Great Expectations
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 negro-head,
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.
Chapter XLII.
“Dear boy and Pip’s comrade. I am not a-going fur to tell you my life
like a song, or a story-book. But to give it you short and handy, I’ll
put it at once into a mouthful of English. In jail and out of jail, in
jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There, you’ve got it.
That’s _my_ life pretty much, down to such times as I got shipped off,
arter Pip stood my friend.
“I’ve been done everything to, pretty well—except hanged. I’ve been
locked up as much as a silver tea-kittle. I’ve been carted here and
carted there, and put out of this town, and put out of that town, and
stuck in the stocks, and whipped and worried and drove. I’ve no more
notion where I was born than you have—if so much. I first become aware
of myself down in Essex, a thieving turnips for my living. Summun had
run away from me—a man—a tinker—and he’d took the fire with him, and
left me wery cold.
“I know’d my name to be Magwitch, chrisen’d Abel. How did I know it?
Much as I know’d the birds’ names in the hedges to be chaffinch,
sparrer, thrush. I might have thought it was all lies together, only as
the birds’ names come out true, I supposed mine did.
“So fur as I could find, there warn’t a soul that see young Abel
Magwitch, with us little on him as in him, but wot caught fright at
him, and either drove him off, or took him up. I was took up, took up,
took up, to that extent that I reg’larly grow’d up took up.
“This is the way it was, that when I was a ragged little creetur as
much to be pitied as ever I see (not that I looked in the glass, for
there warn’t many insides of furnished houses known to me), I got the
name of being hardened. ‘This is a terrible hardened one,’ they says to
prison wisitors, picking out me. ‘May be said to live in jails, this
boy.’ Then they looked at me, and I looked at them, and they measured
my head, some on ’em,—they had better a measured my stomach,—and others
on ’em giv me tracts what I couldn’t read, and made me speeches what I
couldn’t understand. They always went on agen me about the Devil. But
what the Devil was I to do? I must put something into my stomach,
mustn’t I?—Howsomever, I’m a getting low, and I know what’s due. Dear
boy and Pip’s comrade, don’t you be afeerd of me being low.
“Tramping, begging, thieving, working sometimes when I could,—though
that warn’t as often as you may think, till you put the question
whether you would ha’ been over-ready to give me work yourselves,—a bit
of a poacher, a bit of a labourer, a bit of a wagoner, a bit of a
haymaker, a bit of a hawker, a bit of most things that don’t pay and
lead to trouble, I got to be a man. A deserting soldier in a
Traveller’s Rest, what lay hid up to the chin under a lot of taturs,
learnt me to read; and a travelling Giant what signed his name at a
penny a time learnt me to write. I warn’t locked up as often now as
formerly, but I wore out my good share of key-metal still.
“At Epsom races, a matter of over twenty years ago, I got acquainted
wi’ a man whose skull I’d crack wi’ this poker, like the claw of a
lobster, if I’d got it on this hob. His right name was Compeyson; and
that’s the man, dear boy, what you see me a pounding in the ditch,
according to what you truly told your comrade arter I was gone last
night.
“He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he’d been to a public
boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to talk, and was
a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-looking too. It was the
night afore the great race, when I found him on the heath, in a booth
that I know’d on. Him and some more was a sitting among the tables when
I went in, and the landlord (which had a knowledge of me, and was a
sporting one) called him out, and said, ‘I think this is a man that
might suit you,’—meaning I was.
“Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and I look at him. He has a
watch and a chain and a ring and a breast-pin and a handsome suit of
clothes.
“‘To judge from appearances, you’re out of luck,’ says Compeyson to me.
“‘Yes, master, and I’ve never been in it much.’ (I had come out of
Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal. Not but what it might have
been for something else; but it warn’t.)
“‘Luck changes,’ says Compeyson; ‘perhaps yours is going to change.’
“I says, ‘I hope it may be so. There’s room.’
“‘What can you do?’ says Compeyson.
“‘Eat and drink,’ I says; ‘if you’ll find the materials.’
“Compeyson laughed, looked at me again very noticing, giv me five
shillings, and appointed me for next night. Same place.
“I went to Compeyson next night, same place, and Compeyson took me on
to be his man and pardner. And what was Compeyson’s business in which
we was to go pardners? Compeyson’s business was the swindling,
handwriting forging, stolen bank-note passing, and such-like. All sorts
of traps as Compeyson could set with his head, and keep his own legs
out of and get the profits from and let another man in for, was
Compeyson’s business. He’d no more heart than a iron file, he was as
cold as death, and he had the head of the Devil afore mentioned.
“There was another in with Compeyson, as was called Arthur,—not as
being so chrisen’d, but as a surname. He was in a Decline, and was a
shadow to look at. Him and Compeyson had been in a bad thing with a
rich lady some years afore, and they’d made a pot of money by it; but
Compeyson betted and gamed, and he’d have run through the king’s taxes.
