oliver began. “Utterly. Totally, absolutely, and completely under her thumb, I’d say.” “And your mother thinks she should not accept your love—nor respond to it— no matter what her personal feelings may be—for fear of blighting your prospects. Isn’t that it?” “Well précis-ed, old boy! I revise my former advice. It’s the diplomatic for you! One of our chores, you know, is to write aides-memoires on one side of a foolscap sheet. Everything HMG needs to know about Persia, say, in seven hundred words!

226 If you can summarize a situation as well as that, you could end up Governor- General of India. But you haven’t just thought all this out, have you! You must have been turning these matters over for quite some time. Which means you’ve been discussing them with someone. The question is—who? Not with my dear old mater, to be sure. Her views admit of no flexibility—ergo, no room for discussion. QED Now who does that leave?” Oliver said, “If I had talked of such things with Rose, and if she had sworn me to secrecy, it would not alter a single word I have spoken tonight. Every word I have spoken I would have spoken, too—under such an oath.” Henry chuckled. “I begin to see what my mother means.” “About what?” “Never mind. She will not let me sit by Rose unless I give my word of honour that I will not tell her of my feelings—nor ask her how she may feel about me. I wonder—how would India’s future Governor-General work his way around that one?” “Rose is unconscious ...” Oliver mused. “Yes?” “One cannot tell an unconscious person anything ...” “And so?” “One could speak one’s innermost thoughts aloud without breaking one’s parole.” “Go on!” “If the unconscious person were to recover consciousness while one were speaking—but kept her eyes closed—or his eyes, too, of course, because we’re not talking about any actual case here, are we?” “Perish the thought, Twist!” “If that were to happen, one might deeply regret it, but it would hardly be one’s fault, would it?” “It’s most definitely the diplomatic service for you, my boy! When you’re ready, give a shout and I’ll pull you through.” “If I’m still alive by then,” Oliver said. After a moment’s silence Henry gave an awkward laugh and said, “Macabre sense of humour, old chap—in the circs, what!” “It isn’t a joke,” Oliver replied. “I wish it were. I think I ought to let someone know the true identities of the Cap’n and Pop-Eyes and the others. Just in case something happens.” Henry was startled into half-rising from the bed. Settling on one elbow, he asked, “Is this some prank?” Oliver shook his head. “A man almost killed me yesterday. I think he’s connected in some way with either Bill Sikes (that’s Pop-Eyes) or Lord Fagan (that’s the Cap’n) ...” “The Irish peer? I thought he was in New South Wales. But never mind that. A man tried to kill you, did you say? How? Where? And why did you tell nobody, for heaven’s sake!” “I thought your mother had enough worries.” “Ha! Enough worries! Oh, Nolly—have a sense of proportion for God’s sake! A

227 man tried to kill you. Death is apt to be rather permanent you know!” Oliver shrugged. “Men have come near to killing me before—and without even trying. He didn’t succeed, anyway. He tried to strangle me but he stopped before he managed it.” “He stopped or you got free?” “He stopped. He said something about having left his luggage on the coach, so he must have been on the Yorkshire Flyer, which came in while I was there. He must have seen me and got off and followed me. He said he asked the postmistress something about me. I went into Hatfield to see her this morning— after your mother ... er ...” “Exiled you?” “Yes. The woman said the man came into the post office there—it was just after I’d posted the letter to you and had set off home ...” “You saw him?” “Not then—though he must have seen me—from inside the coach. He wasn’t an outsider, anyway. And he followed me down to the post office and asked for me by name—Oliver Twist. He pretended to be from the Salisbury Arms—said I’d left my cap behind.” “And had you?” “I wasn’t wearing a cap. Anyway, when he caught up with me, near the old lime-kilns, the first thing he asked was my name—even though he already knew it.” “What did he say when you told him?” “I didn’t. Something about him made my flesh creep. So I told him the first name that came into my head—Fleming.” “Rose’s real name!” “Yes.” Oliver laughed. “We’ve decided to adopt each other as brother and sister, you see? So that’s why I said it.” “And what did he say then—‘Why are you going about calling yourself Twist?’ “ “No! You’d have thought I’d thrown sand in his eyes or something! He started back and flung up his hands and said something like, ‘All for nothing’ or ‘All in vain’—something like that. And then he asked my mother’s name, so I said ... guess?” “Rose? No! I know—Agnes!” “Yes, Agnes. And that was even worse than saying ‘Fleming’ had been. He rolled around like a madman, saying, ‘He knows all ... they’ve told him all ...’ or something along those lines. ‘Too late!’ He said that, too. And then he looked all about us and saw we were quite alone—and that’s when he attacked me. He put his hands with these lavender-coloured gloves around my throat and tried to strangle me.” “And?” Oliver shrugged. “I passed out for ... I don’t know. Not very long.” “And he left you for dead?” “No, he knew I wasn’t dead. He was standing there, about six paces away, smoothing out his gloves, and he told me I’d been lucky—because he’d left his

228 luggage with the Flyer and the postmistress could identify him, so it was too risky to finish me off this time. That’s what he said.” Henry flopped back on the bed like a man exhausted. “And you don’t breathe a word of this—because you think my mother has worries enough!” “I knew you were coming,” Oliver pointed out. “I always meant to tell you. D’you think he was just a lunatic?” “Just a lunatic! I like that! As a matter of fact, I don’t. Tomorrow, I want you to take me to this place near the lime-kilns and I’ll play the part of this fellow—all except the actual strangling, of course!—and you describe precisely what happened. Are you on?” “On!” Oliver replied.

CHAPTER 40

Monks reveals his avarice and stupidity; Lord Fagan is satisfied

As he had promised, Fagan brought a selection of his best wipes and pocket books to Jago, who, though he was now more willing to believe that his lordship had been playing him like a trout on the line, still felt uneasy at any special attention from the old aristocrat. Being every inch a gentleman, Fagan never carried a parcel himself; one of his minions always accompanied him on such errands to do the actual portering, and today the lot had fallen to Nancy. Arrived at the shop near the end of Field Lane, they repaired at once to a dingy little room at the back, where Nancy opened the case and spread out the dainties—as pretty an assortment of silk kerchiefs and tooled leather as could be found in the entire district. “We Fagans are men of our word, Jago,” his lordship said; even now he rubbed his hands gloatingly over his stock of treasures. “I’ll make your fortune with these.” “How cool are they?” Jago tried not to show his excitement. “You could wrap butter in them and keep it a summer month, old chap. Why, half the owners must be toothless and in their rocking chairs by now.” “And the other half?” Jago asked morosely. Fagan pointed to somewhere south of the floorboards and then somewhere north of the ceiling. “And I suppose you wish me to sell them on commission?” Jago continued hopefully. Fagan merely laughed. “Did he say ‘on commission,’ Nancy? Or did my old ears deceive me? No, Jago—there’s no ‘as-and-when’ about this nice parcel. It’s your best offer this minute or old Mumbles and the rest will get their chance to bid.” Jago muttered something inaudible (which was usually old Mumbles’s

229 prerogative, hence the name) in which the few intelligible words were ‘funny idea’ and ‘favour.’ “The favour, old boy, is that you are getting first bite of the cherry. Do you want still more favours from the old firm of Fagan and Co? Our closest daily attention to your most esteemed business, for example?” Jago hastened to assure him that was not at all necessary. “Trade is always off in summer. My best price would be twenty, then,” he said, scratching his neck as he ran his best jaundiced eye over the treasures. “For the leather, I presume?” Fagan said. “I hope that’s what you meant, my friend. How much for the wipes? Another twenty at the very least, wouldn’t you say?” Jago seemed to experience a sudden difficulty with his breathing. “Thirty?” he offered. Instead of replying, Fagan crossed to the window and threw it open. For a moment both Nancy and the shopkeeper thought he was going to pick the man up bodily and heave him out. Then—as if the draughts of fresh air were still not enough to cool his temper, he strode from the room, back out into the street. Nancy, long accustomed to the quaint customs and rituals that attended all of Fagan’s sales, began to pack up the treasures once more. But Jago stayed her hand. “Let me try one more bid,” he said. “He’ll agree to thirty if you make it guineas,” she whispered to him, being eager to go. “I’ll do you a favour one day,” he said gratefully as he left. But Fagan returned at that moment—with Monks at his heel, complaining that he had been ‘looking everywhere’ for his lordship. “Well, you’ve found me now, so stop snivelling,” Fagan told him. “Nancy, Jago, out! This won’t take long.” As soon as they were outside, Nancy asked Jago the directions of the necessary, knowing full well it lay beyond the room they had just vacated. “I’ll do you that favour now,” he said with a significant wink. “Use the side passage.” He knew what she really wanted, of course—and had nothing but admiration for her courage in risking Lord Fagan’s terrible anger if she were caught eavesdropping on him. His favour consisted in moving his outside stall a little way, to mask the entrance to the side-passage from the idle curiosity of passers-by. Nancy, now secure in her concealment, crept toward the open window, stopping just before it and flattening herself to the wall behind the shutter, trying not even to breathe. Fagan was saying, “So far, my dear chap, you have made no sense at all. I presume you went to Fellgate?” “Yes, you oaf! Otherwise how came I to Hatfield?” Nancy had the hardest job not drawing breath sharply at that word, ‘oaf.’ Monks must indeed be growing weary of life. “Let us take it by stages,” Fagan said patiently. “Oh, and by-the-by, my dear friend, never call me oaf again. I merely mention it so that there will be no misunderstanding. Speaking for myself, I don’t object in the least. It was a common term of endearment at Eton and I suppose its usage leaked to all the

230 other minor schools in the land. But it would not sound right if one of my little helpers should overhear,” he concluded—laying such stress on the word that Nancy knew he had already guessed her whereabouts. “You do understand, I trust?” Nancy stood there, almost fainting as the blood, along with most of her innards, drained into her boots; now she was d—d if she went and d—d if she stayed. She stayed, nonetheless. “You went to Fellgate,” Fagan prompted Monks. “And what did you there?” “Nothing! It was a thorough waste of time. I spoke to the undertaker’s cook, Charlotte, who told me they’d never had a ’prentice boy there from the workhouse. Never! The lying minx!” “There’s another young female who has lost her heart to little Nolly and will do all in her power to protect him, no doubt!” Fagan sighed. “It will do them no good in the end, I feel sure. Go on.” “The charity boy, Noah Claypole was more helpful. Sent me to the workhouse, whither I intended going, anyway ...” “To see Bumble, the beadle.” “Yes—except that he has since married the matron and become the workhouse master—in name, anyway.” “Oh?” “She wears the unmentionables there.” “Which I’m sure he resents?” “He is a whipped and beaten man, Fagan.” “Good! Excellent!” He rubbed his hands. “So you dealt with her? What did she say? Had she any proof of Oliver’s birth and pedigree?” “None! Not a whisper.” “But you did not believe her, surely? You got Bumble on his own? You plied him with spirits and sympathy? You spoke of your own wretched marriage? And you ...” “But I am not married,” Monks said in a bewildered tone. “You spoke of your own wretched marriage,” Fagan insisted contemptuously. “And you told him some story of how you revenged yourself on the captain of your soul by revealing her most shameful secrets ... and you waited for him to tell you all that his wife had failed to divulge? Oh tell me, Monks, that you did all these things!” “There was no point.” Monks replied with a shamefaced kind of pugnacity. “The hag who had been her midwife was dead. The parish surgeon who attended her said she had nothing, no locket, no rings—you know the sort of thing—about her. There was no point.”—here he seemed to recall the subject he was most eager to address—“And anyway, even if she had furnished me with everything—locket, rings, mother’s baptismal certificate ... a copy of the letter from my father telling her of their proxy marriage in Rome—even if she had ...” “One moment!” Fagan’s bark brought the other to a sudden halt. “What did you just say?” “Rings?” Monks replied, sounding slightly puzzled. “A locket ...” “No! About a proxy marriage?”

231 Monks swallowed so audibly that even Nancy heard him from outside. “Did I never mention that?” “Never! Do you mean Oliver was born within the bond of holy matrimony?” “I don’t know. And I don’t wish to make inquiries about it, either. It would only raise suspicions, and once lawyers get an attack of raised suspicions, they’ll never leave you be until they’ve squeezed every last drop of profit and advantage to themselves out of it.” “Either there was a marriage or there wasn’t!” “I don’t wish to talk about it,” Monks said stubbornly. “But I do! I must! It alters everything.” “How? I don’t see that.” “Never mind, dear fellow. That’s my affair. I have not asked you to help me with my affairs, but you have asked my assistance with yours—and, as I told you on the very first occasion that we met, I must know everything, everything, pertaining to young Master Oliver. Now tell me all you know about this proxy marriage.” “What is there to tell? Someone in Rome, some female, stood proxy for Agnes Fleming in a ceremony at the British Embassy.” “Just ‘a female’? British, I presume?” “The second secretary’s daughter, if you want to be precise.” “I do want to be precise, my dear. I want to know the length of her eyelashes and the size she took in gloves if you have such particulars about you.” “Well, I don’t—so you can whistle for them!” “Did Agnes know of this arrangement? Hardly! Else why did she run away in shame?” “Now he asks questions and answers them!” Monks said sarcastically. “Of course she didn’t know! My father returned to his hôtel from the ceremony and was dead before nightfall. The letter to Agnes was on his desk, signed, sealed, but unpaid. My mother intercepted it. She was in Rome for the annulment of their marriage, of course.” “Of course! And that had already occurred, else he could not have contracted this second marriage. Interesting ... interesting! It makes a bastard of you and a legitimate heir of Oliver!” “Only under Roman canon law—I mean only the religious union was annulled. Under the Code Napoléon, I am still legitimate.” “But your father’s wealth is all in England—where opinions of that code do not run very high! However, if Agnes did not give her actual signed consent to the proxy, that would be a stumbling block in Oliver’s case. Ha! What a feast for those carrion crows in Chancery! A court would have to assume Agnes’s consent to this marriage with Edwin Leeford, your father. Yet—speaking as on who has some very personal knowledge of these affairs!—I believe that the courts would do so from the fact that she was expecting his child.” Then, in a sly tone that Nancy knew so well, he added, “And the locket and rings, of course. You got rid of them, I trust?” “I said there were none,” Monks snapped. “Ah yes, so you did, my dear. So you did.”

232 “Nothing survived her.” “Except a possibly legitimate heir!” “May I now get to the point I wish to make?” “Of course you may—now that all is as clear as day. Hatfield, you said ... something about Hatfield?” Monks then described his encounter with Oliver, beginning with the moment when he recognized him from the coach. “He said what?” Fagan exclaimed when Monks reached the central point of his narrative. “Fleming! He gave me his true name—Fleming. And when I asked his mother’s name ...” “You asked his mother’s name?” Fagan interrupted him. “What were you thinking of, man?” “Why should I not ask his mother’s name?” “Forgive me, my dear!” Fagan was at his most sarcastic. “I forgot! Oliver is such a dullard! He couldn’t even make four out of two and two. He’s not going to tell Mrs Maylie that a man came running up to him, asked his name, and then ran away, is he! It would never occur to the little simpleton that you had any actual interest in the name! Just as it would never occur to Mrs Maylie and that son of hers—the one who’s in the diplomatic service ... what’s his name?” “Henry.” “It would never occur to Henry Maylie to make inquiries of the Yorkshire Flyer Company as to the name of the gentleman who alighted at Hatfield and left his luggage on board—at least, I presume the Flyer did not wait your pleasure, while you made your little half-brother’s acquaintance?” “You may sneer, Fagan, but your signature’s on these events, too. You needn’t think you can cheer and hiss from the gallery—you’re in the pit with me. What am I saying? You dug the pit with your own supposed cunning!” “I should be obliged if you’d tell me how?” Fagan responded haughtily enough—yet one who knew him as well as Nancy could already detect a tiny note of uncertainty there. “When the Dodger first brought the boy to you, did he know anything of his parentage—anything at all?” Fagan must simply have shaken his head, for Nancy heard no reply. “And by the time you sent him out—when he got caught and taken before Fang—the day I thought I recognized him and came to see you ...” “Yes, yes! I remeber the day only too well—and if you’re about to ask if he knew of his ancestry by then, the answer’s still no. Nor did he learn anything from Brownlow. He’d have been astute enough to offer me a hundred pounds for his freedom—and I’d most certainly have accepted the offer!” “In short, the only people who know of Agnes Fleming’s disgrace and of my father’s part in it, are Rose Maylie, formerly Rose Fleming, Mrs Maylie, and her son Henry. So isn’t it obvious who told Oliver the truth about his origins?” “I still don’t see how that implicates me. My man, Toby ... well, never mind his other name—he got the bare bones of the story out of a former servant of the Maylies, who dismissed him for drunkenness. He now lives in Holborn. That’s

233 how I learned of the Maylies’ connection with Rose. But I still don’t see ...” “Omni malo punico inest granum putre! I presume they taught some Latin at Eton—to one or two brighter boys, anyway? Think, man! See it from the Maylies’ point of view. A little boy is sent thirty miles out of London to burgle one house. Which house? Why —mirabile dictu!—the very house where his Aunt Rose has been adopted! Pure coincidence? Of course! Such things happen every day and twice on Sundays—I don’t think! And nor will they.” “Even so ...” Nancy could hear that Fagan was distinctly uneasy now. “What can they do about it? It’s quite obvious Oliver hasn’t peached on us—God bless him! Without a name, what can they do?” “They can tell the Bow Street Runners—that’s what. And Oliver may take King’s Evidence after my attempt to strangle him.” “Wha-a-a-t?” Fagan’s awesome cry sent a cloud of pigeons up from the rooftop opposite where Nancy stood. “You said nothing of that!” “You didn’t let me finish.” Monks sounded quite calm; he probably thought he had Fagan where he wanted him now—a fatal mistake that many she could name (but no longer meet) had made down the years. “I would have finished the job, too, if I hadn’t remembered blurting out his name—Oliver Twist, I mean—to the postmistress. And, of course, leaving my bags on the Flyer. But to get back to my point. Not all the Bow Street men are clowns like Bull and Taylor. Some of them there have an ounce or two of brain—enough, anyway, to work out that only one man in London’s underworld would have the wit, the elegance, to send the boy to burgle his own aunt’s benefactress.” “They’d need more than that to hang a man,” Fagan sneered, but Nancy could tell he was now distinctly rattled. “They’d soon get it,” Monks assured him. “Once they knew where to look. Why didn’t you hang lanterns all around your ken, my lord? And chalk arrows along all the footpaths? It would have been more subtle.” “All right!” Fagan growled. But Monks was now implacable. “Time is closing a net around us, my lord—all of us ...” “Enough!” cried Lord Fagan. “Jam satis est!” “I want him dead now, Fagan. Even transportation for life will no longer serve. Dead I want him and dead he must be—dead on your terms—half the inheritance. Fifty thousand shiny ones to you! Is it done?” Nancy held her breath until she thought she would faint—and still Fagan did not answer. “Come, man! Have we a bargain, you and I?” “We have a bargain, you and I,” Fagan echoed quietly.

CHAPTER 41

Henry Maylie is expelled from hearth and home

234 “Do you suppose I am still a boy, mother?” Henry asked. “That I am ignorant of my own mind? That I mistake the impulses of my soul?” “My dear boy!” Mrs Maylie laid her hand upon her son’s shoulder. “I think that youth has many generous impulses that do not last; and that among them are some, which, being gratified, become only the more fleeting ...” “Not with me.” Henry tried to interrupt. “Above all,” his mother continued implacably, “I think that if an enthusiastic, ardent, and ambitious man marry a wife on whose name there is a stain, which ...” “There is no stain on this Rose!” “There is on Fleming, on the name of Fleming.” “But she is a Maylie now, both by law and general acknowledgement. How many know she was ever anything else?” “Enough to make such a union impossible. That fellow we dismissed for drunkenness, for one. Jeffries was his name. Just let you become ambassador or chief secretary and he would appear at your tradesman’s door one dark night, suggesting you should buy his silence over the little matter of your wife’s real maiden name and the spot her sister placed upon it.” “I should tell him to do his worst. There is no stain on Rose Fleming—on Agnes, perhaps, though the particulars are lost in the mists of time. But not on Rose.” Mrs Maylie shook her head. “He would agree with you, I’m sure, but that is neither here nor there. The world is full of cold and sordid people who are all too eager to find out such stains, to magnify them, and to visit the shame of them on the blameless sister and her children—aye, and her children’s children, too, for all I know. And the greater your success, the more it will be cast in your teeth and the more you and she and your dear ones will be the target of sneers. Then—no matter how good and generous your nature now—you may come to repent of the connection. And Rose, who—heaven knows—has already endured enough pain and torture for one lifetime, will be put through it all again.” “Mother!” For a moment it appeared that Henry might tear out his own hair. “Do you really think me such a selfish brute?” “Not at this moment, dear—but at some future time? Who can say?” “I can say! I can say never! I have loved Rose ... well, all my life, of course—or all that part of it she and I have shared. But I have loved her with this passion for the past three years at least. And she knows it—though I have never said a word. In deference to your wishes, I have never said a word. But ...” “And will, I trust, continue in your silence while she is under my roof? So I devoutly hope.” He bowed his head reluctantly. “I will not go against your wishes. Not for your sake—don’t think that! Nor for mine—certainly not for mine! But for hers. She knows I love her, but she also knows your views—those views you have so cruelly repeated to me just now. And so ...” “Ah, darling! You think it cruelty now but my fear is the day may come when you ask yourself why-oh-why you did not heed your mother’s words, which were so kindly intended!” “Have no fear!” he exclaimed bitterly. “She will not marry me while you are set

235 against it. She will not even tell me she returns my love—though I know she does.” “Then you must both set your minds resolutely against it, my dear, for mine was never more firmly resolved than it is in this present course. And I tell you now— you may stay here until Rose recovers consciousness, which Doctor Losberne assures us may happen at any hour. But if, when she recovers, you breathe one word of your love to her—or communicate it in any other way—or get some third party (whom I shall not name) to do it for you—you may not stop another hour— no, not another minute even!” Henry sank his head in his hands and sighed profoundly. “Will nothing make you change your mind?” he asked. His voice betrayed no hope of an affirmative reply. “Nothing of a remotely possible or practical nature,” she said. “For instance?” Even these dismissive words had kindled an unwarranted spark of hope. “Oh ... for instance ... let me think ... yes—if you could produce some document to show that Agnes was lawfully married after all!” “You are cruel, cruel, cruel!” he cried. “You know that is impossible.” “I knew it before I said it. I even warned you it was so.” “I shall go and sit by her. If I must suffer for my adoration—and I see I must— then I prefer to do it at the side of the one I adore ...” “And you will suffer in silence? Your word on it?” “She shall not hear one word of my love pass my lips—you have my word on that.” Though deeply mistrusting his acquiescence, she nonetheless let him go. She and Losberne had taken turns at Rose’s side all day and now wanted the relaxation of a game of cribbage. Henry, knowing that the evening vigil was his, had spent the afternoon swimming in the Lea with Oliver, though never going more than hailing distance from the cottage garden; so Oliver was now fast asleep in bed—or, considering the day’s exertions, he jolly well ought to be, Henry thought. And the vigil was his. “Rose?” he whispered as he seated himself at her bedside. The regular rise and fall of her breathing did not change. Her hand lay outside, on her coverlet; he took it up in his and stroked it, squeezed it gently ... stooped and kissed it with all that passion he had just expressed to his mother; it remained as limp and unresponsive as when he had first touched it. “Oh, Rose!” he murmured. “What are we to to, you and I? We love each other so! If we can never be united, our lives are worth less than dust. Yet I fear we may, indeed, be forced to live apart for ever—and not by the cruel dictate of an unfeeling parent but by her love for both of us. There’s a paradox for you, eh! If she cared not a shred for our well-being or happiness, she would let us marry tomorrow. She would say, ‘Make your bed and lie in it for all I care!’ Oh Rose! How I long for us to make that bed and lie in it!” Was that a twitch? Did one of her fingers move? He squeezed her hand as gently as before but it lay as limp as ever in his. “But she says no,” he continued, “and because we love her we submit. For

236 myself, I would disobey her—which is something I have practised often enough down the years, anyway! But I know you would not. You are too sensible of the gratitude you owe her to cause her such pain. And so, my darling, if you never hear me speak those three most beautiful words in our most beautiful language— ‘I love you’—it is not for want of adoration but out of consideration for your happiness.” He paused and gave a little laugh. “D’you know what she said to me just a while ago, Rose? No, of course you don’t, so I’ll tell you—because it may offer us both a way out of our difficulties. She said that the greater my ambition and the higher I rise and the more prominent my success, the louder will grow the whispers and taunts about the stain on the Fleming name. Well, Rose, my darling—what my mother didn’t see is that her reasoning cuts two ways. The more modest by ambition, the more limited my rise, and the more obscure my place in society, the more those same whispers will dwindle away to silence! Then what objection could there be to our marriage, eh! What if I were to resign from the foreign service and take a modest living as a curate in some remote Welsh parish, or a chaplaincy in the Potteries? Who would think it worth the expenditure of breath to whisper of the ‘Fleming stain’? By Jove, I think I’ll do it!” Now that was a definite twitch! She stirred then! Evening was well advanced by now and, though it might be still just light enough to read large print outside, the smallness of the cottage windows brought a premature night to the room. He struck a lucifer and transferred its flame to the lamp-wick. The soft light fell across her face and her loveliness almost shattered his resolve to keep his word to his mother; for a moment he fought with himself not to shake her awake and shout in her ear those blessed words he had promised never to speak. Then he saw with surprise that tears must lately have coursed down her cheeks—in the past few minutes, too, for the tracks were still glistening wet. “Rose!” he whispered. She did not stir. He moved his head closer to hers. “By thunder!” he murmured. “If I may never kiss you when you know it, then I shall kiss you when you don’t! Oh, my Sleeping Beauty!” And he lowered his lips to hers and pressed them there as gently as goosedown on snow—except that her lips had no hint of snow about them. Far from it, indeed. They were warm and mobile. They yielded. They parted. They stiffened and met his, heart-beat for heart-beat. A little moan escaped them. The arm that had lain upon the coverlet snaked round his head and trapped it. He had never known such softness, such sweetness, such supple abundance of warmth ... “So!” His mother cried from the door. “This is how you keep your word, Henry! Leave this house now, d’you hear—for you are no longer son of mine!”

