 CHAPTER XXXVIII. If that staid old house near the green at Richmond should ever come to be haunted when I am dead, it will be haunted surely by my ghost. O, the many, many nights and days through which the unquiet spirit within me haunted that house when Estella lived there! Let my body be where it would! My spirit was always wandering, wandering, wandering about that house. The lady with whom Estella was placed, Mrs. Bradley, by name, was a widow, with one daughter several years older than Estella. The mother looked young, and the daughter looked old. The mother's complexion was pink, and the daughter's was yellow. The mother set up for frivolity the daughter for theology. They were in what is called a good position, and visited, and were visited by, numbers of people. People of any community of feeling subsisted between them and Estella, but the understanding was established that they were necessary to her, and that she was necessary to them. Mrs. Bradley had been a friend of Miss Havishams before the time of her seclusion. In Mrs. Bradley's house, and out of Mrs. Bradley's house, I suffered every kind and degree of torture that Estella could cause me. The nature of my relations with her, which placed me on terms of familiarity, without placing me on terms of favor, conduced to my distraction. She made use of me to tease other admirers, and she turned the very familiarity between herself and me to the account of putting a constant slight on my devotion to her. If I had been her secretary, steward, half-brother, poor relation, if I had been a younger brother of her appointed husband, I could not have seen to myself, I could not have seen to myself further from my hopes when I was nearest to her. The privilege of calling her by her name, and hearing her call me by mind, became, under the circumstances, an aggravation of my trials, and while I think it likely that it almost maddened her other lovers, I know too certainly that it almost maddened me. She had admirers without end. No doubt my jealousy made an admirer of every one who went near her, for there were more than enough of them without that. I saw her often at Richmond. I heard of her often in town, and I used often to take her and the Bradley's on the water. There were picnics, vet days, plays, operas, concerts, parties, all sorts of pleasures, through which I pursued her, and they were all miseries to me. I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the four and twenty hours was harping on the happiness of having her with me unto death. Throughout this part of our intercourse, and it lasted as will presently be seen for what I then thought a long time, she habitually reverted to that tone which expressed that our association was forced upon us. There were other times when she would come to a sudden check in this tone, and in all her many tones, and would seem to pity me. PIP! PIP! She said one evening, coming to such a check, when we sat apart at a darkening window of the house in Richmond. Will you never take warning? Of what? Of me. Warning not to be attracted by you, do you mean, Estella? Do I mean, if you don't know what I mean you are blind? I should have replied that love was commonly reputed blind, but for the reason that I always was restrained, and this was not the least of my miseries, by a feeling that it was ungenerous to press myself upon her, when she knew that she could not choose but obey Miss Havisham. My dread always was that this knowledge on her part laid me under a heavy disadvantage with her pride, and may be the subject of a rebellious struggle in her bosom. At any rate, said I, I have no warning given me just now, for you wrote to me to come to you this time. That's true, said Estella, with a cold careless smile that always chilled me. After looking at the twilight without, for a little while, she went on to say, The time has come round when Miss Havisham wishes to have me for a day at Satis. You are to take me there, and bring me back, if you will. She would rather I did not travel alone, and objects to receiving my maid, for she has a sensitive horror of being talked of by such people. Can you take me? Can I take you, Estella? You can, then. The day after tomorrow, if you please. You are to pay all charges out of my purse. You hear the condition of your going? And must obey, said I. This was all the preparation I received for that visit, or for others like it. Miss Havisham never wrote to me, nor had I ever so much as seen her handwriting. She went down on the next day but one, and we found her in the room where I had first beheld her, and it is needless to add that there was no change in Satis' house. She was even more dreadfully fond of Estella than she had been when I last saw them together. I repeat the word advisedly, for there was something positively dreadful in the energy of her looks and embraces. She hung upon Estella's beauty, hung upon her words, hung upon her gestures, and sat mumbling her own trembling fingers while she looked at her, as though she were devouring the beautiful creature she had reared. From Estella she looked at me, with a searching glance that seemed to pry into my heart and probe its wounds. How does she use you, Pip? How does she use you? She asked me again, with her witch-like eagerness even in Estella's hearing. But when we sat by her flickering fire at night she was most weird. For then, keeping Estella's hand drawn through her arm and clutched in her own hand, she extorted from her, by dint of referring back to what Estella had told her in her regular letters, the names and conditions of the men whom she had fascinated. And as Miss Havisham dwelt upon this roll, with the intensity of a mind mortally hurt and diseased, she sat with her other hand on her crutch-stick, and her chin on that, and her one bright eyes glaring at me, a very specter. I saw in this, wretched though it made me, and bitter the sense of dependence and even of degradation that it awakened, I saw in this that Estella was set to reek Miss Havisham's revenge on men, and that she was not to be given to me until she had gratified it for a term. I saw in this a reason for her being beforehand assigned to me. Sending her out to attract and torment and do mischief, Miss Havisham sent her with the malicious assurance that she was beyond the reach of all admirers, and that all who stalked upon that caste were secured to lose. I saw in this that I too was tormented by a perversion of ingenuity, even while the prize was reserved for me. I saw in this the reason for my being staved off so long, and the reason for my late guardians declining to commit himself to the formal knowledge of such a scheme. In a word, I saw in this Miss Havisham as I had heard then, and there before my eyes, and always had her before my eyes, and I saw in this the distinct shadow of the darkened and unhealthy house in which her life was hidden from the sun. The candles that lighted that room of hers were placed in sconces on the wall. They were high from the ground, and they burnt with the steady dullness of artificial light in air that has seldom renewed. As I looked round at them, and at the pale gloom they made, and at the stopped clock, and at the withered articles of bridal dress upon the table and the ground, and at her own awful figure, with its glosely reflection thrown large by the fire upon the ceiling and the wall, I saw in everything the construction that my mind had come to, repeated and thrown back to me. My thoughts passed into the great room across the landing where this table was spread, and I saw it there, as it were, in the falls of the cobwebs from the centerpiece, in the crawling of the spiders on the cloth, in the tracks of the mice as they betook their little quickened hearts behind the panels, and in the groping symposings of the beetles on the floor. It happened on the occasion of this visit that some sharp words arose between Estella and Miss Havisham. It was the first time I had ever seen them opposed. We were seated by the fire, as just now described, and Miss Havisham still had Estella's arm drawn through her own, and still clutched Estella's hand in hers, when Estella gradually began to detach herself. She had shown a proud impatience more than once before, and had rather endured that fierce affection than accepted or returned it. What! said Miss Havisham, flashing her eyes upon her. Are you tired of me? Only a little tired of myself. Replied Estella, disengaging her arm, and moving to the great chimney-piece where she stood looking down at the fire. Speak the truth, you ingrate! cried Miss Havisham, passionately striking her stick upon the floor. You are tired of me! Estella looked at her with perfect composure, and again looked down at the fire. Her graceful figure and her beautiful face expressed a self-possessed indifference to the wild heat of the other that was almost cruel. You're stuck in