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Stanley Weyman - "The House of the Wolf"

Harriet Beecher Stowe - "Queer Little Folks"

Thomas Wentworth Higginson - "Oldport Days"

Bertrand Russell - ""

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

D >> Dickens >> Great Expectations by Charles Dickens




I really believe Joe would have prolonged this word (mightily
expressive to my mind of some architecture that I know) into a
perfect Chorus, but for his attention being providentially
attracted by his hat, which was toppling. Indeed, it demanded from
him a constant attention, and a quickness of eye and hand, very
like that exacted by wicket-keeping. He made extraordinary play
with it, and showed the greatest skill; now, rushing at it and
catching it neatly as it dropped; now, merely stopping it midway,
beating it up, and humouring it in various parts of the room and
against a good deal of the pattern of the paper on the wall, before
he felt it safe to close with it; finally, splashing it into the
slop-basin, where I took the liberty of laying hands upon it.

As to his shirt-collar, and his coat-collar, they were perplexing
to reflect upon - insoluble mysteries both. Why should a man scrape
himself to that extent, before he could consider himself full
dressed? Why should he suppose it necessary to be purified by
suffering for his holiday clothes? Then he fell into such
unaccountable fits of meditation, with his fork midway between his
plate and his mouth; had his eyes attracted in such strange
directions; was afflicted with such remarkable coughs; sat so far
from the table, and dropped so much more than he ate, and pretended
that he hadn't dropped it; that I was heartily glad when Herbert
left us for the city.

I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling to know that this
was all my fault, and that if I had been easier with Joe, Joe would
have been easier with me. I felt impatient of him and out of temper
with him; in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head.

"Us two being now alone, Sir," - began Joe.

"Joe," I interrupted, pettishly, "how can you call me, Sir?"

Joe looked at me for a single instant with something faintly like
reproach. Utterly preposterous as his cravat was, and as his
collars were, I was conscious of a sort of dignity in the look.

"Us two being now alone," resumed Joe, "and me having the
intentions and abilities to stay not many minutes more, I will now
conclude - leastways begin - to mention what have led to my having
had the present honour. For was it not," said Joe, with his old air
of lucid exposition, "that my only wish were to be useful to you, I
should not have had the honour of breaking wittles in the company
and abode of gentlemen."

I was so unwilling to see the look again, that I made no
remonstrance against this tone.

"Well, Sir," pursued Joe, "this is how it were. I were at the
Bargemen t'other night, Pip;" whenever he subsided into affection,
he called me Pip, and whenever he relapsed into politeness he
called me Sir; "when there come up in his shay-cart, Pumblechook.
Which that same identical," said Joe, going down a new track, "do
comb my 'air the wrong way sometimes, awful, by giving out up and
down town as it were him which ever had your infant companionation
and were looked upon as a playfellow by yourself."

"Nonsense. It was you, Joe."

"Which I fully believed it were, Pip," said Joe, slightly tossing
his head, "though it signify little now, Sir. Well, Pip; this same
identical, which his manners is given to blusterous, come to me at
the Bargemen (wot a pipe and a pint of beer do give refreshment to
the working-man, Sir, and do not over stimilate), and his word
were, 'Joseph, Miss Havisham she wish to speak to you.'"

"Miss Havisham, Joe?"

"'She wish,' were Pumblechook's word, 'to speak to you.'" Joe sat
and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

"Yes, Joe? Go on, please."

"Next day, Sir," said Joe, looking at me as if I were a long way
off, "having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss A."

"Miss A., Joe? Miss Havisham?"

"Which I say, Sir," replied Joe, with an air of legal formality, as
if he were making his will, "Miss A., or otherways Havisham. Her
expression air then as follering: 'Mr. Gargery. You air in
correspondence with Mr. Pip?' Having had a letter from you, I were
able to say 'I am.' (When I married your sister, Sir, I said 'I
will;' and when I answered your friend, Pip, I said 'I am.') 'Would
you tell him, then,' said she, 'that which Estella has come home
and would be glad to see him.'"