CHAPTER 42

Nancy braves the scorn of her betters to thwart the plans of Monks

237

One look at the imposing entrance to the Voyagers’ Club in Pall Mall was enough to let Nancy know it would be hopeless to try gaining access to Mr Henry Maylie by that ingress. She slipped down the side alley and found what could only be the tradesmen’s and servants’ entrance. It was wedged open and a great draft of hot air, laden with the succulent aromas of roast beef, roast mutton, and roast pork, engulfed her as she stepped inside. She found herself in a short, dimly lighted passage, empty of people but otherwise pretty crowded with sacks, boxes, teachests, and cartons of every proportion. “Now then, young woman!” A smartly dressed female of middling years poked her head out of a doorway; she appeared to be compiling a list of items on a shelf. “What d’you want here?” “A gentleman who’s stopping here, if you please, ma’am,” Nancy said. She wished now she had disguised herself as the demure young girl who had charmed her way into the house in Pentonville; but if she had got all dressed up, it would only have roused Bill’s suspicions. “Well!” the woman exclaimed, looking her up and down, “I’m sure he didn’t send for you! Does he expect you?” “I have news he must hear—something he will be glad to hear. It’s Mister Maylie, I seek.” When Nancy advanced a little into the light the other saw beyond doubt what sort of female she was and so decided she could no longer converse with her. “Wait here!” she barked before she went up the passage to the only other doorway—the kitchen, to judge by the noises and aromas that emanated from it. After exchanging a few words with someone inside, she turned and beckoned Nancy to approach, which the girl did most eagerly. “What name am I to say?” the waiter asked, having been told what little of her business she had divulged to the severe woman. “It’s no use saying any,” Nancy replied. “I’ve never met him.” “What business, then?” “Urgent business, much to his benefit.” “Oh, come!” The man grasped her by the arms and began pushing her back toward the exit. “Enough! Take yourself off!” Nancy slumped on a teachest. “You’ll have to carry me then,” she said. “And I can make that a job two of ye won’t forget.” She broke free and ran past him into the kitchen. “Is there no one here will carry a simple message for me—poor wretch that I am?” A chef-de-partie came to her aid. “Go on, Joe!” he cajoled the waiter. “Just take a message up for her, can’t yer?” Joe’s lips curled in a sneer. “You don’t suppose Mister Henry Maylie will come downstairs for the likes of this?” he asked. His words seemed to be the signal that four housemaids, watching in silence until then, had been waiting for; they began a chorus of remarks to the effect that Nancy was a disgrace to her sex mingled with advice to Joe and the chef to throw her out into the kennel at once. “I should like to see anyone try it!” Nancy pulled up her sleeves and folded her

238 arms. “But first, I’d like someone to let Mister Henry Maylie know I have news for him. If he should hear you turned me off—me with the tidings I have for him—it will go well with none of you.” “You’re coming it strong, ain’t yer?” the waiter said. The chef looked at him and raised his brows. “It’ll be a quieter life if you do as she asks, Joe,” he said. “Very well!” Joe sighed. “What’s it to be? I must have a piece of paper if I’m to say I’m carrying a message.” He tore a sheet off his order pad and handed it to her with his pencil. “Just write something,” he said. “If she can,” one of the housemaids sniggered, at which the other three burst into giggles. She wrote: OLIVER TWIST—also called FLEMING and handed it to him. “And this is going to fetch him down to yer?” the waiter sneered. “Three steps at a time,” Nancy promised. The man sauntered upstairs. She remained, pale, scarcely breathing, as she endured the slights of the chaste housemaids, which they did not stint her. Their scorn redoubled when the waiter returned, somewhat bemused, to say she was to wait—even more, that she was to be allowed a seat—and that he would see her directly. “Seems like it’s no good being proper in this world,” one of them said. “Brass can do better’n the gold what has withstood the fire,” said a second. “What’s ladies made of—that’s what I wonder,” sniffed a third. The fourth contented herself with the treble line in an Abigail-quartette of “Shameful!” The moment Henry’s eyes fell on Nancy, however, he realized that a conference of any length between them would be impossible there in that kitchen. “You know something of Oliver Twist?” he asked. “Are you the girl he calls Nancy?” The question took her aback. “He has told you my name?” “He has told me everyone’s name—on condition I say nothing and do nothing until you are safely away from them.” She closed her eyes. A tear, already fetched there by the comments of the four chaste Dianas, rolled down her cheek. “God bless you, Nolly!” she said. “And what do you know of him now?” Henry asked. She took a grasp on her sorrow. “I know that his life is in danger, sir.” “That’s enough for me,” he said, leading her up the passage to the storeroom, where the severe woman was once again writing her lists. “Mrs Oakley?” he cajoled. “This young lady has information of great importance to me. Do you think ...” “I’m sorry, Mister Maylie,” she replied before he had even posed his request. “I am days behindhand already. Mister Carters will be most displeased if I do not bring this list to him within the hour.” “One of the other rooms, perhaps?” “Mister Carters has the keys, sir.” They could both see the keys hanging from her chatelaine; she made no attempt to conceal them; she was telling him in all but words that no part of her domain was to be used for any purpose involving that ‘young lady.’

239 Henry turned to Nancy. “Perhaps ... oh dear! A walk out in the Mall? Under the trees?” She shook her head. “It would compromise you, sir—just as it would compromise me to be seen talking with you down Clerkenwell way.” “That is true,” he admitted with a sigh. He glanced again at Mrs Oakley—who said, “No, Mister Maylie!” before he had even opened his mouth. “The passageway, then,” he said to Nancy. But as soon as they were out in the passage, the girl inclined her head toward the open store-room door and indicated that she did not with to have an eavesdropper in attendance. “I know what, sir,” she said. “Are you familiar with London Bridge?” “I know where it is, but I couldn’t draw it from memory to save my life.” “Can you be there in two hours?” He took a pace away from her and looked her coolly up and down. “No,” he said. “This could be some kind of trap ...” “On my honour, sir ...” she protested. “On what?” he asked with a smile. She tried again: “As I love little Oliver and am risking my life in telling you ...” And again he interrupted: “As you love little Oliver, you will leave all question of my reputation to me and come out into The Mall this minute and there tell me what you have to say.” “Very well, sir. I must hope I have not been dodged—that’s all.” “Let me get my hat. If you wish to avoid the light, I’ll meet you at the top of the little alley outside the servants’ entrance.” When he met her at that appointed place, he said, “You could as easily have been dodged to London Bridge, you know.” “London Bridge is my reach,” she replied. “No one would think twice to see me take a gentleman to a little private parapet half-way down the river steps—and no one could dodge us there.” “And no one could see your pells slit my gizzard and toss me in the Thames.” “As if I would, sir!” “You wouldn’t, Nancy. I do believe you there. But they might dodge you, nonetheless—and slit your gizzard, too, for aught I know. Tell me it is not possible!” She could not do that, of course. “Very well,” he said. “We’ll stay in this passage, if you prefer. It’s dark enough here—and not too busy at this time of night.” “I would prefer it, sir. I would, indeed.” He led her a little way down but stopped when she had passed into the shadows while he was still in the light of a gas lamp out in the street. “I shall certainly wish to take notes,” he explained as he extracted a notebook and pencil from his inner pocket. “You see that lamp? Twenty-odd years ago, that was the first-ever gas lamp in any street in the world. Civilization, Nancy! Doesn’t it fill you with pride to be English? We shall light the lamps of civilization all around the world!” “Even in Clerkenwell?” she asked, overawed by his vision. “Well ... enough of that. To business! To save you ‘peaching’ on your people,

240 would it help if I first tell you what I know—leaving you merely to fill any cracks in my knowledge?” “That would be kind, sir,” she replied. “I just knew Oliver would fall among kindly people one day—God knows the little mite deserved it, the life he’s been led.” “He fell among kindly people earlier,” Henry reminded her. “In Pentonville. And was snatched back to Fagan and his infamous crew.” Poor Nancy burst into tears at that. “Oh, sir!” she managed to say between sobs. “If there was one day of my life I’d gladly live again ...” “Calm yourself!” he said, feeing guilty now at having spoken so curtly. “Even Oliver acknowledges you had no choice but to act as you did. It was your life or his liberty. He bears you no grudge for choosing to live.” “He must have told you a great deal, sir,” she said as she dried her eyes and sought to regain as much of her composure as was possible in the circumstances. “Everything, I hope. He kept all your names secret, you know—Lord Fagan was ‘the Cap’n’ and Sikes was ...” “Sikes?” She was filled with consternation. “He named Sikes?” “I was about to tell you. Sikes was ‘Pop-Eyes’ until ...” And now Nancy dissolved in a fit of giggles, as was only human for a young girl in her present peril. “He only revealed your true names—and then only to me—last week—after a stranger attempted to strangle him ...” “Monks!” Nancy exclaimed. “Ah!” Henry’s pencil flashed over the page. “You know his name? Good!” “I know his true name, too—Leeford! Edward Leeford!” “Ha!” Henry’s hand fell to his side. The notebook clattered to the cobbles. His other hand went to his brow and he had to lean against the wall for support. “Sir?” Nancy was alarmed at this change in him. “It cannot be!” he whispered. “Say that name again?” “Edward Leeford?” She obeyed hesitantly, fearing that this repetition might tip him over the brink into complete insensibility. “Are you sure you don’t mean Edwin?” he asked, rallying slightly but still somewhat febrile. She shook her head. “Edward. I’m sure it’s Edward” “How old is he, would you guess?” “Thirty to thirty-five. He is one of those so-called gentlemen who like to frequent low kens, to gamble and associate with criminals and ... you know—with the likes of me. Could your Edwin be his father? Edward is Oliver’s half-brother,” she added, “or so I guess from things he said to Fagan—things I chanced to overhear.” He rallied completely at that. “I wonder ...” he mused. “Half-brother, eh?” Then he suddenly struck himself on the forehead. “Yes! Of course he is! I see it now. Oliver’s mother was Agnes Fleming! By thunder—there must be an inheritance in it somewhere. An inheritance or a title—what else do siblings kill for in these civilized times! And yet Agnes died in abject ...” “It is at least a hundred thousand pounds,” Nancy said. “Fagan agreed to ‘deal

241 with’ Oliver for half the inheritance, which Monks—that’s what Leeford prefers to ...” “Wait a moment—we are tripping over ourselves now. Do you know how Leeford, or Monks, came to find Oliver, all the way out there in Hertfordshire?” “That was chance. He had been to Fellgate ...” “Where Oliver was born.” “Yes—born to Agnes Fleming. I only know these names, sir. I know nothing of the actual people—save for Monks and Oliver—and now yourself. And I know that Fagan was amused to choose Golden Grove for the burglary because your mother, sir, happened to have adopted Rose Fleming—Agnes’s sister.” “Yes!” Henry was breathless with excitement now as bits of the puzzle were explained and fell into their orderly places. “Rose is Nolly’s aunt! Naturally.” He chuckled. “She won’t like that! She had already declared them to be brother-and- sister.” He cleared his throat and became businesslike again. “So there is one happenstance explained! The seeming coincidence that Oliver was snaked in to burgle the house where his aunt had been adopted was, in fact, Lord Fagan’s notion of an exquisite jest! But how did Lord Fagan know?” “From a converssation with a servant you dismissed once. I don’t know the name.” “But I believe I do—Jeffries! Oh, mother—I owe you an apology! But there is one other happenstance I do not believe to be so—my mother’s adoption of Rose. She must have some prior connection with or knowledge of Edwin Leeford ...” He made a note in his book and then apologized to Nancy. “I interrupted your tale. Monks went to Fellgate, you said?” “A moment!” Nancy closed her eyes and bowed her head. “There is something ... something at the back of my mind.” “Something Monks said?” She nodded and pressed a fingertip to each temple, as if the memory were in her hands and might somehow flow back into her brain that way. “He said the whole trip was a waste of time. Even if ... something about a locket and two rings ...” Henry swallowed audibly. “Wedding rings?” he asked, not daring to hope. “A locket and ... wedding rings and ... something else ... a paper. Yes!” Her eyes flashed in triumph. “He said even if he had found a locket and the rings and a letter about a proxy marriage ... yes! Even if he’d found and destroyed all those things, it would do no good because ...” “A proxy marriage?” Henry was unable to hold back in his excitement. “In Rome,” Nancy replied. “Rome was mentioned, I’m sure. Is it important?” “Important! I should say so! A proxy marriage would mean that Agnes need not have run away in shame and that Oliver is the legitimate heir to whatever fortune Edwin Leeford might have left.” “More is coming back to me now! Monks said his mother intercepted a letter ... no, not intercepted. There was a proxy marriage—in Rome—at the British embassy there ...” “Ha! Ha!” Henry danced two circles on the spot, making feeble noises in his throat. “The embasssy in Rome! We have copies of all such marriages here at the Foreign Office. I can discover all this within the next twelve hours. Oh, Nancy!

242 You cannot possibly imagine how much happiness hinges on this intelligence! Go on! After this proxy wedding ... what?” “His father, Edwin Leeford, returned home ... oh yes! The proxy wife was some secretary’s daughter. I should have had a notebook, like you! Anyway, Edwin Leeford returned home and was ‘dead within the hour,’ he said. You’d never think it was his own father he was talking about—nor his own half-brother, come to that.” “Dead within the hour,” Henry echoed. “So he had no time to write—to let Agnes know ...” “No—he did write a letter. That was another thing. Oh Lord—it’s all coming out backwards and upside-down!” “Not at all Nancy. Everything you have said so far makes perfect sense. You are a marvel at listening and remembering. We could do with a hundred like you in some of our far-flung legations, I can assure you! So he did write to Agnes?” “Yes—and she intercepted it—Monks’s mother. She was in Rome for an annual ... something.” “Annulment?” “That was the word—annulment. What does it mean?” “Undoing some legal action—in this case the marriage of Edwin Leeford and his wife —first wife, one should perhaps call her now. She must have been a Roman Catholic.” “Ah!” “Why do you say it like that?” “Now I understand. Fagan said that this annulment thing had made Oliver legitimate and Monks illegitimate.” “So it does!” Henry laughed. “No wonder he was so eager to find any trace of rings and lockets and things.” “I think he found them, too,” Nancy said. “There was just something not right in his voice when he said he found nothing. Well, he didn’t actually say he’d found nothing. He said he didn’t find any rings or a locket—well, nobody had mentioned either rings or lockets until then. Fagan didn’t believe him, either. He just said he hoped Monks had destroyed the rings and the locket—which, for Lord Fagan to say such a thing, is serious, believe you me! That man loves gold!” Henry chuckled. “When Fagan told him that Oliver was legitimate while he was now illegitimate, what did Monks say?” “Ah, well, first you should understand how personal these things are to Fagan,” Nancy replied—and she went on to explain how his lordship was cheated out of everything but the title by some scoundrels in the Irish courts, and how it was the only topic on which the man was, perhaps, not entirely sane. “It seems odd, then,” Henry said, “that he should now be helping Monks, the scoundrel, to profit at the expense of the legitimate heir.” “Yes!” Nancy said in a puzzled tone. “I was amazed at that—especially as Nolly was always his little favourite. He told me once that Oliver would be a second Jonathan Wild—whoever he was—only even greater.” “Jonathan Wild was the greatest thief-taker of his day, Nancy,” Henry explained. “That was over a century ago. But he was also the master-organizer of

243 thieves—the king of the thieves and vagabonds of his day. He ran with the hare and hunted with the hounds.” “So—he was the Fagan of his time, you might say. And that’s what he’d have made of our Nolly if he’d had the teaching of him for long enough and without interruption.” “So, Nancy, it’s even stranger he’s willing to fall in with Monks’s plans for the boy.” “Fifty thousand pounds, sir—it’s a sauce would help any man to swallow a great deal of principle.” “You must be right,” he conceded. “Did Monks mention the names of any he saw up in Fellgate? Mister Bumble, I’m sure. And either of the Sowerberrys?” “Bumble, yes.” There was a touch of pride in her voice as she added, “I got his name for them! I got it from the inn where ...” “But didn’t you already know it from Oliver?” “Oliver would never speak to us of his days in the workhouse, sir. He told us about the Sowerberrys and Charlotte and Claypole, but never a word about the workhouse. Maybe he opened up a little to Fagan. It wouldn’t be the first time his lordship has sent me out to glean intelligence he’s already in possession of. But I got Bumble’s name from the inn where he stayed when he came to London on some parish business and saw Mister Brownlow’s advertisement ...” “Ah, yes—Brownlow! I want you to tell me all you know about him, too—but first complete the story of Monks’s visit to Fellgate.” “He didn’t meet the Sowerberrys, who were not about at that hour, but he spoke to their cook-general ...” “Charlotte?” “Yes. She told him they’d never had a parish orphan apprenticed there ... tried to put him right off Oliver’s scent.” “Good for her! I suppose Noah Claypole gave it all away, though?” “Just so, sir. He directed him to Mister Bumble, who is now workhouse master there.” “Ah!” He made a further note. “And Monks didn’t come back to talk with the Sowerberry’s afterwards—hoping to find them risen?” “He didn’t mention it.” “So—whatever he was seeking, he must have found complete satisfaction in his interview with Bumble. Isn’t that ...” “And the matron. Bumble’s married to the matron, now. Yes, it does seem that way—which is something I never thought of. My head’s been spinning with thoughts ever since I overheard those two, sir. I keep thinking how I can best spare poor Nolly.” “And yourself, Nancy. You must take no more risks after tonight—but I’ll come to that in a minute. You were going to tell me about Mister Brownlow?” She told him what little she had gleaned—principally the fact that he, Mrs Bedwin, and Mr Grimwig (the three who knew anything about Oliver) had all emigrated to Jamaica; she, of course, did not know that it was more of a family visit than an emigration and that all three of them were expected back in London almost daily.

244 “So all direct inquiry through Brownlow’s household is closed to me,” Henry mused. “I can get letters out in a diplomatic bag inside weeks but even that may prove too slow. I think my next-best course will be to visit Fellgate myself and see what inquiries there may turn up. We must pray he did not destroy the locket and the rings. I shall scour the jewelers’ and pawn shops for miles around before I give up. Then, I fear, a long, serious confrontation with my mother will prove unavoidable. But I shall begin with a much more agreeable talk with young Charlotte, I’m sure—one of the three angels set to watch over Oliver here on earth.” “Three angels?” Nancy was puzzled. “Charlotte,” he said. “Rose Fleming, now Rose Maylie. And a young tigress- angel called Nancy!” “Oh, sir!” She could feel herself blushing. “I am a very fallen angel, let me tell you!” “No more than the Magdalen—which brings me to you, my dear. Why must you go back to them this evening? Or ever again? Within the next fifteen minutes, I could put you in my carriage with a letter commending you to our protection, out there in Hertfordshire. There you would be safe until we have Monks frightened back to the Continent, which is where he belongs, and Fagan in the condemned cell—which is where he belongs.” She shook her head and, in a sad little voice, replied that she could not. “Give me one good reason,” he challenged her. “Oliver,” she replied. “And there is none better than that.” “Oliver?” “If I do not return and live among them as always, they will smell a rat. Fagan, especially, will know at once I have peached on them to save Nolly’s skin—and they will move against him at once. How many armed men can you place around his present lodgings before dawn tomorrow?” Henry chewed his lip anxiously. “Is it as bad as that?” “Only if I fail to return—which brings me to a rather delicate matter, sir. To have been out and about these many hours on such a balmy night as this, I ought to return home with at least a guinea in my purse. If I don’t, Sikes will just beat me about the back and legs a bit, where it wouldn’t show too bad—but that Fagan might sniff a baby rat. So, could you ...” “Of course, my dear! Here!” He took out his purse and counted out a guinea’s worth of silver. “Shocking!” he murmured. “A gentleman carrying silver into his club! It’s good of you to relieve me of it, Nancy—I could be excluded a month if they found me out. Are you sure that’s enough? Why don’t you let me give you another five pounds—so that you can flee from them at a moment’s notice and not have to worry about the fare?” But Nancy refused all offers of help; then she said she had to go. “How may I get in touch with you again?” he asked. “Bless you, sir—that’s something gentlemen have no difficulty in doing— getting in touch with me. You’ll find me admiring the view from London Bridge most evenings and, if you will, I’ll engage always to be there on the sabbath eve—up until midnight.”

245 Still loath to see her depart, back to that world of unimaginable cruelty and violence, he put his arms about her and hugged her warmly before planting a chaste kiss on her brow. “Take no more risks than you must, Nancy, love,” he murmured. “You are very dear to Nolly—and now, through your action tonight, dear to us Maylies as well. We should grieve more than you can imagine if any harm came to you over this. Promise me you will run at the first sign of trouble? I shall leave word with the porters here. They will find a place of safety for you, and get word to me, if I should happen to be away.” As she turned to go he added, “As a matter of interest, how did you know to find me here?” “It’s in the court register, sir. One thing living close by Lord Fagan has taught me: Everything you want to know is written down somewhere. After Monks gave him Rose Fleming’s name, he found the deed poll that changed her name to Maylie in Somerset House—which is how he found the name of your house— Golden Grove. Then he met that Jeffries you mentioned ...” “We live in an age of contumely and bad faith!” Henry exclaimed. “There are no more secret lives!”

CHAPTER 43

Sikes is given leave to break Nancy’s bones—if he must

The Artful Dodger came swaggering into Lord Fagan’s ken shortly before ten that night; in the doorway he paused, leaned against the jamb, tipped back his hat, and whistled a bar or two of, ‘Oh my eye!’ while he favoured the company with an all-round survey. “Any danger of a busy working man being rewarded with a drop of sperrit around here?” he asked. “Dodger!” Fagan cried jovially and gave a mocking bow. “You know my rule of life—take what you want and pay for it. Only in your case it’s more a matter of pay for it first. What gifts do you bring a poor old man who’s practically down to his last crust?” The Dodger flung a fob watch and a few wipes down upon the table. Bates and Beth, who were busy cheating a young buck at cards and earning a guinea or two along the way, looked them over with mild interest but the buck seized upon the watch at once, opened the back cover, and read no more than a word or two before crowing, “Haw! It’s me dear old pater’s what! What? Thought I recognized it. I say, what a chiz! Haw, haw!” He looked in admiration at the Dodger. “How je do it, chum?” “Now yer sees it,” the Dodger said as he palmed the watch from the fellow’s hand; then he immediately opened his hand again to show it was already empty. “Now yer don’t!” said he. “Haw, haw!” cried the buck, looking about and wondering why the others were not as amazed as he. But the wonders were not over for him yet, for the Dodger now pointed to his other hand, which, as far as the other could recall, had stayed in his deep and

246 capacious pocket all this while; and yet, as the Dodger slowly withdrew it into the light of day, he spied first the chain and then the fat silver disc of the watch itself, sparkling in the lamplight. That, to be sure, led to a long chorus of haw-haws, which it would be tedious even to adumbrate. The Dodger’s other hand, which only moments before had been empty, now contained a fine leather pocket-book, the sight of which sent the young buck into a fresh paroxysm—until he noticed that the item in question was his own, which he had supposed it to be nestling securely inside his inner pocket with the flap buttoned down. The discovery brought on a fit of uncharacteristic silence as, with a rueful smile and a murmur of gratitude, he accepted the return of his own property. “Timeo Dodger et dona ferentes!” Lord Fagan winked at the buck, just in case he was feeling a little diminished by the Dodger’s skills. “Let him have the watch, too, Dodger,” he said, greatly to that young thief’s amazement. “He can earn a little glory with his old man with a tale of pursuing some felon and taking it back by main force, eh?” He grinned at the poor gull. “What?” the Artful asked in as affronted a tone as he dared employ. “Do as I say and stop being so annoying! You are doing it deliberately, I can tell. You know I am far more interested in where you went tonight and what your ears picked up.” “Yes, ecod, where did you dip the old boy?” the buck put in. Smiling, the Dodger did not take his eyes off his lordship as he answered: “Outside one of them posh clubs in Pall Mall ... Saint James’s ... that sort of area, doen’tcha kneow, ecod.” He tried to parrot the buck’s swell tones. “You are just beginning to interest me,” Fagan said. “Without naming any names”—and here he inclined his head almost imperceptibly toward Beth—“did you dodge our mark as I asked? Did it go anywhere interesting ... do anything dangerous?” “Biddles!” the buck exclaimed. “You dipped him outside Biddles—that’s one of his clubs.” The Dodger shook his head and, turning back to Fagan, said, “It might have, my lord. And then again, it mightn’t.” “D—n me! What’s his other club?” The buck sank into a profoundly philosophical posture. “Journeymen? Journey ... something.” “The Voyagers’,” the Dodger flung over his shoulder, still holding his eye on Fagan. “You’re not holding back for money, I trust,” the old aristocrat asked menacingly. “Come! Enough of this! We’ll go next door where you may speak plain. You three!” he addressed Bates, Bet, and the young buck though his remark was clearly aimed at the first two only. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” He took up a bottle of gin and held it like a carrot before an ass as he hastened the Dodger to the adjoining room but one. “We don’t want little ears pressed to the wall, do we,” he said grimly. “Not for such tidings as you may bear!” “It’s little enough that’s dependable, my lord,” the Dodger warned him. “There’s gas lamps flaring like little suns all the way up that street ...” “Yes-yes!” Fagan poured him a generous measure. “We’ll consider pleas in

247 mitigation later. The specifics first, if you please! You dodged her all the way— never lost sight of her?” “Never for longer than it takes to step into a doorway and out again. She leaves her beat at Lunnon Bridge and goes up Thames Street and Puddle Dock to Saint Paul’s ... Ludgate Hill ... Fleet Street ... the Strand ... all the way to Charing Cross.” “Without stopping?” “Never stopped once. Never spoke to no one till she got to the Royal Mews, which is now just rubble, for this new square. There she stops and asks the way of a hackney man.” “You’re sure she asks the way? These particulars are important.” “She says something to ’im and ’e waves ’is arms about a lot, pointing west like as if ’e’s saying ‘Down ’ere, along there, up there!’ And off she goes again, speaking to none.” “Plenty of gentlemen about?” “Like flies at Smithfield! Plenty of offers, too, but never a nibble from our Nance! On she goes like a shot off a shovel—straight as a arrer!” “A girl with a misssion, our Nance! Oh, my dear! Why can you not leave these matters to me!” Fagan laughed at the wounded shock in the Dodger’s expression. “Not you, my dear—Nancy. Why must she meddle? Does she truly think I’d harm our little Nolly? Why will she not trust me?” The Dodger, who could have given him a thousand reasons, wisely said nothing. “So!” Fagan became brisk again. “Drink up, Artful! You’re doing splendidly so far. Where does the dear girl finally rest her weary feet?” “Outside that club I mentioned—the Voyagers’. She stops, looks at the big front door ... honest! You could fit these three rooms just inside their lobby! Anyway, she decides it’s no go there, so she trots round the tradesmen’s. But”—he licked his lips nervously and fortified himself with another fiery draught—“ ’ere’s the first of my woes, Fagan. The passage is as narrer as a needle’s eye. I slips in and goes down the bottom end, beyond the servants’ door, where there’s a gate into a little garden. But it’s locked. So I creeps in behind an old roll of carpet they’ve put out for the rag-and-bone. And I waits. She’s gawn about ten minutes. Gawd- elp-us, I think, she’s done a bunk some other way, or gawn up into one of them rooms ...” “Never!” Fagan laughed. “Queen Adelaide herself would be barred there.” “Anyway, out she comes again, just as my legs think I’ve forgotten they’re there. I gets ready for the off. But no! She stops! Hangs back in the shadder. Waits. And so does I.” He took another swig, after which Fagan pointedly removed the bottle beyond his reach, saying, “No more now till you’re done, my dear. Don’t fuddle your head at this point. How long does she wait?” “Not above a couple of minutes. Then out comes a swell cove ... polished topper, white kid gloves, and all. Stays in the light so’s ’e can write things in a book. You never saw a peeler take down notes more fulsome, honest!” “Notes, Dodger? What notes?” The Artful answered with a rueful shake of his head. “It’s a long alley, Fagan.

