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

in my dazed, not to say distracted, state, it took so long, that I

did not get out to further them until two 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

immediately 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 curious.”

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 untrue, 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 verbal communication with a man in

New South Wales, you 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 responsible

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 downcast

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 never been the least departure from

the strict line of fact. You are quite aware of that?”

“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 another caution. He appeared to me to have

obscurely hinted in his letter at some distant idea he had of

seeing you in England 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 presenting 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. Jaggers, still

looking hard at me, “that he has received a letter, under date

Portsmouth, from a colonist of the name of Purvis, 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 particulars 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 explanation 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 Provis, have the goodness to

mention that the particulars and vouchers of our long account shall

be sent to you, together 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 could see

me. I turned at the door, and he was still looking hard at me,

while the two vile casts on the shelf seemed to be trying to get

their eyelids open, and to force out of their swollen throats, “O,

what a man he is!”

Wemmick was out, and though he had been at his desk he could have

done nothing for me. I went straight back to the Temple, where I

found the terrible Provis drinking rum and water and smoking

negro-head, in safety.

Next day the clothes I had ordered all came home, and he put them

on. Whatever he put on, became him less (it dismally seemed to me)

than what he had worn before. To my thinking, there was something

in him that made it hopeless to attempt to disguise him. The more I

dressed him and the better I dressed him, the more he looked like

the slouching fugitive on the marshes. This effect on my anxious

fancy was partly referable, no doubt, to his old face and manner

growing more familiar to me; but I believe too that he dragged one

of his legs as if there were still a weight of iron on it, and that

from head to foot there was Convict in the very grain of the man.

The influences of his solitary hut-life were upon him besides, and

gave him a savage air that no dress could tame; added to these

were the influences of his subsequent branded life among men, and,

crowning all, his consciousness that he was dodging and hiding now.

In all his ways of sitting and standing, and eating and drinking,—

of brooding about in a high-shouldered reluctant style,—of taking

out his great horn-handled jackknife and wiping it on his legs and

cutting his food,—of lifting light glasses and cups to his lips,

as if they were clumsy pannikins,—of chopping a wedge off his

bread, and soaking up with it the last fragments of gravy round and

round his plate, as if to make the most of an allowance, and then

drying his finger-ends on it, and then swallowing it,—in these

ways and a thousand other small nameless instances arising every

minute in the day, there was Prisoner, Felon, Bondsman, plain as

plain could be.

It had been his own idea to wear that touch of powder, and I had

conceded the powder after overcoming the shorts. But I can compare

the effect of it, when on, to nothing but the probable effect of

rouge upon the dead; so awful was the manner in which everything in

him that it was most desirable to repress, started through that

thin layer of pretence, and seemed to come blazing out at the crown

of his head. It was abandoned as soon as tried, and he wore his

grizzled hair cut short.

Words cannot tell what a sense I had, at the same time, of the

dreadful mystery that he was to me. When he fell asleep of an

evening, with his knotted hands clenching the sides of the

easy-chair, and his bald head tattooed with deep wrinkles falling

forward on his breast, I would sit and look at him, wondering what

he had done, and loading him with all the crimes in the Calendar,

until the impulse was powerful on me to start up and fly from him.

Every hour so increased my abhorrence of him, that I even think I

might have yielded to this impulse in the first agonies of being so

haunted, notwithstanding all he had done for me and the risk he

ran, but for the knowledge that Herbert must soon come back. Once,

I actually did start out of bed in the night, and begin to dress

myself in my worst clothes, hurriedly intending to leave him there

with everything else I possessed, and enlist for India as a private

soldier.

I doubt if a ghost could have been more terrible to me, up in those

lonely rooms in the long evenings and long nights, with the wind

and the rain always rushing by. A ghost could not have been taken

and hanged on my account, and the consideration that he could be,

and the dread that he would be, were no small addition to my

horrors. When he was not asleep, or playing a complicated kind of

Patience with a ragged pack of cards of his own,—a game that I

never saw before or since, and in which he recorded his winnings by

sticking his jackknife into the table,—when he was not engaged in

either of these pursuits, he would ask me to read to him,—“Foreign

language, dear boy!” While I complied, he, not comprehending a

single word, would stand before the fire surveying me with the air

of an Exhibitor, and I would see him, between the fingers of the

hand with which I shaded my face, appealing in dumb show to the

furniture to take notice of my proficiency. The imaginary student

pursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was not

more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and

recoiling from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admired

me and the fonder he was of me.

This is written of, I am sensible, as if it had lasted a year. It

lasted about five days. Expecting Herbert all the time, I dared not

go out, except when I took Provis for an airing after dark. At

length, one evening when dinner was over and I had dropped into a

slumber quite worn out,—for my nights had been agitated and my

rest broken by fearful dreams,—I was roused by the welcome

footstep on the staircase. Provis, who had been asleep too,

staggered up at the noise I made, and in an instant I saw his

jackknife shining in his hand.

“Quiet! It’s Herbert!” I said; and Herbert came bursting in, with

the airy freshness of six hundred miles of France upon him.

“Handel, my dear fellow, how are you, and again how are you, and

again how are you? I seem to have been gone a twelvemonth! Why, so I

must have been, for you have grown quite thin and pale! Handel, my—

Halloa! I beg your pardon.”

He was stopped in his running on and in his shaking hands with me,

by seeing Provis. Provis, regarding him with a fixed attention, was

slowly putting up his jackknife, and groping in another pocket for

something else.

“Herbert, my dear friend,” said I, shutting the double doors, while

Herbert stood staring and wondering, “something very strange has

happened. This is—a visitor of mine.”

“It’s all right, dear boy!” said Provis coming forward, with his