Great Expectations

Chapter I.

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my

infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit

than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his

tombstone and my sister,—Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith.

As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of

either of them (for their days were long before the days of

photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were

unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on

my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man,

with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription,

“_Also Georgiana Wife of the Above_,” I drew a childish conclusion that

my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each

about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside

their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of

mine,—who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that

universal struggle,—I am indebted for a belief I religiously

entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands

in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state

of existence.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river

wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad

impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on

a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out

for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the

churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also

Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander,

Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the

aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness

beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates,

with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low

leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from

which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of

shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.

“Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from

among the graves at the side of the church porch. “Keep still, you

little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!”

A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man

with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his

head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and

lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by

briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose

teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.

“Oh! Don’t cut my throat, sir,” I pleaded in terror. “Pray don’t do it,

sir.”

“Tell us your name!” said the man. “Quick!”

“Pip, sir.”

“Once more,” said the man, staring at me. “Give it mouth!”

“Pip. Pip, sir.”

“Show us where you live,” said the man. “Pint out the place!”

I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the

alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and

emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread.

When the church came to itself,—for he was so sudden and strong that he

made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my

feet,—when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high

tombstone, trembling while he ate the bread ravenously.

[Illustration]

“You young dog,” said the man, licking his lips, “what fat cheeks you

ha’ got.”

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my

years, and not strong.

“Darn me if I couldn’t eat ’em,” said the man, with a threatening shake

of his head, “and if I han’t half a mind to’t!”

I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn’t, and held tighter to the

tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it;

partly, to keep myself from crying.

“Now lookee here!” said the man. “Where’s your mother?”

“There, sir!” said I.

He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder.

“There, sir!” I timidly explained. “Also Georgiana. That’s my mother.”

“Oh!” said he, coming back. “And is that your father alonger your

mother?”

“Yes, sir,” said I; “him too; late of this parish.”

“Ha!” he muttered then, considering. “Who d’ye live with,—supposin’

you’re kindly let to live, which I han’t made up my mind about?”

“My sister, sir,—Mrs. Joe Gargery,—wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith,

sir.”

“Blacksmith, eh?” said he. And looked down at his leg.

After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to

my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he

could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine,

and mine looked most helplessly up into his.

“Now lookee here,” he said, “the question being whether you’re to be

let to live. You know what a file is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you know what wittles is?”

“Yes, sir.”

After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a

greater sense of helplessness and danger.

“You get me a file.” He tilted me again. “And you get me wittles.” He

tilted me again. “You bring ’em both to me.” He tilted me again. “Or

I’ll have your heart and liver out.” He tilted me again.

I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both

hands, and said, “If you would kindly please to let me keep upright,

sir, perhaps I shouldn’t be sick, and perhaps I could attend more.”

He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped

over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright

position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms:—

“You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles. You

bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do it, and

you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your

having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall

be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no

matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore

out, roasted, and ate. Now, I ain’t alone, as you may think I am.

There’s a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I

am a Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has

a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his

heart, and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide

himself from that young man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in

bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think

himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and

creep his way to him and tear him open. I am a keeping that young man

from harming of you at the present moment, with great difficulty. I

find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside. Now, what

do you say?”

I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken

bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in

the morning.

“Say Lord strike you dead if you don’t!” said the man.

I said so, and he took me down.

“Now,” he pursued, “you remember what you’ve undertook, and you

remember that young man, and you get home!”

“Goo-good night, sir,” I faltered.

“Much of that!” said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. “I

wish I was a frog. Or a eel!”

At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his

arms,—clasping himself, as if to hold himself together,—and limped

towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the

nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked

in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people,

stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his

ankle and pull him in.

When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose

legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When

I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of

my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on

again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms, and

picking his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into

the marshes here and there, for stepping-places when the rains were

heavy or the tide was in.

The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped

to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not

nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long

angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the

river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the

prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the

beacon by which the sailors steered,—like an unhooped cask upon a

pole,—an ugly thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet, with

some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was

limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life,

and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a

terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their

heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I

looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of

him. But now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.

Chapter II.

My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I,

and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbours

because she had brought me up “by hand.” Having at that time to find

out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a

hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her

husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both

brought up by hand.

She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general

impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe

was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth

face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to

have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild,

good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow,—a sort

of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness.

My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing

redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible

she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap. She was tall

and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her

figure behind with two loops, and having a square impregnable bib in

front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made it a powerful

merit in herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this

apron so much. Though I really see no reason why she should have worn

it at all; or why, if she did wear it at all, she should not have taken

it off, every day of her life.

Joe’s forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many of

the dwellings in our country were,—most of them, at that time. When I

ran home from the churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe was

sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and

having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me, the moment

I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him opposite to it,

sitting in the chimney corner.

“Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And she’s

out now, making it a baker’s dozen.”

“Is she?”

“Yes, Pip,” said Joe; “and what’s worse, she’s got Tickler with her.”

At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat

round and round, and looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler

was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled

frame.

“She sot down,” said Joe, “and she got up, and she made a grab at

Tickler, and she Ram-paged out. That’s what she did,” said Joe, slowly

clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and looking at

it; “she Ram-paged out, Pip.”

“Has she been gone long, Joe?” I always treated him as a larger species

of child, and as no more than my equal.

“Well,” said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, “she’s been on the

Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She’s a-coming! Get

behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel betwixt you.”

I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open,

and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause,

and applied Tickler to its further investigation. She concluded by

throwing me—I often served as a connubial missile—at Joe, who, glad to

get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into the chimney and quietly

fenced me up there with his great leg.

“Where have you been, you young monkey?” said Mrs. Joe, stamping her

foot. “Tell me directly what you’ve been doing to wear me away with

fret and fright and worrit, or I’d have you out of that corner if you

was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys.”

“I have only been to the churchyard,” said I, from my stool, crying and

rubbing myself.

“Churchyard!” repeated my sister. “If it warn’t for me you’d have been

to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who brought you up by

hand?”

“You did,” said I.

“And why did I do it, I should like to know?” exclaimed my sister.

I whimpered, “I don’t know.”

“_I_ don’t!” said my sister. “I’d never do it again! I know that. I may

truly say I’ve never had this apron of mine off since born you were.

It’s bad enough to be a blacksmith’s wife (and him a Gargery) without

being your mother.”

My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsolately at

the fire. For the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the

mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was

under to commit a larceny on those sheltering premises, rose before me

in the avenging coals.

“Hah!” said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. “Churchyard,

indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two.” One of us, by the by,

had not said it at all. “You’ll drive _me_ to the churchyard betwixt

you, one of these days, and O, a pr-r-recious pair you’d be without

me!”

As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at me

over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself up, and

calculating what kind of pair we practically should make, under the

grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After that, he sat feeling his

right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about with

his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times.

My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread and butter for us,

that never varied. First, with her left hand she jammed the loaf hard

and fast against her bib,—where it sometimes got a pin into it, and

sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got into our mouths. Then she

took some butter (not too much) on a knife and spread it on the loaf,

in an apothecary kind of way, as if she were making a plaster,—using

both sides of the knife with a slapping dexterity, and trimming and

moulding the butter off round the crust. Then, she gave the knife a

final smart wipe on the edge of the plaster, and then sawed a very

thick round off the loaf: which she finally, before separating from the

loaf, hewed into two halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other.

On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my slice.

I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dreadful

acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young man. I knew

Mrs. Joe’s housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that my

larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe.

Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of bread and butter down the leg of

my trousers.

The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this purpose I

found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to make up my mind to leap

from the top of a high house, or plunge into a great depth of water.

And it was made the more difficult by the unconscious Joe. In our

already-mentioned freemasonry as fellow-sufferers, and in his

good-natured companionship with me, it was our evening habit to compare

the way we bit through our slices, by silently holding them up to each

other’s admiration now and then,—which stimulated us to new exertions.

To-night, Joe several times invited me, by the display of his fast

diminishing slice, to enter upon our usual friendly competition; but he

found me, each time, with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my

untouched bread and butter on the other. At last, I desperately

considered that the thing I contemplated must be done, and that it had

best be done in the least improbable manner consistent with the

circumstances. I took advantage of a moment when Joe had just looked at

me, and got my bread and butter down my leg.

Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be my loss

of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice, which he

didn’t seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth much longer than

usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after all gulped it down like

a pill. He was about to take another bite, and had just got his head on

one side for a good purchase on it, when his eye fell on me, and he saw

that my bread and butter was gone.

The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the threshold of

his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape my sister’s

observation.

“What’s the matter _now_?” said she, smartly, as she put down her cup.

“I say, you know!” muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in very serious

remonstrance. “Pip, old chap! You’ll do yourself a mischief. It’ll

stick somewhere. You can’t have chawed it, Pip.”

“What’s the matter now?” repeated my sister, more sharply than before.

“If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I’d recommend you to do

it,” said Joe, all aghast. “Manners is manners, but still your elth’s

your elth.”

By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe,

and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little

while against the wall behind him, while I sat in the corner, looking

guiltily on.

“Now, perhaps you’ll mention what’s the matter,” said my sister, out of

breath, “you staring great stuck pig.”

Joe looked at her in a helpless way, then took a helpless bite, and

looked at me again.

“You know, Pip,” said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in his cheek,

and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two were quite alone,

“you and me is always friends, and I’d be the last to tell upon you,

any time. But such a—” he moved his chair and looked about the floor

between us, and then again at me—“such a most oncommon Bolt as that!”

“Been bolting his food, has he?” cried my sister.

“You know, old chap,” said Joe, looking at me, and not at Mrs. Joe,

with his bite still in his cheek, “I Bolted, myself, when I was your

age—frequent—and as a boy I’ve been among a many Bolters; but I never

see your Bolting equal yet, Pip, and it’s a mercy you ain’t Bolted

dead.”

My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair, saying

nothing more than the awful words, “You come along and be dosed.”

Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a fine

medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard;

having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At the

best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a

choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling like

a new fence. On this particular evening the urgency of my case demanded

a pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat, for my greater

comfort, while Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm, as a boot would be

held in a bootjack. Joe got off with half a pint; but was made to

swallow that (much to his disturbance, as he sat slowly munching and

meditating before the fire), “because he had had a turn.” Judging from

myself, I should say he certainly had a turn afterwards, if he had had

none before.

Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy; but when, in

the case of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with another secret

burden down the leg of his trousers, it is (as I can testify) a great

punishment. The guilty knowledge that I was going to rob Mrs. Joe—I

never thought I was going to rob Joe, for I never thought of any of the

housekeeping property as his—united to the necessity of always keeping

one hand on my bread and butter as I sat, or when I was ordered about

the kitchen on any small errand, almost drove me out of my mind. Then,

as the marsh winds made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the

voice outside, of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn me to

secrecy, declaring that he couldn’t and wouldn’t starve until

to-morrow, but must be fed now. At other times, I thought, What if the

young man who was with so much difficulty restrained from imbruing his

hands in me should yield to a constitutional impatience, or should

mistake the time, and should think himself accredited to my heart and

liver to-night, instead of to-morrow! If ever anybody’s hair stood on

end with terror, mine must have done so then. But, perhaps, nobody’s

ever did?

It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day, with

a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock. I tried it with

the load upon my leg (and that made me think afresh of the man with the

load on _his_ leg), and found the tendency of exercise to bring the

bread and butter out at my ankle, quite unmanageable. Happily I slipped

away, and deposited that part of my conscience in my garret bedroom.

“Hark!” said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking a final

warm in the chimney corner before being sent up to bed; “was that great

guns, Joe?”

“Ah!” said Joe. “There’s another conwict off.”

“What does that mean, Joe?” said I.

Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said, snappishly,

“Escaped. Escaped.” Administering the definition like Tar-water.

While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework, I put my

mouth into the forms of saying to Joe, “What’s a convict?” Joe put

_his_ mouth into the forms of returning such a highly elaborate answer,

that I could make out nothing of it but the single word “Pip.”

“There was a conwict off last night,” said Joe, aloud, “after

sunset-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears they’re

firing warning of another.”

“_Who’s_ firing?” said I.

“Drat that boy,” interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work,

“what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no

lies.”

It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should be

told lies by her even if I did ask questions. But she never was polite

unless there was company.

At this point Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by taking the utmost

pains to open his mouth very wide, and to put it into the form of a

word that looked to me like “sulks.” Therefore, I naturally pointed to

Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth into the form of saying, “her?” But Joe

wouldn’t hear of that, at all, and again opened his mouth very wide,

and shook the form of a most emphatic word out of it. But I could make

nothing of the word.

“Mrs. Joe,” said I, as a last resort, “I should like to know—if you

wouldn’t much mind—where the firing comes from?”

“Lord bless the boy!” exclaimed my sister, as if she didn’t quite mean

that but rather the contrary. “From the Hulks!”

“Oh-h!” said I, looking at Joe. “Hulks!”

Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, “Well, I told you so.”

“And please, what’s Hulks?” said I.

“That’s the way with this boy!” exclaimed my sister, pointing me out

with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. “Answer him one

question, and he’ll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are prison-ships,

right ’cross th’ meshes.” We always used that name for marshes, in our

country.

“I wonder who’s put into prison-ships, and why they’re put there?” said

I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.

It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. “I tell you what,

young fellow,” said she, “I didn’t bring you up by hand to badger

people’s lives out. It would be blame to me and not praise, if I had.

People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and because they rob,

and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always begin by asking

questions. Now, you get along to bed!”

I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went

upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling,—from Mrs. Joe’s thimble

having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last words,—I

felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the hulks were

handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking

questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.

Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often thought

that few people know what secrecy there is in the young under terror.

No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be terror. I was in

mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart and liver; I was in

mortal terror of my interlocutor with the iron leg; I was in mortal

terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had been extracted; I had

no hope of deliverance through my all-powerful sister, who repulsed me

at every turn; I am afraid to think of what I might have done on

requirement, in the secrecy of my terror.

If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself drifting

down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks; a ghostly pirate

calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I passed the

gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be hanged there at

once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep, even if I had been

inclined, for I knew that at the first faint dawn of morning I must rob

the pantry. There was no doing it in the night, for there was no

getting a light by easy friction then; to have got one I must have

struck it out of flint and steel, and have made a noise like the very

pirate himself rattling his chains.

As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window was

shot with grey, I got up and went downstairs; every board upon the way,

and every crack in every board calling after me, “Stop thief!” and “Get

up, Mrs. Joe!” In the pantry, which was far more abundantly supplied

than usual, owing to the season, I was very much alarmed by a hare

hanging up by the heels, whom I rather thought I caught, when my back

was half turned, winking. I had no time for verification, no time for

selection, no time for anything, for I had no time to spare. I stole

some bread, some rind of cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I

tied up in my pocket-handkerchief with my last night’s slice), some

brandy from a stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle I had

secretly used for making that intoxicating fluid,

Spanish-liquorice-water, up in my room: diluting the stone bottle from

a jug in the kitchen cupboard), a meat bone with very little on it, and

a beautiful round compact pork pie. I was nearly going away without the

pie, but I was tempted to mount upon a shelf, to look what it was that

was put away so carefully in a covered earthenware dish in a corner,

and I found it was the pie, and I took it in the hope that it was not

intended for early use, and would not be missed for some time.

There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with the forge; I

unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe’s tools.

Then I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the door at which

I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it, and ran for the

misty marshes.

Chapter III.

It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the

outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there

all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw

the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort

of spiders’ webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade.

On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh mist was so

thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our

village—a direction which they never accepted, for they never came

there—was invisible to me until I was quite close under it. Then, as I

looked up at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience

like a phantom devoting me to the Hulks.

The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that

instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me.

This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dikes and

banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly

as could be, “A boy with somebody else’s pork pie! Stop him!” The

cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes,

and steaming out of their nostrils, “Halloa, young thief!” One black

ox, with a white cravat on,—who even had to my awakened conscience

something of a clerical air,—fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and

moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved

round, that I blubbered out to him, “I couldn’t help it, sir! It wasn’t

for myself I took it!” Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of

smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and

a flourish of his tail.

All this time, I was getting on towards the river; but however fast I

went, I couldn’t warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed riveted,

as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was running to meet. I

knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight, for I had been down there

on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, had told me that

when I was ’prentice to him, regularly bound, we would have such Larks

there! However, in the confusion of the mist, I found myself at last

too far to the right, and consequently had to try back along the

river-side, on the bank of loose stones above the mud and the stakes

that staked the tide out. Making my way along here with all despatch, I

had just crossed a ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery, and

had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man

sitting before me. His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded,

and was nodding forward, heavy with sleep.

I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him with his breakfast,

in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly and touched him on

the shoulder. He instantly jumped up, and it was not the same man, but

another man!

And yet this man was dressed in coarse grey, too, and had a great iron

on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was everything that

the other man was; except that he had not the same face, and had a flat

broad-brimmed low-crowned felt hat on. All this I saw in a moment, for

I had only a moment to see it in: he swore an oath at me, made a hit at

me,—it was a round weak blow that missed me and almost knocked himself

down, for it made him stumble,—and then he ran into the mist, stumbling

twice as he went, and I lost him.

“It’s the young man!” I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I identified

him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver, too, if I had

known where it was.

I was soon at the Battery after that, and there was the right

man,—hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he had never all

night left off hugging and limping,—waiting for me. He was awfully

cold, to be sure. I half expected to see him drop down before my face

and die of deadly cold. His eyes looked so awfully hungry too, that

when I handed him the file and he laid it down on the grass, it

occurred to me he would have tried to eat it, if he had not seen my

bundle. He did not turn me upside down this time to get at what I had,

but left me right side upwards while I opened the bundle and emptied my

pockets.

“What’s in the bottle, boy?” said he.

“Brandy,” said I.

He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most curious

manner,—more like a man who was putting it away somewhere in a violent

hurry, than a man who was eating it,—but he left off to take some of

the liquor. He shivered all the while so violently, that it was quite

as much as he could do to keep the neck of the bottle between his

teeth, without biting it off.

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

“I’m much of your opinion, boy,” said he.

“It’s bad about here,” I told him. “You’ve been lying out on the

meshes, and they’re dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too.”

“I’ll eat my breakfast afore they’re the death of me,” said he. “I’d do

that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows as there is

over there, directly afterwards. I’ll beat the shivers so far, I’ll bet

you.”

He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie, all

at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round

us, and often stopping—even stopping his jaws—to listen. Some real or

fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing of beast upon the

marsh, now gave him a start, and he said, suddenly,—

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

“No, sir! No!”

“Nor giv’ no one the office to follow you?”

“No!”

“Well,” said he, “I believe you. You’d be but a fierce young hound

indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched

warmint hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched warmint

is!”

Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a clock,

and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough sleeve over

his eyes.

Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled down

upon the pie, I made bold to say, “I am glad you enjoy it.”

“Did you speak?”

“I said I was glad you enjoyed it.”

“Thankee, my boy. I do.”

I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now

noticed a decided similarity between the dog’s way of eating, and the

man’s. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He

swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast;

and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought

there was danger in every direction of somebody’s coming to take the

pie away. He was altogether too unsettled in his mind over it, to

appreciate it comfortably I thought, or to have anybody to dine with

him, without making a chop with his jaws at the visitor. In all of

which particulars he was very like the dog.

“I am afraid you won’t leave any of it for him,” said I, timidly; after

a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness of making

the remark. “There’s no more to be got where that came from.” It was

the certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer the hint.

“Leave any for him? Who’s him?” said my friend, stopping in his

crunching of pie-crust.

“The young man. That you spoke of. That was hid with you.”

“Oh ah!” he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. “Him? Yes,

yes! _He_ don’t want no wittles.”

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

The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest scrutiny and

the greatest surprise.

“Looked? When?”

“Just now.”

“Where?”

“Yonder,” said I, pointing; “over there, where I found him nodding

asleep, and thought it was you.”

He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began to think his

first idea about cutting my throat had revived.

“Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat,” I explained, trembling;

“and—and”—I was very anxious to put this delicately—“and with—the same

reason for wanting to borrow a file. Didn’t you hear the cannon last

night?”

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

“I wonder you shouldn’t have been sure of that,” I returned, “for we

heard it up at home, and that’s farther away, and we were shut in

besides.”

“Why, see now!” said he. “When a man’s alone on these flats, with a

light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he hears

nothin’ all night, but guns firing, and voices calling. Hears? He sees

the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the torches carried

afore, closing in round him. Hears his number called, hears himself

challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets, hears the orders ‘Make

ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!’ and is laid hands on—and

there’s nothin’! Why, if I see one pursuing party last night—coming up

in order, Damn ’em, with their tramp, tramp—I see a hundred. And as to

firing! Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad

day,—But this man”; he had said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my

being there; “did you notice anything in him?”

“He had a badly bruised face,” said I, recalling what I hardly knew I

knew.

“Not here?” exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly,

with the flat of his hand.

“Yes, there!”

“Where is he?” He crammed what little food was left, into the breast of

his grey jacket. “Show me the way he went. I’ll pull him down, like a

bloodhound. Curse this iron on my sore leg! Give us hold of the file,

boy.”

I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other man, and

he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down on the rank wet

grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not minding me or minding

his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody, but which

he handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it than the file.

I was very much afraid of him again, now that he had worked himself

into this fierce hurry, and I was likewise very much afraid of keeping

away from home any longer. I told him I must go, but he took no notice,

so I thought the best thing I could do was to slip off. The last I saw

of him, his head was bent over his knee and he was working hard at his

fetter, muttering impatient imprecations at it and at his leg. The last

I heard of him, I stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still

going.

Chapter IV.

I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to take me

up. But not only was there no Constable there, but no discovery had yet

been made of the robbery. Mrs. Joe was prodigiously busy in getting the

house ready for the festivities of the day, and Joe had been put upon

the kitchen doorstep to keep him out of the dust-pan,—an article into

which his destiny always led him, sooner or later, when my sister was

vigorously reaping the floors of her establishment.

“And where the deuce ha’ _you_ been?” was Mrs. Joe’s Christmas

salutation, when I and my conscience showed ourselves.

I said I had been down to hear the Carols. “Ah! well!” observed Mrs.

Joe. “You might ha’ done worse.” Not a doubt of that I thought.

“Perhaps if I warn’t a blacksmith’s wife, and (what’s the same thing) a

slave with her apron never off, _I_ should have been to hear the

Carols,” said Mrs. Joe. “I’m rather partial to Carols, myself, and

that’s the best of reasons for my never hearing any.”

Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dustpan had

retired before us, drew the back of his hand across his nose with a

conciliatory air, when Mrs. Joe darted a look at him, and, when her

eyes were withdrawn, secretly crossed his two forefingers, and

exhibited them to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross temper.

This was so much her normal state, that Joe and I would often, for

weeks together, be, as to our fingers, like monumental Crusaders as to

their legs.

We were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled pork

and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome mince-pie had

been made yesterday morning (which accounted for the mincemeat not

being missed), and the pudding was already on the boil. These extensive

arrangements occasioned us to be cut off unceremoniously in respect of

breakfast; “for I ain’t,” said Mrs. Joe,—“I ain’t a-going to have no

formal cramming and busting and washing up now, with what I’ve got

before me, I promise you!”

So, we had our slices served out, as if we were two thousand troops on

a forced march instead of a man and boy at home; and we took gulps of

milk and water, with apologetic countenances, from a jug on the

dresser. In the meantime, Mrs. Joe put clean white curtains up, and

tacked a new flowered flounce across the wide chimney to replace the

old one, and uncovered the little state parlour across the passage,

which was never uncovered at any other time, but passed the rest of the

year in a cool haze of silver paper, which even extended to the four

little white crockery poodles on the mantel-shelf, each with a black

nose and a basket of flowers in his mouth, and each the counterpart of

the other. Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite

art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than

dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the

same by their religion.

My sister, having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that

is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working-clothes, Joe was a

well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday clothes, he

was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than anything else.

Nothing that he wore then fitted him or seemed to belong to him; and

everything that he wore then grazed him. On the present festive

occasion he emerged from his room, when the blithe bells were going,

the picture of misery, in a full suit of Sunday penitentials. As to me,

I think my sister must have had some general idea that I was a young

offender whom an Accoucheur Policeman had taken up (on my birthday) and

delivered over to her, to be dealt with according to the outraged

majesty of the law. I was always treated as if I had insisted on being

born in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality,

and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends. Even when I

was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to make

them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me have the

free use of my limbs.

Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving spectacle

for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suffered outside was nothing to

what I underwent within. The terrors that had assailed me whenever Mrs.

Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of the room, were only to be

equalled by the remorse with which my mind dwelt on what my hands had

done. Under the weight of my wicked secret, I pondered whether the

Church would be powerful enough to shield me from the vengeance of the

terrible young man, if I divulged to that establishment. I conceived

the idea that the time when the banns were read and when the clergyman

said, “Ye are now to declare it!” would be the time for me to rise and

propose a private conference in the vestry. I am far from being sure

that I might not have astonished our small congregation by resorting to

this extreme measure, but for its being Christmas Day and no Sunday.

Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us; and Mr. Hubble

the wheelwright and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumblechook (Joe’s uncle,

but Mrs. Joe appropriated him), who was a well-to-do cornchandler in

the nearest town, and drove his own chaise-cart. The dinner hour was

half-past one. When Joe and I got home, we found the table laid, and

Mrs. Joe dressed, and the dinner dressing, and the front door unlocked

(it never was at any other time) for the company to enter by, and

everything most splendid. And still, not a word of the robbery.

The time came, without bringing with it any relief to my feelings, and

the company came. Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large

shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which he was uncommonly proud

of; indeed it was understood among his acquaintance that if you could

only give him his head, he would read the clergyman into fits; he

himself confessed that if the Church was “thrown open,” meaning to

competition, he would not despair of making his mark in it. The Church

not being “thrown open,” he was, as I have said, our clerk. But he

punished the Amens tremendously; and when he gave out the psalm,—always

giving the whole verse,—he looked all round the congregation first, as

much as to say, “You have heard my friend overhead; oblige me with your

opinion of this style!”

I opened the door to the company,—making believe that it was a habit of

ours to open that door,—and I opened it first to Mr. Wopsle, next to

Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all to Uncle Pumblechook. N.B. _I_ was

not allowed to call him uncle, under the severest penalties.

“Mrs. Joe,” said Uncle Pumblechook, a large hard-breathing middle-aged

slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair

standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been

all but choked, and had that moment come to, “I have brought you as the

compliments of the season—I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of sherry

wine—and I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of port wine.”

Every Christmas Day he presented himself, as a profound novelty, with

exactly the same words, and carrying the two bottles like dumb-bells.

Every Christmas Day, Mrs. Joe replied, as she now replied, “O, Un—cle

Pum-ble—chook! This _is_ kind!” Every Christmas Day, he retorted, as he

now retorted, “It’s no more than your merits. And now are you all

bobbish, and how’s Sixpennorth of halfpence?” meaning me.

We dined on these occasions in the kitchen, and adjourned, for the nuts

and oranges and apples to the parlour; which was a change very like

Joe’s change from his working-clothes to his Sunday dress. My sister

was uncommonly lively on the present occasion, and indeed was generally

more gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble than in other company. I

remember Mrs. Hubble as a little curly sharp-edged person in sky-blue,

who held a conventionally juvenile position, because she had married

Mr. Hubble,—I don’t know at what remote period,—when she was much

younger than he. I remember Mr Hubble as a tough, high-shouldered,

stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs

extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my short days I always saw some

miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane.

Among this good company I should have felt myself, even if I hadn’t

robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not because I was squeezed in

at an acute angle of the tablecloth, with the table in my chest, and

the Pumblechookian elbow in my eye, nor because I was not allowed to

speak (I didn’t want to speak), nor because I was regaled with the

scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and with those obscure

corners of pork of which the pig, when living, had had the least reason

to be vain. No; I should not have minded that, if they would only have

left me alone. But they wouldn’t leave me alone. They seemed to think

the opportunity lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me,

every now and then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an

unfortunate little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched

up by these moral goads.

It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace with

theatrical declamation,—as it now appears to me, something like a

religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third,—and

ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful.

Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and said, in a low

reproachful voice, “Do you hear that? Be grateful.”

“Especially,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “be grateful, boy, to them which

brought you up by hand.”

Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful

presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, “Why is it that the

young are never grateful?” This moral mystery seemed too much for the

company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, “Naterally

wicious.” Everybody then murmured “True!” and looked at me in a

particularly unpleasant and personal manner.

Joe’s station and influence were something feebler (if possible) when

there was company than when there was none. But he always aided and

comforted me when he could, in some way of his own, and he always did

so at dinner-time by giving me gravy, if there were any. There being

plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned into my plate, at this point, about

half a pint.

A little later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle reviewed the sermon with

some severity, and intimated—in the usual hypothetical case of the

Church being “thrown open”—what kind of sermon _he_ would have given

them. After favouring them with some heads of that discourse, he

remarked that he considered the subject of the day’s homily, ill

chosen; which was the less excusable, he added, when there were so many

subjects “going about.”

“True again,” said Uncle Pumblechook. “You’ve hit it, sir! Plenty of

subjects going about, for them that know how to put salt upon their

tails. That’s what’s wanted. A man needn’t go far to find a subject, if

he’s ready with his salt-box.” Mr. Pumblechook added, after a short

interval of reflection, “Look at Pork alone. There’s a subject! If you

want a subject, look at Pork!”

“True, sir. Many a moral for the young,” returned Mr. Wopsle,—and I

knew he was going to lug me in, before he said it; “might be deduced

from that text.”

(“You listen to this,” said my sister to me, in a severe parenthesis.)

Joe gave me some more gravy.

“Swine,” pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and pointing his

fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my Christian name,—“swine

were the companions of the prodigal. The gluttony of Swine is put

before us, as an example to the young.” (I thought this pretty well in

him who had been praising up the pork for being so plump and juicy.)

“What is detestable in a pig is more detestable in a boy.”

“Or girl,” suggested Mr. Hubble.

“Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble,” assented Mr. Wopsle, rather

irritably, “but there is no girl present.”

“Besides,” said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, “think what

you’ve got to be grateful for. If you’d been born a Squeaker—”

“He _was_, if ever a child was,” said my sister, most emphatically.

Joe gave me some more gravy.

“Well, but I mean a four-footed Squeaker,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “If

you had been born such, would you have been here now? Not you—”

“Unless in that form,” said Mr. Wopsle, nodding towards the dish.

“But I don’t mean in that form, sir,” returned Mr. Pumblechook, who had

an objection to being interrupted; “I mean, enjoying himself with his

elders and betters, and improving himself with their conversation, and

rolling in the lap of luxury. Would he have been doing that? No, he

wouldn’t. And what would have been your destination?” turning on me

again. “You would have been disposed of for so many shillings according

to the market price of the article, and Dunstable the butcher would

have come up to you as you lay in your straw, and he would have whipped

you under his left arm, and with his right he would have tucked up his

frock to get a penknife from out of his waistcoat-pocket, and he would

have shed your blood and had your life. No bringing up by hand then.

Not a bit of it!”

Joe offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take.

“He was a world of trouble to you, ma’am,” said Mrs. Hubble,

commiserating my sister.

“Trouble?” echoed my sister; “trouble?” and then entered on a fearful

catalogue of all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and all the acts

of sleeplessness I had committed, and all the high places I had tumbled

from, and all the low places I had tumbled into, and all the injuries I

had done myself, and all the times she had wished me in my grave, and I

had contumaciously refused to go there.

I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with

their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in

consequence. Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle’s Roman nose so aggravated me, during

the recital of my misdemeanours, that I should have liked to pull it

until he howled. But, all I had endured up to this time was nothing in

comparison with the awful feelings that took possession of me when the

pause was broken which ensued upon my sister’s recital, and in which

pause everybody had looked at me (as I felt painfully conscious) with

indignation and abhorrence.

“Yet,” said Mr. Pumblechook, leading the company gently back to the

theme from which they had strayed, “Pork—regarded as biled—is rich,

too; ain’t it?”

“Have a little brandy, uncle,” said my sister.

O Heavens, it had come at last! He would find it was weak, he would say

it was weak, and I was lost! I held tight to the leg of the table under

the cloth, with both hands, and awaited my fate.

My sister went for the stone bottle, came back with the stone bottle,

and poured his brandy out: no one else taking any. The wretched man

trifled with his glass,—took it up, looked at it through the light, put

it down,—prolonged my misery. All this time Mrs. Joe and Joe were

briskly clearing the table for the pie and pudding.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. Always holding tight by the leg of the

table with my hands and feet, I saw the miserable creature finger his

glass playfully, take it up, smile, throw his head back, and drink the

brandy off. Instantly afterwards, the company were seized with

unspeakable consternation, owing to his springing to his feet, turning

round several times in an appalling spasmodic whooping-cough dance, and

rushing out at the door; he then became visible through the window,

violently plunging and expectorating, making the most hideous faces,

and apparently out of his mind.

I held on tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him. I didn’t know how I

had done it, but I had no doubt I had murdered him somehow. In my

dreadful situation, it was a relief when he was brought back, and

surveying the company all round as if _they_ had disagreed with him,

sank down into his chair with the one significant gasp, “Tar!”

I had filled up the bottle from the tar-water jug. I knew he would be

worse by and by. I moved the table, like a Medium of the present day,

by the vigor of my unseen hold upon it.

“Tar!” cried my sister, in amazement. “Why, how ever could Tar come

there?”

But, Uncle Pumblechook, who was omnipotent in that kitchen, wouldn’t

hear the word, wouldn’t hear of the subject, imperiously waved it all

away with his hand, and asked for hot gin and water. My sister, who had

begun to be alarmingly meditative, had to employ herself actively in

getting the gin, the hot water, the sugar, and the lemon-peel, and

mixing them. For the time being at least, I was saved. I still held on

to the leg of the table, but clutched it now with the fervor of

gratitude.

By degrees, I became calm enough to release my grasp and partake of

pudding. Mr. Pumblechook partook of pudding. All partook of pudding.

The course terminated, and Mr. Pumblechook had begun to beam under the

genial influence of gin and water. I began to think I should get over

the day, when my sister said to Joe, “Clean plates,—cold.”

I clutched the leg of the table again immediately, and pressed it to my

bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and friend of my

soul. I foresaw what was coming, and I felt that this time I really was

gone.

“You must taste,” said my sister, addressing the guests with her best

grace—“you must taste, to finish with, such a delightful and delicious

present of Uncle Pumblechook’s!”

Must they! Let them not hope to taste it!

“You must know,” said my sister, rising, “it’s a pie; a savory pork

pie.”

The company murmured their compliments. Uncle Pumblechook, sensible of

having deserved well of his fellow-creatures, said,—quite vivaciously,

all things considered,—“Well, Mrs. Joe, we’ll do our best endeavours;

let us have a cut at this same pie.”

My sister went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the pantry.

I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife. I saw reawakening appetite in

the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble remark that “a bit

of savory pork pie would lay atop of anything you could mention, and do

no harm,” and I heard Joe say, “You shall have some, Pip.” I have never

been absolutely certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror,

merely in spirit, or in the bodily hearing of the company. I felt that

I could bear no more, and that I must run away. I released the leg of

the table, and ran for my life.

But I ran no farther than the house door, for there I ran head-foremost

into a party of soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held out a

pair of handcuffs to me, saying, “Here you are, look sharp, come on!”

Chapter V.

The apparition of a file of soldiers ringing down the but-ends of their

loaded muskets on our door-step, caused the dinner-party to rise from

table in confusion, and caused Mrs. Joe re-entering the kitchen

empty-handed, to stop short and stare, in her wondering lament of

“Gracious goodness gracious me, what’s gone—with the—pie!”

The sergeant and I were in the kitchen when Mrs. Joe stood staring; at

which crisis I partially recovered the use of my senses. It was the

sergeant who had spoken to me, and he was now looking round at the

company, with his handcuffs invitingly extended towards them in his

right hand, and his left on my shoulder.

“Excuse me, ladies and gentleman,” said the sergeant, “but as I have

mentioned at the door to this smart young shaver,” (which he hadn’t),

“I am on a chase in the name of the king, and I want the blacksmith.”

“And pray what might you want with _him_?” retorted my sister, quick to

resent his being wanted at all.

“Missis,” returned the gallant sergeant, “speaking for myself, I should

reply, the honour and pleasure of his fine wife’s acquaintance;

speaking for the king, I answer, a little job done.”