248 And narrer, like I said—a woman in a wide dress’d sweep both sides at once. And I’m down the bottom behind the only concealment there is, and they’re up the top—him in the light, Nancy just a shadder—and there’s hackneys and broughams and Gawd knows what rattling by ...” “Very well, Dodger!” Fagan raised both hands to stem the tide of apology. “You did well to get so close as you did—and to see what you did. So tell me about that, instead.” “I saw them talk and talk and talk, my lord. And I saw him write things down in his notebook, like what I said.” “Describe him ... age, height—you know the sort of thing.” “Tall. As tall as what you are. He’s a good pair o’ shoulders on him but nothing of any importance to swell out his belt. Clean-shaved at the jaw and chin but a swell’s moustachioes on his lip. Fair-haired, so far as what anyone can tell at night and against the gas lights.” “Henry Maylie,” Fagan murmured. “Who else could it have been? Brownlow? But he’s much older. And fatter. And, in any case ...” At this point Fagan noticed a peculiarly sly smile on his young friend’s lips. “You have not finished?” he said. “No, Fagan. Like what one of them coves in the Bible says—the best is yet to come. They finish talking, see? So I gives our darling gel time to get away and then I comes out meself. Down the steps by the Stonecutters, hares along through the back gardens by The Mall. Out into Cockspur Street, where I meets ’er as if I’m legging it from somewhere east of there—like I’ve never been west all night, see?” “Clever as ever, my dear!” Fagan purred. “What does she say? She’s not completely deceived, surely—not our Nancy!” “No. She pulls out a handful of coin and tells me she’s found a new lay—the alleys and gardens round the swell clubs of Saint James’s! She says one gentleman nipped out between the roast pheasant and the spotted dick. ‘Fancied a taste of beef, eh!’ says I. ‘Ho yus!’ she replies, and laughs and laughs and laughs like as if I’d said somethink funny!” “It is not the season for pheasant,” Fagan said grimly. “But for little songbirds? Ah, yes! It seems the season for one little songbird in particular. Dear me! So sad! I had such hopes of Nancy once upon a time.” “I’ve not done yet, Fagan,” the Dodger continued. “Talking of funny things— it’s funny you should bring up the name of Brownlow just now. ’E’s the cove what Batesy and me dipped by the bookstall in Clerkenwell Green, that day Oliver got tooken up before Fang, am I right?” “Right you are, my dear.” Fagan’s eyes had the hooded blankness of a snake’s. “Well, strolling back along the Strand with our Nance, ’oo should I espy, turning in down Craven Street, but old Brownlow ’isself!” Fagan’s eyebrows shot up an inch. “You’re sure of it?” “As sure as you’re a-sitting there a-listening to this. ‘Ain’t that ol’ Brownlow?” I asks Nance. ‘Never!’ she says, not hardly even looking. But it was, Fagan. I’ll swear it was Brownlow. I never forgets the face of a gentleman as I’ve dipped.” He grinned. “It pays to let a year or so pass afore dipping ’im again!”

249 “So he’s emigrated to the West Indies, has he?” Fagan mused. “A new name for Craven Street! Oh, Nancy! Learn a lesson from this, Dodger—never to lie to me! Be sure your sins will find you out. Live by that motto where it touches me, my dear ...” He would have favoured his young acolyte with a great deal more advice in that vein if, at that moment, the whole house had not been shaken by the slamming of the street door, followed by the voice of Bill Sikes, bellowing, “Where is ’e?” like a demented bull. Fagan hastened out on to the landing and picked up a bucket of filth that was kept there for the express purpose of throwing it over unwanted visitors, by way of discouraging their attentions. “Sikes!” he barked. “You may guess what I’m holding in my hand, and you may guess who’s going to get it all over him unless he can control his voice this minute.” The threat was effectual insofar as it deterred the visitor from further shouting, but it did nothing to sweeten his temper. “Look!” he commanded fiercely as he mounted the last flight of stairs. And when he arrived, he showed them—for the Dodger had come out on to the landing, too—a badly torn jacket and a pair of trousers that was hardly decent, so greatly was it cut about. “What happened, Bill?” Fagan asked solicitously. “Did you get the plate?” The burglar rattled the sack he held in his hand. “D—n your plate!” he replied. “What about my clothes? Broken glass on top of the wall—that’s what did this. You never said about broken glass.” “Come along inside, Bill, and have a drop of something to sweeten you. A word of warning, though.” He clutched at Sikes’s sleeve. “We’ve got a young gull in there for Bates and Beth to fleece. So you can strut before him like any lord of the thieves’ fraternity. But go soft on names and places, eh?” “Don’t you drop no sermons on me, Fagan!” the other growled. “I’m too old and too ugly to be taught by you.” But he stood tall and swaggered into the room just as if he had heeded the other’s advice to the last dot and comma. “Now, young buck!” Fagan cried genially as he followed Sikes inside. “You’re in luck tonight! From Shadwell to Hounslow, from Dulwich to Barnet, who’s the cracksman they toast when the kings of the trade are honoured? And when the Bow Street Runners get called to investigate, whose personal hallmark do they dread to find upon every aspect of the crime? Two questions but one and the same answer: Mister William Sikes! And where is this living legend to be encountered? Stand up and doff your hat, for you are a-looking at him this very minute!” The awestruck young man rose clumsily to his feet, suddenly realizing that he must have swallowed a great deal more of that ‘mild cordial’ than he realized. “Oh, Mish’er Shikes, shir!” he mumbled. “Z’an honour ... nonner! Heard so mush ’bout’cha!” “What?” the bewildered Sikes roared—and would have roared more if Fagan had not struck him rather sharply near the shoulderblade. “Your reputation, to be sure,” the befuddled young buck added. Then, apropos nothing in particular, he quoted from Othello: “Reputation, reputation, reputation! I have lost my reputation!” “Not quite yet,” Fagan said cheerfully, as he pushed him down again and put his

250 half-filled tumbler back into his elegant hand. “Just sit and watch what the great man will now draw forth from his booty-sack. This, you will understand, has not been one of his grand sorties—merely a few baubles that stuck to his hand as he walked this way.” “Fagan!” Sikes growled. “I’m warning you ...” But the Dodger put his lips near the man’s ear and murmured, “Go easy, now, Bill! ’E’s in as big a bate as ever I seen ’him—don’tcher reckonize the signs? Let ’im ’ave ’is little fun, eh?” Bill turned several shades paler at this, not that it showed much beneath all those layers of grime that clung to his unshaven chops. But he unpacked his haul meekly enough, the moment Fagan gave him the nod. “Very nice, Bill!” Fagan polished up the crest on the largest plate with his sleeve. “Yes—a little work with a scorper and a burnishing tool and we shall have a blank cartouche here that any nobleman would be delighted to grace with his own crest. I might even keep these for myself. Ah, but I wish I had young Oliver Twist about the place still! No one could put the virginity—if you’ll pardon the word, Beth—back into used silver half so well as he!” “Enough of that, Fagan,” Sikes risked saying. “I’ve taken all the tongue-lashing I need on that subjick, thank you very much!” “Ah, Bill!” Fagan shook his head in sorrow. “Like you, I wish it were all behind us. But just tonight—this very hour, in fact, I learn we still have unfinished business.” “What are you looking at me like that for?” The man backed away and stared menacingly. “Sit down, Bill,” Fagan advised him gently. “You are not in the dock, here. Indeed, I hereby appoint you judge and warder. You shall decide the sentence, Bill—and you shall carry it out.” “What foolery is this?” Sikes grumbled as, nonetheless, he took his place at the table and poured himself a drink. “Not too much of that, Bill,” Fagan warned, tilting the bottle upright again before the man had poured out more than a tablespoon or two. “You’ll need a clear head to judge this case—and a cool head to carry out the sentence, too. We don’t want to go too far, Bill.” “Get to the point, blast yer!” Sikes felt he ought to live up to the reputation Fagan had given him with the young and impressionable visitor. “You’re in a strange temper tonight, I can see.” “Oh, I’ve got that to tell you, Bill, as will make you worse than me!” “Aye? Do you say so? Then out with it, man—or Nance will think I’m lost.” “Lost?” Fagan laughed harshly. “I’d say she’s pretty well settled that, in her own mind, already.” Sikes raised his hand and levelled a finger at Fagan’s nose. “Speak, you d—l!” he commanded. “Say what you have to say—and say it in plain words!” Smiling, Fagan gently pushed the accusing finger aside, holding it until it was pointing at Bates—who also turned paler, though, again, it hardly showed. “Supposing that lad there was to peach, Bill—to blow upon us all—first seeking out the proper authorities—and then approaching them in the street and painting

251 our likenesses, describing every mark peculiar to you, to me, to the Dodger there, and directing them to the ken where we might most conveniently be taken ... Wait, Bill—wait! Hear me out before you answer. Suppose that lad there was to do all this more or less of his own fancy; not grabbed, trapped, taken up, tried, and put in danger of eternal hellfire by the parson ... not brought to it on helpings of the cane and a diet of bread and water—but out of his own fancy, to gratify his own taste, stealing out one night and walking four deliberate miles to find one most interested against us and peaching to him up some dark alley. Suppose he did all this—what then, Bill?” By now Sikes’s eyes were starting from their sockets and the pallor of his cheek had turned a fiery red which not all the grime in London could have masked. “What then?” he echoed with a wrathful thunder. “Why, if any of ye left a morsel of him alive, I’d grind his skull under the iron dogs of my boots. I’d leave it in as many bits as there were hairs on the rogue’s head!” “And what if I did it, Bill?” He thrust his head forward and the spittle of rage fell in a shower from his lips. “I that know so much and could hang so many alongside me!” “Then I’d be tried along of you, too. I’d lift my chains in open court and beat your brains out afore the lot on ’em!” He raised a brawny arm and pushed Fagan away again. “You’d look prettier, my lord, if a laden dray had gone over you with all four wheels.” “You would?” Fagan asked with a grim sort of pleasure in his tone. “Try and stop me! Not all the traps in London could hold me back!” “And if it was the Dodger, eh? Or Bet, who’s sitting there so pretty and demure? Or”—he narrowed his eyes and lowered his voice dramatically—“if it was ...” “I don’t care who!” Bill interrupted impatiently. “Whoever it was, I’d serve them the same.” “D o d g e r ...!” Fagan drew the name out, never one moment taking his eyes off Sikes. “Me?” The Dodger swallowed heavily. “He’s half asleep, Bill,” Fagan went on. “All asleep, I shouldn’t wonder. Nor blame him, neither. He’s dead with fatigue, poor fellow. Tired of dodging her so long. Dodging her, Bill!” “Whadd’yer mean?” Sikes was beginning to realize he had been manoeuvred into a trap of some kind. “Tell him, Dodger!” Fagan snapped. “Er ... tell ’im what, my lord?” “About that Nancy! Tell him how you dodged her all the way from London Bridge tonight.” “True,” Dodger responded in a thin, quavering voice. “Out of the City, wasn’t it!” “Yus!” “Into Westminster!” “Yus!” “Into the West End—tell him, Artful—don’t leave all to me!” “Yes. To Pall Mall, I dodged her, to an alley beside the Voyagers’ Club.”

252 “Where she meets a fine gentleman?” Fagan prompted, being unable to let the Dodger continue in his trembling, lacklustre manner. “Yus.” “By arrangement, yes? And doesn’t he pull out a notebook when she gives him all our names? Don’t you hear her name us one by one? Spelling out Sikes with an ‘i’ and not with a ‘y’—isn’t that how it was?” “Yus!” By now the Dodger’s voice was a barely audible piping sound. “What?” Sikes started up with a mighty oath. “I’ll kill ’er. With these two hands, I swear it, I’ll ...” “Easy now, Bill! Nothing rash, d’you hear? Hearken to the tail of it, too.” He turned to the Dodger again. “Did he have her by the throat, Artful?” “No, my lord,” He was glad to have a different word to say. “Had he a pistol held to her temple? Was she restrained in any way?” “No, my lord—to both.” “And who did they speak of? It was Oliver Twist, was it not? She asked was Oliver safe—was he beyond our reach—and being assured of it, peached on us all. Wasn’t that the way of it, Dodger?” The poor lad nodded and whispered, “Yus” one last time. Fagan immediately flung himself at Sikes, who had tumbled his chair and tripped over it in his anger; and now he was searching through all Fagan’s drawers and cupboards for the pistol he knew the man kept somewhere there. “I said easy, Bill!” Fagan had to raise his voice before he had the slightest effect on the man. “Beat her black and blue, all you want. Break her bones, if you must. Chastize her, Bill. Teach her that a well-run ship can have but one master—and that if anyone’s going to make sure our Oliver’s free from all harm, that man is me! Teach her we live by my law here and she cannot go taking it into her own hands!” “I’ll ... why, I’ll ...” The man stood at the door, panting, his eyes almost starting out of his head and rolling wildly in their sockets. “You’ll chastize her, Bill. No more! Mark me now—nothing foolish. You do something foolish, my friend, and you’re suddenly the loneliest man in Clerkenwell—indeed, on the whole of this planet. Say you understand me now, or I’ll drop you on the stair!” The man gave his grudging assent to these words and flung himself out with another vicious oath. “What’s all this about keeping Oliver safe?” the Dodger asked as soon as they were seated again. Fagan grinned. “Only safe from Monks, my dear,” he replied. “When Monks is safely dancing the hangman’s gavotte, our dear Nolly will come into a tidy little sum—enough to go all round. Enough to let Nancy forget a few bruises and admit there can only be one master here.”

CHAPTER 44

253 Henry returns from Yorkshire with an untangled pedigree; but a new mystery intrudes

Henry Maylie descended from the Yorkshire Flyer at Hatfield, where he had left his own gig and horse at livery, five days earlier, on his way north; a cat locked in a creamery, or a miser with the back-door key to the Bank of England could not have worn a more satisfied smile than the one that lay upon his lips as he set out to drive the four or five miles to his mother’s summer cottage in Essendon. He hoped he might meet Oliver along the way and so gain a little advance intelligence of the situation he would find upon his arrival—not that it mattered too much, for the situation he would create, the moment he revealed his news, would turn all else into a distant memory. His hopes were not disappointed; he found Oliver among a gaggle of his friends, racing hoops up and down the village’s main street, much to the annoyance of two elderly ladies who were sitting out on the footpath, shelling beans and hoping for a little peace in which to talk. In fact, Oliver saw him first. “Henry! Henry!” he cried, racing up to him in apparent distress and looking as if he were about to burst into tears. “That nasty boy Jellicoe has taken my hoop and won’t give it back ... and how am I to get home now without its aid?” At that he did burst into tears. Henry, who could see no logical connection between a stolen hoop and an inability to get home because of it—after all, a hoop was not a whole chariot— was just about to offer to get the thing back by force when he saw Oliver grinning behind the hands that masked his face. Caught again! “Stand still!” he said urgently. “You have a wasp on your cap!” This allowed him to get near enough to the unsuspecting boy to give him a good smack, more surprising than painful, on the top of his head. “Now we’re quits,” he said as Oliver looked up in outrage. “Jump aboard! I’ve got something to show you that will make you jump cartwheels, Nolly. I shouldn’t be surprised if you don’t turn yourself into a hoop and bowl yourself all the way home.” “What? Where? Show me now!” Friends forgotten, hoop forgotten, smack on the head forgotten, Oliver climbed into the gig beside him. “Oh, very well. I had intended waiting until we arrived home, but, if anyone has a right to see them, that person is you. In fact, I suppose they belong to you, now!” Henry tied the reins to the footrail and reached into his bag to pull out a stained leather purse of the old-fashioned kind—a pouch with a drawstring around its neck. “Get in the back there,” he said, “and hold out your hands like a cup. We don’t want to drop these.” Oliver did as he was told. Henry turned the pouch upside-down and pulled the neck open. Out dropped a locket ... a ring ... a ring ... Oliver looked up expectantly. “If you should want only three things in all this world, Oliver,” Henry assured him, “you are now holding them in your hands. Look at the name on the ring.” But Oliver was absorbed by the locket, which he had already opened; he was

254 plucking at the delicate bundles of hair. “Careful!” Henry warned him. The youngster’s sharp eyes, however, had noticed that the enamelled plate, to which the little bundles of hair were attached by narrow bands of gold, moved slightly. He inserted the tip of his little-finger nail into the gap at its edge and prised it gently. It moved further! Now he was able to get a strong thumbnail under it. Henry watched with bated breath as he prised it again. “I didn’t spot that,” he murmured. “Trust you!” But when Oliver had it open he gave such a start that he almost flung it from the gig. As it was he let it drop from his nerveless fingers and only Henry’s lightning- swift response prevented it from falling between the duckboards. “It’s a portrait,” he said. “It must be ...” “It is the same lady as in the picture at Mister Brownlow’s,” Oliver said. “So there is a connection,” Henry mused aloud. “There must be. But what? What can it be?” “Who is she?” Oliver asked. “How can Mister Brownlow have one picture of her and you another—although you have never met? Where did you get this?” “Look at the name on the ring, Oliver,” Henry said. “Nothing,” he replied. “It’s blank. Oh no! The other one ... I see. A ... G ... Agnes!” His smile almost split his face in two. “You have found Agnes’s rings and ... is this—the portrait—is it Agnes, too? Oh, won’t Rose be pleased! And she wants pleasing, too, these days, I can tell you ... what? Why do you look at me like that?” Henry was frowning. “I don’t think it proper for you to be calling her Agnes, Oliver,” he said sternly. “Miss Agnes?” Oliver offered guiltily. Henry shook his head and, reaching forward to steady the boy, said, “Try ... mother!” Oliver turned pale as a ghost and stared again at the portrait in the locket. He began to shiver and Henry gripped him all the harder. “There’s no way of breaking such news gently, is there!” he said. “Mind you—I had no idea the picture was there, too. Let me see.” Oliver passed it over with a hand that was barely able to hold it. “She’s beautiful, Nolly! Everything Rose has ever said about her is true. I’ll wager she was just about the nicest young woman who ever lived. Look at those eyes, eh! Did you ever see anything so loving and gentle?” At last the little boy burst into tears, just as Henry had hoped—for otherwise the apprehension in him would have grown and grown beyond bearing. He reached down and took the locket and rings from him, slipping them into his pocket before he took Oliver in his arms and hugged him tight. Again, when he judged the moment right, he said, “You know what this means, don’t you—Rose is your aunt! You’ll have to call her Aunt Rose from now on.” He felt Oliver stiffen at that. Then the boy giggled. “Aunt Rose!” These swift changes of mood were not at all like the Oliver whom Henry had come to know, first through his mother’s letters and then through personal encounter. But, as Henry now realized, they were characteristic of most young

255 boys of the same age. In short, Oliver was recovering his stolen childhood here among the summer meadows, in the woods and streams, and with his village chums, out here in Hertfordshire. “Can I see it again?” Oliver asked as they set off for home. “Tell me, how is Rose?” Henry asked as he fished in his pocket. “Not gay. The poetry she chooses to read is sadder and sadder.” “Well, all that will change now. You know my mother told me that the only thing that would make her withdraw her objections to a marriage between Rose and me would be to find a certificate to show that Agnes was legally married ...” “And you found it?” Oliver was too excited to wait for Henry to reach that same conclusion. “Yes! Right under my nose in the Foreign Office!” Henry explained as well as he could all about the proxy marriage at the British embassy there. “That was Mister Edwin somebody,” Oliver said, recalling the story Rose had told him. “Edwin Leeford, yes—your father, of course.” Oliver gave a baffled little laugh. “Of course! I’ve grown so used to thinking of him as just a name Rose told me—the man who would have married Agnes if he hadn’t died in Rome. I still can’t think of Agnes as my mother.” He lifted the locket and pressed it to his lips. “Mother!” he whispered. Then, aloud, “I shall say it a hundred times tonight. Then, when I wake up tomorrow, I shall believe it.” “As long as you don’t keep me awake,” Henry warned him. “Are you ready for another shock, Nolly?” “What is it?” he asked nervously. “You know your father, Edwin Leeford, was married before?” “The marriage that was annulled?” “Yes. He was married to a half-French lady called Maria—Maria Monks ...” “Monks!” Oliver sat bolt upright at the name. “The man who tried to throttle me was called Monks—Edward Monks.” “How d’you know that? You didn’t know it when I left. Has he returned since then? Has he attempted yet again to ...” “No. After you left, I thought some more about it. And then I realized that if he came down on the Flyer, it wouldn’t have waited for him. So his bags must have stayed on the coach and gone on ahead of him. Then I got one of my chums whose sister works at the Salisbury Arms in Hatfield to find out the name. That’s how I knew.” “Then you can probably guess who Edward Monks really is? He assumed his mother’s maiden name after the annulment but he was born Edward Leeford—the son of that first marriage.” “My brother!” Oliver gasped. “Half-brother,” Henry said. “But he started to kill me!” “Can’t you guess why?” Oliver thought awhile and guessed, “Revenge for what my father did to his mother—getting the marriage annulled like that?” Henry shook his head. “Your father was his father, too. There may be a bit of

256 that in it but my guess is —money! Somewhere in this world—probably in London—there is a substantial inheritance awaiting you—which Monks would be able to claim if you were dishonoured or dead. There! What d’you think of that?” “Would it be as much as a hundred pounds?” Oliver picked the largest sum of which he had the faintest comprehension. “It very easily could be.” Henry smiled to himself. “What then?” “Then I shall buy new dresses for Rose and your mother, and, er, a better horse than that for you. And I shall have my name engraved on my hoop so Jellicoe can’t steal it.” “Well!” Henry exclaimed. “In that case, I think a hundred is quite enough to be going on with.” They were at the cottage gate by now and—just in case Henry failed to recognize it—Giles and Brittles stood just inside, holding pitchforks at the ready. Henry laughed, which added greatly to their discomfort. “I’m sorry about this, Master Henry,” Giles said. “But the mistress will insist upon it.” “Insist upon it!” Brittles confirmed. “And more than once!” Henry gave the rings to Oliver and told him to show them and the locket to his mother—together with a document, which he now produced from his inner pocket. “This is a copy of the record of that proxy marriage I told you about,” he said. “And what shall I say to her?” Oliver asked. “Nothing! Just beg of her that she will read them. She will understand.” As Oliver opened the gate, Rose appeared at one of the windows to the left of the front door. “Henry!” she cried in anguish. “Please do not torture us so! Please go away—please, please, please ...” Oliver skipped up to her, laughing all the way. “Hallo, Aunt Rose!” he giggled. “You are my real aunt, you know. And my name really is Oliver Fleming and your sister Agnes was my mother ...” His voice trailed off and he turned back to Henry, ashen faced once more. “That’s why he tried to throttle me, of course! Because I told him ...” “Who tried to throttle you?” Rose asked. “When?” “Never mind now.” Henry was impatient. “Tell them later. Do go and show those things to my mother. Poor Giles and Brittles out here—their arms must be practically falling off!” “Show what things?” Rose asked. “These!” Oliver opened his hands briefly. “I’ve got Agnes’s picture here. Come and look at them with your aunt. You can say if it is her or not.” At which he dashed in doors, shouting, “Mrs Maylie! Mrs Maylie!” at the top of his voice. She came out of the parlour holding her hands to her ears. “Be quiet, you wretched boy!” she shouted back at him. “You’ll give me such a headache.” Oliver brushed past her and crossed to the parlour window, where a small whatnot stood. He placed his treasures upon it but reserved the document for later. He left the rings for Mrs Maylie to inspect but, on seeing Rose enter the room, just behind her aunt, he picked up the locket, opened it to reveal the miniature

257 portrait, and then held it behind his back as she sometimes held humbugs for him, asking him to guess which hand. “You won’t faint, Aunt Rose—will you?” he asked, grinning merrily. “What is all this ‘aunt’ nonsense?” she asked, half in apprehension, half in annoyance. “It’s not nonsense. Look!” And he thrust the locket into her hand. “Agnes!” she exclaimed as soon as her eyes fell upon it. “Agnes!” her aunt murmured, reading the name engraved inside one of the rings. “That is a lock of my mother’s hair,” Oliver told Rose. “And that is a lock of my father’s hair—Agnes and Edwin Leeford!” “What are you saying, child?” Mrs Maylie asked crossly. “How can you possibly ...” “Henry found them. He went up to Fellgate and got them there.” “How? Who from? Did you say Henry? Is he here? Have Giles and Brittles let him pass?” “They soon will, I think,” Oliver said as she turned and started angrily toward the door. “As soon as you’ve set eyes on this!” He produced the document with a flourish and held it out toward her, challenging her not to read it. “I can’t take all this in!” Rose cried as she slumped down in a chair. “You are my nephew? You are Agnes’s child?” Mrs Maylie snatched the paper from him with ill grace. “If this is some elaborate prank of yours and Henry’s,” she said, “you will both be very, very sorry.” “It is Agnes, isn’t it?” Oliver asked Rose. She sighed and nodded, turning the miniature toward the light. “She was only seventeen then. My mother painted this in the year she died—the year my mother died, not ... well, of course you understand that! She did a bigger portrait, too. Where did this come from?” “I said—Fellgate.” “Oh yes.” “That’s all I know so far. Henry could tell us everything, if only ...” He cleared his throat heavily. At that moment Henry himself appeared in view through the window, still on the road outside; only his head and shoulders were visible over the hedge. His mother saw him and went to the window, throwing it wide open. “This is too serious a matter to play games with, Henry,” she said. “Will you give me your solemn word that this is genuine?” “I will,” he replied. “Fetch me a Bible.” “Your word is enough,” she said. “But you can understand my misgivings when such a fortuitous discovery follows so swiftly on the heels of our last conversation.” “Our last civilized conversation,” he said. “But believe me, mother, in the league of fortuitous discoveries, this ranks pretty low.” “Low, you say? The document that takes all stain off the name of Leeford and so leaves you free to marry Rose—and you call it ...”

258 “What?” Rose looked up from the miniature. “Did you say ...” “Yes, Rose!” Mrs Maylie raised her up by the wrists and embraced her joyfully. “If this document truly is what it purports to be, there can be no possible objection now to your marrying Henry!” “Hallo-o!” Henry called from the lane as if he had only just arrived—and as if Giles and Brittles were not barring his way with pitchforks. “Anybody ho-ome?” His mother and Rose both laughed at his whimsy and ran out of the front door to greet him. “Why Mister Giles—and Brittles,” Mrs Maylie cried out in horror. “What on earth are you doing with those gruesome weapons? Let Master Henry enter at once, do you hear!” Giles heaved a much-put-upon sigh, which was swiftly echoed by Brittles, and off they went to take Master Henry’s horse round to the stable. Henry took Rose in his arms the moment he came through the gate. Mrs Maylie led Oliver indoors, saying, “I don’t think this is meant for our eyes or ears, Nolly.”