stone! exclaimed Miss Havisham. You cold, cold heart! What! said Estella, preserving her attitude of indifference as she leaned against the great chimney-piece and only moving her eyes. Do you reproach me for being cold? You! Are you not? was the fierce retort. You should know, said Estella, I am what you have made me. Take all the praise, take all the blame, take all the success, take all the failure, in short, take me. Oh, look at her! look at her! cried Miss Havisham bitterly. Look at her so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared, where I took her into this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished years of tenderness upon her. At least I was no party to the compact, said Estella, for if I could walk and speak when it was made, it was as much as I could do. But what would you have? You have been very good to me, and I owe everything to you. What would you have? Love! replied the other. You have it? I have not! said Miss Havisham. Mother by adoption! retorted Estella, never departing from the easy grace of her attitude, never raising her voice as the other did, never yielding either to anger or tenderness. Mother by adoption, I have said that I owe everything to you. All I possess is freely yours. All that you have given me is at your command to have again. Given that I have nothing, and if you asked me to give you what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do in possibilities. Did I never give her love? cried Miss Havisham, turning wildly to me. Did I never give her a burning love, inseparable from jealousy at all times, and from sharp pain while she speaks thus to me? Let her call me mad. Why should I call you mad? returned Estella, I of all people. Does anyone live who knows what set purposes you have, half as well as I do? Does anyone live who knows what a steady memory you have, half as well as I do? I who have sat on the same hearth on the little stool that is even now beside you there, learning your lessons and looking up into your face when your face was strange and frightened me. Soon forgotten, moaned Miss Havisham, time soon forgotten. No, not forgotten, retorted Estella. Not forgotten, but treasured up in my memory. When have you found me false to your teaching? When have you found me unmindful of your lessons? When have you found me unmindful of your lessons? When have you found me giving admission here? She touched your bosom with her hand. To anything that you excluded, be just to me. So proud, so proud! moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her gray hair with both her hands. Who taught me to be proud? returned Estella. Who praised me when I learned my lesson? So hard, so hard! moaned Miss Havisham with her former action. Who taught me to be hard? returned Estella. Who praised me when I learned my lesson? But to be proud and hard to me! Miss Havisham quite shrieked as she stretched out her arms. Estella! Estella! Estella! Estella! Estella! Estella! To be proud and hard to me! Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm wonder, but was not otherwise disturbed. When the moment was passed, she looked down at the fire again. I cannot think, said Estella, raising her eyes after a silence. Why you should be so unreasonable when I come to see you after a separation. I have never forgotten your wrongs and their causes. I have never been unfaithful to you or your schooling. I have never shown any weakness that I could charge myself with. Would it be weakness to return my love? exclaimed Miss Havisham. But yes, yes, yes, she would call it so. I begin to think, said Estella in a musing way after another moment of calm wonder, that I almost understand how this comes about. If you had brought up your adopted daughter wholly in the dark confinement of these rooms, and had never let her know that there was such a thing as the daylight by which she had never once seen your face. If you had done that, and then, for a purpose had wanted her to understand the daylight and know all about it, you would have been disappointed and angry. Miss Havisham, with her head in her hands, sat making a low moaning and swaying herself on her chair, but gave no answer. Or, said Estella, which is a nearer case, if you had taught her from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy and might, that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was made to be her enemy and destroyer, and she must always turn against it, for it had blighted you and would else blight her. If you had done this, and then, for a purpose, had wanted to take her naturally to the daylight and she could not do it, you would have been disappointed and angry. Miss Havisham sat listening, or it seemed so, for I could not see her face, but still made no answer. So, said Estella, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine. The failure is not mine. But the two together make me. Miss Havisham had settled down. I hardly knew how, upon the floor, among the faded bridal relics with which it was strewn. I took advantage of the moment. I had sought one from the first, to leave the room. After beseeching Estella's attention to her, with the movement of my hand. When I left, Estella was yet standing by the great chimney-piece, just as she had stood throughout. Miss Havisham's gray hair was all adrift upon the ground, among the other bridal wrecks, and was a miserable sight to see. It was with a depressed heart that I walked in the starlight for an hour and more about the courtyard and about the brewery and about the ruined garden. When I at last took courage to return to the room I found Estella sitting at Miss Havisham's knee, taking up some stitches in one of those old articles of dress that were dropping to pieces, and of which I have often been reminded since by the faded tatters of old banners that I have seen hanging up in cathedrals. Afterwards Estella and I played at cards as of yore. Only we were skillful now, and played French games. And so the evening wore away, and I went to bed. I lay in that separate building across the courtyard. It was the first time I had ever lain down to rest in Satta's house, and sleep refused to come near me. A thousand Miss Havisham's haunted me. She was on this side of my pillow, on that, at the head of the bed, at the foot, behind the half-open door of the dressing-room, in the dressing-room, in the room overhead, in the room beneath, everywhere. At last, when the night was slow to creep on towards two o'clock, I felt that I absolutely could no longer bear the place as a place to lie down in, and that I must get up. I therefore got up and put on my clothes, and went out across the yard into the long stone passage, designing to gain the outer courtyard and walk there for the relief of my mind. But I was no sooner in the passage than I extinguished my candle, for I saw Miss Havisham going along it in a ghostly manner, making a low cry. I followed her at a distance, and saw her go up the staircase. She carried a bare candle in her hand, which she had probably taken from one of the sconces in her own room, and was a most unearthly object by its light. Standing at the bottom of the staircase, I felt the mildewed air of the feast chamber, without seeing her open the door, and I heard her walking there, and so across into her own room, and so across again into that, never ceasing the low cry. After a time, I tried in the dark both to get out and to go back, but I could do neither, until some streaks of day straight in and showed me where to lay my hands. During the whole interval, whenever I went to the bottom of the staircase, I heard her footstep, saw her light pass above, and heard her ceaseless low cry. Before we left next day there was no revival of the difference between her and Estella, nor was it ever revived on any similar occasion, and there were four similar occasions, to the best of my remembrance, nor did Miss Havisham's manner towards Estella in any wise change, except that I believed it to have something like fear infused among its former characteristics. It is impossible to turn this leaf of my life, without putting Bentley Drummle's name upon it, or I would, very gladly. On a certain occasion when the Finches were assembled in force, and when good feeling was being promoted in the usual manner, by nobodies agreeing with anybody else, the presiding Finch called the Grove to order, for as much as Mr. Drummle had not yet toasted a lady, which, according to the solemn constitution of the society, it was the brute's turn to do that day, I thought I saw him leer in an ugly way at me while the decanters were going round, but as there was no love lost between us, that might easily be. What was my indignant surprise when he called upon the company to pledge him to Estella? Estella who? said I. Never you mind, retorted Drummle. Estella of where? said I. You are bound to say of where? Which he was, as a Finch. Of