Chapter 42

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

"Dear boy and Pip's comrade. I am not a-going fur to tell you my
life, like a song or a story-book. But to give it you short and
handy, I'll put it at once into a mouthful of English. In jail and
out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. There,
you got it. That's my life pretty much, down to such times as I got
shipped off, arter Pip stood my friend.

"I've been done everything to, pretty well - except hanged.
I've been locked up, as much as a silver tea-kettle. I've been
carted here and carted there, and put out of this town and put out of
that town, and stuck in the stocks, and whipped and worried and
drove. I've no more notion where I was born, than you have - if so
much. I first become aware of myself, down in Essex, a thieving
turnips for my living. Summun had run away from me - a man - a
tinker - and he'd took the fire with him, and left me wery cold.

"I know'd my name to be Magwitch, chrisen'd Abel. How did I
know it? Much as I know'd the birds' names in the hedges to be
chaffinch, sparrer, thrush. I might have thought it was all lies
together, only as the birds' names come out true, I supposed mine
did.

"So fur as I could find, there warn't a soul that see young Abel
Magwitch, with us little on him as in him, but wot caught fright at
him, and either drove him off, or took him up. I was took up, took
up, took up, to that extent that I reg'larly grow'd up took up.

"This is the way it was, that when I was a ragged little creetur
as much to be pitied as ever I see (not that I looked in the glass,
for there warn't many insides of furnished houses known to me), I got
the name of being hardened. "This is a terrible hardened one," they
says to prison wisitors, picking out me. "May be said to live in
jails, this boy. "Then they looked at me, and I looked at them, and
they measured my head, some on 'em - they had better a-measured my
stomach - and others on 'em giv me tracts what I couldn't read, and
made me speeches what I couldn't understand. They always went on
agen me about the Devil. But what the Devil was I to do? I must put
something into my stomach, mustn't I? - Howsomever, I'm a getting
low, and I know what's due. Dear boy and Pip's comrade, don't you be
afeerd of me being low.

"Tramping, begging, thieving, working sometimes when I could -
though that warn't as often as you may think, till you put the
question whether you would ha' been over-ready to give me work
yourselves - a bit of a poacher, a bit of a labourer, a bit of a
waggoner, a bit of a haymaker, a bit of a hawker, a bit of most
things that don't pay and lead to trouble, I got to be a man. A
deserting soldier in a Traveller's Rest, what lay hid up to the chin
under a lot of taturs, learnt me to read; and a travelling Giant what
signed his name at a penny a time learnt me to write. I warn't
locked up as often now as formerly, but I wore out my good share of
keymetal still.

"At Epsom races, a matter of over twenty years ago, I got
acquainted wi' a man whose skull I'd crack wi' this poker, like the
claw of a lobster, if I'd got it on this hob. His right name was
Compeyson; and that's the man, dear boy, what you see me a-pounding
in the ditch, according to what you truly told your comrade arter I
was gone last night.

"He set up fur a gentleman, this Compeyson, and he'd been to a
public boarding-school and had learning. He was a smooth one to
talk, and was a dab at the ways of gentlefolks. He was good-looking
too. It was the night afore the great race, when I found him on the
heath, in a booth that I know'd on. Him and some more was a sitting
among the tables when I went in, and the landlord (which had a
knowledge of me, and was a sporting one) called him out, and said, 'I
think this is a man that might suit you' - meaning I was.

"Compeyson, he looks at me very noticing, and I look at him. He
has a watch and a chain and a ring and a breast-pin and a handsome
suit of clothes.

"'To judge from appearances, you're out of luck,' says Compeyson
to me.

"'Yes, master, and I've never been in it much.' (I had come out
of Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal. Not but what it might
have been for something else; but it warn't.)

"'Luck changes,' says Compeyson; 'perhaps yours is going to
change.'

"I says, 'I hope it may be so. There's room.'

"'What can you do?' says Compeyson.

"'Eat and drink,' I says; 'if you'll find the materials.'

"Compeyson laughed, looked at me again very noticing, giv me
five shillings, and appointed me for next night. Same place.

"I went to Compeyson next night, same place, and Compeyson took
me on to be his man and pardner. And what was Compeyson's business
in which we was to go pardners? Compeyson's business was the
swindling, handwriting forging, stolen bank-note passing, and
such-like. All sorts of traps as Compeyson could set with his head,
and keep his own legs out of and get the profits from and let another
man in for, was Compeyson's business. He'd no more heart than a iron
file, he was as cold as death, and he had the head of the Devil afore
mentioned.