This was received as rather neat in the sergeant; insomuch that Mr.

Pumblechook cried audibly, “Good again!”

“You see, blacksmith,” said the sergeant, who had by this time picked

out Joe with his eye, “we have had an accident with these, and I find

the lock of one of ’em goes wrong, and the coupling don’t act pretty.

As they are wanted for immediate service, will you throw your eye over

them?”

Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the job would

necessitate the lighting of his forge fire, and would take nearer two

hours than one. “Will it? Then will you set about it at once,

blacksmith?” said the off-hand sergeant, “as it’s on his Majesty’s

service. And if my men can bear a hand anywhere, they’ll make

themselves useful.” With that, he called to his men, who came trooping

into the kitchen one after another, and piled their arms in a corner.

And then they stood about, as soldiers do; now, with their hands

loosely clasped before them; now, resting a knee or a shoulder; now,

easing a belt or a pouch; now, opening the door to spit stiffly over

their high stocks, out into the yard.

All these things I saw without then knowing that I saw them, for I was

in an agony of apprehension. But beginning to perceive that the

handcuffs were not for me, and that the military had so far got the

better of the pie as to put it in the background, I collected a little

more of my scattered wits.

“Would you give me the time?” said the sergeant, addressing himself to

Mr. Pumblechook, as to a man whose appreciative powers justified the

inference that he was equal to the time.

“It’s just gone half past two.”

“That’s not so bad,” said the sergeant, reflecting; “even if I was

forced to halt here nigh two hours, that’ll do. How far might you call

yourselves from the marshes, hereabouts? Not above a mile, I reckon?”

“Just a mile,” said Mrs. Joe.

“That’ll do. We begin to close in upon ’em about dusk. A little before

dusk, my orders are. That’ll do.”

“Convicts, sergeant?” asked Mr. Wopsle, in a matter-of-course way.

“Ay!” returned the sergeant, “two. They’re pretty well known to be out

on the marshes still, and they won’t try to get clear of ’em before

dusk. Anybody here seen anything of any such game?”

Everybody, myself excepted, said no, with confidence. Nobody thought of

me.

“Well!” said the sergeant, “they’ll find themselves trapped in a

circle, I expect, sooner than they count on. Now, blacksmith! If you’re

ready, his Majesty the King is.”

Joe had got his coat and waistcoat and cravat off, and his leather

apron on, and passed into the forge. One of the soldiers opened its

wooden windows, another lighted the fire, another turned to at the

bellows, the rest stood round the blaze, which was soon roaring. Then

Joe began to hammer and clink, hammer and clink, and we all looked on.

The interest of the impending pursuit not only absorbed the general

attention, but even made my sister liberal. She drew a pitcher of beer

from the cask for the soldiers, and invited the sergeant to take a

glass of brandy. But Mr. Pumblechook said, sharply, “Give him wine,

Mum. I’ll engage there’s no tar in that:” so, the sergeant thanked him

and said that as he preferred his drink without tar, he would take

wine, if it was equally convenient. When it was given him, he drank his

Majesty’s health and compliments of the season, and took it all at a

mouthful and smacked his lips.

“Good stuff, eh, sergeant?” said Mr. Pumblechook.

“I’ll tell you something,” returned the sergeant; “I suspect that

stuff’s of _your_ providing.”

Mr. Pumblechook, with a fat sort of laugh, said, “Ay, ay? Why?”

“Because,” returned the sergeant, clapping him on the shoulder, “you’re

a man that knows what’s what.”

“D’ye think so?” said Mr. Pumblechook, with his former laugh. “Have

another glass!”

“With you. Hob and nob,” returned the sergeant. “The top of mine to the

foot of yours,—the foot of yours to the top of mine,—Ring once, ring

twice,—the best tune on the Musical Glasses! Your health. May you live

a thousand years, and never be a worse judge of the right sort than you

are at the present moment of your life!”

The sergeant tossed off his glass again and seemed quite ready for

another glass. I noticed that Mr. Pumblechook in his hospitality

appeared to forget that he had made a present of the wine, but took the

bottle from Mrs. Joe and had all the credit of handing it about in a

gush of joviality. Even I got some. And he was so very free of the wine

that he even called for the other bottle, and handed that about with

the same liberality, when the first was gone.

As I watched them while they all stood clustering about the forge,

enjoying themselves so much, I thought what terrible good sauce for a

dinner my fugitive friend on the marshes was. They had not enjoyed

themselves a quarter so much, before the entertainment was brightened

with the excitement he furnished. And now, when they were all in lively

anticipation of “the two villains” being taken, and when the bellows

seemed to roar for the fugitives, the fire to flare for them, the smoke

to hurry away in pursuit of them, Joe to hammer and clink for them, and

all the murky shadows on the wall to shake at them in menace as the

blaze rose and sank, and the red-hot sparks dropped and died, the pale

afternoon outside almost seemed in my pitying young fancy to have

turned pale on their account, poor wretches.

At last, Joe’s job was done, and the ringing and roaring stopped. As

Joe got on his coat, he mustered courage to propose that some of us

should go down with the soldiers and see what came of the hunt. Mr.

Pumblechook and Mr. Hubble declined, on the plea of a pipe and ladies’

society; but Mr. Wopsle said he would go, if Joe would. Joe said he was

agreeable, and would take me, if Mrs. Joe approved. We never should

have got leave to go, I am sure, but for Mrs. Joe’s curiosity to know

all about it and how it ended. As it was, she merely stipulated, “If

you bring the boy back with his head blown to bits by a musket, don’t

look to me to put it together again.”

The sergeant took a polite leave of the ladies, and parted from Mr.

Pumblechook as from a comrade; though I doubt if he were quite as fully

sensible of that gentleman’s merits under arid conditions, as when

something moist was going. His men resumed their muskets and fell in.

Mr. Wopsle, Joe, and I, received strict charge to keep in the rear, and

to speak no word after we reached the marshes. When we were all out in

the raw air and were steadily moving towards our business, I

treasonably whispered to Joe, “I hope, Joe, we shan’t find them.” and

Joe whispered to me, “I’d give a shilling if they had cut and run,

Pip.”

We were joined by no stragglers from the village, for the weather was

cold and threatening, the way dreary, the footing bad, darkness coming

on, and the people had good fires in-doors and were keeping the day. A

few faces hurried to glowing windows and looked after us, but none came

out. We passed the finger-post, and held straight on to the churchyard.

There we were stopped a few minutes by a signal from the sergeant’s

hand, while two or three of his men dispersed themselves among the

graves, and also examined the porch. They came in again without finding

anything, and then we struck out on the open marshes, through the gate

at the side of the churchyard. A bitter sleet came rattling against us

here on the east wind, and Joe took me on his back.

Now that we were out upon the dismal wilderness where they little

thought I had been within eight or nine hours and had seen both men

hiding, I considered for the first time, with great dread, if we should

come upon them, would my particular convict suppose that it was I who

had brought the soldiers there? He had asked me if I was a deceiving

imp, and he had said I should be a fierce young hound if I joined the

hunt against him. Would he believe that I was both imp and hound in

treacherous earnest, and had betrayed him?

It was of no use asking myself this question now. There I was, on Joe’s

back, and there was Joe beneath me, charging at the ditches like a

hunter, and stimulating Mr. Wopsle not to tumble on his Roman nose, and

to keep up with us. The soldiers were in front of us, extending into a

pretty wide line with an interval between man and man. We were taking

the course I had begun with, and from which I had diverged in the mist.

Either the mist was not out again yet, or the wind had dispelled it.

Under the low red glare of sunset, the beacon, and the gibbet, and the

mound of the Battery, and the opposite shore of the river, were plain,

though all of a watery lead colour.

With my heart thumping like a blacksmith at Joe’s broad shoulder, I

looked all about for any sign of the convicts. I could see none, I

could hear none. Mr. Wopsle had greatly alarmed me more than once, by

his blowing and hard breathing; but I knew the sounds by this time, and

could dissociate them from the object of pursuit. I got a dreadful

start, when I thought I heard the file still going; but it was only a

sheep-bell. The sheep stopped in their eating and looked timidly at us;

and the cattle, their heads turned from the wind and sleet, stared

angrily as if they held us responsible for both annoyances; but, except

these things, and the shudder of the dying day in every blade of grass,

there was no break in the bleak stillness of the marshes.

The soldiers were moving on in the direction of the old Battery, and we

were moving on a little way behind them, when, all of a sudden, we all

stopped. For there had reached us on the wings of the wind and rain, a

long shout. It was repeated. It was at a distance towards the east, but

it was long and loud. Nay, there seemed to be two or more shouts raised

together,—if one might judge from a confusion in the sound.

To this effect the sergeant and the nearest men were speaking under

their breath, when Joe and I came up. After another moment’s listening,

Joe (who was a good judge) agreed, and Mr. Wopsle (who was a bad judge)

agreed. The sergeant, a decisive man, ordered that the sound should not

be answered, but that the course should be changed, and that his men

should make towards it “at the double.” So we slanted to the right

(where the East was), and Joe pounded away so wonderfully, that I had

to hold on tight to keep my seat.

It was a run indeed now, and what Joe called, in the only two words he

spoke all the time, “a Winder.” Down banks and up banks, and over

gates, and splashing into dikes, and breaking among coarse rushes: no

man cared where he went. As we came nearer to the shouting, it became

more and more apparent that it was made by more than one voice.

Sometimes, it seemed to stop altogether, and then the soldiers stopped.

When it broke out again, the soldiers made for it at a greater rate

than ever, and we after them. After a while, we had so run it down,

that we could hear one voice calling “Murder!” and another voice,

“Convicts! Runaways! Guard! This way for the runaway convicts!” Then

both voices would seem to be stifled in a struggle, and then would

break out again. And when it had come to this, the soldiers ran like

deer, and Joe too.

The sergeant ran in first, when we had run the noise quite down, and

two of his men ran in close upon him. Their pieces were cocked and

levelled when we all ran in.

“Here are both men!” panted the sergeant, struggling at the bottom of a

ditch. “Surrender, you two! and confound you for two wild beasts! Come

asunder!”

Water was splashing, and mud was flying, and oaths were being sworn,

and blows were being struck, when some more men went down into the

ditch to help the sergeant, and dragged out, separately, my convict and

the other one. Both were bleeding and panting and execrating and

struggling; but of course I knew them both directly.

“Mind!” said my convict, wiping blood from his face with his ragged

sleeves, and shaking torn hair from his fingers: “_I_ took him! _I_

give him up to you! Mind that!”

“It’s not much to be particular about,” said the sergeant; “it’ll do

you small good, my man, being in the same plight yourself. Handcuffs

there!”

“I don’t expect it to do me any good. I don’t want it to do me more

good than it does now,” said my convict, with a greedy laugh. “I took

him. He knows it. That’s enough for me.”

The other convict was livid to look at, and, in addition to the old

bruised left side of his face, seemed to be bruised and torn all over.

He could not so much as get his breath to speak, until they were both

separately handcuffed, but leaned upon a soldier to keep himself from

falling.

“Take notice, guard,—he tried to murder me,” were his first words.

“Tried to murder him?” said my convict, disdainfully. “Try, and not do

it? I took him, and giv’ him up; that’s what I done. I not only

prevented him getting off the marshes, but I dragged him here,—dragged

him this far on his way back. He’s a gentleman, if you please, this

villain. Now, the Hulks has got its gentleman again, through me. Murder

him? Worth my while, too, to murder him, when I could do worse and drag

him back!”

The other one still gasped, “He tried—he tried-to—murder me. Bear—bear

witness.”

“Lookee here!” said my convict to the sergeant. “Single-handed I got

clear of the prison-ship; I made a dash and I done it. I could ha’ got

clear of these death-cold flats likewise—look at my leg: you won’t find

much iron on it—if I hadn’t made the discovery that _he_ was here. Let

_him_ go free? Let _him_ profit by the means as I found out? Let _him_

make a tool of me afresh and again? Once more? No, no, no. If I had

died at the bottom there,” and he made an emphatic swing at the ditch

with his manacled hands, “I’d have held to him with that grip, that you

should have been safe to find him in my hold.”

The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his

companion, repeated, “He tried to murder me. I should have been a dead

man if you had not come up.”

“He lies!” said my convict, with fierce energy. “He’s a liar born, and

he’ll die a liar. Look at his face; ain’t it written there? Let him

turn those eyes of his on me. I defy him to do it.”

The other, with an effort at a scornful smile, which could not,

however, collect the nervous working of his mouth into any set

expression, looked at the soldiers, and looked about at the marshes and

at the sky, but certainly did not look at the speaker.

“Do you see him?” pursued my convict. “Do you see what a villain he is?

Do you see those grovelling and wandering eyes? That’s how he looked

when we were tried together. He never looked at me.”

The other, always working and working his dry lips and turning his eyes

restlessly about him far and near, did at last turn them for a moment

on the speaker, with the words, “You are not much to look at,” and with

a half-taunting glance at the bound hands. At that point, my convict

became so frantically exasperated, that he would have rushed upon him

but for the interposition of the soldiers. “Didn’t I tell you,” said

the other convict then, “that he would murder me, if he could?” And any

one could see that he shook with fear, and that there broke out upon

his lips curious white flakes, like thin snow.

“Enough of this parley,” said the sergeant. “Light those torches.”

As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket in lieu of a gun, went

down on his knee to open it, my convict looked round him for the first

time, and saw me. I had alighted from Joe’s back on the brink of the

ditch when we came up, and had not moved since. I looked at him eagerly

when he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and shook my head. I

had been waiting for him to see me that I might try to assure him of my

innocence. It was not at all expressed to me that he even comprehended

my intention, for he gave me a look that I did not understand, and it

all passed in a moment. But if he had looked at me for an hour or for a

day, I could not have remembered his face ever afterwards, as having

been more attentive.

The soldier with the basket soon got a light, and lighted three or four

torches, and took one himself and distributed the others. It had been

almost dark before, but now it seemed quite dark, and soon afterwards

very dark. Before we departed from that spot, four soldiers standing in

a ring, fired twice into the air. Presently we saw other torches

kindled at some distance behind us, and others on the marshes on the

opposite bank of the river. “All right,” said the sergeant. “March.”

We had not gone far when three cannon were fired ahead of us with a

sound that seemed to burst something inside my ear. “You are expected

on board,” said the sergeant to my convict; “they know you are coming.

Don’t straggle, my man. Close up here.”

The two were kept apart, and each walked surrounded by a separate

guard. I had hold of Joe’s hand now, and Joe carried one of the

torches. Mr. Wopsle had been for going back, but Joe was resolved to

see it out, so we went on with the party. There was a reasonably good

path now, mostly on the edge of the river, with a divergence here and

there where a dike came, with a miniature windmill on it and a muddy

sluice-gate. When I looked round, I could see the other lights coming

in after us. The torches we carried dropped great blotches of fire upon

the track, and I could see those, too, lying smoking and flaring. I

could see nothing else but black darkness. Our lights warmed the air

about us with their pitchy blaze, and the two prisoners seemed rather

to like that, as they limped along in the midst of the muskets. We

could not go fast, because of their lameness; and they were so spent,

that two or three times we had to halt while they rested.

After an hour or so of this travelling, we came to a rough wooden hut

and a landing-place. There was a guard in the hut, and they challenged,

and the sergeant answered. Then, we went into the hut, where there was

a smell of tobacco and whitewash, and a bright fire, and a lamp, and a

stand of muskets, and a drum, and a low wooden bedstead, like an

overgrown mangle without the machinery, capable of holding about a

dozen soldiers all at once. Three or four soldiers who lay upon it in

their great-coats were not much interested in us, but just lifted their

heads and took a sleepy stare, and then lay down again. The sergeant

made some kind of report, and some entry in a book, and then the

convict whom I call the other convict was drafted off with his guard,

to go on board first.

My convict never looked at me, except that once. While we stood in the

hut, he stood before the fire looking thoughtfully at it, or putting up

his feet by turns upon the hob, and looking thoughtfully at them as if

he pitied them for their recent adventures. Suddenly, he turned to the

sergeant, and remarked,—

“I wish to say something respecting this escape. It may prevent some

persons laying under suspicion alonger me.”

“You can say what you like,” returned the sergeant, standing coolly

looking at him with his arms folded, “but you have no call to say it

here. You’ll have opportunity enough to say about it, and hear about

it, before it’s done with, you know.”

“I know, but this is another pint, a separate matter. A man can’t

starve; at least _I_ can’t. I took some wittles, up at the willage over

yonder,—where the church stands a’most out on the marshes.”

“You mean stole,” said the sergeant.

“And I’ll tell you where from. From the blacksmith’s.”

“Halloa!” said the sergeant, staring at Joe.

“Halloa, Pip!” said Joe, staring at me.

“It was some broken wittles—that’s what it was—and a dram of liquor,

and a pie.”

“Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?” asked

the sergeant, confidentially.

“My wife did, at the very moment when you came in. Don’t you know,

Pip?”

“So,” said my convict, turning his eyes on Joe in a moody manner, and

without the least glance at me,—“so you’re the blacksmith, are you?

Than I’m sorry to say, I’ve eat your pie.”

“God knows you’re welcome to it,—so far as it was ever mine,” returned

Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe. “We don’t know what you

have done, but we wouldn’t have you starved to death for it, poor

miserable fellow-creatur.—Would us, Pip?”

The something that I had noticed before, clicked in the man’s throat

again, and he turned his back. The boat had returned, and his guard

were ready, so we followed him to the landing-place made of rough

stakes and stones, and saw him put into the boat, which was rowed by a

crew of convicts like himself. No one seemed surprised to see him, or

interested in seeing him, or glad to see him, or sorry to see him, or

spoke a word, except that somebody in the boat growled as if to dogs,

“Give way, you!” which was the signal for the dip of the oars. By the

light of the torches, we saw the black Hulk lying out a little way from

the mud of the shore, like a wicked Noah’s ark. Cribbed and barred and

moored by massive rusty chains, the prison-ship seemed in my young eyes

to be ironed like the prisoners. We saw the boat go alongside, and we

saw him taken up the side and disappear. Then, the ends of the torches

were flung hissing into the water, and went out, as if it were all over

with him.

Chapter VI.

My state of mind regarding the pilfering from which I had been so

unexpectedly exonerated did not impel me to frank disclosure; but I

hope it had some dregs of good at the bottom of it.

I do not recall that I felt any tenderness of conscience in reference

to Mrs. Joe, when the fear of being found out was lifted off me. But I

loved Joe,—perhaps for no better reason in those early days than

because the dear fellow let me love him,—and, as to him, my inner self

was not so easily composed. It was much upon my mind (particularly when

I first saw him looking about for his file) that I ought to tell Joe

the whole truth. Yet I did not, and for the reason that I mistrusted

that if I did, he would think me worse than I was. The fear of losing

Joe’s confidence, and of thenceforth sitting in the chimney corner at

night staring drearily at my forever lost companion and friend, tied up

my tongue. I morbidly represented to myself that if Joe knew it, I

never afterwards could see him at the fireside feeling his fair

whisker, without thinking that he was meditating on it. That, if Joe

knew it, I never afterwards could see him glance, however casually, at

yesterday’s meat or pudding when it came on to-day’s table, without

thinking that he was debating whether I had been in the pantry. That,

if Joe knew it, and at any subsequent period of our joint domestic life

remarked that his beer was flat or thick, the conviction that he

suspected tar in it, would bring a rush of blood to my face. In a word,

I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too

cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. I had had no

intercourse with the world at that time, and I imitated none of its

many inhabitants who act in this manner. Quite an untaught genius, I

made the discovery of the line of action for myself.

As I was sleepy before we were far away from the prison-ship, Joe took

me on his back again and carried me home. He must have had a tiresome

journey of it, for Mr. Wopsle, being knocked up, was in such a very bad

temper that if the Church had been thrown open, he would probably have

excommunicated the whole expedition, beginning with Joe and myself. In

his lay capacity, he persisted in sitting down in the damp to such an

insane extent, that when his coat was taken off to be dried at the

kitchen fire, the circumstantial evidence on his trousers would have

hanged him, if it had been a capital offence.

By that time, I was staggering on the kitchen floor like a little

drunkard, through having been newly set upon my feet, and through

having been fast asleep, and through waking in the heat and lights and

noise of tongues. As I came to myself (with the aid of a heavy thump

between the shoulders, and the restorative exclamation “Yah! Was there

ever such a boy as this!” from my sister,) I found Joe telling them

about the convict’s confession, and all the visitors suggesting

different ways by which he had got into the pantry. Mr. Pumblechook

made out, after carefully surveying the premises, that he had first got

upon the roof of the forge, and had then got upon the roof of the

house, and had then let himself down the kitchen chimney by a rope made

of his bedding cut into strips; and as Mr. Pumblechook was very

positive and drove his own chaise-cart—over everybody—it was agreed

that it must be so. Mr. Wopsle, indeed, wildly cried out, “No!” with

the feeble malice of a tired man; but, as he had no theory, and no coat

on, he was unanimously set at naught,—not to mention his smoking hard

behind, as he stood with his back to the kitchen fire to draw the damp

out: which was not calculated to inspire confidence.

This was all I heard that night before my sister clutched me, as a

slumberous offence to the company’s eyesight, and assisted me up to bed

with such a strong hand that I seemed to have fifty boots on, and to be

dangling them all against the edges of the stairs. My state of mind, as

I have described it, began before I was up in the morning, and lasted

long after the subject had died out, and had ceased to be mentioned

saving on exceptional occasions.

Chapter VII.

At the time when I stood in the churchyard reading the family

tombstones, I had just enough learning to be able to spell them out. My

construction even of their simple meaning was not very correct, for I

read “wife of the Above” as a complimentary reference to my father’s

exaltation to a better world; and if any one of my deceased relations

had been referred to as “Below,” I have no doubt I should have formed

the worst opinions of that member of the family. Neither were my

notions of the theological positions to which my Catechism bound me, at

all accurate; for, I have a lively remembrance that I supposed my

declaration that I was to “walk in the same all the days of my life,”

laid me under an obligation always to go through the village from our

house in one particular direction, and never to vary it by turning down

by the wheelwright’s or up by the mill.

When I was old enough, I was to be apprenticed to Joe, and until I

could assume that dignity I was not to be what Mrs. Joe called

“Pompeyed,” or (as I render it) pampered. Therefore, I was not only

odd-boy about the forge, but if any neighbour happened to want an extra

boy to frighten birds, or pick up stones, or do any such job, I was

favoured with the employment. In order, however, that our superior

position might not be compromised thereby, a money-box was kept on the

kitchen mantel-shelf, into which it was publicly made known that all my

earnings were dropped. I have an impression that they were to be

contributed eventually towards the liquidation of the National Debt,

but I know I had no hope of any personal participation in the treasure.

Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is

to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited

infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in

the society of youth who paid two pence per week each, for the

improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage,

and Mr. Wopsle had the room upstairs, where we students used to

overhear him reading aloud in a most dignified and terrific manner, and

occasionally bumping on the ceiling. There was a fiction that Mr.

Wopsle “examined” the scholars once a quarter. What he did on those

occasions was to turn up his cuffs, stick up his hair, and give us Mark

Antony’s oration over the body of Caesar. This was always followed by

Collins’s Ode on the Passions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr.

Wopsle as Revenge throwing his blood-stained sword in thunder down, and

taking the War-denouncing trumpet with a withering look. It was not

with me then, as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of

the Passions, and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the

disadvantage of both gentlemen.

Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, besides keeping this Educational Institution,

kept in the same room—a little general shop. She had no idea what stock

she had, or what the price of anything in it was; but there was a

little greasy memorandum-book kept in a drawer, which served as a

Catalogue of Prices, and by this oracle Biddy arranged all the shop

transactions. Biddy was Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s granddaughter; I

confess myself quite unequal to the working out of the problem, what

relation she was to Mr. Wopsle. She was an orphan like myself; like me,

too, had been brought up by hand. She was most noticeable, I thought,

in respect of her extremities; for, her hair always wanted brushing,

her hands always wanted washing, and her shoes always wanted mending

and pulling up at heel. This description must be received with a

week-day limitation. On Sundays, she went to church elaborated.

Much of my unassisted self, and more by the help of Biddy than of Mr.

Wopsle’s great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if it had been

a bramble-bush; getting considerably worried and scratched by every

letter. After that I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, who

seemed every evening to do something new to disguise themselves and

baffle recognition. But, at last I began, in a purblind groping way, to

read, write, and cipher, on the very smallest scale.

One night I was sitting in the chimney corner with my slate, expending

great efforts on the production of a letter to Joe. I think it must

have been a full year after our hunt upon the marshes, for it was a

long time after, and it was winter and a hard frost. With an alphabet

on the hearth at my feet for reference, I contrived in an hour or two

to print and smear this epistle:—

“MI DEER JO i OPE U R KRWITE WELL i OPE i SHAL SON B HABELL 4 2 TEEDGE

U JO AN THEN WE SHORL B SO GLODD AN WEN i M PRENGTD 2 U JO WOT LARX AN

BLEVE ME INF XN PIP.”

There was no indispensable necessity for my communicating with Joe by

letter, inasmuch as he sat beside me and we were alone. But I delivered

this written communication (slate and all) with my own hand, and Joe

received it as a miracle of erudition.

“I say, Pip, old chap!” cried Joe, opening his blue eyes wide, “what a

scholar you are! An’t you?”

“I should like to be,” said I, glancing at the slate as he held it;

with a misgiving that the writing was rather hilly.

“Why, here’s a J,” said Joe, “and a O equal to anythink! Here’s a J and

a O, Pip, and a J-O, Joe.”

[Illustration]

I had never heard Joe read aloud to any greater extent than this

monosyllable, and I had observed at church last Sunday, when I

accidentally held our Prayer-Book upside down, that it seemed to suit

his convenience quite as well as if it had been all right. Wishing to

embrace the present occasion of finding out whether in teaching Joe, I

should have to begin quite at the beginning, I said, “Ah! But read the

rest, Jo.”

“The rest, eh, Pip?” said Joe, looking at it with a slow, searching

eye, “One, two, three. Why, here’s three Js, and three Os, and three

J-O, Joes in it, Pip!”

I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my forefinger read him the

whole letter.

“Astonishing!” said Joe, when I had finished. “You ARE a scholar.”

“How do you spell Gargery, Joe?” I asked him, with a modest patronage.

“I don’t spell it at all,” said Joe.

“But supposing you did?”

“It _can’t_ be supposed,” said Joe. “Tho’ I’m uncommon fond of reading,

too.”

“Are you, Joe?”

“On-common. Give me,” said Joe, “a good book, or a good newspaper, and

sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord!” he

continued, after rubbing his knees a little, “when you _do_ come to a J

and a O, and says you, ‘Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,’ how interesting

reading is!”

I derived from this, that Joe’s education, like Steam, was yet in its

infancy. Pursuing the subject, I inquired,—

“Didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?”

“No, Pip.”

“Why didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?”

“Well, Pip,” said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling himself to his

usual occupation when he was thoughtful, of slowly raking the fire

between the lower bars; “I’ll tell you. My father, Pip, he were given

to drink, and when he were overtook with drink, he hammered away at my

mother, most onmerciful. It were a’most the only hammering he did,

indeed, ’xcepting at myself. And he hammered at me with a wigor only to

be equalled by the wigor with which he didn’t hammer at his

anwil.—You’re a listening and understanding, Pip?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“Consequence, my mother and me we ran away from my father several

times; and then my mother she’d go out to work, and she’d say, “Joe,”

she’d say, “now, please God, you shall have some schooling, child,” and

she’d put me to school. But my father were that good in his hart that

he couldn’t abear to be without us. So, he’d come with a most

tremenjous crowd and make such a row at the doors of the houses where

we was, that they used to be obligated to have no more to do with us

and to give us up to him. And then he took us home and hammered us.

Which, you see, Pip,” said Joe, pausing in his meditative raking of the

fire, and looking at me, “were a drawback on my learning.”

“Certainly, poor Joe!”

“Though mind you, Pip,” said Joe, with a judicial touch or two of the

poker on the top bar, “rendering unto all their doo, and maintaining

equal justice betwixt man and man, my father were that good in his

hart, don’t you see?”

I didn’t see; but I didn’t say so.

“Well!” Joe pursued, “somebody must keep the pot a-biling, Pip, or the

pot won’t bile, don’t you know?”

I saw that, and said so.

“Consequence, my father didn’t make objections to my going to work; so

I went to work at my present calling, which were his too, if he would

have followed it, and I worked tolerable hard, I assure _you_, Pip. In

time I were able to keep him, and I kep him till he went off in a

purple leptic fit. And it were my intentions to have had put upon his

tombstone that, Whatsume’er the failings on his part, Remember reader

he were that good in his heart.”

Joe recited this couplet with such manifest pride and careful

perspicuity, that I asked him if he had made it himself.

“I made it,” said Joe, “my own self. I made it in a moment. It was like

striking out a horseshoe complete, in a single blow. I never was so

much surprised in all my life,—couldn’t credit my own ed,—to tell you

the truth, hardly believed it _were_ my own ed. As I was saying, Pip,

it were my intentions to have had it cut over him; but poetry costs

money, cut it how you will, small or large, and it were not done. Not

to mention bearers, all the money that could be spared were wanted for

my mother. She were in poor elth, and quite broke. She weren’t long of

following, poor soul, and her share of peace come round at last.”

Joe’s blue eyes turned a little watery; he rubbed first one of them,

and then the other, in a most uncongenial and uncomfortable manner,

with the round knob on the top of the poker.

“It were but lonesome then,” said Joe, “living here alone, and I got

acquainted with your sister. Now, Pip,”—Joe looked firmly at me as if

he knew I was not going to agree with him;—“your sister is a fine

figure of a woman.”

I could not help looking at the fire, in an obvious state of doubt.

“Whatever family opinions, or whatever the world’s opinions, on that

subject may be, Pip, your sister is,” Joe tapped the top bar with the

poker after every word following, “a-fine-figure—of—a—woman!”

I could think of nothing better to say than “I am glad you think so,

Joe.”

“So am I,” returned Joe, catching me up. “_I_ am glad I think so, Pip.

A little redness or a little matter of Bone, here or there, what does

it signify to Me?”

I sagaciously observed, if it didn’t signify to him, to whom did it

signify?

“Certainly!” assented Joe. “That’s it. You’re right, old chap! When I

got acquainted with your sister, it were the talk how she was bringing

you up by hand. Very kind of her too, all the folks said, and I said,

along with all the folks. As to you,” Joe pursued with a countenance

expressive of seeing something very nasty indeed, “if you could have

been aware how small and flabby and mean you was, dear me, you’d have

formed the most contemptible opinion of yourself!”

Not exactly relishing this, I said, “Never mind me, Joe.”

“But I did mind you, Pip,” he returned with tender simplicity. “When I

offered to your sister to keep company, and to be asked in church at

such times as she was willing and ready to come to the forge, I said to

her, ‘And bring the poor little child. God bless the poor little

child,’ I said to your sister, ‘there’s room for _him_ at the forge!’”

I broke out crying and begging pardon, and hugged Joe round the neck:

who dropped the poker to hug me, and to say, “Ever the best of friends;

an’t us, Pip? Don’t cry, old chap!”

When this little interruption was over, Joe resumed:—

“Well, you see, Pip, and here we are! That’s about where it lights;

here we are! Now, when you take me in hand in my learning, Pip (and I

tell you beforehand I am awful dull, most awful dull), Mrs. Joe mustn’t

see too much of what we’re up to. It must be done, as I may say, on the

sly. And why on the sly? I’ll tell you why, Pip.”

He had taken up the poker again; without which, I doubt if he could

have proceeded in his demonstration.

“Your sister is given to government.”

“Given to government, Joe?” I was startled, for I had some shadowy idea

(and I am afraid I must add, hope) that Joe had divorced her in a

favour of the Lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury.

“Given to government,” said Joe. “Which I meantersay the government of

you and myself.”

“Oh!”

“And she an’t over partial to having scholars on the premises,” Joe

continued, “and in partickler would not be over partial to my being a

scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort of rebel, don’t you

see?”

I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far as “Why—”

when Joe stopped me.

“Stay a bit. I know what you’re a-going to say, Pip; stay a bit! I

don’t deny that your sister comes the Mo-gul over us, now and again. I

don’t deny that she do throw us back-falls, and that she do drop down

upon us heavy. At such times as when your sister is on the Ram-page,

Pip,” Joe sank his voice to a whisper and glanced at the door, “candour

compels fur to admit that she is a Buster.”

Joe pronounced this word, as if it began with at least twelve capital

Bs.

“Why don’t I rise? That were your observation when I broke it off,

Pip?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“Well,” said Joe, passing the poker into his left hand, that he might

feel his whisker; and I had no hope of him whenever he took to that

placid occupation; “your sister’s a master-mind. A master-mind.”

“What’s that?” I asked, in some hope of bringing him to a stand. But

Joe was readier with his definition than I had expected, and completely

stopped me by arguing circularly, and answering with a fixed look,

“Her.”

“And I ain’t a master-mind,” Joe resumed, when he had unfixed his look,

and got back to his whisker. “And last of all, Pip,—and this I want to

say very serious to you, old chap,—I see so much in my poor mother, of

a woman drudging and slaving and breaking her honest hart and never

getting no peace in her mortal days, that I’m dead afeerd of going

wrong in the way of not doing what’s right by a woman, and I’d fur

rather of the two go wrong the t’other way, and be a little

ill-conwenienced myself. I wish it was only me that got put out, Pip; I

wish there warn’t no Tickler for you, old chap; I wish I could take it

all on myself; but this is the up-and-down-and-straight on it, Pip, and

I hope you’ll overlook shortcomings.”

Young as I was, I believe that I dated a new admiration of Joe from

that night. We were equals afterwards, as we had been before; but,

afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and thinking about

him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up

to Joe in my heart.

“However,” said Joe, rising to replenish the fire; “here’s the

Dutch-clock a-working himself up to being equal to strike Eight of ’em,

and she’s not come home yet! I hope Uncle Pumblechook’s mare mayn’t

have set a forefoot on a piece o’ ice, and gone down.”

Mrs. Joe made occasional trips with Uncle Pumblechook on market-days,

to assist him in buying such household stuffs and goods as required a

woman’s judgment; Uncle Pumblechook being a bachelor and reposing no

confidences in his domestic servant. This was market-day, and Mrs. Joe

was out on one of these expeditions.

Joe made the fire and swept the hearth, and then we went to the door to

listen for the chaise-cart. It was a dry cold night, and the wind blew

keenly, and the frost was white and hard. A man would die to-night of

lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars,

and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to

them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the

glittering multitude.

“Here comes the mare,” said Joe, “ringing like a peal of bells!”

The sound of her iron shoes upon the hard road was quite musical, as

she came along at a much brisker trot than usual. We got a chair out,

ready for Mrs. Joe’s alighting, and stirred up the fire that they might

see a bright window, and took a final survey of the kitchen that

nothing might be out of its place. When we had completed these

preparations, they drove up, wrapped to the eyes. Mrs. Joe was soon

landed, and Uncle Pumblechook was soon down too, covering the mare with

a cloth, and we were soon all in the kitchen, carrying so much cold air

in with us that it seemed to drive all the heat out of the fire.

“Now,” said Mrs. Joe, unwrapping herself with haste and excitement, and

throwing her bonnet back on her shoulders where it hung by the strings,

“if this boy ain’t grateful this night, he never will be!”

I looked as grateful as any boy possibly could, who was wholly

uninformed why he ought to assume that expression.

“It’s only to be hoped,” said my sister, “that he won’t be Pompeyed.

But I have my fears.”

“She ain’t in that line, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “She knows

better.”

She? I looked at Joe, making the motion with my lips and eyebrows,

“She?” Joe looked at me, making the motion with _his_ lips and

eyebrows, “She?” My sister catching him in the act, he drew the back of

his hand across his nose with his usual conciliatory air on such

occasions, and looked at her.

“Well?” said my sister, in her snappish way. “What are you staring at?

Is the house afire?”

“—Which some individual,” Joe politely hinted, “mentioned—she.”

“And she is a she, I suppose?” said my sister. “Unless you call Miss

Havisham a he. And I doubt if even you’ll go so far as that.”

“Miss Havisham, up town?” said Joe.

“Is there any Miss Havisham down town?” returned my sister.

“She wants this boy to go and play there. And of course he’s going. And

he had better play there,” said my sister, shaking her head at me as an

encouragement to be extremely light and sportive, “or I’ll work him.”

