THE journey from our town to the metropolis, was a journey of about five hours. It was a little past mid-day when the fourhorse stage-coach by which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of traffic frayed out about the Cross Keys, Wood-street, Cheapside, London.
We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of everything: otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty.
Mr Jaggers had duly sent me his address; it was, Little Britain, and he had written after it on his card, `just out of Smithfield, and close by the coach-office.’ Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman, who seemed to have as many capes to his greasy great-coat as he was years old, packed me up in his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. His getting on his box, which I remember to have been decorated with an old weather-stained pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of time. It was a wonderful equipage, with six great coronets outside, and ragged things behind for I don’t know how many footmen to hold on by, and a harrow below them, to prevent amateur footmen from yielding to the temptation.
I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to think how like a straw-yard it was, and yet how like a rag-shop, and to wonder why the horses’ nose-bags were kept inside, when I observed the coachman beginning to get down, as if we were going to stop presently. And stop we presently did, in a gloomy street, at certain offices with an open door, whereon was painted MR. JAGGERS.
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“要多少钱?”我向马车夫问道。
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`How much?’ I asked the coachman.
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马车夫答道:“一个先令,除非你想多付一些。”
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The coachman answered, `A shilling - unless you wish to make it more.’
`Then it must be a shilling,’ observed the coachman. `I don’t want to get into trouble. I know him!’ He darkly closed an eye at Mr Jaggers’s name, and shook his head.
When he had got his shilling, and had in course of time completed the ascent to his box, and had got away (which appeared to relieve his mind), I went into the front office with my little portmanteau in my hand and asked, Was Mr Jaggers at home?
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“他不在,”一位办事员答道,“他在法院出庭。我可以问问,你是皮普先生吗?”
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`He is not,’ returned the clerk. `He is in Court at present. Am I addressing Mr Pip?’
`Mr Jaggers left word would you wait in his room. He couldn’t say how long he might be, having a case on. But it stands to reason, his time being valuable, that he won’t be longer than he can help.’
With those words, the clerk opened a door, and ushered me into an inner chamber at the back. Here, we found a gentleman with one eye, in a velveteen suit and knee-breeches, who wiped his nose with his sleeve on being interrupted in the perusal of the newspaper.
I began to say that I hoped I was not interrupting - when the clerk shoved this gentleman out with as little ceremony as I ever saw used, and tossing his fur cap out after him, left me alone.
Mr Jaggers’s room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a most dismal place; the skylight, eccentrically patched like a broken head, and the distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had twisted themselves to peep down at me through it. There were not so many papers about, as I should have expected to see; and there were some odd objects about, that I should not have expected to see - such as an old rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several strange-looking boxes and packages, and two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about the nose. Mr Jaggers’s own high-backed chair was of deadly black horse-hair, with rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin; and I fancied I could see how he leaned back in it, and bit his forefinger at the clients. The room was but small, and the clients seemed to have had a habit of backing up against the wall: the wall, especially opposite to Mr Jaggers’s chair, being greasy with shoulders. I recalled, too, that the one-eyed gentleman had shuffled forth against the wall when I was the innocent cause of his being turned out.
I sat down in the cliental chair placed over against Mr Jaggers’s chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of the place. I called to mind that the clerk had the same air of knowing something to everybody else’s disadvantage, as his master had. I wondered how many other clerks there were up-stairs, and whether they all claimed to have the same detrimental mastery of their fellow-creatures. I wondered what was the history of all the odd litter about the room, and how it came there. I wondered whether the two swollen faces were of Mr Jaggers’s family, and, if he were so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such ill-looking relations, why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the blacks and flies to settle on, instead of giving them a place at home. Of course I had no experience of a London summer day, and my spirits may have been oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by the dust and grit that lay thick on everything. But I sat wondering and waiting in Mr Jaggers’s close room, until I really could not bear the two casts on the shelf above Mr Jaggers’s chair, and got up and went out.
When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the air while I waited, he advised me to go round the corner and I should come into Smithfield. So, I came into Smithfield; and the shameful place, being all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to stick to me. So, I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning into a street where I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul’s bulging at me from behind a grim stone building which a bystander said was Newgate Prison. Following the wall of the jail, I found the roadway covered with straw to deaden the noise of passing vehicles; and from this, and from the quantity of people standing about, smelling strongly of spirits and beer, I inferred that the trials were on.
