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Chapter XI
At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham's, and my hesitating
ring at the gate brought out Estella. She locked it after admitting
me, as she had done before, and again preceded me into the dark passage
where her candle stood. She took no notice of me until she had the
candle in her hand, when she looked over her shoulder, superciliously
saying, "You are to come this way to-day," and took me to quite another
part of the house.
The passage was a long one, and seemed to pervade the whole square
basement of the Manor House. We traversed but one side of the square,
however, and at the end of it she stopped, and put her candle down and
opened a door. Here, the daylight reappeared, and I found myself in
a small paved courtyard, the opposite side of which was formed by a
detached dwelling-house, that looked as if it had once belonged to the
manager or head clerk of the extinct brewery. There was a clock in the
outer wall of this house. Like the clock in Miss Havisham's room, and
like Miss Havisham's watch, it had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.
We went in at the door, which stood open, and into a gloomy room with a
low ceiling, on the ground-floor at the back. There was some company in
the room, and Estella said to me as she joined it, "You are to go and
stand there boy, till you are wanted." "There", being the window, I
crossed to it, and stood "there," in a very uncomfortable state of mind,
looking out.
It opened to the ground, and looked into a most miserable corner of the
neglected garden, upon a rank ruin of cabbage-stalks, and one box-tree
that had been clipped round long ago, like a pudding, and had a new
growth at the top of it, out of shape and of a different color, 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 neighbor."
"Sarah Pocket," returned Cousin Raymond, "if a man is not his own
neighbor, 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 watch-chain, and strong black dots where his
beard and whiskers would have been if he had let them. He was nothing
to me, and I could have had no foresight then, that he ever would be
anything to me, but it happened that I had this opportunity of observing
him well.
"Boy of the neighborhood? 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 chimney-piece faintly lighted the chamber; or it
would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness. It was
spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but every discernible
thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces. The
most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on it,
as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all
stopped together. An epergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the
middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its
form was quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow
expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black
fungus, I saw speckle-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home
to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstances of the greatest
public importance had just transpired in the spider community.
I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same
occurrence were important to their interests. But the black beetles took
no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a ponderous
elderly way, as if they were short-sighted and hard of hearing, and not
on terms with one another.
These crawling things had fascinated my attention, and I was watching
them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder.
In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and
she looked like the Witch of the place.
"This," said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, "is where I
will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here."
With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and
there and die at once, the complete 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 ***. "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 piano-forte
tuner's across the street, where the poor mistaken children have even
supposed it to be pigeons cooing at a distance,—and now to be told—"
Here Camilla put her hand to her throat, and began to be quite chemical
as to the formation of new combinations there.
When this same Matthew was mentioned, Miss Havisham stopped me and
herself, and stood looking at the speaker. This change had a great
influence in bringing Camilla's chemistry to a sudden end.
"Matthew will come and see me at last," said Miss Havisham, sternly,
"when I am laid on that table. That will be his place,—there," striking
the table with her stick, "at my head! And yours will be there! And your
husband's there! And Sarah Pocket's there! And Georgiana's there! Now
you all know where to take your stations when you come to feast upon me.
And now go!"
At the mention of each name, she had struck the table with her stick in
a new place. She now said, "Walk me, walk me!" and we went on again.
"I suppose there's nothing to be done," exclaimed Camilla, "but comply
and depart. It's something to have seen the object of one's love and
duty for even so short a time. I shall think of it with a melancholy
satisfaction when I wake up in the night. I wish Matthew could have
that comfort, but he sets it at defiance. I am determined not to make a
display of my feelings, but it's very hard to be told one wants to feast
on one's relations,—as if one was a Giant,—and to be told to go. The
bare idea!"
Mr. Camilla interposing, as Mrs. Camilla laid her hand upon her heaving
***, that lady assumed an unnatural fortitude of manner which I
supposed to be expressive of an intention to drop and choke when out of
view, and kissing her hand to Miss Havisham, was escorted forth. Sarah
Pocket and Georgiana contended who should remain last; but Sarah was
too knowing to be outdone, and ambled round Georgiana with that artful
slipperiness that the latter was obliged to take precedence. Sarah
Pocket then made her separate effect of departing with, "Bless you, Miss
Havisham dear!" and with a smile of forgiving pity on her walnut-shell
countenance for the weaknesses of the rest.
While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham still walked
with her hand on my shoulder, but more and more slowly. At last she
stopped before the fire, and said, after muttering and looking at it
some seconds,—
"This is my birthday, Pip."
I was going to wish her many happy returns, when she lifted her stick.
"I don't suffer it to be spoken of. I don't suffer those who were here
just now, or any one to speak of it. They come here on the day, but they
dare not refer to it."
Of course I made no further effort to refer to it.
"On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of
decay," stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the
table, but not touching it, "was brought here. It and I have worn away
together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of
mice have gnawed at me."
She held the head of her stick against her heart as she stood looking
at the table; she in her once white dress, all yellow and withered; the
once white cloth all yellow and withered; everything around in a state
to crumble under a touch.
"When the ruin is complete," said she, with a ghastly look, "and when
they lay me dead, in my bride's dress on the bride's table,—which shall
be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him,—so much the
better if it is done on this day!"
She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her own figure
lying there. I remained quiet. Estella returned, and she too remained
quiet. It seemed to me that we continued thus for a long time. In
the heavy air of the room, and the heavy darkness that brooded in its
remoter corners, I even had an alarming fancy that Estella and I might
presently begin to decay.
