Great Expectations

By Charles Dickens

Chapter 1

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 dykes

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.

"O! 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.

"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 weather-cock. 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 2

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-bye, had not said it at all. "You'll drive me to the

churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and oh, 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 plaister - 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 plaister, 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 boot-jack. 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

sun-set-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

ironed 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 down stairs; 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 earthen ware 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 3

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

dykes 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, "Holloa,

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 that 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 further 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 4

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 door-step 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 dust-pan 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 an't," said Mrs.

Joe, "I an'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

mantelshelf, 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

Policemen 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 corn-chandler

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, "Oh, 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 table-cloth, 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 vigour 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 fervour 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 savoury

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 re-awakening

appetite in the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble

remark that "a bit of savoury 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 further 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 5

The apparition of a file of soldiers ringing down the butt-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 beat 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 after-noon 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 dykes, 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 dyke 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 6

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 for ever 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

nought - 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 7

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, in to 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 twopence per week

each, for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented

a small cottage, and Mr. Wopsle had the room up-stairs, 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 transaction. Biddy was Mr. Wopsle's

great-aunt's granddaughter; I confess myself quiet 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 fully 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 KR WITE 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."

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 slowly

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 oncommon 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 last, 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 wigour only to be equalled by the wigour 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 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 kept 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 hart."

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 or 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 an'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 fore-foot 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 if 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 an'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

Pomp-eyed. But I have my fears."

"She an'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 a-fire?"

" - 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 for ever 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 soap-suds, 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 8

Mr. Pumblechook's premises in the High-street of the market town,

were of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of

a corn-chandler 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 coach-maker, 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 watch-maker, 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

gormandising 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

court-yard 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

court-yard. 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."

"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 from

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 court-yard, 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 store-house, 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 9

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 coach?" 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; an'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 a 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

wellwisher would adwise, Pip, their being dropped into your

meditations, when you go up-stairs 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 10

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 bed-chamber - 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 gipsies, 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 patronize 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 dump 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 tea-pot 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 11

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 today,"

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 court-yard, 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-de-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, up-stairs. 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 up-stairs 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 watchchain,

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 down-stairs. 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

chimneypiece 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 centrepiece 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 speckled-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 blackbeetles

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 realization 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 posses 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 pianoforte-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 halfdozen

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 them,

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 re-appeared

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, businesslike, 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 court-yard, 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 12

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, specially 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 for ever 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 dressingtable, 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 13

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 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 heart!"

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

up-stairs 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-TONishing!" 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 armchair, 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 corn-chandler. "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-plaister. 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 bloodstain'd

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 14

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 15

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

halfpenny. 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 hill-side 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 up-town 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. Tan't only one wot can go up-town.

"Don't lose your temper," said Joe.

"Shall if I like," growled Orlick. "Some and their up-towning! 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? O! O! O!" 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? O! Hold me! O!"

"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! O! O!" 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 up long

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 up-stairs to dress myself.

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-bye, 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

wellremembered 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 was 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 16

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 re-taken, 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 wine-glasses

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 down-stairs, 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 17

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 patronized 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."

"Oh, 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

further, 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 further, or go home?"

I said to Biddy we would walk a little further, 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 candlelight 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 18

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 cozy

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 recognize me, but I recognized 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 greataunt;

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 recognized 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 needlework 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 genteel 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 19

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

plumpudding, 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 dykes 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.

"Oh, his manners! won't his manners do, then?" asked Biddy,

plucking a black-currant leaf.

"My dear Biddy, they do very well here--"

"Oh! 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.

"Oh! 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 table-cloth,

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 countryside.

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 patronize

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

in 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,

apostrophizing 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 nobleminded,

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 realization 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 turn-pike 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 bridecake 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 my self 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 down stairs. 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 20

The journey from our town to the metropolis, was a journey of about

five hours. It was a little past mid-day when the fourhorse

stage-coach by which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of

traffic frayed out about the Cross Keys, Wood-street, Cheapside,

London.

We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was

treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of

everything: otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of

London, I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was

not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty.

Mr. Jaggers had duly sent me his address; it was, Little Britain,

and he had written after it on his card, "just out of Smithfield,

and close by the coach-office." Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman,

who seemed to have as many capes to his greasy great-coat as he was

years old, packed me up in his coach and hemmed me in with a

folding and jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going to take

me fifty miles. His getting on his box, which I remember to have

been decorated with an old weather-stained pea-green hammercloth

moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of time. It was a wonderful

equipage, with six great coronets outside, and ragged things behind

for I don't know how many footmen to hold on by, and a harrow below

them, to prevent amateur footmen from yielding to the temptation.

I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to think how like a

straw-yard it was, and yet how like a rag-shop, and to wonder why

the horses' nose-bags were kept inside, when I observed the

coachman beginning to get down, as if we were going to stop

presently. And stop we presently did, in a gloomy street, at

certain offices with an open door, whereon was painted MR. JAGGERS.

"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 horse-hair,

with rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin; and I fancied I

could see how he leaned back in it, and bit his forefinger at the

clients. The room was but small, and the clients seemed to have had

a habit of backing up against the wall: the wall, especially

opposite to Mr. Jaggers's chair, being greasy with shoulders. I

recalled, too, that the one-eyed gentleman had shuffled forth

against the wall when I was the innocent cause of his being turned

out.

I sat down in the cliental chair placed over against Mr. Jaggers's

chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of the place.

I called to mind that the clerk had the same air of knowing

something to everybody else's disadvantage, as his master had. I

wondered how many other clerks there were up-stairs, and whether

they all claimed to have the same detrimental mastery of their

fellow-creatures. I wondered what was the history of all the odd

litter about the room, and how it came there. I wondered whether

the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers's family, and, if he were

so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such ill-looking relations,

why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the blacks and flies to

settle on, instead of giving them a place at home. Of course I had

no experience of a London summer day, and my spirits may have been

oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by the dust and grit that

lay thick on everything. But I sat wondering and waiting in Mr.

Jaggers's close room, until I really could not bear the two casts

on the shelf above Mr. Jaggers's chair, and got up and went out.

When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the air while I

waited, he advised me to go round the corner and I should come into

Smithfield. So, I came into Smithfield; and the shameful place,

being all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to

stick to me. So, I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning

into a street where I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul's

bulging at me from behind a grim stone building which a bystander

said was Newgate Prison. Following the wall of the jail, I found

the roadway covered with straw to deaden the noise of passing

vehicles; and from this, and from the quantity of people standing

about, smelling strongly of spirits and beer, I inferred that the

trials were on.

While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially

drunk minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and

hear a trial or so: informing me that he could give me a front

place for half-a-crown, whence I should command a full view of the

Lord Chief Justice in his wig and robes - mentioning that awful

personage like waxwork, and presently offering him at the reduced

price of eighteenpence. As I declined the proposal on the plea of

an appointment, he was so good as to take me into a yard and show

me where the gallows was kept, and also where people were publicly

whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors' Door, out of which

culprits came to be hanged: heightening the interest of that

dreadful portal by giving me to understand that "four on 'em" would

come out at that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the

morning, to be killed in a row. This was horrible, and gave me a

sickening idea of London: the more so as the Lord Chief Justice's

proprietor wore (from his hat down to his boots and up again to his

pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed clothes, which had

evidently not belonged to him originally, and which, I took it into

my head, he had bought cheap of the executioner. Under these

circumstances I thought myself well rid of him for a shilling.