While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially drunk minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and hear a trial or so: informing me that he could give me a front place for half-a-crown, whence I should command a full view of the Lord Chief Justice in his wig and robes - mentioning that awful personage like waxwork, and presently offering him at the reduced price of eighteenpence. As I declined the proposal on the plea of an appointment, he was so good as to take me into a yard and show me where the gallows was kept, and also where people were publicly whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors’ Door, out of which culprits came to be hanged: heightening the interest of that dreadful portal by giving me to understand that `four on ’em’ would come out at that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the morning, to be killed in a row. This was horrible, and gave me a sickening idea of London: the more so as the Lord Chief Justice’s proprietor wore (from his hat down to his boots and up again to his pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed clothes, which had evidently not belonged to him originally, and which, I took it into my head, he had bought cheap of the executioner. Under these circumstances I thought myself well rid of him for a shilling.
I dropped into the office to ask if Mr Jaggers had come in yet, and I found he had not, and I strolled out again. This time, I made the tour of Little Britain, and turned into Bartholomew Close; and now I became aware that other people were waiting about for Mr Jaggers, as well as I. There were two men of secret appearance lounging in Bartholomew Close, and thoughtfully fitting their feet into the cracks of the pavement as they talked together, one of whom said to the other when they first passed me, that `Jaggers would do it if it was to be done.’ There was a knot of three men and two women standing at a corner, and one of the women was crying on her dirty shawl, and the other comforted her by saying, as she pulled her own shawl over her shoulders, `Jaggers is for him, ’Melia, and what more could you have?’ There was a red-eyed little Jew who came into the Close while I was loitering there, in company with a second little Jew whom he sent upon an errand; and while the messenger was gone, I remarked this Jew, who was of a highly excitable temperament, performing a jig of anxiety under a lamp-post and accompanying himself, in a kind of frenzy, with the words, `Oh Jaggerth, Jaggerth, Jaggerth! all otherth ith Cag-Maggerth, give me Jaggerth!’ These testimonies to the popularity of my guardian made a deep impression on me, and I admired and wondered more than ever.
At length, as I was looking out at the iron gate of Bartholomew Close into Little Britain, I saw Mr Jaggers coming across the road towards me. All the others who were waiting, saw him at the same time, and there was quite a rush at him. Mr Jaggers, putting a hand on my shoulder and walking me on at his side without saying anything to me, addressed himself to his followers.
`Now, I have nothing to say to you,’ said Mr Jaggers, throwing his finger at them. `I want to know no more than I know. As to the result, it’s a toss-up. I told you from the first it was toss-up. Have you paid Wemmick?’
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“先生,我们今天早晨把钱凑好了。”其中一个顺从地说道,而另一个人则在细察着贾格斯先生的脸色。
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`We made the money up this morning, sir,’ said one of the men, submissively, while the other perused Mr Jaggers’s face.
`Very well; then you may go. Now, I won’t have it!’ said Mr Jaggers, waving his hand at them to put them behind him. `If you say a word to me, I’ll throw up the case.’
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“我们想,贾格斯先生——”其中一个人脱下帽子说道。
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`We thought, Mr Jaggers--’ one of the men began, pulling off his hat.
`That’s what I told you not to do,’ said Mr Jaggers. `You thought! I think for you; that’s enough for you. If I want you, I know where to find you; I don’t want you to find me. Now I won’t have it. I won’t hear a word.’
`And now you!’ said Mr Jaggers, suddenly stopping, and turning on the two women with the shawls, from whom the three men had meekly separated. - `Oh! Amelia, is it?’
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“我就是,贾格斯先生。”
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`Yes, Mr Jaggers.’
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“你还记得吗?”贾格斯先生质问道,“要不是我的话,你怕不会在这里了,也不可能在这里了!”
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`And do you remember,’ retorted Mr Jaggers, `that but for me you wouldn’t be here and couldn’t be here?’
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34
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“唔,是的,先生!”两个女人一起大声说道,“上帝保佑您,先生,我们不会忘记,会永记在心里的。”
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`Oh yes, sir!’ exclaimed both women together. `Lord bless you, sir, well we knows that!’
`Now, I tell you what!’ said Mr Jaggers. `Once for all. If you don’t know that your Bill’s in good hands, I know it. And if you come here, bothering about your Bill, I’ll make an example of both your Bill and you, and let him slip through my fingers. Have you paid Wemmick?’
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“哦,付了,先生!一个子儿也不少。”
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`Oh yes, sir! Every farden.’
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“很好。你们已做了所必须做的事,那就别再废话。多说一个字,温米克就会把你们付的钱退还。”
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`Very well. Then you have done all you have got to do. Say another word - one single word - and Wemmick shall give you your money back.’
This terrible threat caused the two women to fall off immediately. No one remained now but the excitable Jew, who had already raised the skirts of Mr Jaggers’s coat to his lips several times.