At length, not coming out of her distraught state by degrees, but in an
instant, Miss Havisham said, "Let me see you two play cards; why have
you not begun?" With that, we returned to her room, and sat down as
before; I was beggared, as before; and again, as before, Miss Havisham
watched us all the time, directed my attention to Estella's beauty, and
made me notice it the more by trying her jewels on Estella's breast and
hair.
Estella, for her part, likewise treated me as before, except that she
did not condescend to speak. When we had played some half-dozen games,
a day was appointed for my return, and I was taken down into the yard
to be fed in the former dog-like manner. There, too, I was again left to
wander about as I liked.
It is not much to the purpose whether a gate in that garden wall which
I had scrambled up to peep over on the last occasion was, on that last
occasion, open or shut. Enough that I saw no gate then, and that I
saw one now. As it stood open, and as I knew that Estella had let
the visitors out,—for she had returned with the keys in her hand,—I
strolled into the garden, and strolled all over it. It was quite a
wilderness, and there were old melon-frames and cucumber-frames in it,
which seemed in their decline to have produced a spontaneous growth of
weak attempts at pieces of old hats and boots, with now and then a weedy
offshoot into the likeness of a battered saucepan.
When I had exhausted the garden and a greenhouse with nothing in it but
a fallen-down grape-vine and some bottles, I found myself in the dismal
corner upon which I had looked out of the window. Never questioning for
a moment that the house was now empty, I looked in at another window,
and found myself, to my great surprise, exchanging a broad stare with a
pale young gentleman with red eyelids and light hair.
This pale young gentleman quickly disappeared, and reappeared beside me.
He had been at his books when I had found myself staring at him, and I
now saw that he was inky.
"Halloa!" said he, "young fellow!"
Halloa being a general observation which I had usually observed to
be best answered by itself, I said, "Halloa!" politely omitting young
fellow.
"Who let you in?" said he.
"Miss Estella."
"Who gave you leave to prowl about?"
"Miss Estella."
"Come and fight," said the pale young gentleman.
What could I do but follow him? I have often asked myself the question
since; but what else could I do? His manner was so final, and I was
so astonished, that I followed where he led, as if I had been under a
spell.
"Stop a minute, though," he said, wheeling round before we had gone many
paces. "I ought to give you a reason for fighting, too. There it is!"
In a most irritating manner he instantly slapped his hands against one
another, daintily flung one of his legs up behind him, pulled my hair,
slapped his hands again, dipped his head, and butted it into my stomach.
The bull-like proceeding last mentioned, besides that it was
unquestionably to be regarded in the light of a liberty, was
particularly disagreeable just after bread and meat. I therefore hit out
at him and was going to hit out again, when he said, "Aha! Would you?"
and began dancing backwards and forwards in a manner quite unparalleled
within my limited experience.
"Laws of the game!" said he. Here, he skipped from his left leg on to
his right. "Regular rules!" Here, he skipped from his right leg on to
his left. "Come to the ground, and go through the preliminaries!" Here,
he dodged backwards and forwards, and did all sorts of things while I
looked helplessly at him.
I was secretly afraid of him when I saw him so dexterous; but I felt
morally and physically convinced that his light head of hair could have
had no business in the pit of my stomach, and that I had a right to
consider it irrelevant when so obtruded on my attention. Therefore, I
followed him without a word, to a retired nook of the garden, formed by
the junction of two walls and screened by some rubbish. On his asking me
if I was satisfied with the ground, and on my replying Yes, he begged my
leave to absent himself for a moment, and quickly returned with a bottle
of water and a sponge dipped in vinegar. "Available for both," he said,
placing these against the wall. And then fell to pulling off, not
only his jacket and waistcoat, but his shirt too, in a manner at once
light-hearted, business-like, and bloodthirsty.
Although he did not look very healthy,—having pimples on his face, and
a breaking out at his mouth,—these dreadful preparations quite appalled
me. I judged him to be about my own age, but he was much taller, and he
had a way of spinning himself about that was full of appearance. For
the rest, he was a young gentleman in a gray suit (when not denuded
for battle), with his elbows, knees, wrists, and heels considerably in
advance of the rest of him as to development.
My heart failed me when I saw him squaring at me with every
demonstration of mechanical nicety, and eyeing my anatomy as if he were
minutely choosing his bone. I never have been so surprised in my life,
as I was when I let out the first blow, and saw him lying on his
back, looking up at me with a bloody nose and his face exceedingly
fore-shortened.
But, he was on his feet directly, and after sponging himself with
a great show of dexterity began squaring again. The second greatest
surprise I have ever had in my life was seeing him on his back again,
looking up at me out of a black eye.
His spirit inspired me with great respect. He seemed to have no
strength, and he never once hit me hard, and he was always knocked down;
but he would be up again in a moment, sponging himself or drinking out
of the water-bottle, with the greatest satisfaction in seconding himself
according to form, and then came at me with an air and a show that made
me believe he really was going to do for me at last. He got heavily
bruised, for I am sorry to record that the more I hit him, the harder I
hit him; but he came up again and again and again, until at last he got
a bad fall with the back of his head against the wall. Even after that
crisis in our affairs, he got up and turned round and round confusedly a
few times, not knowing where I was; but finally went on his knees to his
sponge and threw it up: at the same time panting out, "That means you
have won."
He seemed so brave and innocent, that although I had not proposed the
contest, I felt but a gloomy satisfaction in my victory. Indeed, I go
so far as to hope that I regarded myself while dressing as a species of
savage young wolf or other wild beast. However, I got dressed, darkly
wiping my sanguinary face at intervals, and I said, "Can I help you?"
and he said "No thankee," and I said "Good afternoon," and he said "Same
to you."
When I got into the courtyard, I found Estella waiting with the keys.