Richmond, gentlemen, said Drummle, putting me out of the question, and a peerless beauty. Much he knew about peerless beauties, a mean miserable idiot, I whispered Herbert. I know that lady. Said Herbert, across the table, when the toast had been honored. Do you! said Drummle. And so do I, I added, with an scarlet face. Do you! said Drummle. O Lord! This was the only retort, except glass or crockery, that the heavy creature was capable of making, but I became as highly incensed by it as if it had been barbed with wit, and I immediately rose in my place, and said that I could not but regarded as being like the honorable Finch's impudence to come down to that grove—we always talked about coming down to that grove, as a neat parliamentary turn of expression—down to that grove, proposing a lady of whom he knew nothing, Mr. Drummle, upon this, starting up, demanded what I meant by that, whereupon I made him the extreme reply that I believed he knew where I was to be found. Whether it was possible in a Christian country to get on without blood, after this, was a question on which the Finch's were divided. The debate upon it grew so lively indeed that at least six more honorable members told six more, during the discussion, that they believed they knew where they were to be found. However, it was decided at last, the grove being a court of honor, that if Mr. Drummle would bring never so slight a certificate from the lady, importing that he had the honor of her acquaintance, Mr. Pip must express his regret, as a gentleman, and a Finch, for having been betrayed into a warmth witch. Next day was appointed for the production, lest our honor should take cold from delay, and next day Drummle appeared with a polite little avowal in Estella's hand that she had had had the honor of dancing with him several times. This left me no course but to regret that I had been betrayed into a warmth witch, and on the whole to repudiate, as untenable, the idea that I was to be found anywhere. Drummle and I then sat snorting at one another for an hour, while the grove engaged in indiscriminate contradiction, and finally the promotion of good feeling was declared to have gone ahead at an amazing rate. I tell this lightly, but it was no light thing to me, for I cannot adequately express what pain it gave me to think that Estella should show any favor to a contemptible, clumsy, sulky booby, so very far below the average. To the present moment I believe it to have been referable to some pure fire of generosity and disinterestedness in my love for her that I could not endure the thought of her stooping to that hound. No doubt I should have been miserable, whomsoever she had favored, but a worthier object would have caused me a different kind and degree of distress. It was easy for me to find out, and I did soon find out, that Drummle had begun to follow her closely, and that she allowed him to do it. A little while, and he was always in pursuit of her, and he and I crossed one another every day. He held on, in a dull, persistent way, and Estella held him on, now with encouragement, now with discouragement, now almost flattering him, now openly despising him, now knowing him very well, now scarcely remembering who he was. The spider, as Mr. Jaggers had called him, was used to lying in wait, however, and had the patience of his tribe. Added to that he had a blockhead confidence in his money and in his family greatness, which sometimes did him good service, almost taking the place of concentration and determined purpose. So the spider, doggedly watching Estella, outwatched many brighter insects, and would often uncoil himself and drop at the right nick of time. At a certain assembly ball at Richmond, there used to be assembly balls at most places then. Where Estella had outshone all other beauties, this blundering dremel so hung about her, and with so much toleration on her part, that I resolved to speak to her concerning him. I took the next opportunity, which was when she was waiting for Mrs. Blandly to take her home, and was sitting apart among some flowers, ready to go. I was with her, for I almost always accompanied them to and from such places. Are you tired, Estella? Rather, Pip. You should be. Say, rather, I should not be, for I have my letter to Saddus House to write before I go to sleep. Recounting tonight's triumph, said I, surely a very poor one, Estella. What do you mean? I didn't know there had been any. Estella, said I, do look at that fellow in the corner yonder who was looking over here at us. Why should I look at him? Returned Estella with her eyes on me instead. What is there in that fellow in the corner yonder, to use your words, that I need look at? Indeed, that is the very question I want to ask you, said I, for he has been hovering about you all night. Moths at all sorts of ugly creatures, replied Estella with a glance towards him, hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it? No, I return, but cannot the Estella help it? Well, said she, laughing after a moment. Perhaps. Yes, anything you like. But Estella, do hear me speak. It makes me wretched that you should encourage a man so generally despised as Drummel. You know he is despised. Well, said she. You know he is as ungainly within as without a deficient, ill-tempered, lowering, stupid fellow. Well, said she. You know he has nothing to recommend him, but money, and a ridiculous roll of atle-headed protesters, now, don't you? Well, said she again, and each time she said it she opened her lovely eyes the wider. To overcome the difficulty of getting past that monosyllable I took it from her, and said, repeating it with emphasis, well, then, that is why it makes me wretched. Now, if I could have believed that she favored Drummel with any idea of making me, me wretched, I would have been in better heart about it. But in that habitual way of hers, she put me so entirely out of the question that I could believe nothing of the kind. Pip! said Estella, casting her glance over the room. Don't be foolish about its effect on you. It may have its effect on others, and may be meant to have. It's not worth discussing. Yes, it is, said I, because I cannot bear that people should say she throws away her graces and attractions on a mere boar, the lowest in the crowd. I can bear it, said Estella. Oh, don't be so proud, Estella, and so inflexible. Calls me proud and inflexible in this breath, said Estella, opening her hands. And in his last breath reproach me for stooping to a boar. There is no doubt you do, said I, something hurriedly, for I have seen you give him looks and smiles this very night, such as you never give to me. Do you want me, then, said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and serious, if not angry look, to deceive and entrap you? Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella? Yes, and many others, all of them, but you. Here is Mrs. Bradley. I'll say no more. And now that I have given the one chapter to the theme that so filled my heart, and so often made it ache and ache again, I pass on, unhindered, to the event that had impended over me longer yet, the event that had begun to be prepared for, before I knew that the world held Estella, and in the days when her baby intelligence was receiving its first distortions from Miss Havisham's wasting hands. In the eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the quarry. The tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried through the leagues of rock. The slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof. The rope was roved to it, and slowly taken through the miles of hollow to the Great Iron Ring. All being made ready with much labour, and the hour come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever the rope from the Great Iron Ring was put into his hand, and he struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and the ceiling fell. So, in my case, all the work near and afar that tended to the end had been accomplished, and in an instant the blow was struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me. CHAPTER 39 OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. GREAT EXPECTATIONS By Charles Dickens, Chapter 39 I was three and twenty years of age. Not another word had I heard to enlighten me on the subject of my expectations, and my 23rd birthday was a week gone. We had left Barnards in more than a year and lived in the temple. Our chambers were in Garden Court, down by the river. Mr. Pocket and I had for some time parted company as to our original relations, though we continued on the best terms, notwithstanding my inability to settle to anything, which I hope arose out of the restless and incomplete tenure on which I held my means. I had a taste for reading, and read regularly so many hours a day. That matter of Herbert's was still progressing, and everything with me was as I have brought it down to the close of the last preceding