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Great Expectations
Chapter XXVIII
It was clear that I must repair to our town next day, and in the first
flow of my repentance, it was equally clear that I must stay at Joe's.
But, when I had secured my box-place by to-morrow's coach, and had
been down to Mr. Pocket's and back, I was not by any means convinced
on the last point, and began to invent reasons and make excuses for
putting up at the Blue Boar. I should be an inconvenience at Joe's; I
was not expected, and my bed would not be ready; I should be too far
from Miss Havisham's, and she was exacting and mightn't like it. All
other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with
such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I
should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture
is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious
coin of my own make as good money! An obliging stranger, under
pretence of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security's sake,
abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of
hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself
as notes!
Having settled that I must go to the Blue Boar, my mind was much
disturbed by indecision whether or not to take the Avenger. It was
tempting to think of that expensive Mercenary publicly airing his
boots in the archway of the Blue Boar's posting-yard; it was almost
solemn to imagine him casually produced in the tailor's shop, and
confounding the disrespectful senses of Trabb's boy. On the other
hand, Trabb's boy might worm himself into his intimacy and tell him
things; or, reckless and desperate wretch as I knew he could be, might
hoot him in the High Street, My patroness, too, might hear of him, and
not approve. On the whole, I resolved to leave the Avenger behind.
It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my place, and, as
winter had now come round, I should not arrive at my destination until
two or three hours after dark. Our time of starting from the Cross
Keys was two o'clock. I arrived on the ground with a quarter of an
hour to spare, attended by the Avenger,--if I may connect that
expression with one who never attended on me if he could possibly help
it.
At that time it was customary to carry Convicts down to the dock-yards
by stage-coach. As I had often heard of them in the capacity of
outside passengers, and had more than once seen them on the high road
dangling their ironed legs over the coach roof, I had no cause to be
surprised when Herbert, meeting me in the yard, came up and told me
there were two convicts going down with me. But I had a reason that
was an old reason now for constitutionally faltering whenever I heard
the word "convict."
"You don't mind them, Handel?" said Herbert.
"O no!"
"I thought you seemed as if you didn't like them?"
"I can't pretend that I do like them, and I suppose you don't
particularly. But I don't mind them."
"See! There they are," said Herbert, "coming out of the Tap. What a
degraded and vile sight it is!"
They had been treating their guard, I suppose, for they had a gaoler
with them, and all three came out wiping their mouths on their hands.
The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had irons on their
legs,--irons of a pattern that I knew well. They wore the dress that
I likewise knew well. Their keeper had a brace of pistols, and
carried a thick-knobbed bludgeon under his arm; but he was on terms of
good understanding with them, and stood with them beside him, looking
on at the putting-to of the horses, rather with an air as if the
convicts were an interesting Exhibition not formally open at the
moment, and he the Curator. One was a taller and stouter man than the
other, and appeared as a matter of course, according to the mysterious
ways of the world, both convict and free, to have had allotted to him
the smaller suit of clothes. His arms and legs were like great
pincushions of those shapes, and his attire disguised him absurdly;
but I knew his half-closed eye at one glance. There stood the man
whom I had seen on the settle at the Three Jolly Bargemen on a
Saturday night, and who had brought me down with his invisible gun!
It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no more than if he had
never seen me in his life. He looked across at me, and his eye
appraised my watch-chain, and then he incidentally spat and said
something to the other convict, and they laughed and slued themselves
round with a clink of their coupling manacle, and looked at something
else. The great numbers on their backs, as if they were street doors;
their coarse mangy ungainly outer surface, as if they were lower
animals; their ironed legs, apologetically garlanded with
pocket-handkerchiefs; and the way in which all present looked at them
and kept from them; made them (as Herbert had said) a most
disagreeable and degraded spectacle.
But this was not the worst of it. It came out that the whole of the
back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from London, and
that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat in
front behind the coachman. Hereupon, a choleric gentleman, who had
taken the fourth place on that seat, flew into a most violent passion,
and said that it was a breach of contract to mix him up with such
villainous company, and that it was poisonous, and pernicious, and
infamous, and shameful, and I don't know what else. At this time the
coach was ready and the coachman impatient, and we were all preparing
to get up, and the prisoners had come over with their
keeper,--bringing with them that curious flavor of bread-poultice,
baize, rope-yarn, and hearthstone, which attends the convict presence.
"Don't take it so much amiss, sir," pleaded the keeper to the angry
passenger; "I'll sit next you myself. I'll put 'em on the outside of
the row. They won't interfere with you, sir. You needn't know
they're there."
"And don't blame me," growled the convict I had recognized. "I don't
want to go. I am quite ready to stay behind. As fur as I am
concerned any one's welcome to my place."
"Or mine," said the other, gruffly. "I wouldn't have incommoded none
of you, if I'd had my way." Then they both laughed, and began
cracking nuts, and spitting the shells about.--As I really think I
should have liked to do myself, if I had been in their place and so
despised.
At length, it was voted that there was no help for the angry
gentleman, and that he must either go in his chance company or remain
behind. So he got into his place, still making complaints, and the
keeper got into the place next him, and the convicts hauled themselves
up as well as they could, and the convict I had recognized sat behind
me with his breath on the hair of my head.
