Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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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,
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 seem a simple matter to decide on these precautions; but
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 jack-knife 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 jack-knife 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
jack-knife 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 jack-knife, 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
little clasped black book, and then addressing himself to Herbert.
"Take it in your right hand. Lord strike you dead on the spot, if
ever you split in any way sumever! Kiss it!"

"Do so, as he wishes it," I said to Herbert. So, Herbert, looking
at me with a friendly uneasiness and amazement, complied, and
Provis immediately shaking hands with him, said, "Now you're on
your oath, you know. And never believe me on mine, if Pip shan't
make a gentleman on you!"

Chapter 41

In vain should I attempt to describe the astonishment and disquiet
of Herbert, when he and I and Provis sat down before the fire, and
I recounted the whole of the secret. Enough, that I saw my own
feelings reflected in Herbert's face, and, not least among them, my
repugnance towards the man who had done so much for me.

What would alone have set a division between that man and us, if
there had been no other dividing circumstance, was his triumph in
my story. Saving his troublesome sense of having been "low' on one
occasion since his return - on which point he began to hold forth
to Herbert, the moment my revelation was finished - he had no
perception of the possibility of my finding any fault with my good
fortune. His boast that he had made me a gentleman, and that he had
come to see me support the character on his ample resources, was
made for me quite as much as for himself; and that it was a highly
agreeable boast to both of us, and that we must both be very proud
of it, was a conclusion quite established in his own mind.

"Though, look'ee here, Pip's comrade," he said to Herbert, after
having discoursed for some time, "I know very well that once since
I come back - for half a minute - I've been low. I said to Pip, I
knowed as I had been low. But don't you fret yourself on that
score. I ain't made Pip a gentleman, and Pip ain't a-going to make
you a gentleman, not fur me not to know what's due to ye both. Dear
boy, and Pip's comrade, you two may count upon me always having a
gen-teel muzzle on. Muzzled I have been since that half a minute
when I was betrayed into lowness, muzzled I am at the present time,
muzzled I ever will be."

Herbert said, "Certainly," but looked as if there were no specific
consolation in this, and remained perplexed and dismayed. We were
anxious for the time when he would go to his lodging, and leave us
together, but he was evidently jealous of leaving us together, and
sat late. It was midnight before I took him round to Essex-street,
and saw him safely in at his own dark door. When it closed upon
him, I experienced the first moment of relief I had known since the
night of his arrival.

Never quite free from an uneasy remembrance of the man on the
stairs, I had always looked about me in taking my guest out after
dark, and in bringing him back; and I looked about me now.
Difficult as it is in a large city to avoid the suspicion of being
watched, when the mind is conscious of danger in that regard, I
could not persuade myself that any of the people within sight cared
about my movements. The few who were passing, passed on their
several ways, and the street was empty when I turned back into the
Temple. Nobody had come out at the gate with us, nobody went in at
the gate with me. As I crossed by the fountain, I saw his lighted
back windows looking bright and quiet, and, when I stood for a few
moments in the doorway of the building where I lived, before going
up the stairs, Garden-court was as still and lifeless as the
staircase was when I ascended it.

Herbert received me with open arms, and I had never felt before, so
blessedly, what it is to have a friend. When he had spoken some
sound words of sympathy and encouragement, we sat down to consider
the question, What was to be done?

The chair that Provis had occupied still remaining where it had
stood - for he had a barrack way with him of hanging about one
spot, in one unsettled manner, and going through one round of
observances with his pipe and his negro-head and his jack-knife and
his pack of cards, and what not, as if it were all put down for him
on a slate - I say, his chair remaining where it had stood, Herbert
unconsciously took it, but next moment started out of it, pushed it
away, and took another. He had no occasion to say, after that, that
he had conceived an aversion for my patron, neither had I occasion
to confess my own. We interchanged that confidence without shaping
a syllable.

"What," said I to Herbert, when he was safe in another chair, "what
is to be done?"

"My poor dear Handel," he replied, holding his head, "I am too
stunned to think."

"So was I, Herbert, when the blow first fell. Still, something must
be done. He is intent upon various new expenses - horses, and
carriages, and lavish appearances of all kinds. He must be stopped
somehow."

"You mean that you can't accept--"

"How can I?" I interposed, as Herbert paused. "Think of him! Look at
him!"

An involuntary shudder passed over both of us.

"Yet I am afraid the dreadful truth is, Herbert, that he is
attached to me, strongly attached to me. Was there ever such a
fate!"

"My poor dear Handel," Herbert repeated.

"Then," said I, "after all, stopping short here, never taking
another penny from him, think what I owe him already! Then again: I
am heavily in debt - very heavily for me, who have now no
expectations - and I have been bred to no calling, and I am fit for
nothing."

"Well, well, well!" Herbert remonstrated. "Don't say fit for
nothing."

"What am I fit for? I know only one thing that I am fit for, and
that is, to go for a soldier. And I might have gone, my dear
Herbert, but for the prospect of taking counsel with your
friendship and affection."

Of course I broke down there: and of course Herbert, beyond seizing
a warm grip of my hand, pretended not to know it.

