Charles Dickens 27 page

affection, instead of shrinking from him with the strongest

Great Expectations

repugnance; it could have been no worse. On the contrary,

it would have been better, for his preservation would then

have naturally and tenderly addressed my heart.

My first care was to close the shutters, so that no light

might be seen from without, and then to close and make

fast the doors. While I did so, he stood at the table drinking

rum and eating biscuit; and when I saw him thus engaged, I

saw my convict on the marshes at his meal again. It almost

seemed to me as if he must stoop down presently, to file at

his leg.

When I had gone into Herbert’s room, and had shut off

any other communication between it and the staircase than

through the room in which our conversation had been held,

I asked him if he would go to bed? He said yes, but asked me

for some of my ‘gentleman’s linen’ to put on in the morn-

ing. I brought it out, and laid it ready for him, and my blood

again ran cold when he again took me by both hands to give

me good night.

I got away from him, without knowing how I did it, and

mended the fire in the room where we had been together,

and sat down by it, afraid to go to bed. For an hour or more,

I remained too stunned to think; and it was not until I be-

gan to think, that I began fully to know how wrecked I was,

and how the ship in which I had sailed was gone to pieces.

Miss Havisham’s intentions towards me, all a mere

dream; Estella not designed for me; I only suffered in Sa-

tis House as a convenience, a sting for the greedy relations,

a model with a mechanical heart to practise on when no

other practice was at hand; those were the first smarts I had.

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But, sharpest and deepest pain of all - it was for the convict,

guilty of I knew not what crimes, and liable to be taken out

of those rooms where I sat thinking, and hanged at the Old

Bailey door, that I had deserted Joe.

I would not have gone back to Joe now, I would not have

gone back to Biddy now, for any consideration: simply, I

suppose, because my sense of my own worthless conduct to

them was greater than every consideration. No wisdom on

earth could have given me the comfort that I should have

derived from their simplicity and fidelity; but I could never,

never, undo what I had done.

In every rage of wind and rush of rain, I heard pursuers.

Twice, I could have sworn there was a knocking and whis-

pering at the outer door. With these fears upon me, I began

either to imagine or recall that I had had mysterious warn-

ings of this man’s approach. That, for weeks gone by, I had

passed faces in the streets which I had thought like his. That,

these likenesses had grown more numerous, as he, coming

over the sea, had drawn nearer. That, his wicked spirit had

somehow sent these messengers to mine, and that now on

this stormy night he was as good as his word, and with me.

Crowding up with these reflections came the reflection

that I had seen him with my childish eyes to be a desperate-

ly violent man; that I had heard that other convict reiterate

that he had tried to murder him; that I had seen him down

in the ditch tearing and fighting like a wild beast. Out of

such remembrances I brought into the light of the fire, a

half-formed terror that it might not be safe to be shut up

there with him in the dead of the wild solitary night. This

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dilated until it filled the room, and impelled me to take a

candle and go in and look at my dreadful burden.

He had rolled a handkerchief round his head, and his

face was set and lowering in his sleep. But he was asleep,

and quietly too, though he had a pistol lying on the pillow.

Assured of this, I softly removed the key to the outside of his

door, and turned it on him before I again sat down by the

fire. Gradually I slipped from the chair and lay on the floor.

When I awoke, without having parted in my sleep with the

perception of my wretchedness, the clocks of the Eastward

churches were striking five, the candles were wasted out,

the fire was dead, and the wind and rain intensified the

thick black darkness.

THIS IS THE END OF THE SECOND STAGE OF PIP’S

EXPECTATIONS.

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Chapter 20

It was fortunate for me that I had to take precautions to

ensure (so far as I could) the safety of my dreaded visitor;

for, this thought pressing on me when I awoke, held other

thoughts in a confused concourse at a distance.

The impossibility of keeping him concealed in the cham-

bers was self-evident. It could not be done, and the attempt

to do it would inevitably engender suspicion. True, I had

no Avenger in my service now, but I was looked after by an

inflammatory old female, assisted by an animated rag-bag

whom she called her niece, and to keep a room secret from

them would be to invite curiosity and exaggeration. They

both had weak eyes, which I had long attributed to their

chronically looking in at keyholes, and they were always at

hand when not wanted; indeed that was their only reliable

quality besides larceny. Not to get up a mystery with these

people, I resolved to announce in the morning that my un-

cle had unexpectedly come from the country.

This course I decided on while I was yet groping about in

the darkness for the means of getting a light. Not stumbling

on the means after all, I was fain to go out to the adjacent

Lodge and get the watchman there to come with his lantern.

Now, in groping my way down the black staircase I fell over

something, and that something was a man crouching in a

corner.

