CHAPTER XXVI.

IN WHICH A MYSTERIOUS CHARACTER APPEARS UPON THE SCENE,

AND MANY THINGS INSEPARABLE FROM THIS HISTORY ARE DONE AND

PERFORMED.

THE old man had gained the street corner before he began to recover

the effect of Toby Crackit’s intelligence. He had relaxed nothing of

his unusual speed, but was still pressing onward in the same wild and

disordered manner, when the sudden dashing past of a carriage, and a

boisterous cry from the foot-passengers, who saw his danger, drove

him back upon the pavement. Avoiding as much as possible all the main

streets, and skulking only through the byways and alleys, he at length

emerged on Snow Hill. Here he walked even faster than before; nor did

he linger until he had again turned into a court, when, as if conscious

that he was now in his proper element, he fell into his usual

shuffling pace, and seemed to breathe more freely.

Near to the spot on which Snow Hill and Holborn Hill meet, there

opens, upon the right hand as you come out of the city, a narrow and

dismal alley leading to Saffron Hill. In its filthy shops are exposed

for sale huge bunches of second-hand silk handkerchiefs, of all sizes

and patterns—for here reside the traders who purchase them from

pickpockets. Hundreds of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs

outside the windows, or flaunting from the door-posts; and the shelves

within are piled with them. Confined as the limits of Field Lane are,

it has its barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, and its fried-fish

warehouse. It is a commercial colony of itself, the emporium of petty

larceny, visited at early morning and setting-in of dusk by silent

merchants, who traffic in dark back-parlours, and 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; and stores of

old iron and bones, and heaps of mildewy fragments of woollen-stuff and

linen, rust and rot in the grimy cellars.

It was into this place that the Jew turned. He was well known to the

sallow denizens of the lane, for such of them as were on the lookout to

buy or sell nodded familiarly as he passed along. He replied to their

salutations in the same way, but bestowed no closer recognition until

he reached the further end of the alley, when he stopped to address a

salesman of small stature, who had squeezed as much of his person into

a child’s chair as the chair would hold, and was smoking a pipe at his

warehouse door.

“Why, the sight of you, Mr. Fagin, would cure the hoptalmy!” said this

respectable trader, in acknowledgment of the Jew’s inquiry after his

health.

“The neighbourhood was a little too hot, Lively,” said Fagin, elevating

his eyebrows, and crossing his hands upon his shoulders.

“Well! I’ve heerd that complaint of it once or twice before,” replied

the trader; “but it soon cools down again; don’t you find it so?”

Fagin nodded in the affirmative, and pointing in the direction of

Saffron Hill, inquired whether any one was up yonder to-night.

“At the Cripples?” inquired the man.

The Jew nodded.

“Let me see,” pursued the merchant, reflecting. “Yes; there’s some

half-dozen of ’em gone in that I knows. I don’t think your friend’s

there.”

“Sikes is not, I suppose?” inquired the Jew, with a disappointed

countenance.

“_Non istwentus_, as the lawyers say,” replied the little man, shaking

his head, and looking amazingly sly. “Have you got anything in my line

to-night?”

“Nothing to-night,” said the Jew, turning away.

“Are you going up to the Cripples, Fagin?” cried the little man,

calling after him. “Stop! I don’t mind if I have a drop there with

you!”

But as the Jew, looking back, waved his hand to intimate that he

preferred being alone; and, moreover, as the little man could not very

easily disengage himself from the chair, the sign of the Cripples was,

for a time, bereft of the advantage of Mr. Lively’s presence. By the

time he had got upon his legs the Jew had disappeared; so Mr. Lively,

after ineffectually standing on tiptoe, in the hope of catching sight

of him, again forced himself into the little chair, and, exchanging a

shake of the head with a lady in the opposite shop, in which doubt and

mistrust were plainly mingled, resumed his pipe with a grave demeanour.

The Three Cripples, or rather the Cripples, which was the sign by

which the establishment was familiarly known to its patrons, was the

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

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

stairs, and opening the door of a room, and softly insinuating himself

into the chamber, looked anxiously about, shading his eyes with his

hand, as if in search of some particular person.