CHAPTER 45

Sikes loses two good friends, and all by his own hand

Without one pause or a moment’s consideration; without once turning his head to the right or the left, or raising his eyes to the sky or lowering them to the ground, but looking straight before him with savage resolution—his teeth so tightly compressed that the strained jaw seemed starting through his skin—Sikes held on his headlong course, nor muttered a word, nor relaxed a muscle, until he reached his own door. He opened it softly with a key; strode lightly up the stairs; and entered his and Nancy’s room. But all his caution was wasted, for Nancy was not there. Only Bullseye rose to greet him, wagging his little stump of a tail and whining for food. His master found him some leftover pie, which he devoured ravenously before settling down by the hearth, just as if it were not summer and a roaring fire were burning there. Deep within him Sikes felt the faint stirrings of relief—not that he would have confessed as much to another, nor even admitted it in so many words to himself. For, in his own blackguard way, Bill Sikes loved his Nancy; but, since no one had ever treated him gently, from the moment of his birth until now, he had no pattern for showing such gentleness as he undoubtedly felt. A rough kiss, a violent embrace, a failure to strike when the hand was already raised, the fist already clenched—these were marks of tenderness in him, the mildest actions he knew. And so, on feeling this slight relief that Nancy was still abroad in the City and that the moment when he must chastise her was, for a long or short while, delayed, he crossed the room to the cupboard where he kept the spirits. “If I do not have spirit enough in me to punish her as she deserves,” he told himself, “I can soon put it there!” He laughed aloud at his wit and Bullseye wagged his stump. Immediately his

259 master wished Nancy were there to share the amusement; she thought he was the funniest cove alive and always laughed at his witticisms, however trivial. She was a good gel, really—’cepting, of course, when she done mad, bad things like this ... what was it? What did Fagan say? Oh yes—peaching on them all. Not to a trap, though. Funny, that. Just to a swell in one of them clubs. It got Fagan in a bate, though ... never seen his lordship so rattled. He couldn’t wait for the Dodger to come out with it. He kept jumping in and telling it himself. It must be true, though, ’cos the Artful kept saying yes and the Artful was always a pell of Nancy’s—her best pell after himself, she allus said. So it must be true. The neat gin slid down his throat like silk. It was a good distillery, this. What was the name? Can’t read it. Too dark. Dark enough for dark deeds. Nancy stayed in the dark to do her dark deed ... singing in the dark. Not to the traps, though. Funny, that. Just to a swell. It must be something to do with Fagan’s business. Fagan and this other swell, Monks. Yes—Monks and Oliver Twist—the little rat with the golden hair. May wolves tear out their throats—Monks and Twist both! His Nance had never been the same since they appeared. The little rat especially—he’d taught her an independence of spirit she’d never of dared show afore he come along. Made a harpy-nag of her with her, ‘Bill, yer drinks too much ... Bill, yer getting fat and slothful ... When are yer gonna crack a crib that’s worth it, Bill? ... I’m not slaving all hours so’s you can kip in bed and drink yerself sodden, Bill!’ Ga-a-ah! He drank from the bottle now, for he could no longer trust his shaking hand to fill the tumbler—which was filthy, anyway. She never done no cleaning up around the house, never cooked no meals, never even sewed a button on for him. Dinner, to her, was a pie-with-with from the warehouse. And why should she sew on buttons when he could screw a whole shirt off a little laundry girl with a single threat? That was her idea of fair shares —she’d tell him what needed doing; he’d go out and do it! Ga-a-a-ah! As silken slug after silken slug of gin wound its way down his gullet, the memory of what Fagan and the Dodger had told him faded, to be replaced by the ever-present resentment she had roused in him since the new independence had come over her. But he would chastise her—oh yes! That was firmly fixed in what was left of his mind; the reason might change but the resolution burned undimmed. The bottle was empty on the floor, beneath his dangling arm, when Nancy returned, bringing their ‘dinner’ with her. She let herself in even more quietly than he had done and was overjoyed to see him snoozing before the empty grate. Bullseye, who knew her tread as well as his master’s, opened no more than one eye and wagged his stump no more than twice before falling back asleep. “Bin fed, ’ave yer?” Nancy whispered. “Good boy!” As quiet as a mouse she tugged off her boots and got herself half-undressed— down, at least, to the state in which she usually slept. She consumed her portion of the pie-with-with, licked her fingers clean, took a bite of apple and rubbed her teeth all over with the piece before finishing it off, core and all. And then— feeling the evening rather hot and sultry, took off one more petticoat before drawing aside the curtains around the bed.

260 By that perversity which governed so much of his character and so many of his actions, Sikes, who had snored heartily through all her preparations, woke up at the faint jingling of the brass rings on the brass tester-rail. “Take ’em all orf!” he growled, every syllable husky with intoxicated sleep. “Every stitch!” He staggered to his feet, every move erratic with intoxicated wakefulness. Bullseye lifted his head an inch or two and whined. “No, Bill,” she pleaded. “Not tonight, eh? You’d not credit the business I done tonight—look!” But her dash to her purse, to show him the guinea she had supposedly earned, was intercepted by her drunken paramoor, who snarled, “Not that! Yer don’t slide out of it like that! I gotta chastise yer—that’s what!” “Oh yus?” She took a step back and placed her fists on her hips. “Sez who?” “Sez Fagan, that’s ’oo!” “Ha!” She forced a hint of tenderness into her tone then. “Oh, Bill! Darling Bill! When are yer gonna be yer own man? You’re a bigger man than Fagan’s ever let yer be—can’tcher see it?” “Gotta chastise yer,” he repeated stubbornly as he grabbed the table and started dragging it toward the door. Bullseye rose to a sitting position and cocked his head. “What’cher doing, Bill?” For the first time she became truly alarmed. He had never done such a thing before. He’d knocked her about a bit, yes—left her with a bruise or two, certainly. But this ... blocking off the door with the heavy table— that was new. Bullseye thought so, too, for he set up a repeated whimper. “Quiet, ya cur! Gotta beat’cher black ’n’ blue, that’s what,” Sikes muttered. “But nothing ... nothing ... whossa word?” “Nothing sensible?” she suggested. “Fagan’s blown, Bill. Believe me—I know it. Now it’s ...” “Gotcha!” he cried as he levelled an accusing finger at her. “Fagan’s blown and you blew ’im! That was it! Gotta beat’cher black ’n’ blue for it but nothing too violent for safety—that was it!” “Safety, Bill?” she sneered. “There’s no safety left with Fagan. Can’t you get that into your thick, stupid head?” The dog, now whimpering and whining by turns, retreated beneath the table. Sikes locked the door and pocketed the key before turning and making a sudden lurch for her—or for one of her. He missed—and realized he’d grabbed for the wrong one. Also she was twice as far away from him as she had seemed. Nancy, meanwhile, was struggling to get back into her clothes. A broken leg from jumping out by the window would be preferable to what Sikes obviously had in mind for her now. “No, Bill!” she urged. “I never meant that about you being stupid. You’re not stupid, Bill—not at all. You’re bright. You’re clever. You’re smart! You’ve surely got brains enough to see that Fagan’s blown?” “Yus—and ’oo blew ’im, eh?” “Oliver!” she shouted. “ ’Oo dyer think. Listen! Listen to me! This is Fagan’s work you’re about to do. You do it, and you’ll go down with ’im. I’m the only

261 one what can save yer, Bill, ’cos I’m the only one what knows the truth.” He lunged at her but missed again. This time, however, his great ham of a fist caught in a fold of her bodice and ripped it half off her. He laughed with delight and finished the job with a deliberate tug. Bullseye yapped and howled. After that a red mist rose before the man’s eyes. Now Nancy could have proved to him, from every point of the compass, that he was digging his own grave, and he would not have heeded her. He giggled like a maniac as he staggered after her, chasing her round the room, catching her infrequently, for, though the room was small she was both lithe and sober. But each time she escaped him only at the cost of another chemmy or petticoat. And when there were none left to sacrifice—when they stood facing each other on opposite sides of the chair, the only remaining object she could place between him and her—she saw the gleam of a mad, drunken rage in his eye, mingled with some kind of perverted joy in exercising his brute power over her weaker person. And then she knew that only some desperate action on her part would save her. The dog was now barking and howling like a thing demented. But Sikes ignored the creature; now he had only one thing on his mind. Grinning savagely, knowing he had her trapped at last and could beat her black and blue at his leisure, he bent and picked up the chair, which seemed light as goosedown in his mighty arms. For a moment she imagined he was about to throw it at her, and she prepared to make a dive toward the cold hearth, where the poker lay invitingly—and as yet unnoticed by him! He threw the chair—not at her but on to the bed—so that he could stalk her slowly while she ran her wildest around the room. She made that dive for the hearth, nonetheless, and grasped the poker and sprang to her feet and struck out at him as hard as she could. The blow took him on the shoulder. For a moment the pain dropped him to one knee. She raised the implement again but could not bring it down upon him. “I’ll break yer other arm,” she threatened. “Are yer gonna stop this nonsense now or must I do it?” He cowered from her and growled something inaudible. “What was that, Bill? I didn’t rightly hear yer!” “I said I’ll stop,” he muttered furiously. She lowered the poker to her side. Quicker than lightning he grabbed it from her, sprang to his feet, and brought it down on her head with a sickening crunch of iron on bone. She dropped where she stood; not so much as a sigh escaped her lips. Bullseye went mad, howling and yelping as he scrabbled at the threshold with a manic frenzy; had it been earthen instead of wood, he would have been free within seconds. Sikes stood over her, panting heavily—and suddenly feeling just about as sober as he’d ever felt in his life. “Nance?” he muttered, prodding her lifeless arm with the toe of his boot. “Get up, gel! I just wanted evens.” Blood spilled out of her thick, dark hair and pooled on the hearthstone.

262 “Nance? We’re quits now. I won’t chastise yer, honest. I’ll just let on to Fagan I did. Get up, gel! Please?” For all his bully talk and swaggering threats, he had never actually killed another in his life—had never even half-killed, come to that. He might have felt sober but his brains, still fuddled by the gin, took all of five minutes to admit he had killed her. “Fagan!” he shouted at the four echoing walls. “What do I do now?” The poker fell from his nerveless grasp. Bullseye, despairing of escape by the door, had run to the window and set up a furious barking. His master, goaded to action at last, opened the window and pushed the creature out, hoping to kill him, too, with the fall. But the dog had the good fortune to fall on to the awning of a handcart, parked beside the kerb for the night. He ripped it in his fall but it broke the force enough to allow him to limp off, whining into the dark. Sikes shut the window again and looked wildly about the room—everywhere except at that lifeless thing in the hearth. His eyes fell on the empty gin bottle. He ran to pick it up. He threw back his head and tilted it upside-down above his eagerly open jaws. One single aromatic drop fell out—a memory to taunt his present terror where he sought an elixir to relieve it. With an oath he flung the bottle into the hearth, smashing it to a hundred sherds. He went again to the cupboard, only to discover that that particular bottle had been their last. Their last? His guilty eyes turned to the thing that had been Nancy and he realized there was no ‘they’ or ‘them’ any more. Just him. Alone now—alone in all the world. Fagan would blow on him to the traps within two seconds of hearing what he’d done to Nancy, sure as dogs have fleas. Dogs! The dog! He shouldn’t have let the dog go! Bullseye would lead the mob to him no matter where he went. Unless ... He had to get out of London! To Hackney Marshes! Yes! No! The brief flame of hope that was kindled by the name of that ancient sanctuary for thieves soon died again. The days when a man could hide in Hackney Marshes were dead and gone. The roads were all too good now. Even Barnet was unsafe. He’d have to get away to Birmingham at least—and tramp it day and night—no lifts from friendly carters who’d recall his face and build and voice. And how could he buy a little time? Someone would come a-looking for Nance tomorrow—by noon at the latest. Fagan would worry, too. He might even be sending the Dodger round now, just to make sure that black-and-blue hadn’t turned into stiff-and-cold! The traps could be after him within the hour! Suddenly he saw how he could buy a little time. Chuckling at his cleverness, he forced himself to approach the corpse, forced himself to pick up her hand, forced the hand to point one finger, dipped the finger in the blood, and with it wrote upon an unstained part of the hearthstone: FAGAI— the I being the first stroke of the letter N. He left her finger resting at its base, from which he hoped the investigators would infer she had died in the very act of

263 writing the name of her murderer. “So mine’s a thick, stupid head, eh, Nance?” He chuckled again. “You should never oughter of said that, gel. Yer knows what I am when me temper’s up. This is all your fault.” Thus, having judged and juried his own case—and found himself blameless—he rose, took all Nancy’s earnings plus the few coins that remained in the place, pulled the table from the door, unlocked it, locked it again behind him, and stepped out whistling into the night. “Birmingham!” he murmured as he set off up the street. “Sit up and take note, for the great Bill Sikes, king of thieves and vagabonds, is about to grace yer with ’is presence!”

CHAPTER 46

Oliver learns that an old friend will shortly take up new lodgings

Mrs Maylie looked across the table at Oliver and said, “It’s long past your bedtime, young man.” Oliver dipped his head in acquiescence and rose to his feet, wiping his lips into his napkin. “I’ll obey you, of course, ma’am,” he said. “Yet I fear I shall lie there straining my ears for every word of what is being said here—said about my mother and father ... and who knows what else, beside?” “All the same,” she replied severely. “You have been allowed to enjoy your first dinner with the grown-ups and I think that is quite enough for one day.” “Mother!” Henry exclaimed. “Is this really the time for that sort of accountancy in privileges? Send Nolly to bed now and I am the one who’ll suffer for it.” “You?” She looked at him in surprise. “I fail to see that.” He turned to Oliver. “Imagine you are lying in our bed—an hour from now, say. Perhaps you have fallen asleep but, quiet as I try to be, you awaken as I slip between the sheets. What happens next?” A born juvenile lead like Oliver hardly needed prompting. At once he began to beg in a peculiarly nauseating, whining tone, “Oh, please, Henry, dear, sweet, kind Henry—pray do tell me what you and my Aunt Rose and dear, dear Mrs Maylie were saying just now. I declare—I am so consumed with curiosity that ...” “Very well!” Mrs Maylie silenced him with an imperious hand. “You may stay! You are that dripping tap that wore away a stone sink—you know that?” “Dear Mrs Maylie,” Oliver said sincerely. “You are the kindest, gentlest ...” “Henry!” the woman shouted. “You brought this upon me—you take it off me!” “Very well, Nolly!” Henry winked at him and Oliver was silent again. “Now, mother,” he said, “we have this puzzling conundrum in that ...” “All conundrums are puzzling, dear. Do try to avoid such redundant tautologies.” “All tautologies are redundant, mother, dear,” he replied with a smile. “We have this tautology ... I mean redundancy ... I mean ... you know what I mean ...”

264 “Conundrum,” Oliver said. “My mother’s locket has a miniature of her, painted by her mother. And Mister Brownlow has her portrait, also by her mother, hanging in Mrs Bedwin’s parlour—or he had it there before he emigrated to the West Indies. Can you ...” “Ah!” Henry interrupted. “That’s something I haven’t mentioned yet. Charlotte told me she had written to Brownlow’s attorneys, asking if they would receive the rings and locket on his behalf, to hold in trust for you if ever he should find you again ...” “How did she know Mister Brownlow had the portrait?” Mrs Maylie asked. “She didn’t,” he answered. “None of us knew it until Oliver said as much this afternoon. All Charlotte knew was what Bumble had told her—namely that Brownlow was interested in gaining information about Oliver. That’s why she wrote in the first place. All right? Now that that’s clear, we come back to our conundrum—what is Brownlow’s connection with the Flemings? Why does he have Agnes Fleming’s portrait hanging on one of his walls?” Here he looked directly at his mother. “And I think the answer may be assisted by your telling us what you know of the Flemings, mother, dear—more, that is, than you have already told us.” She stared at the remnants of the meal in silence awhile. Then she said, “I think we should let Mister Giles clear away.” “Mother?” Henry insisted. “Let us withdraw to the parlour,” she insisted as she rose. “I feel I need the support of one glass of ginger cordial.” She tinkled her little handbell and asked Giles to bring some hot water to the parlour; half a glass of ginger cordial would support Oliver, too—and help him to sleep later. When they were all resettled in the parlour, she took up her narrative at the point of her son’s question. “Edwin Leeford,” she said, “was a ... that is, he and ... oh dear! The Leefords lived at Saint Briavels, across the River Wye from Chepstow but they always worshipped in Chepstow because one of their cousins was a minister there. We worshipped in the same church ...” “You mean you lived in Chepstow, too?” Henry asked. “Yes, dear. Didn’t I say that?” “No. Never, in fact. You’ve always spoken of growing up ‘in Wales’—this is the first I’ve heard of Chepstow.” He glanced at Rose, who nodded in confirmation. Mrs Maylie smiled at Oliver. “What is it about you, young man?” she asked. “Everywhere you go, people’s deepest secrets come all untangled in your wake!” “I’m very sorry, ma’am,” he replied penitently. “I’m sure I don’t mean it to happen that way.” “I’m sure you don’t! But it seems to happen nonetheless. Where was I?” “In church in Chepstow,” Henry said. “Oh, yes. I was only about twelve then. A mere child!” She beamed at Oliver. “And I dropped a glove and”—she swallowed heavily—“Edwin Leeford picked it up and ran after me. And ... I don’t know. We just became friends after that.” “Childhood sweethearts?” Rose asked. “Yes, with the emphasis on childhood. We were children, merely. His father—

265 your grandfather, Oliver—was a very ... he was a man of unbending principles. He had a bee in his bonnet about uniting all the Christian churches into one truly catholic church. He was sure that if only all Christians could unite, then Our Lord would come again and rule in glory for a thousand years—which is, indeed, predicted in the Bible. But first we all had to unite. And his own contribution to that Grand Coalescence, as he called it, was to force poor Edwin, who was only twenty at the time, to marry a Roman Catholic lady.” “Maria Monks,” Oliver murmured. Mrs Maylie glanced at him in astonishment. “You know?” “I told him,” Henry said. “It was all in the papers to do with the annulment.” “I see. Well, everybody told the old man it was the wrong way to go about things—I mean, everybody who dared stand up to him. And I’m sorry to say he lived to see the predictions come true and all his hopes founder. Anyway”—she smiled all round—“there was no serious romance between poor Edwin and me but we remained good friends and he wrote to me often throughout his unhappy marriage to Maria. It was pure friendship by then, I must add. By the time our affection might have blossomed into love, I had met your father, Henry—God rest him—and that was that!” “It explains everything,” Henry pointed out, “except your going back to Chepstow, all those years later, and adopting Rose.” “Oh!” She was mildly surprised. “I should have thought that was obvious. I did not lose all connection with our friends in Chepstow, you know. Edwin wrote to tell me that he had returned to the town and had entered into a romantic association with a beautiful young girl called Agnes Fleming. Then I heard nothing more. I wrote to other friends in the town, who told me what had happened—that Edwin had died in Rome—nothing about the annulment, mind you—Edwin had told no one about that, except, possibly, Agnes. I suppose he wanted to spare his father’s feelings. Or memory—I don’t even know if he was still alive then. Anyway, the same letter also said that Agnes had disappeared—in shame, they said. Not hearing from Edwin, she must have assumed the annulment failed and that the proxy marriage did not, therefore, take place—and that she was ruined.” She sighed and sank into a reverie—until she realized she had still not quite completed her tale. “A week later,” she continued, “I received another letter to tell me that Agnes’s father, Augustus Fleming, had died of a broken heart, leaving a younger daughter of seven or eight years called Rose. But that was around the time when Mister Maylie fell ill, so for six months I was unable to go back to Chepstow for any purpose whatsoever. And after he died ... well, I didn’t want to go anywhere. So it was a year—almost a year—before I returned to my native town. I hoped to find that poor Agnes had meanwhile returned. I would have offered whatever help she needed, of course—because off my lifelong friendship with the father of her child.” She leaned forward to where Oliver was sitting cross-legged on the carpet at her feet and patted him on the head. “Such great, solemn eyes!” she murmured. “Are you taking this all in, my child?” “I think I might like to go to Chepstow,” he replied. “Would a hundred pounds

266 be enough to get me there and back? Me and Aunt Rose, I mean?” “Nolly?” Rose said. He turned to her. “I think I’d rather go back to being your sister. I don’t feel like anybody’s aunt, much less yours!” “As you wish ... Rose.” He grinned at her and turned back to Mrs Maylie. “How did you find Rose, then, ma’am—after you returned there?” “Oh, there was no difficulty in that. Maria Leeford, who had gone back to calling herself Maria Monks, had visited the town and ‘rescued’ Rose—as she called it—putting her into the care of those dreadful people.” She chuckled. “If she’s still alive, she must be still paying them a miserable five pounds a year for all I know—until Rose comes of age—for I’m sure they have neglected to inform her that I took Rose off their hands for twenty pounds!” “Ha!” Henry exclaimed. “Now I shall be able to look any Oriental potentate in the eye and tell him my mother bought my wife for a bride-price of twenty ... guineas. I shall say guineas.” “You!” Rose butted him playfully on the shoulder and then, no doubt feeling weary, left her sweet head resting there. “So now,” Henry said, “all is explained—except Brownlow’s possession of Agnes’s portrait.” Again he turned an expectant gaze upon his mother. “As to that,” she replied, “I am no wiser than you. Edwin must have been given it at some time. That is clear. But how it passed from him to Mister Brownlow must remain a mystery—until we can meet the man himself and ask him face-to- face.” “And that,” Henry said, “may be sooner than anyone here may suppose. Nolly! I have one more happy surprise for you—at least, I’m sure it will be happy. Are you ready?” Oliver nodded and held his breath. “I did not tell you all that Charlotte told me about her correspondence with Brownlow’s lawyers. In their response to her, they advised her to keep the locket and rings somewhere safe for the moment —because Brownlow himself is due to return from the West Indies at any moment! Indeed, he may already be here!” “Now the boy won’t sleep at all!” Mrs Maylie said crossly. “See him squirm and stamp his heels! Well, Henry—you have only yourself to blame.”

CHAPTER 47

Sikes takes another long country walk and finds it even less to his liking

Of all the wicked deeds that had been perpetrated under cover of darkness, within wide London’s bounds since that night fell, the murder of Nancy was the worst. Of all the horrors that rose with an ill scent upon the morning air, that was the foulest and most cruel. The sun—the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man—burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant

267 glory. Through costly coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray. It lighted the room where the murdered woman lay. Nothing stirred there save a small plague of bluebottles, attracted by the matted blood. The stillness of death is the most profound there is. The stillness of a table or a rock is nothing beside it. And the stillness of a once-laughing, once-vibrant, once-passionate young girl, such as Nancy was, is a stillness passing all comprehension. How strange, then, that something so utterly, so entirely, so perfectly still as Nancy’s corpse should be the occasion of so much feverish activity—both in Saffron Hill and along the ways leading north to Birmingham. In Saffron Hill the arrival of Bullseye last night, still whining and yelping, a mere ten minutes after the murder was done, first alerted Fagan and his crew to the possibility that all was not well in George Yard, off Turnmill Street, where Sikes and Nancy had their kip that month. Filled with apprehension that, in his anger—his justifiable anger—he had fired Sikes up too hot, Fagan dispatched the Dodger to go and discover the lie of the land. The door to the room was locked, of course, but that was no bar to young Artful. He went back to the street, moved the handcart closer to the wall, shinned up one of its side-stanchions, hopped onto a ledge, and worked his way along it until he could peer in at the window. “Nance?” he called softly, seeing her lying apparently drunk in the hearth—it would not be for the first time. “Nance? It’s me—Dodger. Is Bill wiv yer?” But as his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom within, he saw what the palpitations of his heart and the forebodings of his spirit had already half-prepared him to see. “Oh-mi-gawd!” His whispered oath briefly clouded the glass. “Oh my gawd!” he cried aloud and, slipping, fell to the footpath below. He bruised a knee and an elbow in his fall but, heedless of the pain, he raced back to Saffron Hill as fast as his legs could carry him. “ ’E’s turned ’er off,” he cried breathlessly as soon as he opened the door. “What?” Fagan cried; there was a curious mixture of fear and rage in his tone. “Turned ’er off—done ’er in—snuffed ’er. She’s gawn trumpet-cleaning. ’Ow many ways d’yer want me to say it, Fagan? I’ll say it plain—our Nancy’s gone to Peg Trantum’s.” “I told him!” Fagan roared. “You heard me, Dodger. Nothing too violent, I said. Beat her black and blue but nothing too bold. Didn’t I say that, Dodger?” The Dodger’s tongue darted in and out, licking his lips without moistening them; his panic was communicating to Charley Bates, Bet, and the young buck, who had just lost his last shilling to their superior knowledge of the cards. The dog had been turned out of doors again. “What you said, Fagan, ain’t neither in this place nor that. ’E’s croaked ’er and that’s all about it.” “No sign of ’im? She never killed him, too?” Bates asked. “ ’E kept a primed pistol there, I know.” “No sign o’ that,” the Dodger replied. “ ’E’s up the Cripples this minute, I’ll lay, drinking enough Dutch courage to come for sanctuary here.”

