Stranica 145 [145]
OCR
103 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. (c Now,” muttered the Jew as he knocked at the door, “ if there is any deep pla 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, s 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 halfsmothered noise that escaped her, to be crying. “And the boy, too,” said the Jew, straining his eyes to catcha 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, | 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 ?” s 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, “Ill 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. 4 What is it!” pursued Fagin, mad with rage. “This! hen 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 the whole of his demeanour. A moment before, his clenched hands had grasped the air, his eyes had dilated, and his face had 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