But she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had kept her
waiting; and there was a bright flush upon her face, as though something
had happened to delight her. Instead of going straight to the gate, too,
she stepped back into the passage, and beckoned me.
"Come here! You may kiss me, if you like."
I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone
through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But I felt that the kiss was
given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and
that it was worth nothing.
What with the birthday visitors, and what with the cards, and what with
the fight, my stay had lasted so long, that when I neared home the light
on the spit of sand off the point on the marshes was gleaming against
a black night-sky, and Joe's furnace was flinging a path of fire across
the road.
Chapter XII
My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale young gentleman. The
more I thought of the fight, and recalled the pale young gentleman on
his back in various stages of puffy and incrimsoned countenance, the
more certain it appeared that something would be done to me. I felt that
the pale young gentleman's blood was on my head, and that the Law would
avenge it. Without having any definite idea of the penalties I had
incurred, it was clear to me that village boys could not go stalking
about the country, ravaging the houses of gentlefolks and pitching into
the studious youth of England, without laying themselves open to severe
punishment. For some days, I even kept close at home, and looked out at
the kitchen door with the greatest caution and trepidation before going
on an errand, lest the officers of the County Jail should pounce upon
me. The pale young gentleman's nose had stained my trousers, and I tried
to wash out that evidence of my guilt in the dead of night. I had cut
my knuckles against the pale young gentleman's teeth, and I twisted my
imagination into a thousand tangles, as I devised incredible ways of
accounting for that damnatory circumstance when I should be haled before
the Judges.
When the day came round for my return to the scene of the deed of
violence, my terrors reached their height. Whether myrmidons of Justice,
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 ***,
Pumblechook, used often to come over of a night for the purpose of
discussing my prospects with my sister; and I really do believe (to
this hour with less penitence than I ought to feel), that if these hands
could have taken a linchpin out of his chaise-cart, they would have done
it. The miserable man was a man of that confined stolidity of mind, that
he could not discuss my prospects without having me before him,—as it
were, to operate upon,—and he would drag me up from my stool (usually
by the collar) where I was quiet in a corner, and, putting me before the
fire as if I were going to be cooked, would begin by saying, "Now, Mum,
here is this boy! Here is this boy which you brought up by hand. Hold up
your head, boy, and be forever grateful unto them which so did do. Now,
Mum, with respections to this boy!" And then he would rumple my hair
the wrong way,—which from my earliest remembrance, as already hinted,
I have in my soul denied the right of any fellow-creature to do,—and
would hold me before him by the sleeve,—a spectacle of imbecility only
to be equalled by himself.
Then, he and my sister would pair off in such nonsensical speculations
about Miss Havisham, and about what she would do with me and for me,
that I used to want—quite painfully—to burst into spiteful tears, fly
at Pumblechook, and pummel him all over. In these dialogues, my sister
spoke to me as if she were morally wrenching one of my teeth out at
every reference; while Pumblechook himself, self-constituted my patron,
would sit supervising me with a depreciatory eye, like the architect of
my fortunes who thought himself engaged on a very unremunerative job.
In these discussions, Joe bore no part. But he was often talked at,
while they were in progress, by reason of Mrs. Joe's perceiving that
he was not favorable 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 favor to bother my life out.
We went on in this way for a long time, and it seemed likely that we
should continue to go on in this way for a long time, when one day Miss
Havisham stopped short as she and I were walking, she leaning on my
shoulder; and said with some displeasure,—
"You are growing tall, Pip!"
I thought it best to hint, through the medium of a meditative look, that
this might be occasioned by circumstances over which I had no control.
She said no more at the time; but she presently stopped and looked at me
again; and presently again; and after that, looked frowning and moody.
On the next day of my attendance, when our usual exercise was over, and
I had landed her at her dressing-table, she stayed me with a movement of
her impatient fingers:—
"Tell me the name again of that blacksmith of yours."
"Joe Gargery, ma'am."
"Meaning the master you were to be apprenticed to?"
"Yes, Miss Havisham."
"You had better be apprenticed at once. Would Gargery come here with
you, and bring your indentures, do you think?"
I signified that I had no doubt he would take it as an honor to be
asked.
"Then let him come."
"At any particular time, Miss Havisham?"
"There, there! I know nothing about times. Let him come soon, and come
along with you."
When I got home at night, and delivered this message for Joe, my sister
"went on the Rampage," in a more alarming degree than at any previous
period. She asked me and Joe whether we supposed she was door-mats under
our feet, and how we dared to use her so, and what company we graciously
thought she was fit for? When she had exhausted a torrent of such
inquiries, she threw a candlestick at Joe, burst into a loud sobbing,
got out the dustpan,—which was always a very bad sign,—put on her
coarse apron, and began cleaning up to a terrible extent. Not satisfied
with a dry cleaning, she took to a pail and scrubbing-brush, and cleaned
us out of house and home, so that we stood shivering in the back-yard.
It was ten o'clock at night before we ventured to creep in again, and
then she asked Joe why he hadn't married a Negress Slave at once?
Joe offered no answer, poor fellow, but stood feeling his whisker and
looking dejectedly at me, as if he thought it really might have been a
better speculation.
Chapter XIII
It was a trial to my feelings, on the next day but one, to see
Joe arraying himself in his Sunday clothes to accompany me to Miss
Havisham's. However, as he thought his court-suit necessary to the
occasion, it was not for me to tell him that he looked far better in his
working-dress; the rather, because I knew he made himself so dreadfully
uncomfortable, entirely on my account, and that it was for me he pulled
up his shirt-collar so very high behind, that it made the hair on the
crown of his head stand up like a tuft of feathers.