268 “I say—I rather think I ought to be leaving,” the buck cried, having turned a distinct shade of pale green about the gills. “Can anybody lend me the cab-fare home?” Fagan held out a sovereign without a second thought—which was the clearest sign to the others of how dire a predicament now was theirs. “You’ve never been here, you understand,” Fagan assured him. “Never been here?” he began to protest. “Never!” his lordship insisted. “You don’t know my name—I don’t know yours—you’ve never met Batesy—you wouldn’t recognize Bet if you passed her in the street. And, talking of streets—you couldn’t place Saffron Hill on the map of London to save your life. We’ll be gone from here inside five minutes, anyway. You understand all this?” He waved the coin below the oaf’s nose, which proved a powerful stimulant to his intelligence. “Yes!” he drawled as a smile slowly creased his face. “Got it! Of course! Jolly excitin’ what!” “Jolly!” Fagan passed him the sovereign and told him to be off, and if Bullseye was sniffing round outside, to give him a kick. “Now Bet, now lads—we must look sharp!” “Where this time?” the Dodger asked as he and the other two flung all their portable property into blankets and sacks. “A place we’ve not had to use these two years gone,” Fagan told him. “Jacob’s Island!” “The same—let us hope it still has a floor and a roof!” Fagan would dearly have loved to take his ‘pretty things’ which were once again securely hidden beneath the screwed-down floorboards, where Oliver had seen him hide them on that first morning among his lordship’s crew. Of course, they had been with him on every move they had made since then—but never had he been forced to move in such a panic as this. Even if he could send the others on ahead—for the Dodger knew the way to Jacob’s Island well enough—there would still be the problem of concealing the strong-box there without their knowledge, for, the moment they arrived, he would have to leave them again to settle Monks’s fate with his friends in Bow Street. Reluctantly, then, he left his pretty things behind, comforting himself with the thought that there was nowhere else in London—nowhere accessible to him, at least—where they would be more secure for the moment. If he had known how wide of the mark was the Dodger’s guess as to Sikes’s whereabouts at that precise moment, he would have been a great deal easier in his mind and far more leisurely in his move. But then, he did not know his name was written in Nancy’s blood on the hearth beside her body, either. And in Fagan’s world, not to know such important little details was usually the cause of much suffering. Sikes, having passed unchallenged through Islington was then climbing Highgate Hill, at the very spot where, according to the stone beside the way there, Dick Whittington once heard the bells of London calling him to ‘turn again’ and become ‘thrice Lord Mayor of London Town.’ But the bells that tolled in Sikes’s ears sounded more like passing bells, ringing his own death knell. If they called

269 him to anything, it was a triple hanging—or a hanging-drawing-quartering. Ahead of him he saw what looked like a night-watchman, though it could just as easily have been a coachman on his way home. Not wishing to risk the encounter, however, he took off along a footpath across the fields to his left, skirting Caen Wood, to emerge at last on Hampstead Heath. There he descended into the hollow of the Vale of Health before mounting the opposite side into Hampstead village, from where he struck out for North End. There he lay beneath a hedge and cat- napped awhile, until the sweat of fear had lifted from him. Each painful step made him realize how little exercise he had taken of late. Nance was right. He had become slothful. He’d mend his ways now, though. Perhaps he should go back and tell her ...? “No!” he cried aloud, stirring a flock of rooks to the sharp, clucking calls they make when disturbed at night. In his exhaustion he had even forgotten, for a moment, what he was running from; he would almost have sworn he was running from Nancy’s wrath, rather than from her cold, lifeless body. Oh, what would he not give now for one minute of even her most terrible wrath! A minute? An hour! A lifetime! Yes, he would endure the lash of her tongue for the rest of his natural span, if only he could have her back. If he had known how to place his two hands together, how to kneel fittingly—and, above all, Whom to address—he would have done so for the rest of that night. As it was, the fear of discovery drove him to rise and continue on his way, ignoring the protests from every muscle, joint, nerve, and fibre within him. Having little or no knowledge of England’s geography, he now began to fear he had struck out too soon and in too westerly a direction for his ultimate destination—Birmingham. It would be best, he thought, to go north first and only edge westwards when he was sure of his goal. So back he went to Highgate, this time taking the lane to the north of Caen Wood. From Highgate he crossed the fields to Stoke Newington, where he found himself at last on a road that still retained the stamp of its Roman origins in its exceptional straightness. This must surely be the Great North Road, he thought. It certainly ran north to judge by the glow in the sky behind him. But a tramping labourer told him he was now on Watling Street to Cambridge and he should either go back to Highgate or turn left ahead at Ponders End and wend his way across country through Enfield to Potters Bar, where he could once again pick up the road he sought. Being unable to face the prospect of going through Highgate for the third time in as many hours, he chose the latter course. Now there was nothing for it but to place one foot in front of the other and fall forward in a mindless sort of daze, encouraging himself with the reminder that, compared with the dance he’d be doing on the Newgate scaffold, this was very heaven. On through Stamford Hill he stumbled, to Seven Sisters, Tottenham ... Edmonton ... Ponders End. And there, just as the man had said, he found a fingerboard pointing left to Enfield. Glad that something seemed at last to be going well for him he set off to the left just as the first fingers of dawn rose up to lift night’s veil behind him. By now he was walking so automatically that it would have cost him more effort to stop, to

270 let his sinews rest—and begin to notice their pain—than it did to continue. The sun rose in a clear azure sky as he left Enfield behind him, taking a winding country lane that had been marked by a fingerboard to Potter’s Bar. Had they discovered her yet? Had the hue and cry started? Was his name already being cried from street to street? Were bills even now being printed with his name upon them in large black Egyptians? £5 REWARD ... or £10? What was one dead Nancy worth to the traps? A servant’s annual wages? Each insistent question was a further goad to his tortured legs, forcing his muscles to efforts they no longer had left in them. At Potter’s Bar he felt safe enough—though barely—to stop at a pie-shop and buy some vittles, including a loaf of new-baked bread that he could mine with one finger along his way. He bought a bottle of ale, too, to steady the shivers in his hands—which the innkeeper thought were due entirely to alcoholic excess followed by deprivation. Sikes, by drinking it down greedily in an unbroken train of gulps, and ordering another immediately, did nothing to dispel the conclusion. He managed a few miles more—to just beyond the turn to Essendon, in fact— when his legs protested so much that he had no choice but to fall against the hedge and there take his ease. Once he had done so, not all the hounds in all the hunts in England could have chased him over that soft bed of thorns and nettles into the field beyond. The relief was exquisite—as if his blood had turned to pure sweet gin and was bathing every tortured strand of flesh in his body. While thus he lay, the carriages and waggons passed up and down on their quotidian errands. At first his guilt made him look hard to see if any driver or passenger eyed him suspiciously—and he was ready to make off across the fields at the slightest such provocation. But what is there to suspect in an exhausted tramp, lying at full stretch in the hedge, taking no thought to conceal himself? The fellow was surely harmless. Soon, then, Sikes ceased to pay them any attention and settled himself to sleep in earnest—at least until the sun rose over the hawthorns and baked him awake again. What, therefore, induced him to open his eyes again to see that one particular carriage approach along the side road he could not imagine—did not wish to imagine. It was an open phæton containing a lady, a girl, and—witches boil his bones —Oliver Twist! Sikes stared up in horror, feeling sure that the apparition was not of this world. They were talking ... laughing ... paying him not the slightest attention ... not even noticing he was there! What could be the purpose of this vision? Why had those malevolent fates that ruled his miserable life arranged for him to see it? Ha! Now it was different. They had paused at the junction to let a dray go by; and now Oliver had spotted him! A cool customer for you! He didn’t bat an eyelid. Well, of course he wouldn’t—this was a vision; he wasn’t real; some spiteful harpy was painting his image there, across the road. Why didn’t Oliver look away? And why could not he, Sikes, look away, either? For a moment that seemed eternal they were locked thus, his eye in Oliver’s, Oliver’s in his. Then the dray dawdled past, the driver of the phæton cracked his whip, and the chariot sprang forward once more, turning toward Hatfield and vanishing in a trail of its own dust; and all during that turn Oliver kept his eyes fixed on him. Even

271 afterwards, while they were vanishing up the road, he kept turning round—almost as if he thought he, too, were seeing a phantasm. The dust was real enough, anyway, Sikes thought ruefully as he coughed and rubbed it from his eyes. Then, unable to rest or sleep any longer, he rose and forced his limbs to continue their impossible march north. How many miles still separated him from Birmingham he could not even guess—and he certainly did not wish to know! By the time he reached Hatfield, however, the true meaning of the apparition he had just witnessed occurred to him—not that he had been thinking of it in the meanwhile. Indeed, he was in that waking-sleeping state of exhaustion where connected thought is well-nigh impossible, and where such thought as does take place seeps out, as it were, between the bonds of weariness. All at once, then, he was seized with the conviction that Oliver’s apparition was saying to him that no matter whither he journeyed—Birmingham or Timbuktoo—he would find his past had gone ahead of him ... was already there, waiting for him. People would be waiting for him, too. Oliver, in his apparition, was a mere token of that. He would walk into Birmingham of a Monday, be taken on a Tuesday, tried on a Wednesday and hanged on a Saturday, friendless and alone. Oh, why had he ever left London? At least he had friends there; he knew the ways of the traps there; he could run blindfold down every little rat-infested court and alley. If he had thought that Oliver had appeared to him deliberately, he would have gone down on bended knee to thank him for this warning. Instead, with a great lassitude in his limbs and a great fatigue in his spirit, he turned about in Hatfield—where no stone would ever announce his vision (‘Turn again, Bill Sikes—thrice hanged in London Town’) and set his face toward ... home, for want of a better word. Three or four miles to the south, on the road back to Chertsey, Rose turned to Oliver and said, “You were strangely interested in that old tramp back there.” The boy nodded. “Just for a moment I thought he looked like the one I called Pop-Eyes.” She gave a theatrical shiver. “Pop-Eyes looked like that? I shall never laugh at his name again!” “But then I realized it was impossible. He was quite enough out of temper when the Cap’n forced him to walk all the way to Golden Grove. He’d never tramp to Hatfield of his own free will and nor would the Cap’n be able to force him a second time. Are we going through Harrow-on-the-Hill again, Aunt Maylie?” “Yes, dear. Why d’you ask?” “Is that where the school is—where my father went?” “So I believe.” “Henry says I may go there, too—if we can find my father’s will and the lawyers who presently have the money in trust.” Rose and her aunt exchanged glances—as Oliver was swift to notice. Seeing his puzzled frown Mrs Maylie explained: “Your upbringing, dear—you know—the baby farm and the workhouse and being an undertaker’s apprentice and ... the rest. It’s hardly what the other boys will have experienced! They might pick on

272 you and tease you, you know.” Oliver shrugged his shoulders at this. “I think I may give a good account of myself there,” he said.

CHAPTER 48

Lord Fagan demands his rights in the face of his manifest wrongs

Constable Bull and Constable Taylor took great care in priming their pistols that morning—and it was a brace of pistols for each man, too. One could never be too careful when setting out to arrest a big prize like Lord Fagan—the biggest prize in England, by their reckoning. They brushed out every trace of spent charge; measured the fresh powder to the last grain; held the barrels vertical by the bars on the barracks windows; tapped them to level the powder; pushed down the wad and firmed it as no wad had ever been firmed by them in their lives before; selected those balls with the most perfect fit; rolled them into the barrels and wedged them firmly with a second wad; and finally, for good measure, cleaned the flint with spirit to remove every lingering trace of finger-grease that might discourage the igniting spark. Constable Bull had just delivered himself of the words: “Now, my lord, we are ready for you, indeed!” when a voice at the door cried out, “Well, Bull! That is most civil of you, I must allow!”—and in walked his lordship in person, wearing a smile as broad as the Strand. “No!” cried Constable Taylor. “You’re supposed to be in Saffron Hill!” “Saffron Hill ...” Fagan screwed up his eyes and gave every appearance of deep thought. “Ah yes—Saffron Hill! I remember the place. In fact, I lodged there once upon a time.” He smiled again and his eyes gleamed with admiration. “Your informants are getting uncomfortably up-to-date, though. Soon they will be telling you where I do actually live! But, enough of this idle chatter—there is something you can tell me.” “What?” they both said together. “Precisely why I should be in Saffron Hill?” They exchanged glances. “Because,” Bull said, “that’s where we was coming to arrest you ...” “... for the murder of one Nancy Rogers at George Yard off Turnmill Street.” “Ah!” Fagan laughed—though the constables both knew him well enough to understand their words had shaken him. “That was Sikes’s doing. Nancy was telling tales on him out of school, you see. I warned him ...” Bull cut him short, which was something he had never done before. “That’s not our information, my lord.” “Oh, I’m sure it isn’t!” Fagan scoffed. “But when was your information ever worth a penny marble?” “This comes from a very good source,” Taylor put in. “An unimpeachable source, you might say.”

273 “I should like to see his face!” Fagan was now showing the first open signs of apprehension. “Her face,” Bull corrected him. Both men were now enjoying their game immensely. “Though I should warn you, my lord—it’s not a pretty sight.” Each time they said ‘my lord’ the tone became a little more ironic. “Nancy, you mean? She lived?” “Long enough to give you up, my lord.” “To whom? Show me that man! Bring him here to face me if he dares!” “We can’t do that, sir. But we can bring that man, as you call him—to her.” Fagan, now thoroughly bemused, looked all about them. “Who? Where is he?” Taylor levelled a finger at him. “You, my lord. With your permission and connivance, we will bring you to her and let her make her confession to you all over again.” The constables grinned at each other and nodded. “What tomfoolery is this?” Fagan asked crossly. “Is she alive or is she dead?” “I’ll grind her bones to make my bread!” Bull roared with laughter at completing the couplet in so adroit and witty a fashion, so germane to their present business. “Come, Lord Fagan! No delay, now. Stay between us, if you please—and do nothing that might give us the opportunity to use these lovingly charged pistols, eh!” Outside in the streets a path magically cleared before them as people realized who was abroad that bright late-summer’s morn. And it closed behind them again in whispering knots: “Lord Fagan ... horrible bloody murder ... got him at last ... poor girl ... skull crushed to dust ... blood everywhere ... you’d think a pack of wolves passed through ...” If one hundredth part of the sympathy that was expended upon Nancy in her death had been held out to her during her brief and sordid life, she would have been a hundred miles from George Yard on that fateful night—a happy little laundress, a lace-maker, a serving wench at a thriving hôtel, a laughing dairymaid—she could have been any of these for one hundredth part of the expenditure that would now go into the detection and arrest, the trial and execution of her murderer, real or alleged. A tale of hundreds, indeed! And, in connection with which, perhaps more of our fine members of parliament might be shamed into applying for ’em, leaving vacancies for those who can do more than simply talk! Heigh-ho! Up Great Queen Street they marched, through Lincoln’s Inn Fields and along Great Turnstile into Holborn. From there, with that subtle and exquisite sense of humour for which the Bow Street Runners are renowned throughout the civilized world, they led their prisoner through Field Lane and up Saffron Hill, pausing outside the door to Fagan’s late ken—just to show him they knew it all. Past all his acquaintance they led him in his disgrace, just to ‘rub his nose in it,’ as they would doubtless boast to their colleagues for years to come. And it was, indeed, as if they knew it all—the whole sorry tale of Fagan’s life since it had crossed the path of Oliver Twist’s; for the natural way from Saffron Hill to George Yard took them through Vine Street and Mutton Lane—past the entrance to Love Court, where Mr Fang held irascible sway over those of Fagan’s

274 realm who fell foul of authority. If they had wanted to ‘rub his lordship’s nose’ in their present petty triumph, they could not have chosen a route more redolent of his true present dangers—not that they realized it, of course; and therein lay his only hope. The nearer they approached George Yard, the denser and more excited grew the crowd, and the whispers turned to cries: “Fagan! They’ve got ’im! It’s Fagan, I tell you! Can’t be! It’s Sikes or I’m a Dutchman! Fagan! Sikes! Fagan! Sikes! ...” But his lordship’s remaining power, even as he walked under arrest, in metaphorical chains, was apparent to all; the throng that would have parted to a narrow corridor for the two constables, and jostled in hard on their heels, now fell back to a carriage width and held off reclosing until he had passed them by some yards. Bull and Taylor were beginning to feel uneasy now, realizing that it had— just possibly—not been the wisest of the many wise actions that ornamented their careers to have brought this king of thieves and vagabonds here to the very heart of his realm. It was a relief to them to get indoors, where the mob was held at bay by two burly constables of the Clerkenwell parish, themselves in awe of their two illustrious colleagues from Bow Street. “She’s not moved an inch, sir,” said one of them confidentially to Bull as they passed. “There now!” Taylor cried as he threw wide the door. A cloud of bluebottles rose at the disturbance but quickly settled themselves to fatten and breed again. Fagan, knowing how violent Sikes could be, had prepared himself to face the most ghastly of sights, yet even he was sickened at the wreckage of poor Nancy, lying still where the villain’s single blow had felled her. But, for all the turmoil that now churned within him—rage at Sikes for this grossest of follies and fear for himself that he might yet be hanged for another’s crime—he had the presence of mind to realize that this was the moment that counted—especially when he tore his eyes away from Nancy and saw his own name four-fifths written in her blood! “You pair of clowns!” he exclaimed—not in loud, bombastic tones but with a quiet contempt that was vastly more effective. “ ’Ere!” Bull responded menacingly. “ ’Oo are yer calling clowns?” “Numskulls? Dunderheads? What would you prefer? Can you never conduct the simplest investigation without revealing your imbecility?” Anyone overhearing Fagan speak would have assumed he was their superior officer talking. “What’s wrong with that scene?” He waved a hand toward the body in the hearth. “Come on!” He tapped a fingertip to his temple. “Think! Observe! Something’s very wrong with that scene—surely even you two can see what it is?” He gave them time enough to stare at the body, then at each other, then at him. “Nancy was not left-handed!” He spoke as one might speak to children, for whom matters of great complexity must be explained in monosyllables. “In any case,” he went on, while they absorbed this upsetting fact. “No human could survive a blow like that long enough to shout a name, much less to write it so laboriously. And even if Nancy did—somehow—manage it, would a right- handed girl in that condition form such even, competent letters with her left

275 hand?” “She must of done!” Taylor cried desperately, pointing his hand at the plain evidence of it. “Oh, must she? Is it not possible that some left-handed person, some very large, strong, brutal left-handed person—having killed her in a fit of drunken rage and now wishing to divert the hue-and-cry on to another—might not pick up her left hand, dip it in her blood, and write those sturdy, confident letters of that other person’s name?” He looked from one to the other of them, mustering all the contempt a sixth-generation aristocrat could possibly feel for two such bunglers, and said, in mocking tones, “Now, I wonder ... can any of us possibly think of such a villain. Big ... burly ... addicted to the bottle ... hot tempered ... left-handed ... known to cohabit with Nancy in this very room ...” The pair of constables shuffled uncomfortably. “How do we know Sikes is left- handed?” Taylor muttered. “Find him!” Fagan taunted. “Ask him! For God’s sake—ask the very people in the streets —they know!” And, before they could stop him, he leaped upon the bed, threw up the window, and roared, “Name me one port-sider, boys and girls—a lefty for the Law!” “Sikes!” went up the roar from every corner of the yard. Fagan turned back to his would-be captors, saying, “What the cats and dogs in the streets know today, Bow Street will surely discover sooner or later!” He paced two steps toward the door. “I take it I am free to go?” “ ’Ere!” Bull exclaimed. “What was you a-doing of, anyway—walking bold as brass into our shop like that?” “Bull!” Fagan cried genially as he stepped a pace or two back toward the man. “There is hope for you yet. Only wait long enough and the right question will surely bubble up through all that scum and mud and eventually find its way to the surface! What was I doing at Bow Street when I was so rudely—and so unnecessarily—interrupted? I was doing what any good citizen would be doing. I was trying to report a felony!” The two constables felt able at last to exchange amused glances. “Oh yes!” Taylor replied sarcastically. “Very likely—I don’t think!” But Fagan was imperturbable. “If one of you will kindly take out a notebook, while the other licks a pencil for him, I will do it now, if you like?” The constables, however, preferred to escort him back to Bow Street, there to do his civic duty in the presence of officers more senior than they. So back through the streets they strode, this time to the huzzahs of those who suddenly found it expedient to claim an ancient and unshakable intimacy with his lordship, not to mention a lifelong devotion to his health and well-being. On arriving at the police barracks, however, Fagan was confronted by an officer of an altogether different stamp—Major Fowkes, an ex-dragoon officer and no man to be trifled with. “Lord Fagan,” he said as soon as the man crossed his threshold, “I arrest you in the king’s name and on foot of a warrant issued at Covent Garden police court at four o’clock yesterday afternoon.” Fagan took out a handkerchief and with it flicked some invisible dust from the

276 sleeve that Bull had lately grasped. “One presumes one will be told on what charge one is held?” he murmured. Major Fowkes stepped back to his desk and riffled through an impressive pile of papers. “Procuring infants and minors for theft, shoplifting, burglary, and other immoral purposes ... receiving stolen goods ... selling goods knowing them to be stolen ... conspiracy to rob ... conspiracy to burgle ... incitement to murder ...” “On whose information?” Fagan asked, still confident that none who knew of these things would dare peach on him. “Ah!” The major’s tone suggested he was noticing it for the first time. “It seems to be the same name on each of these affadavits—one Edward Monks.” Fagan burst out laughing. “Why, Major Fowkes—you are very little better than poor Bull and Taylor here! Do you know the real name of this Edward Monks?” The officer’s eyes narrowed but he made no direct reply. “And do you know what felonies he has committed of late? For your interest, they include an attempted murder and a conspiracy to murder.” “Your witness?” barked the other. “Ah!” Fagan shook his head sadly. “He had her silenced not twelve hours ago. Your constables and I have just left the scene of his crime.” “Bill Sikes,” Bull said. “Not Bill Sikes!” Fagan countered. “Sikes is nothing but a marionette. Edward Monks—whose real name is Leeford, by the by—is the one who pulls his strings. If he could have got Sikes to kill me as easily as he did Nancy, by inflaming him against her, he wouldn’t have needed to put himself in jeopardy to you by signing all those ridiculous bits of paper. He thinks this is his way of ridding himself of me!” He waved a contemptuous hand at the officer’s desk. Major Fowkes chuckled and shook his head in a grudging sort of admiration. “You’re a plausible rogue, my lord. I begin to uderstand how you’ve led us such a dance all these years. But I shall detain you, nonetheless, until we can investigate these matters further.” “Then I demand my rights, sir,” Fagan said at once. “And you shall have them, sir. You will be detained in comfort, I assure you. Give me your parole and you shall lodge in my own quarters here ...” “Not that!” Fagan cut him short. “Though I thank you for it. I have no hesitation in offering you my parole, though I must regretfully decline your hospitality, for reasons that will soon become clear to you. I refer, however, to my other rights.” The officer frowned. “Other rights?” “As a peer of the realm, of course. They may have usurped my inheritance but they could not deprive me of that! And it is my right as a peer of the realm—as it is the right of every freeborn Englishman, whatever his rank—to be tried by my peers!” The major gasped. “By the House of Lords, you mean?” “By the House of Lords, sir. Also, I believe, I am entitled, upon giving my parole, to be confined within the Tower of London and lodge with the Governor there!” “The man is quite mad,” Fowkes murmured aloud after Fagan was led away.

277 Then a cunning light crept into his eyes and he laughed. “Yes!” he exclaimed much louder. “Of course he is!”

CHAPTER 49

Oliver meets Brownlow again and further mysteries are explained

When the hackney reached Craven St, Henry turned to Oliver and said, “I know what, young ’un! Lend me the locket for a moment.” Oliver handed it to him at once but still asked why he needed it. “Your Mr Brownlow may have a dickey heart, you know. So may your Mrs Bedwin. The sight of this very familiar portrait will both prick their curiosity and gently prepare them for a surprise whose sudden springing might otherwise do harm.” The cabman leaned down and called through the window, “Number Eight, sir!” as he halted the vehicle. Henry tarried long enough to write THIS IS AGNES LEEFORD, BORN FLEMING— OLIVER TWIST’S MOTHER on the face of his carte de visite; and then descended. He crossed the pavement, went up the short, narrow flight of steps, and knocked at the door. The maid took his card, and the locket, and bade him please to step inside the lobby; and there he waited while Mr Brownlow digested what must surely be the strangest and most surprising communication he had received in many a year. The young man darted his head this way and that, trying to make out details of the interior through the heavily stained and leaded glass of the inner lobby door. There was little enough to see, though. The stairs were directly ahead of him, rising in an unbroken flight of about a dozen to a half-landing, where they turned right and vanished from sight. Beside and beyond them was a passage, leading, no doubt, to the kitchen and back-offices. Tucked imperfectly beneath the stairs, as he could just discern, were two tea-chests and a box—a sign, perhaps, that the household had not yet completed its unpacking of items that had been placed in storage during their visit to the West Indies. The moment he saw Mr Brownlow he realized he need not have bothered about a weak heart. Bronzed by tropic suns and slimmed on tropic fruits, the man was skipping down the stairs as lithe as a Swiss goat, crying out for Mrs Bedwin as he came. The housekeeper emerged from the kitchen regions and Brownlow went down the passage to show her the locket. Then they bent over the teachests and hunted for the matching portrait, which the housekeeper soon produced. They compared the two and shook their heads, and Mrs Bedwin threw up her hands, and then they almost raced each other up the passage toward the lobby, where Henry just managed to straighten himself in time and look nonchalantly about him, as if he had not even realized that coloured glass is as transparent as any other. “My dear Mister ... Mister, ah, Maylie!” Brownlow found the name with difficulty among the overlaid hand-writing. “What an extraordinary thing! What

278 an astonishing thing! What an amazing thing! I hardly know what to say, sir. Pray, step inside and tell us all you know. Oliver Twist, eh! Tell us what you know of him, do!” Henry stood his ground and, with some diffidence, said, “The boy himself could do that far better than I, sir.” “He is here?” Mrs Bedwin cried in even greater excitement. “In a hackney at your door—together with my mother, who can also enlighten you, and ...” He hesitated. “Yes, yes?” Brownlow cried. “Well, sir, if it is not altogether too much, there is also Oliver’s aunt, Rose Fleming, to whom ...” “Fleming!” Mrs Bedwin exclaimed. “There! It must be!” Brownlow turned to Henry. “Is she Augustus Fleming’s daughter, too—Agnes’s sister, in other words?” “Bring them in!” cried Mrs Bedwin. “We can have all these questions and answers presently, in due course. Oh, my little lamb! My chickabidee! I knew he was not lost forever!” She did not wait for the maid but opened the door herself and went skipping down the steps almost as blithely as her master had taken the much longer flight indoors. “Nolly!” she cried, holding out her arms as he opened the door and flew into them, directly from the interior of the cab. “Mrs Bedwin! Dear, dear Mrs Bedwin!” he cried as he hugged the breath from her body. His trembling weight threatened to overbalance her. “My, oh my!” she exclaimed, staggering a little and glad of Rose’s swiftly offered support as the girl descended, too. “Someone has been feeding my little lamb and putting flesh on his bones! I can hardly hold him now. Oh! Oh dear! Oh my!” And then it was, “Oh, pardon, ma’am!” as she attempted a curtsy to Mrs Maylie, the last to descend from the coach. “Mrs Bedwin!” the lady said. “I felt quite sure you’d fly above us on angel’s wings—the reputation young Oliver has given you!” “I said no such thing!” Oliver laughed as he planted a large, wet kiss on the housekeeper’s cheek. “I hope it’ll be a hundred years before there’s any talk of angel’s wings for you!” “Bless me!” She took a step back and put her head on one side. “And someone’s been feeding you dictionaries, too, since last we met!” “You don’t need to feed them,” Rose assured her. “He’s like a sponge. How d’ee do, Mrs Bedwin. I’m Rose Maylie, Oliver’s aunt.” They shook hands and then it was presentations all round before they all went into the morning room and sent the maid off to fetch tea and sherry and biscuits. “Well!” Mr Brownlow beamed happily at the assembled company. “Indeed,” Mrs Maylie said, eyeing him with a curious intensity. “Who’s to start first?” Rose asked. “Where to start first?” Mrs Bedwin said. “The one thing we are dying to know, Mister Brownlow, sir,” Oliver said, “is how came you by that picture of my mother?” “The eyes!” Mrs Bedwin exclaimed. “See his eyes! I always said it, sir. If you

279 hadn’t had the picture removed, we should have spotted it before Oliver was snatched from us.” “Snatched?” cried a voice from the hall outside, a gruff, male voice. “Oliver Twist snatched? If he was snatched, I’ll boil my head and eat it with turnips!” “God send he’d be able to tell the difference!” Oliver murmured to Henry. The door was flung wide open and there, to be sure, stood Grimwig, as bronzed and fit as his dear old friend had become. “Am I in time for muffins?” he asked. “Company, I see!” After further introductions, during which the tea and sherry and biscuits were brought in and handed around, Brownlow said, “I was asked how I came by that picture of Agnes Fleming ...” “Leeford, sir,” Oliver corrected him. “Agnes Leeford.” The broadest smile Oliver had ever seen now parted his old benefactor’s lips. “Do you say so, my dear? I saw it written on the card but hardly dared believe it. Is that really true? Did my old friend manage it after all?” “Edwin Leeford was your friend, sir?” Henry asked in some excitement. Brownlow nodded. “I believe I was the last of his English friends to see him alive. He journeyed down from Wales ...” He paused in mid-sentence and whispered, “Maylie?” Then, as if he only just dared do so, he raised his eyes to Mrs Maylie’s and said, “Maylie!” “Yes, Charles!” she responded. “May I still call you that?” “Eleanora! Goodness gracious me! D’you know—the moment I saw you I wondered ...” “The moment I set eyes on you,” she said, “I knew!” “Am I forgiven?” he asked. “Am I?” she countered. Their mutual smiles answered for them. “It was very long ago,” he said. “And we were ridiculously young ...” “I say!” Henry leaned forward and picked up the locket, which Brownlow had laid on a low table in their midst. “Does anybody recall this?” Their host chuckled. “Oh, but the young are so impatient! It was never so in our day—was it, Eleanora!” “Never, Charles! Impatience? Why, we did not know the meaning of the word. But do please put my boy out of his misery.” “Well,” Brownlow said, “as must be quite obvious by now, Edwin Leeford and I were the greatest chums ...” “Were you both at Harrow, sir?” Oliver asked him. “Indeed we were!” “I’m going there, too!” Oliver said proudly. “I know you are,” Brownlow replied. “I entered your name in the same week as you, ah ...” “Took leg bail!” Grimwig snorted. “Hark’ee—if we’ve heard the last of this ...” Bang went his stick on the polished floor, making Mrs Brownlow wince. “Hold your tongue, sir!” Brownlow shouted suddenly, taking them all by surprise.

