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Read books online » Fiction » Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📖

Book online «Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📖». Author Charles Dickens



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affection,

he called me Pip, and whenever he relapsed into politeness he

called me sir; “when there come up in his shay-cart, Pumblechook.

Which that same identical,” said Joe, going down a new track, “do

comb my ‘air the wrong way sometimes, awful, by giving out up and

down town as it were him which ever had your infant companionation

and were looked upon as a playfellow by yourself.”

“Nonsense. It was you, Joe.”

“Which I fully believed it were, Pip,” said Joe, slightly tossing

his head, “though it signify little now, sir. Well, Pip; this same

identical, which his manners is given to blusterous, come to me at

the Bargemen (wot a pipe and a pint of beer do give refreshment to

the workingman, sir, and do not over stimilate), and his word

were, ‘Joseph, Miss Havisham she wish to speak to you.’”

“Miss Havisham, Joe?”

“‘She wish,’ were Pumblechook’s word, ‘to speak to you.’” Joe sat

and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

“Yes, Joe? Go on, please.”

“Next day, sir,” said Joe, looking at me as if I were a long way

off, “having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss A.”

“Miss A., Joe? Miss Havisham?”

“Which I say, sir,” replied Joe, with an air of legal formality, as

if he were making his will, “Miss A., or otherways Havisham. Her

expression air then as follering: ‘Mr. Gargery. You air in

correspondence with Mr. Pip?’ Having had a letter from you, I were

able to say ‘I am.’ (When I married your sister, sir, I said ‘I

will;’ and when I answered your friend, Pip, I said ‘I am.’) ‘Would

you tell him, then,’ said she, ‘that which Estella has come home

and would be glad to see him.’”

I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe. I hope one remote cause

of its firing may have been my consciousness that if I had known

his errand, I should have given him more encouragement.

“Biddy,” pursued Joe, “when I got home and asked her fur to write

the message to you, a little hung back. Biddy says, “I know he will

be very glad to have it by word of mouth, it is holiday time, you

want to see him, go!” I have now concluded, sir,” said Joe, rising

from his chair, “and, Pip, I wish you ever well and ever prospering

to a greater and a greater height.”

“But you are not going now, Joe?”

“Yes I am,” said Joe.

“But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?”

“No I am not,” said Joe.

Our eyes met, and all the “ir” melted out of that manly heart as

he gave me his hand.

“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded

together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a

whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith.

Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If

there’s been any fault at all to-day, it’s mine. You and me is not

two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but

what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It

ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall

never see me no more in these clothes. I’m wrong in these clothes.

I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th’ meshes. You

won’t find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge

dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won’t find

half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to

see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see

Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt

apron, sticking to the old work. I’m awful dull, but I hope I’ve

beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD

bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!”

I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was a simple dignity

in him. The fashion of his dress could no more come in its way when

he spoke these words than it could come in its way in Heaven. He

touched me gently on the forehead, and went out. As soon as I could

recover myself sufficiently, I hurried out after him and looked for

him in the neighboring streets; but he was gone.

Chapter XXVIII

It was clear that I must repair to our town next day, and in the

first flow of my repentance, it was equally clear that I must stay

at Joe’s. But, when I had secured my box-place by tomorrow’s coach,

and had been down to Mr. Pocket’s and back, I was not by any means

convinced on the last point, and began to invent reasons and make

excuses for putting up at the Blue Boar. I should be an

inconvenience at Joe’s; I was not expected, and my bed would not be

ready; I should be too far from Miss Havisham’s, and she was

exacting and mightn’t like it. All other swindlers upon earth are

nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat

myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad

half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture is reasonable enough;

but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own

make as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretence of

compactly folding up my bank-notes for security’s sake, abstracts

the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand

to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as

notes!

Having settled that I must go to the Blue Boar, my mind was much

disturbed by indecision whether or not to take the Avenger. It was

tempting to think of that expensive Mercenary publicly airing his

boots in the archway of the Blue Boar’s posting-yard; it was almost

solemn to imagine him casually produced in the tailor’s shop, and

confounding the disrespectful senses of Trabb’s boy. On the other

hand, Trabb’s boy might worm himself into his intimacy and tell him

things; or, reckless and desperate wretch as I knew he could be,

might hoot him in the High Street, My patroness, too, might hear of

him, and not approve. On the whole, I resolved to leave the Avenger

behind.