At breakfast-time my sister declared her intention of going to town with
us, and being left at Uncle Pumblechook's and called for "when we had
done with our fine ladies"—a way of putting the case, from which Joe
appeared inclined to augur the worst. The forge was shut up for the day,
and Joe inscribed in chalk upon the door (as it was his custom to do on
the very rare occasions when he was not at work) the monosyllable
HOUT, accompanied by a sketch of an arrow supposed to be flying in the
direction he had taken.
We walked to town, my sister leading the way in a very large beaver
bonnet, and carrying a basket like the Great Seal of England in plaited
Straw, a pair of pattens, a spare shawl, and an umbrella, though it
was a fine bright day. I am not quite clear whether these articles were
carried penitentially or ostentatiously; but I rather think they were
displayed as articles of property,—much as Cleopatra or any other
sovereign lady on the Rampage might exhibit her wealth in a pageant or
procession.
When we came to Pumblechook's, my sister bounced in and left us. As it
was almost noon, Joe and I held straight on to Miss Havisham's house.
Estella opened the gate as usual, and, the moment she appeared, Joe took
his hat off and stood weighing it by the brim in both his hands; as if
he had some urgent reason in his mind for being particular to half a
quarter of an ounce.
Estella took no notice of either of us, but led us the way that I knew
so well. I followed next to her, and Joe came last. When I looked back
at Joe in the long passage, he was still weighing his hat with the
greatest care, and was coming after us in long strides on the tips of
his toes.
Estella told me we were both to go in, so I took Joe by the coat-cuff
and conducted him into Miss Havisham's presence. She was seated at her
dressing-table, and looked round at us immediately.
"Oh!" said she to Joe. "You are the husband of the sister of this boy?"
I could hardly have imagined dear old Joe looking so unlike himself or
so like some extraordinary bird; standing as he did speechless, with his
tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if he wanted a worm.
"You are the husband," repeated Miss Havisham, "of the sister of this
boy?"
It was very aggravating; but, throughout the interview, Joe persisted in
addressing Me instead of Miss Havisham.
"Which I meantersay, Pip," Joe now observed in a manner that was at
once expressive of forcible argumentation, strict confidence, and great
politeness, "as I hup and married your sister, and I were at the time
what you might call (if you was anyways inclined) a single man."
"Well!" said Miss Havisham. "And you have reared the boy, with the
intention of taking him for your apprentice; is that so, Mr. Gargery?"
"You know, Pip," replied Joe, "as you and me were ever friends, and it
were looked for'ard to betwixt us, as being calc'lated to lead to
larks. Not but what, Pip, if you had ever made objections to the
business,—such as its being open to black and sut, or such-like,—not
but what they would have been attended to, don't you see?"
"Has the boy," said Miss Havisham, "ever made any objection? Does he
like the trade?"
"Which it is well beknown to yourself, Pip," returned Joe, strengthening
his former mixture of argumentation, confidence, and politeness, "that
it were the wish of your own hart." (I saw the idea suddenly break upon
him that he would adapt his epitaph to the occasion, before he went on
to say) "And there weren't no objection on your part, and Pip it were
the great wish of your hart!"
It was quite in vain for me to endeavor 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 by, 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-TON-ishing!" and so, by degrees, became conversational and able to
walk away.
I have reason to think that Joe's intellects were brightened by the
encounter they had passed through, and that on our way to Pumblechook's
he invented a subtle and deep design. My reason is to be found in
what took place in Mr. Pumblechook's parlor: where, on our presenting
ourselves, my sister sat in conference with that detested seedsman.
"Well?" cried my sister, addressing us both at once. "And what's
happened to you? I wonder you condescend to come back to such poor
society as this, I am sure I do!"
"Miss Havisham," said Joe, with a fixed look at me, like an effort of
remembrance, "made it wery partick'ler that we should give her—were it
compliments or respects, Pip?"
"Compliments," I said.
"Which that were my own belief," answered Joe; "her compliments to Mrs.
J. Gargery—"
"Much good they'll do me!" observed my sister; but rather gratified too.
"And wishing," pursued Joe, with another fixed look at me, like another
effort of remembrance, "that the state of Miss Havisham's elth were
sitch as would have—allowed, were it, Pip?"
"Of her having the pleasure," I added.
"Of ladies' company," said Joe. And drew a long breath.
"Well!" cried my sister, with a mollified glance at Mr. Pumblechook.
"She might have had the politeness to send that message at first, but
it's better late than never. And what did she give young Rantipole
here?"
"She giv' him," said Joe, "nothing."
Mrs. Joe was going to break out, but Joe went on.
"What she giv'," said Joe, "she giv' to his friends. 'And by his
friends,' were her explanation, 'I mean into the hands of his sister
Mrs. J. Gargery.' Them were her words; 'Mrs. J. Gargery.' She mayn't
have know'd," added Joe, with an appearance of reflection, "whether it
were Joe, or Jorge."
My sister looked at Pumblechook: who smoothed the elbows of his wooden
arm-chair, and nodded at her and at the fire, as if he had known all
about it beforehand.
"And how much have you got?" asked my sister, laughing. Positively
laughing!
"What would present company say to ten pound?" demanded Joe.
"They'd say," returned my sister, curtly, "pretty well. Not too much,
but pretty well."
"It's more than that, then," said Joe.
That fearful Impostor, Pumblechook, immediately nodded, and said, as he
rubbed the arms of his chair, "It's more than that, Mum."
"Why, you don't mean to say—" began my sister.
"Yes I do, Mum," said Pumblechook; "but wait a bit. Go on, Joseph. Good
in you! Go on!"
"What would present company say," proceeded Joe, "to twenty pound?"
"Handsome would be the word," returned my sister.
"Well, then," said Joe, "It's more than twenty pound."
