Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [top 10 best books of all time txt] 📗

they’re not like sneaking you, as writes but

one. I’ve had a firm mind and a firm will to have your life, since

you was down here at your sister’s burying. I han’t seen a way to

get you safe, and I’ve looked arter you to know your ins and outs.

For, says Old Orlick to himself, ‘Somehow or another I’ll have

him!’ What! When I looks for you, I finds your uncle Provis, eh?”

Mill Pond Bank, and Chinks’s Basin, and the Old Green Copper

Ropewalk, all so clear and plain! Provis in his rooms, the signal

whose use was over, pretty Clara, the good motherly woman, old Bill

Barley on his back, all drifting by, as on the swift stream of my

life fast running out to sea!

“You with a uncle too! Why, I know’d you at Gargery’s when you was

so small a wolf that I could have took your weazen betwixt this

finger and thumb and chucked you away dead (as I’d thoughts o’

doing, odd times, when I see you loitering amongst the pollards on

a Sunday), and you hadn’t found no uncles then. No, not you! But

when Old Orlick come for to hear that your uncle Provis had

most like wore the leg-iron wot Old Orlick had picked up, filed

asunder, on these meshes ever so many year ago, and wot he kep by

him till he dropped your sister with it, like a bullock, as he

means to drop you—hey?—when he come for to hear that—hey?”

In his savage taunting, he flared the candle so close at me that I

turned my face aside to save it from the flame.

“Ah!” he cried, laughing, after doing it again, “the burnt child

dreads the fire! Old Orlick knowed you was burnt, Old Orlick knowed

you was smuggling your uncle Provis away, Old Orlick’s a match for

you and know’d you’d come tonight! Now I’ll tell you something

more, wolf, and this ends it. There’s them that’s as good a match

for your uncle Provis as Old Orlick has been for you. Let him ‘ware

them, when he’s lost his nevvy! Let him ‘ware them, when no man

can’t find a rag of his dear relation’s clothes, nor yet a bone of

his body. There’s them that can’t and that won’t have Magwitch,—

yes, I know the name!—alive in the same land with them, and

that’s had such sure information of him when he was alive in

another land, as that he couldn’t and shouldn’t leave it unbeknown

and put them in danger. P’raps it’s them that writes fifty hands,

and that’s not like sneaking you as writes but one. ‘Ware

Compeyson, Magwitch, and the gallows!”

He flared the candle at me again, smoking my face and hair, and for

an instant blinding me, and turned his powerful back as he replaced

the light on the table. I had thought a prayer, and had been with

Joe and Biddy and Herbert, before he turned towards me again.

There was a clear space of a few feet between the table and the

opposite wall. Within this space, he now slouched backwards and

forwards. His great strength seemed to sit stronger upon him than

ever before, as he did this with his hands hanging loose and heavy

at his sides, and with his eyes scowling at me. I had no grain of

hope left. Wild as my inward hurry was, and wonderful the force of

the pictures that rushed by me instead of thoughts, I could yet

clearly understand that, unless he had resolved that I was within a

few moments of surely perishing out of all human knowledge, he

would never have told me what he had told.

Of a sudden, he stopped, took the cork out of his bottle, and

tossed it away. Light as it was, I heard it fall like a plummet. He

swallowed slowly, tilting up the bottle by little and little, and

now he looked at me no more. The last few drops of liquor he poured

into the palm of his hand, and licked up. Then, with a sudden hurry

of violence and swearing horribly, he threw the bottle from him,

and stooped; and I saw in his hand a stone-hammer with a long heavy

handle.

The resolution I had made did not desert me, for, without uttering

one vain word of appeal to him, I shouted out with all my might,

and struggled with all my might. It was only my head and my legs

that I could move, but to that extent I struggled with all the

force, until then unknown, that was within me. In the same instant

I heard responsive shouts, saw figures and a gleam of light dash in

at the door, heard voices and tumult, and saw Orlick emerge from a

struggle of men, as if it were tumbling water, clear the table at a

leap, and fly out into the night.

After a blank, I found that I was lying unbound, on the floor, in

the same place, with my head on some one’s knee. My eyes were fixed

on the ladder against the wall, when I came to myself,—had opened

on it before my mind saw it,—and thus as I recovered

consciousness, I knew that I was in the place where I had lost it.

Too indifferent at first, even to look round and ascertain who

supported me, I was lying looking at the ladder, when there came

between me and it a face. The face of Trabb’s boy!

“I think he’s all right!” said Trabb’s boy, in a sober voice; “but

ain’t he just pale though!”

At these words, the face of him who supported me looked over into

mine, and I saw my supporter to be—

“Herbert! Great Heaven!”

“Softly,” said Herbert. “Gently, Handel. Don’t be too eager.”