The room was illuminated by two gas-lights, the glare of which was

prevented by the barred shutters and closely-drawn curtains of faded

red from being visible outside. The ceiling was blackened to prevent

its colour being injured by the flaring of the lamps; and the place was

so full of dense tobacco-smoke, that at first it was scarcely possible

to discern anything further. By degrees, however, as some of it cleared

away through the open door, an assemblage of heads, as confused as the

noises that greeted the ear, might be made out; and as the eye grew

more accustomed to the scene, the spectator gradually became aware of

the presence of a numerous company, male and female, crowded round a

long table, at the upper end of which sat a chairman with a hammer of

office in his hand, while a professional gentleman, with a bluish nose

and his face tied up for the benefit of a toothache, presided at a

jingling piano in a remote corner.

As Fagin stepped softly in, the professional gentleman, running over

the keys by way of prelude, occasioned a general cry of order for

a song; which having subsided, a young lady proceeded to entertain

the company with a ballad in four verses, between each of which the

accompanyist played the melody all through as loud as he could.

When this was over, the chairman gave a sentiment; after which, the

professional gentlemen on the chairman’s right and left volunteered a

duet, and sang it with great applause.

It was curious to observe some faces which stood out prominently from

among the group. There was the chairman himself, (the landlord of the

house,) a coarse, rough, heavy-built fellow, who, while the songs

were proceeding, rolled his eyes hither and, thither, and, seeming

to give himself up to joviality, had an eye for every thing that was

done, and an ear for everything that was said—and sharp ones, too.

Near him were the singers, receiving, with professional indifference,

the compliments of the company, and applying themselves in turn to a

dozen proffered glasses of spirits and water tendered by their more

boisterous admirers, whose countenances, expressive of almost every

vice in almost every grade, irresistibly attracted the attention by

their very repulsiveness. Cunning, ferocity, and 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, and others with every mark and stamp of their sex utterly

beaten out, and presenting but one loathsome blank of profligacy and

crime—some mere girls, others but young women, and none past the prime

of life—formed the darkest and saddest portion of this dreary picture.

Fagin, troubled by no grave emotions, looked eagerly from face to face

while these proceedings were in progress, but, apparently, without

meeting that of which he was in search. Succeeding, at length, in

catching the eye of the man who occupied the chair, he beckoned to him

slightly, and left the room as quietly as he had entered it.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Fagin?” inquired the man, as he followed

him out to the landing. “Wont you join us? They’ll be delighted, every

one of ’em.”

The Jew shook his head impatiently, and said in a whisper, “Is _he_

here?”

“No,” replied the man.

“And no news of Barney?” inquired Fagin.

“None,” replied the landlord of the Cripples; for it was he. “He wont

stir till it’s all safe. Depend on it that they’re on the scent down

there, and that if he moved he’d blow upon the thing at once. He’s all

right enough, Barney is, else I should have heard of him. I’ll pound it

that Barney’s managing properly. Let him alone for that.”

“Will _he_ be here to-night?” asked the Jew, laying the same emphasis

on the pronoun as before.

“Monks, do you mean?” inquired the landlord, hesitating.

“Hush!” said the Jew. “Yes.”

“Certain,” replied the man, drawing a gold watch from his fob; “I

expected him here before now. If you’ll wait ten minutes, he’ll be——”

“No, no,” said the Jew, hastily, as though, however desirous he might

be to see the person in question, he was nevertheless relieved by his

absence. “Tell him I came here to see him, and that he must come to me

to-night; no, say to-morrow. As he is not here, to-morrow will be time

enough.”

“Good!” said the man. “Nothing more?”

“Not a word now,” said the Jew, descending the stairs.

“I say,” said the other, looking over the rails, and speaking in a

hoarse whisper; “what a time this would be for a sell! I’ve got Phil

Barker here, so drunk that a boy might take him.”

“Aha! But it’s not Phil Barker’s time,” said the Jew, looking up. “Phil

has something more to do before we can afford to part with him; so go

back to the company, my dear, and tell them to lead merry lives—_while

they last_. Ha! ha! ha!”

The landlord reciprocated the old man’s laugh, and returned to his

guests. The Jew was no sooner alone, than his countenance resumed its

former expression of anxiety and thought. After a brief reflection,

he called a hack-cabriolet, and bade the man drive towards Bethnal

Green. He dismissed him within some quarter of a mile of Mr. Sikes’s

residence, and performed the short remainder of the distance on foot.

“Now,” muttered the Jew, as he knocked at the door, “if there is any

deep play here, I shall have it out of you, my girl, cunning as you

are.”