280 “I shall say whatever I please in my own house, sir!” Grimwig shouted back. “But this ain’t your house, sir—it’s mine!” Brownlow roared. “Very well!” Grimwig was not in the least abashed. At the top of his voice he shrieked, “I shall say what I like in your house, too!” “Now shake hands and make up—both of you,” Mrs Bedwin said wearily—at which the two gentlemen shook hands, smiled broadly at each other and then at the assembled company, who, thenceforth, knew what surprises to expect of the two eccentrics. “Where was I now?” Brownlow asked. “My father was your closest friend ...” Oliver prompted him. “Ah yes! To be sure. He journeyed down from Wales and stayed with me in Marylebone. I lived in Marylebone then. He was going onward to Rome, to have his marriage annulled.” He shook his head sadly. “Dreadful affair! Should never have happened. He should have married ...” A brisk clearing of the throat from Mrs Maylie brought his thoughts to a premature conclusion. “Yes, well, ’nuff said, eh?” he muttered. “Did he show any sign of illness then, sir?” Oliver asked. “He was fatigued from his journey—naturally. But, no, his spirits were high and we had a most convivial evening together. But we talked of serious matters, too ...” He fell into a reverie from which none saw fit to rouse him. “Yes!” He sighed. “Poor Edwin. He’d brought that portrait with him—to carry to Rome and to serve as a reminder ... or an encouragement in the midst of all the sadness. The dissolution of even an unhappy marriage has its sadder side, I’m sure. But then he had second thoughts. If his wife—Maria—saw it, she might think he brought it only to provoke her. To taunt her. Though Edwin would never have done such a thing. It would not even have crossed his mind. Anyway, he thought it would be safer with me ...” A new thought struck him. “By the way—have you any idea what was written on the back of the canvas? We sent it for restretching while we were abroad and it only came to light then.” He picked up the portrait, which he had also brought into the room with him and, taking out his folding pocket-knife, carefully slit the new paper backing until he could slip a finger beneath it and tear the rest away. He held the back of the exposed canvas toward them and showed it all round. In red paint were the words: ‘Agnes Fleming, loveliest and finest of maidens, who is shortly to be my first, true, and only wife—Edwin Leeford, Thurs. March 11, 1824.’ Once the mystery of the painting was cleared up there followed an orgy of the explanations and suppositions at which Oliver and the Maylies had already arrived. During the course of their fevered discussions it emerged that Oliver’s father had, indeed, written a will and discussed it in some detail with his friend that night in Marylebone. “Maria was a wealthy woman in her own right,” Brownlow said. “And a proud one, too. She declared she’d not take a penny from Edwin.” “And the boy—Edward?” Henry asked. “Oliver’s half-brother?”

281 “She wouldn’t hear of his receiving a penny, either. She’d take care of him entirely. As far as she was concerned, her former husband would cease to have any connection with her and the boy. All this was settled months before the annulment.” Here, everyone looked at Rose, as if for confirmation; she could only shrug her shoulders and remind them that, although she was the only person still alive who had been there, she had been only seven or eight at the time. “We didn’t actually discuss the size of Edwin’s estate,” Brownlow went on, “but I happen to know from independent information that it was then around a hundred thousand pounds, including a small estate at Saint Briavels, on the edge of the Forest of Dean, and a coal mine actually in the forest itself.” “Independent information?” Henry asked delicately. Brownlow smiled. “Very well—my own investigation, when I went to Saint Briavels ... which, I’m sorry to say, was not until some time after Edwin’s sad death. When he did not return to collect the picture, I’m afraid I assumed he had failed to get his annulment and had gone off to ... I don’t know—Africa or South America—somewhere to forget it all. I assumed he couldn’t face the portrait at all—and if I’d known about the words on the back, I’d have felt doubly certain of it. I was a little surprised, I must allow—not to say hurt—at receiving no explanation, nor any cards from Mexico City or the Cape. It wasn’t until I went to a reunion of Old Harrovians, more than a year later, that I heard the truth of what had happened. Of course, I was on the coach next day to Chepstow—where I was told of Agnes’s disappearance. Then, too, I learned of Rose’s existence—and of the fact that a wealthy lady had spirited her away.” “And the name Maylie didn’t ring a bell?” Henry asked. Brownlow fixed his eye on the ‘wealthy lady’ in question. “That was not the name she gave,” he said. “What name then?” was the next eager inquiry. Still not taking his eyes off her, he answered, “One day, I may even answer that question, young man—if I am given leave?” “You most certainly are not!” the lady cried in alarm. “The will!” Grimwig barked. “You did not tell us the conditions in the will. You have the mind of a butterfly, sir.” “And you have the charm of a wild boar, sir,” Brownlow replied affably. “The will divided Edwin’s estate evenly between the mother and the child, if both survived—the child’s portion to be held in trust. If it were a girl, she was to inherit outright on coming of age. There were more complicated settlements in the event of her marriage—which are not relevant, anyway. If it were a boy ...” He beamed at Oliver. “Yes! Yes!” Grimwig cried impatiently. “Now we’ll have it!” “He would inherit his portion only if he had lived an honest, upright, sober, and industrious life.” “Ha!” Grimwig shouted. “That’s done for you, young Twist! Not a penny will you get! If you do ...” Bang went the stick. The company ignored him, which he seemed not to mind in the least. “Well,” Henry said, “I have made inquiries at the court of probate and it is

282 certain that no will was ever proved. So, since we now know beyond a peradventure that there was such a document, the question arises: Where is it now?” “Ha!” Brownlow smiled again at Mrs Maylie. “Did you say ‘impetuous,’ Eleanora?” Then, turning to Henry, he went on: “In my youth, young sir, I studied the Law, though I never went into practice. And there is one precept of my old master’s which I have never forgotten—the one vital question any lawyer must ask in any matter where land, title, wealth, or control are at stake is Cui bono?— which means ... Oliver? Do you know?” “Who gets the benefit?” Oliver guessed from Brownlow’s preamble. “Bah!” cried Grimwig. “Not you! You’ll see!” “A sponge!” Rose said to Mrs Bedwin. “And if Oliver is denied or cheated out of his inheritance ... cui bono?” Brownlow asked generally. “Monks!” Oliver and all three Maylies spoke the name in unison.

CHAPTER 50

Sikes, impatient of the Law’s delays, expedites the matter in his case

Upstream from that part of the Thames on which the church of St Mary at Rotherhithe abuts, where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels on the river blackest with the dust of colliers and the smoke of close-built low-roofed houses, there exists, at the present day, the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London, wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass of its inhabitants. To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze of close, narrow, and muddy streets, thronged by the poorest and roughest of water-side people, and devoted to the traffic they may be supposed to occcasion. The cheapest and least delicate provisions are heaped in the shops; the coarsest and commonest articles of wearing apparel dangle at the salesman’s door, and stream from the house- parapet and windows. Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the very raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along, assailed by offensive sights and smells from the narrow alleys which branch off on the right and left, and deafened by the clash of ponderous wagons that bear great piles of merchandise from the stacks of warehouses that rise from every corner. Arriving at length in streets remoter and less frequented than those through which he has passed, he walks beneath tottering house-fronts projecting over the pavement, dismantled walls that seem to totter as he passes, chimneys half crushed, half hesitating to fall, windows guarded by rusty iron bars that time and dirt have almost eaten away, and every imaginable sign of desolation and neglect. In such a neighbourhood, beyond Dockhead in the Borough of Southwark, stands Jacob’s Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch six or eight feet deep and fifteen or twenty wide when the tide is in, once called Mill Pond, but known in

283 these days as Folly Ditch. It is a creek or inlet from the Thames, and can always be filled at high water by opening the sluices at the lead mills from which it took its old name. At such times a stranger, looking from one of the wooden bridges thrown across it at Mill Lane, will see the inhabitants of the houses on either side lowering, from their back doors and windows, buckets, pails, domestic utensils of all kinds, in which to haul the water up; and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene before him. Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows broken and patched, with poles thrust out on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it, as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations; every repulsive lineament of poverty; every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage;—all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch. In Jacob’s Island the warehouses are rooflesss and empty; the walls are crumbling down; the windows are windows no more; the doors are falling into the streets; the chimneys are blackened but they yield no smoke. Thirty or forty years ago, before losses and chancery suits came upon it, it was a thriving place; but now it is desolate indeed. The houses have no owners; they are broken open, and entered upon by those who have the courage; and there they live, and there they die. They must have powerful motives for a secret residence, or be reduced to a destitute condition indeed, who seek a refuge in Jacob’s Island. In an upper room in one of these houses—a detatched house of a fair size, ruinous in other respects, but strongly defended at door and window, of which house the back commanded the ditch in manner already described—the Artful Dodger sat huddled with Charley Bates, Bet, and other little boys and girls whose experiences with Lord Fagan, at some time or other in their past, had been such as to pose a present danger to his liberty and life. They had played at cards until they were weary of it; they had slept as much as the rats and stray cats permitted; they had scavenged the streets and begged for food, returning with little but crusts and cheese-parings; they were frightened and alone. “What’s a-keeping of ’im?” Bates complained for the twentieth time. “ ’E said ’e’d be back long afore now.” “I’m ’ungry,” Bet whined. “Let us out, Dodger, there’s a dear man. I can be on London Bridge in ’alf-an-hour and get back by midnight with wittles for all!” “Yes! Yes!” the others clamoured. “Let ’er go, Dodger, else we’ll starve to our deaths ’ere.” “Shut yer traps, the lot o’ yer!” the Dodger snapped, though in truth he was every bit as hungry and frightened as they. “I could bring back news, too,” Bet continued. “Maybe they’ve tooken Fagan up already. Maybe ’e ain’t never coming back. I could find out, see?” But the Dodger was adamant: “Fagan sez to stop ’ere and so ’ere we stops till ’e sez otherwise.” He silenced their muttering with a stern sweep of his eye and

284 continued: “Name me one mortal soul as ever prospered by going against what Lord Fagan said, and I’ll let Bet go. Come on! One name and she may go!” They were cowed to silence. “Yus!” he said triumphantly. “No one thought to mention the great Bill Sikes, did they! What did Fagan tell ’im? And what did ’e then go and do? And where is ’e now, with ’is name up for ten-pounds reward on every street in London?” It kept them silent—if resentful—for the next half hour at least. The answer to the Dodger’s final question, which he had intended rhetorically, would have interested him more than somewhat, for Sikes was less than thirty minutes’ walk away and bending his steps toward them with all deliberate speed—or he would have been if Bullseye, by that strange sympathy which binds a dog to its master, be he never so unfeeling, had not smelled him out and was now trying to re-attach himself, as of old. What made it all the more remarkable was that Sikes, having turned back toward the city, and having discovered at Barnet that there was a hue-and-cry out after him (and for ten pounds, no less), had skirted widely around the north-eastern suburbs, staying outside the arc of the Regent’s Canal until he felt it safe to make his way south through the docklands to the northern end of Mr Brunel’s pedestrian tunnel beneath the Thames at Wapping. He had been on the point of entering the tunnel when the familiar yelping whine of that miserable cur detained him. And so, at the precise moment when the Dodger was posing his rhetorical question, Sikes was standing with a length of jetsam rope in his hand, saying in a voice the dog hardly recognized, “Come ’ere, Bullseye—dear, sweet little doggy, lovely doggy, good boy ...” and other words that might as well have been in a foreign language to the creature intended to receive them—indeed, they were in a foreign language to him. One end of the rope was tied to a large stone—quite large enough to drag a dog of any size to the bottom of the Thames; the other end Sikes had fashioned into a noose whose purpose anyone might guess—even, as it happened, Bullseye. No sooner did he spy the trap intended for his neck than he took to his paws and fled once again, howling away along the waterfront; he almost stopped, though, when he heard the more familiar cries that were wont to fall from his beloved master’s lips: “Garn then, yer miserable cur ... rot your bones in the deepest pit of hell ...” and other dainty endearments. Then, aware that he had attracted more attention that was healthy for a man in his condition, he turned once more to the mouth of the tunnel and attempted to enter. But his way was immediately barred by a large labouring man of the ‘navigator’ type—that is to say, the type with whom arguments of a physical nature are unwise. “Sorry, boss,” this worthy said, holding up a hand the size of a shovel. “Not open to the public yet.” “Yet?” Sikes protested. “Whadd’yer mean—yet? I’ve ’eard tell about this-’ere tunnel all my life!” “Well, it ain’t open and that’s all about it. It’s been ten years a-building and it’ll be ten years more, the way things is going, afore it’s done. But there’s a jolly boatman”—he nodded to one who was waiting at the foot of King Edward steps, hard by—“‘oo’ll save yer legs from walking and yer lungs from drowning, and all

285 for a penny!” Twilight was closing in fast as Sikes paid his penny and took his place in the rowboat. At least the dog would not be able to follow him now. He sat obliquely, facing downstream, to avoid even an accidental glimpse of Execution Dock, where pirates and sea-robbers were once hanged in chains to drown until three full tides had washed over them; being of a superstitious cast, he feared that something of the ill-luck which brought them to that slow, lingering death in the rising waters of the river, might still hang about the place like a corpse-miasma, ready to reinfect the living. Arrived on the south bank, just downstream of the church, he could have walked directly along Rotherhithe Street into Jacob’s Island; but that would have left him with his back to the river in the case that he was noticed and chased. At the church, therefore, he turned inland and came through the winding alleys away from the riverside warehouses—Paradise St, Millpond Rd, and thence to the open ground by the rope walk beyond Salisbury Rd. Here he rested in the shadows half an hour, until night had fallen, looking all the while about him, nervous for the smallest sign of pursuit. Satisfied that none was offered, he set out again to cover the last few furlongs to Fagan’s sanctuary of sanctuaries. Hunger and fear of the dark had driven Fagan’s pathetic little crew into an even tighter huddle. The Dodger allowed but a single candle to be lighted, for their stocks were low and he had expected Fagan back ten hours ago with a new supply. They had just settled down to a cold, hungry, fretful slumber when there came the most ferocious knocking at the door. “Lord Fagan!” cried one hopeful child. “Fagan’s got a key,” the Dodger told him contemptuously. “Quiet, now! ’E may go away, ’ooever it is.” Whoever it was did not go away. He banged even louder and roared, “Lemme in, rot yer blasted hides!” “Sikes!” The name started up in fear from half a dozen lips. The Dodger took up the only candle and went out on to the landing; several floors opposite had fallen in, enabling him to stare right down to the front door, which was shored and battened against forced entry by a leaning forest of old joists and floorboards; only a little locked wicket door was capable of opening. “Don’t leave us in the dark,” the others howled as they came out to join him. The dark was filled with sharp little squeals, furious scratchings, and the swift brushing-past of little furry bodies. They all stood at the stairhead, silently willing their unwanted visitor to go away again, or fall in Folly Ditch—or do anything but trouble them further. “Are yer gonna let me in or must I bring the whole neighbourhood down upon yer?” he bawled. The Dodger went down the ricketty stairs; the others followed him, or, rather, followed the light. “Yer can’t come in ’ere, Bill!” The Dodger half commanded, half pleaded. “Not ’ere ... not wiv us ... not after what you done.” Sikes’s only answer was to start a series of mighty kicks that would surely have demolished the wicket door in under a minute if the Dodger had not relented and

286 let it fall open. “That’s better!” Sikes almost tumbled inside as the door yielded. “You wanna learn some respeck, Dodger. I was fleeing the law when you was in swaddlin’s.” The Dodger thought it best to make no reply as he hastened to secure the door again. “What is it, yer scurvy lot?” Sikes’s wild eyes seemed to start out of his head as he stared from one terrified little face to another. “Ain’tcher never seen a grown man afore? Ain’tcher got the manners to offer a weary traveller a drop of summat to wet his whistle and heat his belly—nor the wittles for it to wash down?” The Dodger took up his candle again and led the way upstairs. “Fagan left us this morning—said ’e’d come back with wittles and lights and sperrits and blankets and gawd knows what else—and we ain’t seen nor hide nor hair of ’im since.” “ ’E’s tooken!” Bates said gloomily. “Or legged it to Dover!” Sikes’s tone was grimmer as he tried to force his way among them to the head of the straggling column. “In which case, Dodger”—Bet tugged at his coat-tails—“there ain’t no point us stopping ’ere. If Fagan’s legged it, nuffink what any of us can say can’t do ’im no ’arm, no more. We might as well leg it, too. Take our chance, eh?” The Dodger reached the landing and turned to face them while he still had the advantage of height. “Listen to yer!” he roared. “Fagan’s not gone above twelve hours and ye’re all over the place. Take yer chance? You ain’t got no chance—not wivvout Fagan—so just come to order.” He turned and went back into the room. “Why ain’t ’e ’ere, then?” Bates shouted the challenge after him. “ ’Cos ’e ain’t,” was the impeccable logic of the Dodger’s reply. They all trooped in his wake. “Where’s the sperrits, then?” asked Sikes, wiping his mouth on his sleeve in anticipation. “Ain’t got none,” the Dodger told him. “Spare me that, Jack Dawkins!” the murderer cried. “Fagan’s never yet ’ad a ken where there ain’t no sperrits.” “Well, ’e’s got one now,” the Dodger responded imperturbably. “We ain’t even got no water.” Half-heartedly he kicked an empty bucket with the toe of his boot. “You wanna drink, you lower that on a rope. We gotta bunch of grass off of the roof to filter it, and that’s all about it.” Sikes opened the window, which immediately fell off its sole remaining hinge and dropped thirty feet to the ditch below, which was now filling fast on the rising tide. A moment later the blood turned to ice in his veins and all thought of food or drink was forgotten—for there on the adjoining piece of land, standing on the rubble of a warehouse that had utterly collapsed some time ago, barking and whining in the light of a full and newly risen moon, was Bullseye! And, even more disturbing, from the direction of Mill Street, to the west, came a subdued but mighty muttering such as one might hear at some distance from a lively election meeting; worse yet, the walls of the timber yard, the ship’s brew house, and other less identifiable buildings were, to the casual glance, all on fire—which, on closer inspection, proved to be the flickering light of several dozen torches, such as

287 might be held and jostled and carried along by a streaming mob. “Gotta-gettim-in!” Sikes muttered, all in one word, as he lurched back toward the stair, taking the light with him. The children all crowded out in his train—all save the Dodger, who went to the window to see what had so disturbed the man. No sooner had his eyes discovered Bullseye than the first of the torches started making an appearance on the farther bank of the ditch—together with the mob that had followed Sikes’s dog to this place, hoping it would lead one or more of them to that ten-pound reward. He was on the point of running out to the landing to tell Sikes it would now be madness for him to show himself at the door when he realized it was precisely the sort of diversion he required to assist him in his own escape. The ditch was, in fact, on two sides of the building—the one immediately below him and a spur from it around the corner to his right and parallel with the Thames. There was no hope of escaping by way of the ditch below, not with the mob crowding the farther bank; but the spur beneath the gable end of the house was flanked by a brick wall on its farther bank, high and windowless. An enterprising young fellow could drift around the corner and out through the sluices into the Thames; and if he had a bit of gas tubing to breathe through while the rest of him submerged itself, he could do it under the very eye of the mob! Chuckling to himself, muttering, “Now does I deserve me name Artful, or does I not?” he began to coil up the rope from the bucket, having first untied it from the handle. He had just ripped eighteen inches of disused gas pipe from the wall when Sikes returned—having reached the same obvious conclusion as the Dodger. “Why, my dear Dodger!” he cried, imitating Fagan but poorly. “You think of everything! Thank you so much.” He gave an ironic bow and held out his hand for the rope. “Catch me first!” the Dodger cried as he feinted to the left and skipped past Sikes to the right, making for the door to the roof. Unfortunately for him it was hinged to open inward, into the room, so he was not able to wedge it against pursuit. As a result, he heard the man coming clumsily up the narrow stair before he reached the door at the top—and that fell to pieces even as he attempted to swing it open. Now his only way of escaping Sikes was to clamber upward, over broken slates and rotten battens that might just about support his weight but that would collapse entirely beneath a full-grown man’s. He reached the ridge just as Sikes emerged from the door. “Come now, Dodger,” the man panted heavily from his climb. “There’s no escaping me ’ere—and you know it.” “Knows it, does I?” the Dodger responded cheerfully as he began inching his way toward the spur-ditch, which Sikes had clearly forgotten, if, indeed, he had even known of it. “Yer’ll ’ave to come up ’ere, Bill, and put salt on my tail if yer wants ter stop me now!” Sikes leaned his weight against the roof. Two slates immediately cracked; bits of them skittered down the roof, struck his boot, and rebounded so as to fall over rather than into the gutter. There was also an ominous cracking of rotten timbers. “I can’t,” he whined. Then in an altogether different tone: “Dodger? Jack, me old

288 pal—we’ve grafted and chizzed together this many a year—you ain’t gonna leave yer ol’ chum in the lurch now, are yer? Don’t say it!” “I won’t, then,” the Dodger laughed as he continued his unrelenting way along the ridge to the chimney at the end. “I shall ’old my tongue at your request!” The sherds of slate fell into the ditch with a resounding splash, heard even above the hubbub of the crowd. There was a hush—and then a mighty roar: “The roof! The roof! Sikes is on the roof! There’s two of ’em. Who’s got a musket? Bring a musket!” From inside the building Sikes could also hear the screams of the children as the outer door began yielding to the battering of the mob, who had found an old ship’s mast in the timber yard and were using it as a ram; its steady boom-boom against the door, interspersed with a repeated ‘Heave! Heave!’ of encouragement from the mob, raised Sikes’s panic, notch by notch with each repetition. By now the Dodger had passed the rope around the chimney-stack and was securing the loop with a reef. The crack of a musket below was simultanous with the smack of the ball on the slates immediately behind Sikes. In desperation he launched himself crabwise along the roof, caring not how many slates he broke nor what battens gave way beneath him. That he reached the farther end was a black miracle, but reach it he did. His arrival naturally put the Dodger in a panic, too—so much so that he lost the free end of the rope, which he had fashioned into a running noose to pass around himself beneath his armpits. It went snaking down the slope, until it was caught by a grinning Sikes. “Well done, Dodger!” he cried as he tested the strain of his weight against the rotten brickwork of the old chimney stack. “I knew yer’d never let yer ol’ pal down!.” A second shot from below, which also missed by mere inches, put an end to his crowing. The slates still cracked and fell beneath him but the double rafters at the gable end were stout enough to support his weight and soon he was sitting astride the ridge immediately behind the Dodger. Laughing wildly, panting even more heavily than before, he rested the loop around his head and on his shoulders while he gathered the rest of the rope into a coil. “We’ll cheat ’em yet, Dodger, you and me! You was always the pick o’ the litter, you was. And I knew yer’d never ...” What the Dodger would never do or think or say remains unknown to this day, for at that precise moment a third ball from below went smack into the chimney stack and startled Sikes from his precarious perch on the ridge. He teetered for a moment. He made a frantic grab for the ridge-tile and caught it. But his fingers began to slip in the moss and lichen there. He grabbed for a better hold and this time missed it. Then, realizing that he had the noose around his neck still, and not yet under his arms, he made a frantic effort to move it. His writhings caused him to lose his hold entirely and he began an inexorable slide down the slates toward the gutter. And now, when he would have prayed for them to shatter beneath him and deposit him in the house, the slates held to the last man, hissing and groaning

289 beneath him as they sped him on his way. In his guilt and terror they seemed to form and repeat the name, ‘Nansssee ... Nanssssee!’ over and over again, lingering on the sibilant ‘s’ like the hiss of an angry mob. His only hope now was to get a toehold between the lower edge of the slates and the gutter—and that the gutter would hold. But the gutter would not hold. It would not even have held his weight when still; now, when its pressure was increased by the impetus of his downward slide, the gutter yielded as if made of nothing stronger than paper—and Sikes was launched into eternity. The noose was at his neck. It ran up with his weight, tight as a bowstring and swift as any arrow a bowstring speeds. He fell for thirty feet—four times the drop at Newgate’s scaffold, where he would otherwise have met his end. There was a sudden jerk, a terrific convulsion of the limbs ... and there for a moment he swung above the ditch, above the mob, his bloated face all ghastly with the hellish lighting of the torches from below. For a moment there was a hush as the crowd, appalled at the sight, pondered such a dreadful end; then came a great huzzah as they realized it was, indeed, the end, the absolute, incontrovertible, irreversible end of a life of infamy and disgrace. Then came a second hush as the head, whose neck had not merely been snapped (as with the much shorter Newgate drop) but wrenched apart entirely, so that it was held merely by skin and windpipe, was slowly pulled off the body by its sheer weight. A moment later there was a double splash in the aptly named Folly Ditch at their feet and the rope was swinging freely in the breeze. Then they gasped to see it snaking up the wall of the house, as the Dodger hauled it in from above. “The second fellow!” came a cry. “How can he fare better?” was the answer. And: “They’ve broken in the door. We’ve got him both sides now!” And so those brave souls who ventured on to the house-top some five minutes later were both surprised and chagrinned to find an empty rope danging over the gable end of the building—and no sign whatever of that ‘second fellow.’