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As the man made no answer when I asked him what he

did there, but eluded my touch in silence, I ran to the Lodge

and urged the watchman to come quickly: telling him of

the incident on the way back. The wind being as fierce as

ever, we did not care to endanger the light in the lantern

by rekindling the extinguished lamps on the staircase, but

we examined the staircase from the bottom to the top and

found no one there. It then occurred to me as possible that

the man might have slipped into my rooms; so, lighting my

candle at the watchman’s, and leaving him standing at the

door, I examined them carefully, including the room in

which my dreaded guest lay asleep. All was quiet, and as-

suredly no other man was in those chambers.

It troubled me that there should have been a lurker on

the stairs, on that night of all nights in the year, and I asked

the watchman, on the chance of eliciting some hopeful ex-

planation as I handed him a dram at the door, whether he

had admitted at his gate any gentleman who had perceptibly

been dining out? Yes, he said; at different times of the night,

three. One lived in Fountain Court, and the other two lived

in the Lane, and he had seen them all go home. Again, the

only other man who dwelt in the house of which my cham-

bers formed a part, had been in the country for some weeks;

and he certainly had not returned in the night, because we

had seen his door with his seal on it as we came up-stairs.

‘The night being so bad, sir,’ said the watchman, as he

gave me back my glass, ‘uncommon few have come in at

my gate. Besides them three gentlemen that I have named, I

don’t call to mind another since about eleven o’clock, when

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a stranger asked for you.’

‘My uncle,’ I muttered. ‘Yes.’

‘You saw him, sir?’

‘Yes. Oh yes.’

‘Likewise the person with him?’

‘Person with him!’ I repeated.

‘I judged the person to be with him,’ returned the watch-

man. ‘The person stopped, when he stopped to make inquiry

of me, and the person took this way when he took this way.’

‘What sort of person?’

The watchman had not particularly noticed; he should

say a working person; to the best of his belief, he had a

dust-coloured kind of clothes on, under a dark coat. The

watchman made more light of the matter than I did, and

naturally; not having my reason for attaching weight to it.

When I had got rid of him, which I thought it well to do

without prolonging explanations, my mind was much trou-

bled by these two circumstances taken together. Whereas

they were easy of innocent solution apart - as, for instance,

some diner-out or diner-at-home, who had not gone near

this watchman’s gate, might have strayed to my staircase

and dropped asleep there - and my nameless visitor might

have brought some one with him to show him the way - still,

joined, they had an ugly look to one as prone to distrust and

fear as the changes of a few hours had made me.

I lighted my fire, which burnt with a raw pale flare at

that time of the morning, and fell into a doze before it. I

seemed to have been dozing a whole night when the clocks

struck six. As there was full an hour and a half between me

Great Expectations

and daylight, I dozed again; now, waking up uneasily, with

prolix conversations about nothing, in my ears; now, mak-

ing thunder of the wind in the chimney; at length, falling

off into a profound sleep from which the daylight woke me

with a start.

All this time I had never been able to consider my own

situation, nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to at-

tend to it. I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an

incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan for

the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant. When

I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet wild morn-

ing, all of a leaden hue; when I walked from room to room;

when I sat down again shivering, before the fire, waiting for

my laundress to appear; I thought how miserable I was, but

hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, or on what day

of the week I made the reflection, or even who I was that

made it.

At last, the old woman and the niece came in - the lat-

ter with a head not easily distinguishable from her dusty

broom - and testified surprise at sight of me and the fire. To

whom I imparted how my uncle had come in the night and

was then asleep, and how the breakfast preparations were to

be modified accordingly. Then, I washed and dressed while

they knocked the furniture about and made a dust; and so,

in a sort of dream or sleep-waking, I found myself sitting by

the fire again, waiting for - Him - to come to breakfast.

By-and-by, his door opened and he came out. I could not

bring myself to bear the sight of him, and I thought he had

a worse look by daylight.

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‘I do not even know,’ said I, speaking low as he took his

seat at the table, ‘by what name to call you. I have given out

that you are my uncle.’

‘That’s it, dear boy! Call me uncle.’

‘You assumed some name, I suppose, on board ship?’

‘Yes, dear boy. I took the name of Provis.’

‘Do you mean to keep that name?’

‘Why, yes, dear boy, it’s as good as another - unless you’d

like another.’

‘What is your real name?’ I asked him in a whisper.

‘Magwitch,’ he answered, in the same tone; ‘chrisen’d

Abel.’

‘What were you brought up to be?’

‘A warmint, dear boy.’

He answered quite seriously, and used the word as if it

denoted some profession.