"Good by, Handel!" Herbert called out as we started. I thought what a
blessed fortune it was, that he had found another name for me than
Pip.
It is impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the convict's
breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along my spine.
The sensation was like being touched in the marrow with some pungent
and searching acid, it set my very teeth on edge. He seemed to have
more breathing business to do than another man, and to make more noise
in doing it; and I was conscious of growing high-shouldered on one
side, in my shrinking endeavors to fend him off.
The weather was miserably raw, and the two cursed the cold. It made
us all lethargic before we had gone far, and when we had left the
Half-way House behind, we habitually dozed and shivered and were
silent. I dozed off, myself, in considering the question whether I
ought to restore a couple of pounds sterling to this creature before
losing sight of him, and how it could best be done. In the act of
dipping forward as if I were going to bathe among the horses, I woke
in a fright and took the question up again.
But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, although I
could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and
shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind
that blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a screen
against the wind, the convicts were closer to me than before. The
very first words I heard them interchange as I became conscious, were
the words of my own thought, "Two One Pound notes."
"How did he get 'em?" said the convict I had never seen.
"How should I know?" returned the other. "He had 'em stowed away
somehows. Giv him by friends, I expect."
"I wish," said the other, with a bitter curse upon the cold, "that I
had 'em here."
"Two one pound notes, or friends?"
"Two one pound notes. I'd sell all the friends I ever had for one,
and think it a blessed good bargain. Well? So he says--?"
"So he says," resumed the convict I had recognized,--"it was all said
and done in half a minute, behind a pile of timber in the
Dock-yard,--'You're a going to be discharged?' Yes, I was. Would I
find out that boy that had fed him and kep his secret, and give him
them two one pound notes? Yes, I would. And I did."
"More fool you," growled the other. "I'd have spent 'em on a Man, in
wittles and drink. He must have been a green one. Mean to say he
knowed nothing of you?"
"Not a ha'porth. Different gangs and different ships. He was tried
again for prison breaking, and got made a Lifer."
"And was that--Honor!--the only time you worked out, in this part of
the country?"
"The only time."
"What might have been your opinion of the place?"
"A most beastly place. Mudbank, mist, swamp, and work; work, swamp,
mist, and mudbank."
They both execrated the place in very strong language, and gradually
growled themselves out, and had nothing left to say.
After overhearing this dialogue, I should assuredly have got down and
been left in the solitude and darkness of the highway, but for feeling
certain that the man had no suspicion of my identity. Indeed, I was
not only so changed in the course of nature, but so differently
dressed and so differently circumstanced, that it was not at all
likely he could have known me without accidental help. Still, the
coincidence of our being together on the coach, was sufficiently
strange to fill me with a dread that some other coincidence might at
any moment connect me, in his hearing, with my name. For this reason,
I resolved to alight as soon as we touched the town, and put myself
out of his hearing. This device I executed successfully. My little
portmanteau was in the boot under my feet; I had but to turn a hinge
to get it out; I threw it down before me, got down after it, and was
left at the first lamp on the first stones of the town pavement. As
to the convicts, they went their way with the coach, and I knew at
what point they would be spirited off to the river. In my fancy, I
saw the boat with its convict crew waiting for them at the
slime-washed stairs,--again heard the gruff "Give way, you!" like and
order to dogs,--again saw the wicked Noah's Ark lying out on the black
water.
I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my fear was altogether
undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon me. As I walked on
to the hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceeding the mere
apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition, made me
tremble. I am confident that it took no distinctness of shape, and
that it was the revival for a few minutes of the terror of childhood.
The coffee-room at the Blue Boar was empty, and I had not only ordered
my dinner there, but had sat down to it, before the waiter knew me.
As soon as he had apologized for the remissness of his memory, he
asked me if he should send Boots for Mr. Pumblechook?
"No," said I, "certainly not."
The waiter (it was he who had brought up the Great Remonstrance from
the Commercials, on the day when I was bound) appeared surprised, and
took the earliest opportunity of putting a dirty old copy of a local
newspaper so directly in my way, that I took it up and read this
paragraph:--
Our readers will learn, not altogether without interest, in reference
to the recent romantic rise in fortune of a young artificer in iron of
this neighborhood (what a theme, by the way, for the magic pen of our
as yet not universally acknowledged townsman TOOBY, the poet of our
columns!) that the youth's earliest patron, companion, and friend, was
a highly respected individual not entirely unconnected with the corn
and seed trade, and whose eminently convenient and commodious business
premises are situate within a hundred miles of the High Street. It is
not wholly irrespective of our personal feelings that we record HIM as
the Mentor of our young Telemachus, for it is good to know that our
town produced the founder of the latter's fortunes. Does the
thought-contracted brow of the local Sage or the lustrous eye of local
Beauty inquire whose fortunes? We believe that Quintin Matsys was the
BLACKSMITH of Antwerp. VERB. SAP.
I entertain a conviction, based upon large experience, that if in the
days of my prosperity I had gone to the North Pole, I should have met
somebody there, wandering Esquimaux or civilized man, who would have
told me that Pumblechook was my earliest patron and the founder of my
fortunes.