Great Expectations
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
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