That abject hypocrite, Pumblechook, nodded again, and said, with a
patronizing laugh, "It's more than that, Mum. Good again! Follow her up,
Joseph!"
"Then to make an end of it," said Joe, delightedly handing the bag to my
sister; "it's five-and-twenty pound."
"It's five-and-twenty pound, Mum," echoed that basest of swindlers,
Pumblechook, rising to shake hands with her; "and it's no more than your
merits (as I said when my opinion was asked), and I wish you joy of the
money!"
If the villain had stopped here, his case would have been sufficiently
awful, but he blackened his guilt by proceeding to take me into custody,
with a right of patronage that left all his former criminality far
behind.
"Now you see, Joseph and wife," said Pumblechook, as he took me by the
arm above the elbow, "I am one of them that always go right through with
what they've begun. This boy must be bound, out of hand. That's my way.
Bound out of hand."
"Goodness knows, Uncle Pumblechook," said my sister (grasping the
money), "we're deeply beholden to you."
"Never mind me, Mum," returned that diabolical cornchandler. "A
pleasure's a pleasure all the world over. But this boy, you know; we
must have him bound. I said I'd see to it—to tell you the truth."
The Justices were sitting in the Town Hall near at hand, and we at
once went over to have me bound apprentice to Joe in the Magisterial
presence. I say we went over, but I was pushed over by Pumblechook,
exactly as if I had that moment picked a pocket or fired a rick; indeed,
it was the general impression in Court that I had been taken red-handed;
for, as Pumblechook shoved me before him through the crowd, I heard some
people say, "What's he done?" and others, "He's a young 'un, too, but
looks bad, don't he?" One person of mild and benevolent aspect even gave
me a tract ornamented with a woodcut of a malevolent young man fitted
up with a perfect sausage-shop of fetters, and entitled TO BE READ IN MY
CELL.
The Hall was a *** place, I thought, with higher pews in it than a
church,—and with people hanging over the pews looking on,—and with
mighty Justices (one with a powdered head) leaning back in chairs, with
folded arms, or taking snuff, or going to sleep, or writing, or reading
the newspapers,—and with some shining black portraits on the walls,
which my unartistic eye regarded as a composition of hardbake and
sticking-plaster. Here, in a corner my indentures were duly signed and
attested, and I was "bound"; Mr. Pumblechook holding me all the while
as if we had looked in on our way to the scaffold, to have those little
preliminaries disposed of.
When we had come out again, and had got rid of the boys who had been put
into great spirits by the expectation of seeing me publicly tortured,
and who were much disappointed to find that my friends were merely
rallying round me, we went back to Pumblechook's. And there my sister
became so excited by the twenty-five guineas, that nothing would serve
her but we must have a dinner out of that windfall at the Blue Boar, and
that Pumblechook must go over in his chaise-cart, and bring the Hubbles
and Mr. Wopsle.
It was agreed to be done; and a most melancholy day I passed. For,
it inscrutably appeared to stand to reason, in the minds of the whole
company, that I was an excrescence on the entertainment. And to make it
worse, they all asked me from time to time,—in short, whenever they
had nothing else to do,—why I didn't enjoy myself? And what could I
possibly do then, but say I was enjoying myself,—when I wasn't!
However, they were grown up and had their own way, and they made the
most of it. That swindling Pumblechook, exalted into the beneficent
contriver of the whole occasion, actually took the top of the table;
and, when he addressed them on the subject of my being bound, and had
fiendishly congratulated them on my being liable to imprisonment if I
played at cards, drank strong liquors, kept late hours or bad company,
or indulged in other vagaries which the form of my indentures appeared
to contemplate as next to inevitable, he placed me standing on a chair
beside him to illustrate his remarks.
My only other remembrances of the great festival are, That they wouldn't
let me go to sleep, but whenever they saw me dropping off, woke me up
and told me to enjoy myself. That, rather late in the evening Mr. Wopsle
gave us Collins's ode, and threw his bloodstained sword in thunder
down, with such effect, that a waiter came in and said, "The Commercials
underneath sent up their compliments, and it wasn't the Tumblers' Arms."
That, they were all in excellent spirits on the road home, and sang, O
Lady Fair! Mr. Wopsle taking the bass, and asserting with a tremendously
strong voice (in reply to the inquisitive bore who leads that piece
of music in a most impertinent manner, by wanting to know all about
everybody's private affairs) that he was the man with his white locks
flowing, and that he was upon the whole the weakest pilgrim going.
Finally, I remember that when I got into my little bedroom, I was truly
wretched, and had a strong conviction on me that I should never like
Joe's trade. I had liked it once, but once was not now.
Chapter XIV
It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be black
ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well
deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.
Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of my sister's
temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed in it. I had
believed in the best parlor as a most elegant saloon; I had believed
in the front door, as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose
solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had
believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment;
I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and
independence. Within a single year all this was changed. Now it was all
coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella
see it on any account.
How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own fault,
how much Miss Havisham's, how much my sister's, is now of no moment to
me or to any one. The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well or
ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.
Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my
shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe's 'prentice, I should be
distinguished and happy. Now the reality was in my hold, I only felt
that I was dusty with the dust of small-coal, and that I had a weight
upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather. There have
been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have
felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest
and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more.
Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in
life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly entered road
of apprenticeship to Joe.
I remember that at a later period of my "time," I used to stand about
the churchyard on Sunday evenings when night was falling, comparing my
own perspective with the windy marsh view, and making out some likeness
between them by thinking how flat and low both were, and how on both
there came an unknown way and a dark mist and then the sea. I was quite
as dejected on the first working-day of my apprenticeship as in that
after-time; but I am glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe
while my indentures lasted. It is about the only thing I am glad to know
of myself in that connection.