I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe. I hope one remote cause
of its firing, may have been my consciousness that if I had known
his errand, I should have given him more encouragement.

"Biddy," pursued Joe, "when I got home and asked her fur to write
the message to you, a little hung back. Biddy says, 'I know he will
be very glad to have it by word of mouth, it is holidaytime, you
want to see him, go!' I have now concluded, Sir," said Joe, rising
from his chair, "and, Pip, I wish you ever well and ever prospering
to a greater and a greater heighth."

"But you are not going now, Joe?"

"Yes I am," said Joe.

"But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?"

"No I am not," said Joe.

Our eyes met, and all the "Sir" melted out of that manly heart as
he gave me his hand.

"Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded
together, as I may say, and one man's a blacksmith, and one's a
whitesmith, and one's a goldsmith, and one's a coppersmith.
Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If
there's been any fault at all to-day, it's mine. You and me is not
two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but
what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It
ain't that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall
never see me no more in these clothes. I'm wrong in these clothes.
I'm wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th' meshes. You
won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge
dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won't find
half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to
see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see
Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt
apron, sticking to the old work. I'm awful dull, but I hope I've
beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD
bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!"

I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was a simple dignity
in him. The fashion of his dress could no more come in its way when
he spoke these words, than it could come in its way in Heaven. He
touched me gently on the forehead, and went out. As soon as I could
recover myself sufficiently, I hurried out after him and looked for
him in the neighbouring streets; but he was gone.


Chapter 28

It was clear that I must repair to our town next day, and in the
first flow of my repentance it was equally clear that I must stay
at Joe's. But, when I had secured my box-place by to-morrow's coach
and had been down to Mr. Pocket's and back, I was not by any means
convinced on the last point, and began to invent reasons and make
excuses for putting up at the Blue Boar. I should be an
inconvenience at Joe's; I was not expected, and my bed would not be
ready; I should be too far from Miss Havisham's, and she was
exacting and mightn't like it. All other swindlers upon earth are
nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat
myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad
half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough;
but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own
make, as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretence of
compactly folding up my bank-notes for security's sake, abstracts
the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand
to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as
notes!

Having settled that I must go to the Blue Boar, my mind was much
disturbed by indecision whether or not to take the Avenger. It was
tempting to think of that expensive Mercenary publicly airing his
boots in the archway of the Blue Boar's posting-yard; it was almost
solemn to imagine him casually produced in the tailor's shop and
confounding the disrespectful senses of Trabb's boy. On the other
hand, Trabb's boy might worm himself into his intimacy and tell him
things; or, reckless and desperate wretch as I knew he could be,
might hoot him in the High-street, My patroness, too, might hear of
him, and not approve. On the whole, I resolved to leave the Avenger
behind.

It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my place, and, as
winter had now come round, I should not arrive at my destination
until two or three hours after dark. Our time of starting from the
Cross Keys was two o'clock. I arrived on the ground with a quarter
of an hour to spare, attended by the Avenger - if I may connect
that expression with one who never attended on me if he could
possibly help it.

At that time it was customary to carry Convicts down to the
dockyards by stage-coach. As I had often heard of them in the
capacity of outside passengers, and had more than once seen them on
the high road dangling their ironed legs over the coach roof, I had
no cause to be surprised when Herbert, meeting me in the yard, came
up and told me there were two convicts going down with me. But I
had a reason that was an old reason now, for constitutionally
faltering whenever I heard the word convict.

"You don't mind them, Handel?" said Herbert.

"Oh no!"

"I thought you seemed as if you didn't like them?"

"I can't pretend that I do like them, and I suppose you don't
particularly. But I don't mind them."

"See! There they are," said Herbert, "coming out of the Tap. What a
degraded and vile sight it is!"