I dropped into the office to ask if Mr. Jaggers had come in yet, and

I found he had not, and I strolled out again. This time, I made the

tour of Little Britain, and turned into Bartholomew Close; and now

I became aware that other people were waiting about for Mr. Jaggers,

as well as I. There were two men of secret appearance lounging in

Bartholomew Close, and thoughtfully fitting their feet into the

cracks of the pavement as they talked together, one of whom said to

the other when they first passed me, that "Jaggers would do it if

it was to be done." There was a knot of three men and two women

standing at a corner, and one of the women was crying on her dirty

shawl, and the other comforted her by saying, as she pulled her own

shawl over her shoulders, "Jaggers is for him, 'Melia, and what

more could you have?" There was a red-eyed little Jew who came into

the Close while I was loitering there, in company with a second

little Jew whom he sent upon an errand; and while the messenger was

gone, I remarked this Jew, who was of a highly excitable

temperament, performing a jig of anxiety under a lamp-post and

accompanying himself, in a kind of frenzy, with the words, "Oh

Jaggerth, Jaggerth, Jaggerth! all otherth ith Cag-Maggerth, give me

Jaggerth!" These testimonies to the popularity of my guardian made

a deep impression on me, and I admired and wondered more than ever.

At length, as I was looking out at the iron gate of Bartholomew

Close into Little Britain, I saw Mr. Jaggers coming across the road

towards me. All the others who were waiting, saw him at the same

time, and there was quite a rush at him. Mr. Jaggers, putting a hand

on my shoulder and walking me on at his side without saying

anything to me, addressed himself to his followers.

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?"

"Oh 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?"

"Oh 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 settin 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

cask-full, 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 up-stairs 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 21

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.

"Oh! 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 postoffice

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 frouzy 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 realization 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

bed-room; 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 22

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 goodhumouredly,

"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 look-out 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 connexion 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 gipsy

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 armchair, the bread on the bookshelves, the cheese in

the coalscuttle, 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 apologized. 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

apologized, 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 councils, 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.

"I think I shall trade, also," said he, putting his thumbs in his

waistcoat pockets, "to the West Indies, for sugar, tobacco, and

rum. Also to Ceylon, specially 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

nursemaids 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 23

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 down stairs. 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 had come to

London. Here, after gradually failing in loftier hopes, he had

"read" with divers who had lacked opportunities or neglected them,

and had refurbished divers others for special occasions, and had

turned his acquirements to the account of literary compilation and

correction, and on such means, added to some very moderate private

resources, still maintained the house I saw.

Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had a toady neighbour; a widow lady of that

highly sympathetic nature that she agreed with everybody, blessed

everybody, and shed smiles and tears on everybody, according to

circumstances. This lady's name was Mrs. Coiler, and I had the

honour of taking her down to dinner on the day of my installation.

She gave me to understand on the stairs, that it was a blow to dear

Mrs. Pocket that dear Mr. Pocket should be under the necessity of

receiving gentlemen to read with him. That did not extend to me,

she told me in a gush of love and confidence (at that time, I had

known her something less than five minutes); if they were all like

Me, it would be quite another thing.

"But dear Mrs. Pocket," said Mrs. Coiler, "after her early

disappointment (not that dear Mr. Pocket was to blame in that),

requires so much luxury and elegance--"

"Yes, ma'am," I said, to stop her, for I was afraid she was going

to cry.

"And she is of so aristocratic a disposition--"

"Yes, ma'am," I said again, with the same object as before.

" - that it is hard," said Mrs. Coiler, "to have dear Mr. Pocket's

time and attention diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket."

I could not help thinking that it might be harder if the butcher's

time and attention were diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket; but I said

nothing, and indeed had enough to do in keeping a bashful watch

upon my company-manners.

It came to my knowledge, through what passed between Mrs. Pocket and

Drummle while I was attentive to my knife and fork, spoon, glasses,

and other instruments of self-destruction, that Drummle, whose

Christian name was Bentley, was actually the next heir but one to a

baronetcy. It further appeared that the book I had seen Mrs. Pocket

reading in the garden, was all about titles, and that she knew the

exact date at which her grandpapa would have come into the book, if

he ever had come at all. Drummle didn't say much, but in his

limited way (he struck me as a sulky kind of fellow) he spoke as

one of the elect, and recognized Mrs. Pocket as a woman and a

sister. No one but themselves and Mrs. Coiler the toady neighbour

showed any interest in this part of the conversation, and it

appeared to me that it was painful to Herbert; but it promised to

last a long time, when the page came in with the announcement of a

domestic affliction. It was, in effect, that the cook had mislaid

the beef. To my unutterable amazement, I now, for the first time,

saw Mr. Pocket relieve his mind by going through a performance that

struck me as very extraordinary, but which made no impression on

anybody else, and with which I soon became as familiar as the rest.

He laid down the carving-knife and fork - being engaged in carving,

at the moment - put his two hands into his disturbed hair, and

appeared to make an extraordinary effort to lift himself up by it.

When he had done this, and had not lifted himself up at all, he

quietly went on with what he was about.

Mrs. Coiler then changed the subject, and began to flatter me. I

liked it for a few moments, but she flattered me so very grossly

that the pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of coming

close at me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the

friends and localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and

fork-tongued; and when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop

(who said very little to her), or upon Drummle (who said less), I

rather envied them for being on the opposite side of the table.

After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs. Coiler made

admiring comments on their eyes, noses, and legs - a sagacious way

of improving their minds. There were four little girls, and two

little boys, besides the baby who might have been either, and the

baby's next successor who was as yet neither. They were brought in

by Flopson and Millers, much as though those two noncommissioned

officers had been recruiting somewhere for children and had

enlisted these: while Mrs. Pocket looked at the young Nobles that

ought to have been, as if she rather thought she had had the

pleasure of inspecting them before, but didn't quite know what to

make of them.

"Here! Give me your fork, Mum, and take the baby," said Flopson.

"Don't take it that way, or you'll get its head under the table."

Thus advised, Mrs. Pocket took it the other way, and got its head

upon the table; which was announced to all present by a prodigious

concussion.

"Dear, dear! Give it me back, Mum," said Flopson; "and Miss Jane,

come and dance to baby, do!"

One of the little girls, a mere mite who seemed to have prematurely

taken upon herself some charge of the others, stepped out of her

place by me, and danced to and from the baby until it left off

crying, and laughed. Then, all the children laughed, and Mr. Pocket

(who in the meantime had twice endeavoured to lift himself up by

the hair) laughed, and we all laughed and were glad.

Flopson, by dint of doubling the baby at the joints like a Dutch

doll, then got it safely into Mrs. Pocket's lap, and gave it the

nutcrackers to play with: at the same time recommending Mrs. Pocket

to take notice that the handles of that instrument were not likely

to agree with its eyes, and sharply charging Miss Jane to look

after the same. Then, the two nurses left the room, and had a

lively scuffle on the staircase with a dissipated page who had

waited at dinner, and who had clearly lost half his buttons at the

gamingtable.

I was made very uneasy in my mind by Mrs. Pocket's falling into a

discussion with Drummle respecting two baronetcies, while she ate a

sliced orange steeped in sugar and wine, and forgetting all about

the baby on her lap: who did most appalling things with the

nutcrackers. At length, little Jane perceiving its young brains to

be imperilled, softly left her place, and with many small artifices

coaxed the dangerous weapon away. Mrs. Pocket finishing her orange

at about the same time, and not approving of this, said to Jane:

"You naughty child, how dare you? Go and sit down this instant!"

"Mamma dear," lisped the little girl, "baby ood have put hith eyeth

out."

"How dare you tell me so?" retorted Mrs. Pocket. "Go and sit down in

your chair this moment!"

Mrs. Pocket's dignity was so crushing, that I felt quite abashed: as

if I myself had done something to rouse it.

"Belinda," remonstrated Mr. Pocket, from the other end of the table,

"how can you be so unreasonable? Jane only interfered for the

protection of baby."

"I will not allow anybody to interfere," said Mrs. Pocket. "I am

surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the affront of

interference."

"Good God!" cried Mr. Pocket, in an outbreak of desolate

desperation. "Are infants to be nutcrackered into their tombs, and

is nobody to save them?"

"I will not be interfered with by Jane," said Mrs. Pocket, with a

majestic glance at that innocent little offender. "I hope I know my

poor grandpapa's position. Jane, indeed!"

