Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📖

head from

behind.

“Now,” said a suppressed voice with an oath, “I’ve got you!”

“What is this?” I cried, struggling. “Who is it? Help, help, help!”

Not only were my arms pulled close to my sides, but the pressure on

my bad arm caused me exquisite pain. Sometimes, a strong man’s

hand, sometimes a strong man’s breast, was set against my mouth to

deaden my cries, and with a hot breath always close to me, I

struggled ineffectually in the dark, while I was fastened tight to

the wall. “And now,” said the suppressed voice with another oath,

“call out again, and I’ll make short work of you!”

Faint and sick with the pain of my injured arm, bewildered by the

surprise, and yet conscious how easily this threat could be put in

execution, I desisted, and tried to ease my arm were it ever so

little. But, it was bound too tight for that. I felt as if, having

been burnt before, it were now being boiled.

The sudden exclusion of the night, and the substitution of black

darkness in its place, warned me that the man had closed a shutter.

After groping about for a little, he found the flint and steel he

wanted, and began to strike a light. I strained my sight upon the

sparks that fell among the tinder, and upon which he breathed and

breathed, match in hand, but I could only see his lips, and the

blue point of the match; even those but fitfully. The tinder was

damp,—no wonder there,—and one after another the sparks died out.

The man was in no hurry, and struck again with the flint and steel.

As the sparks fell thick and bright about him, I could see his

hands, and touches of his face, and could make out that he was

seated and bending over the table; but nothing more. Presently I

saw his blue lips again, breathing on the tinder, and then a flare

of light flashed up, and showed me Orlick.

Whom I had looked for, I don’t know. I had not looked for him.

Seeing him, I felt that I was in a dangerous strait indeed, and I

kept my eyes upon him.

He lighted the candle from the flaring match with great

deliberation, and dropped the match, and trod it out. Then he put

the candle away from him on the table, so that he could see me, and

sat with his arms folded on the table and looked at me. I made out

that I was fastened to a stout perpendicular ladder a few inches

from the wall,—a fixture there,—the means of ascent to the loft

above.

“Now,” said he, when we had surveyed one another for some time,

“I’ve got you.”

“Unbind me. Let me go!”

“Ah!” he returned, “I’ll let you go. I’ll let you go to the moon,

I’ll let you go to the stars. All in good time.”

“Why have you lured me here?”

“Don’t you know?” said he, with a deadly look.

“Why have you set upon me in the dark?”

“Because I mean to do it all myself. One keeps a secret better than

two. O you enemy, you enemy!”

His enjoyment of the spectacle I furnished, as he sat with his arms

folded on the table, shaking his head at me and hugging himself,

had a malignity in it that made me tremble. As I watched him in

silence, he put his hand into the corner at his side, and took up a

gun with a brass-bound stock.

“Do you know this?” said he, making as if he would take aim at me.

“Do you know where you saw it afore? Speak, wolf!”

“Yes,” I answered.

“You cost me that place. You did. Speak!”

“What else could I do?”

“You did that, and that would be enough, without more. How dared

you to come betwixt me and a young woman I liked?”

“When did I?”

“When didn’t you? It was you as always give Old Orlick a bad name

to her.”

“You gave it to yourself; you gained it for yourself. I could have

done you no harm, if you had done yourself none.”

“You’re a liar. And you’ll take any pains, and spend any money, to

drive me out of this country, will you?” said he, repeating my

words to Biddy in the last interview I had with her. “Now, I’ll

tell you a piece of information. It was never so well worth your

while to get me out of this country as it is tonight. Ah! If it

was all your money twenty times told, to the last brass farden!” As

he shook his heavy hand at me, with his mouth snarling like a

tiger’s, I felt that it was true.

“What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m a going,” said he, bringing his fist down upon the table with a

heavy blow, and rising as the blow fell to give it greater force,—

“I’m a going to have your life!”

He leaned forward staring at me, slowly unclenched his hand and

drew it across his mouth as if his mouth watered for me, and sat

down again.

“You was always in Old Orlick’s way since ever you was a child. You

goes out of his way this present night. He’ll have no more on you.

You’re dead.”

I felt that I had come to the brink of my grave. For a moment I

looked wildly round my trap for any chance of escape; but there was

none.

“More than that,” said he, folding his arms on the table again, “I

won’t have a rag of you, I won’t have a bone of you, left on earth.

I’ll put your body in the kiln,—I’d carry two such to it, on my

Shoulders,—and, let people suppose what they may of you, they

shall never know nothing.”

