Fagin

“ If you want revenge on those that treat you like a dog—like a dog! worse than his dog, for he humours him sometimes—come to me. I say, come to me. He is the mere hound of a day, but you know me of old, Nance—of old."
"I know you well," replied the girl, without manifesting the least emotion. "Good night."
She shrunk back as Fagin offered to lay his hand on hers, but said good night again in a steady voice, and, answering his parting look with a nod of intelligence, closed the door between them.
Fagin walked towards his own home, intent upon the thoughts that were working within his brain. ”

“ Fagin laid his hand upon the bundle, and locking it in the cupboard, sat down again without speaking. But he did not take his eyes off the robber for an instant during this action, and now that they sat over against each other face to face, he looked fixedly at him, with his lips quivering so violently, and his face so altered by the emotions which had mastered him, that the housebreaker involuntarily drew back his chair, and surveyed him with a look of real affright.
"Wot now?" cried Sikes. "Wot do you look at a man so for?—Speak, will you?" ”

“ Fagin raised his right hand, and shook his trembling forefinger in the air; but his passion was so great, that the power of speech was for the moment gone.
“Damme!” said Sikes, feeling in his breast with a look of alarm. “He’s gone mad. I must look to myself here.”
“No, no,” rejoined Fagin, finding his voice. “It’s not—you’re not the person, Bill. I’ve no—no fault to find with you.”
“Oh, you haven’t, haven’t you?” said Sikes, looking sternly at him, and ostentatiously passing a pistol into a more convenient pocket. “That’s lucky—for one of us. Which one that is, don’t matter.” ”

“ Fagin seemed to interpret the endeavour as expressing a perfect coincidence with his opinion, and put about the liquor which Barney reappeared with, in a very friendly manner.
'Good stuff that,' observed Mr. Claypole, smacking his lips.
'Dear!' said Fagin. 'A man need be always emptying a till, or a pocket, or a woman's reticule, or a house, or a mail-coach, or a bank, if he drinks it regularly.'
Mr. Claypole no sooner heard this extract from his own remarks than he fell back in his chair, and looked from the Jew to Charlotte with a countenance of ashy paleness and excessive terror. ”

“ Fagin would put a snuff-box in one pocket, a watch in another and a handkerchief in a third; then he would walk about the room just as any old gentleman would walk about the street, stopping now and then, as if he were looking into shop-windows. All the time the boys followed him closely, sometimes treading on his toes or stumbling against him, and when this happened one of them would slip a hand into his pocket and take out either the watch or the snuff-box or the handkerchief. If the Jew felt a hand in his pocket he cried out which it was, and then the game began all over again. ”

“ We know the oft-repeated story of the artist's despondency, his failure to realise an attitude to express Fagin's despair, and how as he caught sight of his own face in the glass he saw that he himself, a draughtsman troubled by a subject, was the very model for one about to be hanged. All the personality of anecdote and the sentimental log-rolling which gathered round the pictures, that by chance were associated with a series of masterpieces in fiction, no longer fascinate us. ”

“ 'There never was another man with such a face as yours, unless it was your father, and I suppose he is singeing his grizzled red beard by this time, unless you came straight from the old 'un without any father at all betwixt you; which I shouldn't wonder at, a bit.'
Fagin offered no reply to this compliment: but, pulling Sikes by the sleeve, pointed his finger towards Nancy, who had taken advantage of the foregoing conversation to put on her bonnet, and was now leaving the room. ”

“ I’m your man.”
“I knew you would be,” cried Fagin, elated by the success of his proposal.
“Of course, of course,” replied Noah. “Where is she? Where am I to wait for her? When am I to go?”
“All that, my dear, you shall hear from me. I’ll point her out at the proper time,” said Fagin. “You keep ready, and leave the rest to me.”
That night, and the next, and the next again, the spy sat booted and equipped in his carter’s dress, ready to turn out at a word from Fagin. ”