chapter. Business had taken Herbert on a journey to Marseille. I was alone and had a dull sense of being alone. Despirited and anxious, long hoping that tomorrow or next week would clear my way, and long disappointed, I sadly missed the cheerful face and ready response of my friend. It was wretched weather, stormy and wet, stormy and wet, and mud, mud, mud deep in all the streets. Day after day a vast heavy veil had been driving over London from the east, and it drove still, as if in the east there were an eternity of cloud and wind. So furious had been the gusts, that high buildings in town had had the lead stripped off their roofs, and in the country trees had been torn up, and sails of windmills carried away, and gloomy accounts had come in from the coast of shipwreck and death. Violent blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and the day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of all. Alterations have been made in that part of the temple since that time, and it is not now so lonely a character as it had then, nor is it so exposed to the river. We lived at the top of the last house, and the wind rushing up the river shook the house that night, like discharges of cannon, or breakings of a sea. When the rain came with it and dashed against the windows, I thought, raising my eyes to them as they rocked, that I might have fancied myself in a storm-beaten lighthouse. Occasionally the smoke came rolling down the chimney as though it could not bear to go out into such a night, and when I set the doors open and looked down the staircase, the staircase lamps were blown out, and when I shaded my face with my hands and looked through the black windows, opening them ever so little was out of the question in the teeth of such wind and rain. I saw that the lamps in the court were blown out, and that the lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuttering, and that the coal fires and barges on the river were being carried away before the wind, like red-hot splashes in the rain. I read with my watch upon the table, purposing to close my book at eleven o'clock. As I shut it, St. Paul's, and all the many church clocks in the city, some leading, some accompanying, some following, struck that hour. The sound was curiously flawed by the wind, and I was listening and thinking how the wind assailed and tore it when I heard a footstep on the stair. What nervous folly made me start and awfully connect it with the footstep of my dead sister matters not. It was passed in a moment, and I listened again and heard the footstep stumble in coming on. Remembering then that the staircase lights were blown out, I took up my reading lamp and went out to the stair-head. Whoever was below had stopped on seeing my lamp, for all was quiet. There is someone down there, is there not? I called out, looking down. Yes, said a voice from the darkness beneath. What floor do you want? The top. Mr. Pip. That is my name. There's nothing to matter. Nothing to matter. Returned the voice, and the man came on. I stood with my lamp held out over the stair rail, and he came slowly within its light. It was a shaded lamp to shine upon a book, and its circle of light was very contracted, so that he was in it for a mere instant, and then out of it. In the instant I had seen a face that was strange to me, looking up with an incomprehensible air of being touched, and pleased by the sight of me. Moving the lamp as the man moved, I made out that he was substantially dressed, but roughly, like a voyager by sea, that he had long iron-grey hair, that his age was about sixty, that he was a muscular man, strong on his legs, and that he was browned and hardened by exposure to weather. As he ascended the last stair or two, and the light of my lamp included us both, I saw with a stupid kind of amazement that he was holding out both his hands to me. "'Pray what is your business?' I asked him. "'My business!' he repeated, pausing. "'Ah, yes. I will explain my business by your leave.' "'Do you wish to come in?' "'Yes,' he replied. "'I wish to come in, master.' I had asked him the question inhospitably enough, for I resented the sort of bright and gratified recognition that's still shown in his face. I resented it, because it seemed to imply that he expected me to respond to it. But I took him into the room I had just left, and having set the lamp on the table, asked him as civilly as I could, to explain himself. He looked about him with the strangest air, an air of wondering pleasure, as if he had some part in the things he admired. And he pulled off a rough outer coat and his hat. Then I saw that his head was furrowed and bald, and that the long iron-grey hair grew only on its sides. But I saw nothing that in the least explained him. On the contrary, I saw him next moment once more holding out both his hands to me. What do you mean? Said I, half expecting him to be mad. He stopped in his looking at me and slowly rubbed his right hand over his head. It's disappointing to a man, he said in a course broken voice, hard to having to look forward so distant and come so fur, but you're not to blame for that. Neither on us is to blame for that. I'll speak in half a minute. Give me half a minute, please. He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire and covered his forehead with his large brown Venice hands. I looked at him attentively then and recoiled a little from him, but I did not know him. There's no one nigh, said he, looking over his shoulder. Is there? Why do you, a stranger coming into my rooms at this time of night, ask that question? Said I. You're a Game One, he returned, shaking his head at me with a deliberate affection, at once most unintelligible and most exasperating. I'm glad you've grown up a Game One, but don't catch hold of me. You'll be sorry afterwards to have done it. I relinquished the intention he had detected, for I knew him. Even yet I could not recall a single feature, but I knew him. If the wind and rain had driven away the intervening years, had scattered all the intervening objects, had swept us to the churchyard, where we first stood face to face on such different levels, I could not have known my convict more distinctly than I knew him now as he sat in the chair before the fire. No need to take a file from his pocket and show it to me. No need to take the handkerchief from his neck and twist it round his head. No need to hug himself with both his arms and take a shivering turn across the room, looking back at me for recognition. I knew him before he gave me one of those aids, though a moment before I had not been conscious of remotely suspecting his identity. He came back to where I stood and again held out both his hands, not knowing what to do, for in my astonishment I had lost my self-possession. I reluctantly gave him my hands. He grasped unheartedly, raised them to his lips, kissed them, and still held them. "'You acted noble, my boy,' said he. "'Noble, Pip, and I have never forgot it.' At a change in his manner as if he were even going to embrace me, I laid a hand upon his breast and put him away. "'Stay,' said I. "'Keep off. If you are grateful to me for what I did when I was a little child, I hope you have shown your gratitude by mending your way of life. If you have come here to thank me, it was not necessary. Still, however you have found me out, there must be something good in the feeling that has brought you here, and I will not repulse you, but I must understand that I—' My attention was so attracted by the singularity of his fixed look at me that the words died away on my tongue. "'You was a saying,' he observed, when we had confronted one another in silence, "'that surely I must understand. What surely must I understand? "'That I cannot wish to renew that chance intercourse with you of long go under these different circumstances. I'm glad to believe you have repented and recovered yourself. I'm glad to tell you so. I'm glad that, thinking I deserve to be thanked, you have come to thank me. But our ways are different ways. Nonetheless, you are wet and you look weary. Will you drink something before you go?' He had replaced his neckerchief loosely and had stood, keenly observing of me, biting a long end of it. "'I think,' he answered, still with the end at his mouth and still observing of me. "'That I will drink, I thank you, before I go.' There was a tray ready on a side table. I brought it to the table near the fire and asked him what he would have. He touched one of the bottles without looking at it or speaking, and I made him some hot rum and water. I tried to keep my hand steady while I did so, but his look at me as he leaned back in his chair with a long, draggled end of his neckerchief between his teeth, evidently forgotten, made my hand very difficult to master. When at last I put the glass to him I saw with amazement that his eyes were full of tears. Up to this time