For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit of what I
proceed to add was Joe's. It was not because I was faithful, but because
Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went for a soldier or
a sailor. It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of
industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry,
that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain. It is not possible
to know how far the influence of any amiable honest-hearted duty-doing
man flies out into the world; but it is very possible to know how it has
touched one's self in going by, and I know right well that any good that
intermixed itself with my apprenticeship came of plain contented Joe,
and not of restlessly aspiring discontented me.
What I wanted, who can say? How can I say, when I never knew? What
I dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I, being at my grimiest and
commonest, should lift up my eyes and see Estella looking in at one
of the wooden windows of the forge. I was haunted by the fear that she
would, sooner or later, find me out, with a black face and hands, doing
the coarsest part of my work, and would exult over me and despise me.
Often after dark, when I was pulling the bellows for Joe, and we were
singing Old Clem, and when the thought how we used to sing it at Miss
Havisham's would seem to show me Estella's face in the fire, with her
pretty hair fluttering in the wind and her eyes scorning me,—often at
such a time I would look towards those panels of black night in the wall
which the wooden windows then were, and would fancy that I saw her just
drawing her face away, and would believe that she had come at last.
After that, when we went in to supper, the place and the meal would have
a more homely look than ever, and I would feel more ashamed of home than
ever, in my own ungracious breast.
Chapter XV
As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's room, my
education under that preposterous female terminated. Not, however, until
Biddy had imparted to me everything she knew, from the little catalogue
of prices, to a comic song she had once bought for a half-penny.
Although the only coherent part of the latter piece of literature were
the opening lines.
When I went to Lunnon town sirs, Too rul loo rul Too rul loo rul Wasn't
I done very brown sirs? Too rul loo rul Too rul loo rul—still, in
my desire to be wiser, I got this composition by heart with the utmost
gravity; nor do I recollect that I questioned its merit, except that I
thought (as I still do) the amount of Too rul somewhat in excess of the
poetry. In my hunger for information, I made proposals to Mr. Wopsle to
bestow some intellectual crumbs upon me, with which he kindly complied.
As it turned out, however, that he only wanted me for a dramatic
lay-figure, to be contradicted and embraced and wept over and bullied
and clutched and stabbed and knocked about in a variety of ways, I soon
declined that course of instruction; though not until Mr. Wopsle in his
poetic fury had severely mauled me.
Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This statement sounds so
well, that I cannot in my conscience let it pass unexplained. I wanted
to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he might be worthier of my
society and less open to Estella's reproach.
The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of study, and a broken
slate and a short piece of slate-pencil were our educational implements:
to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I never knew Joe to
remember anything from one Sunday to another, or to acquire, under my
tuition, any piece of information whatever. Yet he would smoke his pipe
at the Battery with a far more sagacious air than anywhere else,—even
with a learned air,—as if he considered himself to be advancing
immensely. Dear fellow, I hope he did.
It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on the river passing
beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low, looking
as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing on at the
bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels standing out to sea
with their white sails spread, I somehow thought of Miss Havisham and
Estella; and whenever the light struck aslant, afar off, upon a cloud
or sail or green hillside or water-line, it was just the same.—Miss
Havisham and Estella and the strange house and the strange life appeared
to have something to do with everything that was picturesque.
One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so plumed himself on
being "most awful dull," that I had given him up for the day, I lay on
the earthwork for some time with my chin on my hand, descrying traces of
Miss Havisham and Estella all over the prospect, in the sky and in the
water, until at last I resolved to mention a thought concerning them
that had been much in my head.
"Joe," said I; "don't you think I ought to make Miss Havisham a visit?"
"Well, Pip," returned Joe, slowly considering. "What for?"
"What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?"
"There is some wisits p'r'aps," said Joe, "as for ever remains open to
the question, Pip. But in regard to wisiting Miss Havisham. She might
think you wanted something,—expected something of her."
"Don't you think I might say that I did not, Joe?"
"You might, old chap," said Joe. "And she might credit it. Similarly she
mightn't."
Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he pulled hard
at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it by repetition.
"You see, Pip," Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that danger, "Miss
Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss Havisham done the
handsome thing by you, she called me back to say to me as that were
all."
"Yes, Joe. I heard her."
"ALL," Joe repeated, very emphatically.
"Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her."
"Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning were,—Make a
end on it!—As you was!—Me to the North, and you to the South!—Keep in
sunders!"
I had thought of that too, and it was very far from comforting to me
to find that he had thought of it; for it seemed to render it more
probable.
"But, Joe."
"Yes, old chap."
"Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, since the day
of my being bound, I have never thanked Miss Havisham, or asked after
her, or shown that I remember her."
"That's true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her out a set of shoes
all four round,—and which I meantersay as even a set of shoes all
four round might not be acceptable as a present, in a total wacancy of
hoofs—"
"I don't mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I don't mean a present."
But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head and must harp upon it.
"Or even," said he, "if you was helped to knocking her up a new chain
for the front door,—or say a gross or two of shark-headed screws for
general use,—or some light fancy article, such as a toasting-fork
when she took her muffins,—or a gridiron when she took a sprat or such
like—"
"I don't mean any present at all, Joe," I interposed.
"Well," said Joe, still harping on it as though I had particularly
pressed it, "if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn't. No, I would not. For
what's a door-chain when she's got one always up? And shark-headers is
open to misrepresentations. And if it was a toasting-fork, you'd go into
brass and do yourself no credit. And the oncommonest workman can't show
himself oncommon in a gridiron,—for a gridiron IS a gridiron," said
Joe, steadfastly impressing it upon me, as if he were endeavouring to
rouse me from a fixed delusion, "and you may haim at what you like, but
a gridiron it will come out, either by your leave or again your leave,
and you can't help yourself—"
"My dear Joe," I cried, in desperation, taking hold of his coat, "don't
go on in that way. I never thought of making Miss Havisham any present."