"There was another in with Compeyson, as was called Arthur - not
as being so chrisen'd, but as a surname. He was in a Decline, and
was a shadow to look at. Him and Compeyson had been in a bad thing
with a rich lady some years afore, and they'd made a pot of money by
it; but Compeyson betted and gamed, and he'd have run through the
king's taxes. So, Arthur was a-dying, and a-dying poor and with the
horrors on him, and Compeyson's wife (which Compeyson kicked mostly)
was a-having pity on him when she could, and Compeyson was a-having
pity on nothing and nobody.

"I might a-took warning by Arthur, but I didn't; and I won't
pretend I was partick'ler - for where 'ud be the good on it, dear boy
and comrade? So I begun wi' Compeyson, and a poor tool I was in his
hands. Arthur lived at the top of Compeyson's house (over nigh
Brentford it was), and Compeyson kept a careful account agen him for
board and lodging, in case he should ever get better to work it out.
But Arthur soon settled the account. The second or third time as
ever I see him, he come a-tearing down into Compeyson's parlour late
at night, in only a flannel gown, with his hair all in a sweat, and
he says to Compeyson's wife, 'Sally, she really is upstairs alonger
me, now, and I can't get rid of her. She's all in white,' he says,
'wi' white flowers in her hair, and she's awful mad, and she's got a
shroud hanging over her arm, and she says she'll put it on me at five
in the morning.'

"Says Compeyson: 'Why, you fool, don't you know she's got a
living body? And how should she be up there, without coming through
the door, or in at the window, and up the stairs?'

"'I don't know how she's there,' says Arthur, shivering dreadful
with the horrors, 'but she's standing in the corner at the foot of
the bed, awful mad. And over where her heart's brook - you broke it!
- there's drops of blood.'

"Compeyson spoke hardy, but he was always a coward. 'Go up
alonger this drivelling sick man,' he says to his wife, 'and
Magwitch, lend her a hand, will you?' But he never come nigh
himself.

"Compeyson's wife and me took him up to bed agen, and he raved
most dreadful. 'Why look at her!' he cries out. 'She's a-shaking
the shroud at me! Don't you see her? Look at her eyes! Ain't it
awful to see her so mad?' Next, he cries, 'She'll put it on me, and
then I'm done for! Take it away from her, take it away!' And then
he catched hold of us, and kep on a-talking to her, and answering of
her, till I half believed I see her myself.

"Compeyson's wife, being used to him, giv him some liquor to get
the horrors off, and by-and-by he quieted. 'Oh, she's gone! Has her
keeper been for her?' he says. 'Yes,' says Compeyson's wife. 'Did
you tell him to lock her and bar her in?' 'Yes.' 'And to take that
ugly thing away from her?' 'Yes, yes, all right.' 'You're a good
creetur,' he says, 'don't leave me, whatever you do, and thank
you!'

"He rested pretty quiet till it might want a few minutes of
five, and then he starts up with a scream, and screams out, 'Here she
is! She's got the shroud again. She's unfolding it. She's coming
out of the corner. She's coming to the bed. Hold me, both on you -
one of each side - don't let her touch me with it. Hah! she missed
me that time. Don't let her throw it over my shoulders. Don't let
her lift me up to get it round me. She's lifting me up. Keep me
down!' Then he lifted himself up hard, and was dead.

"Compeyson took it easy as a good riddance for both sides. Him
and me was soon busy, and first he swore me (being ever artful) on my
own book - this here little black book, dear boy, what I swore your
comrade on.

"Not to go into the things that Compeyson planned, and I done -
which 'ud take a week - I'll simply say to you, dear boy, and Pip's
comrade, that that man got me into such nets as made me his black
slave. I was always in debt to him, always under his thumb, always
a-working, always a-getting into danger. He was younger than me, but
he'd got craft, and he'd got learning, and he overmatched me five
hundred times told and no mercy. My Missis as I had the hard time
wi' - Stop though! I ain't brought her in--"

He looked about him in a confused way, as if he had lost his
place in the book of his remembrance; and he turned his face to the
fire, and spread his hands broader on his knees, and lifted them off
and put them on again.

"There ain't no need to go into it," he said, looking round once
more. "The time wi' Compeyson was a'most as hard a time as ever I
had; that said, all's said. Did I tell you as I was tried, alone,
for misdemeanour, while with Compeyson?"

I answered, No.

"Well!" he said, "I was, and got convicted. As to took up on
suspicion, that was twice or three times in the four or five year
that it lasted; but evidence was wanting. At last, me and Compeyson
was both committed for felony - on a charge of putting stolen notes
in circulation - and there was other charges behind. Compeyson says
to me, 'Separate defences, no communication,' and that was all. And
I was so miserable poor, that I sold all the clothes I had, except
what hung on my back, afore I could get Jaggers.

