Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (speed reading book TXT) 📕

drew his sleeve across his eyes and forehead.

“How are you living?” I asked him.

“I’ve been a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, other trades besides,

away in the new world,” said he; “many a thousand mile of stormy

water off from this.”

“I hope you have done well?”

“I’ve done wonderfully well. There’s others went out alonger me as

has done well too, but no man has done nigh as well as me. I’m

famous for it.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

“I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy.”

Without stopping to try to understand those words or the tone in

which they were spoken, I turned off to a point that had just come

into my mind.

“Have you ever seen a messenger you once sent to me,” I inquired,

“since he undertook that trust?”

“Never set eyes upon him. I warn’t likely to it.”

“He came faithfully, and he brought me the two one-pound notes. I

was a poor boy then, as you know, and to a poor boy they were a

little fortune. But, like you, I have done well since, and you must

let me pay them back. You can put them to some other poor boy’s

use.” I took out my purse.

He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table and opened it, and

he watched me as I separated two one-pound notes from its contents.

They were clean and new, and I spread them out and handed them over

to him. Still watching me, he laid them one upon the other, folded

them long-wise, gave them a twist, set fire to them at the lamp,

and dropped the ashes into the tray.

“May I make so bold,” he said then, with a smile that was like a

frown, and with a frown that was like a smile, “as ask you how you

have done well, since you and me was out on them lone shivering

marshes?”

“How?”

“Ah!”

He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the fire,

with his heavy brown hand on the mantel-shelf. He put a foot up to

the bars, to dry and warm it, and the wet boot began to steam; but,

he neither looked at it, nor at the fire, but steadily looked at

me. It was only now that I began to tremble.

When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words that were

without sound, I forced myself to tell him (though I could not do

it distinctly), that I had been chosen to succeed to some property.

“Might a mere warmint ask what property?” said he.

I faltered, “I don’t know.”

“Might a mere warmint ask whose property?” said he.

I faltered again, “I don’t know.”

“Could I make a guess, I wonder,” said the Convict, “at your income

since you come of age! As to the first figure now. Five?”

With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered action, I

rose out of my chair, and stood with my hand upon the back of it,

looking wildly at him.

“Concerning a guardian,” he went on. “There ought to have been some

guardian, or such-like, whiles you was a minor. Some lawyer, maybe.

As to the first letter of that lawyer’s name now. Would it be J?”

All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its

disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds,

rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had

to struggle for every breath I drew.

“Put it,” he resumed, “as the employer of that lawyer whose name

begun with a J, and might be Jaggers,—put it as he had come over

sea to Portsmouth, and had landed there, and had wanted to come on

to you. ‘However, you have found me out,’ you says just now. Well!

However, did I find you out? Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a

person in London, for particulars of your address. That person’s

name? Why, Wemmick.”

I could not have spoken one word, though it had been to save my

life. I stood, with a hand on the chair-back and a hand on my

breast, where I seemed to be suffocating,—I stood so, looking

wildly at him, until I grasped at the chair, when the room began to

surge and turn. He caught me, drew me to the sofa, put me up

against the cushions, and bent on one knee before me, bringing the

face that I now well remembered, and that I shuddered at, very near

to mine.

“Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has

done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that

guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I

spec’lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that

you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above

work. What odds, dear boy? Do I tell it, fur you to feel a

obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to know as that there

hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head so high that

he could make a gentleman,—and, Pip, you’re him!”

The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the

repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been

exceeded if he had been some terrible beast.

“Look’ee here, Pip. I’m your second father. You’re my son,—more to

me nor any son. I’ve put away money, only for you to spend. When I

was a hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but

faces of sheep till I half forgot wot men’s and women’s faces wos

like, I see yourn. I drops my knife many a time in that hut when I

was a-eating my dinner or my supper, and I says, ‘Here’s the boy

again, a looking at me whiles I eats and drinks!’ I see you there a

many times, as plain as ever I see you on them misty marshes. ‘Lord

strike me dead!’ I says each time,—and I goes out in the air to

say it under the open heavens,—‘but wot, if I gets liberty and

money, I’ll make that boy a gentleman!’ And I done it. Why, look at

you, dear boy! Look at these here lodgings o’yourn, fit for a lord!

A lord? Ah! You shall show money with lords for wagers, and beat

‘em!”