They had been treating their guard, I suppose, for they had a
gaoler with them, and all three came out wiping their mouths on
their hands. The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had
irons on their legs - irons of a pattern that I knew well. They
wore the dress that I likewise knew well. Their keeper had a brace
of pistols, and carried a thick-knobbed bludgeon under his arm; but
he was on terms of good understanding with them, and stood, with
them beside him, looking on at the putting-to of the horses, rather
with an air as if the convicts were an interesting Exhibition not
formally open at the moment, and he the Curator. One was a taller
and stouter man than the other, and appeared as a matter of course,
according to the mysterious ways of the world both convict and
free, to have had allotted to him the smaller suit of clothes. His
arms and legs were like great pincushions of those shapes, and his
attire disguised him absurdly; but I knew his half-closed eye at
one glance. There stood the man whom I had seen on the settle at
the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, and who had brought
me down with his invisible gun!

It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no more than if he
had never seen me in his life. He looked across at me, and his eye
appraised my watch-chain, and then he incidentally spat and said
something to the other convict, and they laughed and slued
themselves round with a clink of their coupling manacle, and looked
at something else. The great numbers on their backs, as if they
were street doors; their coarse mangy ungainly outer surface, as if
they were lower animals; their ironed legs, apologetically
garlanded with pocket-handkerchiefs; and the way in which all
present looked at them and kept from them; made them (as Herbert
had said) a most disagreeable and degraded spectacle.

But this was not the worst of it. It came out that the whole of the
back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from London,
and that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat
in front, behind the coachman. Hereupon, a choleric gentleman, who
had taken the fourth place on that seat, flew into a most violent
passion, and said that it was a breach of contract to mix him up
with such villainous company, and that it was poisonous and
pernicious and infamous and shameful, and I don't know what else.
At this time the coach was ready and the coachman impatient, and we
were all preparing to get up, and the prisoners had come over with
their keeper - bringing with them that curious flavour of
bread-poultice, baize, rope-yarn, and hearthstone, which attends
the convict presence.

"Don't take it so much amiss, sir," pleaded the keeper to the angry
passenger; "I'll sit next you myself. I'll put 'em on the outside
of the row. They won't interfere with you, sir. You needn't know
they're there."

"And don't blame me," growled the convict I had recognized. "I
don't want to go. I am quite ready to stay behind. As fur as I am
concerned any one's welcome to my place."

"Or mine," said the other, gruffly. "I wouldn't have incommoded
none of you, if I'd had my way." Then, they both laughed, and began
cracking nuts, and spitting the shells about. - As I really think I
should have liked to do myself, if I had been in their place and so
despised.

At length, it was voted that there was no help for the angry
gentleman, and that he must either go in his chance company or
remain behind. So, he got into his place, still making complaints,
and the keeper got into the place next him, and the convicts hauled
themselves up as well as they could, and the convict I had
recognized sat behind me with his breath on the hair of my head.

"Good-bye, Handel!" Herbert called out as we started. I thought
what a blessed fortune it was, that he had found another name for
me than Pip.

It is impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the
convict's breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along
my spine. The sensation was like being touched in the marrow with
some pungent and searching acid, it set my very teeth on edge. He
seemed to have more breathing business to do than another man, and
to make more noise in doing it; and I was conscious of growing
high-shoulderd on one side, in my shrinking endeavours to fend him
off.

The weather was miserably raw, and the two cursed the cold. It made
us all lethargic before we had gone far, and when we had left the
Half-way House behind, we habitually dozed and shivered and were
silent. I dozed off, myself, in considering the question whether I
ought to restore a couple of pounds sterling to this creature
before losing sight of him, and how it could best be done. In the
act of dipping forward as if I were going to bathe among the
horses, I woke in a fright and took the question up again.

But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, although
I could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and
shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind
that blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a
screen against the wind, the convicts were closer to me than
before. They very first words I heard them interchange as I became
conscious were the words of my own thought, "Two One Pound notes."

"How did he get 'em?" said the convict I had never seen.

"How should I know?" returned the other. "He had 'em stowed away
somehows. Giv him by friends, I expect."

"I wish," said the other, with a bitter curse upon the cold, "that
I had 'em here."

"Two one pound notes, or friends?"