"When we was put in the dock, I noticed first of all what a
gentleman Compeyson looked, wi' his curly hair and his black clothes
and his white pocket-handkercher, and what a common sort of a wretch
I looked. When the prosecution opened and the evidence was put
short, aforehand, I noticed how heavy it all bore on me, and how
light on him. When the evidence was giv in the box, I noticed how it
was always me that had come for'ard, and could be swore to, how it
was always me that the money had been paid to, how it was always me
that had seemed to work the thing and get the profit. But, when the
defence come on, then I see the plan plainer; for, says the
counsellor for Compeyson, 'My lord and gentlemen, here you has afore
you, side by side, two persons as your eyes can separate wide; one,
the younger, well brought up, who will be spoke to as such; one, the
elder, ill brought up, who will be spoke to as such; one, the
younger, seldom if ever seen in these here transactions, and only
suspected; t'other, the elder, always seen in 'em and always wi'his
guilt brought home. Can you doubt, if there is but one in it, which
is the one, and, if there is two in it, which is much the worst one?'
And such-like. And when it come to character, warn't it Compeyson
as had been to the school, and warn't it his schoolfellows as was in
this position and in that, and warn't it him as had been know'd by
witnesses in such clubs and societies, and nowt to his disadvantage?
And warn't it me as had been tried afore, and as had been know'd up
hill and down dale in Bridewells and Lock-Ups? And when it come to
speech-making, warn't it Compeyson as could speak to 'em wi' his face
dropping every now and then into his white pocket-handkercher - ah!
and wi' verses in his speech, too - and warn't it me as could only
say, 'Gentlemen, this man at my side is a most precious rascal'? And
when the verdict come, warn't it Compeyson as was recommended to
mercy on account of good character and bad company, and giving up all
the information he could agen me, and warn't it me as got never a
word but Guilty? And when I says to Compeyson, 'Once out of this
court, I'll smash that face of yourn!' ain't it Compeyson as prays
the Judge to be protected, and gets two turnkeys stood betwixt us?
And when we're sentenced, ain't it him as gets seven year, and me
fourteen, and ain't it him as the Judge is sorry for, because he
might a done so well, and ain't it me as the Judge perceives to be a
old offender of wiolent passion, likely to come to worse?"

He had worked himself into a state of great excitement, but he
checked it, took two or three short breaths, swallowed as often, and
stretching out his hand towards me said, in a reassuring manner, "I
ain't a-going to be low, dear boy!"

He had so heated himself that he took out his handkerchief and
wiped his face and head and neck and hands, before he could go on.

"I had said to Compeyson that I'd smash that face of his, and I
swore Lord smash mine! to do it. We was in the same prison-ship, but
I couldn't get at him for long, though I tried. At last I come
behind him and hit him on the cheek to turn him round and get a
smashing one at him, when I was seen and seized. The black-hole of
that ship warn't a strong one, to a judge of black-holes that could
swim and dive. I escaped to the shore, and I was a hiding among the
graves there, envying them as was in 'em and all over, when I first
see my boy!"

He regarded me with a look of affection that made him almost
abhorrent to me again, though I had felt great pity for him.

"By my boy, I was giv to understand as Compeyson was out on them
marshes too. Upon my soul, I half believe he escaped in his terror,
to get quit of me, not knowing it was me as had got ashore. I hunted
him down. I smashed his face. 'And now,' says I 'as the worst thing
I can do, caring nothing for myself, I'll drag you back.' And I'd
have swum off, towing him by the hair, if it had come to that, and
I'd a got him aboard without the soldiers.

"Of course he'd much the best of it to the last - his character
was so good. He had escaped when he was made half-wild by me and my
murderous intentions; and his punishment was light. I was put in
irons, brought to trial again, and sent for life. I didn't stop for
life, dear boy and Pip's comrade, being here."

"He wiped himself again, as he had done before, and then slowly
took his tangle of tobacco from his pocket, and plucked his pipe from
his button-hole, and slowly filled it, and began to smoke.

"Is he dead?" I asked, after a silence.

"Is who dead, dear boy?"

"Compeyson."

"He hopes I am, if he's alive, you may be sure," with a fierce
look. "I never heerd no more of him."

Herbert had been writing with his pencil in the cover of a book.
He softly pushed the book over to me, as Provis stood smoking with
his eyes on the fire, and I read in it:

"Young Havisham's name was Arthur. Compeyson is the man who
professed to be Miss Havisham's lover."

I shut the book and nodded slightly to Herbert, and put the book
by; but we neither of us said anything, and both looked at Provis as
he stood smoking by the fire.