Читать книгу Большие надежды. Уровень 2 / Great Expectations - Чарльз Диккенс, Geoffrey Palmer, Miriam Margolyes - Страница 4

It was a rimy morning, and very damp. The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes. Everything seemed to look at me. The gates and dikes and banks cried, “A boy with somebody’s else’s pork pie! Stop him!” The cattle came upon me. They were staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, “Halloa, young thief!”

All this time, I was getting on towards the river. I crossed a ditch, and scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch. Then I saw the man. He was sitting before me. His back was towards me. His arms were folded, he was nodding forward, heavy with sleep.

I went forward softly and touched him on the shoulder. He instantly jumped up. It was not the same man, but another man!

And yet this man was dressed in coarse gray, too, and had a great iron on his leg. All this I saw in a moment. I had only a moment to see it in. He ran into the mist, and I lost him.

Soon I saw the right Man, who was waiting for me. He was awfully cold. His eyes looked so awfully hungry too.

“What’s in the bottle, boy?” said he.

“Brandy,” said I. “I think you have got the ague,” said I.

“Sure, boy,” said he.

“It’s bad about here,” I told him. “You’re lying out on the meshes, and they’re dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too.”

“You’re not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with you?”

“No, sir! No!”

“Well,” said he, “I believe you.”

Something clicked in his throat. He smeared his ragged rough sleeve over his eyes.

“I am glad you enjoy the food,” said I

“What?”

“I said I was glad you enjoyed it.”

“Thank you, my boy. I do.”

He was eating like a large dog of ours. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog.

“I am afraid you won’t leave any food for him,” said I, timidly.

“Leave for him? Who’s him?” said my friend.

“The man. That you spoke of[11].”

“Oh ah!” he said, with something like a gruff laugh. “Him? Yes, yes! He doesn’t want any food.”

“I thought he looked as if he did,” said I.

The man stopped eating. He regarded me with the keenest scrutiny and the greatest surprise.

“Looked? When?”

“Just now.”

“Where?”

“Yonder,” said I, and pointed; “over there, where I found him. He was sleeping, and I thought it was you.”

He held me by the collar and stared at me. I began to think his first idea to cut my throat revived again.

“Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat,” I explained. I was trembling. “Didn’t you hear the cannon last night?”

“Then there was firing!” he said to himself.

“He had a badly bruised face,” said I.

“Not here?” exclaimed the man. He stroke his left cheek mercilessly, with the flat of his hand.

“Yes, there!”

“Where is he?” He crammed little food into the breast of his gray jacket. “Show me the way he went. I’ll pull him down[12], like a bloodhound. But first give me the file, boy.”

I indicated the direction. He looked at me for an instant. But then he sat on the wet grass and began to file his iron like a madman. I told him I must go, but he took no notice.