Great Expectations

"You gave it to yourself; you gained it for yourself. I could have done

you no harm, if you had done yourself none."

"You're a liar. And you'll take any pains, and spend any money, to drive

me out of this country, will you?" said he, repeating my words to Biddy

in the last interview I had with her. "Now, I'll tell you a piece of

information. It was never so well worth your while to get me out of this

country as it is to-night. Ah! If it was all your money twenty times

told, to the last brass farden!" As he shook his heavy hand at me, with

his mouth snarling like a tiger's, I felt that it was true.

"What are you going to do to me?"

"I'm a going," said he, bringing his fist down upon the table with a

heavy blow, and rising as the blow fell to give it greater force,--"I'm

a going to have your life!"

He leaned forward staring at me, slowly unclenched his hand and drew it

across his mouth as if his mouth watered for me, and sat down again.

"You was always in Old Orlick's way since ever you was a child. You goes

out of his way this present night. He'll have no more on you. You're

dead."

I felt that I had come to the brink of my grave. For a moment I looked

wildly round my trap for any chance of escape; but there was none.

"More than that," said he, folding his arms on the table again, "I won't

have a rag of you, I won't have a bone of you, left on earth. I'll put

your body in the kiln,--I'd carry two such to it, on my Shoulders,--and,

let people suppose what they may of you, they shall never know nothing."

My mind, with inconceivable rapidity followed out all the consequences

of such a death. Estella's father would believe I had deserted him,

would be taken, would die accusing me; even Herbert would doubt me,

when he compared the letter I had left for him with the fact that I had

called at Miss Havisham's gate for only a moment; Joe and Biddy would

never know how sorry I had been that night, none would ever know what

I had suffered, how true I had meant to be, what an agony I had passed

through. The death close before me was terrible, but far more terrible

than death was the dread of being misremembered after death. And

so quick were my thoughts, that I saw myself despised by unborn

generations,--Estella's children, and their children,--while the

wretch's words were yet on his lips.