I had remained standing, not to disguise that I wished him gone. But I was softened by the softened aspect of the man and felt a touch of reproach. "'I hope,' said I, hurriedly putting something into a glass for myself and drawing a chair to the table. "'That you would not think I spoke harshly to you just now? I had no intention of doing it, and I am sorry for it if I did. I wish you well and happy.' As I put my glass to my lips I glanced with surprise at the end of his neckerchief, dropping from his mouth when he opened it, and stretched out his hand. I gave him mine, and then he drank and drew his sleeve across his eyes and forehead. "'How are you living?' I asked him. "'I have been a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, other trades besides, away in the New World,' said he, many a thousand miles of stormy water off from this. "'I hope you've done well?' "'I've done wonderfully well. "'There's others went out alonger me as has done well, too. "'But no man has done nigh as well as me. "'I'm famous for it.' "'I am glad to hear it.' "'I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy.' Without stopping to try to understand those words or the tone in which they were spoken, I turned off to a point that had just come to my mind. "'Have you ever seen a messenger you once sent to me?' I inquired, since he undertook that trust. "'Never set eyes upon him. I warn't likely to it.' He came faithfully, and he brought me the two one-pound notes. "'I was a poor boy, then, as you know, "'and to a poor boy they were a little fortune. "'But, like you, I have done well, since, "'and you must let me pay them back. "'You can put them to some other poor boy's use.' I took out my purse. "'He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table "'and opened it, and he watched me "'as I separated two one-pound notes from its contents. "'They were clean and new, and I spread them out "'and handed them over to him. "'Still watching me, he laid them one upon the other, "'folded them longwise, gave them a twist, "'set fire to them at the lamp, "'and dropped the ashes into the tray.' "'May I make so bold!' he said then, "'with a smile that was like a frown, "'and with a frown that was like a smile. "'As ask you how you have done well, "'since you and me was out on them lone shivering marshes.' "'How?' "'Ha!' "'He emptied its glass, got up, "'and stood at the side of the fire, "'with his heavy-brown hand on the metal shelf. "'He put a foot up to the bars to dry and warm it, "'and the wet boot began to steam. "'But he neither looked at it nor at the fire, "'but steadily looked at me. "'It was only now that I began to tremble. "'When my lips had parted and had shaped some words "'that were without sound, "'I forced myself to tell him, "'though I could not do it distinctly, "'that I had been chosen to succeed to some property.' "'Might Amir Varmert ask what property?' said he. "'I faltered. "'I don't know.' "'Might Amir Varmert ask whose property?' said he. "'I faltered again. "'I don't know.' "'Could I make a guess, I wonder,' said the convict, "'at your income since you come of age, "'as to the first figure now. "'Five?' "'With my heart beating like a heavy hammer "'of disordered action, "'I rose out of my chair and stood with my hand "'upon the back of it, looking wildly at him. "'Concerning a guardian,' he went on, "'there ought to have been some guardian, "'or such like, whilst you was a minor. "'Some lawyer, maybe, "'as to the first letter of that lawyer's name now. "'Would it be Jay?' "'All the truth of my position came flashing on me, "'and its disappointments, dangers, disgraces, "'consequences of all kinds, "'rushed in such a multitude that I was born down by them "'and had to struggle for every breath I drew.' "'Put it,' he resumed, "'as the employer of that lawyer whose name "'begun with a Jay, and might be Jaggers, "'put it as he had come overseas to Portsmouth "'and had landed there and had wanted to come on to you. "'However you have found me out,' you says just now. "'Well, however, did I find you out? "'Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a person in London "'for particulars of your address. "'That person's name? "'Why, Wemmick!' "'I could not have spoken one word, "'though it had been to save my life. "'I stood, with a hand on the chair-back "'and a hand on my breast, where I seemed to be suffocating. "'I stood so, looking wildly at him, "'until I grasped at the chair, "'when the room began to surge and turn. "'He caught me, drew me to the sofa, "'put me up against the cushions "'and bent on one knee before me, "'bringing the face that I now well remembered "'and that I shuddered at, very near to mine. "'Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you. "'It's me what has done it. "'I swore that time sure as ever I earned a guinea. "'That guinea should go to you. "'I swore afterwards sure as ever I speculated "'and got rich, you should get rich. "'I lived rough, that you should live smooth. "'I worked hard, that you should be above work. "'What odds, dear boy? "'Do I tell it for you to feel an obligation? "'Not a bit. "'I tell it for you to know "'as that there'd hunted Dunghill dog "'that you kept life in, "'got his head so high that he could make a gentleman. "'And Pip, you're him. "'The abhorrence in which I held the man, "'the dread I had of him, "'the repugnance with which I shrank from him, "'could not have been exceeded "'if he had been some terrible beast. "'Looky here, Pip. "'I'm your second father. "'You're my son, more to me nor any son. "'I'll put away money only for you to spend. "'When I was a hired out shepherd in a solitary hut, "'not seeing no faces but faces of sheep "'till I have forgot what men's and women's faces was like, "'I seen yarn. "'I dropped my knife many a time in that hut "'when I was eating my dinner or my supper. "'And I says, "'Here's the boy again, looking at me "'while I eat and drinks. "'I see you there a many times, "'as plain as ever I see you on them misty marshes. "'Lord, strike me dead,' I says each time, "'and I goes out in the air to say it under the open heavens. "'But what, if I get liberty and money, "'I'll make that boy a gentleman. "'And I've done it.' "'Why, look at you, dear boy. "'Look at these here logins of yore and fit for a lord. "'A lord! "'You shall show money with lords for wagers and beat them.' "'In his heat and triumph, "'and in his knowledge that I had been nearly fainting, "'he did not remark on my reception of all this. "'It was the one grain of relief I had.' "'Looky here!' "'He went on, taking my watch out of my pocket "'and turning towards him a ring on my finger "'while I recoiled from his touch as if he had been a snake. "'A golden and a beauty! "'That's a gentleman's, I hope. "'A diamond all set round with rubies. "'That's a gentleman's, I hope. "'Look at your linen, fine and beautiful. "'Look at your clothes. "'Better ain't to be got. "'And your books, too.' "'Turning his eyes round the room. "'Mounting up on their shells by hundreds. "'And you read them, don't you? "'I see you've been a-reading of them when I come in. "'Ha, ha, ha! "'You shall read them to me, dear boy. "'And if they're in foreign languages "'what I don't understand, "'I shall be just as proud as if I did.' "'Again he took both my hands "'and put them to his lips "'while my blood ran cold within me.' "'Don't you mind talking, Pip?' "'Said he, after again drawing his sleeve "'over his eyes and forehead, "'as the click came in his throat, "'which I well remembered. "'And he was all the more horrible to me "'that he was so much in earnest. "'You can't do better, nor keep quiet, dear boy. "'You ain't look slowly forward to this as I have. "'He wasn't prepared for this as I was. "'But didn't you never think it might be me?' "'Oh, no, no, no, I returned. "'Never, never! "'Well, you see, it was me and single-handed. "'Never a soul in it but my own self and Mr. Jaggers.' "'Was there no one else?' I asked. "'No,' said he, with a glance of surprise. "'Who else should there be? "'And, dear boy, how good-looking you have groaned. "'There's bright eyes somewheres, eh? "'Isn't there bright eyes somewheres, "'what you love the thoughts on?' "'Oh, Estella, Estella. "'They shall be your'n, dear boy, if money can buy them. "'Not the gentleman like you, "'so well set up as you, "'can't win him off of his own game, "'but money shall back you. "'You finish what I was a-tellin', you dear boy. "'From that there hut, and that there hiring out, "'I got money left be by my master, "'which died and had been the same as me, "'and got my liberty and went for myself. "'In every single thing I went for, I went for you. "'Lord strike a blight upon it,' I says, "'whatever it was I went for, if it ain't for him.' "'It all prospered wonderful. "'As I give you to understand just now, I'm famous for it. "'It was the money left me, "'and the gains of the