"Two one pound notes. I'd sell all the friends I ever had, for one,
and think it a blessed good bargain. Well? So he says - ?"

"So he says," resumed the convict I had recognized - "it was all
said and done in half a minute, behind a pile of timber in the
Dockyard - 'You're a-going to be discharged?' Yes, I was. Would I
find out that boy that had fed him and kep his secret, and give him
them two one pound notes? Yes, I would. And I did."

"More fool you," growled the other. "I'd have spent 'em on a Man,
in wittles and drink. He must have been a green one. Mean to say he
knowed nothing of you?"

"Not a ha'porth. Different gangs and different ships. He was tried
again for prison breaking, and got made a Lifer."

"And was that - Honour! - the only time you worked out, in this
part of the country?"

"The only time."

"What might have been your opinion of the place?"

"A most beastly place. Mudbank, mist, swamp, and work; work, swamp,
mist, and mudbank."

They both execrated the place in very strong language, and
gradually growled themselves out, and had nothing left to say.

After overhearing this dialogue, I should assuredly have got down
and been left in the solitude and darkness of the highway, but for
feeling certain that the man had no suspicion of my identity.
Indeed, I was not only so changed in the course of nature, but so
differently dressed and so differently circumstanced, that it was
not at all likely he could have known me without accidental help.
Still, the coincidence of our being together on the coach, was
sufficiently strange to fill me with a dread that some other
coincidence might at any moment connect me, in his hearing, with my
name. For this reason, I resolved to alight as soon as we touched
the town, and put myself out of his hearing. This device I executed
successfully. My little portmanteau was in the boot under my feet;
I had but to turn a hinge to get it out: I threw it down before me,
got down after it, and was left at the first lamp on the first
stones of the town pavement. As to the convicts, they went their
way with the coach, and I knew at what point they would be spirited
off to the river. In my fancy, I saw the boat with its convict crew
waiting for them at the slime-washed stairs, - again heard the
gruff "Give way, you!" like and order to dogs - again saw the
wicked Noah's Ark lying out on the black water.

I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my fear was
altogether undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon me.
As I walked on to the hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceeding
the mere apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition,
made me tremble. I am confident that it took no distinctness of
shape, and that it was the revival for a few minutes of the terror
of childhood.

The coffee-room at the Blue Boar was empty, and I had not only
ordered my dinner there, but had sat down to it, before the waiter
knew me. As soon as he had apologized for the remissness of his
memory, he asked me if he should send Boots for Mr. Pumblechook?

"No," said I, "certainly not."

The waiter (it was he who had brought up the Great Remonstrance
from the Commercials, on the day when I was bound) appeared
surprised, and took the earliest opportunity of putting a dirty old
copy of a local newspaper so directly in my way, that I took it up
and read this paragraph:

Our readers will learn, not altogether without interest, in
reference to the recent romantic rise in fortune of a young
artificer in iron of this neighbourhood (what a theme, by the way,
for the magic pen of our as yet not universally acknowledged
townsman TOOBY, the poet of our columns!) that the youth's earliest
patron, companion, and friend, was a highly-respected individual
not entirely unconnected with the corn and seed trade, and whose
eminently convenient and commodious business premises are situate
within a hundred miles of the High-street. It is not wholly
irrespective of our personal feelings that we record HIM as the
Mentor of our young Telemachus, for it is good to know that our
town produced the founder of the latter's fortunes. Does the
thoughtcontracted brow of the local Sage or the lustrous eye of
local Beauty inquire whose fortunes? We believe that Quintin Matsys
was the BLACKSMITH of Antwerp. VERB. SAP.

I entertain a conviction, based upon large experience, that if in
the days of my prosperity I had gone to the North Pole, I should
have met somebody there, wandering Esquimaux or civilized man, who
would have told me that Pumblechook was my earliest patron and the
founder of my fortunes.


Chapter 29

Betimes in the morning I was up and out. It was too early yet to go
to Miss Havisham's, so I loitered into the country on Miss
Havisham's side of town - which was not Joe's side; I could go
there to-morrow - thinking about my patroness, and painting
brilliant pictures of her plans for me.