Mr. Pocket got his hands in his hair again, and this time really did

lift himself some inches out of his chair. "Hear this!" he

helplessly exclaimed to the elements. "Babies are to be

nutcrackered dead, for people's poor grandpapa's positions!" Then

he let himself down again, and became silent.

We all looked awkwardly at the table-cloth while this was going on.

A pause succeeded, during which the honest and irrepressible baby

made a series of leaps and crows at little Jane, who appeared to me

to be the only member of the family (irrespective of servants) with

whom it had any decided acquaintance.

"Mr. Drummle," said Mrs. Pocket, "will you ring for Flopson? Jane,

you undutiful little thing, go and lie down. Now, baby darling,

come with ma!"

The baby was the soul of honour, and protested with all its might.

It doubled itself up the wrong way over Mrs. Pocket's arm, exhibited

a pair of knitted shoes and dimpled ankles to the company in lieu

of its soft face, and was carried out in the highest state of

mutiny. And it gained its point after all, for I saw it through the

window within a few minutes, being nursed by little Jane.

It happened that the other five children were left behind at the

dinner-table, through Flopson's having some private engagement, and

their not being anybody else's business. I thus became aware of the

mutual relations between them and Mr. Pocket, which were exemplified

in the following manner. Mr. Pocket, with the normal perplexity of

his face heightened and his hair rumpled, looked at them for some

minutes, as if he couldn't make out how they came to be boarding

and lodging in that establishment, and why they hadn't been

billeted by Nature on somebody else. Then, in a distant, Missionary

way he asked them certain questions - as why little Joe had that

hole in his frill: who said, Pa, Flopson was going to mend it when

she had time - and how little Fanny came by that whitlow: who said,

Pa, Millers was going to poultice it when she didn't forget. Then,

he melted into parental tenderness, and gave them a shilling apiece

and told them to go and play; and then as they went out, with one

very strong effort to lift himself up by the hair he dismissed the

hopeless subject.

In the evening there was rowing on the river. As Drummle and

Startop had each a boat, I resolved to set up mine, and to cut them

both out. I was pretty good at most exercises in which countryboys

are adepts, but, as I was conscious of wanting elegance of style

for the Thames - not to say for other waters - I at once engaged to

place myself under the tuition of the winner of a prizewherry who

plied at our stairs, and to whom I was introduced by my new allies.

This practical authority confused me very much, by saying I had the

arm of a blacksmith. If he could have known how nearly the

compliment lost him his pupil, I doubt if he would have paid it.

There was a supper-tray after we got home at night, and I think we

should all have enjoyed ourselves, but for a rather disagreeable

domestic occurrence. Mr. Pocket was in good spirits, when a

housemaid came in, and said, "If you please, sir, I should wish to

speak to you."

"Speak to your master?" said Mrs. Pocket, whose dignity was roused

again. "How can you think of such a thing? Go and speak to Flopson.

Or speak to me - at some other time."

"Begging your pardon, ma'am," returned the housemaid, "I should

wish to speak at once, and to speak to master."

Hereupon, Mr. Pocket went out of the room, and we made the best of

ourselves until he came back.

"This is a pretty thing, Belinda!" said Mr. Pocket, returning with a

countenance expressive of grief and despair. "Here's the cook lying

insensibly drunk on the kitchen floor, with a large bundle of fresh

butter made up in the cupboard ready to sell for grease!"

Mrs. Pocket instantly showed much amiable emotion, and said, "This

is that odious Sophia's doing!"

"What do you mean, Belinda?" demanded Mr. Pocket.

"Sophia has told you," said Mrs. Pocket. "Did I not see her with my

own eyes and hear her with my own ears, come into the room just now

and ask to speak to you?"

"But has she not taken me down stairs, Belinda," returned Mr.

Pocket, "and shown me the woman, and the bundle too?"

"And do you defend her, Matthew," said Mrs. Pocket, "for making

mischief?"

Mr. Pocket uttered a dismal groan.

"Am I, grandpapa's granddaughter, to be nothing in the house?" said

Mrs. Pocket. "Besides, the cook has always been a very nice

respectful woman, and said in the most natural manner when she came

to look after the situation, that she felt I was born to be a

Duchess."

There was a sofa where Mr. Pocket stood, and he dropped upon it in

the attitude of the Dying Gladiator. Still in that attitude he

said, with a hollow voice, "Good night, Mr. Pip," when I deemed it

advisable to go to bed and leave him.

Chapter 24

After two or three days, when I had established myself in my room

and had gone backwards and forwards to London several times, and

had ordered all I wanted of my tradesmen, Mr. Pocket and I had a

long talk together. He knew more of my intended career than I knew

myself, for he referred to his having been told by Mr. Jaggers that

I was not designed for any profession, and that I should be well

enough educated for my destiny if I could "hold my own" with the

average of young men in prosperous circumstances. I acquiesced, of

course, knowing nothing to the contrary.

He advised my attending certain places in London, for the

acquisition of such mere rudiments as I wanted, and my investing

him with the functions of explainer and director of all my studies.

He hoped that with intelligent assistance I should meet with little

to discourage me, and should soon be able to dispense with any aid

but his. Through his way of saying this, and much more to similar

purpose, he placed himself on confidential terms with me in an

admirable manner; and I may state at once that he was always so

zealous and honourable in fulfilling his compact with me, that he

made me zealous and honourable in fulfilling mine with him. If he

had shown indifference as a master, I have no doubt I should have

returned the compliment as a pupil; he gave me no such excuse, and

each of us did the other justice. Nor, did I ever regard him as

having anything ludicrous about him - or anything but what was

serious, honest, and good - in his tutor communication with me.

When these points were settled, and so far carried out as that I

had begun to work in earnest, it occurred to me that if I could

retain my bedroom in Barnard's Inn, my life would be agreeably

varied, while my manners would be none the worse for Herbert's

society. Mr. Pocket did not object to this arrangement, but urged

that before any step could possibly be taken in it, it must be

submitted to my guardian. I felt that this delicacy arose out of

the consideration that the plan would save Herbert some expense, so

I went off to Little Britain and imparted my wish to Mr. Jaggers.

"If I could buy the furniture now hired for me," said I, "and one

or two other little things, I should be quite at home there."

"Go it!" said Mr. Jaggers, with a short laugh. "I told you you'd get

on. Well! How much do you want?"

I said I didn't know how much.

"Come!" retorted Mr. Jaggers. "How much? Fifty pounds?"

"Oh, not nearly so much."

"Five pounds?" said Mr. Jaggers.

This was such a great fall, that I said in discomfiture, "Oh! more

than that."

"More than that, eh!" retorted Mr. Jaggers, lying in wait for me,

with his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, and his eyes

on the wall behind me; "how much more?"

"It is so difficult to fix a sum," said I, hesitating.

"Come!" said Mr. Jaggers. "Let's get at it. Twice five; will that

do? Three times five; will that do? Four times five; will that do?"

I said I thought that would do handsomely.

"Four times five will do handsomely, will it?" said Mr. Jaggers,

knitting his brows. "Now, what do you make of four times five?"

"What do I make of it?"

"Ah!" said Mr. Jaggers; "how much?"

"I suppose you make it twenty pounds," said I, smiling.

"Never mind what I make it, my friend," observed Mr. Jaggers, with a

knowing and contradictory toss of his head. "I want to know what

you make it."

"Twenty pounds, of course."

"Wemmick!" said Mr. Jaggers, opening his office door. "Take Mr. Pip's

written order, and pay him twenty pounds."

This strongly marked way of doing business made a strongly marked

impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr. Jaggers

never laughed; but he wore great bright creaking boots, and, in

poising himself on these boots, with his large head bent down and

his eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, he sometimes

caused the boots to creak, as if they laughed in a dry and

suspicious way. As he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick was

brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick that I hardly knew what to

make of Mr. Jaggers's manner.

