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

nothing half so legible in its local news, as the foreign matter of

coffee, pickles, fish sauces, gravy, melted butter, and wine with

which it was sprinkled all over, as if it had taken the measles in

a highly irregular form, I sat at my table while he stood before

the fire. By degrees it became an enormous injury to me that he

stood before the fire. And I got up, determined to have my share of

it. I had to put my hand behind his legs for the poker when I went

up to the fireplace to stir the fire, but still pretended not to

know him.

“Is this a cut?” said Mr. Drummle.

“Oh!” said I, poker in hand; “it’s you, is it? How do you do? I was

wondering who it was, who kept the fire off.”

With that, I poked tremendously, and having done so, planted myself

side by side with Mr. Drummle, my shoulders squared and my back to

the fire.

“You have just come down?” said Mr. Drummle, edging me a little away

with his shoulder.

“Yes,” said I, edging him a little away with my shoulder.

“Beastly place,” said Drummle. “Your part of the country, I

think?”

“Yes,” I assented. “I am told it’s very like your Shropshire.”

“Not in the least like it,” said Drummle.

Here Mr. Drummle looked at his boots and I looked at mine, and then

Mr. Drummle looked at my boots, and I looked at his.

“Have you been here long?” I asked, determined not to yield an inch

of the fire.

“Long enough to be tired of it,” returned Drummle, pretending to

yawn, but equally determined.

“Do you stay here long?”

“Can’t say,” answered Mr. Drummle. “Do you?”

“Can’t say,” said I.

I felt here, through a tingling in my blood, that if Mr. Drummle’s

shoulder had claimed another hair’s breadth of room, I should have

jerked him into the window; equally, that if my own shoulder had

urged a similar claim, Mr. Drummle would have jerked me into the

nearest box. He whistled a little. So did I.

“Large tract of marshes about here, I believe?” said Drummle.

“Yes. What of that?” said I.

Mr. Drummle looked at me, and then at my boots, and then said, “Oh!”

and laughed.

“Are you amused, Mr. Drummle?”

“No,” said he, “not particularly. I am going out for a ride in the

saddle. I mean to explore those marshes for amusement.

Out-of-the-way villages there, they tell me. Curious little

public-houses—and smithies—and that. Waiter!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that horse of mine ready?”

“Brought round to the door, sir.”

“I say. Look here, you sir. The lady won’t ride to-day; the weather

won’t do.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And I don’t dine, because I’m going to dine at the lady’s.”

“Very good, sir.”

Then, Drummle glanced at me, with an insolent triumph on his

great-jowled face that cut me to the heart, dull as he was, and so

exasperated me, that I felt inclined to take him in my arms (as the

robber in the story-book is said to have taken the old lady) and

seat him on the fire.

One thing was manifest to both of us, and that was, that until

relief came, neither of us could relinquish the fire. There we

stood, well squared up before it, shoulder to shoulder and foot to

foot, with our hands behind us, not budging an inch. The horse was

visible outside in the drizzle at the door, my breakfast was put on

the table, Drummle’s was cleared away, the waiter invited me to

begin, I nodded, we both stood our ground.

“Have you been to the Grove since?” said Drummle.

“No,” said I, “I had quite enough of the Finches the last time I

was there.”

“Was that when we had a difference of opinion?”

“Yes,” I replied, very shortly.

“Come, come! They let you off easily enough,” sneered Drummle. “You

shouldn’t have lost your temper.”

“Mr. Drummle,” said I, “you are not competent to give advice on that

subject. When I lose my temper (not that I admit having done so on

that occasion), I don’t throw glasses.”

“I do,” said Drummle.

After glancing at him once or twice, in an increased state of

smouldering ferocity, I said,—

“Mr. Drummle, I did not seek this conversation, and I don’t think it

an agreeable one.”

“I am sure it’s not,” said he, superciliously over his shoulder; “I

don’t think anything about it.”

“And therefore,” I went on, “with your leave, I will suggest that

we hold no kind of communication in future.”

“Quite my opinion,” said Drummle, “and what I should have suggested

myself, or done—more likely—without suggesting. But don’t lose

your temper. Haven’t you lost enough without that?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Waiter!,” said Drummle, by way of answering me.

The waiter reappeared.

“Look here, you sir. You quite understand that the young lady don’t

ride to-day, and that I dine at the young lady’s?”

“Quite so, sir!”

When the waiter had felt my fast-cooling teapot with the palm of

his hand, and had looked imploringly at me, and had gone out,

Drummle, careful not to move the shoulder next me, took a cigar

from his pocket and bit the end off, but showed no sign of

stirring. Choking and boiling as I was, I felt that we could not go

a word further, without introducing Estella’s name, which I could

not endure to hear him utter; and therefore I looked stonily at the

opposite wall, as if there were no one present, and forced myself

to silence. How long we might have remained in this ridiculous

position it is impossible to say, but for the incursion of three

thriving farmers—laid on by the waiter, I think—who came into

the coffee-room unbuttoning their great-coats and rubbing their

hands, and before whom, as they charged at the fire, we were

obliged to give way.

I saw him through the window, seizing his horse’s mane, and

mounting in his blundering brutal manner, and sidling and backing

away. I thought he was gone, when he came back, calling for a light

for the cigar in his mouth, which he had forgotten. A man in a

dust-colored dress appeared with what was wanted,—I could not have

said from where: whether from the inn yard, or the street, or where

not,—and as Drummle leaned down from the saddle and lighted his

cigar and laughed, with a jerk of his head towards the coffee-room

windows, the slouching shoulders and ragged hair of this man whose

back was towards me reminded me of Orlick.

Too heavily out of sorts to care much at the time whether it were

he or no, or after all to touch the breakfast, I washed the weather

and the journey from my face and hands, and went out to the

memorable old house that it would have been so much the better for

me never to have entered, never to have seen.