She had adopted Estella, she had as good as adopted me, and it
could not fail to be her intention to bring us together. She
reserved it for me to restore the desolate house, admit the
sunshine into the dark rooms, set the clocks a-going and the cold
hearths a-blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the vermin - in
short, do all the shining deeds of the young Knight of romance, and
marry the Princess. I had stopped to look at the house as I passed;
and its seared red brick walls, blocked windows, and strong green
ivy clasping even the stacks of chimneys with its twigs and
tendons, as if with sinewy old arms, had made up a rich attractive
mystery, of which I was the hero. Estella was the inspiration of
it, and the heart of it, of course. But, though she had taken such
strong possession of me, though my fancy and my hope were so set
upon her, though her influence on my boyish life and character had
been all-powerful, I did not, even that romantic morning, invest
her with any attributes save those she possessed. I mention this in
this place, of a fixed purpose, because it is the clue by which I
am to be followed into my poor labyrinth. According to my
experience, the conventional notion of a lover cannot be always
true. The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the
love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible.
Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always,
that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace,
against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that
could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew
it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had
devoutly believed her to be human perfection.

I so shaped out my walk as to arrive at the gate at my old time.
When I had rung at the bell with an unsteady hand, I turned my back
upon the gate, while I tried to get my breath and keep the beating
of my heart moderately quiet. I heard the side door open, and steps
come across the court-yard; but I pretended not to hear, even when
the gate swung on its rusty hinges.

Being at last touched on the shoulder, I started and turned. I
started much more naturally then, to find myself confronted by a
man in a sober grey dress. The last man I should have expected to
see in that place of porter at Miss Havisham's door.

"Orlick!"

"Ah, young master, there's more changes than yours. But come in,
come in. It's opposed to my orders to hold the gate open."

I entered and he swung it, and locked it, and took the key out.
"Yes!" said he, facing round, after doggedly preceding me a few
steps towards the house. "Here I am!"

"How did you come here?"

"I come her," he retorted, "on my legs. I had my box brought
alongside me in a barrow."

"Are you here for good?"

"I ain't her for harm, young master, I suppose?"

I was not so sure of that. I had leisure to entertain the retort in
my mind, while he slowly lifted his heavy glance from the pavement,
up my legs and arms, to my face.

"Then you have left the forge?" I said.

"Do this look like a forge?" replied Orlick, sending his glance all
round him with an air of injury. "Now, do it look like it?"

I asked him how long he had left Gargery's forge?

"One day is so like another here," he replied, "that I don't know
without casting it up. However, I come her some time since you
left."

"I could have told you that, Orlick."

"Ah!" said he, drily. "But then you've got to be a scholar."

By this time we had come to the house, where I found his room to be
one just within the side door, with a little window in it looking
on the court-yard. In its small proportions, it was not unlike the
kind of place usually assigned to a gate-porter in Paris. Certain
keys were hanging on the wall, to which he now added the gate-key;
and his patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner division or
recess. The whole had a slovenly confined and sleepy look, like a
cage for a human dormouse: while he, looming dark and heavy in the
shadow of a corner by the window, looked like the human dormouse
for whom it was fitted up - as indeed he was.

"I never saw this room before," I remarked; "but there used to be
no Porter here."

"No," said he; "not till it got about that there was no protection
on the premises, and it come to be considered dangerous, with
convicts and Tag and Rag and Bobtail going up and down. And then I
was recommended to the place as a man who could give another man as
good as he brought, and I took it. It's easier than bellowsing and
hammering. - That's loaded, that is."

My eye had been caught by a gun with a brass bound stock over the
chimney-piece, and his eye had followed mine.

"Well," said I, not desirous of more conversation, "shall I go up
to Miss Havisham?"

"Burn me, if I know!" he retorted, first stretching himself and
then shaking himself; "my orders ends here, young master. I give
this here bell a rap with this here hammer, and you go on along the
passage till you meet somebody."

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