"Tell him that, and he'll take it as a compliment," answered

Wemmick; "he don't mean that you should know what to make of it. -

Oh!" for I looked surprised, "it's not personal; it's professional:

only professional."

Wemmick was at his desk, lunching - and crunching - on a dry hard

biscuit; pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit

of a mouth, as if he were posting them.

"Always seems to me," said Wemmick, "as if he had set a mantrap and

was watching it. Suddenly - click - you're caught!"

Without remarking that man-traps were not among the amenities of

life, I said I supposed he was very skilful?

"Deep," said Wemmick, "as Australia." Pointing with his pen at the

office floor, to express that Australia was understood, for the

purposes of the figure, to be symmetrically on the opposite spot of

the globe. "If there was anything deeper," added Wemmick, bringing

his pen to paper, "he'd be it."

Then, I said I supposed he had a fine business, and Wemmick said,

"Ca-pi-tal!" Then I asked if there were many clerks? to which he

replied:

"We don't run much into clerks, because there's only one Jaggers,

and people won't have him at second-hand. There are only four of

us. Would you like to see 'em? You are one of us, as I may say."

I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had put all the biscuit into

the post, and had paid me my money from a cash-box in a safe, the

key of which safe he kept somewhere down his back and produced from

his coat-collar like an iron pigtail, we went up-stairs. The house

was dark and shabby, and the greasy shoulders that had left their

mark in Mr. Jaggers's room, seemed to have been shuffling up and

down the staircase for years. In the front first floor, a clerk who

looked something between a publican and a rat-catcher - a large

pale puffed swollen man - was attentively engaged with three or

four people of shabby appearance, whom he treated as

unceremoniously as everybody seemed to be treated who contributed

to Mr. Jaggers's coffers. "Getting evidence together," said Mr.

Wemmick, as we came out, "for the Bailey."

In the room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with

dangling hair (his cropping seemed to have been forgotten when he

was a puppy) was similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes, whom

Mr. Wemmick presented to me as a smelter who kept his pot always

boiling, and who would melt me anything I pleased - and who was in

an excessive white-perspiration, as if he had been trying his art on

himself. In a back room, a high-shouldered man with a face-ache tied

up in dirty flannel, who was dressed in old black clothes that bore

the appearance of having been waxed, was stooping over his work of

making fair copies of the notes of the other two gentlemen, for Mr.

Jaggers's own use.

This was all the establishment. When we went down-stairs again,

Wemmick led me into my guardian's room, and said, "This you've seen

already."

"Pray," said I, as the two odious casts with the twitchy leer upon

them caught my sight again, "whose likenesses are those?"

"These?" said Wemmick, getting upon a chair, and blowing the dust

off the horrible heads before bringing them down. "These are two

celebrated ones. Famous clients of ours that got us a world of

credit. This chap (why you must have come down in the night and

been peeping into the inkstand, to get this blot upon your eyebrow,

you old rascal!) murdered his master, and, considering that he

wasn't brought up to evidence, didn't plan it badly."

"Is it like him?" I asked, recoiling from the brute, as Wemmick

spat upon his eyebrow and gave it a rub with his sleeve.

"Like him? It's himself, you know. The cast was made in Newgate,

directly after he was taken down. You had a particular fancy for

me, hadn't you, Old Artful?" said Wemmick. He then explained this

affectionate apostrophe, by touching his brooch representing the

lady and the weeping willow at the tomb with the urn upon it, and

saying, "Had it made for me, express!"

"Is the lady anybody?" said I.

"No," returned Wemmick. "Only his game. (You liked your bit of

game, didn't you?) No; deuce a bit of a lady in the case, Mr. Pip,

except one - and she wasn't of this slender ladylike sort, and you

wouldn't have caught her looking after this urn - unless there was

something to drink in it." Wemmick's attention being thus directed

to his brooch, he put down the cast, and polished the brooch with

his pocket-handkerchief.

"Did that other creature come to the same end?" I asked. "He has

the same look."

"You're right," said Wemmick; "it's the genuine look. Much as if

one nostril was caught up with a horsehair and a little fish-hook.

Yes, he came to the same end; quite the natural end here, I assure

you. He forged wills, this blade did, if he didn't also put the

supposed testators to sleep too. You were a gentlemanly Cove,

though" (Mr. Wemmick was again apostrophizing), "and you said you

could write Greek. Yah, Bounceable! What a liar you were! I never

met such a liar as you!" Before putting his late friend on his

shelf again, Wemmick touched the largest of his mourning rings and

said, "Sent out to buy it for me, only the day before."

While he was putting up the other cast and coming down from the

chair, the thought crossed my mind that all his personal jewellery

was derived from like sources. As he had shown no diffidence on the

subject, I ventured on the liberty of asking him the question, when

he stood before me, dusting his hands.

"Oh yes," he returned, "these are all gifts of that kind. One

brings another, you see; that's the way of it. I always take 'em.

They're curiosities. And they're property. They may not be worth

much, but, after all, they're property and portable. It don't

signify to you with your brilliant look-out, but as to myself, my

guidingstar always is, "Get hold of portable property"."

When I had rendered homage to this light, he went on to say, in a

friendly manner:

"If at any odd time when you have nothing better to do, you

wouldn't mind coming over to see me at Walworth, I could offer you

a bed, and I should consider it an honour. I have not much to show

you; but such two or three curiosities as I have got, you might

like to look over; and I am fond of a bit of garden and a

summer-house."

I said I should be delighted to accept his hospitality.

"Thankee," said he; "then we'll consider that it's to come off,

when convenient to you. Have you dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?"

"Not yet."

"Well," said Wemmick, "he'll give you wine, and good wine. I'll

give you punch, and not bad punch. and now I'll tell you something.

When you go to dine with Mr. Jaggers, look at his housekeeper."

"Shall I see something very uncommon?"

"Well," said Wemmick, "you'll see a wild beast tamed. Not so very

uncommon, you'll tell me. I reply, that depends on the original

wildness of the beast, and the amount of taming. It won't lower

your opinion of Mr. Jaggers's powers. Keep your eye on it."

I told him I would do so, with all the interest and curiosity that

his preparation awakened. As I was taking my departure, he asked me

if I would like to devote five minutes to seeing Mr. Jaggers "at

it?"

For several reasons, and not least because I didn't clearly know

what Mr. Jaggers would be found to be "at," I replied in the

affirmative. We dived into the City, and came up in a crowded

policecourt, where a blood-relation (in the murderous sense) of the

deceased with the fanciful taste in brooches, was standing at the

bar, uncomfortably chewing something; while my guardian had a woman

under examination or cross-examination - I don't know which - and

was striking her, and the bench, and everybody present, with awe.

If anybody, of whatsoever degree, said a word that he didn't

approve of, he instantly required to have it "taken down." If

anybody wouldn't make an admission, he said, "I'll have it out of

you!" and if anybody made an admission, he said, "Now I have got

you!" the magistrates shivered under a single bite of his finger.

Thieves and thieftakers hung in dread rapture on his words, and

shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned in their direction. Which

side he was on, I couldn't make out, for he seemed to me to be

grinding the whole place in a mill; I only know that when I stole

out on tiptoe, he was not on the side of the bench; for, he was

making the legs of the old gentleman who presided, quite convulsive

under the table, by his denunciations of his conduct as the

representative of British law and justice in that chair that day.

Chapter 25

Bentley Drummle, who was so sulky a fellow that he even took up a

book as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up an

acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement,

and comprehension - in the sluggish complexion of his face, and in

the large awkward tongue that seemed to loll about in his mouth as

he himself lolled about in a room - he was idle, proud, niggardly,

reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in

Somersetshire, who had nursed this combination of qualities until

they made the discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead.

Thus, Bentley Drummle had come to Mr. Pocket when he was a head

taller than that gentleman, and half a dozen heads thicker than

most gentlemen.