"No, Pip," Joe assented, as if he had been contending for that, all
along; "and what I say to you is, you are right, Pip."
"Yes, Joe; but what I wanted to say, was, that as we are rather slack
just now, if you would give me a half-holiday to-morrow, I think I would
go 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
favor 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 favor only one of us. If Young
Pip has a half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick." I suppose he was
about five-and-twenty, but he usually spoke of himself as an ancient
person.
"Why, what'll you do with a half-holiday, if you get it?" said Joe.
"What'll I do with it! What'll he do with it? I'll do as much with it as
him," said Orlick.
"As to Pip, he's going up town," said Joe.
"Well then, as to Old Orlick, he's a going up town," retorted that
worthy. "Two can go up town. Tain't only one wot can go up town.
"Don't lose your temper," said Joe.
"Shall if I like," growled Orlick. "Some and their up-towning! Now,
master! Come. No favoring 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-favored grin.
("Let her alone," said Joe.)
"I'd be a match for all noodles and all rogues," returned my sister,
beginning to work herself into a mighty rage. "And I couldn't be a
match for the noodles, without being a match for your master, who's the
dunder-headed king of the noodles. And I couldn't be a match for the
rogues, without being a match for you, who are the blackest-looking and
the worst rogue between this and France. Now!"
"You're a foul shrew, Mother Gargery," growled the journeyman. "If that
makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be a good'un."
("Let her alone, will you?" said Joe.)
"What did you say?" cried my sister, beginning to scream. "What did you
say? What did that fellow Orlick say to me, Pip? What did he call me,
with my husband standing by? Oh! oh! oh!" Each of these exclamations was
a shriek; and I must remark of my sister, what is equally true of all
the violent women I have ever seen, that passion was no excuse for
her, because it is undeniable that instead of lapsing into passion, she
consciously and deliberately took extraordinary pains to force herself
into it, and became blindly furious by regular stages; "what was the
name he gave me before the base man who swore to defend me? Oh! Hold me!
Oh!"
"Ah-h-h!" growled the journeyman, between his teeth, "I'd hold you, if
you was my wife. I'd hold you under the pump, and choke it out of you."
("I tell you, let her alone," said Joe.)
"Oh! To hear him!" cried my sister, with a clap of her hands and a
scream together,—which was her next stage. "To hear the names he's
giving me! That Orlick! In my own house! Me, a married woman! With my
husband standing by! Oh! Oh!" Here my sister, after a fit of clappings
and screamings, beat her hands upon her *** 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 neighborhood
could stand uplong against Joe, I never saw the man. Orlick, as if he
had been of no more account than the pale young gentleman, was very
soon among the coal-dust, and in no hurry to come out of it. Then Joe
unlocked the door and picked up my sister, who had dropped insensible
at the window (but who had seen the fight first, I think), and who was
carried into the house and laid down, and who was recommended to revive,
and would do nothing but struggle and clench her hands in Joe's hair.
Then, came that singular calm and silence which succeed all uproars; and
then, with the vague sensation which I have always connected with such
a lull,—namely, that it was Sunday, and somebody was dead,—I went 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 parlor. 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 *** my uncle with no extenuating circumstances whatever;
Millwood put me down in argument, on every occasion; it became sheer
monomania in my master's daughter to care a button for me; and all I can
say for my gasping and procrastinating conduct on the fatal morning, is,
that it was worthy of the general feebleness of my character. Even after
I was happily hanged and Wopsle had closed the book, Pumblechook sat
staring at me, and shaking his head, and saying, "Take warning, boy,
take warning!" as if it were a well-known fact that I contemplated
murdering a near relation, provided I could only induce one to have the
weakness to become my benefactor.
It was a very dark night when it was all over, and when I set out with
Mr. Wopsle on the walk home. Beyond town, we found a heavy mist out, and
it fell wet and thick. The turnpike lamp was a blur, quite out of the
lamp's usual place apparently, and its rays looked solid substance on
the fog. We were noticing this, and saying how that the mist rose with a
change of wind from a certain quarter of our marshes, when we came upon
a man, slouching under the lee of the turnpike house.
"Halloa!" we said, stopping. "Orlick there?"
"Ah!" he answered, slouching out. "I was standing by a minute, on the
chance of company."
"You are late," I remarked.
Orlick not unnaturally answered, "Well? And you're late."
"We have been," said Mr. Wopsle, exalted with his late performance,—"we
have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an intellectual evening."
Old Orlick growled, as if he had nothing to say about that, and we all
went on together. I asked him presently whether he had been spending his
half-holiday up and down town?
"Yes," said he, "all of it. I come in behind yourself. I didn't see you,
but I must have been pretty close behind you. By the by, the guns is
going again."
"At the Hulks?" said I.
"Ay! There's some of the birds flown from the cages. The guns have been
going since dark, about. You'll hear one presently."
In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when the
well-remembered boom came towards us, deadened by the mist, and heavily
rolled away along the low grounds by the river, as if it were pursuing
and threatening the fugitives.
"A good night for cutting off in," said Orlick. "We'd be puzzled how to
bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night."
The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought about it in
silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of the evening's tragedy,
fell to meditating aloud in his garden at Camberwell. Orlick, with his
hands in his pockets, slouched heavily at my side. It was very dark,
very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed along. Now and then, the sound
of the signal cannon broke upon us again, and again rolled sulkily along
the course of the river. I kept myself to myself and my thoughts. Mr.