CHAPTER 51

Monks makes a full confession and is strangely punished

Charlotte came out of the butcher’s stall, carrying three pounds of prime surloin for the Sowerberrys’ supper, a mutton chop for herself, some lights for Tripp, the dog, and nothing for Noah Claypole, who, greatly to her relief, no longer worked for the undertaker. She almost dropped the lot at the sight that greeted her eyes on the pavement outside. “Nolly?” she cried in tones that betrayed a want of perfect confidence in her identification, for the velvet-suited little gentleman with the silver-buckled shoes who now stood before her was a far cry from her memory of the little starveling waif the workhouse had furnished.

290 “Lottie!” he cried, flinging his arms around her waist and hugging himself tight against her. Each repeated the other’s name, several times, in delight before embarking upon a conversation. “I should have written first,” Oliver began. “I would have written first except that I knew I was coming in person and I thought it would be ever so jolly to surprise you.” “Well, you most certainly did that, see tha! What art tha doing here?” “I’ve come to thank you for rescuing the locket and the rings.” “Eay, chick, think nowt on it! Th’ast lost thy Yorkshire tongue, I can hear!” “He’ll pick it up again as swiftly, Miss Mercer,” said the young woman who had been standing by all this while. “As he picks up everything else that’s going! I’m Rose Maylie, by the way, Oliver’s aunt—though we’ve adopted each other as brother and sister.” She held out her hand. “Eh?” Poor Charlotte was, quite understandably, confused. “Pleased to meet thee, Miss Maylie, I’m sure. I think I met your other brother?” “My betrothed, in fact. I know, I know! We have the same surname already! All is confusion! Never mind—it will become clear in good time. And meanwhile may I present a gentleman whose name, at least, is well known to you—Mister Brownlow.” “Oh, sir!” She curtsied in awe and did not dare shake his hand until he insisted on it. “You did a fine and noble thing, Miss Mercer,” Brownlow said. “I’m proud to take your hand. Not one in a thousand would have had the courage to do as you did that afternoon. You may not have known it, but you risked your life.” “So Mister Maylie told me,” she replied. “I can’t see it meself. Besides”—she turned to Oliver and chucked him under the chin—“who wouldn’t do all she could for this little charmer!” “I mean to make it up to you, Charlotte,” he told her seriously. “Make what up, pet? There’s nowt to make up.” “You’ll see! I mean—Tha’llt see!” He chuckled. “When all our business here is done.” “All?” “Aye, love. Tell us, does t’Yorkshire Flyer still stop at t’Mucky Duck?” He dipped his head toward the Black Swan, which was just across the square from where they stood. “As ever!” She nodded. “In t’next ten minutes if she’s up to time, see tha.” “We’re hoping to meet a certain gentleman off it,” Brownlow explained. “A gentleman by his birth but by nothing else he has done since that lamentable day—a gentleman known to you.” “Monks,” she said. He nodded. “It might be best if you were not seen talking to us. But we are staying at the Black Swan—or Mooky Dook, as Fellgate folk seem to call it—and would deem it an honour if you could dine there with us tonight? I understand the Sowerberrys dine at four? So you might be free to join us at half-past six?” And so it was arranged—and just in time, too, for the post-horn clarion of the

291 Flyer could be heard approaching, though it was still out of sight down the winding main street. Oliver skipped and turned small circles all the way across the square, chanting, “Monkey-monkey-monkey-Monks,” as they went. “I am still in two minds as to whether we should allow him to do this,” Brownlow said to Rose. “He’ll die of mortification if we forbid it,” Rose pointed out. “And when you think that every humiliation that was ever heaped upon him is, at the last tracing of responsibility, to be laid at that man’s door ... besides, the blackguard deserves it!” “Aye—who can deny that. He deserves far worse. Well, well—there is no stopping Oliver, anyway, I suppose.” “He is a tribute to all adversity,” she replied by way of agreement. They vanished into the arched alleyway that led into the inn yard just as the flyer entered the square, where, a moment or two earlier, they had been conversing with Charlotte. Oliver positioned himself where the coach door would open and forced his legs to stop skipping and twitching; the other two stood back a little, not in concealment, yet where they would not be immediately obvious. The arch at the Swan was built to allow for several feet of winter snow so there was no prospect of banging heads against it on this fine, early-autumn day; the Flyer therefore entered the yard at a truly sedate pace and came to a graceful halt precisely where Oliver had guessed it would. The coach door opened and out stepped a stout elderly gentleman, then a thin woman of middle years accompanied by her companion, then a gunner officer, then a middle-aged man ... and then, just as Oliver was beginning to think the man was not coming after all, Monks himself in his lavender gloves—the last to emerge. With his little heart working double tides in his breast, Oliver stepped up to his half-brother, holding out a piece of paper on which Rose had painted fair replications of the locket and rings. “Hallo, brother!” he said, slightly shrill. “May I interest you in any of these?” “What the ...” Monks stared at him aghast, then at the paper, then at him ... at the paper again until, at last he comprehended what was represented there. “D—l take you!” he roared. “Where is Mrs Bumble, you impudent little villain?” Brownlow, fearing a physical assault, then stepped forward. “The Bumbles know nothing of your arrival, sir,” he said. “I was the writer of the letter that has brought you here.” “And who the d—l are you, pray?” he snarled. “I must ask you to moderate your tongue, Monks,” Brownlow told him severely. “Miss Maylie is of our party, too. I shall not present you—in the circumstances. And now, before we confront the Bumbles with their part in your crimes, I must ask you to step inside, if you will be so good?” “Hemmed if I will, sir! I know you now. I recognize you.” Monks took a step backward; his eyes quartered the courtyard in search of ways of escape. “It will be the worse for you if you will not. Your half-brother has—unwisely, in my view—proposed a settlement of his inheritance that is vastly more generous to you that you have any right to expect. The alternative is prison.”

292 The man’s tongue darted in and out like a viper’s; even now, when he must surely know his game was up, he was still scheming for advantage in any way he could. “Very well,” he conceded with ill grace. “But if this is some kind of a trap ...” He patted his pocket but did not distinguish his threat. Brownlow laughed contemptuously. “In your predicament, young man, a sharp mind will be of more service than a sharp knife or a ready pistol. Do not add crass folly to your long list of crimes and imbecilities, I pray you.” He led the way into a private room, which he had secured for the next hour or so, and indicated that Monks should seat himself at the table; he himself took the seat directly opposite, with the window at his back, while Rose and Oliver went to sit in the window seat, facing Monks; thus the villain could see their silhouettes but not make out their features too easily. A sheaf of papers was already on the table before him. “It is a statement I shall ask you to sign at the end of our interview,” Brownlow explained. “But first I ask you to read it and let us know if you disagree with any portion of it. It is, of course, our surmise entirely, pieced together from the actions of yourself and others.” Monks picked up the top sheet and began to read. “Aloud, if you please,” Brownlow insisted. In the singsong voice of one compelled to a disagreeable chore, the man said, “I, Edward Monks, being of sound mind, do hereby declare ... hubble-bubble, toil and trouble. Yes, all right—no disagreement so far. We’ll get to the meat of the business. One day in the spring of eighteen hundred and thirty-five in the Clerkenwell district of London I noticed a young boy, whom I later knew to be called Oliver Twist, who bore uncanny resemblances both to my father and his second wife, Agnes Leeford, born Fleming. She, being then with child, had run away on hearing of my father’s death in Rome, not knowing that my father’s first marriage to my mother had been annulled and that she and he were married by proxy at the British Embassy in Rome. Had she lived to bear the child, he would have been of Oliver Twist’s age, too.” Monks looked up as he reached for the second sheet; he said nothing but there was a hunted look in his eyes now. He continued reading: “This discovery perturbed me greatly for, if mother and child had died, I stood to inherit my father’s considerable estate in Saint Briavels and the Forest of Dean. The boy was arrested in error when two pickpockets plied their trade at the expense of Mister Charles Brownlow. I followed him to the police court, hoping the law would remove my difficulty, for my father’s will would bar the inheritance from any male child who fell foul of the law. A short while later I saw Mister Brownlow carrying the boy away to his own home. I did not then know Mister Brownlow’s name or directions so I loitered at the court in the hope of acquiring the information without revealing myself or exposing my purpose.” He looked up again and this time said a grudging, “Pretty good!” before resuming: “It was thus that I met one Jack Dawkins, otherwise known as the Artful Dodger, one of the aforementioned pickpockets. After the passage of a small coin ...” Here Monks laughed. “No, sir! This is guesswork. The fact is, I dodged the Dodger, who was dodging Nancy. They led me back to Lord Fagan.”

293 He read a sentence or so to himself and then said, “It is correct from here: I later arranged a meeting with Fagan and engaged him to make sure Twist descended into a life of crime; whether or not he truly were my brother was of lesser importance, anyway. This, naturally, entailed recapturing Twist from the security of Mister Brownlow’s establishment in Pentonville. This was duly accomplished by two of Fagan’s associates.” He frowned. “Why so coy?” he asked. “You surely know their names?” “Bill Sikes and Nancy Rogers—yes,” Brownlow agreed. “They were included in an earlier draft, believe me, but your brother wished them to be taken out—so that the name of Leeford will never be linked with one of the most brutal murders of recent times.” Monks nodded a reluctant thank-you at Oliver’s shadow and returned to his confession: “Lord Fagan, having made inquiries of his own, had meanwhile ascertained that Agnes Leeford’s younger sister had been adopted by a Mrs Eleanora Maylie, residing at Golden Grove in Chertsey.” He cleared his throat. “Actually, I gave him most of the information. He would not collaborate with me unless I told him all I knew.” “I don’t suppose you wish to change it, though!” Brownlow said. Monks gave a single grim laugh and agreed. “Fagan thought it would be a capital jest for Oliver to be sent to burgle the very house where resided his only living relation, Miss Rose Fleming, now Miss Rose Maylie. If he were caught, his own aunt would assist in handing him over to the law; if he were not, he would be bound to Fagan in dishonour from that time forth. And so he would forfeit his inheritance either way. The one possibility for which Fagan had not planned was that Oliver would be wounded and left for dead, and that Mrs Maylie and her adopted niece would nurse him—and so come to hear his tale—rather than hand him over to the police. And that was, indeed, what happened.” Monks stared at the paper and shook his head. “Were you hiding behind the wainscote, sir, or hanging from the eaves?” “Villiany such as yours is remarkably single-minded, sir,” Brownlow told him. “It cuts a straight path through the restraints of decency and wholesomeness. And straight paths are the easiest to trace.” The man took up the next sheet: “Following this reverse I felt it expedient to visit Fellgate, Twist’s native town, and discover if any possible connection between him and his mother and the names of Leeford or Fleming still remained. I still could not be sure he was my half-brother, but it was time to find out. My caution was rewarded when I learned that an old pauper lady—ha! An old hag, more like!” “An old pauper lady known as Old Sal,” Brownlow insisted sternly. “... known as Old Sal had stolen a locket and two rings from the dead or dying body of Agnes Leeford.” Aghast at what he now read, he rose from his seat, sending his chair in a somersault. “But how could you possibly know this?” he demanded. “Has Bumble talked? His wife never would—that I’d swear. You must have bribed this tale—this pack of lies—from that dimwit Bumble!” “We have the locket,” Brownlow told him quietly. “We have the rings.”

294 Monks laughed in a kind of sneer. “How could you possibly have them?” “Oh?” Brownlow raised his eyebrows. “What makes you so absolutely sure we cannot possibly have them?” “Well ... because ...” The man saw where his outburst had led him. “Because no such trinkets exist—that’s why,” he exclaimed, relieved to have evaded the trap in time. “Is that why?” Brownlow asked in that same quietly insistent tone. “It could not possibly be that you know that you threw them, still in the leather purse in which you bought them from Mrs Bumble, into the River Fell—down on the New Bridge? Is that what you’re thinking?” “I’m under no obligation to tell you what I’m thinking,” Monks replied uncomfortably. “But I know you are trying to bluff me into some kind of trap. There was no locket. There were no rings. And so I shall swear to my dying breath.” Brownlow raised his left hand from his lap, where it had rested for some while, and laid it on the table. To his horrified amazement Monks saw there the very purse he thought he had safely cast into the river not two months ago. “Fakes!” he cried. “Trumpery! This is some trumped-up evidence to hang me! Well, I shall not ...” “It ought to hang you,” Brownlow interrupted him. “In a truly civilized society it surely would. But all it is intended to do here is to secure your agreement to a second document, which will be shown to you when you have signed this present confession. Please read on. As I say, you will have every opportunity to amend it before we ask you to sign.” Cowed and with a heavy heart, the man obeyed: “On her deathbed earlier this year, Old Sal relieved her conscience by passing on the rings and locket to the matron of the workhouse, Mrs Bumble, formerly Mrs Corney. I, in turn, purchased them from the Bumbles for the sum of ... blank. Hah! There’s something you don’t know at last!” “You will please to fill it in when you append your signature—and in words, not merely figures,” Brownlow told him. “I shall do no such thing! It’s all lies from top to bottom. The Bumbles will deny it, if they know what’s good for them. So do your worst, sir! I refuse to read any more of this ... farrago!” He pushed the papers across the table and rose to depart. “I shall read it for you, then,” Brownlow said mildly. “And you would be wise at least to stay and listen.” “Really? I fail to see why.” He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Because if we cannot reach an amicable settlement with you, we shall be forced to pass this same information on to the law. You ought at least to know what it is.” Without waiting for Monks to make up his mind, he continued where the man had left off: “I carried them to the New Bridge in Fellgate and threw them, in a leather purse, into the River Fell from the upstream side of the bridge. It sank from the momentum of its fall but, unseen by me, it rose again to the surface beneath the arch. I now know that it continued to float for some time— until, indeed, it was fished from the water by a citizen of Fellgate who had seen

295 me drop it and who then sent word of the find to Mister Brownlow in London. Meanwhile, as I now also know ...” “Just a moment!” Monks sneered. “It was rescued from the water by ‘a citizen of Fellgate’ you say?” “Quite.” “A likely tale!” “I’m at a loss to see anything unlikely about it, sir.” “How did this ‘citizen’—one of five or six thousand such ‘citizens’—know of your particular existence?” “What was to prevent his knowing? Or,” he added hastily, as if recovering from a blunder, “her knowing. I will not say it was a man.” “Ha! So it was a man!” Monks cried triumphantly. “Noah Claypole, I’ll be bound! Nasty, dirty, dishonest, snivelling little charity-boy!” “Hear-hear!” Oliver interjected. Brownlow smiled. Monks merely glowered at him and went on. “I do hope you’re not relying on any statement from that source! He’d swear on oath that his mother and father were ten years his juniors if you paid him enough.” Brownlow allowed a short silence to intervene before continuing: “When Mister Henry Maylie visited Fellgate to make inquiries of his own, the same citizen furnished him with the locket and rings and gave him a full account of their provenance.” “The little rat!” Monks muttered. “The said locket and rings,” the other continued implacably, “have now been shown to me and I confirm that, to the best of my knowledge, the miniature portrait within the locket is a true likeness ...” “What miniature?” Monks asked scornfully; and now he righted the chair and resumed his seat at the table. “There was no miniature. Now I know it is a fake!” “Oliver?” Brownlow said. “We need your nimble little fingers here!” And, while Oliver worked to pry open the plate on which the locks of hair were bound, Brownlow explained: “Those same nimble little fingers discovered what you and the Bumbles all failed to notice, Monks. There!” He held it up, opened to reveal the miniature. Monks lowered his eyes as if he were unable to face the accusation he might find in hers—she who would have been his lawful stepmother had she lived. “Your reluctance to face her is admission enough,” Brownlow told him. “To continue: On my return from Fellgate, while the coach was changing horses at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, I chanced to spy my half-brother, Twist, in the street. I left the Flyer there and pursued him across the fields to Essendon, where he was staying with the Maylies, though I did not know it at the time. I caught him and attempted his life. He, however, escaped ...” “One moment, sir!” Again Monks thought he had discovered a flaw in the document they expected him to sign. “You have cleverly leaped ahead of yourself and back again to make it seem natural that Oliver should know his parents’ name and story by then. But Mister Maylie’s visit to this town and his interview with Claypole ...” “Or so you guess!” Brownlow cautioned him.

296 “So I know!” Monks insisted. “That visit did not occur until some weeks after my visit here. I presume that until Mister Maylie returned with that locket, Oliver knew nothing of his true name and ancestry. How could he? His mother gave no name before she died, and Old Sal ...” “Your point, sir?” Brownlow snapped. “Come to the point if you please?” “My point is that when I asked Oliver his name, he gave it as Augustus Fleming and told me, too, that his mother’s name was Agnes. How could that be?” Brownlow could not answer; Oliver had omitted or glossed over certain portions of his story, especially those that showed him in an heroic light. He turned inquiringly to the boy, who then described his conversation with Rose ... and how, in his fancy, he had adopted her tale as his own. When Monks realized that Oliver had hit upon the right names by the merest fancy, all the fight went out of him. “Give me the paper,” he said in a hollow voice. “There are forces at work here that it would be folly to resist.” But when the quill was dipped in ink and placed into his hand, he suddenly recalled that ‘other document’ Brownlow had mentioned, and all his earlier caution returned. He would not sign his confession until he knew what that second document contained. It was soon dealt with. It began, “We, the undersigned, Oliver Leeford, formerly known as Twist, and Edward Monks, formerly known as Leeford ...” and went on to provide that so long as the said Monks renounced all claim on the estate of the late Edwin Leeford of St Briavels in Gloucestershire-trans-Severn and withdrew all opposition to the abovementioned Oliver Leeford’s claim to it, the same Oliver Leeford would provide the same Monks with an annual allowance of two hundred and fifty pounds on certain strict conditions, the principal one being that Monks should reside abroad in a country or countries of his own choosing, never to set foot within the British Isles again. A beaten man, he signed both documents, added the missing sum of twenty-five pounds in the blank that was left for it, and made a minor amendment to explain his first encounter with Fagan. He was about to slink away without a word when a scandalized Brownlow called out to him: “Monks!” “What now?” He turned like a man in torment. “You forget yourself. You’re an Old Harrovian like your father before you—are you not? Though I say it to my own shame.” “I am.” He nodded curtly. “Then take your defeat as our old school will have taught you that a gentleman takes a defeat—on the chin! Like a man! Shake your brother’s hand and close a chapter—a sorry chapter—in your life!” Monks shuffled forward and stretched forth his hand. “You’re a true Leeford after all, I suppose,” he muttered. “As generous as our idiot-father was in his time. And I must now thank you for it.” “All is not forlorn, brother dear,” Oliver said. “Recognition of one’s iniquity is often the first step toward one’s spiritual cleansing and ...” “Oliver!” Rose said sharply. The boy giggled but was immediately serious again. “Goodbye, Edward,” he said. “That time you failed to strangle me—remember?”

297 “What of it?” “You couldn’t. I saw it in your face. It had nothing to do with leaving your luggage on the Flyer and fear of being found out—you couldn’t do it anyway. You don’t have it in you. And I honestly believe that, with a fresh start among people who do not know your past, you can become a different man.” The prominent bulge of the other’s adam’s apple bobbed an enormous curtsy in his neck as, suddenly unable to speak, he shook his brother’s hand again and, sniffing heavily, turned to depart. “One more small thing!” Brownlow cried as the man was on the threshold. “Edwin Leeford’s will. There is a copy with his lawyers, which we could with some delay and annoyance have certified and probated, but ...” “It’s with Fagan,” Monks said. “He insisted on my handing it over before he would help me further.” Then he smiled and came one step back into the room. “You probably don’t understand about Fagan,” he added. “He was deceiving me—not Oliver! He wanted Oliver to inherit.” He laughed. “Naturally he would have expected a greater reward than two hundred and fifty pounds a year, but ...” “Then why did he let Sikes murder Nancy—just for helping us?” Oliver asked. “It must be for that, because ...” “That’s the part you don’t understand, little bro—you who know him so well, too! I should have realized from the very beginning that it was quite impossible he—a man cheated of his inheritance—should help me, a man who proposed to usurp yours! You are still his darling, you know. He still thinks the world of you.” “But ... Nancy ...?” Oliver persisted. “She tried to help you without his permission—something he will not tolerate. You could do him some favour, something he’s been longing for for years, but if he did not first ask it of you, he would nonetheless make you suffer for taking his law into your own hands. That is his way.” Oliver sighed and nodded; every word was the truth, he could not deny it. “Anyway,” Monks called back over his shoulder as, at last, he left them, “Fagan has the original will—as I said. Be prepared for him to seek a good price for returning it to you!”

CHAPTER 52

Mr Bumble has a few warm wishes for the Law’s future happiness

The board of the Fellgate Union met in an extraordinary ad hoc session the moment Mr Brownlow acquainted its chairman, Mr Limbkins, with the relevant portion of Monks’s signed confession; they knew the matter must be serious for it was no more than the middle of the afternoon, when half of them should still be at table while the other half should be sleeping off the effects of their prandial indulgence. “Ha!” cried Mr Wrungley as he entered to take his place and saw Oliver waiting there. “Brought back for judgement, eh? And in stolen clothes by the look of it!”

298 He rubbed his hands with relish and began turning over in his mind the various punishments they might be called upon to meet out. He had been greatly preoccupied with the virtues of thumbscrews of late. “Didn’t I always say you’d come to a bad end, Master Twist? I’m glad I’ve lived to see it, that’s all I can say.” Mr Limbkins bent low over him and had a word in his ear. “Eh?” He stared at Oliver in amazement. “You don’t tell me! Well done, me boy! Now don’t you go abroad telling folk as we don’t know how to raise proper young gentlemen here at Fellgate! I always knew you had the makings in you— didn’t I say as much? And if I didn’t, no matter—I intended it often.” “Mister Wrungley!” Mr Limbkins, now in his chair of office, banged his gavel. “Do you intend to favour us with an entire chapter of memoir? Or may we proceed—by your leave, sir?” “The boy’s a credit to us!” Wrungley had the last word. “I challenge any man to say he isn’t!” “This afternoon,” Limbkins continued, “we meet to discuss two people who most certainly are not a credit to us—namely, Mister and Mrs Bumble.” “That rascal!” Wrungley cried. “Never liked the man. You should never beat a boy or girl about the posteriors with a cane—that’s my humble opinion. What’s yours, reverend?” The chairman persisted: “They have been discovered in a most compromising affair that reflects badly on us all.” “Thumbscrews!” Wrungley, cried. “That’s the medicine for wicked little boys and girls. Thumbscrews!” “If they had succeeded, they would have deprived this splendid young gentleman, Master Oliver Leeford—to whom we lent the temporary cognomen Twist—of his rightful inheritance.” “Eh, Twist?” Wrungley continued his own independent line. “I’ll bet you’d have preferred thumbscrews anyday to the whippings that blackguard Bumble served you—eh?” “I should have preferred even more to be heard, sir,” Oliver replied. “So you were, sir!” The portly reverend gentleman laughed. “All over the building. And by One Above, of course—what? What? Ha ha!” “And we must hope,” Limbkins said with rising desperation in his tone, “that when, with our assistance here this afternoon, young Master Leeford comes into that rightful inheritance—which is substantial, gentlemen!—he will not forget his alma mater here at Fellgate and our all-pervading charity to those who do not have his fortune. His good fortune, that is to say.” Suddenly one could have heard a pin drop. And Mr Limbkins took full advantage of their silence and attention to explain the circumstances of Oliver’s parentage—and the proof of it, stolen by Old Sal, stolen again by the Bumbles, and then sold on to a third party called Monks for twenty-five guineas. “Eh?” exclaimed the reverend gentleman. “Did you say twenty-five guineas? But I saw no entry for twenty-five guineas in the accounts. Are we sure this story is true, Mister Limbkins?”

299 “They did not pay it into the workhouse accounts, sir!” the chairman exclaimed—which produced another shocked silence. “You mean they ...” Wrungley was unable to utter so foul, so heinous a thought. But Limbkins was made of sterner stuff. “Yes!” he cried. “They kept it for themselves!” The silence that followed this would have kept an entire Trappist monastery in plenary indulgences for a year. “In any case,” Mr Brownlow felt he had to point out, “even to have paid the money into the workhouse accounts would have been theft.” Furrowed brows and puzzled glances greeted this assertion; eventually, all turned to the reverend gentleman for guidance. “Well ... yes,” he conceded with great reluctance. “In a purely legal and technical sense, I suppose one could make out such a case.” “Be that as it may,” Limbkins said, all businesslike again, for, truth to tell, the higher reaches and arcane corners of moral philosophy had never held much fascination for him, “we clearly cannot continue to employ either of the Bumbles one day longer. Not an hour, I say!” “Not if they’re going to cheat us of money on that sort of scale,” the reverend gentleman agreed. “You mean, surely, sir—not if they are going to cheat the paupers,” Brownlow said. “And on any scale?” “Same thing, sir, I do assure you,” that august personage replied affably. “Every penny we receive in charity—or by any other means—is for the benefit of the paupers—which I’m sure our illustrious alumnus at your side will confirm—and which I trust he will not forget when he, er, ha-ha! Yes!” “Are we resolved, then, to dismiss both the Bumbles forthwith?” the chairman asked. “All agreed?” “Will you not give them a chance to defend themselves?” Brownlow asked in astonishment. “Here’s a fine accuser!” Wrungley cried. “Now wants to become counsel for the defence as well!” “I hope I am an upholder of justice in either direction, sir,” Brownlow replied. “A man has a right to speak in his own defence, surely?” “Not in any English court I know,” said a gentleman who had not spoken until then. “And as one of the leading attorneys in Fellgate, I ...” “The leading attorney in Fellgate,” put in another gentleman, who also had not spoken before (and who, by the by, owed forty pounds to the attorney in question). “You are kind, sir,” the attorney responded with a cold little bow. “Kind in parts, at least. At all events, no accused may speak in his own defence until after the verdict—that’s the way of English Law, and a very fine way it is, too. Imagine the delays if the accused could harangue the bench on his own behalf for hours on end!” “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” Limbkins banged his gavel. “To order! I think we can say—without prejudice to our formal verdict—that we have already decided on the Bumbles’ guilt. Shall we now give them every appearance of a fair

300 hearing?” Grudging murmurs of assent—accompanied by resentful looks at Brownlow from those whose eyes were falling closed with half-slaked fatigue or whose bellies were reminding them all too painfully how they had been untimely torn from their frugal luncheons. The Bumbles were sent for. They must already have had an inkling that something unpleasant was afoot. Members of the board were not lightly summoned at such a disgraceful hour as this. In any case, the moment they saw Oliver Twist sitting there —sitting, mark you—beside a grave and dignified gentleman who now fixed them with the most jaundiced eye—they would have been imbeciles not to know that something very unpleasant was afoot—and that they were somehow at the heart of it. “Why, Oliver!” cried Bumble. “My dear young Nolly! ’Ow hutterly delighted I am to see thee again! Or do these eyes deceive me? Eay—if tha knew ’ow long I’ve grieved for a sight o’ thee!” “Hold your tongue, fool!” his wife murmured at his side. “Ain’t naature naaature, Mrs Bumble?” he remonstrated. “Can’t I be supposed to feel —I what brought the lad up porochially—when I sees ’im a-setting there in velveteen and silver buckles? I always loved that lad—just as if he’d been me ... me ... me own ... me own grandfayther! There, can’t say fairer nor more honest nor that!” His voice trailed off to a horrified silence as he saw what the gentleman beside Oliver was now tipping onto the table from a very familiar-looking leather pouch of the old-fashioned kind, with a drawstring at the top. “Tell the board what you know of these, sir,” Brownlow said. “Nothing!” Mrs Bumble cried at once. “The fool knows nowt!” “Let him speak for himself,” Limbkin insisted. “Bumble! What do you know of these three valuable items?” He could not look at them. “You heard Mrs Bumble, gentlemen,” he said. “I know nothing of them.” “With your permisssion, sir?” Brownlow looked at Fellgate’s leading attorney. “You may not be aware of the delicacy of your own situation, Mister Bumble,” he went on. “If these items were stolen, someone must hang or be transported for it. If they were stolen and then sold onward—that merely compounds the felony and makes the punishment more condign. The only mitigation—the only mitigation— would be a full, frank, and unforced confession, either from the party concerned ... or from one who merely stood by and permitted it to happen. The board might then think it fitting to take the matter no further—at least as far as the law was concerned?” He made it a question and canvassed Limbkins with a lift of his brow. “Indeed!” that gentleman was eager to confirm, being uncertain how vigorous a scrutiny the institution’s ledgers could withstand. Bumble drew breath to reply but his wife cut him short again. “Hold your tongue!” she said. “Can’t you tell he’s bluffing?” “I have here a copy of the relevant portion of Monks’s confession, ma’am—if you would care to peruse it?” Brownlow held forth a piece of paper.