Startop had been spoilt by a weak mother and kept at home when he

ought to have been at school, but he was devotedly attached to her,

and admired her beyond measure. He had a woman's delicacy of

feature, and was - "as you may see, though you never saw her," said

Herbert to me - exactly like his mother. It was but natural that I

should take to him much more kindly than to Drummle, and that, even

in the earliest evenings of our boating, he and I should pull

homeward abreast of one another, conversing from boat to boat,

while Bentley Drummle came up in our wake alone, under the

overhanging banks and among the rushes. He would always creep

in-shore like some uncomfortable amphibious creature, even when the

tide would have sent him fast upon his way; and I always think of

him as coming after us in the dark or by the back-water, when our

own two boats were breaking the sunset or the moonlight in

mid-stream.

Herbert was my intimate companion and friend. I presented him with

a half-share in my boat, which was the occasion of his often coming

down to Hammersmith; and my possession of a halfshare in his

chambers often took me up to London. We used to walk between the

two places at all hours. I have an affection for the road yet

(though it is not so pleasant a road as it was then), formed in the

impressibility of untried youth and hope.

When I had been in Mr. Pocket's family a month or two, Mr. and Mrs.

Camilla turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket's sister. Georgiana, whom

I had seen at Miss Havisham's on the same occasion, also turned up.

she was a cousin - an indigestive single woman, who called her

rigidity religion, and her liver love. These people hated me with

the hatred of cupidity and disappointment. As a matter of course,

they fawned upon me in my prosperity with the basest meanness.

Towards Mr. Pocket, as a grown-up infant with no notion of his own

interests, they showed the complacent forbearance I had heard them

express. Mrs. Pocket they held in contempt; but they allowed the

poor soul to have been heavily disappointed in life, because that

shed a feeble reflected light upon themselves.

These were the surroundings among which I settled down, and applied

myself to my education. I soon contracted expensive habits, and

began to spend an amount of money that within a few short months I

should have thought almost fabulous; but through good and evil I

stuck to my books. There was no other merit in this, than my having

sense enough to feel my deficiencies. Between Mr. Pocket and Herbert

I got on fast; and, with one or the other always at my elbow to

give me the start I wanted, and clear obstructions out of my road,

I must have been as great a dolt as Drummle if I had done less.

I had not seen Mr. Wemmick for some weeks, when I thought I would

write him a note and propose to go home with him on a certain

evening. He replied that it would give him much pleasure, and that

he would expect me at the office at six o'clock. Thither I went,

and there I found him, putting the key of his safe down his back as

the clock struck.

"Did you think of walking down to Walworth?" said he.

"Certainly," said I, "if you approve."

"Very much," was Wemmick's reply, "for I have had my legs under the

desk all day, and shall be glad to stretch them. Now, I'll tell you

what I have got for supper, Mr. Pip. I have got a stewed steak -

which is of home preparation - and a cold roast fowl - which is

from the cook's-shop. I think it's tender, because the master of

the shop was a Juryman in some cases of ours the other day, and we

let him down easy. I reminded him of it when I bought the fowl, and

I said, "Pick us out a good one, old Briton, because if we had

chosen to keep you in the box another day or two, we could easily

have done it." He said to that, "Let me make you a present of the

best fowl in the shop." I let him, of course. As far as it goes,

it's property and portable. You don't object to an aged parent, I

hope?"

I really thought he was still speaking of the fowl, until he added,

"Because I have got an aged parent at my place." I then said what

politeness required.

"So, you haven't dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?" he pursued, as we

walked along.

"Not yet."

"He told me so this afternoon when he heard you were coming. I

expect you'll have an invitation to-morrow. He's going to ask your

pals, too. Three of 'em; ain't there?"

Although I was not in the habit of counting Drummle as one of my

intimate associates, I answered, "Yes."

"Well, he's going to ask the whole gang;" I hardly felt

complimented by the word; "and whatever he gives you, he'll give

you good. Don't look forward to variety, but you'll have

excellence. And there'sa nother rum thing in his house," proceeded

Wemmick, after a moment's pause, as if the remark followed on the

housekeeper understood; "he never lets a door or window be fastened

at night."

"Is he never robbed?"

"That's it!" returned Wemmick. "He says, and gives it out publicly,

"I want to see the man who'll rob me." Lord bless you, I have heard

him, a hundred times if I have heard him once, say to regular

cracksmen in our front office, "You know where I live; now, no bolt

is ever drawn there; why don't you do a stroke of business with me?

Come; can't I tempt you?" Not a man of them, sir, would be bold

enough to try it on, for love or money."

"They dread him so much?" said I.

"Dread him," said Wemmick. "I believe you they dread him. Not but

what he's artful, even in his defiance of them. No silver, sir.

Britannia metal, every spoon."

"So they wouldn't have much," I observed, "even if they--"

"Ah! But he would have much," said Wemmick, cutting me short, "and

they know it. He'd have their lives, and the lives of scores of

'em. He'd have all he could get. And it's impossible to say what he

couldn't get, if he gave his mind to it."

I was falling into meditation on my guardian's greatness, when

Wemmick remarked:

"As to the absence of plate, that's only his natural depth, you

know. A river's its natural depth, and he's his natural depth. Look

at his watch-chain. That's real enough."

"It's very massive," said I.

"Massive?" repeated Wemmick. "I think so. And his watch is a gold

repeater, and worth a hundred pound if it's worth a penny. Mr. Pip,

there are about seven hundred thieves in this town who know all

about that watch; there's not a man, a woman, or a child, among

them, who wouldn't identify the smallest link in that chain, and

drop it as if it was red-hot, if inveigled into touching it."

At first with such discourse, and afterwards with conversation of a

more general nature, did Mr. Wemmick and I beguile the time and the

road, until he gave me to understand that we had arrived in the

district of Walworth.

It appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and little

gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement.

Wemmick's house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots

of garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery

mounted with guns.

"My own doing," said Wemmick. "Looks pretty; don't it?"

I highly commended it, I think it was the smallest house I ever

saw; with the queerest gothic windows (by far the greater part of

them sham), and a gothic door, almost too small to get in at.

"That's a real flagstaff, you see," said Wemmick, "and on Sundays I

run up a real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed this

bridge, I hoist it up - so - and cut off the communication."

The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide

and two deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which

he hoisted it up and made it fast; smiling as he did so, with a

relish and not merely mechanically.

"At nine o'clock every night, Greenwich time," said Wemmick, "the

gun fires. There he is, you see! And when you hear him go, I think

you'll say he's a Stinger."

The piece of ordnance referred to, was mounted in a separate

fortress, constructed of lattice-work. It was protected from the

weather by an ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature

of an umbrella.

"Then, at the back," said Wemmick, "out of sight, so as not to

impede the idea of fortifications - for it's a principle with me,

if you have an idea, carry it out and keep it up - I don't know

whether that's your opinion--"

I said, decidedly.

" - At the back, there's a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits;

then, I knock together my own little frame, you see, and grow

cucumbers; and you'll judge at supper what sort of a salad I can

raise. So, sir," said Wemmick, smiling again, but seriously too, as

he shook his head, "if you can suppose the little place besieged,

it would hold out a devil of a time in point of provisions."

Then, he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but which

was approached by such ingenious twists of path that it took quite

a long time to get at; and in this retreat our glasses were already

set forth. Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose

margin the bower was raised. This piece of water (with an island in

the middle which might have been the salad for supper) was of a

circular form, and he had constructed a fountain in it, which, when

you set a little mill going and took a cork out of a pipe, played

to that powerful extent that it made the back of your hand quite

wet.

"I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber,

and my own gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades," said Wemmick,

in acknowledging my compliments. "Well; it's a good thing, you

know. It brushes the Newgate cobwebs away, and pleases the Aged.

You wouldn't mind being at once introduced to the Aged, would you?

