Chapter 10
Of course there was a public-house
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in the village, and of course Joe liked sometimes to smoke
his pipe there. I had received strict orders from my sister to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen,
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that evening, on my way from school, and bring him home. To the Three Jolly Bargemen, therefore,
I directed my steps.
There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk scores in it on the wall
at the side of the door, which seemed to me to be never paid off.
It was Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather sadly at these records; but as my
business was with Joe and not with him, I merely wished him good evening, and passed into the
common room at the end of the passage, where there was a bright large kitchen fire, and where Joe
was smoking his pipe in company with Mr. Wopsle and a stranger. Joe greeted me as usual with
“Halloa, Pip, old chap!” and the moment he said that, the stranger turned his head and looked at me.
He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen before. His head was all on one side, and
one of his eyes was half shut up, as if he were taking aim at something with an invisible gun. He had
a pipe in his mouth, and he took it out, and, after slowly blowing all his smoke away and looking hard
at me all the time, nodded. So, I nodded, and then he nodded again.
“You were saying,” said the strange man, turning to Joe, “that you were a blacksmith.”
“Yes. I said it, you know,” said Joe.
“What’ll you drink, Mr. – ? You didn’t mention your name, by the way.”
Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him by it. “What’ll you drink, Mr. Gargery?
At my expense?
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”
“Well,” said Joe, “to tell you the truth, I am not much in the habit of drinking at anybody’s
expense but my own.”
“Habit? No,” returned the stranger, “but once and away, and on a Saturday night too. Come!”
“I don’t want to spoil the company,” said Joe. “Rum.”
“Rum,” repeated the stranger.
“Rum,” said Mr. Wopsle.
“Three Rums!” cried the stranger, calling to the landlord.
“This other gentleman,” observed Joe, by way of introducing Mr. Wopsle, “is our clerk at
church.”
“Aha!” said the stranger, quickly. “The lonely church, right out on the marshes, with graves
round it!”
“That’s it,” said Joe.
The stranger put his legs up on the settle. He wore a flapping broad-brimmed traveller’s hat,
and under it a handkerchief tied over his head in the manner of a cap: so that he showed no hair. As he
looked at the fire, I thought I saw a cunning expression, followed by a half-laugh, come into his face.
“I am not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but it seems a solitary country towards the
river.”
“Most marshes is solitary,” said Joe.
“No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gypsies, now, or tramps of any sort, out there?”
“No,” said Joe; “none but a runaway convict now and then.
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Eh, Mr. Wopsle?”
Mr. Wopsle assented; but not warmly.
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public-house – трактир, харчевня
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Three Jolly Bargemen – “Три Весёлых матроса” (название трактира)
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At my expense? – За мой счёт?
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but a runaway convict now and then – разве что беглого арестанта
Д. Остин, Ч. Диккенс, С. А. Матвеев. «Гордость и предубеждение / Pride and Prejudice. Great Expectations / Боль-
шие надежды»
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The stranger looked at me again – still cocking his eye, as if he were taking aim at me with his
invisible gun – and said, “He’s a nice boy. What is his name?”
“Pip,” said Joe.
“Son of yours?”
“Well,” said Joe, “well – no. No, he isn’t.”
“Nephew?” said the strange man.
“Well,” said Joe, with the same appearance of profound cogitation, “he is not – no, not to
deceive you, he is not – my nephew.”
“What is he?” asked the stranger.
Mr. Wopsle expounded the ties between me and Joe.
The strange man looked at nobody but me. He said nothing, until the glasses of rum and water
were brought; and then he made his shot, and a most extraordinary shot it was.
It was not a verbal remark, but it was addressed to me. He stirred his rum and water pointedly
at me, and he tasted his rum and water pointedly at me. And he stirred it and he tasted it; not with
a spoon that was brought to him, but with a file.
He did this so that nobody but I saw the file; and when he had done it he wiped the file and
put it in a breast-pocket. I knew it to be Joe’s file, and I knew that he knew my convict, the moment
I saw the instrument. I sat gazing at him, spell-bound.
“Stop half a moment, Mr. Gargery,” said the strange man. “I think I’ve got a bright new shilling
somewhere in my pocket, and if I have, the boy will have it.”
He looked it out from a handful of small change, folded it in some crumpled paper, and gave
it to me. “Yours!” said he. “Mind! Your own.”
I thanked him, staring at him. He gave Joe good-night, and he gave Mr. Wopsle good-night
(who went out with us), and he gave me only a look with his aiming eye.
On the way home, if I had been in a humor for talking, the talk must have been all on my side,
for Mr. Wopsle parted from us at the door of the Jolly Bargemen, and Joe went all the way home
with his mouth wide open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible. But I could think of
nothing else.
My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented ourselves in the kitchen, and Joe told
her about the bright shilling. “A bad one,
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I’m sure,” said Mrs. Joe triumphantly, “Let’s look at it.”
I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good one. “But what’s this?” said Mrs. Joe,
throwing down the shilling and catching up the paper. “Two One—Pound notes?”
Joe caught up his hat again, and ran with them to the Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their
owner. While he was gone, I sat down on my usual stool and looked at my sister, feeling pretty sure
that the man would not be there.
Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was gone, but that he, Joe, had left word at the
Three Jolly Bargemen concerning the notes. Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper, and
put them under some dried rose-leaves in a teapot on the top of a press in the state parlor. There they
remained, a nightmare to me, many and many a night and day.
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A bad one. – Фальшивый.
Д. Остин, Ч. Диккенс, С. А. Матвеев. «Гордость и предубеждение / Pride and Prejudice. Great Expectations / Боль-
шие надежды»
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