She was in her room, the woman said; so Fagin crept softly up stairs,

and entered it without any previous ceremony. The girl was alone, lying

with her head upon the table, and her hair straggling over it.

“She has been drinking,” thought the Jew, coolly, “or perhaps she is

only miserable.”

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

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

narrowly, as she inquired whether there was any news, and listened to

his recital of Toby Crackit’s story. When it was concluded, she sunk

into her former attitude, but spoke not a word. She pushed the candle

impatiently away, and once or twice, as she feverishly changed her

position, shuffled her feet upon the ground; but this was all.

During this silence, the Jew looked restlessly about the room, as if to

assure himself that there were no appearances of Sikes having covertly

returned. Apparently satisfied with his inspection, he coughed twice or

thrice, and made as many efforts to open a conversation; but the girl

heeded him no more than if he had been made of stone. At length he made

another attempt, and, rubbing his hands together, said, in his most

conciliatory tone,

“And where should you think Bill was now, my dear—eh?”

The girl moaned out some scarcely intelligible reply, that she could

not tell, and seemed, from the half-smothered noise that escaped her,

to be crying.

“And the boy, too,” said the Jew, straining his eyes to catch a glimpse

of her face. “Poor leetle child!—left in a ditch, Nance; only think!”

“The child,” said the girl, suddenly looking up, “is better where he

is than among us: and if no harm comes to Bill from it, I hope he lies

dead in the ditch, and that his young bones may rot there.”

“What!” cried the Jew, in amazement.

“Ay, I do,” returned the girl, meeting his gaze. “I shall be glad to

have him away from my eyes, and to know that the worst is over. I can’t

bear to have him about me. The sight of him turns me against myself and

all of you.”

“Pooh!” said the Jew, scornfully. “You’re drunk, girl.”

“Am I?” cried the girl, bitterly. “It’s no fault of yours if I am

not! you’d never have me anything else if you had your will, except

now;—the humour doesn’t suit you, doesn’t it?”

“No!” rejoined the Jew, furiously. “It does not.”

“Change it, then!” responded the girl, with a laugh.

“Change it!” exclaimed the Jew, exasperated beyond all bounds by his

companion’s unexpected obstinacy, and the vexation of the night, “I

will change it! Listen to me, you drab! listen to me, who with six

words can strangle Sikes as surely as if I had his bull’s throat

between my fingers now. If he comes back, and leaves that boy behind

him,—if he gets off free, and, dead or alive, fails to restore him to

me, murder him yourself if you would have him escape Jack Ketch, and do

it the moment he sets foot in this room, or, mind me, it will be too

late!”

“What is all this?” cried the girl, involuntarily.

“What is it?” pursued Fagin, mad with rage. “This—When the boy’s worth

hundreds of pounds to me, am I to lose what chance threw me in the way

of getting safely, through the whims of a drunken gang that I could

whistle away the lives of,—and me bound, too, to a born devil that

only wants the will, and has got the power to, to——”

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

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

demeanour. A moment before, his clenched hands grasped the air, his

eyes had dilated, and his face grown livid with passion; but now

he shrunk into a chair, and, cowering together, trembled with the

apprehension of having himself disclosed some hidden villany. After a

short silence, he ventured to look round at his companion, and appeared

somewhat reassured on beholding her in the same listless attitude from

which he had first roused her.

“Nancy, dear!” croaked the Jew, in his usual voice. “Did you mind me,

dear?”

“Don’t worry me, now, Fagin!” replied the girl, raising her head

languidly. “If Bill has not done it this time, he will another. He has

done many a good job for you, and will do many more when he can; and

when he can’t, he wont; so no more about that.”

“Regarding this boy, my dear?” said the Jew, rubbing the palms of his

hands nervously together.

“The boy must take his chance with the rest,” interrupted Nancy,

hastily; “and I say again, I hope he is dead, and out of harm’s way,

and out of yours,—that is, if Bill comes to no harm, and if Toby got

clear off, he’s pretty sure to, for he’s worth two of him any time.”

“And about what I was saying, my dear?” observed the Jew, keeping his

glistening eye steadily upon her.

“You must say it all over again if it’s any thing you want me to do,”

rejoined Nancy: “and if it is, you had better wait till to-morrow. You

put me up for a minute, but now I’m stupid again.”