In his heat and triumph, and in his knowledge that I had been

nearly fainting, he did not remark on my reception of all this. It

was the one grain of relief I had.

“Look’ee here!” he went on, taking my watch out of my pocket, and

turning towards him a ring on my finger, while I recoiled from his

touch as if he had been a snake, “a gold ‘un and a beauty: that’s a

gentleman’s, I hope! A diamond all set round with rubies; that’s a

gentleman’s, I hope! Look at your linen; fine and beautiful! Look

at your clothes; better ain’t to be got! And your books too,”

turning his eyes round the room, “mounting up, on their shelves, by

hundreds! And you read ‘em; don’t you? I see you’d been a reading

of ‘em when I come in. Ha, ha, ha! You shall read ‘em to me, dear

boy! And if they’re in foreign languages wot I don’t understand, I

shall be just as proud as if I did.”

Again he took both my hands and put them to his lips, while my

blood ran cold within me.

“Don’t you mind talking, Pip,” said he, after again drawing his

sleeve over his eyes and forehead, as the click came in his throat

which I well remembered,—and he was all the more horrible to me

that he was so much in earnest; “you can’t do better nor keep

quiet, dear boy. You ain’t looked slowly forward to this as I have;

you wosn’t prepared for this as I wos. But didn’t you never think

it might be me?”

“O no, no, no,” I returned, “Never, never!”

“Well, you see it wos me, and single-handed. Never a soul in it but

my own self and Mr. Jaggers.”

“Was there no one else?” I asked.

“No,” said he, with a glance of surprise: “who else should there

be? And, dear boy, how good looking you have growed! There’s bright

eyes somewheres—eh? Isn’t there bright eyes somewheres, wot you

love the thoughts on?”

O Estella, Estella!

“They shall be yourn, dear boy, if money can buy ‘em. Not that a

gentleman like you, so well set up as you, can’t win ‘em off of his

own game; but money shall back you! Let me finish wot I was a

telling you, dear boy. From that there hut and that there

hiring-out, I got money left me by my master (which died, and had

been the same as me), and got my liberty and went for myself. In

every single thing I went for, I went for you. ‘Lord strike a

blight upon it,’ I says, wotever it was I went for, ‘if it ain’t

for him!’ It all prospered wonderful. As I giv’ you to understand

just now, I’m famous for it. It was the money left me, and the

gains of the first few year wot I sent home to Mr. Jaggers—all for

you—when he first come arter you, agreeable to my letter.”

O that he had never come! That he had left me at the forge,—far

from contented, yet, by comparison happy!

“And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me, look’ee here, to

know in secret that I was making a gentleman. The blood horses of

them colonists might fling up the dust over me as I was walking;

what do I say? I says to myself, ‘I’m making a better gentleman nor

ever you’ll be!’ When one of ‘em says to another, ‘He was a

convict, a few year ago, and is a ignorant common fellow now, for

all he’s lucky,’ what do I say? I says to myself, ‘If I ain’t a

gentleman, nor yet ain’t got no learning, I’m the owner of such.

All on you owns stock and land; which on you owns a brought-up

London gentleman?’ This way I kep myself a going. And this way I

held steady afore my mind that I would for certain come one day and

see my boy, and make myself known to him, on his own ground.”

He laid his hand on my shoulder. I shuddered at the thought that

for anything I knew, his hand might be stained with blood.

“It warn’t easy, Pip, for me to leave them parts, nor yet it warn’t

safe. But I held to it, and the harder it was, the stronger I held,

for I was determined, and my mind firm made up. At last I done it.

Dear boy, I done it!”

I tried to collect my thoughts, but I was stunned. Throughout, I

had seemed to myself to attend more to the wind and the rain than

to him; even now, I could not separate his voice from those voices,

though those were loud and his was silent.

“Where will you put me?” he asked, presently. “I must be put

somewheres, dear boy.”

“To sleep?” said I.

“Yes. And to sleep long and sound,” he answered; “for I’ve been

sea-tossed and sea-washed, months and months.”

“My friend and companion,” said I, rising from the sofa, “is

absent; you must have his room.”

“He won’t come back tomorrow; will he?”

“No,” said I, answering almost mechanically, in spite of my utmost

efforts; “not tomorrow.”

“Because, look’ee here, dear boy,” he said, dropping his voice, and

laying a long finger on my breast in an impressive manner, “caution

is necessary.”

“How do you mean?