I had heard of Miss Havisham up town,—everybody for miles round had

heard of Miss Havisham up town,—as an immensely rich and grim lady who

lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who

led a life of seclusion.

“Well to be sure!” said Joe, astounded. “I wonder how she come to know

Pip!”

“Noodle!” cried my sister. “Who said she knew him?”

“—Which some individual,” Joe again politely hinted, “mentioned that

she wanted him to go and play there.”

“And couldn’t she ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go and

play there? Isn’t it just barely possible that Uncle Pumblechook may be

a tenant of hers, and that he may sometimes—we won’t say quarterly or

half-yearly, for that would be requiring too much of you—but

sometimes—go there to pay his rent? And couldn’t she then ask Uncle

Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go and play there? And couldn’t

Uncle Pumblechook, being always considerate and thoughtful for

us—though you may not think it, Joseph,” in a tone of the deepest

reproach, as if he were the most callous of nephews, “then mention this

boy, standing Prancing here”—which I solemnly declare I was not

doing—“that I have for ever been a willing slave to?”

“Good again!” cried Uncle Pumblechook. “Well put! Prettily pointed!

Good indeed! Now Joseph, you know the case.”

“No, Joseph,” said my sister, still in a reproachful manner, while Joe

apologetically drew the back of his hand across and across his nose,

“you do not yet—though you may not think it—know the case. You may

consider that you do, but you do _not_, Joseph. For you do not know

that Uncle Pumblechook, being sensible that for anything we can tell,

this boy’s fortune may be made by his going to Miss Havisham’s, has

offered to take him into town to-night in his own chaise-cart, and to

keep him to-night, and to take him with his own hands to Miss

Havisham’s to-morrow morning. And Lor-a-mussy me!” cried my sister,

casting off her bonnet in sudden desperation, “here I stand talking to

mere Mooncalfs, with Uncle Pumblechook waiting, and the mare catching

cold at the door, and the boy grimed with crock and dirt from the hair

of his head to the sole of his foot!”

With that, she pounced upon me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my face

was squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put under taps

of water-butts, and I was soaped, and kneaded, and towelled, and

thumped, and harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite beside

myself. (I may here remark that I suppose myself to be better

acquainted than any living authority, with the ridgy effect of a

wedding-ring, passing unsympathetically over the human countenance.)

When my ablutions were completed, I was put into clean linen of the

stiffest character, like a young penitent into sackcloth, and was

trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. I was then delivered

over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as if he were the

Sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that I knew he had been

dying to make all along: “Boy, be forever grateful to all friends, but

especially unto them which brought you up by hand!”

“Good-bye, Joe!”

“God bless you, Pip, old chap!”

I had never parted from him before, and what with my feelings and what

with soapsuds, I could at first see no stars from the chaise-cart. But

they twinkled out one by one, without throwing any light on the

questions why on earth I was going to play at Miss Havisham’s, and what

on earth I was expected to play at.

Chapter VIII.

Mr. Pumblechook’s premises in the High Street of the market town, were

of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of a

cornchandler and seedsman should be. It appeared to me that he must be

a very happy man indeed, to have so many little drawers in his shop;

and I wondered when I peeped into one or two on the lower tiers, and

saw the tied-up brown paper packets inside, whether the flower-seeds

and bulbs ever wanted of a fine day to break out of those jails, and

bloom.

It was in the early morning after my arrival that I entertained this

speculation. On the previous night, I had been sent straight to bed in

an attic with a sloping roof, which was so low in the corner where the

bedstead was, that I calculated the tiles as being within a foot of my

eyebrows. In the same early morning, I discovered a singular affinity

between seeds and corduroys. Mr. Pumblechook wore corduroys, and so did

his shopman; and somehow, there was a general air and flavour about the

corduroys, so much in the nature of seeds, and a general air and

flavour about the seeds, so much in the nature of corduroys, that I

hardly knew which was which. The same opportunity served me for

noticing that Mr. Pumblechook appeared to conduct his business by

looking across the street at the saddler, who appeared to transact

_his_ business by keeping his eye on the coachmaker, who appeared to

get on in life by putting his hands in his pockets and contemplating

the baker, who in his turn folded his arms and stared at the grocer,

who stood at his door and yawned at the chemist. The watchmaker, always

poring over a little desk with a magnifying-glass at his eye, and

always inspected by a group of smock-frocks poring over him through the

glass of his shop-window, seemed to be about the only person in the

High Street whose trade engaged his attention.

Mr. Pumblechook and I breakfasted at eight o’clock in the parlour

behind the shop, while the shopman took his mug of tea and hunch of

bread and butter on a sack of peas in the front premises. I considered

Mr. Pumblechook wretched company. Besides being possessed by my

sister’s idea that a mortifying and penitential character ought to be

imparted to my diet,—besides giving me as much crumb as possible in

combination with as little butter, and putting such a quantity of warm

water into my milk that it would have been more candid to have left the

milk out altogether,—his conversation consisted of nothing but

arithmetic. On my politely bidding him Good-morning, he said,

pompously, “Seven times nine, boy?” And how should _I_ be able to

answer, dodged in that way, in a strange place, on an empty stomach! I

was hungry, but before I had swallowed a morsel, he began a running sum

that lasted all through the breakfast. “Seven?” “And four?” “And

eight?” “And six?” “And two?” “And ten?” And so on. And after each

figure was disposed of, it was as much as I could do to get a bite or a

sup, before the next came; while he sat at his ease guessing nothing,

and eating bacon and hot roll, in (if I may be allowed the expression)

a gorging and gormandizing manner.

For such reasons, I was very glad when ten o’clock came and we started

for Miss Havisham’s; though I was not at all at my ease regarding the

manner in which I should acquit myself under that lady’s roof. Within a

quarter of an hour we came to Miss Havisham’s house, which was of old

brick, and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. Some of the

windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were

rustily barred. There was a courtyard in front, and that was barred; so

we had to wait, after ringing the bell, until some one should come to

open it. While we waited at the gate, I peeped in (even then Mr.

Pumblechook said, “And fourteen?” but I pretended not to hear him), and

saw that at the side of the house there was a large brewery. No brewing

was going on in it, and none seemed to have gone on for a long long

time.

A window was raised, and a clear voice demanded “What name?” To which

my conductor replied, “Pumblechook.” The voice returned, “Quite right,”

and the window was shut again, and a young lady came across the

court-yard, with keys in her hand.

“This,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “is Pip.”

“This is Pip, is it?” returned the young lady, who was very pretty and

seemed very proud; “come in, Pip.”

Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped him with the gate.

“Oh!” she said. “Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?”

“If Miss Havisham wished to see me,” returned Mr. Pumblechook,

discomfited.

“Ah!” said the girl; “but you see she don’t.”

She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way, that Mr.

Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled dignity, could not

protest. But he eyed me severely,—as if _I_ had done anything to

him!—and departed with the words reproachfully delivered: “Boy! Let

your behaviour here be a credit unto them which brought you up by

hand!” I was not free from apprehension that he would come back to

propound through the gate, “And sixteen?” But he didn’t.

My young conductress locked the gate, and we went across the courtyard.

It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in every crevice. The

brewery buildings had a little lane of communication with it, and the

wooden gates of that lane stood open, and all the brewery beyond stood

open, away to the high enclosing wall; and all was empty and disused.

The cold wind seemed to blow colder there than outside the gate; and it

made a shrill noise in howling in and out at the open sides of the

brewery, like the noise of wind in the rigging of a ship at sea.

She saw me looking at it, and she said, “You could drink without hurt

all the strong beer that’s brewed there now, boy.”

“I should think I could, miss,” said I, in a shy way.

“Better not try to brew beer there now, or it would turn out sour, boy;

don’t you think so?”

“It looks like it, miss.”

“Not that anybody means to try,” she added, “for that’s all done with,

and the place will stand as idle as it is till it falls. As to strong

beer, there’s enough of it in the cellars already, to drown the Manor

House.”

[Illustration]

“Is that the name of this house, miss?”

“One of its names, boy.”

“It has more than one, then, miss?”

“One more. Its other name was Satis; which is Greek, or Latin, or

Hebrew, or all three—or all one to me—for enough.”

“Enough House,” said I; “that’s a curious name, miss.”

“Yes,” she replied; “but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it

was given, that whoever had this house could want nothing else. They

must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should think. But

don’t loiter, boy.”

Though she called me “boy” so often, and with a carelessness that was

far from complimentary, she was of about my own age. She seemed much

older than I, of course, being a girl, and beautiful and

self-possessed; and she was as scornful of me as if she had been

one-and-twenty, and a queen.

We went into the house by a side door, the great front entrance had two

chains across it outside,—and the first thing I noticed was, that the

passages were all dark, and that she had left a candle burning there.

She took it up, and we went through more passages and up a staircase,

and still it was all dark, and only the candle lighted us.

At last we came to the door of a room, and she said, “Go in.”

I answered, more in shyness than politeness, “After you, miss.”

To this she returned: “Don’t be ridiculous, boy; I am not going in.”

And scornfully walked away, and—what was worse—took the candle with

her.

This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid. However, the only

thing to be done being to knock at the door, I knocked, and was told

from within to enter. I entered, therefore, and found myself in a

pretty large room, well lighted with wax candles. No glimpse of

daylight was to be seen in it. It was a dressing-room, as I supposed

from the furniture, though much of it was of forms and uses then quite

unknown to me. But prominent in it was a draped table with a gilded

looking-glass, and that I made out at first sight to be a fine lady’s

dressing-table.

Whether I should have made out this object so soon if there had been no

fine lady sitting at it, I cannot say. In an arm-chair, with an elbow

resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the

strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see.

She was dressed in rich materials,—satins, and lace, and silks,—all of

white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent

from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was

white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and

some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid

than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about.

She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on,—the

other was on the table near her hand,—her veil was but half arranged,

her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay

with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and some

flowers, and a Prayer-Book all confusedly heaped about the

looking-glass.

It was not in the first few moments that I saw all these things, though

I saw more of them in the first moments than might be supposed. But I

saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been

white long ago, and had lost its lustre and was faded and yellow. I saw

that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and

like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her

sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure

of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose had

shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly

waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage

lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches

to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress that had been dug out of

a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to

have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if

I could.

“Who is it?” said the lady at the table.

“Pip, ma’am.”

“Pip?”

“Mr. Pumblechook’s boy, ma’am. Come—to play.”

“Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close.”

It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took note of

the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped

at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at

twenty minutes to nine.

“Look at me,” said Miss Havisham. “You are not afraid of a woman who

has never seen the sun since you were born?”

I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie

comprehended in the answer “No.”

“Do you know what I touch here?” she said, laying her hands, one upon

the other, on her left side.

“Yes, ma’am.” (It made me think of the young man.)

“What do I touch?”

“Your heart.”

“Broken!”

She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, and

with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. Afterwards she kept

her hands there for a little while, and slowly took them away as if

they were heavy.

“I am tired,” said Miss Havisham. “I want diversion, and I have done

with men and women. Play.”

I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious reader, that she

could hardly have directed an unfortunate boy to do anything in the

wide world more difficult to be done under the circumstances.

“I sometimes have sick fancies,” she went on, “and I have a sick fancy

that I want to see some play. There, there!” with an impatient movement

of the fingers of her right hand; “play, play, play!”

For a moment, with the fear of my sister’s working me before my eyes, I

had a desperate idea of starting round the room in the assumed

character of Mr. Pumblechook’s chaise-cart. But I felt myself so

unequal to the performance that I gave it up, and stood looking at Miss

Havisham in what I suppose she took for a dogged manner, inasmuch as

she said, when we had taken a good look at each other,—

“Are you sullen and obstinate?”

“No, ma’am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can’t play just

now. If you complain of me I shall get into trouble with my sister, so

I would do it if I could; but it’s so new here, and so strange, and so

fine,—and melancholy—.” I stopped, fearing I might say too much, or had

already said it, and we took another look at each other.

Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes from me, and looked at the

dress she wore, and at the dressing-table, and finally at herself in

the looking-glass.

“So new to him,” she muttered, “so old to me; so strange to him, so

familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us! Call Estella.”

As she was still looking at the reflection of herself, I thought she

was still talking to herself, and kept quiet.

“Call Estella,” she repeated, flashing a look at me. “You can do that.

Call Estella. At the door.”

To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an unknown house,

bawling Estella to a scornful young lady neither visible nor

responsive, and feeling it a dreadful liberty so to roar out her name,

was almost as bad as playing to order. But she answered at last, and

her light came along the dark passage like a star.

Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close, and took up a jewel from the

table, and tried its effect upon her fair young bosom and against her

pretty brown hair. “Your own, one day, my dear, and you will use it

well. Let me see you play cards with this boy.”

“With this boy? Why, he is a common labouring-boy!”

I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer,—only it seemed so

unlikely,—“Well? You can break his heart.”

“What do you play, boy?” asked Estella of myself, with the greatest

disdain.

“Nothing but beggar my neighbour, miss.”

“Beggar him,” said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.

It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had

stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that

Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had

taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the

dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now

yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the

shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now

yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything,

this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the

withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like

grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.

So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frillings and

trimmings on her bridal dress, looking like earthy paper. I knew

nothing then of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies

buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of being

distinctly seen; but, I have often thought since, that she must have

looked as if the admission of the natural light of day would have

struck her to dust.

“He calls the knaves Jacks, this boy!” said Estella with disdain,

before our first game was out. “And what coarse hands he has! And what

thick boots!”

I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to

consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so

strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural, when I

knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she denounced me for

a stupid, clumsy labouring-boy.

“You say nothing of her,” remarked Miss Havisham to me, as she looked

on. “She says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her. What

do you think of her?”

“I don’t like to say,” I stammered.

“Tell me in my ear,” said Miss Havisham, bending down.

“I think she is very proud,” I replied, in a whisper.

“Anything else?”

“I think she is very pretty.”

“Anything else?”

“I think she is very insulting.” (She was looking at me then with a

look of supreme aversion.)

“Anything else?”

“I think I should like to go home.”

“And never see her again, though she is so pretty?”

“I am not sure that I shouldn’t like to see her again, but I should

like to go home now.”

“You shall go soon,” said Miss Havisham, aloud. “Play the game out.”

Saving for the one weird smile at first, I should have felt almost sure

that Miss Havisham’s face could not smile. It had dropped into a

watchful and brooding expression,—most likely when all the things about

her had become transfixed,—and it looked as if nothing could ever lift

it up again. Her chest had dropped, so that she stooped; and her voice

had dropped, so that she spoke low, and with a dead lull upon her;

altogether, she had the appearance of having dropped body and soul,

within and without, under the weight of a crushing blow.

I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me. She

threw the cards down on the table when she had won them all, as if she

despised them for having been won of me.

“When shall I have you here again?” said Miss Havisham. “Let me think.”

I was beginning to remind her that to-day was Wednesday, when she

checked me with her former impatient movement of the fingers of her

right hand.

“There, there! I know nothing of days of the week; I know nothing of

weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat, and let him

roam and look about him while he eats. Go, Pip.”

I followed the candle down, as I had followed the candle up, and she

stood it in the place where we had found it. Until she opened the side

entrance, I had fancied, without thinking about it, that it must

necessarily be night-time. The rush of the daylight quite confounded

me, and made me feel as if I had been in the candlelight of the strange

room many hours.

“You are to wait here, you boy,” said Estella; and disappeared and

closed the door.

I took the opportunity of being alone in the courtyard to look at my

coarse hands and my common boots. My opinion of those accessories was

not favourable. They had never troubled me before, but they troubled me

now, as vulgar appendages. I determined to ask Joe why he had ever

taught me to call those picture-cards Jacks, which ought to be called

knaves. I wished Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up, and

then I should have been so too.

She came back, with some bread and meat and a little mug of beer. She

put the mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave me the bread and

meat without looking at me, as insolently as if I were a dog in

disgrace. I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry,—I

cannot hit upon the right name for the smart—God knows what its name

was,—that tears started to my eyes. The moment they sprang there, the

girl looked at me with a quick delight in having been the cause of

them. This gave me power to keep them back and to look at her: so, she

gave a contemptuous toss—but with a sense, I thought, of having made

too sure that I was so wounded—and left me.

But when she was gone, I looked about me for a place to hide my face

in, and got behind one of the gates in the brewery-lane, and leaned my

sleeve against the wall there, and leaned my forehead on it and cried.

As I cried, I kicked the wall, and took a hard twist at my hair; so

bitter were my feelings, and so sharp was the smart without a name,

that needed counteraction.

My sister’s bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in

which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is

nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. It may be

only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is

small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many

hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within

myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with

injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my

sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had

cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand gave

her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments,

disgraces, fasts, and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had

nursed this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a

solitary and unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was

morally timid and very sensitive.

I got rid of my injured feelings for the time by kicking them into the

brewery wall, and twisting them out of my hair, and then I smoothed my

face with my sleeve, and came from behind the gate. The bread and meat

were acceptable, and the beer was warming and tingling, and I was soon

in spirits to look about me.

To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the pigeon-house in the

brewery-yard, which had been blown crooked on its pole by some high

wind, and would have made the pigeons think themselves at sea, if there

had been any pigeons there to be rocked by it. But there were no

pigeons in the dove-cot, no horses in the stable, no pigs in the sty,

no malt in the storehouse, no smells of grains and beer in the copper

or the vat. All the uses and scents of the brewery might have

evaporated with its last reek of smoke. In a by-yard, there was a

wilderness of empty casks, which had a certain sour remembrance of

better days lingering about them; but it was too sour to be accepted as

a sample of the beer that was gone,—and in this respect I remember

those recluses as being like most others.

Behind the furthest end of the brewery, was a rank garden with an old

wall; not so high but that I could struggle up and hold on long enough

to look over it, and see that the rank garden was the garden of the

house, and that it was overgrown with tangled weeds, but that there was

a track upon the green and yellow paths, as if some one sometimes

walked there, and that Estella was walking away from me even then. But

she seemed to be everywhere. For when I yielded to the temptation

presented by the casks, and began to walk on them, I saw _her_ walking

on them at the end of the yard of casks. She had her back towards me,

and held her pretty brown hair spread out in her two hands, and never

looked round, and passed out of my view directly. So, in the brewery

itself,—by which I mean the large paved lofty place in which they used

to make the beer, and where the brewing utensils still were. When I

first went into it, and, rather oppressed by its gloom, stood near the

door looking about me, I saw her pass among the extinguished fires, and

ascend some light iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high overhead,

as if she were going out into the sky.

It was in this place, and at this moment, that a strange thing happened

to my fancy. I thought it a strange thing then, and I thought it a

stranger thing long afterwards. I turned my eyes—a little dimmed by

looking up at the frosty light—towards a great wooden beam in a low

nook of the building near me on my right hand, and I saw a figure

hanging there by the neck. A figure all in yellow white, with but one

shoe to the feet; and it hung so, that I could see that the faded

trimmings of the dress were like earthy paper, and that the face was

Miss Havisham’s, with a movement going over the whole countenance as if

she were trying to call to me. In the terror of seeing the figure, and

in the terror of being certain that it had not been there a moment

before, I at first ran from it, and then ran towards it. And my terror

was greatest of all when I found no figure there.

Nothing less than the frosty light of the cheerful sky, the sight of

people passing beyond the bars of the court-yard gate, and the reviving

influence of the rest of the bread and meat and beer, would have

brought me round. Even with those aids, I might not have come to myself

as soon as I did, but that I saw Estella approaching with the keys, to

let me out. She would have some fair reason for looking down upon me, I

thought, if she saw me frightened; and she would have no fair reason.

She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me, as if she rejoiced that

my hands were so coarse and my boots were so thick, and she opened the

gate, and stood holding it. I was passing out without looking at her,

when she touched me with a taunting hand.

“Why don’t you cry?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“You do,” said she. “You have been crying till you are half blind, and

you are near crying again now.”

She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and locked the gate upon me.

I went straight to Mr. Pumblechook’s, and was immensely relieved to

find him not at home. So, leaving word with the shopman on what day I

was wanted at Miss Havisham’s again, I set off on the four-mile walk to

our forge; pondering, as I went along, on all I had seen, and deeply

revolving that I was a common labouring-boy; that my hands were coarse;

that my boots were thick; that I had fallen into a despicable habit of

calling knaves Jacks; that I was much more ignorant than I had

considered myself last night, and generally that I was in a low-lived

bad way.

Chapter IX.

When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all about Miss

Havisham’s, and asked a number of questions. And I soon found myself

getting heavily bumped from behind in the nape of the neck and the

small of the back, and having my face ignominiously shoved against the

kitchen wall, because I did not answer those questions at sufficient

length.

If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of other

young people to anything like the extent to which it used to be hidden

in mine,—which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason to

suspect myself of having been a monstrosity,—it is the key to many

reservations. I felt convinced that if I described Miss Havisham’s as

my eyes had seen it, I should not be understood. Not only that, but I

felt convinced that Miss Havisham too would not be understood; and

although she was perfectly incomprehensible to me, I entertained an

impression that there would be something coarse and treacherous in my

dragging her as she really was (to say nothing of Miss Estella) before

the contemplation of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I

could, and had my face shoved against the kitchen wall.

The worst of it was that that bullying old Pumblechook, preyed upon by

a devouring curiosity to be informed of all I had seen and heard, came

gaping over in his chaise-cart at tea-time, to have the details

divulged to him. And the mere sight of the torment, with his fishy eyes

and mouth open, his sandy hair inquisitively on end, and his waistcoat

heaving with windy arithmetic, made me vicious in my reticence.

“Well, boy,” Uncle Pumblechook began, as soon as he was seated in the

chair of honour by the fire. “How did you get on up town?”

I answered, “Pretty well, sir,” and my sister shook her fist at me.

“Pretty well?” Mr. Pumblechook repeated. “Pretty well is no answer.

Tell us what you mean by pretty well, boy?”

Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy

perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on my forehead, my

obstinacy was adamantine. I reflected for some time, and then answered

as if I had discovered a new idea, “I mean pretty well.”

My sister with an exclamation of impatience was going to fly at me,—I

had no shadow of defence, for Joe was busy in the forge,—when Mr.

Pumblechook interposed with “No! Don’t lose your temper. Leave this lad

to me, ma’am; leave this lad to me.” Mr. Pumblechook then turned me

towards him, as if he were going to cut my hair, and said,—

“First (to get our thoughts in order): Forty-three pence?”

I calculated the consequences of replying “Four Hundred Pound,” and

finding them against me, went as near the answer as I could—which was

somewhere about eightpence off. Mr. Pumblechook then put me through my

pence-table from “twelve pence make one shilling,” up to “forty pence

make three and fourpence,” and then triumphantly demanded, as if he had

done for me, “_Now!_ How much is forty-three pence?” To which I

replied, after a long interval of reflection, “I don’t know.” And I was

so aggravated that I almost doubt if I did know.

Mr. Pumblechook worked his head like a screw to screw it out of me, and

said, “Is forty-three pence seven and sixpence three fardens, for

instance?”

“Yes!” said I. And although my sister instantly boxed my ears, it was

highly gratifying to me to see that the answer spoilt his joke, and

brought him to a dead stop.

“Boy! What like is Miss Havisham?” Mr. Pumblechook began again when he

had recovered; folding his arms tight on his chest and applying the

screw.

“Very tall and dark,” I told him.

“Is she, uncle?” asked my sister.

Mr. Pumblechook winked assent; from which I at once inferred that he

had never seen Miss Havisham, for she was nothing of the kind.

“Good!” said Mr. Pumblechook conceitedly. (“This is the way to have

him! We are beginning to hold our own, I think, Mum?”)

“I am sure, uncle,” returned Mrs. Joe, “I wish you had him always; you

know so well how to deal with him.”

“Now, boy! What was she a-doing of, when you went in today?” asked Mr.

Pumblechook.

“She was sitting,” I answered, “in a black velvet coach.”

Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another—as they well

might—and both repeated, “In a black velvet coach?”

“Yes,” said I. “And Miss Estella—that’s her niece, I think—handed her

in cake and wine at the coach-window, on a gold plate. And we all had

cake and wine on gold plates. And I got up behind the coach to eat

mine, because she told me to.”

“Was anybody else there?” asked Mr. Pumblechook.

“Four dogs,” said I.

“Large or small?”

“Immense,” said I. “And they fought for veal-cutlets out of a silver

basket.”

Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another again, in utter

amazement. I was perfectly frantic,—a reckless witness under the

torture,—and would have told them anything.

“Where _was_ this coach, in the name of gracious?” asked my sister.

“In Miss Havisham’s room.” They stared again. “But there weren’t any

horses to it.” I added this saving clause, in the moment of rejecting

four richly caparisoned coursers which I had had wild thoughts of

harnessing.

“Can this be possible, uncle?” asked Mrs. Joe. “What can the boy mean?”

“I’ll tell you, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “My opinion is, it’s a

sedan-chair. She’s flighty, you know,—very flighty,—quite flighty

enough to pass her days in a sedan-chair.”

“Did you ever see her in it, uncle?” asked Mrs. Joe.

“How could I,” he returned, forced to the admission, “when I never see

her in my life? Never clapped eyes upon her!”

“Goodness, uncle! And yet you have spoken to her?”

“Why, don’t you know,” said Mr. Pumblechook, testily, “that when I have

been there, I have been took up to the outside of her door, and the

door has stood ajar, and she has spoke to me that way. Don’t say you

don’t know _that_, Mum. Howsever, the boy went there to play. What did

you play at, boy?”

“We played with flags,” I said. (I beg to observe that I think of

myself with amazement, when I recall the lies I told on this occasion.)

“Flags!” echoed my sister.

“Yes,” said I. “Estella waved a blue flag, and I waved a red one, and

Miss Havisham waved one sprinkled all over with little gold stars, out

at the coach-window. And then we all waved our swords and hurrahed.”

“Swords!” repeated my sister. “Where did you get swords from?”

“Out of a cupboard,” said I. “And I saw pistols in it,—and jam,—and

pills. And there was no daylight in the room, but it was all lighted up

with candles.”

“That’s true, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook, with a grave nod. “That’s the

state of the case, for that much I’ve seen myself.” And then they both

stared at me, and I, with an obtrusive show of artlessness on my

countenance, stared at them, and plaited the right leg of my trousers

with my right hand.

If they had asked me any more questions, I should undoubtedly have

betrayed myself, for I was even then on the point of mentioning that

there was a balloon in the yard, and should have hazarded the statement

but for my invention being divided between that phenomenon and a bear

in the brewery. They were so much occupied, however, in discussing the

marvels I had already presented for their consideration, that I

escaped. The subject still held them when Joe came in from his work to

have a cup of tea. To whom my sister, more for the relief of her own

mind than for the gratification of his, related my pretended

experiences.

Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes and roll them all round the

kitchen in helpless amazement, I was overtaken by penitence; but only

as regarded him,—not in the least as regarded the other two. Towards

Joe, and Joe only, I considered myself a young monster, while they sat

debating what results would come to me from Miss Havisham’s

acquaintance and favour. They had no doubt that Miss Havisham would “do

something” for me; their doubts related to the form that something

would take. My sister stood out for “property.” Mr. Pumblechook was in

favour of a handsome premium for binding me apprentice to some genteel

trade,—say, the corn and seed trade, for instance. Joe fell into the

deepest disgrace with both, for offering the bright suggestion that I

might only be presented with one of the dogs who had fought for the

veal-cutlets. “If a fool’s head can’t express better opinions than

that,” said my sister, “and you have got any work to do, you had better

go and do it.” So he went.

After Mr. Pumblechook had driven off, and when my sister was washing

up, I stole into the forge to Joe, and remained by him until he had

done for the night. Then I said, “Before the fire goes out, Joe, I

should like to tell you something.”

“Should you, Pip?” said Joe, drawing his shoeing-stool near the forge.

“Then tell us. What is it, Pip?”

“Joe,” said I, taking hold of his rolled-up shirt sleeve, and twisting

it between my finger and thumb, “you remember all that about Miss

Havisham’s?”

“Remember?” said Joe. “I believe you! Wonderful!”

“It’s a terrible thing, Joe; it ain’t true.”

“What are you telling of, Pip?” cried Joe, falling back in the greatest

amazement. “You don’t mean to say it’s—”

“Yes I do; it’s lies, Joe.”

“But not all of it? Why sure you don’t mean to say, Pip, that there was

no black welwet co—eh?” For, I stood shaking my head. “But at least

there was dogs, Pip? Come, Pip,” said Joe, persuasively, “if there

warn’t no weal-cutlets, at least there was dogs?”

“No, Joe.”

“A dog?” said Joe. “A puppy? Come?”

“No, Joe, there was nothing at all of the kind.”

As I fixed my eyes hopelessly on Joe, Joe contemplated me in dismay.

“Pip, old chap! This won’t do, old fellow! I say! Where do you expect

to go to?”

“It’s terrible, Joe; ain’t it?”

“Terrible?” cried Joe. “Awful! What possessed you?”

“I don’t know what possessed me, Joe,” I replied, letting his shirt

sleeve go, and sitting down in the ashes at his feet, hanging my head;

“but I wish you hadn’t taught me to call Knaves at cards Jacks; and I

wish my boots weren’t so thick nor my hands so coarse.”

And then I told Joe that I felt very miserable, and that I hadn’t been

able to explain myself to Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, who were so rude to

me, and that there had been a beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham’s

who was dreadfully proud, and that she had said I was common, and that

I knew I was common, and that I wished I was not common, and that the

lies had come of it somehow, though I didn’t know how.

This was a case of metaphysics, at least as difficult for Joe to deal

with as for me. But Joe took the case altogether out of the region of

metaphysics, and by that means vanquished it.

“There’s one thing you may be sure of, Pip,” said Joe, after some

rumination, “namely, that lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn’t

ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to

the same. Don’t you tell no more of ’em, Pip. _That_ ain’t the way to

get out of being common, old chap. And as to being common, I don’t make

it out at all clear. You are oncommon in some things. You’re oncommon

small. Likewise you’re a oncommon scholar.”

“No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe.”

“Why, see what a letter you wrote last night! Wrote in print even! I’ve

seen letters—Ah! and from gentlefolks!—that I’ll swear weren’t wrote in

print,” said Joe.

“I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You think much of me. It’s only

that.”

“Well, Pip,” said Joe, “be it so or be it son’t, you must be a common

scholar afore you can be a oncommon one, I should hope! The king upon

his throne, with his crown upon his ed, can’t sit and write his acts of

Parliament in print, without having begun, when he were a unpromoted

Prince, with the alphabet.—Ah!” added Joe, with a shake of the head

that was full of meaning, “and begun at A too, and worked his way to Z.

And _I_ know what that is to do, though I can’t say I’ve exactly done

it.”

There was some hope in this piece of wisdom, and it rather encouraged

me.

“Whether common ones as to callings and earnings,” pursued Joe,

reflectively, “mightn’t be the better of continuing for to keep company

with common ones, instead of going out to play with oncommon

ones,—which reminds me to hope that there were a flag, perhaps?”

“No, Joe.”

“(I’m sorry there weren’t a flag, Pip). Whether that might be or

mightn’t be, is a thing as can’t be looked into now, without putting

your sister on the Rampage; and that’s a thing not to be thought of as

being done intentional. Lookee here, Pip, at what is said to you by a

true friend. Which this to you the true friend say. If you can’t get to

be oncommon through going straight, you’ll never get to do it through

going crooked. So don’t tell no more on ’em, Pip, and live well and die

happy.”

“You are not angry with me, Joe?”

“No, old chap. But bearing in mind that them were which I meantersay of

a stunning and outdacious sort,—alluding to them which bordered on

weal-cutlets and dog-fighting,—a sincere well-wisher would adwise, Pip,

their being dropped into your meditations, when you go upstairs to bed.

That’s all, old chap, and don’t never do it no more.”

When I got up to my little room and said my prayers, I did not forget

Joe’s recommendation, and yet my young mind was in that disturbed and

unthankful state, that I thought long after I laid me down, how common

Estella would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith; how thick his boots, and

how coarse his hands. I thought how Joe and my sister were then sitting

in the kitchen, and how I had come up to bed from the kitchen, and how

Miss Havisham and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far above

the level of such common doings. I fell asleep recalling what I “used

to do” when I was at Miss Havisham’s; as though I had been there weeks

or months, instead of hours; and as though it were quite an old subject

of remembrance, instead of one that had arisen only that day.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it

is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it,

and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read

this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of

thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the

formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Chapter X.

The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I woke,

that the best step I could take towards making myself uncommon was to

get out of Biddy everything she knew. In pursuance of this luminous

conception I mentioned to Biddy when I went to Mr. Wopsle’s

great-aunt’s at night, that I had a particular reason for wishing to

get on in life, and that I should feel very much obliged to her if she

would impart all her learning to me. Biddy, who was the most obliging

of girls, immediately said she would, and indeed began to carry out her

promise within five minutes.

The Educational scheme or Course established by Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt

may be resolved into the following synopsis. The pupils ate apples and

put straws down one another’s backs, until Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt

collected her energies, and made an indiscriminate totter at them with

a birch-rod. After receiving the charge with every mark of derision,

the pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand

to hand. The book had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a

little spelling,—that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this

volume began to circulate, Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt fell into a state of

coma, arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils

then entered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the

subject of Boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the

hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasted until Biddy made a

rush at them and distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped as if they

had been unskilfully cut off the chump end of something), more

illegibly printed at the best than any curiosities of literature I have

since met with, speckled all over with ironmould, and having various

specimens of the insect world smashed between their leaves. This part

of the Course was usually lightened by several single combats between

Biddy and refractory students. When the fights were over, Biddy gave

out the number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we could,—or

what we couldn’t—in a frightful chorus; Biddy leading with a high,

shrill, monotonous voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or

reverence for, what we were reading about. When this horrible din had

lasted a certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt,

who staggered at a boy fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was

understood to terminate the Course for the evening, and we emerged into

the air with shrieks of intellectual victory. It is fair to remark that

there was no prohibition against any pupil’s entertaining himself with

a slate or even with the ink (when there was any), but that it was not

easy to pursue that branch of study in the winter season, on account of

the little general shop in which the classes were holden—and which was

also Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s sitting-room and bedchamber—being but

faintly illuminated through the agency of one low-spirited dip-candle

and no snuffers.

It appeared to me that it would take time to become uncommon, under

these circumstances: nevertheless, I resolved to try it, and that very

evening Biddy entered on our special agreement, by imparting some

information from her little catalogue of Prices, under the head of

moist sugar, and lending me, to copy at home, a large old English D

which she had imitated from the heading of some newspaper, and which I

supposed, until she told me what it was, to be a design for a buckle.

Of course there was a public-house 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, that

evening, on my way from school, and bring him home at my peril. 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. They had been there ever since I could remember, and

had grown more than I had. But there was a quantity of chalk about our

country, and perhaps the people neglected no opportunity of turning it

to account.

It being Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather grimly 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, and made room on the settle beside him that I might sit

down there.

But as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered that place of

resort, I said “No, thank you, sir,” and fell into the space Joe made

for me on the opposite settle. The strange man, after glancing at Joe,

and seeing that his attention was otherwise engaged, nodded to me again

when I had taken my seat, and then rubbed his leg—in a very odd way, as

it struck me.

“You was saying,” said the strange man, turning to Joe, “that you was a

blacksmith.”

“Yes. I said it, you know,” said Joe.

“What’ll you drink, Mr.—? You didn’t mention your name, by the bye.”

Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him by it. “What’ll

you drink, Mr. Gargery? At my expense? To top up with?”

“Well,” said Joe, “to tell you the truth, I ain’t 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! Put a name to it, Mr. Gargery.”

“I wouldn’t wish to be stiff company,” said Joe. “Rum.”

“Rum,” repeated the stranger. “And will the other gentleman originate a

sentiment.”

“Rum,” said Mr. Wopsle.

“Three Rums!” cried the stranger, calling to the landlord. “Glasses

round!”

“This other gentleman,” observed Joe, by way of introducing Mr. Wopsle,

“is a gentleman that you would like to hear give it out. Our clerk at

church.”

“Aha!” said the stranger, quickly, and cocking his eye at me. “The

lonely church, right out on the marshes, with graves round it!”

“That’s it,” said Joe.

The stranger, with a comfortable kind of grunt over his pipe, put his

legs up on the settle that he had to himself. 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, or

vagrants of any sort, out there?”

