Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter XL Page 1
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
exaggeration. They both had weak eyes, which I had long attributed
at hand not wanted; indeed that was their only reliable
quality besides larceny. Not to get up a mystery with these people,
unexpectedly come from the country.
darkness for the means of getting a light. Not stumbling on the
means after all, I was fain 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.
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 on
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 guest 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
gentleman 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 a part 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 up-stairs.
"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 repeated.
"I judged the person to be 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
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 some one 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 seemed to have
been dozing a whole night when the clocks struck six. As there was
now, waking up uneasily, with prolix 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. 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,
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 and the fire. To whom I imparted
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 assumed some name, I suppose, on board ship?"
"Yes, dear boy. I took the name of Provis."
"Do you mean to keep that name?"
another."
"Magwitch," he answered, in the same tone; "chrisen'd Abel."
"What were you brought up to be?"
"A warmint, 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,
"With me? No, dear boy."
"But there was some one there?"
"I didn't take particular notice," he said, dubiously, "not knowing
the ways of the place. But I think there was a person, too, come in
"I hope not!" said he, giving his neck a jerk with 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 knowed Mr. Jaggers that way. Jaggers was for me."
It was on 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 done
He ate in a ravenous way that was very disagreeable, and all his
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
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 polite 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 ha'
got into lighter trouble. Similarly, I must have my smoke. When I
I hadn't a had my smoke."
As he said so, he got up from table, and putting his hand into the
breast of the pea-coat he wore, brought out a short black pipe, and
a handful of loose tobacco of the kind is called Negro-head.
Having filled his pipe, he put the surplus tobacco back again, as
fire the tongs, and lighted his pipe at it, and then turned
round on the hearth-rug with his back to the fire, and went through
his favorite action of holding out both his hands for mine.
"And this," said he, dandling 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 fur to look at you, Pip. All I
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 a footing it in the mire of the
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 blood 'uns, if you please, good Lord!) and not my
London gentleman? No, no. We'll show 'em anotpair of shoes than
He took out of his pocket a great thick pocket-book, bursting with
papers, and tossed it on the table.
It's yourn. All I've got ain't mine; it's yourn. Don't you be
afeerd on it. There's more where that come from. I've come to the
old country fur to see my gentleman spend his money like a
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
dust, I'll show a better gentleman than the whole kit on you put
"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,
"Look'ee here, Pip," said he, laying his hand on my arm in a
suddenly altered and subdued manner; "first of all, look'ee here. I
forgot myself half a minute ago. What I said was low; that's what
it was; low. Look'ee here, Pip. Look over it. I ain't a going to be
low."
"First," I resumed, half groaning, "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 year to make a
gentleman, not without knowing what's due to him. Look'ee 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 look'ee here," he persisted. "Dear boy, I ain't come so
"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
there's Wemmick, and there's you. Who else is there to inform?"
said I.
advertise myself in the newspapers by the name of A.M. come back
from Botany Bay; and years have rolled away, and who's to gain by
it? Still, look'ee here, Pip. If the danger had been fifty times as
great, I should ha' come to see you, mind you, just the same."
"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?
"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 what not. Others has done it safe afore, and what others
has done afore, others can do agen. As to the where and how of
living, dear boy, give me your own opinions on it."
night, when you swore it was Death."
"And so I swear 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
'ud be as bad as to stand ground--worse. Besides, Pip, I'm here,
because I've meant it by you, years and years. As to what I dare,
was fledged, and I'm not afeerd 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, and then I'll believe in him and not afore. And now
let me have a look at my gentleman agen."