So, Arthur was a dying, and a dying poor and with the horrors on him,
and Compeyson’s wife (which Compeyson kicked mostly) was a having pity
on him when she could, and Compeyson was a having pity on nothing and
nobody.
“I might a took warning by Arthur, but I didn’t; and I won’t pretend I
was partick’ler—for where ’ud be the good on it, dear boy and comrade?
So I begun wi’ Compeyson, and a poor tool I was in his hands. Arthur
lived at the top of Compeyson’s house (over nigh Brentford it was), and
Compeyson kept a careful account agen him for board and lodging, in
case he should ever get better to work it out. But Arthur soon settled
the account. The second or third time as ever I see him, he come a
tearing down into Compeyson’s parlour late at night, in only a flannel
gown, with his hair all in a sweat, and he says to Compeyson’s wife,
‘Sally, she really is upstairs alonger me, now, and I can’t get rid of
her. She’s all in white,’ he says, ‘wi’ white flowers in her hair, and
she’s awful mad, and she’s got a shroud hanging over her arm, and she
says she’ll put it on me at five in the morning.’
“Says Compeyson: ‘Why, you fool, don’t you know she’s got a living
body? And how should she be up there, without coming through the door,
or in at the window, and up the stairs?’
“‘I don’t know how she’s there,’ says Arthur, shivering dreadful with
the horrors, ‘but she’s standing in the corner at the foot of the bed,
awful mad. And over where her heart’s broke—_you_ broke it!—there’s
drops of blood.’
“Compeyson spoke hardy, but he was always a coward. ‘Go up alonger this
drivelling sick man,’ he says to his wife, ‘and Magwitch, lend her a
hand, will you?’ But he never come nigh himself.
“Compeyson’s wife and me took him up to bed agen, and he raved most
dreadful. ‘Why look at her!’ he cries out. ‘She’s a shaking the shroud
at me! Don’t you see her? Look at her eyes! Ain’t it awful to see her
so mad?’ Next he cries, ‘She’ll put it on me, and then I’m done for!
Take it away from her, take it away!’ And then he catched hold of us,
and kep on a talking to her, and answering of her, till I half believed
I see her myself.
“Compeyson’s wife, being used to him, giv him some liquor to get the
horrors off, and by and by he quieted. ‘O, she’s gone! Has her keeper
been for her?’ he says. ‘Yes,’ says Compeyson’s wife. ‘Did you tell him
to lock her and bar her in?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And to take that ugly thing away
from her?’ ‘Yes, yes, all right.’ ‘You’re a good creetur,’ he says,
‘don’t leave me, whatever you do, and thank you!’
“He rested pretty quiet till it might want a few minutes of five, and
then he starts up with a scream, and screams out, ‘Here she is! She’s
got the shroud again. She’s unfolding it. She’s coming out of the
corner. She’s coming to the bed. Hold me, both on you—one of each
side—don’t let her touch me with it. Hah! she missed me that time.
Don’t let her throw it over my shoulders. Don’t let her lift me up to
get it round me. She’s lifting me up. Keep me down!’ Then he lifted
himself up hard, and was dead.
“Compeyson took it easy as a good riddance for both sides. Him and me
was soon busy, and first he swore me (being ever artful) on my own
book,—this here little black book, dear boy, what I swore your comrade
on.
“Not to go into the things that Compeyson planned, and I done—which ’ud
take a week—I’ll simply say to you, dear boy, and Pip’s comrade, that
that man got me into such nets as made me his black slave. I was always
in debt to him, always under his thumb, always a working, always a
getting into danger. He was younger than me, but he’d got craft, and
he’d got learning, and he overmatched me five hundred times told and no
mercy. My Missis as I had the hard time wi’—Stop though! I ain’t
brought _her_ in—”
He looked about him in a confused way, as if he had lost his place in
the book of his remembrance; and he turned his face to the fire, and
spread his hands broader on his knees, and lifted them off and put them
on again.
“There ain’t no need to go into it,” he said, looking round once more.
“The time wi’ Compeyson was a’most as hard a time as ever I had; that
said, all’s said. Did I tell you as I was tried, alone, for
misdemeanor, while with Compeyson?”
I answered, No.
“Well!” he said, “I _was_, and got convicted. As to took up on
suspicion, that was twice or three times in the four or five year that
it lasted; but evidence was wanting. At last, me and Compeyson was both
committed for felony,—on a charge of putting stolen notes in
circulation,—and there was other charges behind. Compeyson says to me,
‘Separate defences, no communication,’ and that was all. And I was so
miserable poor, that I sold all the clothes I had, except what hung on
my back, afore I could get Jaggers.
“When we was put in the dock, I noticed first of all what a gentleman
Compeyson looked, wi’ his curly hair and his black clothes and his