It wouldn't put you out?"

I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle.

There, we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel

coat: clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for, but

intensely deaf.

"Well aged parent," said Wemmick, shaking hands with him in a

cordial and jocose way, "how am you?"

"All right, John; all right!" replied the old man.

"Here's Mr. Pip, aged parent," said Wemmick, "and I wish you could

hear his name. Nod away at him, Mr. Pip; that's what he likes. Nod

away at him, if you please, like winking!"

"This is a fine place of my son's, sir," cried the old man, while I

nodded as hard as I possibly could. "This is a pretty

pleasure-ground, sir. This spot and these beautiful works upon it

ought to be kept together by the Nation, after my son's time, for

the people's enjoyment."

"You're as proud of it as Punch; ain't you, Aged?" said Wemmick,

contemplating the old man, with his hard face really softened;

"there's a nod for you;" giving him a tremendous one; "there's

another for you;" giving him a still more tremendous one; "you like

that, don't you? If you're not tired, Mr. Pip - though I know it's

tiring to strangers - will you tip him one more? You can't think

how it pleases him."

I tipped him several more, and he was in great spirits. We left him

bestirring himself to feed the fowls, and we sat down to our punch

in the arbour; where Wemmick told me as he smoked a pipe that it

had taken him a good many years to bring the property up to its

present pitch of perfection.

"Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick?"

"O yes," said Wemmick, "I have got hold of it, a bit at a time.

It's a freehold, by George!"

"Is it, indeed? I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it?"

"Never seen it," said Wemmick. "Never heard of it. Never seen the

Aged. Never heard of him. No; the office is one thing, and private

life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle

behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office

behind me. If it's not in any way disagreeable to you, you'll

oblige me by doing the same. I don't wish it professionally spoken

about."

Of course I felt my good faith involved in the observance of his

request. The punch being very nice, we sat there drinking it and

talking, until it was almost nine o'clock. "Getting near gun-fire,"

said Wemmick then, as he laid down his pipe; "it's the Aged's

treat."

Proceeding into the Castle again, we found the Aged heating the

poker, with expectant eyes, as a preliminary to the performance of

this great nightly ceremony. Wemmick stood with his watch in his

hand, until the moment was come for him to take the red-hot poker

from the Aged, and repair to the battery. He took it, and went out,

and presently the Stinger went off with a Bang that shook the crazy

little box of a cottage as if it must fall to pieces, and made

every glass and teacup in it ring. Upon this, the Aged - who I

believe would have been blown out of his arm-chair but for holding

on by the elbows - cried out exultingly, "He's fired! I heerd him!"

and I nodded at the old gentleman until it is no figure of speech

to declare that I absolutely could not see him.

The interval between that time and supper, Wemmick devoted to

showing me his collection of curiosities. They were mostly of a

felonious character; comprising the pen with which a celebrated

forgery had been committed, a distinguished razor or two, some

locks of hair, and several manuscript confessions written under

condemnation - upon which Mr. Wemmick set particular value as being,

to use his own words, "every one of 'em Lies, sir." These were

agreeably dispersed among small specimens of china and glass,

various neat trifles made by the proprietor of the museum, and some

tobacco-stoppers carved by the Aged. They were all displayed in

that chamber of the Castle into which I had been first inducted,

and which served, not only as the general sitting-room but as the

kitchen too, if I might judge from a saucepan on the hob, and a

brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a

roasting-jack.

There was a neat little girl in attendance, who looked after the

Aged in the day. When she had laid the supper-cloth, the bridge was

lowered to give her means of egress, and she withdrew for the

night. The supper was excellent; and though the Castle was rather

subject to dry-rot insomuch that it tasted like a bad nut, and

though the pig might have been farther off, I was heartily pleased

with my whole entertainment. Nor was there any drawback on my

little turret bedroom, beyond there being such a very thin ceiling

between me and the flagstaff, that when I lay down on my back in

bed, it seemed as if I had to balance that pole on my forehead all

night.

Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid I heard him

cleaning my boots. After that, he fell to gardening, and I saw him

from my gothic window pretending to employ the Aged, and nodding at

him in a most devoted manner. Our breakfast was as good as the

supper, and at half-past eight precisely we started for Little

Britain. By degrees, Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along,

and his mouth tightened into a post-office again. At last, when we

got to his place of business and he pulled out his key from his

coat-collar, he looked as unconscious of his Walworth property as

if the Castle and the drawbridge and the arbour and the lake and

the fountain and the Aged, had all been blown into space together

by the last discharge of the Stinger.

Chapter 26

It fell out as Wemmick had told me it would, that I had an early

opportunity of comparing my guardian's establishment with that of

his cashier and clerk. My guardian was in his room, washing his

hands with his scented soap, when I went into the office from

Walworth; and he called me to him, and gave me the invitation for

myself and friends which Wemmick had prepared me to receive. "No

ceremony," he stipulated, "and no dinner dress, and say tomorrow."

I asked him where we should come to (for I had no idea where he

lived), and I believe it was in his general objection to make

anything like an admission, that he replied, "Come here, and I'll

take you home with me." I embrace this opportunity of remarking

that he washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or a

dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose,

which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer's shop. It had an

unusually large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he

would wash his hands, and wipe them and dry them all over this

towel, whenever he came in from a police-court or dismissed a

client from his room. When I and my friends repaired to him at six

o'clock next day, he seemed to have been engaged on a case of a

darker complexion than usual, for, we found him with his head

butted into this closet, not only washing his hands, but laving his

face and gargling his throat. And even when he had done all that,

and had gone all round the jack-towel, he took out his penknife and

scraped the case out of his nails before he put his coat on.

There were some people slinking about as usual when we passed out

into the street, who were evidently anxious to speak with him; but

there was something so conclusive in the halo of scented soap which

encircled his presence, that they gave it up for that day. As we

walked along westward, he was recognized ever and again by some

face in the crowd of the streets, and whenever that happened he

talked louder to me; but he never otherwise recognized anybody, or

took notice that anybody recognized him.

He conducted us to Gerrard-street, Soho, to a house on the south

side of that street. Rather a stately house of its kind, but

dolefully in want of painting, and with dirty windows. He took out

his key and opened the door, and we all went into a stone hall,

bare, gloomy, and little used. So, up a dark brown staircase into a

series of three dark brown rooms on the first floor. There were

carved garlands on the panelled walls, and as he stood among them

giving us welcome, I know what kind of loops I thought they looked

like.

Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms; the second was his

dressing-room; the third, his bedroom. He told us that he held the

whole house, but rarely used more of it than we saw. The table was

comfortably laid - no silver in the service, of course - and at the

side of his chair was a capacious dumb-waiter, with a variety of

bottles and decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert.

I noticed throughout, that he kept everything under his own hand,

and distributed everything himself.

There was a bookcase in the room; I saw, from the backs of the

books, that they were about evidence, criminal law, criminal

biography, trials, acts of parliament, and such things. The

furniture was all very solid and good, like his watch-chain. It had

an official look, however, and there was nothing merely ornamental

to be seen. In a corner, was a little table of papers with a shaded

lamp: so that he seemed to bring the office home with him in that

respect too, and to wheel it out of an evening and fall to work.

As he had scarcely seen my three companions until now - for, he and

I had walked together - he stood on the hearth-rug, after ringing

the bell, and took a searching look at them. To my surprise, he

seemed at once to be principally if not solely interested in

Drummle.

"Pip," said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder and moving me

to the window, "I don't know one from the other. Who's the Spider?"

"The spider?" said I.

"The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow."

"That's Bentley Drummle," I replied; "the one with the delicate

face is Startop."

Not making the least account of "the one with the delicate face,"

he returned, "Bentley Drummle is his name, is it? I like the look

of that fellow."

He immediately began to talk to Drummle: not at all deterred by his

replying in his heavy reticent way, but apparently led on by it to

screw discourse out of him. I was looking at the two, when there

came between me and them, the housekeeper, with the first dish for

the table.

