Stranica 143 [143]
101
ways and alleys, he at length emerged on
Snow Hill. Here he walked even faster
than before; nor did he linger until he
had again turned into a court, when, as
if conscious that he was now in his pro¬
per element, he fell into his usual shuf¬
. pace, and seemed to breathe more
eely.
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 ex¬
posed for sale huge bunches of second¬
hand silk handkerchiefs of all sizes and
patterns,—for here reside the traders who
purchase them from pickpockets. Hun¬
dreds of these handkerchiefs hang dan¬
ghing from pegs outside the windows, or
unting from the door-posts; and the
shelves within are piled with them. Con¬
fined 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 came. 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
sa. acy of woollen stuff and linen, rust
and rot in the grimy cellars.
It was into this place that the Jew turn¬
ed. He was well known to the sallow
denizens of the lane, for such of them as
were on the look-out to buy or sell, nod¬
ded 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 sales¬
man 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, Mister Fagin,
would cure the hoptalmy !” said this re¬
spectable trader, in acknowledgment of
the Jew’s inquiry after his health.
c The neighbourhood was a little too
hot, Lively!” said Fagin, elevating his
eyebrows, and crossing his hands upon his
oulders.
“Well! I’ve heerd that complaint of
it once or twice before,” replied the tra¬
der, “ but it soon cools down again; don’t
you find it so?”
Te 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.
s Let me see!” pursued the merchant,
reflecting. “Yes; there’s some half
‘em gone in, that I knows on.
I don’t think your friend ’s there.”
c Sikes is not, I suppose?" inquired the
Jew with a disappointed countenance.
6 Non istwentus, as the lawyers say,”
replied the little man, shaking his head,
and looking amazing sly. ‘Have you
got anything in my line to-night ?” |
_ “ Nothing to-night,” said the Jew, turn¬
ing away.
“ Are you going up to the Cripples, Fa¬
in?” cried the little man, calling after
Fim. “Stop! I don’t mind if I have a
drain there with you!”
But as the Jew, looking back, waved
his hand to intimate that he preferred be¬
ing alone; and, moreover, as the little
man could not very easily disengage him¬
self from the chair, the sign of the Crip¬
ples was, for a time, bereft of the advan¬
tage of Mr. Lively’s presence. By the
time he had got upon his legs the Jew
had disappeared; so Mr. Lively, after in¬
effectually standing on tip-toe, in the hope
of catching sight of him, again forced
himself into the little chair, and, exchang¬
ing a shake of the head with a lady in
the opposite shop, in which doubt and
mistrust were plainly mingled, resumed
his pipe with grave demeanour.
he Three Cripples, or rather the
Cripples, which was the sign by which
the establishment was familianly 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, shadin
his eyes with his hand, as if in search o
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