“ Ain’t there any other line open?”
“Stop!” said Fagin, laying his hand on Noah’s knee. “The kinchin lay.”
“What’s that?” demanded Mr. Claypole.
“The kinchins, my dear,” said Fagin, “is the young children that’s sent on errands by their mothers, with sixpences and shillings; and the lay is just to take their money away—they’ve always got it ready in their hands,—then knock ’em into the kennel, and walk off very slow, as if there were nothing else the matter but a child fallen down and hurt itself. Ha! ha! ha!” ”

“ Sikes knew too much, and his ruffian taunts had not galled Fagin the less, because the wounds were hidden. The girl must know, well, that if she shook him off, she could never be safe from his fury, and that it would be surely wreaked—to the maiming of limbs, or perhaps the loss of life—on the object of her more recent fancy.
'With a little persuasion,' thought Fagin, 'what more likely than that she would consent to poison him? Women have done such things, and worse, to secure the same object before now. There would be the dangerous villain: the man I hate: gone ”

“ Depend upon it he’s a safe one, Bill.’
‘I know he is,’ rejoined Fagin. ‘He’s been in good training these last few weeks, and it’s time he began to work for his bread. Besides, the others are all too big.’
‘Well, he is just the size I want,’ said Mr. Sikes, ruminating.
‘And will do everything you want, Bill, my dear,’ interposed the Jew; ‘he can’t help himself. ”

“ Something had occurred, too, meantime, that made Fagin almost crazy with rage at losing him. It was this: A wicked man—so wicked that he was afraid of thunder—who went by the name of Monks, had come to him and told him he would pay a large sum of money if he could succeed in making Oliver a thief and so ruin his reputation and his good name. ”

“ Fagin stealthily descended the kitchen stairs. After a short absence, he returned with a lighted candle, and the intelligence that Toby Crackit was asleep in the back room below, and that the boys were in the front one. Beckoning the man to follow him, he led the way upstairs.
‘We can say the few words we’ve got to say in here, my dear,’ said the Jew, throwing open a door on the first floor; ‘and as there are holes in the shutters, and we never show lights to our neighbours, we’ll set the candle on the stairs. ”

“ The company of thieves was broken up with Fagin's arrest. Fagin himself was found guilty, and died on the gallows shrieking with fear. Monks sailed for America, where he was soon detected in crime and died in prison.
The wicked apprentice, who had been the real cause of poor Nancy's murder, was so frightened at the fate of Fagin that he reformed and became a spy for the police, and by his aid the Artful Dodger, who continued to pick pockets, soon found himself in jail. ”

“ Cunning, ferocity, and drunkeness in all its stages, were there, in their strongest aspect; and women: some with the last lingering tinge of their early freshness almost fading as you looked: others with every mark and stamp of their sex utterly beaten out, and presenting but one loathsome blank of profligacy and crime; some mere girls, others but young women, and none past the prime of life; formed the darkest and saddest portion of this dreary picture.
Fagin, troubled by no grave emotions, looked eagerly from face to face while these proceedings were in progress ”

“ The girl clearly comprehended it. Her glance at parting showed that.
But perhaps she would recoil from a plot to take the life of Sikes, and that was one of the chief ends to be attained. ‘How,’ thought Fagin, as he crept homeward, ‘can I increase my influence with her? What new power can I acquire?’
Such brains are fertile in expedients. ”

“ Thus equipped he was to saunter into the office as some country fellow from Covent Garden market might be supposed to do for the gratification of his curiosity; and as he was as awkward, ungainly, and raw-boned a fellow as need be, Mr. Fagin had no fear but that he would look the part to perfection.
These arrangements completed, he was informed of the necessary signs and tokens by which to recognise the artful Dodger, and was conveyed by Master Bates through dark and winding ways to within a very short distance of Bow-street. ”

“ Fagin the Jew was captured at last, and for his share in this crime, and his other wickednesses was condemned to death. A great popular clamor had been aroused against him, and he was to be hung without delay.
In the hope that the Jew would throw some light upon Monks and some secret papers which Mr. Brownlow had traced, that gentleman took Oliver with him to the prison to see Fagin on his last night upon earth.
"Is the young gentleman to come, too, sir?" said the man whose duty it was to conduct them. "It's not a sight for children, sir." ”