“No,” said Joe; “none but a runaway convict now and then. And we don’t

find _them_, easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle?”

Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of old discomfiture, assented;

but not warmly.

“Seems you have been out after such?” asked the stranger.

“Once,” returned Joe. “Not that we wanted to take them, you understand;

we went out as lookers on; me, and Mr. Wopsle, and Pip. Didn’t us,

Pip?”

“Yes, Joe.”

The stranger looked at me again,—still cocking his eye, as if he were

expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gun,—and said, “He’s a

likely young parcel of bones that. What is it you call him?”

“Pip,” said Joe.

“Christened Pip?”

“No, not christened Pip.”

“Surname Pip?”

“No,” said Joe, “it’s a kind of family name what he gave himself when a

infant, and is called by.”

“Son of yours?”

“Well,” said Joe, meditatively, not, of course, that it could be in

anywise necessary to consider about it, but because it was the way at

the Jolly Bargemen to seem to consider deeply about everything that was

discussed over pipes,—“well—no. No, he ain’t.”

“Nevvy?” 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 nevvy.”

“What the Blue Blazes is he?” asked the stranger. Which appeared to me

to be an inquiry of unnecessary strength.

Mr. Wopsle struck in upon that; as one who knew all about

relationships, having professional occasion to bear in mind what female

relations a man might not marry; and expounded the ties between me and

Joe. Having his hand in, Mr. Wopsle finished off with a most

terrifically snarling passage from Richard the Third, and seemed to

think he had done quite enough to account for it when he added, “—as

the poet says.”

And here I may remark that when Mr. Wopsle referred to me, he

considered it a necessary part of such reference to rumple my hair and

poke it into my eyes. I cannot conceive why everybody of his standing

who visited at our house should always have put me through the same

inflammatory process under similar circumstances. Yet I do not call to

mind that I was ever in my earlier youth the subject of remark in our

social family circle, but some large-handed person took some such

ophthalmic steps to patronise me.

All this while, the strange man looked at nobody but me, and looked at

me as if he were determined to have a shot at me at last, and bring me

down. But he said nothing after offering his Blue Blazes observation,

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 a proceeding in dumb-show, and was

pointedly 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. But he now reclined on

his settle, taking very little notice of me, and talking principally

about turnips.

There was a delicious sense of cleaning-up and making a quiet pause

before going on in life afresh, in our village on Saturday nights,

which stimulated Joe to dare to stay out half an hour longer on

Saturdays than at other times. The half-hour and the rum and water

running out together, Joe got up to go, and took me by the hand.

“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 shall 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 far beyond the bounds of good manners,

and holding tight to Joe. 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,—no, not a look, for he shut it up, but wonders may

be done with an eye by hiding it.

On the way home, if I had been in a humour 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 was in a

manner stupefied by this turning up of my old misdeed and old

acquaintance, and could think of nothing else.

My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented ourselves in

the kitchen, and Joe was encouraged by that unusual circumstance to

tell her about the bright shilling. “A bad un, I’ll be bound,” said

Mrs. Joe triumphantly, “or he wouldn’t have given it to the boy! 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?”

Nothing less than two fat sweltering one-pound notes that seemed to

have been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all the cattle-markets

in the county. 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 vacantly 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 an ornamental teapot on the top of a press in

the state parlour. There they remained, a nightmare to me, many and

many a night and day.

I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking of the

strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of the

guiltily coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms of

conspiracy with convicts,—a feature in my low career that I had

previously forgotten. I was haunted by the file too. A dread possessed

me that when I least expected it, the file would reappear. I coaxed

myself to sleep by thinking of Miss Havisham’s, next Wednesday; and in

my sleep I saw the file coming at me out of a door, without seeing who

held it, and I screamed myself awake.

Chapter XI.

At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham’s, and my hesitating

ring at the gate brought out Estella. She locked it after admitting me,

as she had done before, and again preceded me into the dark passage

where her candle stood. She took no notice of me until she had the

candle in her hand, when she looked over her shoulder, superciliously

saying, “You are to come this way to-day,” and took me to quite another

part of the house.

The passage was a long one, and seemed to pervade the whole square

basement of the Manor House. We traversed but one side of the square,

however, and at the end of it she stopped, and put her candle down and

opened a door. Here, the daylight reappeared, and I found myself in a

small paved courtyard, the opposite side of which was formed by a

detached dwelling-house, that looked as if it had once belonged to the

manager or head clerk of the extinct brewery. There was a clock in the

outer wall of this house. Like the clock in Miss Havisham’s room, and

like Miss Havisham’s watch, it had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

We went in at the door, which stood open, and into a gloomy room with a

low ceiling, on the ground-floor at the back. There was some company in

the room, and Estella said to me as she joined it, “You are to go and

stand there boy, till you are wanted.” “There”, being the window, I

crossed to it, and stood “there,” in a very uncomfortable state of

mind, looking out.

It opened to the ground, and looked into a most miserable corner of the

neglected garden, upon a rank ruin of cabbage-stalks, and one box-tree

that had been clipped round long ago, like a pudding, and had a new

growth at the top of it, out of shape and of a different colour, as if

that part of the pudding had stuck to the saucepan and got burnt. This

was my homely thought, as I contemplated the box-tree. There had been

some light snow, overnight, and it lay nowhere else to my knowledge;

but, it had not quite melted from the cold shadow of this bit of

garden, and the wind caught it up in little eddies and threw it at the

window, as if it pelted me for coming there.

I divined that my coming had stopped conversation in the room, and that

its other occupants were looking at me. I could see nothing of the room

except the shining of the fire in the window-glass, but I stiffened in

all my joints with the consciousness that I was under close inspection.

There were three ladies in the room and one gentleman. Before I had

been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me

that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended

not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: because the

admission that he or she did know it, would have made him or her out to

be a toady and humbug.

They all had a listless and dreary air of waiting somebody’s pleasure,

and the most talkative of the ladies had to speak quite rigidly to

repress a yawn. This lady, whose name was Camilla, very much reminded

me of my sister, with the difference that she was older, and (as I

found when I caught sight of her) of a blunter cast of features.

Indeed, when I knew her better I began to think it was a Mercy she had

any features at all, so very blank and high was the dead wall of her

face.

“Poor dear soul!” said this lady, with an abruptness of manner quite my

sister’s. “Nobody’s enemy but his own!”

“It would be much more commendable to be somebody else’s enemy,” said

the gentleman; “far more natural.”

“Cousin Raymond,” observed another lady, “we are to love our

neighbour.”

“Sarah Pocket,” returned Cousin Raymond, “if a man is not his own

neighbour, who is?”

Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed and said (checking a yawn),

“The idea!” But I thought they seemed to think it rather a good idea

too. The other lady, who had not spoken yet, said gravely and

emphatically, “_Very_ true!”

“Poor soul!” Camilla presently went on (I knew they had all been

looking at me in the mean time), “he is so very strange! Would anyone

believe that when Tom’s wife died, he actually could not be induced to

see the importance of the children’s having the deepest of trimmings to

their mourning? ‘Good Lord!’ says he, ‘Camilla, what can it signify so

long as the poor bereaved little things are in black?’ So like Matthew!

The idea!”

“Good points in him, good points in him,” said Cousin Raymond; “Heaven

forbid I should deny good points in him; but he never had, and he never

will have, any sense of the proprieties.”

“You know I was obliged,” said Camilla,—“I was obliged to be firm. I

said, ‘It WILL NOT DO, for the credit of the family.’ I told him that,

without deep trimmings, the family was disgraced. I cried about it from

breakfast till dinner. I injured my digestion. And at last he flung out

in his violent way, and said, with a D, ‘Then do as you like.’ Thank

Goodness it will always be a consolation to me to know that I instantly

went out in a pouring rain and bought the things.”

“_He_ paid for them, did he not?” asked Estella.

“It’s not the question, my dear child, who paid for them,” returned

Camilla. “_I_ bought them. And I shall often think of that with peace,

when I wake up in the night.”

The ringing of a distant bell, combined with the echoing of some cry or

call along the passage by which I had come, interrupted the

conversation and caused Estella to say to me, “Now, boy!” On my turning

round, they all looked at me with the utmost contempt, and, as I went

out, I heard Sarah Pocket say, “Well I am sure! What next!” and Camilla

add, with indignation, “Was there ever such a fancy! The i-d_e_-a!”

As we were going with our candle along the dark passage, Estella

stopped all of a sudden, and, facing round, said in her taunting

manner, with her face quite close to mine,—

“Well?”

“Well, miss?” I answered, almost falling over her and checking myself.

She stood looking at me, and, of course, I stood looking at her.

“Am I pretty?”

“Yes; I think you are very pretty.”

“Am I insulting?”

“Not so much so as you were last time,” said I.

“Not so much so?”

“No.”

She fired when she asked the last question, and she slapped my face

with such force as she had, when I answered it.

“Now?” said she. “You little coarse monster, what do you think of me

now?”

“I shall not tell you.”

“Because you are going to tell upstairs. Is that it?”

“No,” said I, “that’s not it.”

“Why don’t you cry again, you little wretch?”

“Because I’ll never cry for you again,” said I. Which was, I suppose,

as false a declaration as ever was made; for I was inwardly crying for

her then, and I know what I know of the pain she cost me afterwards.

We went on our way upstairs after this episode; and, as we were going

up, we met a gentleman groping his way down.

“Whom have we here?” asked the gentleman, stopping and looking at me.

“A boy,” said Estella.

He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark complexion, with an

exceedingly large head, and a corresponding large hand. He took my chin

in his large hand and turned up my face to have a look at me by the

light of the candle. He was prematurely bald on the top of his head,

and had bushy black eyebrows that wouldn’t lie down but stood up

bristling. His eyes were set very deep in his head, and were

disagreeably sharp and suspicious. He had a large watch-chain, and

strong black dots where his beard and whiskers would have been if he

had let them. He was nothing to me, and I could have had no foresight

then, that he ever would be anything to me, but it happened that I had

this opportunity of observing him well.

“Boy of the neighbourhood? Hey?” said he.

“Yes, sir,” said I.

“How do _you_ come here?”

“Miss Havisham sent for me, sir,” I explained.

“Well! Behave yourself. I have a pretty large experience of boys, and

you’re a bad set of fellows. Now mind!” said he, biting the side of his

great forefinger as he frowned at me, “you behave yourself!”

With those words, he released me—which I was glad of, for his hand

smelt of scented soap—and went his way downstairs. I wondered whether

he could be a doctor; but no, I thought; he couldn’t be a doctor, or he

would have a quieter and more persuasive manner. There was not much

time to consider the subject, for we were soon in Miss Havisham’s room,

where she and everything else were just as I had left them. Estella

left me standing near the door, and I stood there until Miss Havisham

cast her eyes upon me from the dressing-table.

“So!” she said, without being startled or surprised: “the days have

worn away, have they?”

“Yes, ma’am. To-day is—”

“There, there, there!” with the impatient movement of her fingers. “I

don’t want to know. Are you ready to play?”

I was obliged to answer in some confusion, “I don’t think I am, ma’am.”

“Not at cards again?” she demanded, with a searching look.

“Yes, ma’am; I could do that, if I was wanted.”

“Since this house strikes you old and grave, boy,” said Miss Havisham,

impatiently, “and you are unwilling to play, are you willing to work?”

I could answer this inquiry with a better heart than I had been able to

find for the other question, and I said I was quite willing.

“Then go into that opposite room,” said she, pointing at the door

behind me with her withered hand, “and wait there till I come.”

I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indicated.

From that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had

an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in

the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than

to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed

colder than the clearer air,—like our own marsh mist. Certain wintry

branches of candles on the high chimney-piece faintly lighted the

chamber; or it would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its

darkness. It was spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but

every discernible thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and

dropping to pieces. The most prominent object was a long table with a

tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the

house and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne or centre-piece

of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily

overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; and,

as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its

seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckle-legged spiders with

blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if some

circumstances of the greatest public importance had just transpired in

the spider community.

I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same

occurrence were important to their interests. But the black beetles

took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a

ponderous elderly way, as if they were short-sighted and hard of

hearing, and not on terms with one another.

These crawling things had fascinated my attention, and I was watching

them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder.

In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned,

and she looked like the Witch of the place.

“This,” said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, “is where

I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here.”

With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and

there and die at once, the complete realisation of the ghastly waxwork

at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.

“What do you think that is?” she asked me, again pointing with her

stick; “that, where those cobwebs are?”

“I can’t guess what it is, ma’am.”

“It’s a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!”

She looked all round the room in a glaring manner, and then said,

leaning on me while her hand twitched my shoulder, “Come, come, come!

Walk me, walk me!”

I made out from this, that the work I had to do, was to walk Miss

Havisham round and round the room. Accordingly, I started at once, and

she leaned upon my shoulder, and we went away at a pace that might have

been an imitation (founded on my first impulse under that roof) of Mr.

Pumblechook’s chaise-cart.

She was not physically strong, and after a little time said, “Slower!”

Still, we went at an impatient fitful speed, and as we went, she

twitched the hand upon my shoulder, and worked her mouth, and led me to

believe that we were going fast because her thoughts went fast. After a

while she said, “Call Estella!” so I went out on the landing and roared

that name as I had done on the previous occasion. When her light

appeared, I returned to Miss Havisham, and we started away again round

and round the room.

If only Estella had come to be a spectator of our proceedings, I should

have felt sufficiently discontented; but as she brought with her the

three ladies and the gentleman whom I had seen below, I didn’t know

what to do. In my politeness, I would have stopped; but Miss Havisham

twitched my shoulder, and we posted on,—with a shame-faced

consciousness on my part that they would think it was all my doing.

“Dear Miss Havisham,” said Miss Sarah Pocket. “How well you look!”

“I do not,” returned Miss Havisham. “I am yellow skin and bone.”

Camilla brightened when Miss Pocket met with this rebuff; and she

murmured, as she plaintively contemplated Miss Havisham, “Poor dear

soul! Certainly not to be expected to look well, poor thing. The idea!”

“And how are _you_?” said Miss Havisham to Camilla. As we were close to

Camilla then, I would have stopped as a matter of course, only Miss

Havisham wouldn’t stop. We swept on, and I felt that I was highly

obnoxious to Camilla.

“Thank you, Miss Havisham,” she returned, “I am as well as can be

expected.”

“Why, what’s the matter with you?” asked Miss Havisham, with exceeding

sharpness.

“Nothing worth mentioning,” replied Camilla. “I don’t wish to make a

display of my feelings, but I have habitually thought of you more in

the night than I am quite equal to.”

“Then don’t think of me,” retorted Miss Havisham.

“Very easily said!” remarked Camilla, amiably repressing a sob, while a

hitch came into her upper lip, and her tears overflowed. “Raymond is a

witness what ginger and sal volatile I am obliged to take in the night.

Raymond is a witness what nervous jerkings I have in my legs. Chokings

and nervous jerkings, however, are nothing new to me when I think with

anxiety of those I love. If I could be less affectionate and sensitive,

I should have a better digestion and an iron set of nerves. I am sure I

wish it could be so. But as to not thinking of you in the night—The

idea!” Here, a burst of tears.

The Raymond referred to, I understood to be the gentleman present, and

him I understood to be Mr. Camilla. He came to the rescue at this

point, and said in a consolatory and complimentary voice, “Camilla, my

dear, it is well known that your family feelings are gradually

undermining you to the extent of making one of your legs shorter than

the other.”

“I am not aware,” observed the grave lady whose voice I had heard but

once, “that to think of any person is to make a great claim upon that

person, my dear.”

Miss Sarah Pocket, whom I now saw to be a little dry, brown, corrugated

old woman, with a small face that might have been made of

walnut-shells, and a large mouth like a cat’s without the whiskers,

supported this position by saying, “No, indeed, my dear. Hem!”

“Thinking is easy enough,” said the grave lady.

“What is easier, you know?” assented Miss Sarah Pocket.

“Oh, yes, yes!” cried Camilla, whose fermenting feelings appeared to

rise from her legs to her bosom. “It’s all very true! It’s a weakness

to be so affectionate, but I can’t help it. No doubt my health would be

much better if it was otherwise, still I wouldn’t change my disposition

if I could. It’s the cause of much suffering, but it’s a consolation to

know I possess it, when I wake up in the night.” Here another burst of

feeling.

Miss Havisham and I had never stopped all this time, but kept going

round and round the room; now brushing against the skirts of the

visitors, now giving them the whole length of the dismal chamber.

“There’s Matthew!” said Camilla. “Never mixing with any natural ties,

never coming here to see how Miss Havisham is! I have taken to the sofa

with my staylace cut, and have lain there hours insensible, with my

head over the side, and my hair all down, and my feet I don’t know

where—”

(“Much higher than your head, my love,” said Mr. Camilla.)

“I have gone off into that state, hours and hours, on account of

Matthew’s strange and inexplicable conduct, and nobody has thanked me.”

“Really I must say I should think not!” interposed the grave lady.

“You see, my dear,” added Miss Sarah Pocket (a blandly vicious

personage), “the question to put to yourself is, who did you expect to

thank you, my love?”

“Without expecting any thanks, or anything of the sort,” resumed

Camilla, “I have remained in that state, hours and hours, and Raymond

is a witness of the extent to which I have choked, and what the total

inefficacy of ginger has been, and I have been heard at the piano-forte

tuner’s across the street, where the poor mistaken children have even

supposed it to be pigeons cooing at a distance,—and now to be told—”

Here Camilla put her hand to her throat, and began to be quite chemical

as to the formation of new combinations there.

When this same Matthew was mentioned, Miss Havisham stopped me and

herself, and stood looking at the speaker. This change had a great

influence in bringing Camilla’s chemistry to a sudden end.

“Matthew will come and see me at last,” said Miss Havisham, sternly,

“when I am laid on that table. That will be his place,—there,” striking

the table with her stick, “at my head! And yours will be there! And

your husband’s there! And Sarah Pocket’s there! And Georgiana’s there!

Now you all know where to take your stations when you come to feast

upon me. And now go!”

At the mention of each name, she had struck the table with her stick in

a new place. She now said, “Walk me, walk me!” and we went on again.

“I suppose there’s nothing to be done,” exclaimed Camilla, “but comply

and depart. It’s something to have seen the object of one’s love and

duty for even so short a time. I shall think of it with a melancholy

satisfaction when I wake up in the night. I wish Matthew could have

that comfort, but he sets it at defiance. I am determined not to make a

display of my feelings, but it’s very hard to be told one wants to

feast on one’s relations,—as if one was a Giant,—and to be told to go.

The bare idea!”

Mr. Camilla interposing, as Mrs. Camilla laid her hand upon her heaving

bosom, that lady assumed an unnatural fortitude of manner which I

supposed to be expressive of an intention to drop and choke when out of

view, and kissing her hand to Miss Havisham, was escorted forth. Sarah

Pocket and Georgiana contended who should remain last; but Sarah was

too knowing to be outdone, and ambled round Georgiana with that artful

slipperiness that the latter was obliged to take precedence. Sarah

Pocket then made her separate effect of departing with, “Bless you,

Miss Havisham dear!” and with a smile of forgiving pity on her

walnut-shell countenance for the weaknesses of the rest.

While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham still walked

with her hand on my shoulder, but more and more slowly. At last she

stopped before the fire, and said, after muttering and looking at it

some seconds,—

“This is my birthday, Pip.”

I was going to wish her many happy returns, when she lifted her stick.

“I don’t suffer it to be spoken of. I don’t suffer those who were here

just now, or any one to speak of it. They come here on the day, but

they dare not refer to it.”

Of course _I_ made no further effort to refer to it.

“On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of

decay,” stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the

table, but not touching it, “was brought here. It and I have worn away

together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of

mice have gnawed at me.”

She held the head of her stick against her heart as she stood looking

at the table; she in her once white dress, all yellow and withered; the

once white cloth all yellow and withered; everything around in a state

to crumble under a touch.

“When the ruin is complete,” said she, with a ghastly look, “and when

they lay me dead, in my bride’s dress on the bride’s table,—which shall

be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him,—so much the

better if it is done on this day!”

She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her own

figure lying there. I remained quiet. Estella returned, and she too

remained quiet. It seemed to me that we continued thus for a long time.

In the heavy air of the room, and the heavy darkness that brooded in

its remoter corners, I even had an alarming fancy that Estella and I

might presently begin to decay.

At length, not coming out of her distraught state by degrees, but in an

instant, Miss Havisham said, “Let me see you two play cards; why have

you not begun?” With that, we returned to her room, and sat down as

before; I was beggared, as before; and again, as before, Miss Havisham

watched us all the time, directed my attention to Estella’s beauty, and

made me notice it the more by trying her jewels on Estella’s breast and

hair.

Estella, for her part, likewise treated me as before, except that she

did not condescend to speak. When we had played some half-dozen games,

a day was appointed for my return, and I was taken down into the yard

to be fed in the former dog-like manner. There, too, I was again left

to wander about as I liked.

It is not much to the purpose whether a gate in that garden wall which

I had scrambled up to peep over on the last occasion was, on that last

occasion, open or shut. Enough that I saw no gate then, and that I saw

one now. As it stood open, and as I knew that Estella had let the

visitors out,—for she had returned with the keys in her hand,—I

strolled into the garden, and strolled all over it. It was quite a

wilderness, and there were old melon-frames and cucumber-frames in it,

which seemed in their decline to have produced a spontaneous growth of

weak attempts at pieces of old hats and boots, with now and then a

weedy offshoot into the likeness of a battered saucepan.

When I had exhausted the garden and a greenhouse with nothing in it but

a fallen-down grape-vine and some bottles, I found myself in the dismal

corner upon which I had looked out of the window. Never questioning for

a moment that the house was now empty, I looked in at another window,

and found myself, to my great surprise, exchanging a broad stare with a

pale young gentleman with red eyelids and light hair.

This pale young gentleman quickly disappeared, and reappeared beside

me. He had been at his books when I had found myself staring at him,

and I now saw that he was inky.

“Halloa!” said he, “young fellow!”

Halloa being a general observation which I had usually observed to be

best answered by itself, _I_ said, “Halloa!” politely omitting young

fellow.

“Who let _you_ in?” said he.

“Miss Estella.”

“Who gave you leave to prowl about?”

“Miss Estella.”

“Come and fight,” said the pale young gentleman.

What could I do but follow him? I have often asked myself the question

since; but what else could I do? His manner was so final, and I was so

astonished, that I followed where he led, as if I had been under a

spell.

“Stop a minute, though,” he said, wheeling round before we had gone

many paces. “I ought to give you a reason for fighting, too. There it

is!” In a most irritating manner he instantly slapped his hands against

one another, daintily flung one of his legs up behind him, pulled my

hair, slapped his hands again, dipped his head, and butted it into my

stomach.

The bull-like proceeding last mentioned, besides that it was

unquestionably to be regarded in the light of a liberty, was

particularly disagreeable just after bread and meat. I therefore hit

out at him and was going to hit out again, when he said, “Aha! Would

you?” and began dancing backwards and forwards in a manner quite

unparalleled within my limited experience.

“Laws of the game!” said he. Here, he skipped from his left leg on to

his right. “Regular rules!” Here, he skipped from his right leg on to

his left. “Come to the ground, and go through the preliminaries!” Here,

he dodged backwards and forwards, and did all sorts of things while I

looked helplessly at him.

I was secretly afraid of him when I saw him so dexterous; but I felt

morally and physically convinced that his light head of hair could have

had no business in the pit of my stomach, and that I had a right to

consider it irrelevant when so obtruded on my attention. Therefore, I

followed him without a word, to a retired nook of the garden, formed by

the junction of two walls and screened by some rubbish. On his asking

me if I was satisfied with the ground, and on my replying Yes, he

begged my leave to absent himself for a moment, and quickly returned

with a bottle of water and a sponge dipped in vinegar. “Available for

both,” he said, placing these against the wall. And then fell to

pulling off, not only his jacket and waistcoat, but his shirt too, in a

manner at once light-hearted, business-like, and bloodthirsty.

Although he did not look very healthy,—having pimples on his face, and

a breaking out at his mouth,—these dreadful preparations quite appalled

me. I judged him to be about my own age, but he was much taller, and he

had a way of spinning himself about that was full of appearance. For

the rest, he was a young gentleman in a grey suit (when not denuded for

battle), with his elbows, knees, wrists, and heels considerably in

advance of the rest of him as to development.

My heart failed me when I saw him squaring at me with every

demonstration of mechanical nicety, and eyeing my anatomy as if he were

minutely choosing his bone. I never have been so surprised in my life,

as I was when I let out the first blow, and saw him lying on his back,

looking up at me with a bloody nose and his face exceedingly

fore-shortened.

But, he was on his feet directly, and after sponging himself with a

great show of dexterity began squaring again. The second greatest

surprise I have ever had in my life was seeing him on his back again,

looking up at me out of a black eye.

His spirit inspired me with great respect. He seemed to have no

strength, and he never once hit me hard, and he was always knocked

down; but he would be up again in a moment, sponging himself or

drinking out of the water-bottle, with the greatest satisfaction in

seconding himself according to form, and then came at me with an air

and a show that made me believe he really was going to do for me at

last. He got heavily bruised, for I am sorry to record that the more I

hit him, the harder I hit him; but he came up again and again and

again, until at last he got a bad fall with the back of his head

against the wall. Even after that crisis in our affairs, he got up and

turned round and round confusedly a few times, not knowing where I was;

but finally went on his knees to his sponge and threw it up: at the

same time panting out, “That means you have won.”

He seemed so brave and innocent, that although I had not proposed the

contest, I felt but a gloomy satisfaction in my victory. Indeed, I go

so far as to hope that I regarded myself while dressing as a species of

savage young wolf or other wild beast. However, I got dressed, darkly

wiping my sanguinary face at intervals, and I said, “Can I help you?”

and he said “No thankee,” and I said “Good afternoon,” and _he_ said

“Same to you.”

When I got into the courtyard, I found Estella waiting with the keys.

But she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had kept her

waiting; and there was a bright flush upon her face, as though

something had happened to delight her. Instead of going straight to the

gate, too, she stepped back into the passage, and beckoned me.

“Come here! You may kiss me, if you like.”

I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone

through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But I felt that the kiss was

given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and

that it was worth nothing.

What with the birthday visitors, and what with the cards, and what with

the fight, my stay had lasted so long, that when I neared home the

light on the spit of sand off the point on the marshes was gleaming

against a black night-sky, and Joe’s furnace was flinging a path of

fire across the road.

Chapter XII.

My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale young gentleman.

The more I thought of the fight, and recalled the pale young gentleman

on his back in various stages of puffy and incrimsoned countenance, the

more certain it appeared that something would be done to me. I felt

that the pale young gentleman’s blood was on my head, and that the Law

would avenge it. Without having any definite idea of the penalties I

had incurred, it was clear to me that village boys could not go

stalking about the country, ravaging the houses of gentlefolks and

pitching into the studious youth of England, without laying themselves

open to severe punishment. For some days, I even kept close at home,

and looked out at the kitchen door with the greatest caution and

trepidation before going on an errand, lest the officers of the County

Jail should pounce upon me. The pale young gentleman’s nose had stained

my trousers, and I tried to wash out that evidence of my guilt in the

dead of night. I had cut my knuckles against the pale young gentleman’s

teeth, and I twisted my imagination into a thousand tangles, as I

devised incredible ways of accounting for that damnatory circumstance

when I should be haled before the Judges.

When the day came round for my return to the scene of the deed of

violence, my terrors reached their height. Whether myrmidons of

Justice, especially sent down from London, would be lying in ambush

behind the gate;—whether Miss Havisham, preferring to take personal

vengeance for an outrage done to her house, might rise in those

grave-clothes of hers, draw a pistol, and shoot me dead:—whether

suborned boys—a numerous band of mercenaries—might be engaged to fall

upon me in the brewery, and cuff me until I was no more;—it was high

testimony to my confidence in the spirit of the pale young gentleman,

that I never imagined _him_ accessory to these retaliations; they

always came into my mind as the acts of injudicious relatives of his,

goaded on by the state of his visage and an indignant sympathy with the

family features.

However, go to Miss Havisham’s I must, and go I did. And behold!

nothing came of the late struggle. It was not alluded to in any way,

and no pale young gentleman was to be discovered on the premises. I

found the same gate open, and I explored the garden, and even looked in

at the windows of the detached house; but my view was suddenly stopped

by the closed shutters within, and all was lifeless. Only in the corner

where the combat had taken place could I detect any evidence of the

young gentleman’s existence. There were traces of his gore in that

spot, and I covered them with garden-mould from the eye of man.

On the broad landing between Miss Havisham’s own room and that other

room in which the long table was laid out, I saw a garden-chair,—a

light chair on wheels, that you pushed from behind. It had been placed

there since my last visit, and I entered, that same day, on a regular

occupation of pushing Miss Havisham in this chair (when she was tired

of walking with her hand upon my shoulder) round her own room, and

across the landing, and round the other room. Over and over and over

again, we would make these journeys, and sometimes they would last as

long as three hours at a stretch. I insensibly fall into a general

mention of these journeys as numerous, because it was at once settled

that I should return every alternate day at noon for these purposes,

and because I am now going to sum up a period of at least eight or ten

months.

As we began to be more used to one another, Miss Havisham talked more

to me, and asked me such questions as what had I learnt and what was I

going to be? I told her I was going to be apprenticed to Joe, I

believed; and I enlarged upon my knowing nothing and wanting to know

everything, in the hope that she might offer some help towards that

desirable end. But she did not; on the contrary, she seemed to prefer

my being ignorant. Neither did she ever give me any money,—or anything

but my daily dinner,—nor ever stipulate that I should be paid for my

services.

Estella was always about, and always let me in and out, but never told

me I might kiss her again. Sometimes, she would coldly tolerate me;

sometimes, she would condescend to me; sometimes, she would be quite

familiar with me; sometimes, she would tell me energetically that she

hated me. Miss Havisham would often ask me in a whisper, or when we

were alone, “Does she grow prettier and prettier, Pip?” And when I said

yes (for indeed she did), would seem to enjoy it greedily. Also, when

we played at cards Miss Havisham would look on, with a miserly relish

of Estella’s moods, whatever they were. And sometimes, when her moods

were so many and so contradictory of one another that I was puzzled

what to say or do, Miss Havisham would embrace her with lavish

fondness, murmuring something in her ear that sounded like “Break their

hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy!”

There was a song Joe used to hum fragments of at the forge, of which

the burden was Old Clem. This was not a very ceremonious way of

rendering homage to a patron saint, but I believe Old Clem stood in

that relation towards smiths. It was a song that imitated the measure

of beating upon iron, and was a mere lyrical excuse for the

introduction of Old Clem’s respected name. Thus, you were to hammer

boys round—Old Clem! With a thump and a sound—Old Clem! Beat it out,

beat it out—Old Clem! With a clink for the stout—Old Clem! Blow the

fire, blow the fire—Old Clem! Roaring dryer, soaring higher—Old Clem!

One day soon after the appearance of the chair, Miss Havisham suddenly

saying to me, with the impatient movement of her fingers, “There,

there, there! Sing!” I was surprised into crooning this ditty as I

pushed her over the floor. It happened so to catch her fancy that she

took it up in a low brooding voice as if she were singing in her sleep.

After that, it became customary with us to have it as we moved about,

and Estella would often join in; though the whole strain was so

subdued, even when there were three of us, that it made less noise in

the grim old house than the lightest breath of wind.

What could I become with these surroundings? How could my character

fail to be influenced by them? Is it to be wondered at if my thoughts

were dazed, as my eyes were, when I came out into the natural light

from the misty yellow rooms?

Perhaps I might have told Joe about the pale young gentleman, if I had

not previously been betrayed into those enormous inventions to which I

had confessed. Under the circumstances, I felt that Joe could hardly

fail to discern in the pale young gentleman, an appropriate passenger

to be put into the black velvet coach; therefore, I said nothing of

him. Besides, that shrinking from having Miss Havisham and Estella

discussed, which had come upon me in the beginning, grew much more

potent as time went on. I reposed complete confidence in no one but

Biddy; but I told poor Biddy everything. Why it came natural to me to

do so, and why Biddy had a deep concern in everything I told her, I did

not know then, though I think I know now.

Meanwhile, councils went on in the kitchen at home, fraught with almost

insupportable aggravation to my exasperated spirit. That ass,

Pumblechook, used often to come over of a night for the purpose of

discussing my prospects with my sister; and I really do believe (to

this hour with less penitence than I ought to feel), that if these

hands could have taken a linchpin out of his chaise-cart, they would

have done it. The miserable man was a man of that confined stolidity of

mind, that he could not discuss my prospects without having me before

him,—as it were, to operate upon,—and he would drag me up from my stool

(usually by the collar) where I was quiet in a corner, and, putting me

before the fire as if I were going to be cooked, would begin by saying,

“Now, Mum, here is this boy! Here is this boy which you brought up by

hand. Hold up your head, boy, and be forever grateful unto them which

so did do. Now, Mum, with respections to this boy!” And then he would

rumple my hair the wrong way,—which from my earliest remembrance, as

already hinted, I have in my soul denied the right of any

fellow-creature to do,—and would hold me before him by the sleeve,—a

spectacle of imbecility only to be equalled by himself.

Then, he and my sister would pair off in such nonsensical speculations

about Miss Havisham, and about what she would do with me and for me,

that I used to want—quite painfully—to burst into spiteful tears, fly

at Pumblechook, and pummel him all over. In these dialogues, my sister

spoke to me as if she were morally wrenching one of my teeth out at

every reference; while Pumblechook himself, self-constituted my patron,

would sit supervising me with a depreciatory eye, like the architect of

my fortunes who thought himself engaged on a very unremunerative job.

In these discussions, Joe bore no part. But he was often talked at,

while they were in progress, by reason of Mrs. Joe’s perceiving that he

was not favourable to my being taken from the forge. I was fully old

enough now to be apprenticed to Joe; and when Joe sat with the poker on

his knees thoughtfully raking out the ashes between the lower bars, my

sister would so distinctly construe that innocent action into

opposition on his part, that she would dive at him, take the poker out

of his hands, shake him, and put it away. There was a most irritating

end to every one of these debates. All in a moment, with nothing to

lead up to it, my sister would stop herself in a yawn, and catching

sight of me as it were incidentally, would swoop upon me with, “Come!

there’s enough of _you_! _You_ get along to bed; _you_’ve given trouble

enough for one night, I hope!” As if I had besought them as a favour to

bother my life out.

We went on in this way for a long time, and it seemed likely that we

should continue to go on in this way for a long time, when one day Miss

Havisham stopped short as she and I were walking, she leaning on my

shoulder; and said with some displeasure,—

“You are growing tall, Pip!”

I thought it best to hint, through the medium of a meditative look,

that this might be occasioned by circumstances over which I had no

control.

She said no more at the time; but she presently stopped and looked at

me again; and presently again; and after that, looked frowning and

moody. On the next day of my attendance, when our usual exercise was

over, and I had landed her at her dressing-table, she stayed me with a

movement of her impatient fingers:—

“Tell me the name again of that blacksmith of yours.”

“Joe Gargery, ma’am.”

“Meaning the master you were to be apprenticed to?”

“Yes, Miss Havisham.”

“You had better be apprenticed at once. Would Gargery come here with

you, and bring your indentures, do you think?”

I signified that I had no doubt he would take it as an honour to be

asked.

“Then let him come.”

“At any particular time, Miss Havisham?”

“There, there! I know nothing about times. Let him come soon, and come

along with you.”

When I got home at night, and delivered this message for Joe, my sister

“went on the Rampage,” in a more alarming degree than at any previous

period. She asked me and Joe whether we supposed she was door-mats

under our feet, and how we dared to use her so, and what company we

graciously thought she _was_ fit for? When she had exhausted a torrent

of such inquiries, she threw a candlestick at Joe, burst into a loud

sobbing, got out the dustpan,—which was always a very bad sign,—put on

her coarse apron, and began cleaning up to a terrible extent. Not

satisfied with a dry cleaning, she took to a pail and scrubbing-brush,

and cleaned us out of house and home, so that we stood shivering in the

back-yard. It was ten o’clock at night before we ventured to creep in

again, and then she asked Joe why he hadn’t married a Negress Slave at

once? Joe offered no answer, poor fellow, but stood feeling his whisker

and looking dejectedly at me, as if he thought it really might have

been a better speculation.

Chapter XIII.