It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my place, and, as

winter had now come round, I should not arrive at my destination

until two or three hours after dark. Our time of starting from the

Cross Keys was two o’clock. I arrived on the ground with a quarter

of an hour to spare, attended by the Avenger,—if I may connect

that expression with one who never attended on me if he could

possibly help it.

At that time it was customary to carry Convicts down to the

dock-yards by stage-coach. As I had often heard of them in the

capacity of outside passengers, and had more than once seen them on

the high road dangling their ironed legs over the coach roof, I had

no cause to be surprised when Herbert, meeting me in the yard, came

up and told me there were two convicts going down with me. But I

had a reason that was an old reason now for constitutionally

faltering whenever I heard the word “convict.”

“You don’t mind them, Handel?” said Herbert.

“O no!”

“I thought you seemed as if you didn’t like them?”

“I can’t pretend that I do like them, and I suppose you don’t

particularly. But I don’t mind them.”

“See! There they are,” said Herbert, “coming out of the Tap. What a

degraded and vile sight it is!”

They had been treating their guard, I suppose, for they had a

gaoler with them, and all three came out wiping their mouths on

their hands. The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had

irons on their legs,—irons of a pattern that I knew well. They

wore the dress that I likewise knew well. Their keeper had a brace

of pistols, and carried a thick-knobbed bludgeon under his arm; but

he was on terms of good understanding with them, and stood with

them beside him, looking on at the putting-to of the horses, rather

with an air as if the convicts were an interesting Exhibition not

formally open at the moment, and he the Curator. One was a taller

and stouter man than the other, and appeared as a matter of course,

according to the mysterious ways of the world, both convict and

free, to have had allotted to him the smaller suit of clothes. His

arms and legs were like great pincushions of those shapes, and his

attire disguised him absurdly; but I knew his half-closed eye at

one glance. There stood the man whom I had seen on the settle at

the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, and who had brought

me down with his invisible gun!

It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no more than if he

had never seen me in his life. He looked across at me, and his eye

appraised my watch-chain, and then he incidentally spat and said

something to the other convict, and they laughed and slued

themselves round with a clink of their coupling manacle, and looked

at something else. The great numbers on their backs, as if they

were street doors; their coarse mangy ungainly outer surface, as if

they were lower animals; their ironed legs, apologetically

garlanded with pocket-handkerchiefs; and the way in which all

present looked at them and kept from them; made them (as Herbert

had said) a most disagreeable and degraded spectacle.

But this was not the worst of it. It came out that the whole of the

back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from London,

and that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat

in front behind the coachman. Hereupon, a choleric gentleman, who

had taken the fourth place on that seat, flew into a most violent

passion, and said that it was a breach of contract to mix him up

with such villainous company, and that it was poisonous, and

pernicious, and infamous, and shameful, and I don’t know what else.

At this time the coach was ready and the coachman impatient, and we

were all preparing to get up, and the prisoners had come over with

their keeper,—bringing with them that curious flavor of

bread-poultice, baize, rope-yarn, and hearthstone, which attends

the convict presence.

“Don’t take it so much amiss, sir,” pleaded the keeper to the angry

passenger; “I’ll sit next you myself. I’ll put ‘em on the outside

of the row. They won’t interfere with you, sir. You needn’t know

they’re there.”

“And don’t blame me,” growled the convict I had recognized. “I

don’t want to go. I am quite ready to stay behind. As fur as I am

concerned any one’s welcome to my place.”

“Or mine,” said the other, gruffly. “I wouldn’t have incommoded

none of you, if I’d had my way.” Then they both laughed, and began

cracking nuts, and spitting the shells about.—As I really think I

should have liked to do myself, if I had been in their place and so

despised.

At length, it was voted that there was no help for the angry

gentleman, and that he must either go in his chance company or

remain behind. So he got into his place, still making complaints,

and the keeper got into the place next him, and the convicts hauled

themselves up as well as they could, and the convict I had

recognized sat behind me with his breath on the hair of my head.

“Good

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