first few year "'what I set home to Mr. Jaggers, all for you, "'when he first come after you, agreeable to my letter. "'Oh, that he had never come, "'that he had left me at the forge, "'far from contented, yet by comparison happy.' "'And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me, "'lookie here, to know in secret that I was making a gentleman. "'The blood horses of them colonists "'might fling up the dust over me as I was walking. "'What do I say?' I says to myself, "'I'm making a better gentleman, or ever you'll be.' "'When one of them says to another, "'he was a convict a few year ago, "'and is an ignorant common fellow now for all he's lucky, "'what do I say?' I says to myself, "'if I ain't a gentleman nor yet ain't got no learning, "'I'm the owner of such. "'All of you own stock and land. "'Which of you owns have brought up London gentlemen? "'This way I kept myself a-going. "'And this way I held steadier for my mind "'that I would, for certain, come one day and see my boy "'and make myself known to him on his own ground.' "'He laid his hand on my shoulder. "'I shuttered at the thought "'that for anything I knew his hand might be stained with blood. "'It warn't easy, Pip, for me to leave them parts, "'nor yet it warn't safe. "'But I held to it, and the harder it was, "'the stronger I held, for I was determined, "'and my mind firm made up. "'At last I'd done it. "'Dear boy, I'd done it.' I tried to collect my thoughts, but I was stunned. "'Throughout I had seemed to myself "'to attend more to the wind and the rain than to him. "'Even now I could not separate his voice from those voices, "'though those were loud and his was silent. "'Where will you put me?' he asked presently. "'I must be put somewheres, dear boy.' "'To sleep?' said I. "'Yes, hand to sleep long and sound,' he answered, "'for I've been sea-tossed and sea-washed months and months.' "'My friend and companion,' said I, rising from the sofa, "'is absent. You must have his room.' "'He won't come back to-morrow, will he?' "'No,' said I, answering almost mechanically "'in spite of my utmost efforts. Not to-morrow.' "'Because, looky here, dear boy,' he said, dropping his voice and laying a long finger on my breast in an impressive manner. "'Caution is necessary.' "'How do you mean, caution?' "'By God, it's death.' "'What's death?' "'I was sent for life. It's death to come back. "'There's been over much coming back of late years, "'and I should have a certainty be hanged, if took.' "'Nothing was needed but this. "'The wretched man, after loading wretched me "'with his gold and silver chains for years, "'had risked his life to come to me, "'and I held it there in my keeping. "'If I had loved him, instead of abhorring him, "'if I had been attracted to him by the strongest admiration "'and affection, instead of shrinking from him "'with the strongest repugnance, it could have been no worse. "'On the contrary, it would have been better "'for his preservation would then have naturally "'and tenderly addressed my heart. "'My first care was to close the shutters "'so that no light might be seen from without, "'and then to close and make fast the doors. "'While I did so, he stood at the table "'drinking rum and eating biscuit, "'and when I saw him thus engaged, "'I saw my convict on the marshes at his meal again. "'It almost seemed to me as if he must stoop down presently "'to file at his leg. "'When I had gone into Herbert's room "'and had shut off any other communication between it "'and the staircase, then through the room "'in which our conversation had been held, "'I asked him if he would go to bed. "'He said yes, but asked me for some of my gentlemen's linen "'to put on in the morning. "'I brought it out and laid it ready for him, "'and my blood again ran cold "'and again took me by both hands to give me good night. "'I got away from him without knowing how I did it "'and mended the fire in the room where we had been together "'and sat down by it, afraid to go to bed. "'For an hour or more I remained too stunned to think, "'and it was not until I began to think "'that I began fully to know how wrecked I was "'and how the ship in which I had sailed "'was gone to pieces. "'I must have a sham's intentions towards me. "'All a mere dream. "'Istela, not designed for me. "'I only suffered in saddest house as a convenience, "'a sting for the greedy relations, "'a model with a mechanical heart to practice on "'when no other practice was at hand. "'Those were the first smarts I had, "'but sharpest and deepest pain of all. "'It was for the convict, "'the guilty of I knew not what crimes "'and liable to be taken out of those rooms "'where I sat thinking and hanged at the old Bailey door "'that I had deserted Joe. "'I would not have gone back to Joe now. "'I would not have gone back to Biddy now "'for any consideration. "'Simply, I suppose, "'because my sense of my own worthless conduct to them "'was greater than every consideration. "'No wisdom on earth could have given me the comfort "'from their simplicity and fidelity, "'but I could never, never undo what I had done. "'In every rage of wind and rush of rain I heard pursuers. "'Twice I could have sworn there was a knocking "'in whispering at the outer door. "'With these fears upon me I began either to imagine "'or recall that I had had mysterious warnings "'of this man's approach, "'that for weeks gone by I had passed faces "'in the streets which I had thought, like his, "'that these likenesses had grown more numerous "'as he, coming over the sea, had drawn nearer, "'that his wicked spirit had somehow sent these messengers "'to mine, and that now on this stormy night "'he was as good as his word and with me. "'Crowding up with these reflections came the reflection "'that I had seen him with my childish eyes "'to be a desperately violent man, "'that I had heard that other convict reiterate "'that he had tried to murder him, "'that I had seen him down in the ditch "'tearing and fighting like a wild beast. "'Out of such remembrances I brought into the light of the fire "'a half-formed terror that it might not be safe "'to be shut up there with him "'in the dead of the wild solitary night. "'This dilated until it filled the room "'for me to take a candle and go in and look at my dreadful burden. "'He had rolled a handkerchief round his head "'and his face was set and lowering in his sleep, "'but he was asleep and quietly too, "'though he had a pistol lying on the pillow. "'Assured of this I softly removed the key "'to the outside of his door "'and turned it on him before I again sat down by the fire. "'Gradually I slipped from the chair and lay on the floor. "'When I awoke without having parted in my sleep "'with the perception of my wretchedness, "'the clocks of the eastward churches were striking five, "'the candles were wasted out, "'the fire was dead, "'and the wind and rain intensified "'the thick black darkness. "'This is the end of the second stage of Pip's expectations.'" End of chapter 40 It was fortunate for me that I had to take precautions to ensure, so far as I could, the safety of my dreaded visitor, for this thought pressing on me when I awoke, held other thoughts in a confused concourse at a distance. The impossibility of keeping him concealed in the chambers was self-evident. It could not be done, and the attempt to do it would inevitably engender suspicion. True, I had no avenger in my service now, but I was looked after by an inflammatory old female, assisted by an animated rag-bag whom she called her niece, and to keep a room secret from them would be to invite curiosity and exaggeration. They both had weak eyes, which I had long attributed to their chronically looking-in at keyholes, and they were always at hand when not wanted. Indeed, that was their only reliable quality besides larceny. Not to get up a mystery with these people, I resolved to announce in the morning that my uncle had unexpectedly come from the country. This course I decided on while I was yet groping about in the darkness for the means of getting a light. Not stumbling on the means after all, I was feigned to go out to the adjacent lodge and get the watchman there to come with his lantern. Now in groping my way down the black staircase I fell over something, and that something was a man crouching in a corner. As the man made no answer when I asked him what he did there, but eluded my touch in silence, I ran to the lodge and urged the watchman to come quickly, telling him of the incident on the way back. The wind being as fierce as ever, we did not care to endanger the light in the lantern by rekindling the extinguished lamps in the staircase, but we examined the staircase from the bottom to the top and found no one there. It then occurred to me as possible that the man might have slipped into my rooms, so lighting my candle at the watchman's and leaving him standing at the door, I examined them