It was a trial to my feelings, on the next day but one, to see Joe

arraying himself in his Sunday clothes to accompany me to Miss

Havisham’s. However, as he thought his court-suit necessary to the

occasion, it was not for me to tell him that he looked far better in

his working-dress; the rather, because I knew he made himself so

dreadfully uncomfortable, entirely on my account, and that it was for

me he pulled up his shirt-collar so very high behind, that it made the

hair on the crown of his head stand up like a tuft of feathers.

At breakfast-time my sister declared her intention of going to town

with us, and being left at Uncle Pumblechook’s and called for “when we

had done with our fine ladies”—a way of putting the case, from which

Joe appeared inclined to augur the worst. The forge was shut up for the

day, and Joe inscribed in chalk upon the door (as it was his custom to

do on the very rare occasions when he was not at work) the monosyllable

HOUT, accompanied by a sketch of an arrow supposed to be flying in the

direction he had taken.

We walked to town, my sister leading the way in a very large beaver

bonnet, and carrying a basket like the Great Seal of England in plaited

Straw, a pair of pattens, a spare shawl, and an umbrella, though it was

a fine bright day. I am not quite clear whether these articles were

carried penitentially or ostentatiously; but I rather think they were

displayed as articles of property,—much as Cleopatra or any other

sovereign lady on the Rampage might exhibit her wealth in a pageant or

procession.

When we came to Pumblechook’s, my sister bounced in and left us. As it

was almost noon, Joe and I held straight on to Miss Havisham’s house.

Estella opened the gate as usual, and, the moment she appeared, Joe

took his hat off and stood weighing it by the brim in both his hands;

as if he had some urgent reason in his mind for being particular to

half a quarter of an ounce.

Estella took no notice of either of us, but led us the way that I knew

so well. I followed next to her, and Joe came last. When I looked back

at Joe in the long passage, he was still weighing his hat with the

greatest care, and was coming after us in long strides on the tips of

his toes.

Estella told me we were both to go in, so I took Joe by the coat-cuff

and conducted him into Miss Havisham’s presence. She was seated at her

dressing-table, and looked round at us immediately.

“Oh!” said she to Joe. “You are the husband of the sister of this boy?”

I could hardly have imagined dear old Joe looking so unlike himself or

so like some extraordinary bird; standing as he did speechless, with

his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if he wanted a

worm.

“You are the husband,” repeated Miss Havisham, “of the sister of this

boy?”

It was very aggravating; but, throughout the interview, Joe persisted

in addressing Me instead of Miss Havisham.

“Which I meantersay, Pip,” Joe now observed in a manner that was at

once expressive of forcible argumentation, strict confidence, and great

politeness, “as I hup and married your sister, and I were at the time

what you might call (if you was anyways inclined) a single man.”

“Well!” said Miss Havisham. “And you have reared the boy, with the

intention of taking him for your apprentice; is that so, Mr. Gargery?”

“You know, Pip,” replied Joe, “as you and me were ever friends, and it

were looked for’ard to betwixt us, as being calc’lated to lead to

larks. Not but what, Pip, if you had ever made objections to the

business,—such as its being open to black and sut, or such-like,—not

but what they would have been attended to, don’t you see?”

“Has the boy,” said Miss Havisham, “ever made any objection? Does he

like the trade?”

“Which it is well beknown to yourself, Pip,” returned Joe,

strengthening his former mixture of argumentation, confidence, and

politeness, “that it were the wish of your own hart.” (I saw the idea

suddenly break upon him that he would adapt his epitaph to the

occasion, before he went on to say) “And there weren’t no objection on

your part, and Pip it were the great wish of your hart!”

It was quite in vain for me to endeavour to make him sensible that he

ought to speak to Miss Havisham. The more I made faces and gestures to

him to do it, the more confidential, argumentative, and polite, he

persisted in being to Me.

“Have you brought his indentures with you?” asked Miss Havisham.

“Well, Pip, you know,” replied Joe, as if that were a little

unreasonable, “you yourself see me put ’em in my ’at, and therefore you

know as they are here.” With which he took them out, and gave them, not

to Miss Havisham, but to me. I am afraid I was ashamed of the dear good

fellow,—I _know_ I was ashamed of him,—when I saw that Estella stood at

the back of Miss Havisham’s chair, and that her eyes laughed

mischievously. I took the indentures out of his hand and gave them to

Miss Havisham.

“You expected,” said Miss Havisham, as she looked them over, “no

premium with the boy?”

“Joe!” I remonstrated, for he made no reply at all. “Why don’t you

answer—”

“Pip,” returned Joe, cutting me short as if he were hurt, “which I

meantersay that were not a question requiring a answer betwixt yourself

and me, and which you know the answer to be full well No. You know it

to be No, Pip, and wherefore should I say it?”

Miss Havisham glanced at him as if she understood what he really was

better than I had thought possible, seeing what he was there; and took

up a little bag from the table beside her.

“Pip has earned a premium here,” she said, “and here it is. There are

five-and-twenty guineas in this bag. Give it to your master, Pip.”

As if he were absolutely out of his mind with the wonder awakened in

him by her strange figure and the strange room, Joe, even at this pass,

persisted in addressing me.

“This is wery liberal on your part, Pip,” said Joe, “and it is as such

received and grateful welcome, though never looked for, far nor near,

nor nowheres. And now, old chap,” said Joe, conveying to me a

sensation, first of burning and then of freezing, for I felt as if that

familiar expression were applied to Miss Havisham,—“and now, old chap,

may we do our duty! May you and me do our duty, both on us, by one and

another, and by them which your liberal present—have-conweyed—to be—for

the satisfaction of mind-of—them as never—” here Joe showed that he

felt he had fallen into frightful difficulties, until he triumphantly

rescued himself with the words, “and from myself far be it!” These

words had such a round and convincing sound for him that he said them

twice.

“Good-bye, Pip!” said Miss Havisham. “Let them out, Estella.”

“Am I to come again, Miss Havisham?” I asked.

“No. Gargery is your master now. Gargery! One word!”

Thus calling him back as I went out of the door, I heard her say to Joe

in a distinct emphatic voice, “The boy has been a good boy here, and

that is his reward. Of course, as an honest man, you will expect no

other and no more.”

How Joe got out of the room, I have never been able to determine; but I

know that when he did get out he was steadily proceeding upstairs

instead of coming down, and was deaf to all remonstrances until I went

after him and laid hold of him. In another minute we were outside the

gate, and it was locked, and Estella was gone. When we stood in the

daylight alone again, Joe backed up against a wall, and said to me,

“Astonishing!” And there he remained so long saying, “Astonishing” at

intervals, so often, that I began to think his senses were never coming

back. At length he prolonged his remark into “Pip, I do assure _you_

this is as-TON-ishing!” and so, by degrees, became conversational and

able to walk away.

I have reason to think that Joe’s intellects were brightened by the

encounter they had passed through, and that on our way to Pumblechook’s

he invented a subtle and deep design. My reason is to be found in what

took place in Mr. Pumblechook’s parlour: where, on our presenting

ourselves, my sister sat in conference with that detested seedsman.

“Well?” cried my sister, addressing us both at once. “And what’s

happened to _you_? I wonder you condescend to come back to such poor

society as this, I am sure I do!”

“Miss Havisham,” said Joe, with a fixed look at me, like an effort of

remembrance, “made it wery partick’ler that we should give her—were it

compliments or respects, Pip?”

“Compliments,” I said.

“Which that were my own belief,” answered Joe; “her compliments to Mrs.

J. Gargery—”

“Much good they’ll do me!” observed my sister; but rather gratified

too.

“And wishing,” pursued Joe, with another fixed look at me, like another

effort of remembrance, “that the state of Miss Havisham’s elth were

sitch as would have—allowed, were it, Pip?”

“Of her having the pleasure,” I added.

“Of ladies’ company,” said Joe. And drew a long breath.

“Well!” cried my sister, with a mollified glance at Mr. Pumblechook.

“She might have had the politeness to send that message at first, but

it’s better late than never. And what did she give young Rantipole

here?”

“She giv’ him,” said Joe, “nothing.”

Mrs. Joe was going to break out, but Joe went on.

“What she giv’,” said Joe, “she giv’ to his friends. ‘And by his

friends,’ were her explanation, ‘I mean into the hands of his sister

Mrs. J. Gargery.’ Them were her words; ‘Mrs. J. Gargery.’ She mayn’t

have know’d,” added Joe, with an appearance of reflection, “whether it

were Joe, or Jorge.”

My sister looked at Pumblechook: who smoothed the elbows of his wooden

arm-chair, and nodded at her and at the fire, as if he had known all

about it beforehand.

“And how much have you got?” asked my sister, laughing. Positively

laughing!

“What would present company say to ten pound?” demanded Joe.

“They’d say,” returned my sister, curtly, “pretty well. Not too much,

but pretty well.”

“It’s more than that, then,” said Joe.

That fearful Impostor, Pumblechook, immediately nodded, and said, as he

rubbed the arms of his chair, “It’s more than that, Mum.”

“Why, you don’t mean to say—” began my sister.

“Yes I do, Mum,” said Pumblechook; “but wait a bit. Go on, Joseph. Good

in you! Go on!”

“What would present company say,” proceeded Joe, “to twenty pound?”

“Handsome would be the word,” returned my sister.

“Well, then,” said Joe, “It’s more than twenty pound.”

That abject hypocrite, Pumblechook, nodded again, and said, with a

patronizing laugh, “It’s more than that, Mum. Good again! Follow her

up, Joseph!”

“Then to make an end of it,” said Joe, delightedly handing the bag to

my sister; “it’s five-and-twenty pound.”

“It’s five-and-twenty pound, Mum,” echoed that basest of swindlers,

Pumblechook, rising to shake hands with her; “and it’s no more than

your merits (as I said when my opinion was asked), and I wish you joy

of the money!”

If the villain had stopped here, his case would have been sufficiently

awful, but he blackened his guilt by proceeding to take me into

custody, with a right of patronage that left all his former criminality

far behind.

“Now you see, Joseph and wife,” said Pumblechook, as he took me by the

arm above the elbow, “I am one of them that always go right through

with what they’ve begun. This boy must be bound, out of hand. That’s

_my_ way. Bound out of hand.”

“Goodness knows, Uncle Pumblechook,” said my sister (grasping the

money), “we’re deeply beholden to you.”

“Never mind me, Mum,” returned that diabolical cornchandler. “A

pleasure’s a pleasure all the world over. But this boy, you know; we

must have him bound. I said I’d see to it—to tell you the truth.”

The Justices were sitting in the Town Hall near at hand, and we at once

went over to have me bound apprentice to Joe in the Magisterial

presence. I say we went over, but I was pushed over by Pumblechook,

exactly as if I had that moment picked a pocket or fired a rick;

indeed, it was the general impression in Court that I had been taken

red-handed; for, as Pumblechook shoved me before him through the crowd,

I heard some people say, “What’s he done?” and others, “He’s a young

’un, too, but looks bad, don’t he?” One person of mild and benevolent

aspect even gave me a tract ornamented with a woodcut of a malevolent

young man fitted up with a perfect sausage-shop of fetters, and

entitled TO BE READ IN MY CELL.

The Hall was a queer place, I thought, with higher pews in it than a

church,—and with people hanging over the pews looking on,—and with

mighty Justices (one with a powdered head) leaning back in chairs, with

folded arms, or taking snuff, or going to sleep, or writing, or reading

the newspapers,—and with some shining black portraits on the walls,

which my unartistic eye regarded as a composition of hardbake and

sticking-plaster. Here, in a corner my indentures were duly signed and

attested, and I was “bound”; Mr. Pumblechook holding me all the while

as if we had looked in on our way to the scaffold, to have those little

preliminaries disposed of.

When we had come out again, and had got rid of the boys who had been

put into great spirits by the expectation of seeing me publicly

tortured, and who were much disappointed to find that my friends were

merely rallying round me, we went back to Pumblechook’s. And there my

sister became so excited by the twenty-five guineas, that nothing would

serve her but we must have a dinner out of that windfall at the Blue

Boar, and that Pumblechook must go over in his chaise-cart, and bring

the Hubbles and Mr. Wopsle.

It was agreed to be done; and a most melancholy day I passed. For, it

inscrutably appeared to stand to reason, in the minds of the whole

company, that I was an excrescence on the entertainment. And to make it

worse, they all asked me from time to time,—in short, whenever they had

nothing else to do,—why I didn’t enjoy myself? And what could I

possibly do then, but say I _was_ enjoying myself,—when I wasn’t!

However, they were grown up and had their own way, and they made the

most of it. That swindling Pumblechook, exalted into the beneficent

contriver of the whole occasion, actually took the top of the table;

and, when he addressed them on the subject of my being bound, and had

fiendishly congratulated them on my being liable to imprisonment if I

played at cards, drank strong liquors, kept late hours or bad company,

or indulged in other vagaries which the form of my indentures appeared

to contemplate as next to inevitable, he placed me standing on a chair

beside him to illustrate his remarks.

My only other remembrances of the great festival are, That they

wouldn’t let me go to sleep, but whenever they saw me dropping off,

woke me up and told me to enjoy myself. That, rather late in the

evening Mr. Wopsle gave us Collins’s ode, and threw his bloodstained

sword in thunder down, with such effect, that a waiter came in and

said, “The Commercials underneath sent up their compliments, and it

wasn’t the Tumblers’ Arms.” That, they were all in excellent spirits on

the road home, and sang, O Lady Fair! Mr. Wopsle taking the bass, and

asserting with a tremendously strong voice (in reply to the inquisitive

bore who leads that piece of music in a most impertinent manner, by

wanting to know all about everybody’s private affairs) that _he_ was

the man with his white locks flowing, and that he was upon the whole

the weakest pilgrim going.

Finally, I remember that when I got into my little bedroom, I was truly

wretched, and had a strong conviction on me that I should never like

Joe’s trade. I had liked it once, but once was not now.

Chapter XIV.

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be

black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive

and well deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.

Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of my sister’s

temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed in it. I had

believed in the best parlour as a most elegant saloon; I had believed

in the front door, as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose

solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had

believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I

had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and

independence. Within a single year all this was changed. Now it was all

coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella

see it on any account.

How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own fault,

how much Miss Havisham’s, how much my sister’s, is now of no moment to

me or to any one. The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well

or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.

Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my

shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe’s ’prentice, I should be

distinguished and happy. Now the reality was in my hold, I only felt

that I was dusty with the dust of small-coal, and that I had a weight

upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather. There have

been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I

have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its

interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance

any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my

way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly

entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.

I remember that at a later period of my “time,” I used to stand about

the churchyard on Sunday evenings when night was falling, comparing my

own perspective with the windy marsh view, and making out some likeness

between them by thinking how flat and low both were, and how on both

there came an unknown way and a dark mist and then the sea. I was quite

as dejected on the first working-day of my apprenticeship as in that

after-time; but I am glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe

while my indentures lasted. It is about the only thing I _am_ glad to

know of myself in that connection.

For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit of what I

proceed to add was Joe’s. It was not because I was faithful, but

because Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went for a soldier

or a sailor. It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of

industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry,

that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain. It is not possible

to know how far the influence of any amiable honest-hearted duty-doing

man flies out into the world; but it is very possible to know how it

has touched one’s self in going by, and I know right well that any good

that intermixed itself with my apprenticeship came of plain contented

Joe, and not of restlessly aspiring discontented me.

What I wanted, who can say? How can _I_ say, when I never knew? What I

dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I, being at my grimiest and

commonest, should lift up my eyes and see Estella looking in at one of

the wooden windows of the forge. I was haunted by the fear that she

would, sooner or later, find me out, with a black face and hands, doing

the coarsest part of my work, and would exult over me and despise me.

Often after dark, when I was pulling the bellows for Joe, and we were

singing Old Clem, and when the thought how we used to sing it at Miss

Havisham’s would seem to show me Estella’s face in the fire, with her

pretty hair fluttering in the wind and her eyes scorning me,—often at

such a time I would look towards those panels of black night in the

wall which the wooden windows then were, and would fancy that I saw her

just drawing her face away, and would believe that she had come at

last.

After that, when we went in to supper, the place and the meal would

have a more homely look than ever, and I would feel more ashamed of

home than ever, in my own ungracious breast.

Chapter XV.

As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s room, my

education under that preposterous female terminated. Not, however,

until Biddy had imparted to me everything she knew, from the little

catalogue of prices, to a comic song she had once bought for a

half-penny. Although the only coherent part of the latter piece of

literature were the opening lines,

When I went to Lunnon town sirs,

Too rul loo rul

Too rul loo rul

Wasn’t I done very brown sirs?

Too rul loo rul

Too rul loo rul

—still, in my desire to be wiser, I got this composition by heart with

the utmost gravity; nor do I recollect that I questioned its merit,

except that I thought (as I still do) the amount of Too rul somewhat in

excess of the poetry. In my hunger for information, I made proposals to

Mr. Wopsle to bestow some intellectual crumbs upon me, with which he

kindly complied. As it turned out, however, that he only wanted me for

a dramatic lay-figure, to be contradicted and embraced and wept over

and bullied and clutched and stabbed and knocked about in a variety of

ways, I soon declined that course of instruction; though not until Mr.

Wopsle in his poetic fury had severely mauled me.

Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This statement sounds so

well, that I cannot in my conscience let it pass unexplained. I wanted

to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he might be worthier of my

society and less open to Estella’s reproach.

The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of study, and a broken

slate and a short piece of slate-pencil were our educational

implements: to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I never knew

Joe to remember anything from one Sunday to another, or to acquire,

under my tuition, any piece of information whatever. Yet he would smoke

his pipe at the Battery with a far more sagacious air than anywhere

else,—even with a learned air,—as if he considered himself to be

advancing immensely. Dear fellow, I hope he did.

It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on the river

passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low,

looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing on

at the bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels standing out

to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow thought of Miss

Havisham and Estella; and whenever the light struck aslant, afar off,

upon a cloud or sail or green hillside or water-line, it was just the

same.—Miss Havisham and Estella and the strange house and the strange

life appeared to have something to do with everything that was

picturesque.

One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so plumed himself

on being “most awful dull,” that I had given him up for the day, I lay

on the earthwork for some time with my chin on my hand, descrying

traces of Miss Havisham and Estella all over the prospect, in the sky

and in the water, until at last I resolved to mention a thought

concerning them that had been much in my head.

“Joe,” said I; “don’t you think I ought to make Miss Havisham a visit?”

“Well, Pip,” returned Joe, slowly considering. “What for?”

“What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?”

“There is some wisits p’r’aps,” said Joe, “as for ever remains open to

the question, Pip. But in regard to wisiting Miss Havisham. She might

think you wanted something,—expected something of her.”

“Don’t you think I might say that I did not, Joe?”

“You might, old chap,” said Joe. “And she might credit it. Similarly

she mightn’t.”

Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he pulled hard

at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it by repetition.

“You see, Pip,” Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that danger, “Miss

Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss Havisham done the

handsome thing by you, she called me back to say to me as that were

all.”

“Yes, Joe. I heard her.”

“ALL,” Joe repeated, very emphatically.

“Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her.”

“Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning were,—Make a end

on it!—As you was!—Me to the North, and you to the South!—Keep in

sunders!”

I had thought of that too, and it was very far from comforting to me to

find that he had thought of it; for it seemed to render it more

probable.

“But, Joe.”

“Yes, old chap.”

“Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, since the day

of my being bound, I have never thanked Miss Havisham, or asked after

her, or shown that I remember her.”

“That’s true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her out a set of shoes

all four round,—and which I meantersay as even a set of shoes all four

round might not be acceptable as a present, in a total wacancy of

hoofs—”

“I don’t mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I don’t mean a present.”

But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head and must harp upon

it. “Or even,” said he, “if you was helped to knocking her up a new

chain for the front door,—or say a gross or two of shark-headed screws

for general use,—or some light fancy article, such as a toasting-fork

when she took her muffins,—or a gridiron when she took a sprat or such

like—”

“I don’t mean any present at all, Joe,” I interposed.

“Well,” said Joe, still harping on it as though I had particularly

pressed it, “if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn’t. No, I would _not_. For

what’s a door-chain when she’s got one always up? And shark-headers is

open to misrepresentations. And if it was a toasting-fork, you’d go

into brass and do yourself no credit. And the oncommonest workman can’t

show himself oncommon in a gridiron,—for a gridiron IS a gridiron,”

said Joe, steadfastly impressing it upon me, as if he were endeavouring

to rouse me from a fixed delusion, “and you may haim at what you like,

but a gridiron it will come out, either by your leave or again your

leave, and you can’t help yourself—”

“My dear Joe,” I cried, in desperation, taking hold of his coat, “don’t

go on in that way. I never thought of making Miss Havisham any

present.”

“No, Pip,” Joe assented, as if he had been contending for that, all

along; “and what I say to you is, you are right, Pip.”

“Yes, Joe; but what I wanted to say, was, that as we are rather slack

just now, if you would give me a half-holiday to-morrow, I think I

would go uptown and make a call on Miss Est—Havisham.”

“Which her name,” said Joe, gravely, “ain’t Estavisham, Pip, unless she

have been rechris’ened.”

“I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine. What do you think of it,

Joe?”

In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well of it, he thought well of

it. But, he was particular in stipulating that if I were not received

with cordiality, or if I were not encouraged to repeat my visit as a

visit which had no ulterior object but was simply one of gratitude for

a favour received, then this experimental trip should have no

successor. By these conditions I promised to abide.

Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name was Orlick. He

pretended that his Christian name was Dolge,—a clear Impossibility,—but

he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition that I believe him to

have been the prey of no delusion in this particular, but wilfully to

have imposed that name upon the village as an affront to its

understanding. He was a broadshouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of

great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching. He never even

seemed to come to his work on purpose, but would slouch in as if by

mere accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his

dinner, or went away at night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the

Wandering Jew, as if he had no idea where he was going and no intention

of ever coming back. He lodged at a sluice-keeper’s out on the marshes,

and on working-days would come slouching from his hermitage, with his

hands in his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his

neck and dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on the

sluice-gates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always slouched,

locomotively, with his eyes on the ground; and, when accosted or

otherwise required to raise them, he looked up in a half-resentful,

half-puzzled way, as though the only thought he ever had was, that it

was rather an odd and injurious fact that he should never be thinking.

This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I was very small and

timid, he gave me to understand that the Devil lived in a black corner

of the forge, and that he knew the fiend very well: also that it was

necessary to make up the fire, once in seven years, with a live boy,

and that I might consider myself fuel. When I became Joe’s ’prentice,

Orlick was perhaps confirmed in some suspicion that I should displace

him; howbeit, he liked me still less. Not that he ever said anything,

or did anything, openly importing hostility; I only noticed that he

always beat his sparks in my direction, and that whenever I sang Old

Clem, he came in out of time.

Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next day, when I reminded Joe of

my half-holiday. He said nothing at the moment, for he and Joe had just

got a piece of hot iron between them, and I was at the bellows; but by

and by he said, leaning on his hammer,—

“Now, master! Sure you’re not a-going to favour only one of us. If

Young Pip has a half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick.” I suppose he

was about five-and-twenty, but he usually spoke of himself as an

ancient person.

“Why, what’ll you do with a half-holiday, if you get it?” said Joe.

“What’ll _I_ do with it! What’ll _he_ do with it? I’ll do as much with

it as _him_,” said Orlick.

“As to Pip, he’s going up town,” said Joe.

“Well then, as to Old Orlick, _he_’s a-going up town,” retorted that

worthy. “Two can go up town. Tain’t only one wot can go up town.

“Don’t lose your temper,” said Joe.

“Shall if I like,” growled Orlick. “Some and their uptowning! Now,

master! Come. No favouring in this shop. Be a man!”

The master refusing to entertain the subject until the journeyman was

in a better temper, Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew out a red-hot

bar, made at me with it as if he were going to run it through my body,

whisked it round my head, laid it on the anvil, hammered it out,—as if

it were I, I thought, and the sparks were my spirting blood,—and

finally said, when he had hammered himself hot and the iron cold, and

he again leaned on his hammer,—

“Now, master!”

“Are you all right now?” demanded Joe.

“Ah! I am all right,” said gruff Old Orlick.

“Then, as in general you stick to your work as well as most men,” said

Joe, “let it be a half-holiday for all.”

My sister had been standing silent in the yard, within hearing,—she was

a most unscrupulous spy and listener,—and she instantly looked in at

one of the windows.

“Like you, you fool!” said she to Joe, “giving holidays to great idle

hulkers like that. You are a rich man, upon my life, to waste wages in

that way. I wish _I_ was his master!”

“You’d be everybody’s master, if you durst,” retorted Orlick, with an

ill-favoured grin.

(“Let her alone,” said Joe.)

“I’d be a match for all noodles and all rogues,” returned my sister,

beginning to work herself into a mighty rage. “And I couldn’t be a

match for the noodles, without being a match for your master, who’s the

dunder-headed king of the noodles. And I couldn’t be a match for the

rogues, without being a match for you, who are the blackest-looking and

the worst rogue between this and France. Now!”

“You’re a foul shrew, Mother Gargery,” growled the journeyman. “If that

makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be a good’un.”

(“Let her alone, will you?” said Joe.)

“What did you say?” cried my sister, beginning to scream. “What did you

say? What did that fellow Orlick say to me, Pip? What did he call me,

with my husband standing by? Oh! oh! oh!” Each of these exclamations

was a shriek; and I must remark of my sister, what is equally true of

all the violent women I have ever seen, that passion was no excuse for

her, because it is undeniable that instead of lapsing into passion, she

consciously and deliberately took extraordinary pains to force herself

into it, and became blindly furious by regular stages; “what was the

name he gave me before the base man who swore to defend me? Oh! Hold

me! Oh!”

“Ah-h-h!” growled the journeyman, between his teeth, “I’d hold you, if

you was my wife. I’d hold you under the pump, and choke it out of you.”

(“I tell you, let her alone,” said Joe.)

“Oh! To hear him!” cried my sister, with a clap of her hands and a

scream together,—which was her next stage. “To hear the names he’s

giving me! That Orlick! In my own house! Me, a married woman! With my

husband standing by! Oh! Oh!” Here my sister, after a fit of clappings

and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon her knees, and

threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down,—which were the last stages

on her road to frenzy. Being by this time a perfect Fury and a complete

success, she made a dash at the door which I had fortunately locked.

What could the wretched Joe do now, after his disregarded parenthetical

interruptions, but stand up to his journeyman, and ask him what he

meant by interfering betwixt himself and Mrs. Joe; and further whether

he was man enough to come on? Old Orlick felt that the situation

admitted of nothing less than coming on, and was on his defence

straightway; so, without so much as pulling off their singed and burnt

aprons, they went at one another, like two giants. But, if any man in

that neighbourhood could stand uplong against Joe, I never saw the man.

Orlick, as if he had been of no more account than the pale young

gentleman, was very soon among the coal-dust, and in no hurry to come

out of it. Then Joe unlocked the door and picked up my sister, who had

dropped insensible at the window (but who had seen the fight first, I

think), and who was carried into the house and laid down, and who was

recommended to revive, and would do nothing but struggle and clench her

hands in Joe’s hair. Then came that singular calm and silence which

succeed all uproars; and then, with the vague sensation which I have

always connected with such a lull,—namely, that it was Sunday, and

somebody was dead,—I went upstairs to dress myself.

[Illustration]

When I came down again, I found Joe and Orlick sweeping up, without any

other traces of discomposure than a slit in one of Orlick’s nostrils,

which was neither expressive nor ornamental. A pot of beer had appeared

from the Jolly Bargemen, and they were sharing it by turns in a

peaceable manner. The lull had a sedative and philosophical influence

on Joe, who followed me out into the road to say, as a parting

observation that might do me good, “On the Rampage, Pip, and off the

Rampage, Pip:—such is Life!”

With what absurd emotions (for we think the feelings that are very

serious in a man quite comical in a boy) I found myself again going to

Miss Havisham’s, matters little here. Nor, how I passed and repassed

the gate many times before I could make up my mind to ring. Nor, how I

debated whether I should go away without ringing; nor, how I should

undoubtedly have gone, if my time had been my own, to come back.

Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No Estella.

“How, then? You here again?” said Miss Pocket. “What do you want?”

When I said that I only came to see how Miss Havisham was, Sarah

evidently deliberated whether or no she should send me about my

business. But unwilling to hazard the responsibility, she let me in,

and presently brought the sharp message that I was to “come up.”

Everything was unchanged, and Miss Havisham was alone.

“Well?” said she, fixing her eyes upon me. “I hope you want nothing?

You’ll get nothing.”

“No indeed, Miss Havisham. I only wanted you to know that I am doing

very well in my apprenticeship, and am always much obliged to you.”

“There, there!” with the old restless fingers. “Come now and then; come

on your birthday.—Ay!” she cried suddenly, turning herself and her

chair towards me, “You are looking round for Estella? Hey?”

I had been looking round,—in fact, for Estella,—and I stammered that I

hoped she was well.

“Abroad,” said Miss Havisham; “educating for a lady; far out of reach;

prettier than ever; admired by all who see her. Do you feel that you

have lost her?”

There was such a malignant enjoyment in her utterance of the last

words, and she broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I was at a

loss what to say. She spared me the trouble of considering, by

dismissing me. When the gate was closed upon me by Sarah of the

walnut-shell countenance, I felt more than ever dissatisfied with my

home and with my trade and with everything; and that was all I took by

_that_ motion.

As I was loitering along the High Street, looking in disconsolately at

the shop windows, and thinking what I would buy if I were a gentleman,

who should come out of the bookshop but Mr. Wopsle. Mr. Wopsle had in

his hand the affecting tragedy of George Barnwell, in which he had that

moment invested sixpence, with the view of heaping every word of it on

the head of Pumblechook, with whom he was going to drink tea. No sooner

did he see me, than he appeared to consider that a special Providence

had put a ’prentice in his way to be read at; and he laid hold of me,

and insisted on my accompanying him to the Pumblechookian parlour. As I

knew it would be miserable at home, and as the nights were dark and the

way was dreary, and almost any companionship on the road was better

than none, I made no great resistance; consequently, we turned into

Pumblechook’s just as the street and the shops were lighting up.

As I never assisted at any other representation of George Barnwell, I

don’t know how long it may usually take; but I know very well that it

took until half-past nine o’ clock that night, and that when Mr. Wopsle

got into Newgate, I thought he never would go to the scaffold, he

became so much slower than at any former period of his disgraceful

career. I thought it a little too much that he should complain of being

cut short in his flower after all, as if he had not been running to

seed, leaf after leaf, ever since his course began. This, however, was

a mere question of length and wearisomeness. What stung me, was the

identification of the whole affair with my unoffending self. When

Barnwell began to go wrong, I declare that I felt positively

apologetic, Pumblechook’s indignant stare so taxed me with it. Wopsle,

too, took pains to present me in the worst light. At once ferocious and

maudlin, I was made to murder my uncle with no extenuating

circumstances whatever; Millwood put me down in argument, on every

occasion; it became sheer monomania in my master’s daughter to care a

button for me; and all I can say for my gasping and procrastinating

conduct on the fatal morning, is, that it was worthy of the general

feebleness of my character. Even after I was happily hanged and Wopsle

had closed the book, Pumblechook sat staring at me, and shaking his

head, and saying, “Take warning, boy, take warning!” as if it were a

well-known fact that I contemplated murdering a near relation, provided

I could only induce one to have the weakness to become my benefactor.

It was a very dark night when it was all over, and when I set out with

Mr. Wopsle on the walk home. Beyond town, we found a heavy mist out,

and it fell wet and thick. The turnpike lamp was a blur, quite out of

the lamp’s usual place apparently, and its rays looked solid substance

on the fog. We were noticing this, and saying how that the mist rose

with a change of wind from a certain quarter of our marshes, when we

came upon a man, slouching under the lee of the turnpike house.

“Halloa!” we said, stopping. “Orlick there?”

“Ah!” he answered, slouching out. “I was standing by a minute, on the

chance of company.”

“You are late,” I remarked.

Orlick not unnaturally answered, “Well? And _you_’re late.”

“We have been,” said Mr. Wopsle, exalted with his late performance,—“we

have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an intellectual evening.”

Old Orlick growled, as if he had nothing to say about that, and we all

went on together. I asked him presently whether he had been spending

his half-holiday up and down town?

“Yes,” said he, “all of it. I come in behind yourself. I didn’t see

you, but I must have been pretty close behind you. By the by, the guns

is going again.”

“At the Hulks?” said I.

“Ay! There’s some of the birds flown from the cages. The guns have been

going since dark, about. You’ll hear one presently.”

In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when the

well-remembered boom came towards us, deadened by the mist, and heavily

rolled away along the low grounds by the river, as if it were pursuing

and threatening the fugitives.

“A good night for cutting off in,” said Orlick. “We’d be puzzled how to

bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night.”

The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought about it in

silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of the evening’s

tragedy, fell to meditating aloud in his garden at Camberwell. Orlick,

with his hands in his pockets, slouched heavily at my side. It was very

dark, very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed along. Now and then, the

sound of the signal cannon broke upon us again, and again rolled

sulkily along the course of the river. I kept myself to myself and my

thoughts. Mr. Wopsle died amiably at Camberwell, and exceedingly game

on Bosworth Field, and in the greatest agonies at Glastonbury. Orlick

sometimes growled, “Beat it out, beat it out,—Old Clem! With a clink

for the stout,—Old Clem!” I thought he had been drinking, but he was

not drunk.

Thus, we came to the village. The way by which we approached it took us

past the Three Jolly Bargemen, which we were surprised to find—it being

eleven o’clock—in a state of commotion, with the door wide open, and

unwonted lights that had been hastily caught up and put down scattered

about. Mr. Wopsle dropped in to ask what was the matter (surmising that

a convict had been taken), but came running out in a great hurry.

“There’s something wrong,” said he, without stopping, “up at your

place, Pip. Run all!”

“What is it?” I asked, keeping up with him. So did Orlick, at my side.

“I can’t quite understand. The house seems to have been violently

entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts. Somebody has

been attacked and hurt.”

We were running too fast to admit of more being said, and we made no

stop until we got into our kitchen. It was full of people; the whole

village was there, or in the yard; and there was a surgeon, and there

was Joe, and there were a group of women, all on the floor in the midst

of the kitchen. The unemployed bystanders drew back when they saw me,

and so I became aware of my sister,—lying without sense or movement on

the bare boards where she had been knocked down by a tremendous blow on

the back of the head, dealt by some unknown hand when her face was

turned towards the fire,—destined never to be on the Rampage again,

while she was the wife of Joe.

Chapter XVI.

With my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first disposed to

believe that _I_ must have had some hand in the attack upon my sister,

or at all events that as her near relation, popularly known to be under

obligations to her, I was a more legitimate object of suspicion than

any one else. But when, in the clearer light of next morning, I began

to reconsider the matter and to hear it discussed around me on all

sides, I took another view of the case, which was more reasonable.

Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe, from a

quarter after eight o’clock to a quarter before ten. While he was

there, my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door, and had

exchanged Good Night with a farm-labourer going home. The man could not

be more particular as to the time at which he saw her (he got into

dense confusion when he tried to be), than that it must have been

before nine. When Joe went home at five minutes before ten, he found

her struck down on the floor, and promptly called in assistance. The

fire had not then burnt unusually low, nor was the snuff of the candle

very long; the candle, however, had been blown out.

Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house. Neither, beyond

the blowing out of the candle,—which stood on a table between the door

and my sister, and was behind her when she stood facing the fire and

was struck,—was there any disarrangement of the kitchen, excepting such

as she herself had made, in falling and bleeding. But, there was one

remarkable piece of evidence on the spot. She had been struck with

something blunt and heavy, on the head and spine; after the blows were

dealt, something heavy had been thrown down at her with considerable

violence, as she lay on her face. And on the ground beside her, when

Joe picked her up, was a convict’s leg-iron which had been filed

asunder.

Now, Joe, examining this iron with a smith’s eye, declared it to have

been filed asunder some time ago. The hue and cry going off to the

Hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron, Joe’s opinion was

corroborated. They did not undertake to say when it had left the

prison-ships to which it undoubtedly had once belonged; but they

claimed to know for certain that that particular manacle had not been

worn by either of the two convicts who had escaped last night. Further,

one of those two was already retaken, and had not freed himself of his

iron.

Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own here. I believed

the iron to be my convict’s iron,—the iron I had seen and heard him

filing at, on the marshes,—but my mind did not accuse him of having put

it to its latest use. For I believed one of two other persons to have

become possessed of it, and to have turned it to this cruel account.