Fagin put several other questions, all with the same drift of

ascertaining whether the girl had profited by his unguarded hints; but

she answered them so readily, and was withal so utterly unmoved by his

searching looks, that his original impression of her being more than a

trifle in liquor was fully confirmed. Nancy, indeed, was not exempt

from a failing which was very common among the Jew’s female pupils, and

in which, in their tenderer years, they were rather encouraged than

checked. Her disordered appearance, and a wholesale perfume of Geneva

which pervaded the apartment, afforded strong confirmatory evidence

of the justice of the Jew’s supposition; and when, after indulging

in the temporary display of violence above described, she subsided,

first into dulness, and afterwards into a compound of feelings, under

the influence of which she shed tears one minute, and in the next

gave utterance to various exclamations of “Never say die!” and divers

calculations as to what might be the amount of the odds so long as

a lady or gentleman were happy, Mr. Fagin, who had had considerable

experience of such matters in his time, saw, with great satisfaction,

that she was very far gone indeed.

Having eased his mind by this discovery, and accomplished his twofold

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

ascertaining with his own eyes that Sikes had not returned, Mr. Fagin

again turned his face homeward, leaving his young friend asleep with

her head upon the table.

It was within an hour of midnight, and the weather being dark and

piercing cold, he had no great temptation to loiter. The sharp wind

that scoured the streets seemed to have cleared them of passengers

as of dust and mud, for few people were abroad, and they were to all

appearance hastening fast home. It blew from the right quarter for the

Jew, however, and straight before it he went, trembling and shivering

as every fresh gust drove him rudely on his way.

He had reached the corner of his own street, and was already fumbling

in his pocket for the door-key, when a dark figure emerged from a

projecting entrance which lay in deep shadow, and, crossing the road,

glided up to him unperceived.

“Fagin!” whispered a voice close to his ear.

“Ah!” said the Jew, turning quickly round, “is that——”

“Yes!” interrupted the stranger, harshly. “I have been lingering here

these two hours. Where the devil have you been?”

“On your business, my dear,” replied the Jew, glancing uneasily at his

companion, and slackening his pace as he spoke. “On your business all

night.”

“Oh, of course!” said the stranger, with a sneer. “Well; and what’s

come of it?”

“Nothing good,” said the Jew.

“Nothing bad, I hope?” said the stranger, stopping short, and turning a

startled look upon his companion.

The Jew shook his head, and was about to reply, when the stranger,

interrupting him, motioned to the house before which they had by this

time arrived, and remarked, that he had better say what he had got to

say under cover, for his blood was chilled with standing about so long,

and the wind blew through him.

Fagin looked as if he could have willingly excused himself from taking

home a visiter at that unseasonable hour, and muttered something

about having no fire; but his companion repeating his request in a

peremptory manner, he unlocked the door, and requested him to close it

softly, while he got a light.

“It’s as dark as the grave,” said the man, groping forward a few steps.

“Make haste. I hate this!”

“Shut the door,” whispered Fagin from the end of the passage. As he

spoke, it closed with a loud noise.

“That wasn’t my doing,” said the other man, feeling his way. “The wind

blew it to, or it shut of its own accord; one or the other. Look sharp

with the light, or I shall knock my brains out against something in

this confounded hole.”

Fagin stealthily descended the kitchen stairs, and, after a short

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

Crackit was asleep in the back-room below, and the boys in the front

one. Beckoning the other man to follow him, he led the way up stairs.

“We can say the few words we’ve got to say in here, my dear,” said the

Jew, throwing open a door on the first floor; “and as there are holes

in the shutters, and we never shew lights to our neighbours, we’ll set

the candle on the stairs. There!”

With these words, the Jew, stooping down, placed the candle on an

upper flight of stairs, exactly opposite the room door, and led the

way into the apartment, which was destitute of all moveables save a

broken arm-chair, and an old couch or sofa without covering, which

stood behind the door. Upon this piece of furniture the stranger

flung himself with the air of a weary man, and the Jew drawing up the

arm-chair opposite, they sat face to face. It was not quite dark, for

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

reflection on the opposite wall.

They conversed for some time in whispers; although nothing of the

conversation was distinguishable beyond a few disjointed words here and

there; a listener might easily have perceived that Fagin appeared to be

defending himself against some remarks of the stranger, and that the

latter was in a state of considerable irritation. They might have been

talking thus for a quarter of an hour or more, when Monks—by which

name the Jew had designated the strange man several times in the course

of their colloquy—said, raising his voice a little,

“I tell you again it was badly planned. Why not have kept him here

among the rest, and made a sneaking, snivelling pickpocket of him at

once?”