Wopsle died amiably at Camberwell, and exceedingly game on Bosworth
Field, and in the greatest agonies at Glastonbury. Orlick sometimes
growled, "Beat it out, beat it out,—Old Clem! With a clink for the
stout,—Old Clem!" I thought he had been drinking, but he was not drunk.
Thus, we came to the village. The way by which we approached it took us
past the Three Jolly Bargemen, which we were surprised to find—it being
eleven o'clock—in a state of commotion, with the door wide open, and
unwonted lights that had been hastily caught up and put down scattered
about. Mr. Wopsle dropped in to ask what was the matter (surmising that
a convict had been taken), but came running out in a great hurry.
"There's something wrong," said he, without stopping, "up at your place,
Pip. Run all!"
"What is it?" I asked, keeping up with him. So did Orlick, at my side.
"I can't quite understand. The house seems to have been violently
entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts. Somebody has
been attacked and hurt."
We were running too fast to admit of more being said, and we made no
stop until we got into our kitchen. It was full of people; the whole
village was there, or in the yard; and there was a surgeon, and there
was Joe, and there were a group of women, all on the floor in the midst
of the kitchen. The unemployed bystanders drew back when they saw me,
and so I became aware of my sister,—lying without sense or movement on
the bare boards where she had been knocked down by a tremendous blow
on the back of the head, dealt by some unknown hand when her face was
turned towards the fire,—destined never to be on the Rampage again,
while she was the wife of Joe.
Chapter XVI
With my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first disposed to believe
that I must have had some hand in the attack upon my sister, or at
all events that as her near relation, popularly known to be under
obligations to her, I was a more legitimate object of suspicion than
any one else. But when, in the clearer light of next morning, I began to
reconsider the matter and to hear it discussed around me on all sides, I
took another view of the case, which was more reasonable.
Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe, from a
quarter after eight o'clock to a quarter before ten. While he was there,
my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door, and had exchanged
Good Night with a farm-laborer going home. The man could not be more
particular as to the time at which he saw her (he got into dense
confusion when he tried to be), than that it must have been before nine.
When Joe went home at five minutes before ten, he found her struck down
on the floor, and promptly called in assistance. The fire had not then
burnt unusually low, nor was the snuff of the candle very long; the
candle, however, had been blown out.
Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house. Neither, beyond
the blowing out of the candle,—which stood on a table between the door
and my sister, and was behind her when she stood facing the fire and was
struck,—was there any disarrangement of the kitchen, excepting such
as she herself had made, in falling and bleeding. But, there was one
remarkable piece of evidence on the spot. She had been struck with
something blunt and heavy, on the head and spine; after the blows were
dealt, something heavy had been thrown down at her with considerable
violence, as she lay on her face. And on the ground beside her, when Joe
picked her up, was a convict's leg-iron which had been filed asunder.
Now, Joe, examining this iron with a smith's eye, declared it to have
been filed asunder some time ago. The hue and cry going off to the
Hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron, Joe's opinion
was corroborated. They did not undertake to say when it had left the
prison-ships to which it undoubtedly had once belonged; but they claimed
to know for certain that that particular manacle had not been worn by
either of the two convicts who had escaped last night. Further, one of
those two was already retaken, and had not freed himself of his iron.
Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own here. I believed
the iron to be my convict's iron,—the iron I had seen and heard him
filing at, on the marshes,—but my mind did not accuse him of having put
it to its latest use. For I believed one of two other persons to have
become possessed of it, and to have turned it to this cruel account.
Either Orlick, or the strange man who had shown me the file.
Now, as to Orlick; he had gone to town exactly as he told us when we
picked him up at the turnpike, he had been seen about town all the
evening, he had been in divers companies in several public-houses, and
he had come back with myself and Mr. Wopsle. There was nothing against
him, save the quarrel; and my sister had quarrelled with him, and with
everybody else about her, ten thousand times. As to the strange man; if
he had come back for his two bank-notes there could have been no dispute
about them, because my sister was fully prepared to restore them.
Besides, there had been no altercation; the assailant had come in so
silently and suddenly, that she had been felled before she could look
round.
It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon, however
undesignedly, but I could hardly think otherwise. I suffered unspeakable
trouble while I considered and reconsidered whether I should at last
dissolve that spell of my childhood and tell Joe all the story. For
months afterwards, I every day settled the question finally in the
negative, and reopened and reargued it next morning. The contention
came, after all, to this;—the secret was such an old one now, had so
grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not tear it
away. In addition to the dread that, having led up to so much mischief,
it would be now more likely than ever to alienate Joe from me if he
believed it, I had a further restraining dread that he would not believe
it, but would assort it with the fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets as a
monstrous invention. However, I temporized with myself, of course—for,
was I not wavering between right and wrong, when the thing is always
done?—and resolved to make a full disclosure if I should see any
such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of the
assailant.
The Constables and the Bow Street men from London—for, this happened in
the days of the extinct red-waistcoated police—were about the house for
a week or two, and did pretty much what I have heard and read of like
authorities doing in other such cases. They took up several obviously
wrong people, and they ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas,
and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas, instead
of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances. Also, they stood
about the door of the Jolly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks
that filled the whole neighborhood with admiration; and they had a
mysterious manner of taking their drink, that was almost as good as
taking the culprit. But not quite, for they never did it.
Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister lay very
ill in bed. Her sight was disturbed, so that she saw objects multiplied,
and grasped at visionary teacups and wineglasses instead of the
realities; her hearing was greatly impaired; her memory also; and her
speech was unintelligible. When, at last, she came round so far as to
be helped 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.
End of Chapter XVI �