Either Orlick, or the strange man who had shown me the file.

Now, as to Orlick; he had gone to town exactly as he told us when we

picked him up at the turnpike, he had been seen about town all the

evening, he had been in divers companies in several public-houses, and

he had come back with myself and Mr. Wopsle. There was nothing against

him, save the quarrel; and my sister had quarrelled with him, and with

everybody else about her, ten thousand times. As to the strange man; if

he had come back for his two bank-notes there could have been no

dispute about them, because my sister was fully prepared to restore

them. Besides, there had been no altercation; the assailant had come in

so silently and suddenly, that she had been felled before she could

look round.

It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon, however

undesignedly, but I could hardly think otherwise. I suffered

unspeakable trouble while I considered and reconsidered whether I

should at last dissolve that spell of my childhood and tell Joe all the

story. For months afterwards, I every day settled the question finally

in the negative, and reopened and reargued it next morning. The

contention came, after all, to this;—the secret was such an old one

now, had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not

tear it away. In addition to the dread that, having led up to so much

mischief, it would be now more likely than ever to alienate Joe from me

if he believed it, I had a further restraining dread that he would not

believe it, but would assort it with the fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets

as a monstrous invention. However, I temporized with myself, of

course—for, was I not wavering between right and wrong, when the thing

is always done?—and resolved to make a full disclosure if I should see

any such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of

the assailant.

The Constables and the Bow Street men from London—for, this happened in

the days of the extinct red-waistcoated police—were about the house for

a week or two, and did pretty much what I have heard and read of like

authorities doing in other such cases. They took up several obviously

wrong people, and they ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas,

and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas, instead

of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances. Also, they stood

about the door of the Jolly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks

that filled the whole neighbourhood with admiration; and they had a

mysterious manner of taking their drink, that was almost as good as

taking the culprit. But not quite, for they never did it.

Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister lay

very ill in bed. Her sight was disturbed, so that she saw objects

multiplied, and grasped at visionary teacups and wineglasses instead of

the realities; her hearing was greatly impaired; her memory also; and

her speech was unintelligible. When, at last, she came round so far as

to be helped downstairs, it was still necessary to keep my slate always

by her, that she might indicate in writing what she could not indicate

in speech. As she was (very bad handwriting apart) a more than

indifferent speller, and as Joe was a more than indifferent reader,

extraordinary complications arose between them which I was always

called in to solve. The administration of mutton instead of medicine,

the substitution of Tea for Joe, and the baker for bacon, were among

the mildest of my own mistakes.

However, her temper was greatly improved, and she was patient. A

tremulous uncertainty of the action of all her limbs soon became a part

of her regular state, and afterwards, at intervals of two or three

months, she would often put her hands to her head, and would then

remain for about a week at a time in some gloomy aberration of mind. We

were at a loss to find a suitable attendant for her, until a

circumstance happened conveniently to relieve us. Mr. Wopsle’s

great-aunt conquered a confirmed habit of living into which she had

fallen, and Biddy became a part of our establishment.

It may have been about a month after my sister’s reappearance in the

kitchen, when Biddy came to us with a small speckled box containing the

whole of her worldly effects, and became a blessing to the household.

Above all, she was a blessing to Joe, for the dear old fellow was sadly

cut up by the constant contemplation of the wreck of his wife, and had

been accustomed, while attending on her of an evening, to turn to me

every now and then and say, with his blue eyes moistened, “Such a fine

figure of a woman as she once were, Pip!” Biddy instantly taking the

cleverest charge of her as though she had studied her from infancy; Joe

became able in some sort to appreciate the greater quiet of his life,

and to get down to the Jolly Bargemen now and then for a change that

did him good. It was characteristic of the police people that they had

all more or less suspected poor Joe (though he never knew it), and that

they had to a man concurred in regarding him as one of the deepest

spirits they had ever encountered.

Biddy’s first triumph in her new office, was to solve a difficulty that

had completely vanquished me. I had tried hard at it, but had made

nothing of it. Thus it was:—

Again and again and again, my sister had traced upon the slate, a

character that looked like a curious T, and then with the utmost

eagerness had called our attention to it as something she particularly

wanted. I had in vain tried everything producible that began with a T,

from tar to toast and tub. At length it had come into my head that the

sign looked like a hammer, and on my lustily calling that word in my

sister’s ear, she had begun to hammer on the table and had expressed a

qualified assent. Thereupon, I had brought in all our hammers, one

after another, but without avail. Then I bethought me of a crutch, the

shape being much the same, and I borrowed one in the village, and

displayed it to my sister with considerable confidence. But she shook

her head to that extent when she was shown it, that we were terrified

lest in her weak and shattered state she should dislocate her neck.

When my sister found that Biddy was very quick to understand her, this

mysterious sign reappeared on the slate. Biddy looked thoughtfully at

it, heard my explanation, looked thoughtfully at my sister, looked

thoughtfully at Joe (who was always represented on the slate by his

initial letter), and ran into the forge, followed by Joe and me.

“Why, of course!” cried Biddy, with an exultant face. “Don’t you see?

It’s _him_!”

Orlick, without a doubt! She had lost his name, and could only signify

him by his hammer. We told him why we wanted him to come into the

kitchen, and he slowly laid down his hammer, wiped his brow with his

arm, took another wipe at it with his apron, and came slouching out,

with a curious loose vagabond bend in the knees that strongly

distinguished him.

I confess that I expected to see my sister denounce him, and that I was

disappointed by the different result. She manifested the greatest

anxiety to be on good terms with him, was evidently much pleased by his

being at length produced, and motioned that she would have him given

something to drink. She watched his countenance as if she were

particularly wishful to be assured that he took kindly to his

reception, she showed every possible desire to conciliate him, and

there was an air of humble propitiation in all she did, such as I have

seen pervade the bearing of a child towards a hard master. After that

day, a day rarely passed without her drawing the hammer on her slate,

and without Orlick’s slouching in and standing doggedly before her, as

if he knew no more than I did what to make of it.

Chapter XVII.

I now fell into a regular routine of apprenticeship life, which was

varied beyond the limits of the village and the marshes, by no more

remarkable circumstance than the arrival of my birthday and my paying

another visit to Miss Havisham. I found Miss Sarah Pocket still on duty

at the gate; I found Miss Havisham just as I had left her, and she

spoke of Estella in the very same way, if not in the very same words.

The interview lasted but a few minutes, and she gave me a guinea when I

was going, and told me to come again on my next birthday. I may mention

at once that this became an annual custom. I tried to decline taking

the guinea on the first occasion, but with no better effect than

causing her to ask me very angrily, if I expected more? Then, and after

that, I took it.

So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened

room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that

I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that

mysterious place, and, while I and everything else outside it grew

older, it stood still. Daylight never entered the house as to my

thoughts and remembrances of it, any more than as to the actual fact.

It bewildered me, and under its influence I continued at heart to hate

my trade and to be ashamed of home.

Imperceptibly I became conscious of a change in Biddy, however. Her

shoes came up at the heel, her hair grew bright and neat, her hands

were always clean. She was not beautiful,—she was common, and could not

be like Estella,—but she was pleasant and wholesome and sweet-tempered.

She had not been with us more than a year (I remember her being newly

out of mourning at the time it struck me), when I observed to myself

one evening that she had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes

that were very pretty and very good.

It came of my lifting up my own eyes from a task I was poring

at—writing some passages from a book, to improve myself in two ways at

once by a sort of stratagem—and seeing Biddy observant of what I was

about. I laid down my pen, and Biddy stopped in her needlework without

laying it down.

“Biddy,” said I, “how do you manage it? Either I am very stupid, or you

are very clever.”

“What is it that I manage? I don’t know,” returned Biddy, smiling.

She managed our whole domestic life, and wonderfully too; but I did not

mean that, though that made what I did mean more surprising.

“How do you manage, Biddy,” said I, “to learn everything that I learn,

and always to keep up with me?” I was beginning to be rather vain of my

knowledge, for I spent my birthday guineas on it, and set aside the

greater part of my pocket-money for similar investment; though I have

no doubt, now, that the little I knew was extremely dear at the price.

“I might as well ask you,” said Biddy, “how _you_ manage?”

“No; because when I come in from the forge of a night, any one can see

me turning to at it. But you never turn to at it, Biddy.”

“I suppose I must catch it like a cough,” said Biddy, quietly; and went

on with her sewing.

Pursuing my idea as I leaned back in my wooden chair, and looked at

Biddy sewing away with her head on one side, I began to think her

rather an extraordinary girl. For I called to mind now, that she was

equally accomplished in the terms of our trade, and the names of our

different sorts of work, and our various tools. In short, whatever I

knew, Biddy knew. Theoretically, she was already as good a blacksmith

as I, or better.

“You are one of those, Biddy,” said I, “who make the most of every

chance. You never had a chance before you came here, and see how

improved you are!”

Biddy looked at me for an instant, and went on with her sewing. “I was

your first teacher though; wasn’t I?” said she, as she sewed.

“Biddy!” I exclaimed, in amazement. “Why, you are crying!”

“No I am not,” said Biddy, looking up and laughing. “What put that in

your head?”

What could have put it in my head but the glistening of a tear as it

dropped on her work? I sat silent, recalling what a drudge she had been

until Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt successfully overcame that bad habit of

living, so highly desirable to be got rid of by some people. I recalled

the hopeless circumstances by which she had been surrounded in the

miserable little shop and the miserable little noisy evening school,

with that miserable old bundle of incompetence always to be dragged and

shouldered. I reflected that even in those untoward times there must

have been latent in Biddy what was now developing, for, in my first

uneasiness and discontent I had turned to her for help, as a matter of

course. Biddy sat quietly sewing, shedding no more tears, and while I

looked at her and thought about it all, it occurred to me that perhaps

I had not been sufficiently grateful to Biddy. I might have been too

reserved, and should have patronised her more (though I did not use

that precise word in my meditations) with my confidence.

“Yes, Biddy,” I observed, when I had done turning it over, “you were my

first teacher, and that at a time when we little thought of ever being

together like this, in this kitchen.”

“Ah, poor thing!” replied Biddy. It was like her self-forgetfulness to

transfer the remark to my sister, and to get up and be busy about her,

making her more comfortable; “that’s sadly true!”

“Well!” said I, “we must talk together a little more, as we used to do.

And I must consult you a little more, as I used to do. Let us have a

quiet walk on the marshes next Sunday, Biddy, and a long chat.”

My sister was never left alone now; but Joe more than readily undertook

the care of her on that Sunday afternoon, and Biddy and I went out

together. It was summer-time, and lovely weather. When we had passed

the village and the church and the churchyard, and were out on the

marshes and began to see the sails of the ships as they sailed on, I

began to combine Miss Havisham and Estella with the prospect, in my

usual way. When we came to the river-side and sat down on the bank,

with the water rippling at our feet, making it all more quiet than it

would have been without that sound, I resolved that it was a good time

and place for the admission of Biddy into my inner confidence.

“Biddy,” said I, after binding her to secrecy, “I want to be a

gentleman.”

“O, I wouldn’t, if I was you!” she returned. “I don’t think it would

answer.”

“Biddy,” said I, with some severity, “I have particular reasons for

wanting to be a gentleman.”

“You know best, Pip; but don’t you think you are happier as you are?”

“Biddy,” I exclaimed, impatiently, “I am not at all happy as I am. I am

disgusted with my calling and with my life. I have never taken to

either, since I was bound. Don’t be absurd.”

“Was I absurd?” said Biddy, quietly raising her eyebrows; “I am sorry

for that; I didn’t mean to be. I only want you to do well, and to be

comfortable.”

“Well, then, understand once for all that I never shall or can be

comfortable—or anything but miserable—there, Biddy!—unless I can lead a

very different sort of life from the life I lead now.”

“That’s a pity!” said Biddy, shaking her head with a sorrowful air.

Now, I too had so often thought it a pity, that, in the singular kind

of quarrel with myself which I was always carrying on, I was half

inclined to shed tears of vexation and distress when Biddy gave

utterance to her sentiment and my own. I told her she was right, and I

knew it was much to be regretted, but still it was not to be helped.

“If I could have settled down,” I said to Biddy, plucking up the short

grass within reach, much as I had once upon a time pulled my feelings

out of my hair and kicked them into the brewery wall,—“if I could have

settled down and been but half as fond of the forge as I was when I was

little, I know it would have been much better for me. You and I and Joe

would have wanted nothing then, and Joe and I would perhaps have gone

partners when I was out of my time, and I might even have grown up to

keep company with you, and we might have sat on this very bank on a

fine Sunday, quite different people. I should have been good enough for

_you_; shouldn’t I, Biddy?”

Biddy sighed as she looked at the ships sailing on, and returned for

answer, “Yes; I am not over-particular.” It scarcely sounded

flattering, but I knew she meant well.

“Instead of that,” said I, plucking up more grass and chewing a blade

or two, “see how I am going on. Dissatisfied, and uncomfortable,

and—what would it signify to me, being coarse and common, if nobody had

told me so!”

Biddy turned her face suddenly towards mine, and looked far more

attentively at me than she had looked at the sailing ships.

“It was neither a very true nor a very polite thing to say,” she

remarked, directing her eyes to the ships again. “Who said it?”

I was disconcerted, for I had broken away without quite seeing where I

was going to. It was not to be shuffled off now, however, and I

answered, “The beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham’s, and she’s more

beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her dreadfully, and I

want to be a gentleman on her account.” Having made this lunatic

confession, I began to throw my torn-up grass into the river, as if I

had some thoughts of following it.

“Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over?”

Biddy quietly asked me, after a pause.

“I don’t know,” I moodily answered.

“Because, if it is to spite her,” Biddy pursued, “I should think—but

you know best—that might be better and more independently done by

caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should

think—but you know best—she was not worth gaining over.”

Exactly what I myself had thought, many times. Exactly what was

perfectly manifest to me at the moment. But how could I, a poor dazed

village lad, avoid that wonderful inconsistency into which the best and

wisest of men fall every day?

“It may be all quite true,” said I to Biddy, “but I admire her

dreadfully.”

In short, I turned over on my face when I came to that, and got a good

grasp on the hair on each side of my head, and wrenched it well. All

the while knowing the madness of my heart to be so very mad and

misplaced, that I was quite conscious it would have served my face

right, if I had lifted it up by my hair, and knocked it against the

pebbles as a punishment for belonging to such an idiot.

Biddy was the wisest of girls, and she tried to reason no more with me.

She put her hand, which was a comfortable hand though roughened by

work, upon my hands, one after another, and gently took them out of my

hair. Then she softly patted my shoulder in a soothing way, while with

my face upon my sleeve I cried a little,—exactly as I had done in the

brewery yard,—and felt vaguely convinced that I was very much ill-used

by somebody, or by everybody; I can’t say which.

“I am glad of one thing,” said Biddy, “and that is, that you have felt

you could give me your confidence, Pip. And I am glad of another thing,

and that is, that of course you know you may depend upon my keeping it

and always so far deserving it. If your first teacher (dear! such a

poor one, and so much in need of being taught herself!) had been your

teacher at the present time, she thinks she knows what lesson she would

set. But it would be a hard one to learn, and you have got beyond her,

and it’s of no use now.” So, with a quiet sigh for me, Biddy rose from

the bank, and said, with a fresh and pleasant change of voice, “Shall

we walk a little farther, or go home?”

“Biddy,” I cried, getting up, putting my arm round her neck, and giving

her a kiss, “I shall always tell you everything.”

“Till you’re a gentleman,” said Biddy.

“You know I never shall be, so that’s always. Not that I have any

occasion to tell you anything, for you know everything I know,—as I

told you at home the other night.”

“Ah!” said Biddy, quite in a whisper, as she looked away at the ships.

And then repeated, with her former pleasant change, “shall we walk a

little farther, or go home?”

I said to Biddy we would walk a little farther, and we did so, and the

summer afternoon toned down into the summer evening, and it was very

beautiful. I began to consider whether I was not more naturally and

wholesomely situated, after all, in these circumstances, than playing

beggar my neighbour by candle-light in the room with the stopped

clocks, and being despised by Estella. I thought it would be very good

for me if I could get her out of my head, with all the rest of those

remembrances and fancies, and could go to work determined to relish

what I had to do, and stick to it, and make the best of it. I asked

myself the question whether I did not surely know that if Estella were

beside me at that moment instead of Biddy, she would make me miserable?

I was obliged to admit that I did know it for a certainty, and I said

to myself, “Pip, what a fool you are!”

We talked a good deal as we walked, and all that Biddy said seemed

right. Biddy was never insulting, or capricious, or Biddy to-day and

somebody else to-morrow; she would have derived only pain, and no

pleasure, from giving me pain; she would far rather have wounded her

own breast than mine. How could it be, then, that I did not like her

much the better of the two?

“Biddy,” said I, when we were walking homeward, “I wish you could put

me right.”

“I wish I could!” said Biddy.

“If I could only get myself to fall in love with you,—you don’t mind my

speaking so openly to such an old acquaintance?”

“Oh dear, not at all!” said Biddy. “Don’t mind me.”

“If I could only get myself to do it, _that_ would be the thing for

me.”

“But you never will, you see,” said Biddy.

It did not appear quite so unlikely to me that evening, as it would

have done if we had discussed it a few hours before. I therefore

observed I was not quite sure of that. But Biddy said she _was_, and

she said it decisively. In my heart I believed her to be right; and yet

I took it rather ill, too, that she should be so positive on the point.

When we came near the churchyard, we had to cross an embankment, and

get over a stile near a sluice-gate. There started up, from the gate,

or from the rushes, or from the ooze (which was quite in his stagnant

way), Old Orlick.

“Halloa!” he growled, “where are you two going?”

“Where should we be going, but home?”

“Well, then,” said he, “I’m jiggered if I don’t see you home!”

This penalty of being jiggered was a favourite supposititious case of

his. He attached no definite meaning to the word that I am aware of,

but used it, like his own pretended Christian name, to affront mankind,

and convey an idea of something savagely damaging. When I was younger,

I had had a general belief that if he had jiggered me personally, he

would have done it with a sharp and twisted hook.

Biddy was much against his going with us, and said to me in a whisper,

“Don’t let him come; I don’t like him.” As I did not like him either, I

took the liberty of saying that we thanked him, but we didn’t want

seeing home. He received that piece of information with a yell of

laughter, and dropped back, but came slouching after us at a little

distance.

Curious to know whether Biddy suspected him of having had a hand in

that murderous attack of which my sister had never been able to give

any account, I asked her why she did not like him.

“Oh!” she replied, glancing over her shoulder as he slouched after us,

“because I—I am afraid he likes me.”

“Did he ever tell you he liked you?” I asked indignantly.

“No,” said Biddy, glancing over her shoulder again, “he never told me

so; but he dances at me, whenever he can catch my eye.”

However novel and peculiar this testimony of attachment, I did not

doubt the accuracy of the interpretation. I was very hot indeed upon

Old Orlick’s daring to admire her; as hot as if it were an outrage on

myself.

“But it makes no difference to you, you know,” said Biddy, calmly.

“No, Biddy, it makes no difference to me; only I don’t like it; I don’t

approve of it.”

“Nor I neither,” said Biddy. “Though _that_ makes no difference to

you.”

“Exactly,” said I; “but I must tell you I should have no opinion of

you, Biddy, if he danced at you with your own consent.”

I kept an eye on Orlick after that night, and, whenever circumstances

were favourable to his dancing at Biddy, got before him to obscure that

demonstration. He had struck root in Joe’s establishment, by reason of

my sister’s sudden fancy for him, or I should have tried to get him

dismissed. He quite understood and reciprocated my good intentions, as

I had reason to know thereafter.

And now, because my mind was not confused enough before, I complicated

its confusion fifty thousand-fold, by having states and seasons when I

was clear that Biddy was immeasurably better than Estella, and that the

plain honest working life to which I was born had nothing in it to be

ashamed of, but offered me sufficient means of self-respect and

happiness. At those times, I would decide conclusively that my

disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge was gone, and that I was

growing up in a fair way to be partners with Joe and to keep company

with Biddy,—when all in a moment some confounding remembrance of the

Havisham days would fall upon me like a destructive missile, and

scatter my wits again. Scattered wits take a long time picking up; and

often before I had got them well together, they would be dispersed in

all directions by one stray thought, that perhaps after all Miss

Havisham was going to make my fortune when my time was out.

If my time had run out, it would have left me still at the height of my

perplexities, I dare say. It never did run out, however, but was

brought to a premature end, as I proceed to relate.

Chapter XVIII.

It was in the fourth year of my apprenticeship to Joe, and it was a

Saturday night. There was a group assembled round the fire at the Three

Jolly Bargemen, attentive to Mr. Wopsle as he read the newspaper aloud.

Of that group I was one.

A highly popular murder had been committed, and Mr. Wopsle was imbrued

in blood to the eyebrows. He gloated over every abhorrent adjective in

the description, and identified himself with every witness at the

Inquest. He faintly moaned, “I am done for,” as the victim, and he

barbarously bellowed, “I’ll serve you out,” as the murderer. He gave

the medical testimony, in pointed imitation of our local practitioner;

and he piped and shook, as the aged turnpike-keeper who had heard

blows, to an extent so very paralytic as to suggest a doubt regarding

the mental competency of that witness. The coroner, in Mr. Wopsle’s

hands, became Timon of Athens; the beadle, Coriolanus. He enjoyed

himself thoroughly, and we all enjoyed ourselves, and were delightfully

comfortable. In this cosey state of mind we came to the verdict Wilful

Murder.

Then, and not sooner, I became aware of a strange gentleman leaning

over the back of the settle opposite me, looking on. There was an

expression of contempt on his face, and he bit the side of a great

forefinger as he watched the group of faces.

“Well!” said the stranger to Mr. Wopsle, when the reading was done,

“you have settled it all to your own satisfaction, I have no doubt?”

Everybody started and looked up, as if it were the murderer. He looked

at everybody coldly and sarcastically.

“Guilty, of course?” said he. “Out with it. Come!”

“Sir,” returned Mr. Wopsle, “without having the honour of your

acquaintance, I do say Guilty.” Upon this we all took courage to unite

in a confirmatory murmur.

“I know you do,” said the stranger; “I knew you would. I told you so.

But now I’ll ask you a question. Do you know, or do you not know, that

the law of England supposes every man to be innocent, until he is

proved—proved—to be guilty?”

“Sir,” Mr. Wopsle began to reply, “as an Englishman myself, I—”

“Come!” said the stranger, biting his forefinger at him. “Don’t evade

the question. Either you know it, or you don’t know it. Which is it to

be?”

He stood with his head on one side and himself on one side, in a

bullying, interrogative manner, and he threw his forefinger at Mr.

Wopsle,—as it were to mark him out—before biting it again.

“Now!” said he. “Do you know it, or don’t you know it?”

“Certainly I know it,” replied Mr. Wopsle.

“Certainly you know it. Then why didn’t you say so at first? Now, I’ll

ask you another question,”—taking possession of Mr. Wopsle, as if he

had a right to him,—“_do_ you know that none of these witnesses have

yet been cross-examined?”

Mr. Wopsle was beginning, “I can only say—” when the stranger stopped

him.

“What? You won’t answer the question, yes or no? Now, I’ll try you

again.” Throwing his finger at him again. “Attend to me. Are you aware,

or are you not aware, that none of these witnesses have yet been

cross-examined? Come, I only want one word from you. Yes, or no?”

Mr. Wopsle hesitated, and we all began to conceive rather a poor

opinion of him.

“Come!” said the stranger, “I’ll help you. You don’t deserve help, but

I’ll help you. Look at that paper you hold in your hand. What is it?”

“What is it?” repeated Mr. Wopsle, eyeing it, much at a loss.

“Is it,” pursued the stranger in his most sarcastic and suspicious

manner, “the printed paper you have just been reading from?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Undoubtedly. Now, turn to that paper, and tell me whether it

distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that his legal

advisers instructed him altogether to reserve his defence?”

“I read that just now,” Mr. Wopsle pleaded.

“Never mind what you read just now, sir; I don’t ask you what you read

just now. You may read the Lord’s Prayer backwards, if you like,—and,

perhaps, have done it before to-day. Turn to the paper. No, no, no my

friend; not to the top of the column; you know better than that; to the

bottom, to the bottom.” (We all began to think Mr. Wopsle full of

subterfuge.) “Well? Have you found it?”

“Here it is,” said Mr. Wopsle.

“Now, follow that passage with your eye, and tell me whether it

distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that he was

instructed by his legal advisers wholly to reserve his defence? Come!

Do you make that of it?”

Mr. Wopsle answered, “Those are not the exact words.”

“Not the exact words!” repeated the gentleman bitterly. “Is that the

exact substance?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Wopsle.

“Yes,” repeated the stranger, looking round at the rest of the company

with his right hand extended towards the witness, Wopsle. “And now I

ask you what you say to the conscience of that man who, with that

passage before his eyes, can lay his head upon his pillow after having

pronounced a fellow-creature guilty, unheard?”

We all began to suspect that Mr. Wopsle was not the man we had thought

him, and that he was beginning to be found out.

“And that same man, remember,” pursued the gentleman, throwing his

finger at Mr. Wopsle heavily,—“that same man might be summoned as a

juryman upon this very trial, and, having thus deeply committed

himself, might return to the bosom of his family and lay his head upon

his pillow, after deliberately swearing that he would well and truly

try the issue joined between Our Sovereign Lord the King and the

prisoner at the bar, and would a true verdict give according to the

evidence, so help him God!”

We were all deeply persuaded that the unfortunate Wopsle had gone too

far, and had better stop in his reckless career while there was yet

time.

The strange gentleman, with an air of authority not to be disputed, and

with a manner expressive of knowing something secret about every one of

us that would effectually do for each individual if he chose to

disclose it, left the back of the settle, and came into the space

between the two settles, in front of the fire, where he remained

standing, his left hand in his pocket, and he biting the forefinger of

his right.

“From information I have received,” said he, looking round at us as we

all quailed before him, “I have reason to believe there is a blacksmith

among you, by name Joseph—or Joe—Gargery. Which is the man?”

“Here is the man,” said Joe.

The strange gentleman beckoned him out of his place, and Joe went.

“You have an apprentice,” pursued the stranger, “commonly known as Pip?

Is he here?”

“I am here!” I cried.

The stranger did not recognise me, but I recognised him as the

gentleman I had met on the stairs, on the occasion of my second visit

to Miss Havisham. I had known him the moment I saw him looking over the

settle, and now that I stood confronting him with his hand upon my

shoulder, I checked off again in detail his large head, his dark

complexion, his deep-set eyes, his bushy black eyebrows, his large

watch-chain, his strong black dots of beard and whisker, and even the

smell of scented soap on his great hand.

“I wish to have a private conference with you two,” said he, when he

had surveyed me at his leisure. “It will take a little time. Perhaps we

had better go to your place of residence. I prefer not to anticipate my

communication here; you will impart as much or as little of it as you

please to your friends afterwards; I have nothing to do with that.”

Amidst a wondering silence, we three walked out of the Jolly Bargemen,

and in a wondering silence walked home. While going along, the strange

gentleman occasionally looked at me, and occasionally bit the side of

his finger. As we neared home, Joe vaguely acknowledging the occasion

as an impressive and ceremonious one, went on ahead to open the front

door. Our conference was held in the state parlour, which was feebly

lighted by one candle.

It began with the strange gentleman’s sitting down at the table,

drawing the candle to him, and looking over some entries in his

pocket-book. He then put up the pocket-book and set the candle a little

aside, after peering round it into the darkness at Joe and me, to

ascertain which was which.

“My name,” he said, “is Jaggers, and I am a lawyer in London. I am

pretty well known. I have unusual business to transact with you, and I

commence by explaining that it is not of my originating. If my advice

had been asked, I should not have been here. It was not asked, and you

see me here. What I have to do as the confidential agent of another, I

do. No less, no more.”

Finding that he could not see us very well from where he sat, he got

up, and threw one leg over the back of a chair and leaned upon it; thus

having one foot on the seat of the chair, and one foot on the ground.

“Now, Joseph Gargery, I am the bearer of an offer to relieve you of

this young fellow your apprentice. You would not object to cancel his

indentures at his request and for his good? You would want nothing for

so doing?”

“Lord forbid that I should want anything for not standing in Pip’s

way,” said Joe, staring.

“Lord forbidding is pious, but not to the purpose,” returned Mr.

Jaggers. “The question is, Would you want anything? Do you want

anything?”

“The answer is,” returned Joe, sternly, “No.”

I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as if he considered him a fool

for his disinterestedness. But I was too much bewildered between

breathless curiosity and surprise, to be sure of it.

“Very well,” said Mr. Jaggers. “Recollect the admission you have made,

and don’t try to go from it presently.”

“Who’s a-going to try?” retorted Joe.

“I don’t say anybody is. Do you keep a dog?”

“Yes, I do keep a dog.”

“Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better.

Bear that in mind, will you?” repeated Mr. Jaggers, shutting his eyes

and nodding his head at Joe, as if he were forgiving him something.

“Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got

to make is, that he has great expectations.”

Joe and I gasped, and looked at one another.

“I am instructed to communicate to him,” said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his

finger at me sideways, “that he will come into a handsome property.

Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of that

property, that he be immediately removed from his present sphere of

life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman,—in a word,

as a young fellow of great expectations.”

My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality; Miss

Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale.

“Now, Mr. Pip,” pursued the lawyer, “I address the rest of what I have

to say, to you. You are to understand, first, that it is the request of

the person from whom I take my instructions that you always bear the

name of Pip. You will have no objection, I dare say, to your great

expectations being encumbered with that easy condition. But if you have

any objection, this is the time to mention it.”

My heart was beating so fast, and there was such a singing in my ears,

that I could scarcely stammer I had no objection.

“I should think not! Now you are to understand, secondly, Mr. Pip, that

the name of the person who is your liberal benefactor remains a

profound secret, until the person chooses to reveal it. I am empowered

to mention that it is the intention of the person to reveal it at first

hand by word of mouth to yourself. When or where that intention may be

carried out, I cannot say; no one can say. It may be years hence. Now,

you are distinctly to understand that you are most positively

prohibited from making any inquiry on this head, or any allusion or

reference, however distant, to any individual whomsoever as _the_

individual, in all the communications you may have with me. If you have

a suspicion in your own breast, keep that suspicion in your own breast.

It is not the least to the purpose what the reasons of this prohibition

are; they may be the strongest and gravest reasons, or they may be mere

whim. This is not for you to inquire into. The condition is laid down.

Your acceptance of it, and your observance of it as binding, is the

only remaining condition that I am charged with, by the person from

whom I take my instructions, and for whom I am not otherwise

responsible. That person is the person from whom you derive your

expectations, and the secret is solely held by that person and by me.

Again, not a very difficult condition with which to encumber such a

rise in fortune; but if you have any objection to it, this is the time

to mention it. Speak out.”

Once more, I stammered with difficulty that I had no objection.

“I should think not! Now, Mr. Pip, I have done with stipulations.”

Though he called me Mr. Pip, and began rather to make up to me, he

still could not get rid of a certain air of bullying suspicion; and

even now he occasionally shut his eyes and threw his finger at me while

he spoke, as much as to express that he knew all kinds of things to my

disparagement, if he only chose to mention them. “We come next, to mere

details of arrangement. You must know that, although I have used the

term ‘expectations’ more than once, you are not endowed with

expectations only. There is already lodged in my hands a sum of money

amply sufficient for your suitable education and maintenance. You will

please consider me your guardian. Oh!” for I was going to thank him, “I

tell you at once, I am paid for my services, or I shouldn’t render

them. It is considered that you must be better educated, in accordance

with your altered position, and that you will be alive to the

importance and necessity of at once entering on that advantage.”

I said I had always longed for it.

“Never mind what you have always longed for, Mr. Pip,” he retorted;

“keep to the record. If you long for it now, that’s enough. Am I

answered that you are ready to be placed at once under some proper

tutor? Is that it?”

I stammered yes, that was it.

“Good. Now, your inclinations are to be consulted. I don’t think that

wise, mind, but it’s my trust. Have you ever heard of any tutor whom

you would prefer to another?”

I had never heard of any tutor but Biddy and Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt;

so, I replied in the negative.

“There is a certain tutor, of whom I have some knowledge, who I think

might suit the purpose,” said Mr. Jaggers. “I don’t recommend him,

observe; because I never recommend anybody. The gentleman I speak of is

one Mr. Matthew Pocket.”

Ah! I caught at the name directly. Miss Havisham’s relation. The

Matthew whom Mr. and Mrs. Camilla had spoken of. The Matthew whose

place was to be at Miss Havisham’s head, when she lay dead, in her

bride’s dress on the bride’s table.

“You know the name?” said Mr. Jaggers, looking shrewdly at me, and then

shutting up his eyes while he waited for my answer.

My answer was, that I had heard of the name.

“Oh!” said he. “You have heard of the name. But the question is, what

do you say of it?”

I said, or tried to say, that I was much obliged to him for his

recommendation—

“No, my young friend!” he interrupted, shaking his great head very

slowly. “Recollect yourself!”

Not recollecting myself, I began again that I was much obliged to him

for his recommendation—

“No, my young friend,” he interrupted, shaking his head and frowning

and smiling both at once,—“no, no, no; it’s very well done, but it

won’t do; you are too young to fix me with it. Recommendation is not

the word, Mr. Pip. Try another.”

Correcting myself, I said that I was much obliged to him for his

mention of Mr. Matthew Pocket—

“_That_’s more like it!” cried Mr. Jaggers.—And (I added), I would

gladly try that gentleman.

“Good. You had better try him in his own house. The way shall be

prepared for you, and you can see his son first, who is in London. When

will you come to London?”

I said (glancing at Joe, who stood looking on, motionless), that I

supposed I could come directly.

“First,” said Mr. Jaggers, “you should have some new clothes to come

in, and they should not be working-clothes. Say this day week. You’ll

want some money. Shall I leave you twenty guineas?”

He produced a long purse, with the greatest coolness, and counted them

out on the table and pushed them over to me. This was the first time he

had taken his leg from the chair. He sat astride of the chair when he

had pushed the money over, and sat swinging his purse and eyeing Joe.

“Well, Joseph Gargery? You look dumbfoundered?”

“I _am_!” said Joe, in a very decided manner.

“It was understood that you wanted nothing for yourself, remember?”

“It were understood,” said Joe. “And it are understood. And it ever

will be similar according.”

“But what,” said Mr. Jaggers, swinging his purse,—“what if it was in my

instructions to make you a present, as compensation?”

“As compensation what for?” Joe demanded.

“For the loss of his services.”

Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the touch of a woman. I have

often thought him since, like the steam-hammer that can crush a man or

pat an egg-shell, in his combination of strength with gentleness. “Pip

is that hearty welcome,” said Joe, “to go free with his services, to

honour and fortun’, as no words can tell him. But if you think as Money

can make compensation to me for the loss of the little child—what come

to the forge—and ever the best of friends!—”

O dear good Joe, whom I was so ready to leave and so unthankful to, I

see you again, with your muscular blacksmith’s arm before your eyes,

and your broad chest heaving, and your voice dying away. O dear good

faithful tender Joe, I feel the loving tremble of your hand upon my

arm, as solemnly this day as if it had been the rustle of an angel’s

wing!

But I encouraged Joe at the time. I was lost in the mazes of my future

fortunes, and could not retrace the by-paths we had trodden together. I

begged Joe to be comforted, for (as he said) we had ever been the best

of friends, and (as I said) we ever would be so. Joe scooped his eyes

with his disengaged wrist, as if he were bent on gouging himself, but

said not another word.

Mr. Jaggers had looked on at this, as one who recognised in Joe the

village idiot, and in me his keeper. When it was over, he said,

weighing in his hand the purse he had ceased to swing:—

“Now, Joseph Gargery, I warn you this is your last chance. No half

measures with me. If you mean to take a present that I have it in

charge to make you, speak out, and you shall have it. If on the

contrary you mean to say—” Here, to his great amazement, he was stopped

by Joe’s suddenly working round him with every demonstration of a fell

pugilistic purpose.

“Which I meantersay,” cried Joe, “that if you come into my place

bull-baiting and badgering me, come out! Which I meantersay as sech if

you’re a man, come on! Which I meantersay that what I say, I meantersay

and stand or fall by!”

