Artful: A Novel Read Free Page A

in his normal calculations. Indeed, things had gone so completely awry since the appearance of Oliver in Dodger’s life that the Artful was inclined to wish he’d never set eyes on the creature in the first place. Yet for all the disaster that had befallen everyone who came within the influence of Master Twist’s orbit, Oliver himself had landed upon his feet in a manner that any plummeting cat would have envied. Indeed, the Artful had espied the aforementioned felinesque Master Twist in a hansom less than a week after he had managed to extricate himself from the hospitality of those in authority (yes, yes, we are aware we have not yet explained how the Artful managed to escape transportation to Australia; we shall do so in the very next chapter, and so ask for your patience until we arrive at that point in the narrative). So on the side of the curb stood Dodger, aghast, as there—on the side of a smiling older man—sat Oliver, who was so ebullient that one could have leaned against him in pitch-blackness and had sufficient illumination to read a book. Oliver looked neither right nor left and took no notice of Dodger at all as the cab rolled by.
    To be charitable to Oliver (or more charitable, as has been explained above), the Artful’s greatest weapon had always been his invisibility. Indeed, it was a power shared by all children who lived upon the street, for no one of any substance gave them even a first look, much less a second. But Dodger had honed his illusion of absence far beyond anything that others of his ilk could aspire to. Yet now he became a prisoner of that selfsame ability he had exploited, for though he waved frantically from the curbside and even shouted Master Twist’s name once or twice to attract his attention, it was to no avail. Whether it was the wind and the hustle and bustle of the crowd that drowned Dodger’s words or that Oliver’s interests were so upon the man who had recently adopted him as his own son that he failed to notice his former friend, Dodger couldn’t be sure. All he knew at that particular moment was this: He might well have been a pane of glass, so thoroughly transparent was he.
    Dodger considered sprinting after him, for there was none fleeter of foot than the Artful, and it was possible that he might have caught up. But then what? Ask whether Oliver remembered him? Beg for tuppence?
    In the words of a man with his own disturbing tale (which must wait for another time): “Bah, humbug.”
    The Artful straightened his coat, snapped his chin up, kept his wavering top hat in position with that customary imperceptible tilt of his head to which we earlier alluded, and declared briskly, “I have my pride; yes, I does. A gen’leman don’t have no need to be runnin’ after the attentions of some former street urchin aspirin’ to move up to a class what he don’t belong in. That”—and he snapped his fingers—“for Oliver Twist.”
    Thus having wrapped himself in a cloak of self-delusion that one normally had to reach full adulthood to acquire, Dodger went upon his way without once looking back (save for the three or four times he looked back until the cab vanished into the gathering evening).
    And so it was that the Artful Dodger reclaimed his rightful place upon the street. His first order of business was to seek shelter; sleeping in the streets or in back alleys had quickly worn thin. His natural inclination was to hie himself back to those domiciles that had served him for so long, namely the beloved run-down pit of squalor that had been Fagin’s den of thievery. But he dared not, for the whispers in the wind declared the nature of the place public knowledge. This made the prospect of taking up residence therein dodgy for Dodger.
    “What if Fagin peached on us,” muttered the Artful to himself, “in the hope of savin’ his scrawny neck from being drawn even scrawnier? And what with me just having taken my leave of that fine ’stablishment, which is to say the