“ The situation was as poignant as a sort of tragic farce. Fagin in his wooden-headed chivalry would have died in order to take Dickens to his family; Dickens39 in his bitter gentility would have died rather than let Fagin know that his family were in the Marshalsea. So these two young idiots tramped the tedious streets, both stubborn, both suffering for an idea. The advantage certainly was with Fagin, who was suffering for a Christian compassion, while Dickens was suffering for a pagan pride. ”

“ Chitling: “am I, Fagin?”
“A very clever fellow, my dear,” said the Jew, patting him on the shoulder, and winking to his other pupils.
“And Mr. Crackit is a heavy swell, an’t he, Fagin?” asked Tom.
“No doubt at all of that, my dear,” replied the Jew.
“And it is a creditable thing to have his acquaintance, an’t it, Fagin?” pursued Tom.
“Very much so, indeed, my dear,” replied the Jew. “They’re only jealous, Tom, because he won’t give it to them.”
“Ah!” cried Tom, triumphantly, “that’s where it is. He has cleaned me out; but I can [39] go and earn some more when I like,—can’t I, Fagin?” ”

“ Mortification at the overthrow of his notable scheme, hatred of the girl who had dared to palter with strangers, an utter distrust of the sincerity of her refusal to yield him up, bitter disappointment at the loss of his revenge on Sikes, the fear of detection and ruin and death, and a fierce and deadly rage kindled by all,—these were the passionate considerations that following close upon each other with rapid and ceaseless whirl shot through the brain of Fagin, as every evil [183] thought and blackest purpose lay working at his heart. ”

“ Bolter put his hand to his neckerchief as if he felt it inconveniently tight, and murmured an assent, qualified in tone but not in substance.
"The gallows," continued Fagin, "the gallows, my dear, is an ugly finger-post, which points out a very short and sharp turning that has stopped many a bold fellow's career on the broad highway. To keep in the easy road, and keep it at a distance, is object number one with you." ”

“ Did not Fagin think about the broken rail when he stood in the dock, and wonder who would mend it? Was not Manfred, the supremely egotistical and subjective, perpetually dragging the mountain-tops and Alpine streamlets into his talk of his own troubles? ”

“ Fagin the Jew heard of Oliver's escape with fear and anger. He knew that it would never do for the boy to tell what he knew about the thieves' den. Their one chance of safety lay in seizing him again and making him a thief like themselves, so that his mouth would be closed.
So Fagin called to his aid a burglar, a big, brutal fellow named Bill Sikes, who always went around with a knotted stick and a surly dog. Nancy, a poor girl of the streets, was also put upon the search, and soon their united efforts were successful. ”

“ For example, think of a scene described by Dickens in which Fagin, now become a sort of man higher up, or at least one of his agents, takes little Oliver out into a Bowery back yard and makes a proficient gunman out of the kid, compelling him to practice in the flickering glare of an electric light at shooting tailor's dummies on a rapidly moving platform, with a .42-caliber six-shooter, until the lad becomes so expert that he can hit nineteen out of twenty as they pass, missing the twentieth only by a hair's breadth because it represents a man Fagin wants to scare and not kill. ”

“ Flinging the old man from him, he rushed from the room, and darted, wildly and furiously, up the stairs.
'Bill, Bill!' cried Fagin, following him hastily. 'A word. Only a word.'
The word would not have been exchanged, but that the housebreaker was unable to open the door: on which he was expending fruitless oaths and violence, when the Jew came panting up.
'Let me out,' said Sikes. 'Don't speak to me; it's not safe. ”

“ The young brat’s been ill and confined to the crib; and—’
‘Ah, Nancy, dear!’ said Fagin, looking up.
Now, whether a peculiar contraction of the Jew’s red eye-brows, and a half closing of his deeply-set eyes, warned Miss Nancy that she was disposed to be too communicative, is not a matter of much importance. The fact is all we need care for here; and the fact is, that she suddenly checked herself, and with several gracious smiles upon Mr. Sikes, turned the conversation to other matters. In about ten minutes’ time, Mr. Fagin was seized with a fit of coughing ”