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

myself to bear the sight of him, and I thought he had a worse look

by daylight.

“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 person, too, come in

alonger me.”

“Are you known in London?”

“I hope not!” said he, giving his neck a jerk with his forefinger

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 marshes, 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 molloncolly-mad sheep myself, if

I hadn’t a had my smoke.”

As he said so, he got up from 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 favorite 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 gray 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.

“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 pleasure ‘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 year 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 fretful laugh, as

I replied, “I have looked over it. In Heaven’s name, don’t harp

upon it!”

“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 intend 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.”

“You take it smoothly now,” said I, “but you were very serious 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 understand 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 favorable

judgment of his physiognomy. “And even then, dear boy,” said he,

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

“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 stolen 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 churchyard 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 dispose 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 difficulty 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