My mind, with inconceivable rapidity followed out all the

consequences of such a death. Estella’s father would believe I had

deserted him, would be taken, would die accusing me; even Herbert

would doubt me, when he compared the letter I had left for him

with the fact that I had called at Miss Havisham’s gate for only a

moment; Joe and Biddy would never know how sorry I had been that

night, none would ever know what I had suffered, how true I had

meant to be, what an agony I had passed through. The death close

before me was terrible, but far more terrible than death was the

dread of being misremembered after death. And so quick were my

thoughts, that I saw myself despised by unborn generations,—

Estella’s children, and their children,—while the wretch’s words

were yet on his lips.

“Now, wolf,” said he, “afore I kill you like any other beast,—

which is wot I mean to do and wot I have tied you up for,—I’ll

have a good look at you and a good goad at you. O you enemy!”

It had passed through my thoughts to cry out for help again; though

few could know better than I, the solitary nature of the spot, and

the hopelessness of aid. But as he sat gloating over me, I was

supported by a scornful detestation of him that sealed my lips.

Above all things, I resolved that I would not entreat him, and that

I would die making some last poor resistance to him. Softened as my

thoughts of all the rest of men were in that dire extremity; humbly

beseeching pardon, as I did, of Heaven; melted at heart, as I was,

by the thought that I had taken no farewell, and never now

could take farewell of those who were dear to me, or could explain

myself to them, or ask for their compassion on my miserable errors,—

still, if I could have killed him, even in dying, I would have done

it.

He had been drinking, and his eyes were red and bloodshot. Around

his neck was slung a tin bottle, as I had often seen his meat and

drink slung about him in other days. He brought the bottle to his

lips, and took a fiery drink from it; and I smelt the strong

spirits that I saw flash into his face.

“Wolf!” said he, folding his arms again, “Old Orlick’s a going to

tell you somethink. It was you as did for your shrew sister.”

Again my mind, with its former inconceivable rapidity, had

exhausted the whole subject of the attack upon my sister, her

illness, and her death, before his slow and hesitating speech had

formed these words.

“It was you, villain,” said I.

“I tell you it was your doing,—I tell you it was done through

you,” he retorted, catching up the gun, and making a blow with the

stock at the vacant air between us. “I come upon her from behind,

as I come upon you tonight. I giv’ it her! I left her for dead,

and if there had been a limekiln as nigh her as there is now nigh

you, she shouldn’t have come to life again. But it warn’t Old

Orlick as did it; it was you. You was favored, and he was bullied

and beat. Old Orlick bullied and beat, eh? Now you pays for it. You

done it; now you pays for it.”

He drank again, and became more ferocious. I saw by his tilting of

the bottle that there was no great quantity left in it. I

distinctly understood that he was working himself up with its

contents to make an end of me. I knew that every drop it held was

a drop of my life. I knew that when I was changed into a part of

the vapor that had crept towards me but a little while before,

like my own warning ghost, he would do as he had done in my

sister’s case,—make all haste to the town, and be seen slouching

about there drinking at the alehouses. My rapid mind pursued him

to the town, made a picture of the street with him in it, and

contrasted its lights and life with the lonely marsh and the white

vapor creeping over it, into which I should have dissolved.

It was not only that I could have summed up years and years and

years while he said a dozen words, but that what he did say

presented pictures to me, and not mere words. In the excited and

exalted state of my brain, I could not think of a place without

seeing it, or of persons without seeing them. It is impossible to

overstate the vividness of these images, and yet I was so intent,

all the time, upon him himself,—who would not be intent on the

tiger crouching to spring!—that I knew of the slightest action of

his fingers.

When he had drunk this second time, he rose from the bench on which

he sat, and pushed the table aside. Then, he took up the candle,

and, shading it with his murderous hand so as to throw its light on

me, stood before me, looking at me and enjoying the sight.

“Wolf, I’ll tell you something more. It was Old Orlick as you

tumbled over on your stairs that night.”

I saw the staircase with its extinguished lamps. I saw the shadows

of the heavy stair-rails, thrown by the watchman’s lantern on the

wall. I saw the rooms that I was never to see again; here, a door

half open; there, a door closed; all the articles of furniture

around.

“And why was Old Orlick there? I’ll tell you something more, wolf.

You and her have pretty well hunted me out of this country, so far

as getting a easy living in it goes, and I’ve took up with new

companions, and new masters. Some of ‘em writes my letters when I

wants ‘em wrote,—do you mind?—writes my letters, wolf! They

writes fifty hands;