I drew Joe away, and he immediately became placable; merely stating to

me, in an obliging manner and as a polite expostulatory notice to any

one whom it might happen to concern, that he were not a-going to be

bull-baited and badgered in his own place. Mr. Jaggers had risen when

Joe demonstrated, and had backed near the door. Without evincing any

inclination to come in again, he there delivered his valedictory

remarks. They were these.

“Well, Mr. Pip, I think the sooner you leave here—as you are to be a

gentleman—the better. Let it stand for this day week, and you shall

receive my printed address in the meantime. You can take a

hackney-coach at the stage-coach office in London, and come straight to

me. Understand, that I express no opinion, one way or other, on the

trust I undertake. I am paid for undertaking it, and I do so. Now,

understand that, finally. Understand that!”

He was throwing his finger at both of us, and I think would have gone

on, but for his seeming to think Joe dangerous, and going off.

Something came into my head which induced me to run after him, as he

was going down to the Jolly Bargemen, where he had left a hired

carriage.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Jaggers.”

“Halloa!” said he, facing round, “what’s the matter?”

“I wish to be quite right, Mr. Jaggers, and to keep to your directions;

so I thought I had better ask. Would there be any objection to my

taking leave of any one I know, about here, before I go away?”

“No,” said he, looking as if he hardly understood me.

“I don’t mean in the village only, but up town?”

“No,” said he. “No objection.”

I thanked him and ran home again, and there I found that Joe had

already locked the front door and vacated the state parlour, and was

seated by the kitchen fire with a hand on each knee, gazing intently at

the burning coals. I too sat down before the fire and gazed at the

coals, and nothing was said for a long time.

My sister was in her cushioned chair in her corner, and Biddy sat at

her needle-work before the fire, and Joe sat next Biddy, and I sat next

Joe in the corner opposite my sister. The more I looked into the

glowing coals, the more incapable I became of looking at Joe; the

longer the silence lasted, the more unable I felt to speak.

At length I got out, “Joe, have you told Biddy?”

“No, Pip,” returned Joe, still looking at the fire, and holding his

knees tight, as if he had private information that they intended to

make off somewhere, “which I left it to yourself, Pip.”

“I would rather you told, Joe.”

“Pip’s a gentleman of fortun’ then,” said Joe, “and God bless him in

it!”

Biddy dropped her work, and looked at me. Joe held his knees and looked

at me. I looked at both of them. After a pause, they both heartily

congratulated me; but there was a certain touch of sadness in their

congratulations that I rather resented.

I took it upon myself to impress Biddy (and through Biddy, Joe) with

the grave obligation I considered my friends under, to know nothing and

say nothing about the maker of my fortune. It would all come out in

good time, I observed, and in the meanwhile nothing was to be said,

save that I had come into great expectations from a mysterious patron.

Biddy nodded her head thoughtfully at the fire as she took up her work

again, and said she would be very particular; and Joe, still detaining

his knees, said, “Ay, ay, I’ll be ekervally partickler, Pip;” and then

they congratulated me again, and went on to express so much wonder at

the notion of my being a gentleman that I didn’t half like it.

Infinite pains were then taken by Biddy to convey to my sister some

idea of what had happened. To the best of my belief, those efforts

entirely failed. She laughed and nodded her head a great many times,

and even repeated after Biddy, the words “Pip” and “Property.” But I

doubt if they had more meaning in them than an election cry, and I

cannot suggest a darker picture of her state of mind.

I never could have believed it without experience, but as Joe and Biddy

became more at their cheerful ease again, I became quite gloomy.

Dissatisfied with my fortune, of course I could not be; but it is

possible that I may have been, without quite knowing it, dissatisfied

with myself.

Anyhow, I sat with my elbow on my knee and my face upon my hand,

looking into the fire, as those two talked about my going away, and

about what they should do without me, and all that. And whenever I

caught one of them looking at me, though never so pleasantly (and they

often looked at me,—particularly Biddy), I felt offended: as if they

were expressing some mistrust of me. Though Heaven knows they never did

by word or sign.

At those times I would get up and look out at the door; for our kitchen

door opened at once upon the night, and stood open on summer evenings

to air the room. The very stars to which I then raised my eyes, I am

afraid I took to be but poor and humble stars for glittering on the

rustic objects among which I had passed my life.

“Saturday night,” said I, when we sat at our supper of bread and cheese

and beer. “Five more days, and then the day before _the_ day! They’ll

soon go.”

“Yes, Pip,” observed Joe, whose voice sounded hollow in his beer-mug.

“They’ll soon go.”

“Soon, soon go,” said Biddy.

“I have been thinking, Joe, that when I go down town on Monday, and

order my new clothes, I shall tell the tailor that I’ll come and put

them on there, or that I’ll have them sent to Mr. Pumblechook’s. It

would be very disagreeable to be stared at by all the people here.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Hubble might like to see you in your new gen-teel figure

too, Pip,” said Joe, industriously cutting his bread, with his cheese

on it, in the palm of his left hand, and glancing at my untasted supper

as if he thought of the time when we used to compare slices. “So might

Wopsle. And the Jolly Bargemen might take it as a compliment.”

“That’s just what I don’t want, Joe. They would make such a business of

it,—such a coarse and common business,—that I couldn’t bear myself.”

“Ah, that indeed, Pip!” said Joe. “If you couldn’t abear yourself—”

Biddy asked me here, as she sat holding my sister’s plate, “Have you

thought about when you’ll show yourself to Mr. Gargery, and your sister

and me? You will show yourself to us; won’t you?”

“Biddy,” I returned with some resentment, “you are so exceedingly quick

that it’s difficult to keep up with you.”

(“She always were quick,” observed Joe.)

“If you had waited another moment, Biddy, you would have heard me say

that I shall bring my clothes here in a bundle one evening,—most likely

on the evening before I go away.”

Biddy said no more. Handsomely forgiving her, I soon exchanged an

affectionate good night with her and Joe, and went up to bed. When I

got into my little room, I sat down and took a long look at it, as a

mean little room that I should soon be parted from and raised above,

for ever. It was furnished with fresh young remembrances too, and even

at the same moment I fell into much the same confused division of mind

between it and the better rooms to which I was going, as I had been in

so often between the forge and Miss Havisham’s, and Biddy and Estella.

The sun had been shining brightly all day on the roof of my attic, and

the room was warm. As I put the window open and stood looking out, I

saw Joe come slowly forth at the dark door, below, and take a turn or

two in the air; and then I saw Biddy come, and bring him a pipe and

light it for him. He never smoked so late, and it seemed to hint to me

that he wanted comforting, for some reason or other.

He presently stood at the door immediately beneath me, smoking his

pipe, and Biddy stood there too, quietly talking to him, and I knew

that they talked of me, for I heard my name mentioned in an endearing

tone by both of them more than once. I would not have listened for

more, if I could have heard more; so I drew away from the window, and

sat down in my one chair by the bedside, feeling it very sorrowful and

strange that this first night of my bright fortunes should be the

loneliest I had ever known.

Looking towards the open window, I saw light wreaths from Joe’s pipe

floating there, and I fancied it was like a blessing from Joe,—not

obtruded on me or paraded before me, but pervading the air we shared

together. I put my light out, and crept into bed; and it was an uneasy

bed now, and I never slept the old sound sleep in it any more.

Chapter XIX.

Morning made a considerable difference in my general prospect of Life,

and brightened it so much that it scarcely seemed the same. What lay

heaviest on my mind was, the consideration that six days intervened

between me and the day of departure; for I could not divest myself of a

misgiving that something might happen to London in the meanwhile, and

that, when I got there, it would be either greatly deteriorated or

clean gone.

Joe and Biddy were very sympathetic and pleasant when I spoke of our

approaching separation; but they only referred to it when I did. After

breakfast, Joe brought out my indentures from the press in the best

parlour, and we put them in the fire, and I felt that I was free. With

all the novelty of my emancipation on me, I went to church with Joe,

and thought perhaps the clergyman wouldn’t have read that about the

rich man and the kingdom of Heaven, if he had known all.

After our early dinner, I strolled out alone, purposing to finish off

the marshes at once, and get them done with. As I passed the church, I

felt (as I had felt during service in the morning) a sublime compassion

for the poor creatures who were destined to go there, Sunday after

Sunday, all their lives through, and to lie obscurely at last among the

low green mounds. I promised myself that I would do something for them

one of these days, and formed a plan in outline for bestowing a dinner

of roast-beef and plum-pudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of

condescension, upon everybody in the village.

If I had often thought before, with something allied to shame, of my

companionship with the fugitive whom I had once seen limping among

those graves, what were my thoughts on this Sunday, when the place

recalled the wretch, ragged and shivering, with his felon iron and

badge! My comfort was, that it happened a long time ago, and that he

had doubtless been transported a long way off, and that he was dead to

me, and might be veritably dead into the bargain.

No more low, wet grounds, no more dikes and sluices, no more of these

grazing cattle,—though they seemed, in their dull manner, to wear a

more respectful air now, and to face round, in order that they might

stare as long as possible at the possessor of such great

expectations,—farewell, monotonous acquaintances of my childhood,

henceforth I was for London and greatness; not for smith’s work in

general, and for you! I made my exultant way to the old Battery, and,

lying down there to consider the question whether Miss Havisham

intended me for Estella, fell asleep.

When I awoke, I was much surprised to find Joe sitting beside me,

smoking his pipe. He greeted me with a cheerful smile on my opening my

eyes, and said,—

“As being the last time, Pip, I thought I’d foller.”

“And Joe, I am very glad you did so.”

“Thankee, Pip.”

“You may be sure, dear Joe,” I went on, after we had shaken hands,

“that I shall never forget you.”

“No, no, Pip!” said Joe, in a comfortable tone, “_I_’m sure of that.

Ay, ay, old chap! Bless you, it were only necessary to get it well

round in a man’s mind, to be certain on it. But it took a bit of time

to get it well round, the change come so oncommon plump; didn’t it?”

Somehow, I was not best pleased with Joe’s being so mightily secure of

me. I should have liked him to have betrayed emotion, or to have said,

“It does you credit, Pip,” or something of that sort. Therefore, I made

no remark on Joe’s first head; merely saying as to his second, that the

tidings had indeed come suddenly, but that I had always wanted to be a

gentleman, and had often and often speculated on what I would do, if I

were one.

“Have you though?” said Joe. “Astonishing!”

“It’s a pity now, Joe,” said I, “that you did not get on a little more,

when we had our lessons here; isn’t it?”

“Well, I don’t know,” returned Joe. “I’m so awful dull. I’m only master

of my own trade. It were always a pity as I was so awful dull; but it’s

no more of a pity now, than it was—this day twelvemonth—don’t you see?”

What I had meant was, that when I came into my property and was able to

do something for Joe, it would have been much more agreeable if he had

been better qualified for a rise in station. He was so perfectly

innocent of my meaning, however, that I thought I would mention it to

Biddy in preference.

So, when we had walked home and had had tea, I took Biddy into our

little garden by the side of the lane, and, after throwing out in a

general way for the elevation of her spirits, that I should never

forget her, said I had a favour to ask of her.

“And it is, Biddy,” said I, “that you will not omit any opportunity of

helping Joe on, a little.”

“How helping him on?” asked Biddy, with a steady sort of glance.

“Well! Joe is a dear good fellow,—in fact, I think he is the dearest

fellow that ever lived,—but he is rather backward in some things. For

instance, Biddy, in his learning and his manners.”

Although I was looking at Biddy as I spoke, and although she opened her

eyes very wide when I had spoken, she did not look at me.

“O, his manners! won’t his manners do then?” asked Biddy, plucking a

black-currant leaf.

“My dear Biddy, they do very well here—”

“O! they _do_ very well here?” interrupted Biddy, looking closely at

the leaf in her hand.

“Hear me out,—but if I were to remove Joe into a higher sphere, as I

shall hope to remove him when I fully come into my property, they would

hardly do him justice.”

“And don’t you think he knows that?” asked Biddy.

It was such a very provoking question (for it had never in the most

distant manner occurred to me), that I said, snappishly,—

“Biddy, what do you mean?”

Biddy, having rubbed the leaf to pieces between her hands,—and the

smell of a black-currant bush has ever since recalled to me that

evening in the little garden by the side of the lane,—said, “Have you

never considered that he may be proud?”

“Proud?” I repeated, with disdainful emphasis.

“O! there are many kinds of pride,” said Biddy, looking full at me and

shaking her head; “pride is not all of one kind—”

“Well? What are you stopping for?” said I.

“Not all of one kind,” resumed Biddy. “He may be too proud to let any

one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fills

well and with respect. To tell you the truth, I think he is; though it

sounds bold in me to say so, for you must know him far better than I

do.”

“Now, Biddy,” said I, “I am very sorry to see this in you. I did not

expect to see this in you. You are envious, Biddy, and grudging. You

are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune, and you can’t help

showing it.”

“If you have the heart to think so,” returned Biddy, “say so. Say so

over and over again, if you have the heart to think so.”

“If you have the heart to be so, you mean, Biddy,” said I, in a

virtuous and superior tone; “don’t put it off upon me. I am very sorry

to see it, and it’s a—it’s a bad side of human nature. I did intend to

ask you to use any little opportunities you might have after I was

gone, of improving dear Joe. But after this I ask you nothing. I am

extremely sorry to see this in you, Biddy,” I repeated. “It’s a—it’s a

bad side of human nature.”

“Whether you scold me or approve of me,” returned poor Biddy, “you may

equally depend upon my trying to do all that lies in my power, here, at

all times. And whatever opinion you take away of me, shall make no

difference in my remembrance of you. Yet a gentleman should not be

unjust neither,” said Biddy, turning away her head.

I again warmly repeated that it was a bad side of human nature (in

which sentiment, waiving its application, I have since seen reason to

think I was right), and I walked down the little path away from Biddy,

and Biddy went into the house, and I went out at the garden gate and

took a dejected stroll until supper-time; again feeling it very

sorrowful and strange that this, the second night of my bright

fortunes, should be as lonely and unsatisfactory as the first.

But, morning once more brightened my view, and I extended my clemency

to Biddy, and we dropped the subject. Putting on the best clothes I

had, I went into town as early as I could hope to find the shops open,

and presented myself before Mr. Trabb, the tailor, who was having his

breakfast in the parlour behind his shop, and who did not think it

worth his while to come out to me, but called me in to him.

“Well!” said Mr. Trabb, in a hail-fellow-well-met kind of way. “How are

you, and what can I do for you?”

Mr. Trabb had sliced his hot roll into three feather-beds, and was

slipping butter in between the blankets, and covering it up. He was a

prosperous old bachelor, and his open window looked into a prosperous

little garden and orchard, and there was a prosperous iron safe let

into the wall at the side of his fireplace, and I did not doubt that

heaps of his prosperity were put away in it in bags.

“Mr. Trabb,” said I, “it’s an unpleasant thing to have to mention,

because it looks like boasting; but I have come into a handsome

property.”

A change passed over Mr. Trabb. He forgot the butter in bed, got up

from the bedside, and wiped his fingers on the tablecloth, exclaiming,

“Lord bless my soul!”

“I am going up to my guardian in London,” said I, casually drawing some

guineas out of my pocket and looking at them; “and I want a fashionable

suit of clothes to go in. I wish to pay for them,” I added—otherwise I

thought he might only pretend to make them, “with ready money.”

“My dear sir,” said Mr. Trabb, as he respectfully bent his body, opened

his arms, and took the liberty of touching me on the outside of each

elbow, “don’t hurt me by mentioning that. May I venture to congratulate

you? Would you do me the favour of stepping into the shop?”

Mr. Trabb’s boy was the most audacious boy in all that country-side.

When I had entered he was sweeping the shop, and he had sweetened his

labours by sweeping over me. He was still sweeping when I came out into

the shop with Mr. Trabb, and he knocked the broom against all possible

corners and obstacles, to express (as I understood it) equality with

any blacksmith, alive or dead.

“Hold that noise,” said Mr. Trabb, with the greatest sternness, “or

I’ll knock your head off!—Do me the favour to be seated, sir. Now,

this,” said Mr. Trabb, taking down a roll of cloth, and tiding it out

in a flowing manner over the counter, preparatory to getting his hand

under it to show the gloss, “is a very sweet article. I can recommend

it for your purpose, sir, because it really is extra super. But you

shall see some others. Give me Number Four, you!” (To the boy, and with

a dreadfully severe stare; foreseeing the danger of that miscreant’s

brushing me with it, or making some other sign of familiarity.)

Mr. Trabb never removed his stern eye from the boy until he had

deposited number four on the counter and was at a safe distance again.

Then he commanded him to bring number five, and number eight. “And let

me have none of your tricks here,” said Mr. Trabb, “or you shall repent

it, you young scoundrel, the longest day you have to live.”

Mr. Trabb then bent over number four, and in a sort of deferential

confidence recommended it to me as a light article for summer wear, an

article much in vogue among the nobility and gentry, an article that it

would ever be an honour to him to reflect upon a distinguished

fellow-townsman’s (if he might claim me for a fellow-townsman) having

worn. “Are you bringing numbers five and eight, you vagabond,” said Mr.

Trabb to the boy after that, “or shall I kick you out of the shop and

bring them myself?”

I selected the materials for a suit, with the assistance of Mr. Trabb’s

judgment, and re-entered the parlour to be measured. For although Mr.

Trabb had my measure already, and had previously been quite contented

with it, he said apologetically that it “wouldn’t do under existing

circumstances, sir,—wouldn’t do at all.” So, Mr. Trabb measured and

calculated me in the parlour, as if I were an estate and he the finest

species of surveyor, and gave himself such a world of trouble that I

felt that no suit of clothes could possibly remunerate him for his

pains. When he had at last done and had appointed to send the articles

to Mr. Pumblechook’s on the Thursday evening, he said, with his hand

upon the parlour lock, “I know, sir, that London gentlemen cannot be

expected to patronise local work, as a rule; but if you would give me a

turn now and then in the quality of a townsman, I should greatly esteem

it. Good-morning, sir, much obliged.—Door!”

The last word was flung at the boy, who had not the least notion what

it meant. But I saw him collapse as his master rubbed me out with his

hands, and my first decided experience of the stupendous power of money

was, that it had morally laid upon his back Trabb’s boy.

After this memorable event, I went to the hatter’s, and the

bootmaker’s, and the hosier’s, and felt rather like Mother Hubbard’s

dog whose outfit required the services of so many trades. I also went

to the coach-office and took my place for seven o’clock on Saturday

morning. It was not necessary to explain everywhere that I had come

into a handsome property; but whenever I said anything to that effect,

it followed that the officiating tradesman ceased to have his attention

diverted through the window by the High Street, and concentrated his

mind upon me. When I had ordered everything I wanted, I directed my

steps towards Pumblechook’s, and, as I approached that gentleman’s

place of business, I saw him standing at his door.

He was waiting for me with great impatience. He had been out early with

the chaise-cart, and had called at the forge and heard the news. He had

prepared a collation for me in the Barnwell parlour, and he too ordered

his shopman to “come out of the gangway” as my sacred person passed.

“My dear friend,” said Mr. Pumblechook, taking me by both hands, when

he and I and the collation were alone, “I give you joy of your good

fortune. Well deserved, well deserved!”

This was coming to the point, and I thought it a sensible way of

expressing himself.

“To think,” said Mr. Pumblechook, after snorting admiration at me for

some moments, “that I should have been the humble instrument of leading

up to this, is a proud reward.”

I begged Mr. Pumblechook to remember that nothing was to be ever said

or hinted, on that point.

“My dear young friend,” said Mr. Pumblechook; “if you will allow me to

call you so—”

I murmured “Certainly,” and Mr. Pumblechook took me by both hands

again, and communicated a movement to his waistcoat, which had an

emotional appearance, though it was rather low down, “My dear young

friend, rely upon my doing my little all in your absence, by keeping

the fact before the mind of Joseph.—Joseph!” said Mr. Pumblechook, in

the way of a compassionate adjuration. “Joseph!! Joseph!!!” Thereupon

he shook his head and tapped it, expressing his sense of deficiency in

Joseph.

“But my dear young friend,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “you must be hungry,

you must be exhausted. Be seated. Here is a chicken had round from the

Boar, here is a tongue had round from the Boar, here’s one or two

little things had round from the Boar, that I hope you may not despise.

But do I,” said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again the moment after he

had sat down, “see afore me, him as I ever sported with in his times of

happy infancy? And may I—_may_ I—?”

This May I, meant might he shake hands? I consented, and he was

fervent, and then sat down again.

“Here is wine,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “Let us drink, Thanks to Fortune,

and may she ever pick out her favourites with equal judgment! And yet I

cannot,” said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again, “see afore me One—and

likewise drink to One—without again expressing—May I—_may_ I—?”

I said he might, and he shook hands with me again, and emptied his

glass and turned it upside down. I did the same; and if I had turned

myself upside down before drinking, the wine could not have gone more

direct to my head.

Mr. Pumblechook helped me to the liver wing, and to the best slice of

tongue (none of those out-of-the-way No Thoroughfares of Pork now), and

took, comparatively speaking, no care of himself at all. “Ah! poultry,

poultry! You little thought,” said Mr. Pumblechook, apostrophising the

fowl in the dish, “when you was a young fledgling, what was in store

for you. You little thought you was to be refreshment beneath this

humble roof for one as—Call it a weakness, if you will,” said Mr.

Pumblechook, getting up again, “but may I? _may_ I—?”

It began to be unnecessary to repeat the form of saying he might, so he

did it at once. How he ever did it so often without wounding himself

with my knife, I don’t know.

“And your sister,” he resumed, after a little steady eating, “which had

the honour of bringing you up by hand! It’s a sad picter, to reflect

that she’s no longer equal to fully understanding the honour. May—”

I saw he was about to come at me again, and I stopped him.

“We’ll drink her health,” said I.

“Ah!” cried Mr. Pumblechook, leaning back in his chair, quite flaccid

with admiration, “that’s the way you know ’em, sir!” (I don’t know who

Sir was, but he certainly was not I, and there was no third person

present); “that’s the way you know the noble-minded, sir! Ever

forgiving and ever affable. It might,” said the servile Pumblechook,

putting down his untasted glass in a hurry and getting up again, “to a

common person, have the appearance of repeating—but _may_ I—?”

When he had done it, he resumed his seat and drank to my sister. “Let

us never be blind,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “to her faults of temper, but

it is to be hoped she meant well.”

At about this time, I began to observe that he was getting flushed in

the face; as to myself, I felt all face, steeped in wine and smarting.

I mentioned to Mr. Pumblechook that I wished to have my new clothes

sent to his house, and he was ecstatic on my so distinguishing him. I

mentioned my reason for desiring to avoid observation in the village,

and he lauded it to the skies. There was nobody but himself, he

intimated, worthy of my confidence, and—in short, might he? Then he

asked me tenderly if I remembered our boyish games at sums, and how we

had gone together to have me bound apprentice, and, in effect, how he

had ever been my favourite fancy and my chosen friend? If I had taken

ten times as many glasses of wine as I had, I should have known that he

never had stood in that relation towards me, and should in my heart of

hearts have repudiated the idea. Yet for all that, I remember feeling

convinced that I had been much mistaken in him, and that he was a

sensible, practical, good-hearted prime fellow.

By degrees he fell to reposing such great confidence in me, as to ask

my advice in reference to his own affairs. He mentioned that there was

an opportunity for a great amalgamation and monopoly of the corn and

seed trade on those premises, if enlarged, such as had never occurred

before in that or any other neighbourhood. What alone was wanting to

the realisation of a vast fortune, he considered to be More Capital.

Those were the two little words, more capital. Now it appeared to him

(Pumblechook) that if that capital were got into the business, through

a sleeping partner, sir,—which sleeping partner would have nothing to

do but walk in, by self or deputy, whenever he pleased, and examine the

books,—and walk in twice a year and take his profits away in his

pocket, to the tune of fifty per cent,—it appeared to him that that

might be an opening for a young gentleman of spirit combined with

property, which would be worthy of his attention. But what did I think?

He had great confidence in my opinion, and what did I think? I gave it

as my opinion. “Wait a bit!” The united vastness and distinctness of

this view so struck him, that he no longer asked if he might shake

hands with me, but said he really must,—and did.

We drank all the wine, and Mr. Pumblechook pledged himself over and

over again to keep Joseph up to the mark (I don’t know what mark), and

to render me efficient and constant service (I don’t know what

service). He also made known to me for the first time in my life, and

certainly after having kept his secret wonderfully well, that he had

always said of me, “That boy is no common boy, and mark me, his fortun’

will be no common fortun’.” He said with a tearful smile that it was a

singular thing to think of now, and I said so too. Finally, I went out

into the air, with a dim perception that there was something unwonted

in the conduct of the sunshine, and found that I had slumberously got

to the turnpike without having taken any account of the road.

There, I was roused by Mr. Pumblechook’s hailing me. He was a long way

down the sunny street, and was making expressive gestures for me to

stop. I stopped, and he came up breathless.

“No, my dear friend,” said he, when he had recovered wind for speech.

“Not if I can help it. This occasion shall not entirely pass without

that affability on your part.—May I, as an old friend and well-wisher?

_May_ I?”

We shook hands for the hundredth time at least, and he ordered a young

carter out of my way with the greatest indignation. Then, he blessed me

and stood waving his hand to me until I had passed the crook in the

road; and then I turned into a field and had a long nap under a hedge

before I pursued my way home.

I had scant luggage to take with me to London, for little of the little

I possessed was adapted to my new station. But I began packing that

same afternoon, and wildly packed up things that I knew I should want

next morning, in a fiction that there was not a moment to be lost.

So, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, passed; and on Friday morning I

went to Mr. Pumblechook’s, to put on my new clothes and pay my visit to

Miss Havisham. Mr. Pumblechook’s own room was given up to me to dress

in, and was decorated with clean towels expressly for the event. My

clothes were rather a disappointment, of course. Probably every new and

eagerly expected garment ever put on since clothes came in, fell a

trifle short of the wearer’s expectation. But after I had had my new

suit on some half an hour, and had gone through an immensity of

posturing with Mr. Pumblechook’s very limited dressing-glass, in the

futile endeavour to see my legs, it seemed to fit me better. It being

market morning at a neighbouring town some ten miles off, Mr.

Pumblechook was not at home. I had not told him exactly when I meant to

leave, and was not likely to shake hands with him again before

departing. This was all as it should be, and I went out in my new

array, fearfully ashamed of having to pass the shopman, and suspicious

after all that I was at a personal disadvantage, something like Joe’s

in his Sunday suit.

I went circuitously to Miss Havisham’s by all the back ways, and rang

at the bell constrainedly, on account of the stiff long fingers of my

gloves. Sarah Pocket came to the gate, and positively reeled back when

she saw me so changed; her walnut-shell countenance likewise turned

from brown to green and yellow.

“You?” said she. “You? Good gracious! What do you want?”

“I am going to London, Miss Pocket,” said I, “and want to say good-bye

to Miss Havisham.”

I was not expected, for she left me locked in the yard, while she went

to ask if I were to be admitted. After a very short delay, she returned

and took me up, staring at me all the way.

Miss Havisham was taking exercise in the room with the long spread

table, leaning on her crutch stick. The room was lighted as of yore,

and at the sound of our entrance, she stopped and turned. She was then

just abreast of the rotted bride-cake.

“Don’t go, Sarah,” she said. “Well, Pip?”

“I start for London, Miss Havisham, to-morrow,” I was exceedingly

careful what I said, “and I thought you would kindly not mind my taking

leave of you.”

“This is a gay figure, Pip,” said she, making her crutch stick play

round me, as if she, the fairy godmother who had changed me, were

bestowing the finishing gift.

“I have come into such good fortune since I saw you last, Miss

Havisham,” I murmured. “And I am so grateful for it, Miss Havisham!”

“Ay, ay!” said she, looking at the discomfited and envious Sarah, with

delight. “I have seen Mr. Jaggers. _I_ have heard about it, Pip. So you

go to-morrow?”

“Yes, Miss Havisham.”

“And you are adopted by a rich person?”

“Yes, Miss Havisham.”

“Not named?”

“No, Miss Havisham.”

“And Mr. Jaggers is made your guardian?”

“Yes, Miss Havisham.”

She quite gloated on these questions and answers, so keen was her

enjoyment of Sarah Pocket’s jealous dismay. “Well!” she went on; “you

have a promising career before you. Be good—deserve it—and abide by Mr.

Jaggers’s instructions.” She looked at me, and looked at Sarah, and

Sarah’s countenance wrung out of her watchful face a cruel smile.

“Good-bye, Pip!—you will always keep the name of Pip, you know.”

“Yes, Miss Havisham.”

“Good-bye, Pip!”

She stretched out her hand, and I went down on my knee and put it to my

lips. I had not considered how I should take leave of her; it came

naturally to me at the moment to do this. She looked at Sarah Pocket

with triumph in her weird eyes, and so I left my fairy godmother, with

both her hands on her crutch stick, standing in the midst of the dimly

lighted room beside the rotten bride-cake that was hidden in cobwebs.

Sarah Pocket conducted me down, as if I were a ghost who must be seen

out. She could not get over my appearance, and was in the last degree

confounded. I said “Good-bye, Miss Pocket;” but she merely stared, and

did not seem collected enough to know that I had spoken. Clear of the

house, I made the best of my way back to Pumblechook’s, took off my new

clothes, made them into a bundle, and went back home in my older dress,

carrying it—to speak the truth—much more at my ease too, though I had

the bundle to carry.

And now, those six days which were to have run out so slowly, had run

out fast and were gone, and to-morrow looked me in the face more

steadily than I could look at it. As the six evenings had dwindled

away, to five, to four, to three, to two, I had become more and more

appreciative of the society of Joe and Biddy. On this last evening, I

dressed myself out in my new clothes for their delight, and sat in my

splendour until bedtime. We had a hot supper on the occasion,

graced by the inevitable roast fowl, and we had some flip to finish

with. We were all very low, and none the higher for pretending to be in

spirits.

I was to leave our village at five in the morning, carrying my little

hand-portmanteau, and I had told Joe that I wished to walk away all

alone. I am afraid—sore afraid—that this purpose originated in my sense

of the contrast there would be between me and Joe, if we went to the

coach together. I had pretended with myself that there was nothing of

this taint in the arrangement; but when I went up to my little room on

this last night, I felt compelled to admit that it might be so, and had

an impulse upon me to go down again and entreat Joe to walk with me in

the morning. I did not.

All night there were coaches in my broken sleep, going to wrong places

instead of to London, and having in the traces, now dogs, now cats, now

pigs, now men,—never horses. Fantastic failures of journeys occupied me

until the day dawned and the birds were singing. Then, I got up and

partly dressed, and sat at the window to take a last look out, and in

taking it fell asleep.

Biddy was astir so early to get my breakfast, that, although I did not

sleep at the window an hour, I smelt the smoke of the kitchen fire when

I started up with a terrible idea that it must be late in the

afternoon. But long after that, and long after I had heard the clinking

of the teacups and was quite ready, I wanted the resolution to go

downstairs. After all, I remained up there, repeatedly unlocking and

unstrapping my small portmanteau and locking and strapping it up again,

until Biddy called to me that I was late.

It was a hurried breakfast with no taste in it. I got up from the meal,

saying with a sort of briskness, as if it had only just occurred to me,

“Well! I suppose I must be off!” and then I kissed my sister who was

laughing and nodding and shaking in her usual chair, and kissed Biddy,

and threw my arms around Joe’s neck. Then I took up my little

portmanteau and walked out. The last I saw of them was, when I

presently heard a scuffle behind me, and looking back, saw Joe throwing

an old shoe after me and Biddy throwing another old shoe. I stopped

then, to wave my hat, and dear old Joe waved his strong right arm above

his head, crying huskily “Hooroar!” and Biddy put her apron to her

face.

I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to go than I had

supposed it would be, and reflecting that it would never have done to

have had an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of all the High

Street. I whistled and made nothing of going. But the village was very

peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were solemnly rising, as if to

show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all

beyond was so unknown and great, that in a moment with a strong heave

and sob I broke into tears. It was by the finger-post at the end of the

village, and I laid my hand upon it, and said, “Good-bye, O my dear,

dear friend!”

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain

upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was

better after I had cried than before,—more sorry, more aware of my own

ingratitude, more gentle. If I had cried before, I should have had Joe

with me then.

So subdued I was by those tears, and by their breaking out again in the

course of the quiet walk, that when I was on the coach, and it was

clear of the town, I deliberated with an aching heart whether I would

not get down when we changed horses and walk back, and have another

evening at home, and a better parting. We changed, and I had not made

up my mind, and still reflected for my comfort that it would be quite

practicable to get down and walk back, when we changed again. And while

I was occupied with these deliberations, I would fancy an exact

resemblance to Joe in some man coming along the road towards us, and my

heart would beat high.—As if he could possibly be there!

We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to

go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and

the world lay spread before me.

THIS IS THE END OF THE FIRST STAGE OF PIP’S EXPECTATIONS.

Chapter XX.

The journey from our town to the metropolis was a journey of about five

hours. It was a little past midday when the four-horse 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.

“How much?” I asked the coachman.

The coachman answered, “A shilling—unless you wish to make it more.”

I naturally said I had no 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?

“He is not,” returned the clerk. “He is in Court at present. Am I

addressing Mr. Pip?”

I signified that he was 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.

“Go and wait outside, Mike,” said the clerk.

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 pitched 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 horsehair, 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 upstairs, 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 eighteen-pence. 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, “O 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.

First, he took the two secret men.

“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 a toss-up. Have you

paid Wemmick?”

“We made the money up this morning, sir,” said one of the men,

submissively, while the other perused Mr. Jaggers’s face.

“I don’t ask you when you made it up, or where, or whether you made it

up at all. Has Wemmick got it?”

“Yes, sir,” said both the men together.

“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.”

“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.”

The two men looked at one another as Mr. Jaggers waved them behind

again, and humbly fell back and were heard no more.

“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?”

“Yes, Mr. Jaggers.”

“And do you remember,” retorted Mr. Jaggers, “that but for me you

wouldn’t be here and couldn’t be here?”

“O yes, sir!” exclaimed both women together. “Lord bless you, sir, well

we knows that!”

“Then why,” said Mr. Jaggers, “do you come here?”

“My Bill, sir!” the crying woman pleaded.

“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?”

“O yes, sir! Every farden.”

“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.

“I don’t know this man!” said Mr. Jaggers, in the same devastating

strain: “What does this fellow want?”

“Ma thear Mithter Jaggerth. Hown brother to Habraham Latharuth?”

“Who’s he?” said Mr. Jaggers. “Let go of my coat.”

The suitor, kissing the hem of the garment again before relinquishing

it, replied, “Habraham Latharuth, on thuthpithion of plate.”

“You’re too late,” said Mr. Jaggers. “I am over the way.”

“Holy father, Mithter Jaggerth!” cried my excitable acquaintance,

turning white, “don’t thay you’re again Habraham Latharuth!”

“I am,” said Mr. Jaggers, “and there’s an end of it. Get out of the

way.”

“Mithter Jaggerth! Half a moment! My hown cuthen’th gone to Mithter

Wemmick at thith prethent minute, to hoffer him hany termth. Mithter

Jaggerth! Half a quarter of a moment! If you’d have the condethenthun

to be bought off from the t’other thide—at hany thuperior prithe!—money

no object!—Mithter Jaggerth—Mithter—!”

My guardian threw his supplicant off with supreme indifference, and

left him dancing on the pavement as if it were red hot. Without further

interruption, we reached the front office, where we found the clerk and

the man in velveteen with the fur cap.

“Here’s Mike,” said the clerk, getting down from his stool, and

approaching Mr. Jaggers confidentially.

“Oh!” said Mr. Jaggers, turning to the man, who was pulling a lock of

hair in the middle of his forehead, like the Bull in Cock Robin pulling

at the bell-rope; “your man comes on this afternoon. Well?”

“Well, Mas’r Jaggers,” returned Mike, in the voice of a sufferer from a

constitutional cold; “arter a deal o’ trouble, I’ve found one, sir, as

might do.”

“What is he prepared to swear?”

“Well, Mas’r Jaggers,” said Mike, wiping his nose on his fur cap this

time; “in a general way, anythink.”

Mr. Jaggers suddenly became most irate. “Now, I warned you before,”

said he, throwing his forefinger at the terrified client, “that if you

ever presumed to talk in that way here, I’d make an example of you. You

infernal scoundrel, how dare you tell ME that?”

The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if he were unconscious

what he had done.

“Spooney!” said the clerk, in a low voice, giving him a stir with his

elbow. “Soft Head! Need you say it face to face?”