‘When you came into the Temple last night—’ said I,

pausing to wonder whether that could really have been last

night, which seemed so long ago.

‘Yes, dear boy?’

‘When you came in at the gate and asked the watchman

the way here, had you any one with you?’

‘With me? No, dear boy.’

‘But there was some one there?’

‘I didn’t take particular notice,’ he said, dubiously, ‘not

knowing the ways of the place. But I think there was a per-

son, too, come in alonger me.’

‘Are you known in London?’

‘I hope not!’ said he, giving his neck a jerk with his fore-

Great Expectations

finger that made me turn hot and sick.

‘Were you known in London, once?’

‘Not over and above, dear boy. I was in the provinces

mostly.’

‘Were you - tried - in London?’

‘Which time?’ said he, with a sharp look.

‘The last time.’

He nodded. ‘First knowed Mr. Jaggers that way. Jaggers

was for me.’

It was on my lips to ask him what he was tried for, but

he took up a knife, gave it a flourish, and with the words,

‘And what I done is worked out and paid for!’ fell to at his

breakfast.

He ate in a ravenous way that was very disagreeable, and

all his actions were uncouth, noisy, and greedy. Some of

his teeth had failed him since I saw him eat on the marsh-

es, and as he turned his food in his mouth, and turned his

head sideways to bring his strongest fangs to bear upon it,

he looked terribly like a hungry old dog. If I had begun with

any appetite, he would have taken it away, and I should have

sat much as I did - repelled from him by an insurmountable

aversion, and gloomily looking at the cloth.

‘I’m a heavy grubber, dear boy,’ he said, as a polite kind of

apology when he made an end of his meal, ‘but I always was.

If it had been in my constitution to be a lighter grubber, I

might ha’ got into lighter trouble. Similarly, I must have my

smoke. When I was first hired out as shepherd t’other side

the world, it’s my belief I should ha’ turned into a mollon-

colly-mad sheep myself, if I hadn’t a had my smoke.’

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As he said so, he got up from the table, and putting his

hand into the breast of the pea-coat he wore, brought out a

short black pipe, and a handful of loose tobacco of the kind

that is called Negro-head. Having filled his pipe, he put the

surplus tobacco back again, as if his pocket were a drawer.

Then, he took a live coal from the fire with the tongs, and

lighted his pipe at it, and then turned round on the hearth-

rug with his back to the fire, and went through his favourite

action of holding out both his hands for mine.

‘And this,’ said he, dandling my hands up and down in

his, as he puffed at his pipe; ‘and this is the gentleman what

I made! The real genuine One! It does me good fur to look

at you, Pip. All I stip’late, is, to stand by and look at you,

dear boy!’

I released my hands as soon as I could, and found that I

was beginning slowly to settle down to the contemplation

of my condition. What I was chained to, and how heavily,

became intelligible to me, as I heard his hoarse voice, and

sat looking up at his furrowed bald head with its iron grey

hair at the sides.

‘I mustn’t see my gentleman a footing it in the mire of the

streets; there mustn’t be no mud on his boots. My gentleman

must have horses, Pip! Horses to ride, and horses to drive,

and horses for his servant to ride and drive as well. Shall

colonists have their horses (and blood ‘uns, if you please,

good Lord!) and not my London gentleman? No, no. We’ll

show ‘em another pair of shoes than that, Pip; won’t us?’

He took out of his pocket a great thick pocket-book,

bursting with papers, and tossed it on the table.

Great Expectations

‘There’s something worth spending in that there book,

dear boy. It’s yourn. All I’ve got ain’t mine; it’s yourn. Don’t

you be afeerd on it. There’s more where that come from. I’ve

come to the old country fur to see my gentleman spend his

money like a gentleman. That’ll be my pleasure. My plea-

sure ‘ull be fur to see him do it. And blast you all!’ he wound

up, looking round the room and snapping his fingers once

with a loud snap, ‘blast you every one, from the judge in his

wig, to the colonist a stirring up the dust, I’ll show a better

gentleman than the whole kit on you put together!’

‘Stop!’ said I, almost in a frenzy of fear and dislike, ‘I want

to speak to you. I want to know what is to be done. I want

to know how you are to be kept out of danger, how long you

are going to stay, what projects you have.’

‘Look’ee here, Pip,’ said he, laying his hand on my arm in

a suddenly altered and subdued manner; ‘first of all, look’ee

here. I forgot myself half a minute ago. What I said was low;

that’s what it was; low. Look’ee here, Pip. Look over it. I ain’t

a-going to be low.’

‘First,’ I resumed, half-groaning, ‘what precautions can

be taken against your being recognized and seized?’