She was a woman of about forty, I supposed - but I may have thought

her younger than she was. Rather tall, of a lithe nimble figure,

extremely pale, with large faded eyes, and a quantity of streaming

hair. I cannot say whether any diseased affection of the heart

caused her lips to be parted as if she were panting, and her face

to bear a curious expression of suddenness and flutter; but I know

that I had been to see Macbeth at the theatre, a night or two

before, and that her face looked to me as if it were all disturbed

by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of the Witches'

caldron.

She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm with a

finger to notify that dinner was ready, and vanished. We took our

seats at the round table, and my guardian kept Drummle on one side

of him, while Startop sat on the other. It was a noble dish of fish

that the housekeeper had put on table, and we had a joint of

equally choice mutton afterwards, and then an equally choice bird.

Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all of the best,

were given out by our host from his dumb-waiter; and when they had

made the circuit of the table, he always put them back again.

Similarly, he dealt us clean plates and knives and forks, for each

course, and dropped those just disused into two baskets on the

ground by his chair. No other attendant than the housekeeper

appeared. She set on every dish; and I always saw in her face, a

face rising out of the caldron. Years afterwards, I made a dreadful

likeness of that woman, by causing a face that had no other natural

resemblance to it than it derived from flowing hair, to pass behind

a bowl of flaming spirits in a dark room.

Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by her

own striking appearance and by Wemmick's preparation, I observed

that whenever she was in the room, she kept her eyes attentively on

my guardian, and that she would remove her hands from any dish she

put before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded his calling her

back, and wanted him to speak when she was nigh, if he had anything

to say. I fancied that I could detect in his manner a consciousness

of this, and a purpose of always holding her in suspense.

Dinner went off gaily, and, although my guardian seemed to follow

rather than originate subjects, I knew that he wrenched the weakest

part of our dispositions out of us. For myself, I found that I was

expressing my tendency to lavish expenditure, and to patronize

Herbert, and to boast of my great prospects, before I quite knew

that I had opened my lips. It was so with all of us, but with no

one more than Drummle: the development of whose inclination to gird

in a grudging and suspicious way at the rest, was screwed out of

him before the fish was taken off.

It was not then, but when we had got to the cheese, that our

conversation turned upon our rowing feats, and that Drummle was

rallied for coming up behind of a night in that slow amphibious way

of his. Drummle upon this, informed our host that he much preferred

our room to our company, and that as to skill he was more than our

master, and that as to strength he could scatter us like chaff. By

some invisible agency, my guardian wound him up to a pitch little

short of ferocity about this trifle; and he fell to baring and

spanning his arm to show how muscular it was, and we all fell to

baring and spanning our arms in a ridiculous manner.

Now, the housekeeper was at that time clearing the table; my

guardian, taking no heed of her, but with the side of his face

turned from her, was leaning back in his chair biting the side of

his forefinger and showing an interest in Drummle, that, to me, was

quite inexplicable. Suddenly, he clapped his large hand on the

housekeeper's, like a trap, as she stretched it across the table.

So suddenly and smartly did he do this, that we all stopped in our

foolish contention.

"If you talk of strength," said Mr. Jaggers, "I'll show you a wrist.

Molly, let them see your wrist."

Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put her

other hand behind her waist. "Master," she said, in a low voice,

with her eyes attentively and entreatingly fixed upon him. "Don't."

"I'll show you a wrist," repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an immovable

determination to show it. "Molly, let them see your wrist."

"Master," she again murmured. "Please!"

"Molly," said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately

looking at the opposite side of the room, "let them see both your

wrists. Show them. Come!"

He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up on the table.

She brought her other hand from behind her, and held the two out

side by side. The last wrist was much disfigured - deeply scarred

and scarred across and across. When she held her hands out, she

took her eyes from Mr. Jaggers, and turned them watchfully on every

one of the rest of us in succession.

"There's power here," said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the

sinews with his forefinger. "Very few men have the power of wrist

that this woman has. It's remarkable what mere force of grip there

is in these hands. I have had occasion to notice many hands; but I

never saw stronger in that respect, man's or woman's, than these."

While he said these words in a leisurely critical style, she

continued to look at every one of us in regular succession as we

sat. The moment he ceased, she looked at him again. "That'll do,

Molly," said Mr. Jaggers, giving her a slight nod; "you have been

admired, and can go." She withdrew her hands and went out of the

room, and Mr. Jaggers, putting the decanters on from his dumbwaiter,

filled his glass and passed round the wine.

"At half-past nine, gentlemen," said he, "we must break up. Pray

make the best use of your time. I am glad to see you all. Mr.

Drummle, I drink to you."

If his object in singling out Drummle were to bring him out still

more, it perfectly succeeded. In a sulky triumph, Drummle showed

his morose depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and more

offensive degree until he became downright intolerable. Through all

his stages, Mr. Jaggers followed him with the same strange interest.

He actually seemed to serve as a zest to Mr. Jaggers's wine.

In our boyish want of discretion I dare say we took too much to

drink, and I know we talked too much. we became particularly hot

upon some boorish sneer of Drummle's, to the effect that we were

too free with our money. It led to my remarking, with more zeal

than discretion, that it came with a bad grace from him, to whom

Startop had lent money in my presence but a week or so before.

"Well," retorted Drummle; "he'll be paid."

"I don't mean to imply that he won't," said I, "but it might make

you hold your tongue about us and our money, I should think."

"You should think!" retorted Drummle. "Oh Lord!"

"I dare say," I went on, meaning to be very severe, "that you

wouldn't lend money to any of us, if we wanted it."

"You are right," said Drummle. "I wouldn't lend one of you a

sixpence. I wouldn't lend anybody a sixpence."

"Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I should say."

"You should say," repeated Drummle. "Oh Lord!"

This was so very aggravating - the more especially as I found

myself making no way against his surly obtuseness - that I said,

disregarding Herbert's efforts to check me:

"Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I'll tell you what

passed between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed that money."

"I don't want to know what passed between Herbert there and you,"

growled Drummle. And I think he added in a lower growl, that we

might both go to the devil and shake ourselves.

"I'll tell you, however," said I, "whether you want to know or not.

We said that as you put it in your pocket very glad to get it, you

seemed to be immensely amused at his being so weak as to lend it."

Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing in our faces, with his

hands in his pockets and his round shoulders raised: plainly

signifying that it was quite true, and that he despised us, as

asses all.

Hereupon Startop took him in hand, though with a much better grace

than I had shown, and exhorted him to be a little more agreeable.

Startop, being a lively bright young fellow, and Drummle being the

exact opposite, the latter was always disposed to resent him as a

direct personal affront. He now retorted in a coarse lumpish way,

and Startop tried to turn the discussion aside with some small

pleasantry that made us all laugh. Resenting this little success

more than anything, Drummle, without any threat or warning, pulled

his hands out of his pockets, dropped his round shoulders, swore,

took up a large glass, and would have flung it at his adversary's

head, but for our entertainer's dexterously seizing it at the

instant when it was raised for that purpose.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting down the glass,

and hauling out his gold repeater by its massive chain, "I am

exceedingly sorry to announce that it's half-past nine."

On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we got to the street

door, Startop was cheerily calling Drummle "old boy," as if nothing

had happened. But the old boy was so far from responding, that he

would not even walk to Hammersmith on the same side of the way; so,

Herbert and I, who remained in town, saw them going down the street

on opposite sides; Startop leading, and Drummle lagging behind in

the shadow of the houses, much as he was wont to follow in his

boat.

As the door was not yet shut, I thought I would leave Herbert there

for a moment, and run up-stairs again to say a word to my guardian.

I found him in his dressing-room surrounded by his stock of boots,

already hard at it, washing his hands of us.

I told him I had come up again to say how sorry I was that anything

disagreeable should have occurred, and that I hoped he would not

blame me much.