“And our old comrade, Startop!” I cried, as he too bent over me.

“Remember what he is going to assist us in,” said Herbert, “and be

calm.”

The allusion made me spring up; though I dropped again from the

pain in my arm. “The time has not gone by, Herbert, has it? What

night is tonight? How long have I been here?” For, I had a strange

and strong misgiving that I had been lying there a long time - a

day and a night,—two days and nights,—more.

“The time has not gone by. It is still Monday night.”

“Thank God!”

“And you have all tomorrow, Tuesday, to rest in,” said Herbert.

“But you can’t help groaning, my dear Handel. What hurt have you

got? Can you stand?”

“Yes, yes,” said I, “I can walk. I have no hurt but in this

throbbing arm.”

They laid it bare, and did what they could. It was violently

swollen and inflamed, and I could scarcely endure to have it

touched. But, they tore up their handkerchiefs to make fresh

bandages, and carefully replaced it in the sling, until we could

get to the town and obtain some cooling lotion to put upon it. In a

little while we had shut the door of the dark and empty

sluice-house, and were passing through the quarry on our way back.

Trabb’s boy—Trabb’s overgrown young man now—went before us with

a lantern, which was the light I had seen come in at the door. But,

the moon was a good two hours higher than when I had last seen the

sky, and the night, though rainy, was much lighter. The white vapor

of the kiln was passing from us as we went by, and as I had

thought a prayer before, I thought a thanksgiving now.

Entreating Herbert to tell me how he had come to my rescue,—which

at first he had flatly refused to do, but had insisted on my

remaining quiet,—I learnt that I had in my hurry dropped the

letter, open, in our chambers, where he, coming home to bring with

him Startop whom he had met in the street on his way to me, found

it, very soon after I was gone. Its tone made him uneasy, and the

more so because of the inconsistency between it and the hasty

letter I had left for him. His uneasiness increasing instead of

subsiding, after a quarter of an hour’s consideration, he set off

for the coach-office with Startop, who volunteered his company, to

make inquiry when the next coach went down. Finding that the

afternoon coach was gone, and finding that his uneasiness grew into

positive alarm, as obstacles came in his way, he resolved to follow

in a post-chaise. So he and Startop arrived at the Blue Boar,

fully expecting there to find me, or tidings of me; but, finding

neither, went on to Miss Havisham’s, where they lost me. Hereupon

they went back to the hotel (doubtless at about the time when I was

hearing the popular local version of my own story) to refresh

themselves and to get some one to guide them out upon the marshes.

Among the loungers under the Boar’s archway happened to be Trabb’s

Boy,—true to his ancient habit of happening to be everywhere where

he had no business,—and Trabb’s boy had seen me passing from Miss

Havisham’s in the direction of my dining-place. Thus Trabb’s boy

became their guide, and with him they went out to the sluice-house,

though by the town way to the marshes, which I had avoided. Now, as

they went along, Herbert reflected, that I might, after all, have

been brought there on some genuine and serviceable errand tending

to Provis’s safety, and, bethinking himself that in that case

interruption must be mischievous, left his guide and Startop on the

edge of the quarry, and went on by himself, and stole round the

house two or three times, endeavouring to ascertain whether all was

right within. As he could hear nothing but indistinct sounds of one

deep rough voice (this was while my mind was so busy), he even at

last began to doubt whether I was there, when suddenly I cried out

loudly, and he answered the cries, and rushed in, closely followed

by the other two.

When I told Herbert what had passed within the house, he was for

our immediately going before a magistrate in the town, late at

night as it was, and getting out a warrant. But, I had already

considered that such a course, by detaining us there, or binding us

to come back, might be fatal to Provis. There was no gainsaying

this difficulty, and we relinquished all thoughts of pursuing

Orlick at that time. For the present, under the circumstances, we

deemed it prudent to make rather light of the matter to Trabb’s

boy; who, I am convinced, would have been much affected by

disappointment, if he had known that his intervention saved me from

the limekiln. Not that Trabb’s boy was of a malignant nature, but

that he had too much spare vivacity, and that it was in his

constitution to want variety and excitement at anybody’s expense.

When we parted, I presented him with two guineas (which seemed to

meet his views), and told him that I was sorry ever to have had an

ill opinion of him (which made no impression on him at all).

Wednesday being so close upon us, we determined to go back to

London that night, three in the post-chaise; the rather, as we

should then be clear away before the night’s adventure began to be

talked of. Herbert got a large bottle of stuff for my arm; and by

dint of having this stuff dropped over it all the night through, I

was just able to bear its pain on the journey. It was daylight when

we reached the Temple, and I went at once to bed, and lay in bed

all day.

My terror, as I lay there, of falling ill, and being unfitted for

tomorrow, was so besetting, that I wonder it