‘No, dear boy,’ he said, in the same tone as before, ‘that

don’t go first. Lowness goes first. I ain’t took so many years

to make a gentleman, not without knowing what’s due to

him. Look’ee here, Pip. I was low; that’s what I was; low.

Look over it, dear boy.’

Some sense of the grimly-ludicrous moved me to a fret-

ful laugh, as I replied, ‘I have looked over it. In Heaven’s

name, don’t harp upon it!’

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‘Yes, but look’ee here,’ he persisted. ‘Dear boy, I ain’t

come so fur, not fur to be low. Now, go on, dear boy. You

was a-saying—‘

‘How are you to be guarded from the danger you have

incurred?’

‘Well, dear boy, the danger ain’t so great. Without I was

informed agen, the danger ain’t so much to signify. There’s

Jaggers, and there’s Wemmick, and there’s you. Who else is

there to inform?’

‘Is there no chance person who might identify you in the

street?’ said I.

‘Well,’ he returned, ‘there ain’t many. Nor yet I don’t in-

tend to advertise myself in the newspapers by the name of A.

M. come back from Botany Bay; and years have rolled away,

and who’s to gain by it? Still, look’ee here, Pip. If the danger

had been fifty times as great, I should ha’ come to see you,

mind you, just the same.’

‘And how long do you remain?’

‘How long?’ said he, taking his black pipe from his mouth,

and dropping his jaw as he stared at me. ‘I’m not a-going

back. I’ve come for good.’

‘Where are you to live?’ said I. ‘What is to be done with

you? Where will you be safe?’

‘Dear boy,’ he returned, ‘there’s disguising wigs can be

bought for money, and there’s hair powder, and spectacles,

and black clothes - shorts and what not. Others has done it

safe afore, and what others has done afore, others can do

agen. As to the where and how of living, dear boy, give me

your own opinions on it.’

Great Expectations

‘You take it smoothly now,’ said I, ‘but you were very seri-

ous last night, when you swore it was Death.’

‘And so I swear it is Death,’ said he, putting his pipe back

in his mouth, ‘and Death by the rope, in the open street not

fur from this, and it’s serious that you should fully under-

stand it to be so. What then, when that’s once done? Here

I am. To go back now, ‘ud be as bad as to stand ground -

worse. Besides, Pip, I’m here, because I’ve meant it by you,

years and years. As to what I dare, I’m a old bird now, as has

dared all manner of traps since first he was fledged, and I’m

not afeerd to perch upon a scarecrow. If there’s Death hid

inside of it, there is, and let him come out, and I’ll face him,

and then I’ll believe in him and not afore. And now let me

have a look at my gentleman agen.’

Once more, he took me by both hands and surveyed me

with an air of admiring proprietorship: smoking with great

complacency all the while.

It appeared to me that I could do no better than secure

him some quiet lodging hard by, of which he might take

possession when Herbert returned: whom I expected in two

or three days. That the secret must be confided to Herbert

as a matter of unavoidable necessity, even if I could have put

the immense relief I should derive from sharing it with him

out of the question, was plain to me. But it was by no means

so plain to Mr. Provis (I resolved to call him by that name),

who reserved his consent to Herbert’s participation until he

should have seen him and formed a favourable judgment of

his physiognomy. ‘And even then, dear boy,’ said he, pull-

ing a greasy little clasped black Testament out of his pocket,

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‘we’ll have him on his oath.’

To state that my terrible patron carried this little black

book about the world solely to swear people on in cases of

emergency, would be to state what I never quite established

- but this I can say, that I never knew him put it to any other

use. The book itself had the appearance of having been sto-

len from some court of justice, and perhaps his knowledge

of its antecedents, combined with his own experience in

that wise, gave him a reliance on its powers as a sort of legal

spell or charm. On this first occasion of his producing it, I

recalled how he had made me swear fidelity in the church-

yard long ago, and how he had described himself last night

as always swearing to his resolutions in his solitude.

As he was at present dressed in a seafaring slop suit, in

which he looked as if he had some parrots and cigars to dis-

pose of, I next discussed with him what dress he should

wear. He cherished an extraordinary belief in the virtues

of ‘shorts’ as a disguise, and had in his own mind sketched

a dress for himself that would have made him something

between a dean and a dentist. It was with considerable diffi-

culty that I won him over to the assumption of a dress more

like a prosperous farmer’s; and we arranged that he should

cut his hair close, and wear a little powder. Lastly, as he had

not yet been seen by the laundress or her niece, he was to

keep himself out of their view until his change of dress was

made.