301 “Monks, is it!” With the speed of a cat on hot coals, the woman turned on her poor, unhappy husband. “I told you not to have anything to do with that Monks!” He drew breath to protest but she rolled on over him: “Them baubles you stole off of dear little Oliver’s mother the night she died—I said you should hand them in to the board!” “But ma’am ... dearest heart! I was not even present the ...” “And as for that Monks, didn’t I say as you should hand him straight over to the constable? The wicked things he suggested!” “No, ma’am! You did not! Indeed, ...” “Shut that trap!” She hissed through clenched teeth. “There’s no saving your place here, not nohow! But mine may still be salvaged!” “What are you whispering?” The reverend gentleman demanded sharply. “She’s trying to stop me speaking, sir,” Bumble replied. “She’s in mortal fear I’ll tell the truth and get her dismissed—which I shall do! She’s behind it all, gentlemen! She got them baubles off of Old Sal on her deathbed, sirs ...” “Bumble!” shrieked his wife. “I’ll not be silenced now, my dove. These men must know where the blame’s to be laid. She got them off of Old Sal and I never even knew she had ’em—just some silver teaspoons and a pot in Sheffield plate, which she said was silver, I never even knew she had ’em till that Monks came and she made us sit in t’corner while she did all’t talking and she kept them twenty-five guineas, too, so she did. I never saw one draught of ale out of it—not one! And I ’ad nowt to do wi’ it from first to last, as God is my witness.” A silence followed while he looked from pitiless face to pitiless face and saw no trace of mercy, which, due to its being such a phenomenal commodity within those walls, would surely have shown, had there been the faintest glimmer to show. “That is all we needed to hear, I think, gentlemen?” Limbkin looked around the table and received nod after nod. “Nem con, egad!” he noted. “Thank you, Bumble! We have always looked to you for the utmost cooperation and, by harry, you have given it us today! You are dismissed.” Bumble smirked and bowed to him, and then to each member in turn, who watched with wry amusement; and then, for good measure, he bowed to Brownlow and Oliver, as well. “I’ll be about my usual business then, gentlemen,” he concluded. “No, Bumble!” the chairman said. “When I said ‘dismissed,’ I meant dismissed! You have one hour to pack up your belongings and go ...” “But it was all ’er fault, sir!” he whimpered, jerking a thumb at the captain of his soul. “That is so,” said the attorney affably. “But it is no possible help to you, for the law supposes a wife to act under her husband’s direction.” Bumble was dumbfounded. “Eh?” was all he could get out. “The law,” the man repeated slowly, “supposes that a wife acts entirely under her husband’s direction.” “If the law supposes that,” said Bumble, turning his hat over and over in his hands, “then the law is a ass, sir—a ass and a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law,

302 then the law’s a bachelor. And the worst I wish the law is that he may marry soon and have his eye opened by experience!” He glanced balefully at Mrs Bumble and shuddered. “By experience, sir!” he repeated.

CHAPTER 53

Lord Fagan is reunited weith his pretty things—but not in the House of his choice

The public trial of a peer on such scandalous charges as Lord Fagan would have to answer was ‘not in the public interest,’ or so, at least, their lordships decided— and all within two hours of the plea being placed before them. It was the fastest decision that august House had ever reached but those who have criticized it on that ground alone are apt to forget that most of the lords then sitting had passed their childhood in the shadow of the French Revolution, so one might say they had spent all their lives deliberating the pros and cons of placing the aristocratic abuse of power and privilege in the public limelight. Therefore, one might also say, it was not the shortest but the longest decision they had ever undertaken, and all it had lacked, until Lord Fagan obligingly furnished it, was an actual case to which it might be conveniently attached. As a result, Lord Fagan was not imprisoned in the Tower as he had demanded; nor was he thrown into Newgate, the Fleet, or the Clink like any common criminal; instead he was placed in most commodious quarters on the top floor in the Mad House between Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals, which was less than a mile west of Jacob’s Island. It was all done quietly and with the utmost discretion; the news of his detention, which, in other circumstances, the police would have trumpeted from the rooftops, merely seeped out. Mr Brownlow heard of it on his visit to the Home Office; and when he returned to Craven Street, where Oliver and Henry were waiting, he had all the particulars of Sikes’s death, too, as well as of the Dodger’s escape and the capture of Charley Bates, Bet, and the other children. His chief concern, of course, had been to find the will; but there, alas, he had nothing to report. “Major Fowkes assures me,” he said, “that he went through Lord Fagan’s possessions minutely before sending them on to his place of incarceration, and he is quite adamant there was no last will and testament there, nor any document at all.” “Did he tell you what was there?” Oliver next inquired. “He said it was amazingly little to show for such a life of crime.” “Six gold watches and chains?” he suggested. “Nothing like that—why?” “A loop of twine threaded through several dozen gold rings? Or a number of brooches?” “I’m sure he’d have mentioned it. He spoke only of some clipped coins ... a few cooking utensils ...” “Nor bracelets? Was there a fan studded all over with glittering stones?”

303 Brownlow gave a baffled laugh. “Why this catechism, young fellow? I have already said that nothing of any value was discovered.” Oliver, whose face had fallen at the news that Fagan apparently no longer had his father’s will, now smiled broadly once again. “Then I think I know where the will is hidden, Uncle Charles!” “Where?” the man asked eagerly. “I can send a man there at once!” “I think we should go there ourselves—alone, the three of us ...” At that point Henry interrupted to say he had better return to the Foreign Office; he could only expect to be granted a certain amount of time off, and that had better be taken when the will was found and there was work to be done of a definite nature. “Why can we not give directions to a man?” Brownlow asked when Henry had departed. “No mere directions will do, uncle. You’ll understand when you see it. It is one of those thieves’ dens where you go in at one house to enter its neighbour and where you must know every tread on every stair so as to avoid those which would send you tumbling into eternity!” “Goodness gracious me!” Brownlow exclaimed. “I need not ask if you will be safe there ... but shall I? As long as I stick by you, eh! How long shall I tell Bedwin we’ll be gone? And may I say where?” “I’d like to go on to see his lordship afterwards, uncle—so you may give her the directions to the Mad House. For the rest, you may say we shall be near the lower end of Saffron Hill.” “Aye—I feared as much,” Brownlow sighed. “Heigh ho!” They took a cab as far as Holborn Hill, descending at the corner of Field Lane. Oliver led his new uncle confidently into the dank, noisome little court, remembering only too vividly how he had recoiled at his first sight—and sniff— of the place. And that was even after a life in the baby-farm, the workhouse, and the mortuary! What must poor Uncle Charles make of it, he wondered? He saw old Jago eyeing him askance and halted long enough to greet the man and ask, “Have you an old bag or suitcase about the place, such as would hold a few small valuables without looking valuable in itself? Don’t worry! I’m doing someone a good turn—I’m sure you know who and what I mean.” “Why should I do him a good turn?” Jago asked truculently. “He can’t hurt anyone no more—not where he’s been put!” “As long as he stays there, Mister Jago, what you say is quite true. So you’ll give me pretty good odds on a bet that he will stay there, eh?” The man hastened indoors and returned with a large leather bag that fitted Oliver’s description perfectly. “Tell him!” he begged. “Tell him it was me as give it you. Tell him I’d not do aught to harm him, just because he’s down for the moment! Tell ’im that!” “By thunder, Oliver!” Brownlow murmured as they crossed the invisible line between Field Lane and Saffron Hill. “I think we got you back out of these purlieus in the nick of time. You would indeed have turned into a second Jonathan Wild!” Oliver laughed and said he doubted it.

304 “Ah, the confidence of youth!” Brownlow exclaimed. “How can you be so sure, though?” “You know where we are, sir?” Oliver asked suddenly, pausing at the threshold of what had once been Fagan’s ken—and his home. “Saffron Hill, of course,” the man replied. “That is only its name,” Oliver remarked. “Not where we are.” “I don’t understand you,” the man said as he followed the lad indoors. No shouted challenge greeted them now. Only the scurrying of rats made a kind of furtive, sibilant welcome. “Tread where I tread,” Oliver advised as he made for the ricketty old stairs. “Why did the man never get them repaired?” Brownlow asked when they reached the first landing. “If you were a Bow Street Runner, uncle, and had not one like me to guide you, how many of these steps would you dare before your thoughts turned to hearth and home!” Brownlow digested this wisdom and then reverted to his earlier puzzle. “If Saffron Hill is merely its name,” he asked, “what is it really?” “See if you can guess when we arrive at the top,” Oliver replied. “It’s much more obvious up there, I think.” They reached the top unscathed and crossed the unsteady little footbridge with its vertiginous drop on both sides. “I see what you mean by going in at one house to arrive at another!” Brownlow said, trying not to glance downward. “Have we far to go?” “A few paces only.” Oliver threw open the door and led him past two doors down the passage. “Here is where I lived for the best part of six months after I was snatched back from you—here or in a room very much like it in a house down near Smithfield markets.” He opened the door and led the way inside. At once he saw that someone else—it could only be the Dodger—had been hunting for Fagan’s pretty things already. Holes had been cut in the plaster here and there; a prodigious quantity of soot had been raked out of the chimney; the shutter boxes beside the windows had been gouged open with something ... in fact, with a jemmy, which—Oliver was delighted to see—now lay abandoned on the floor. But it posed a conundrum. The searcher could only be the Dodger—yet the Dodger would never abandon a valuable tool like that and walk away. Ergo, he had not walked away! Ergo, he was somewhere here at this moment! Hastily Oliver put a finger to his lips and tapped the side of his nose, hoping that Mr Brownlow would understand that he was not to say anything unless prompted. “Well, Uncle Charles,” he said, rather loudly, “have you guessed my riddle yet? Saffron Hill is its name but where is it really? What is it really?” Again his uncle gave a baffled laugh. “I’ve already told you I cannot guess.” “I gave a hint of it just now—when I said I was cooped up here for almost six months. Sometimes Fagan never went out of that door from one week to the next—and when he did it was just as far as the Three Cripples or to deliver some stolen goods to stallholders like the one I spoke to downstairs. What is another name for places like that?”

305 “Prison?” Brownlow guessed. “Prison!” Oliver said. “That is why I should never have agreed to Fagan’s plans for me—all that foolishness about becoming a ‘second Jonathan Wild.’ Poor Fagan! He put himself in prison—a prison of his own making—from the moment he was cheated out of his inheritance and could not let go. And he never found the way back out. All he could do was to set his snares for others—for Nancy, Bet, Batesy, and the Dodger, and a hundred others that I never met. And he brought them into his own private prison with him. He sent them out to roam the streets in little hunting packs and he deceived them into believing that was freedom. Poor Batesy! Poor Dodger! Now Fagan’s not there to keep their illusion going—what will they do?” Mr Brownlow had by now understood that Oliver was talking in this rather strange fashion for the benefit of some third party; he had been casting a surreptitious eye around the room—and had been rewarded with the fleeting glimpse of a shadow moving between two cracks in the plaster of a short partition that projected into the room beside Oliver. He nodded his head almost imperceptibly in that direction now and said, “Suppose you met this Dodger fellow again, Oliver, what would you do? Turn him in?” “Why do that? Why move him from this prison to one of His Majesty’s? What good would that do? D’you know—I have seen boys and girls picking pockets at the edge of crowds gathered to watch other boys and girls being hanged for picking pockets! So what good’s a hanging, either! No, if I met the Dodger again, I’d put twenty pounds in his pocket and a ticket to America. If he couldn’t put his past behind him there and use his wits to make a good living in honest ways, then he’s not the fellow I think he is. And I mean every word of this, Dodger, so you can come out from behind that partition now!” Sheepishly, still with that certain swagger—but now more in parody of his old self—the Dodger came out from hiding. “Mister Brownlow, sir,” he said. “I believe we’ve already met!” The man, taken quite aback by this effrontery, could only gasp and stare at him. “The less said about that, Dodger, the better!” Oliver told him. “Are you on? Will you take that ticket to America and make a better life there?” “Will a dog chase cats?” the Dodger replied. “Will butter melt in the sun? ’Course I will!” “Can you lie low for two or three days—just while the passage is arranged? We’ll get in touch through Colley Cruft, eh?” The Dodger, suddenly too moved to speak, just nodded and blinked. When he did try to talk it was to ask what the pair of them were doing there. “The same as you,” Oliver replied with a grin. “It’s not ’ere. I’ve torn the place apart. ’E must of tooken it to some other ken.” “Pass me that jemmy, please.” Oliver held out his hand. The Dodger shrugged and did as he was asked. And when he saw that Oliver was intending to lift a floorboard, he laughed in scorn. “ ’E’d never risk it, Nolly—not under one of them! They’re all loose—not a screw or a nail in sight!” But his voice dwindled to silence as he saw Oliver scrape at a patch of ingrained dust with an edge of the jemmy. It came away in a little plug to reveal the

306 tarnished head of an old brass screw. Oliver turned and grinned at him. “There are four more like it but this will be quicker—now that his lordship will never need the hiding place again.” At which he stuck the jemmy under the edge of the board. The ancient timber yielded easily and burst up off the screws. “Gawww!” the Dodger cried excitedly as he reached into the cavity and brought out the strong box. “Whossinnit?” Oliver took it from him and carried it to the table. “If he locked it, we won’t know,” he said. He tried the lid. “He locked it!” “Allow me,” Mr Brownlow said with a smile as he pulled the box toward him and took out his penknife, which included a toothpick and other useful implements. “In my schooldays at Harrow,” he remarked, “I frequently needed to borrow back confiscated toys, bows and arrows, slingshots, and the like.” He fiddled for the briefest while with the toothpick and the puny little lock sprang open—to a chorus of admiring gasps from both boys. “Some skills one never forgets,” he said lightly. “It’s like riding a hobby-horse, you know.” The Dodger gasped even louder when he saw the contents of the box. He paid no attention to the document, of course—which was the first thing Oliver snatched up, and then passed to Mr Brownlow. He was so busy watching his uncle’s face, waiting for the smile and the nod which would signify the end of their long search, that he failed to notice how the Dodger was helping himself to everything else in the box. By the time the smile and the nod came, the box was empty. “Dodger!” Oliver exclaimed. “What?” “What did you just promise?” The Artful was puzzled. “But that was for when I got to America! I’ll divvy this wiv yer, honest.” He glanced at Brownlow. “And wiv yer honour, too, if yer wishes it. I know where to get all the best prices, and ...” “Dodger!” Oliver was adamant; he pointed silently to the empty box. “Wotcher gonna do wiv ’em yerself?” he asked. “I can get double the prices what you’ll get.” “Come on! We don’t have all day. I’m not going to sell them.” Reluctantly the young fellow began emptying his pockets—the quantity and location of which simply amazed Mr Brownlow—back into the box. “Not sell ’em?” The idea seemed to pose some difficulties to his comprehension. “Not sell ’em?” Oliver looked at his uncle. “I know what ought to be done with them, sir,” he said. “And yet I feel it would be somehow fitting if his lordship were given them to play with ... until ... until he has no further need for them. But I will let myself be guided, as always, by you.” A cold, implacable light gleamed in the boy’s eyes. The man saw it and could not suppress a slight shiver. But when he thought of the trials and tests to which his immature body and mind had been subjected, he could not think Oliver’s hardness of heart unnatural; one softer and less tempered in those hellish fires would have liquefied and vanished long ere now. “If you think it right, Oliver ...”

307 he began. “In this particular case,” Oliver stressed. “I understand, believe me, I do. I shall not stand in the way of what you propose.” They parted with the Dodger at the street door. As he made his way up the street, melting from doorway to niche to alley-corner, Oliver and his uncle stood and watched. “I see what you mean, Oliver,” Brownlow said. “All these people—they are in a prison already—bounded by these crumbling walls—condemned by their own crimes to the punishment of all this filth and squalor. Tell me—when did the idea first occur to you?” “Not the first time I saw these streets,” Oliver replied. “I had never known what true liberty was before then. They say liberty is the right of every true-born Briton, but it’s not. I realized it the second time—when they snatched me back last summer—after I had been with you and Mrs Bedwin. Sikes and Nancy took me across Smithfield markets to get to where Fagan was then in hiding—one of his alternative prisons! And I thought I might make a dash for it into the fog, but Sikes reminded me how Bullseye, his dog, would love to tear out my throat. And then, as we walked on in silence, I wondered where they—he and Nancy—would escape to that was different from where they might escape from. For my part, I should have escaped directly back to you and Mrs Bedwin in Pentonville—but where had they to go?” They set off again, back through Field Lane to Holborn Hill; Jago winked as they passed but they held no other intercourse with him. “If I do anything with my life when I grow up,” Oliver said when they had settled themselves in the cab, “it will be to help in some way to abolish these vast prisons-without-walls which we call slums.” “I was just wondering,” Brownlow mused. “How many times have I driven down the City Road from Pentonville, on my way to some grand City occasion— and all in blissful ignorance of what my eyes have witnessed this morning! Farewell ignorance—and farewell bliss! I hope you will remember this resolve when you are a man, Oliver—and be sure that, if I am spared, I shall remind you of it. Like another great reformer before you, you may yet light such a fire in England as by God’s grace may never be put out!” It was an unusually contemplative pair who alighted from the cab at the door to Guy’s Mad House. The bell, when they pulled the lever, had a doom-laden ring, it seemed to them. After an interminable wait they heard shuffling in the passage beyond the massive door, accompanied by the turning of heavy locks and the shooting of large bolts, before a voice cried through the door, “Viewing of the lunatics in the afternoons only. The morning spectacles are finished!” “We have come to visit Lord Fagan,” Brownlow called back. “Be so good as to admit us.” “I’ll have to see,” was the reply, followed by more shuffling and a securing of bolts and locks in the reverse order. “What do they do if there’s a fire?” Brownlow murmured. “Let them burn, I

308 suppose!” This time the footsteps were more brisk and the opening of locks and bolts more expeditious. The outermost door swung open to reveal a youngish man with the air of a doctor about him. Brownlow held out his hand. “My name is Brownlow, sir. I have come from the Home Office. This is Oliver Twist.” He held Oliver’s elbow as he spoke and he felt the boy stiffen at the lie-by-implication—and yet every word was the literal truth. “Ah yes. Muckridge—Doctor Muckridge.” He shook hands with both. “Pray enter. His lordship has spoken often of Master Twist. He will be glad to see you.” He continued speaking as he led them through the hall, leaving the shuffling imbecile to lock up behind them. “May I ask what is in the bag? Not tools for burglary, I trust, ha-ha!” “Some pretty things for him to play with,” Oliver told him. His heart was already beating at about twice its normal pace—and not just with the effort of climbing the stairs to Fagan’s chambers at the top. The stench of the place was uncomfortably redolent of the workhouse—a combination of cabbage, gruel, unwashed bodies, and the latrine. At the end of one corridor, beyond a stout iron grille that spanned from wall to wall and floor to ceiling, he spied a naked old woman. “She tears off any rags we put about her,” Muckridge explained, having noticed their amazement. “We have several like that. They are very popular with all our spectators.” “Hence the grille,” Brownlow commented. “Hence the grille.” “There are grilles like that in all the workhouses, you know,” Oliver told them—in pairs—ten feet apart—so that no one may reach across the gap and touch.” “But why?” the doctor asked. “Surely they have no lunatics there?” “It’s to keep husbands apart from their wives and children,” he said. “After a few months in the workhouse, most families have broken apart.” They ascended the last flight of stairs in silence. At the door to Lord Fagan’s set of chambers, the doctor paused and turned to them. “You may think his lordship quite sane,” he warned them. “And, indeed, for all the time he has spent here so far, he is—perfectly sane in my opinion. But I am only a doctor in lunacy! And, as their lordships have, in their great wisdom, decided he is not sane, he must be accommodated here ... or somewhere else like it.” He unlocked the door and opened it. “Visitors, my lord!” he called out as he ushered the pair of them in. “Mr Brownlow of the Home Office and Master Oliver Twist” “Oliver! Nolly! My dear, dear boy!” Fagan came to him with open arms, ignoring Brownlow entirely. “He has not harmed you then! Wonderful! Wonderful! I tried to warn them of his purpose but they would not listen to me. Has he tried to attack you again?” “I am under Mister Brownlow’s protection now,” Oliver replied as he disentangled himself from the man’s embrace. “His and the Maylies’. Monks will

309 live abroad from now on.” “All’s well, then!” He turned at last to Brownlow. “Take the greatest care of this young man, sir—he is no ordinary little mortal.” Poor Brownlow was so taken aback by the man’s brazenness that he forgot the remonstrances and sharp words he had intended to deliver; instead, he spluttered a little and muttered something to the effect that ‘sooner or later everyone discovered that truth’! “Look what we’ve brought you, my lord,” Oliver said, laying the bag on a table. Fagan approached it warily, giving the doctor a resentful glance every now and then. “I must insist on seeing the contents,” the man told him. “And I must confiscate anything that could assist your escape. That is a rule, I’m afraid.” But the moment Fagan saw his dearly beloved box his entire attitude changed— from suspicion to delight. “My pretty things!” he cried. “Nolly! You clever boy! To find them where all others have failed. The Dodger tore the place asunder, I’ll wager—you know he alone escaped from Jacob’s Island?” “I have always known where you hid them,” Oliver said. “From the very first morning in those lodgings in Saffron Hill.” “The lock has been picked!” Suddenly distraught, Fagan began to scrabble through the contents. “What have you taken?” he snarled. “These are my pretty things—mine!” “I took nothing,” Oliver assured him, “except one bit of paper—which was mine already.” Fagan stared into the box, whose contents he had now spread out upon the table; a slow grin spread across his countenance. “Ah, yes!” he murmured. “Well, you’re welcome to that. But ... you mean you took nothing else?” “Nothing.” “What—nothing?” “Not the smallest gem from that pretty fan there.” “And you knew all the time where they were kept?” Oliver nodded. “I even replaced some of the dust over one of the screws when Bullseye scratched it out one evening.” Grinning, Fagan ran his hands over the table, picking up a ring here, a brooch there, a locket, a watch ... “Mine!” he whispered. “None shall have them!” Brownlow pointed to a valuable gold watch. “Couldn’t he bribe one of the attendants to let him out by offering one of those?” he asked the doctor. Muckridge shook his head. “They are all imbeciles—of varying degrees of severity. Such treasures would mean nothing to them.” “That’s why they’re imbeciles,” Fagan chuckled. From the moment the box had been opened he had had eyes for nothing else; his visitors were seemingly forgotten. Oliver glanced at his uncle and inclined his head toward the door. Brownlow looked at Muckrige and nodded. As they edged their way out, Oliver said, “I’ll come and see you from time to time, Lord Fagan.” “Wait!” His lordship sprang suddenly to his feet and ran to one of the windows. “Here! I did not show you. I must show you.”

310 Bewildered, Oliver crossed the room and stood beside him. “Look!” Fagan said excitedly, pointing away to the northwest, across the rooftops of St Thomas’s, which was across the street from Guy’s. “What?” Oliver asked. “The Palace of Westminster—the House of Lords!” Fagan said. “I can see it from here whenever I like! I shall have my day of glory there, Nolly—the moment my trial begins!”

CHAPTER 54

What remains to be told

The fortunes of those who have figured in this tale are nearly closed. The little that remains to their historian to relate is told in few and simple words. Mr Brownlow married Eleanora Maylie, his childhood sweetheart and they adopted Oliver as their son. He went to Harrow School, like his father and stepfather before him, where, as he promised Aunt Maylie and Rose, he gave a good account of himself. He read greats at Brasenose College, Oxford, but, as is the custom among gentlemen, did not sit the examinations. He followed Henry Maylie into the diplomatic service. The Dodger married Betsy and they went to America, with Oliver's help. There they joined a travelling circus and delighted the crowd by picking pockets and removing items of clothing from victims in the audience while those same victims remained blissfully unaware of the thefts; all the stolen items were, of course, scrupulously returned to their owners at the end of their performance! As for Charlotte, Mercer, Oliver kept his promise to her and she was content. Monks squandered his allowances and died in prison in Paris. The Bumbles fared badly, too. Having no trade themselves they were soon reduced to poverty and were forced to seek shelter in the Fellgate workhouse, where Mr Bumble had at least the consolation of the iron grilles that divorced him from his better half. And within the altar of the old village church in Chertsey there stands a white marble tablet, which bears as yet but one word—Agnes! If the spirits of the dead ever come back to earth to visit spots hallowed by love—the love beyond the grave—of those whom they knew in life, I believe that the shade of Agnes ofttimes hovers around that solemn nook. I believe it none the less because that nook is in a church and she, who could not wait for the marriage band, was weak and erring.

THE END

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