“Yes, but look’ee here,” he persisted. “Dear boy, I ain’t come so fur, not fur to be low. Now, go on, dear boy. You was a-saying–”
“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 agen, the danger ain’t so much to signify. There’s Jaggers, and there’s Wemmick, 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 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.”
“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 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.”
“You take it smoothly now,” said I, “but you were very serious last 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, I’m a old bird now, as has dared all manner of traps since first he 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.”
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 confided 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. But 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 favourable judgment of his physiognomy. “And even then, dear boy,” said he, pulling a greasy little clasped 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 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.