It would seem a simple matter to decide on these precau-

tions; but in my dazed, not to say distracted, state, it took

so long, that I did not get out to further them, until two

Great Expectations

or three in the afternoon. He was to remain shut up in the

chambers while I was gone, and was on no account to open

the door.

There being to my knowledge a respectable lodging-

house in Essex-street, the back of which looked into the

Temple, and was almost within hail of my windows, I first of

all repaired to that house, and was so fortunate as to secure

the second floor for my uncle, Mr. Provis. I then went from

shop to shop, making such purchases as were necessary to

the change in his appearance. This business transacted, I

turned my face, on my own account, to Little Britain. Mr.

Jaggers was at his desk, but, seeing me enter, got up imme-

diately and stood before his fire.

‘Now, Pip,’ said he, ‘be careful.’

‘I will, sir,’ I returned. For, coming along I had thought

well of what I was going to say.

‘Don’t commit yourself,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘and don’t

commit any one. You understand - any one. Don’t tell me

anything: I don’t want to know anything; I am not curi-

ous.’

Of course I saw that he knew the man was come.

‘I merely want, Mr. Jaggers,’ said I, ‘to assure myself that

what I have been told, is true. I have no hope of its being un-

true, but at least I may verify it.’

Mr. Jaggers nodded. ‘But did you say ‘told’ or ‘informed’?’

he asked me, with his head on one side, and not looking at

me, but looking in a listening way at the floor. ‘Told would

seem to imply verbal communication. You can’t have ver-

bal communication with a man in New South Wales, you

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know.’

‘I will say, informed, Mr. Jaggers.’

‘Good.’

‘I have been informed by a person named Abel Magwitch,

that he is the benefactor so long unknown to me.’

‘That is the man,’ said Mr. Jaggers,’ - in New South

Wales.’

‘And only he?’ said I.

‘And only he,’ said Mr. Jaggers.

‘I am not so unreasonable, sir, as to think you at all re-

sponsible for my mistakes and wrong conclusions; but I

always supposed it was Miss Havisham.’

‘As you say, Pip,’ returned Mr. Jaggers, turning his eyes

upon me coolly, and taking a bite at his forefinger, ‘I am not

at all responsible for that.’

‘And yet it looked so like it, sir,’ I pleaded with a down-

cast heart.

‘Not a particle of evidence, Pip,’ said Mr. Jaggers, shaking

his head and gathering up his skirts. ‘Take nothing on its

looks; take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule.’

‘I have no more to say,’ said I, with a sigh, after standing

silent for a little while. ‘I have verified my information, and

there’s an end.’

‘And Magwitch - in New South Wales - having at last

disclosed himself,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘you will comprehend,

Pip, how rigidly throughout my communication with you, I

have always adhered to the strict line of fact. There has nev-

er been the least departure from the strict line of fact. You

are quite aware of that?’

Great Expectations

‘Quite, sir.’

‘I communicated to Magwitch - in New South Wales -

when he first wrote to me - from New South Wales - the

caution that he must not expect me ever to deviate from

the strict line of fact. I also communicated to him anoth-

er caution. He appeared to me to have obscurely hinted in

his letter at some distant idea he had of seeing you in Eng-

land here. I cautioned him that I must hear no more of that;

that he was not at all likely to obtain a pardon; that he was

expatriated for the term of his natural life; and that his pre-

senting himself in this country would be an act of felony,

rendering him liable to the extreme penalty of the law. I

gave Magwitch that caution,’ said Mr. Jaggers, looking hard

at me; ‘I wrote it to New South Wales. He guided himself by

it, no doubt.’

‘No doubt,’ said I.

‘I have been informed by Wemmick,’ pursued Mr. Jag-

gers, still looking hard at me, ‘that he has received a letter,

under date Portsmouth, from a colonist of the name of Pur-

vis, or—‘

‘Or Provis,’ I suggested.

‘Or Provis - thank you, Pip. Perhaps it is Provis? Perhaps

you know it’s Provis?’

‘Yes,’ said I.

‘You know it’s Provis. A letter, under date Portsmouth,

from a colonist of the name of Provis, asking for the par-

ticulars of your address, on behalf of Magwitch. Wemmick

sent him the particulars, I understand, by return of post.

Probably it is through Provis that you have received the ex-

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planation of Magwitch - in New South Wales?’

‘It came through Provis,’ I replied.

‘Good day, Pip,’ said Mr. Jaggers, offering his hand; ‘glad

to have seen you. In writing by post to Magwitch - in New

South Wales - or in communicating with him through Pro-

vis, have the goodness to mention that the particulars and

vouchers of our long account shall be sent to you, togeth-

er with the balance; for there is still a balance remaining.

Good day, Pip!’

We shook hands, and he looked hard at me as long as he

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