carefully, including the room in which my dreaded guests lay asleep. All was quiet, and assuredly no other man was in those chambers. It troubled me that there should have been a lurker on the stairs. On that night of all nights in the year, and I asked the watchman, on the chance of eliciting some hopeful explanation, as I handed him a dram at the door, whether he had admitted at his gate any gentlemen who had perceptibly been dining out. Yes, he said, at different times of the night, three. One lived in Fountain Court, and the other two lived in the Lane, and he had seen them all go home. Again, the only other man who dwelt in the house of which my chambers formed apart had been in the country for some weeks, and he certainly had not returned in the night, because we had seen his door with his seal on it as we came upstairs. The night being so bad, sir, said the watchman, as he gave me back my glass, uncommon few have come in at my gate. Besides them three gentlemen that I have named, I don't call to mind another since about eleven o'clock when a stranger asked for you. My uncle, I muttered, yes. You saw him, sir? Yes, oh yes. Likewise the person with him? Person with him, I replied. I judged the person to be with him, returned the watchman. The person stopped when he stopped to make inquiry of me, and the person took this way when he took this way. What sort of person? The watchman had not particularly noticed. He should say a working person to the best of his belief he had a dust-colored kind of clothes on, under a dark coat. The watchman made more light of the matter than I did, and naturally, not having my reason for attaching weight to it. When I had got rid of him, which I thought it well to do without prolonging explanations, my mind was much troubled by these two circumstances taken together. Whereas they were easy of innocent solution apart, as, for instance, some diner out or diner at home who had not gone near this watchman's gate, might have strayed to my staircase and dropped asleep there, and my nameless visitor might have brought someone with him to show him the way. Still, joined, they had an ugly look to one as prone to distrust and fear as the changes of a few hours had made me. I lighted my fire, which burnt with a raw pale flare at that time of the morning, and fell into a doze before it. I had been dozing a whole night when the clock struck six. As there was full an hour and a half between me and daylight, I dozed again, now waking up uneasily, with Prolex conversations about nothing in my ears, now making thunder of the wind in the chimney, at length falling off into a profound sleep from which the daylight woke me with a start. All this time I had never been able to consider my own situation, nor could I do so yet. I had not the power to attend to it. I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could, as soon, have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue, when I walked from room to room, when I sat down again shivering before the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear, I thought how miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or even who I was that made it. At last the old woman and the niece came in, the latter with a head not easily distinguishable from her dusty broom, and testified surprise at sight of me in the fire. To whom I imparted how my uncle had come in the night and was then asleep, and how the breakfast preparations were to be modified accordingly. Then I washed and dressed while they knocked the furniture about and made a dust, and so, in a sort of dream or sleep waking, I found myself sitting by the fire again, waiting for him to come to breakfast. By and by his door opened and he came out. I could not bring myself to bear the sight of him, and I thought he had a worse look by daylight. I do not even know, said I, speaking low as he took his seat at the table. By what name to call you? I have given out that you are my uncle. That's it, dear boy, call me Uncle. You assume some name, I suppose, on board ship? Yes, dear boy, I took the name of Provis. Do you mean to keep that name? Why, yes, dear boy, it's as good as another, unless you'd like another. What is your real name? I asked him in a whisper. Magwitch, he answered in the same tone, christened able. What were you brought up to be? A pharma, dear boy. He answered quite seriously and used the word as if it denoted some profession. When you came into the temple last night, said I, pausing to wonder whether that could really have been last night, which seemed so long ago. Yes, dear boy. When you came in at the gate and asked the watchman the way here, had you any one with you? With me, no, dear boy. But there was someone there? I didn't take particular notice, he said dubiously, not knowing the ways of the place, but I think there was a person to come in alonger me. Are you known in London? I hope not, said he, giving his neck a jerk and his forefinger that made me turn hot and sick. Were you known in London once? Not over and above, dear boy. I was in the provinces mostly. Were you tried in London? Which time, said he with a sharp look? The last time, he nodded. First known Mr. Jaggers that way. Mr. Jaggers was for me. It was all my lips to ask him what he was tried for, but he took up a knife, gave it a flourish, and with the words, and what I'd done is worked out and paid for. Bell, too, had his breakfast. He ate in a ravenous way that was very disagreeable, and all his actions were uncouth, noisy, and greedy. Some of his teeth had failed him since I saw him eat on the marshes, and as he turned his food in his mouth and turned his head sideways to bring his strongest fangs to bear upon it, he looked terribly like a hungry old dog. If I had begun with any appetite, he would have taken it away, and I should have sat much as I did, repelled from him by an insurmountable aversion and gloomily looking at the cloth. I'm a heavy grubber, dear boy. He said as a plight kind of apology when he made an end of his meal. But I always was. If it had been in my constitution to be a lighter grubber, I might have got into lighter trouble. Similarly, I must have my smoke. When I was first hired out as shepherd to the other side of the world, it's my belief I should have turned into a mollincolly mad sheep myself if I hadn't to have my smoke. As he said so, he got up from table and putting his hand into the breast of the peacote he wore, brought out a short black pipe and a handful of loose tobacco of the kind that is called Nigrohead. Having filled his pipe, he put the surplus tobacco back again as if his pocket were a drawer. Then he took a live coal from the fire with the tongs and lighted his pipe at it and then turned round on the hearth-rug and threw this back to the fire and went through his favorite action of holding out both his hands for mine. And this, said he, dangling my hands up and down in his as he puffed at his pipe, and this is the gentleman what I made, the real genuine one. It does me good for to look at you, Pip. All I stipulate is to stand by and look at you, dear boy. I released my hands as soon as I could and found that I was beginning slowly to settle down to the contemplation of my condition. What I was chained to and how heavily became intelligible to me as I heard his hoarse voice and sat looking up at his furrowed bald head with its iron-gray hair at the sides. I mustn't see my gentleman of footing it in the mire of the streets. There mustn't be no mud on his boots. My gentleman must have horses, Pip. Horses to ride and horses to drive and horses for his servant to ride and drive as well. Shall colonists have their horses and bloodens, if you please, good Lord? Had not my London gentleman? No, no. We'll show him another pair of shoes than that, Pip, won't us. Look out of his pocket a great thick pocket-book bursting with papers and tossed it on the table. There's something worth spending in that there book, dear boy. It's yarn. All I've got ain't mine. It's yarn. Don't you be afeard on it. There's more where that come from. I've come to the old country for to see my gentleman spend his money like a gentleman. That'll be my pleasure. My pleasure'll be for to see him do it. And blast you all. He wound up looking round the room and snapping his fingers once with a loud snap. Blast you every one from the judge in his wig to the colonists a-stirin' up the dust. I'll show a better gentleman than the whole kid on you put together. Stop, said I, almost in a frenzy of fear and dislike. I want to speak to you. I want to know what is to be done. I want to know how you are to be kept out of danger. How long you are going to stay. What projects you have. Looky here, Pip, said he, laying his hand on my arm and a-suddenly altered in subdued manner. First of all, looky here. I forgot myself half a minute ago. What I said was low. That's what it was, low. Looky