“Now, I ask you, you blundering booby,” said my guardian, very sternly,

“once more and for the last time, what the man you have brought here is

prepared to swear?”

Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were trying to learn a lesson

from his face, and slowly replied, “Ayther to character, or to having

been in his company and never left him all the night in question.”

“Now, be careful. In what station of life is this man?”

Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor, and looked at the

ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even looked at me, before

beginning to reply in a nervous manner, “We’ve dressed him up like—”

when my guardian blustered out,—

“What? You WILL, will you?”

(“Spooney!” added the clerk again, with another stir.)

After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened and began again:—

“He is dressed like a ’spectable pieman. A sort of a pastry-cook.”

“Is he here?” asked my guardian.

“I left him,” said Mike, “a setting on some doorsteps round the

corner.”

“Take him past that window, and let me see him.”

The window indicated was the office window. We all three went to it,

behind the wire blind, and presently saw the client go by in an

accidental manner, with a murderous-looking tall individual, in a short

suit of white linen and a paper cap. This guileless confectioner was

not by any means sober, and had a black eye in the green stage of

recovery, which was painted over.

“Tell him to take his witness away directly,” said my guardian to the

clerk, in extreme disgust, “and ask him what he means by bringing such

a fellow as that.”

My guardian then took me into his own room, and while he lunched,

standing, from a sandwich-box and a pocket-flask of sherry (he seemed

to bully his very sandwich as he ate it), informed me what arrangements

he had made for me. I was to go to “Barnard’s Inn,” to young Mr.

Pocket’s rooms, where a bed had been sent in for my accommodation; I

was to remain with young Mr. Pocket until Monday; on Monday I was to go

with him to his father’s house on a visit, that I might try how I liked

it. Also, I was told what my allowance was to be,—it was a very liberal

one,—and had handed to me from one of my guardian’s drawers, the cards

of certain tradesmen with whom I was to deal for all kinds of clothes,

and such other things as I could in reason want. “You will find your

credit good, Mr. Pip,” said my guardian, whose flask of sherry smelt

like a whole caskful, as he hastily refreshed himself, “but I shall by

this means be able to check your bills, and to pull you up if I find

you outrunning the constable. Of course you’ll go wrong somehow, but

that’s no fault of mine.”

After I had pondered a little over this encouraging sentiment, I asked

Mr. Jaggers if I could send for a coach? He said it was not worth

while, I was so near my destination; Wemmick should walk round with me,

if I pleased.

I then found that Wemmick was the clerk in the next room. Another clerk

was rung down from upstairs to take his place while he was out, and I

accompanied him into the street, after shaking hands with my guardian.

We found a new set of people lingering outside, but Wemmick made a way

among them by saying coolly yet decisively, “I tell you it’s no use; he

won’t have a word to say to one of you;” and we soon got clear of them,

and went on side by side.

Chapter XXI.

Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was

like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in

stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have

been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some

marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been

softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints.

The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment

over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them

off. I judged him to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his

linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements; for

he wore at least four mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a

lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, too,

that several rings and seals hung at his watch-chain, as if he were

quite laden with remembrances of departed friends. He had glittering

eyes,—small, keen, and black,—and thin wide mottled lips. He had had

them, to the best of my belief, from forty to fifty years.

“So you were never in London before?” said Mr. Wemmick to me.

“No,” said I.

“_I_ was new here once,” said Mr. Wemmick. “Rum to think of now!”

“You are well acquainted with it now?”

“Why, yes,” said Mr. Wemmick. “I know the moves of it.”

“Is it a very wicked place?” I asked, more for the sake of saying

something than for information.

“You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered in London. But there are

plenty of people anywhere, who’ll do that for you.”

“If there is bad blood between you and them,” said I, to soften it off

a little.

“O! I don’t know about bad blood,” returned Mr. Wemmick; “there’s not

much bad blood about. They’ll do it, if there’s anything to be got by

it.”

“That makes it worse.”

“You think so?” returned Mr. Wemmick. “Much about the same, I should

say.”

He wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked straight before

him: walking in a self-contained way as if there were nothing in the

streets to claim his attention. His mouth was such a post-office of a

mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling. We had got to the

top of Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a mechanical

appearance, and that he was not smiling at all.

“Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket lives?” I asked Mr. Wemmick.

“Yes,” said he, nodding in the direction. “At Hammersmith, west of

London.”

“Is that far?”

“Well! Say five miles.”

“Do you know him?”

“Why, you’re a regular cross-examiner!” said Mr. Wemmick, looking at me

with an approving air. “Yes, I know him. _I_ know him!”

There was an air of toleration or depreciation about his utterance of

these words that rather depressed me; and I was still looking sideways

at his block of a face in search of any encouraging note to the text,

when he said here we were at Barnard’s Inn. My depression was not

alleviated by the announcement, for, I had supposed that establishment

to be an hotel kept by Mr. Barnard, to which the Blue Boar in our town

was a mere public-house. Whereas I now found Barnard to be a

disembodied spirit, or a fiction, and his inn the dingiest collection

of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner as a club

for Tom-cats.

We entered this haven through a wicket-gate, and were disgorged by an

introductory passage into a melancholy little square that looked to me

like a flat burying-ground. I thought it had the most dismal trees in

it, and the most dismal sparrows, and the most dismal cats, and the

most dismal houses (in number half a dozen or so), that I had ever

seen. I thought the windows of the sets of chambers into which those

houses were divided were in every stage of dilapidated blind and

curtain, crippled flower-pot, cracked glass, dusty decay, and miserable

makeshift; while To Let, To Let, To Let, glared at me from empty rooms,

as if no new wretches ever came there, and the vengeance of the soul of

Barnard were being slowly appeased by the gradual suicide of the

present occupants and their unholy interment under the gravel. A frowzy

mourning of soot and smoke attired this forlorn creation of Barnard,

and it had strewn ashes on its head, and was undergoing penance and

humiliation as a mere dust-hole. Thus far my sense of sight; while dry

rot and wet rot and all the silent rots that rot in neglected roof and

cellar,—rot of rat and mouse and bug and coaching-stables near at hand

besides—addressed themselves faintly to my sense of smell, and moaned,

“Try Barnard’s Mixture.”

So imperfect was this realisation of the first of my great

expectations, that I looked in dismay at Mr. Wemmick. “Ah!” said he,

mistaking me; “the retirement reminds you of the country. So it does

me.”

He led me into a corner and conducted me up a flight of stairs,—which

appeared to me to be slowly collapsing into sawdust, so that one of

those days the upper lodgers would look out at their doors and find

themselves without the means of coming down,—to a set of chambers on

the top floor. MR. POCKET, JUN., was painted on the door, and there was

a label on the letter-box, “Return shortly.”

“He hardly thought you’d come so soon,” Mr. Wemmick explained. “You

don’t want me any more?”

“No, thank you,” said I.

“As I keep the cash,” Mr. Wemmick observed, “we shall most likely meet

pretty often. Good day.”

“Good day.”

I put out my hand, and Mr. Wemmick at first looked at it as if he

thought I wanted something. Then he looked at me, and said, correcting

himself,—

“To be sure! Yes. You’re in the habit of shaking hands?”

I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of the London fashion,

but said yes.

“I have got so out of it!” said Mr. Wemmick,—“except at last. Very

glad, I’m sure, to make your acquaintance. Good day!”

When we had shaken hands and he was gone, I opened the staircase window

and had nearly beheaded myself, for, the lines had rotted away, and it

came down like the guillotine. Happily it was so quick that I had not

put my head out. After this escape, I was content to take a foggy view

of the Inn through the window’s encrusting dirt, and to stand dolefully

looking out, saying to myself that London was decidedly overrated.

Mr. Pocket, Junior’s, idea of Shortly was not mine, for I had nearly

maddened myself with looking out for half an hour, and had written my

name with my finger several times in the dirt of every pane in the

window, before I heard footsteps on the stairs. Gradually there arose

before me the hat, head, neckcloth, waistcoat, trousers, boots, of a

member of society of about my own standing. He had a paper-bag under

each arm and a pottle of strawberries in one hand, and was out of

breath.

“Mr. Pip?” said he.

“Mr. Pocket?” said I.

“Dear me!” he exclaimed. “I am extremely sorry; but I knew there was a

coach from your part of the country at midday, and I thought you would

come by that one. The fact is, I have been out on your account,—not

that that is any excuse,—for I thought, coming from the country, you

might like a little fruit after dinner, and I went to Covent Garden

Market to get it good.”

For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would start out of my

head. I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and began to think

this was a dream.

“Dear me!” said Mr. Pocket, Junior. “This door sticks so!”

As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling with the door while

the paper-bags were under his arms, I begged him to allow me to hold

them. He relinquished them with an agreeable smile, and combated with

the door as if it were a wild beast. It yielded so suddenly at last,

that he staggered back upon me, and I staggered back upon the opposite

door, and we both laughed. But still I felt as if my eyes must start

out of my head, and as if this must be a dream.

“Pray come in,” said Mr. Pocket, Junior. “Allow me to lead the way. I

am rather bare here, but I hope you’ll be able to make out tolerably

well till Monday. My father thought you would get on more agreeably

through to-morrow with me than with him, and might like to take a walk

about London. I am sure I shall be very happy to show London to you. As

to our table, you won’t find that bad, I hope, for it will be supplied

from our coffee-house here, and (it is only right I should add) at your

expense, such being Mr. Jaggers’s directions. As to our lodging, it’s

not by any means splendid, because I have my own bread to earn, and my

father hasn’t anything to give me, and I shouldn’t be willing to take

it, if he had. This is our sitting-room,—just such chairs and tables

and carpet and so forth, you see, as they could spare from home. You

mustn’t give me credit for the tablecloth and spoons and castors,

because they come for you from the coffee-house. This is my little

bedroom; rather musty, but Barnard’s _is_ musty. This is your bedroom;

the furniture’s hired for the occasion, but I trust it will answer the

purpose; if you should want anything, I’ll go and fetch it. The

chambers are retired, and we shall be alone together, but we shan’t

fight, I dare say. But dear me, I beg your pardon, you’re holding the

fruit all this time. Pray let me take these bags from you. I am quite

ashamed.”

As I stood opposite to Mr. Pocket, Junior, delivering him the bags,

One, Two, I saw the starting appearance come into his own eyes that I

knew to be in mine, and he said, falling back,—

“Lord bless me, you’re the prowling boy!”

“And you,” said I, “are the pale young gentleman!”

Chapter XXII.

The pale young gentleman and I stood contemplating one another in

Barnard’s Inn, until we both burst out laughing. “The idea of its being

you!” said he. “The idea of its being _you_!” said I. And then we

contemplated one another afresh, and laughed again. “Well!” said the

pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand good-humouredly, “it’s all

over now, I hope, and it will be magnanimous in you if you’ll forgive

me for having knocked you about so.”

I derived from this speech that Mr. Herbert Pocket (for Herbert was the

pale young gentleman’s name) still rather confounded his intention with

his execution. But I made a modest reply, and we shook hands warmly.

“You hadn’t come into your good fortune at that time?” said Herbert

Pocket.

“No,” said I.

“No,” he acquiesced: “I heard it had happened very lately. _I_ was

rather on the lookout for good fortune then.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. Miss Havisham had sent for me, to see if she could take a fancy

to me. But she couldn’t,—at all events, she didn’t.”

I thought it polite to remark that I was surprised to hear that.

“Bad taste,” said Herbert, laughing, “but a fact. Yes, she had sent for

me on a trial visit, and if I had come out of it successfully, I

suppose I should have been provided for; perhaps I should have been

what-you-may-called it to Estella.”

“What’s that?” I asked, with sudden gravity.

He was arranging his fruit in plates while we talked, which divided his

attention, and was the cause of his having made this lapse of a word.

“Affianced,” he explained, still busy with the fruit. “Betrothed.

Engaged. What’s-his-named. Any word of that sort.”

“How did you bear your disappointment?” I asked.

“Pooh!” said he, “I didn’t care much for it. _She’s_ a Tartar.”

“Miss Havisham?”

“I don’t say no to that, but I meant Estella. That girl’s hard and

haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up by

Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the male sex.”

“What relation is she to Miss Havisham?”

“None,” said he. “Only adopted.”

“Why should she wreak revenge on all the male sex? What revenge?”

“Lord, Mr. Pip!” said he. “Don’t you know?”

“No,” said I.

“Dear me! It’s quite a story, and shall be saved till dinner-time. And

now let me take the liberty of asking you a question. How did you come

there, that day?”

I told him, and he was attentive until I had finished, and then burst

out laughing again, and asked me if I was sore afterwards? I didn’t ask

him if _he_ was, for my conviction on that point was perfectly

established.

“Mr. Jaggers is your guardian, I understand?” he went on.

“Yes.”

“You know he is Miss Havisham’s man of business and solicitor, and has

her confidence when nobody else has?”

This was bringing me (I felt) towards dangerous ground. I answered with

a constraint I made no attempt to disguise, that I had seen Mr. Jaggers

in Miss Havisham’s house on the very day of our combat, but never at

any other time, and that I believed he had no recollection of having

ever seen me there.

“He was so obliging as to suggest my father for your tutor, and he

called on my father to propose it. Of course he knew about my father

from his connection with Miss Havisham. My father is Miss Havisham’s

cousin; not that that implies familiar intercourse between them, for he

is a bad courtier and will not propitiate her.”

Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very taking.

I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen any one since, who

more strongly expressed to me, in every look and tone, a natural

incapacity to do anything secret and mean. There was something

wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and something that at the

same time whispered to me he would never be very successful or rich. I

don’t know how this was. I became imbued with the notion on that first

occasion before we sat down to dinner, but I cannot define by what

means.

He was still a pale young gentleman, and had a certain conquered

languor about him in the midst of his spirits and briskness, that did

not seem indicative of natural strength. He had not a handsome face,

but it was better than handsome: being extremely amiable and cheerful.

His figure was a little ungainly, as in the days when my knuckles had

taken such liberties with it, but it looked as if it would always be

light and young. Whether Mr. Trabb’s local work would have sat more

gracefully on him than on me, may be a question; but I am conscious

that he carried off his rather old clothes much better than I carried

off my new suit.

As he was so communicative, I felt that reserve on my part would be a

bad return unsuited to our years. I therefore told him my small story,

and laid stress on my being forbidden to inquire who my benefactor was.

I further mentioned that as I had been brought up a blacksmith in a

country place, and knew very little of the ways of politeness, I would

take it as a great kindness in him if he would give me a hint whenever

he saw me at a loss or going wrong.

“With pleasure,” said he, “though I venture to prophesy that you’ll

want very few hints. I dare say we shall be often together, and I

should like to banish any needless restraint between us. Will you do me

the favour to begin at once to call me by my Christian name, Herbert?”

I thanked him and said I would. I informed him in exchange that my

Christian name was Philip.

“I don’t take to Philip,” said he, smiling, “for it sounds like a moral

boy out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy that he fell into a pond,

or so fat that he couldn’t see out of his eyes, or so avaricious that

he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so determined to go a

bird’s-nesting that he got himself eaten by bears who lived handy in

the neighbourhood. I tell you what I should like. We are so harmonious,

and you have been a blacksmith,—would you mind it?”

“I shouldn’t mind anything that you propose,” I answered, “but I don’t

understand you.”

“Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There’s a charming piece of

music by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith.”

“I should like it very much.”

“Then, my dear Handel,” said he, turning round as the door opened,

“here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to take the top of the

table, because the dinner is of your providing.”

This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I faced him. It was a

nice little dinner,—seemed to me then a very Lord Mayor’s Feast,—and it

acquired additional relish from being eaten under those independent

circumstances, with no old people by, and with London all around us.

This again was heightened by a certain gypsy character that set the

banquet off; for while the table was, as Mr. Pumblechook might have

said, the lap of luxury,—being entirely furnished forth from the

coffee-house,—the circumjacent region of sitting-room was of a

comparatively pastureless and shifty character; imposing on the waiter

the wandering habits of putting the covers on the floor (where he fell

over them), the melted butter in the arm-chair, the bread on the

bookshelves, the cheese in the coal-scuttle, and the boiled fowl into

my bed in the next room,—where I found much of its parsley and butter

in a state of congelation when I retired for the night. All this made

the feast delightful, and when the waiter was not there to watch me, my

pleasure was without alloy.

We had made some progress in the dinner, when I reminded Herbert of his

promise to tell me about Miss Havisham.

“True,” he replied. “I’ll redeem it at once. Let me introduce the

topic, Handel, by mentioning that in London it is not the custom to put

the knife in the mouth,—for fear of accidents,—and that while the fork

is reserved for that use, it is not put further in than necessary. It

is scarcely worth mentioning, only it’s as well to do as other people

do. Also, the spoon is not generally used over-hand, but under. This

has two advantages. You get at your mouth better (which after all is

the object), and you save a good deal of the attitude of opening

oysters, on the part of the right elbow.”

He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively way, that we

both laughed and I scarcely blushed.

“Now,” he pursued, “concerning Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham, you must

know, was a spoilt child. Her mother died when she was a baby, and her

father denied her nothing. Her father was a country gentleman down in

your part of the world, and was a brewer. I don’t know why it should be

a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is indisputable that while you

cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was

and brew. You see it every day.”

“Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?” said I.

“Not on any account,” returned Herbert; “but a public-house may keep a

gentleman. Well! Mr. Havisham was very rich and very proud. So was his

daughter.”

“Miss Havisham was an only child?” I hazarded.

“Stop a moment, I am coming to that. No, she was not an only child; she

had a half-brother. Her father privately married again—his cook, I

rather think.”

“I thought he was proud,” said I.

“My good Handel, so he was. He married his second wife privately,

because he was proud, and in course of time _she_ died. When she was

dead, I apprehend he first told his daughter what he had done, and then

the son became a part of the family, residing in the house you are

acquainted with. As the son grew a young man, he turned out riotous,

extravagant, undutiful,—altogether bad. At last his father disinherited

him; but he softened when he was dying, and left him well off, though

not nearly so well off as Miss Havisham.—Take another glass of wine,

and excuse my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one to

be so strictly conscientious in emptying one’s glass, as to turn it

bottom upwards with the rim on one’s nose.”

I had been doing this, in an excess of attention to his recital. I

thanked him, and apologised. He said, “Not at all,” and resumed.

“Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may suppose was looked after

as a great match. Her half-brother had now ample means again, but what

with debts and what with new madness wasted them most fearfully again.

There were stronger differences between him and her than there had been

between him and his father, and it is suspected that he cherished a

deep and mortal grudge against her as having influenced the father’s

anger. Now, I come to the cruel part of the story,—merely breaking off,

my dear Handel, to remark that a dinner-napkin will not go into a

tumbler.”

Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler, I am wholly unable to

say. I only know that I found myself, with a perseverance worthy of a

much better cause, making the most strenuous exertions to compress it

within those limits. Again I thanked him and apologised, and again he

said in the cheerfullest manner, “Not at all, I am sure!” and resumed.

“There appeared upon the scene—say at the races, or the public balls,

or anywhere else you like—a certain man, who made love to Miss

Havisham. I never saw him (for this happened five-and-twenty years ago,

before you and I were, Handel), but I have heard my father mention that

he was a showy man, and the kind of man for the purpose. But that he

was not to be, without ignorance or prejudice, mistaken for a

gentleman, my father most strongly asseverates; because it is a

principle of his that no man who was not a true gentleman at heart ever

was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no

varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you

put on, the more the grain will express itself. Well! This man pursued

Miss Havisham closely, and professed to be devoted to her. I believe

she had not shown much susceptibility up to that time; but all the

susceptibility she possessed certainly came out then, and she

passionately loved him. There is no doubt that she perfectly idolized

him. He practised on her affection in that systematic way, that he got

great sums of money from her, and he induced her to buy her brother out

of a share in the brewery (which had been weakly left him by his

father) at an immense price, on the plea that when he was her husband

he must hold and manage it all. Your guardian was not at that time in

Miss Havisham’s counsels, and she was too haughty and too much in love

to be advised by any one. Her relations were poor and scheming, with

the exception of my father; he was poor enough, but not time-serving or

jealous. The only independent one among them, he warned her that she

was doing too much for this man, and was placing herself too

unreservedly in his power. She took the first opportunity of angrily

ordering my father out of the house, in his presence, and my father has

never seen her since.”

I thought of her having said, “Matthew will come and see me at last

when I am laid dead upon that table;” and I asked Herbert whether his

father was so inveterate against her?

“It’s not that,” said he, “but she charged him, in the presence of her

intended husband, with being disappointed in the hope of fawning upon

her for his own advancement, and, if he were to go to her now, it would

look true—even to him—and even to her. To return to the man and make an

end of him. The marriage day was fixed, the wedding dresses were

bought, the wedding tour was planned out, the wedding guests were

invited. The day came, but not the bridegroom. He wrote her a letter—”

“Which she received,” I struck in, “when she was dressing for her

marriage? At twenty minutes to nine?”

“At the hour and minute,” said Herbert, nodding, “at which she

afterwards stopped all the clocks. What was in it, further than that it

most heartlessly broke the marriage off, I can’t tell you, because I

don’t know. When she recovered from a bad illness that she had, she

laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, and she has never

since looked upon the light of day.”

“Is that all the story?” I asked, after considering it.

“All I know of it; and indeed I only know so much, through piecing it

out for myself; for my father always avoids it, and, even when Miss

Havisham invited me to go there, told me no more of it than it was

absolutely requisite I should understand. But I have forgotten one

thing. It has been supposed that the man to whom she gave her misplaced

confidence acted throughout in concert with her half-brother; that it

was a conspiracy between them; and that they shared the profits.”

“I wonder he didn’t marry her and get all the property,” said I.

“He may have been married already, and her cruel mortification may have

been a part of her half-brother’s scheme,” said Herbert. “Mind! I don’t

know that.”

“What became of the two men?” I asked, after again considering the

subject.

“They fell into deeper shame and degradation—if there can be deeper—and

ruin.”

“Are they alive now?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said just now that Estella was not related to Miss Havisham, but

adopted. When adopted?”

Herbert shrugged his shoulders. “There has always been an Estella,

since I have heard of a Miss Havisham. I know no more. And now,

Handel,” said he, finally throwing off the story as it were, “there is

a perfectly open understanding between us. All that I know about Miss

Havisham, you know.”

“And all that I know,” I retorted, “you know.”

“I fully believe it. So there can be no competition or perplexity

between you and me. And as to the condition on which you hold your

advancement in life,—namely, that you are not to inquire or discuss to

whom you owe it,—you may be very sure that it will never be encroached

upon, or even approached, by me, or by any one belonging to me.”

In truth, he said this with so much delicacy, that I felt the subject

done with, even though I should be under his father’s roof for years

and years to come. Yet he said it with so much meaning, too, that I

felt he as perfectly understood Miss Havisham to be my benefactress, as

I understood the fact myself.

It had not occurred to me before, that he had led up to the theme for

the purpose of clearing it out of our way; but we were so much the

lighter and easier for having broached it, that I now perceived this to

be the case. We were very gay and sociable, and I asked him, in the

course of conversation, what he was? He replied, “A capitalist,—an

Insurer of Ships.” I suppose he saw me glancing about the room in

search of some tokens of Shipping, or capital, for he added, “In the

City.”

I had grand ideas of the wealth and importance of Insurers of Ships in

the City, and I began to think with awe of having laid a young Insurer

on his back, blackened his enterprising eye, and cut his responsible

head open. But again there came upon me, for my relief, that odd

impression that Herbert Pocket would never be very successful or rich.

“I shall not rest satisfied with merely employing my capital in

insuring ships. I shall buy up some good Life Assurance shares, and cut

into the Direction. I shall also do a little in the mining way. None of

these things will interfere with my chartering a few thousand tons on

my own account. I think I shall trade,” said he, leaning back in his

chair, “to the East Indies, for silks, shawls, spices, dyes, drugs, and

precious woods. It’s an interesting trade.”

“And the profits are large?” said I.

“Tremendous!” said he.

I wavered again, and began to think here were greater expectations than

my own.

[Illustration]

“I think I shall trade, also,” said he, putting his thumbs in his

waist-coat pockets, “to the West Indies, for sugar, tobacco, and rum.

Also to Ceylon, especially for elephants’ tusks.”

“You will want a good many ships,” said I.

“A perfect fleet,” said he.

Quite overpowered by the magnificence of these transactions, I asked

him where the ships he insured mostly traded to at present?

“I haven’t begun insuring yet,” he replied. “I am looking about me.”

Somehow, that pursuit seemed more in keeping with Barnard’s Inn. I said

(in a tone of conviction), “Ah-h!”

“Yes. I am in a counting-house, and looking about me.”

“Is a counting-house profitable?” I asked.

“To—do you mean to the young fellow who’s in it?” he asked, in reply.

“Yes; to you.”

“Why, n-no; not to me.” He said this with the air of one carefully

reckoning up and striking a balance. “Not directly profitable. That is,

it doesn’t pay me anything, and I have to—keep myself.”

This certainly had not a profitable appearance, and I shook my head as

if I would imply that it would be difficult to lay by much accumulative

capital from such a source of income.

“But the thing is,” said Herbert Pocket, “that you look about you.

_That’s_ the grand thing. You are in a counting-house, you know, and

you look about you.”

It struck me as a singular implication that you couldn’t be out of a

counting-house, you know, and look about you; but I silently deferred

to his experience.

“Then the time comes,” said Herbert, “when you see your opening. And

you go in, and you swoop upon it and you make your capital, and then

there you are! When you have once made your capital, you have nothing

to do but employ it.”

This was very like his way of conducting that encounter in the garden;

very like. His manner of bearing his poverty, too, exactly corresponded

to his manner of bearing that defeat. It seemed to me that he took all

blows and buffets now with just the same air as he had taken mine then.

It was evident that he had nothing around him but the simplest

necessaries, for everything that I remarked upon turned out to have

been sent in on my account from the coffee-house or somewhere else.

Yet, having already made his fortune in his own mind, he was so

unassuming with it that I felt quite grateful to him for not being

puffed up. It was a pleasant addition to his naturally pleasant ways,

and we got on famously. In the evening we went out for a walk in the

streets, and went half-price to the Theatre; and next day we went to

church at Westminster Abbey, and in the afternoon we walked in the

Parks; and I wondered who shod all the horses there, and wished Joe

did.

On a moderate computation, it was many months, that Sunday, since I had

left Joe and Biddy. The space interposed between myself and them

partook of that expansion, and our marshes were any distance off. That

I could have been at our old church in my old church-going clothes, on

the very last Sunday that ever was, seemed a combination of

impossibilities, geographical and social, solar and lunar. Yet in the

London streets so crowded with people and so brilliantly lighted in the

dusk of evening, there were depressing hints of reproaches for that I

had put the poor old kitchen at home so far away; and in the dead of

night, the footsteps of some incapable impostor of a porter mooning

about Barnard’s Inn, under pretence of watching it, fell hollow on my

heart.

On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine, Herbert went to the

counting-house to report himself,—to look about him, too, I

suppose,—and I bore him company. He was to come away in an hour or two

to attend me to Hammersmith, and I was to wait about for him. It

appeared to me that the eggs from which young Insurers were hatched

were incubated in dust and heat, like the eggs of ostriches, judging

from the places to which those incipient giants repaired on a Monday

morning. Nor did the counting-house where Herbert assisted, show in my

eyes as at all a good Observatory; being a back second floor up a yard,

of a grimy presence in all particulars, and with a look into another

back second floor, rather than a look out.

I waited about until it was noon, and I went upon ’Change, and I saw

fluey men sitting there under the bills about shipping, whom I took to

be great merchants, though I couldn’t understand why they should all be

out of spirits. When Herbert came, we went and had lunch at a

celebrated house which I then quite venerated, but now believe to have

been the most abject superstition in Europe, and where I could not help

noticing, even then, that there was much more gravy on the tablecloths

and knives and waiters’ clothes, than in the steaks. This collation

disposed of at a moderate price (considering the grease, which was not

charged for), we went back to Barnard’s Inn and got my little

portmanteau, and then took coach for Hammersmith. We arrived there at

two or three o’clock in the afternoon, and had very little way to walk

to Mr. Pocket’s house. Lifting the latch of a gate, we passed direct

into a little garden overlooking the river, where Mr. Pocket’s children

were playing about. And unless I deceive myself on a point where my

interests or prepossessions are certainly not concerned, I saw that Mr.

and Mrs. Pocket’s children were not growing up or being brought up, but

were tumbling up.

Mrs. Pocket was sitting on a garden chair under a tree, reading, with

her legs upon another garden chair; and Mrs. Pocket’s two nurse-maids

were looking about them while the children played. “Mamma,” said

Herbert, “this is young Mr. Pip.” Upon which Mrs. Pocket received me

with an appearance of amiable dignity.

“Master Alick and Miss Jane,” cried one of the nurses to two of the

children, “if you go a bouncing up against them bushes you’ll fall over

into the river and be drownded, and what’ll your pa say then?”

At the same time this nurse picked up Mrs. Pocket’s handkerchief, and

said, “If that don’t make six times you’ve dropped it, Mum!” Upon which

Mrs. Pocket laughed and said, “Thank you, Flopson,” and settling

herself in one chair only, resumed her book. Her countenance

immediately assumed a knitted and intent expression as if she had been

reading for a week, but before she could have read half a dozen lines,

she fixed her eyes upon me, and said, “I hope your mamma is quite

well?” This unexpected inquiry put me into such a difficulty that I

began saying in the absurdest way that if there had been any such

person I had no doubt she would have been quite well and would have

been very much obliged and would have sent her compliments, when the

nurse came to my rescue.

“Well!” she cried, picking up the pocket-handkerchief, “if that don’t

make seven times! What ARE you a-doing of this afternoon, Mum!” Mrs.

Pocket received her property, at first with a look of unutterable

surprise as if she had never seen it before, and then with a laugh of

recognition, and said, “Thank you, Flopson,” and forgot me, and went on

reading.

I found, now I had leisure to count them, that there were no fewer than

six little Pockets present, in various stages of tumbling up. I had

scarcely arrived at the total when a seventh was heard, as in the

region of air, wailing dolefully.

“If there ain’t Baby!” said Flopson, appearing to think it most

surprising. “Make haste up, Millers.”

Millers, who was the other nurse, retired into the house, and by

degrees the child’s wailing was hushed and stopped, as if it were a

young ventriloquist with something in its mouth. Mrs. Pocket read all

the time, and I was curious to know what the book could be.

We were waiting, I supposed, for Mr. Pocket to come out to us; at any

rate we waited there, and so I had an opportunity of observing the

remarkable family phenomenon that whenever any of the children strayed

near Mrs. Pocket in their play, they always tripped themselves up and

tumbled over her,—always very much to her momentary astonishment, and

their own more enduring lamentation. I was at a loss to account for

this surprising circumstance, and could not help giving my mind to

speculations about it, until by and by Millers came down with the baby,

which baby was handed to Flopson, which Flopson was handing it to Mrs.

Pocket, when she too went fairly head foremost over Mrs. Pocket, baby

and all, and was caught by Herbert and myself.

“Gracious me, Flopson!” said Mrs. Pocket, looking off her book for a

moment, “everybody’s tumbling!”

“Gracious you, indeed, Mum!” returned Flopson, very red in the face;

“what have you got there?”

“_I_ got here, Flopson?” asked Mrs. Pocket.

“Why, if it ain’t your footstool!” cried Flopson. “And if you keep it

under your skirts like that, who’s to help tumbling? Here! Take the

baby, Mum, and give me your book.”

Mrs. Pocket acted on the advice, and inexpertly danced the infant a

little in her lap, while the other children played about it. This had

lasted but a very short time, when Mrs. Pocket issued summary orders

that they were all to be taken into the house for a nap. Thus I made

the second discovery on that first occasion, that the nurture of the

little Pockets consisted of alternately tumbling up and lying down.

Under these circumstances, when Flopson and Millers had got the

children into the house, like a little flock of sheep, and Mr. Pocket

came out of it to make my acquaintance, I was not much surprised to

find that Mr. Pocket was a gentleman with a rather perplexed expression

of face, and with his very grey hair disordered on his head, as if he

didn’t quite see his way to putting anything straight.

Chapter XXIII.

Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I was not sorry to

see him. “For, I really am not,” he added, with his son’s smile, “an

alarming personage.” He was a young-looking man, in spite of his

perplexities and his very grey hair, and his manner seemed quite

natural. I use the word natural, in the sense of its being unaffected;

there was something comic in his distraught way, as though it would

have been downright ludicrous but for his own perception that it was

very near being so. When he had talked with me a little, he said to

Mrs. Pocket, with a rather anxious contraction of his eyebrows, which

were black and handsome, “Belinda, I hope you have welcomed Mr. Pip?”

And she looked up from her book, and said, “Yes.” She then smiled upon

me in an absent state of mind, and asked me if I liked the taste of

orange-flower water? As the question had no bearing, near or remote, on

any foregone or subsequent transaction, I consider it to have been

thrown out, like her previous approaches, in general conversational

condescension.

I found out within a few hours, and may mention at once, that Mrs.

Pocket was the only daughter of a certain quite accidental deceased

Knight, who had invented for himself a conviction that his deceased

father would have been made a Baronet but for somebody’s determined

opposition arising out of entirely personal motives,—I forget whose, if

I ever knew,—the Sovereign’s, the Prime Minister’s, the Lord

Chancellor’s, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s, anybody’s,—and had tacked

himself on to the nobles of the earth in right of this quite

supposititious fact. I believe he had been knighted himself for

storming the English grammar at the point of the pen, in a desperate

address engrossed on vellum, on the occasion of the laying of the first

stone of some building or other, and for handing some Royal Personage

either the trowel or the mortar. Be that as it may, he had directed

Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from her cradle as one who in the nature

of things must marry a title, and who was to be guarded from the

acquisition of plebeian domestic knowledge.

So successful a watch and ward had been established over the young lady

by this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly ornamental, but

perfectly helpless and useless. With her character thus happily formed,

in the first bloom of her youth she had encountered Mr. Pocket: who was

also in the first bloom of youth, and not quite decided whether to

mount to the Woolsack, or to roof himself in with a mitre. As his doing

the one or the other was a mere question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket

had taken Time by the forelock (when, to judge from its length, it

would seem to have wanted cutting), and had married without the

knowledge of the judicious parent. The judicious parent, having nothing

to bestow or withhold but his blessing, had handsomely settled that

dower upon them after a short struggle, and had informed Mr. Pocket

that his wife was “a treasure for a Prince.” Mr. Pocket had invested

the Prince’s treasure in the ways of the world ever since, and it was

supposed to have brought him in but indifferent interest. Still, Mrs.

Pocket was in general the object of a queer sort of respectful pity,

because she had not married a title; while Mr. Pocket was the object of

a queer sort of forgiving reproach, because he had never got one.

Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my room: which was a

pleasant one, and so furnished as that I could use it with comfort for

my own private sitting-room. He then knocked at the doors of two other

similar rooms, and introduced me to their occupants, by name Drummle

and Startop. Drummle, an old-looking young man of a heavy order of

architecture, was whistling. Startop, younger in years and appearance,

was reading and holding his head, as if he thought himself in danger of

exploding it with too strong a charge of knowledge.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in somebody

else’s hands, that I wondered who really was in possession of the house

and let them live there, until I found this unknown power to be the

servants. It was a smooth way of going on, perhaps, in respect of

saving trouble; but it had the appearance of being expensive, for the

servants felt it a duty they owed to themselves to be nice in their

eating and drinking, and to keep a deal of company downstairs. They

allowed a very liberal table to Mr. and Mrs. Pocket, yet it always

appeared to me that by far the best part of the house to have boarded

in would have been the kitchen,—always supposing the boarder capable of

self-defence, for, before I had been there a week, a neighbouring lady

with whom the family were personally unacquainted, wrote in to say that

she had seen Millers slapping the baby. This greatly distressed Mrs.

Pocket, who burst into tears on receiving the note, and said that it

was an extraordinary thing that the neighbours couldn’t mind their own

business.

By degrees I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. Pocket had been

educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, where he had distinguished

himself; but that when he had had the happiness of marrying Mrs. Pocket

very early in life, he had impaired his prospects and taken up the

calling of a Grinder. After grinding a number of dull blades,—of whom

it was remarkable that their fathers, when influential, were always

going to help him to preferment, but always forgot to do it when the

blades had left the Grindstone,—he had wearied of that poor work and