"Pooh!" said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through the

water-drops; "it's nothing, Pip. I like that Spider though."

He had turned towards me now, and was shaking his head, and

blowing, and towelling himself.

"I am glad you like him, sir," said I - "but I don't."

"No, no," my guardian assented; "don't have too much to do with

him. Keep as clear of him as you can. But I like the fellow, Pip;

he is one of the true sort. Why, if I was a fortune-teller--"

Looking out of the towel, he caught my eye.

"But I am not a fortune-teller," he said, letting his head drop

into a festoon of towel, and towelling away at his two ears. "You

know what I am, don't you? Good-night, Pip."

"Good-night, sir."

In about a month after that, the Spider's time with Mr. Pocket was

up for good, and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs.

Pocket, he went home to the family hole.

Chapter 27

"MY DEAR MR PIP,

"I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for to let you know that he

is going to London in company with Mr. Wopsle and would be glad if

agreeable to be allowed to see you. He would call at Barnard's

Hotel Tuesday morning 9 o'clock, when if not agreeable please

leave word. Your poor sister is much the same as when you left. We

talk of you in the kitchen every night, and wonder what you are

saying and doing. If now considered in the light of a liberty,

excuse it for the love of poor old days. No more, dear Mr. Pip, from

"Your ever obliged, and affectionate servant,

"BIDDY."

"P.S. He wishes me most particular to write what larks. He says you

will understand. I hope and do not doubt it will be agreeable to

see him even though a gentleman, for you had ever a good heart, and

he is a worthy worthy man. I have read him all excepting only the

last little sentence, and he wishes me most particular to write

again what larks."

I received this letter by the post on Monday morning, and therefore

its appointment was for next day. Let me confess exactly, with what

feelings I looked forward to Joe's coming.

Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; no;

with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense

of incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I

certainly would have paid money. My greatest reassurance was, that

he was coming to Barnard's Inn, not to Hammersmith, and

consequently would not fall in Bentley Drummle's way. I had little

objection to his being seen by Herbert or his father, for both of

whom I had a respect; but I had the sharpest sensitiveness as to

his being seen by Drummle, whom I held in contempt. So, throughout

life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for

the sake of the people whom we most despise.

I had begun to be always decorating the chambers in some quite

unnecessary and inappropriate way or other, and very expensive

those wrestles with Barnard proved to be. By this time, the rooms

were vastly different from what I had found them, and I enjoyed the

honour of occupying a few prominent pages in the books of a

neighbouring upholsterer. I had got on so fast of late, that I had

even started a boy in boots - top boots - in bondage and slavery to

whom I might have been said to pass my days. For, after I had made

the monster (out of the refuse of my washerwoman's family) and had

clothed him with a blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat,

creamy breeches, and the boots already mentioned, I had to find him

a little to do and a great deal to eat; and with both of those

horrible requirements he haunted my existence.

This avenging phantom was ordered to be on duty at eight on Tuesday

morning in the hall (it was two feet square, as charged for

floorcloth), and Herbert suggested certain things for breakfast

that he thought Joe would like. While I felt sincerely obliged to

him for being so interested and considerate, I had an odd

half-provoked sense of suspicion upon me, that if Joe had been

coming to see him, he wouldn't have been quite so brisk about it.

However, I came into town on the Monday night to be ready for Joe,

and I got up early in the morning, and caused the sittingroom and

breakfast-table to assume their most splendid appearance.

Unfortunately the morning was drizzly, and an angel could not have

concealed the fact that Barnard was shedding sooty tears outside the

window, like some weak giant of a Sweep.

As the time approached I should have liked to run away, but the

Avenger pursuant to orders was in the hall, and presently I heard

Joe on the staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy manner of

coming up-stairs - his state boots being always too big for him -

and by the time it took him to read the names on the other floors

in the course of his ascent. When at last he stopped outside our

door, I could hear his finger tracing over the painted letters of

my name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him breathing in at the

keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single rap, and Pepper - such was

the compromising name of the avenging boy - announced "Mr. Gargery!"

I thought he never would have done wiping his feet, and that I must

have gone out to lift him off the mat, but at last he came in.

"Joe, how are you, Joe?"

"Pip, how AIR you, Pip?"

With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and his hat put

down on the floor between us, he caught both my hands and worked

them straight up and down, as if I had been the lastpatented Pump.

"I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat."

But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird's-nest

with eggs in it, wouldn't hear of parting with that piece of

property, and persisted in standing talking over it in a most

uncomfortable way.

"Which you have that growed," said Joe, "and that swelled, and that

gentle-folked;" Joe considered a little before he discovered this

word; "as to be sure you are a honour to your king and country."

"And you, Joe, look wonderfully well."

"Thank God," said Joe, "I'm ekerval to most. And your sister, she's

no worse than she were. And Biddy, she's ever right and ready. And

all friends is no backerder, if not no forarder. 'Ceptin Wopsle;

he's had a drop."

All this time (still with both hands taking great care of the

bird's-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room,

and round and round the flowered pattern of my dressing-gown.

"Had a drop, Joe?"

"Why yes," said Joe, lowering his voice, "he's left the Church, and

went into the playacting. Which the playacting have likeways

brought him to London along with me. And his wish were," said Joe,

getting the bird's-nest under his left arm for the moment and

groping in it for an egg with his right; "if no offence, as I would

'and you that."

I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the crumpled playbill

of a small metropolitan theatre, announcing the first appearance,

in that very week, of "the celebrated Provincial Amateur of Roscian

renown, whose unique performance in the highest tragic walk of our

National Bard has lately occasioned so great a sensation in local

dramatic circles."

"Were you at his performance, Joe?" I inquired.

"I were," said Joe, with emphasis and solemnity.

"Was there a great sensation?"

"Why," said Joe, "yes, there certainly were a peck of orange-peel.

Partickler, when he see the ghost. Though I put it to yourself,

sir, whether it were calc'lated to keep a man up to his work with a

good hart, to be continiwally cutting in betwixt him and the Ghost

with "Amen!" A man may have had a misfortun' and been in the

Church," said Joe, lowering his voice to an argumentative and

feeling tone, "but that is no reason why you should put him out at

such a time. Which I meantersay, if the ghost of a man's own father

cannot be allowed to claim his attention, what can, Sir? Still

more, when his mourning "at is unfortunately made so small as that

the weight of the black feathers brings it off, try to keep it on

how you may."

A ghost-seeing effect in Joe's own countenance informed me that

Herbert had entered the room. So, I presented Joe to Herbert, who

held out his hand; but Joe backed from it, and held on by the

bird's-nest.

"Your servant, Sir," said Joe, "which I hope as you and Pip" - here

his eye fell on the Avenger, who was putting some toast on table,

and so plainly denoted an intention to make that young gentleman

one of the family, that I frowned it down and confused him more -

"I meantersay, you two gentlemen - which I hope as you get your

elths in this close spot? For the present may be a werry good inn,

according to London opinions," said Joe, confidentially, "and I

believe its character do stand i; but I wouldn't keep a pig in it

myself - not in the case that I wished him to fatten wholesome and

to eat with a meller flavour on him."

Having borne this flattering testimony to the merits of our

dwelling-place, and having incidentally shown this tendency to call

me "sir," Joe, being invited to sit down to table, looked all round

the room for a suitable spot on which to deposit his hat - as if it

were only on some very few rare substances in nature that it could

find a resting place - and ultimately stood it on an extreme corner

of the chimney-piece, from which it ever afterwards fell off at

intervals.

"Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?" asked Herbert, who always

presided of a morning.

"Thankee, Sir," said Joe, stiff from head to foot, "I'll take

whichever is most agreeable to yourself."

"What do you say to coffee?"

"Thankee, Sir," returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the proposal,

"since you are so kind as make chice of coffee, I will not run

contrairy to your own opinions. But don't you never find it a

little 'eating?"

"