Next day I had the meanness to feign that I was under a binding promise
to go down to Joe; but I was capable of almost any meanness towards Joe
or his name. Provis was to be strictly careful while I was gone, and
Herbert was to take the charge of him that I had taken. I was to be
absent only one night, and, on my return, the gratification of his
impatience for my starting as a gentleman on a greater scale was to
be begun. It occurred to me then, and as I afterwards found to
Herbert also, that he might be best got away across the water, on that
pretence,--as, to make purchases, or the like.
Having thus cleared the way for my expedition to Miss Havisham's, I set
off by the early morning coach before it was yet light, and was out
on the open country road when the day came creeping on, halting and
whimpering and shivering, and wrapped in patches of cloud and rags of
mist, like a beggar. When we drove up to the Blue Boar after a drizzly
ride, whom should I see come out under the gateway, toothpick in hand,
to look at the coach, but Bentley Drummle!
As he pretended not to see me, I pretended not to see him. It was a very
lame pretence on both sides; the lamer, because we both went into the
coffee-room, where he had just finished his breakfast, and where I
ordered mine. It was poisonous to me to see him in the town, for I very
well knew why he had come there.
Pretending to read a smeary newspaper long out of date, which had
nothing half so legible in its local news, as the foreign matter of
coffee, pickles, fish sauces, gravy, melted butter, and wine with which
it was sprinkled all over, as if it had taken the measles in a highly
irregular form, I sat at my table while he stood before the fire. By
degrees it became an enormous injury to me that he stood before the
fire. And I got up, determined to have my share of it. I had to put my
hand behind his legs for the poker when I went up to the fireplace to
stir the fire, but still pretended not to know him.
"Is this a cut?" said Mr. Drummle.
"Oh!" said I, poker in hand; "it's you, is it? How do you do? I was
wondering who it was, who kept the fire off."
With that, I poked tremendously, and having done so, planted myself side
by side with Mr. Drummle, my shoulders squared and my back to the fire.