“Only hear him!” exclaimed the Jew, shrugging his shoulders.

“Why, do you mean to say you couldn’t have done it if you had chosen?”

demanded Monks, sternly. “Haven’t you done it with other boys scores of

times? If you had had patience for a twelvemonth, at most, couldn’t you

have got him convicted and sent safely out of the kingdom, perhaps for

life?”

“Whose turn would that have served, my dear?” inquired the Jew, humbly.

“Mine,” replied Monks.

“But not mine,” said the Jew, submissively. “He might have become

of use to me. When there are two parties to a bargain, it is only

reasonable that the interest of both should be consulted; is it, my

good friend?”

“What then?” demanded Monks, sulkily. “I saw it was not easy to train

him to the business,” replied the Jew; “he was not like other boys in

the same circumstances.”

“Curse him, no!” muttered the man, “or he would have been a thief long

ago.”

“I had no hold upon him to make him worse,” pursued the Jew, anxiously

watching the countenance of his companion. “His hand was not in; I

had nothing to frighten him with, which we always must have in the

beginning, or we labour in vain. What could I do? Send him out with the

Dodger and Charley? We had enough of that at first, my dear; I trembled

for us all.”

“_That_ was not my doing,” observed Monks.

“No, no, my dear!” renewed the Jew, “and I don’t quarrel with it now,

because, if it had never happened, you might never have clapped eyes

upon the boy to notice him, and so led to the discovery that it was him

you were looking for. Well; I got him back for you by means of the

girl, and then _she_ begins to favour him.”

“Throttle the girl!” said Monks, impatiently.

“Why, we can’t afford to do that just now, my dear,” replied the Jew,

smiling; “and, besides, that sort of thing is not in our way, or one

of these days I might be glad to have it done. I know what these girls

are, Monks, well. As soon as the boy begins to harden, she’ll care no

more for him than for a block of wood. You want him made a thief: if

he is alive, I can make him one from this time; and if—if—” said the

Jew, drawing nearer to the other,—“it’s not likely, mind,—but if the

worst comes to the worst, and he is dead——”

“It’s no fault of mine if he is!” interposed the other man, with a look

of terror, and clasping the Jew’s arm with trembling hands. “Mind that,

Fagin; I had no hand in it. Anything but his death, I told you from

the first. I wont shed blood; it’s always found out, and haunts a man

besides. If they shot him dead, I was not the cause; do you hear me?

Fire this infernal den!—what’s that?”

“What!” cried the Jew, grasping the coward round the body with both

arms as he sprung to his feet. “Where?”

“Yonder!” replied the man, glaring at the opposite wall. “The shadow—I

saw the shadow of a woman, in a cloak and bonnet, pass along the

wainscot like a breath!”

The Jew released his hold, and they rushed tumultuously from the room.

The candle, wasted by the draught, was standing where it had been

placed, and shewed them the empty staircase, and their own white faces.

They listened intently, but a profound silence reigned throughout the

house.

“It’s your fancy,” said the Jew, taking up the light, and turning to

his companion.

“I’ll swear I saw it!” replied Monks, trembling violently. “It was

bending forward when I saw it first, and when I spoke it darted away.”

The Jew glanced contemptuously at the pale face of his associate,

and, telling him he could follow if he pleased, ascended the stairs.

They looked into all the rooms; they were cold, bare, and empty. They

descended into the passage, and thence into the cellars below. The

green damp hung upon the low walls, and the tracks of the snail and

slug glistened in the light; but all was still as death.

“What do you think now?” said the Jew, when they had regained the

passage. “Besides ourselves, there’s not a creature in the house except

Toby and the boys, and they’re safe enough. See here!”

As a proof of the fact, the Jew drew forth two keys from his pocket;

and explained, that when he first went down stairs he had locked them

in, to prevent any intrusion on the conference.

This accumulated testimony effectually staggered Mr. Monks. His

protestations had gradually become less and less vehement as they

proceeded in their search without making any discovery; and now he

gave vent to several very grim laughs, and confessed it could only

have been his excited imagination. He declined any renewal of the

conversation, however, for that night, suddenly remembering that it was

past one o’clock: and so the amiable couple parted.