here, Pip. Look over it. I ain't going to be low. First, I resumed half-growning. What precautions can be taken against your being recognized and seized? No, dear boy. He said in the same tone as before, that don't go first. Lowness goes first. I ain't took so many years to make a gentleman, not without knowing what's due to him. Looky here, Pip. I was low. That's what I was, low. Look over it, dear boy. Some sense of the grimly ludicrous moved me to a fretful laugh as I replied. I have looked over it. In heaven's name, don't harp upon it. Yes, but looky here. He persisted. Dear boy, I ain't come so fur. Not fur to be low. Now, go on, dear boy. You was a saiyan. How are you to be guarded from the danger you have incurred? Well, dear boy, the danger ain't so great. Without I was informed again, the danger ain't so much to signify. There's jaggers, and there's wimmic, and there's you. Who else is there to inform? Is there no chance person who might identify you in the street? Said I. Well, he returned. There ain't many. Nor yet I don't intend to advertise myself in the newspaper by the name of A.M. come back from Botany Bay. And years have rolled away, and who's to gain by it? Still, looky here, Pip. If the danger had been fifty times as great, I should have come to see you, mind you, just the same. And how long do you remain? How long? Said he, taking his black pipe from his mouth and dropping his jaw as he stared at me. I'm not a-going back. I've come for good. Where are you to live? Said I. What is to be done with you? Where will you be safe? Dear boy. He returned. There's disguising wigs can be bought for money, and there's hair powder and spectacles and black clothes, shorts and whatnot. Others has done it safe afore, and what others has done afore others can do again. As to the where and how of living, dear boy, give me your own opinions on it. You take it smoothly now, said I, but you were very serious last night when you swore it was death. And so I swore it is death, said he, putting his pipe back in his mouth and death by the rope in the open street, not fur from this, and it's serious that you should fully understand it to be so. What then, when that's once done, here I am to go back now would be as bad as to stand ground worse. Besides, Pip, I'm here because I've met it by you years and years. As to what I dare, I'm an old bird now, as has dared all manner of traps since first he was fledged, and I'm not afeared to perch upon a scarecrow. If there's death hid inside of it, there is, and let him come out, and I'll face him, even him and not a foar. Now let me have a look at my gentleman again. 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 invited 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. What 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 favorable judgment of his physiognomy. And even then, dear boy, said he, pulling a greasy little class 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 have 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 virtue 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 Bip, 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 anyone. You understand? Anyone. 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 unbeknown 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 thank you at all responsible for my mistakes and wrong conclusions. But I always supposed it was Miss Havishan. 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 looks 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. Han 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. Are you 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 Provis, I suggested. Or Purvis, thank you, Pip. Perhaps it is Purvis. Perhaps you know it's Purvis? Yes, said I. You know it's Purvis. A letter under date Portsmouth, from a colonist of the name of Purvis, 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 Purvis that you have received the explanation of Magwitch in New South Wales. It came through Purvis, 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 Purvis. 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, oh, 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 Purvis, drinking rum and water, and smoking Nigro 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 believed, 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 panicons, 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 in 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, on to nothing but the probable effect of rouge upon the dead. So awful was the matter 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 of 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. I would rather so increase my abhorrence of him, than I even think I might have yielded to this impulse in the first agonies of being so haunted, not with standing all he had done for me and the risky ran, but for the knowledge of that Herbert must soon come back. Once I actually did start out of bed in the night, and began to dress myself in my worst clothes, hurriedly intending to leave him there 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 with 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 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 note of my proficiency. The imaginary student pursued by the misshaping creature he had impiously made was not more wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and recalling from him with a stronger voice, before 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 irritated at 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 jackknife 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. Handle, my dear fellow, how and again how are you? and again how are you? I seem to have been gone a twelve month. Why so I must have been, for you have grown quite thin and pale. Handle, my—hello? 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 jackknife and 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 this 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 some ever. 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 you see my face. This is the end of Chapter 41 of Great Expectations. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simsonville, South Carolina. Great Expectations drive the astonishment and disquiet of Herbert when he and I in 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 lucky here, pips comrade, he said to Herbert after having discourse for some time, I know very well that once, since I come back, for half a minute, I have 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 going to make you a gentleman, not for me not to know what's due to you both. Dear boy, and pips comrade, you too may count upon me always have an agential 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, 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, guarding 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 an unsettled manner, and going through one round of observances with his pipe and his negro head and his jackknife 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 he had had conceived an aversion for my patron. Neither had I occasioned to confess my own. He interchanged that competence 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, Handel, when the blow first fell. Still something must be done. He has 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, Soldering won't do. If you were to renounce this patronage in these favors, 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 Clarecker'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 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 thought 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 awaited 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 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'll have to go with him, and then he might be induced to go. But getting where I will could I prevent his coming back? My good handle! 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. Here 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. He got up and linked his arm and mine, and we slowly walked to and fro together, studying the carpet. �Handle!� 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 at 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 on 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 jackknife, and sat down to his meal. He was full of plans for his gentlemen'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,� pips conrad. �Assuredly� replied Herbert. �As to anything I say, you know� he insisted. �The oath applies to all. I understand it to do so. And looky here, whatever I've done is worked out and paid for� he insisted again. �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 threat of his narrative. He put it back again, stuck his pipe in a buttonhole of his coat, spread a hand on each knee, and put it back again, stuck his pipe in a buttonhole of his coat, spread