"Anyhow, my dear Handel," said he presently, "soldiering won't do.
If you were to renounce this patronage and these favours, I suppose
you would do so with some faint hope of one day repaying what you
have already had. Not very strong, that hope, if you went
soldiering! Besides, it's absurd. You would be infinitely better in
Clarriker's house, small as it is. I am working up towards a
partnership, you know."

Poor fellow! He little suspected with whose money.

"But there is another question," said Herbert. "This is an ignorant
determined man, who has long had one fixed idea. More than that, he
seems to me (I may misjudge him) to be a man of a desperate and
fierce character."

"I know he is," I returned. "Let me tell you what evidence I have
seen of it." And I told him what I had not mentioned in my
narrative; of that encounter with the other convict.

"See, then," said Herbert; "think of this! He comes here at the
peril of his life, for the realization of his fixed idea. In the
moment of realization, after all his toil and waiting, you cut the
ground from under his feet, destroy his idea, and make his gains
worthless to him. Do you see nothing that he might do, under the
disappointment?"

"I have seen it, Herbert, and dreamed of it, ever since the fatal
night of his arrival. Nothing has been in my thoughts so
distinctly, as his putting himself in the way of being taken."

"Then you may rely upon it," said Herbert, "that there would be
great danger of his doing it. That is his power over you as long as
he remains in England, and that would be his reckless course if you
forsook him."

I was so struck by the horror of this idea, which had weighed upon
me from the first, and the working out of which would make me
regard myself, in some sort, as his murderer, that I could not rest
in my chair but began pacing to and fro. I said to Herbert,
meanwhile, that even if Provis were recognized and taken, in spite
of himself, I should be wretched as the cause, however innocently.
Yes; even though I was so wretched in having him at large and near
me, and even though I would far far rather have worked at the forge
all the days of my life than I would ever have come to this!

But there was no staving off the question, What was to be done?

"The first and the main thing to be done," said Herbert, "is to get
him out of England. You will have to go with him, and then he may
be induced to go."

"But get him where I will, could I prevent his coming back?"

"My good Handel, is it not obvious that with Newgate in the next
street, there must be far greater hazard in your breaking your mind
to him and making him reckless, here, than elsewhere. If a pretext
to get him away could be made out of that other convict, or out of
anything else in his life, now."

"There, again!" said I, stopping before Herbert, with my open hands
held out, as if they contained the desperation of the case. "I know
nothing of his life. It has almost made me mad to sit here of a
night and see him before me, so bound up with my fortunes and
misfortunes, and yet so unknown to me, except as the miserable
wretch who terrified me two days in my childhood!"

Herbert got up, and linked his arm in mine, and we slowly walked to
and fro together, studying the carpet.

"Handel," said Herbert, stopping, "you feel convinced that you can
take no further benefits from him; do you?"

"Fully. Surely you would, too, if you were in my place?"

"And you feel convinced that you must break with him?"

"Herbert, can you ask me?"

"And you have, and are bound to have, that tenderness for the life
he has risked on your account, that you must save him, if possible,
from throwing it away. Then you must get him out of England before
you stir a finger to extricate yourself. That done, extricate
yourself, in Heaven's name, and we'll see it out together, dear old
boy."

It was a comfort to shake hands upon it, and walk up and down
again, with only that done.

"Now, Herbert," said I, "with reference to gaining some knowledge
of his history. There is but one way that I know of. I must ask him
point-blank."

"Yes. Ask him," said Herbert, "when we sit at breakfast in the
morning." For, he had said, on taking leave of Herbert, that he
would come to breakfast with us.

With this project formed, we went to bed. I had the wildest dreams
concerning him, and woke unrefreshed; I woke, too, to recover the
fear which I had lost in the night, of his being found out as a
returned transport. Waking, I never lost that fear.

He came round at the appointed time, took out his jack-knife, and
sat down to his meal. He was full of plans "for his gentleman's
coming out strong, and like a gentleman," and urged me to begin
speedily upon the pocket-book, which he had left in my possession.
He considered the chambers and his own lodging as temporary
residences, and advised me to look out at once for a "fashionable
crib" near Hyde Park, in which he could have "a shake-down". When
he had made an end of his breakfast, and was wiping his knife on
his leg, I said to him, without a word of preface:

"After you were gone last night, I told my friend of the struggle
that the soldiers found you engaged in on the marshes, when we came
up. You remember?"

"Remember!" said he. "I think so!"

"We want to know something about that man - and about you. It is
strange to know no more about either, and particularly you, than I
was able to tell last night. Is not this as good a time as another
for our knowing more?"

"Well!" he said, after consideration. "You're on your oath, you
know, Pip's comrade?"

"Assuredly," replied Herbert.

"As to anything I say, you know," he insisted. "The oath applies to
all."

"I understand it to do so."

"And look'ee here! Wotever I done, is worked out and paid for," he
insisted again.

"So be it."

He took out his black pipe and was going to fill it with negrohead,
when, looking at the tangle of tobacco in his hand, he seemed to
think it might perplex the thread of his narrative. He put it back
again, stuck his pipe in a button-hole of his coat, spread a hand
on each knee, and, after turning an angry eye on the fire for a few
silent moments, looked round at us and said what follows.

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