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Charles Dickens 2 page

the terror, so that it be terror. I was in mortal terror of the

young man who wanted my heart and liver; I was in mor-

tal terror of my interlocutor with the ironed leg; I was in

mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had

been extracted; I had no hope of deliverance through my all-

powerful sister, who repulsed me at every turn; I am afraid

to think of what I might have done, on requirement, in the

secrecy of my terror.

If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine my-

self drifting down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the

Hulks; a ghostly pirate calling out to me through a speak-

ing-trumpet, as I passed the gibbet-station, that I had better

come ashore and be hanged there at once, and not put it off.

I was afraid to sleep, even if I had been inclined, for I knew

that at the first faint dawn of morning I must rob the pantry.

There was no doing it in the night, for there was no getting

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

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

the very pirate himself rattling his chains.

As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little

window was shot with grey, I got up and went down stairs;

every board upon the way, and every crack in every board,

calling after me, ‘Stop thief!’ and ‘Get up, Mrs. Joe!’ In the

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pantry, which was far more abundantly supplied than usual,

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

hanging up by the heels, whom I rather thought I caught,

when my back was half turned, winking. I had no time for

verification, no time for selection, no time for anything,

for I had no time to spare. I stole some bread, some rind

of cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I tied up

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

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

bottle I had secretly used for making that intoxicating fluid,

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

bottle from a jug in the kitchen cupboard), a meat bone with

very little on it, and a beautiful round compact pork pie. I

was nearly going away without the pie, but I was tempted to

mount upon a shelf, to look what it was that was put away so

carefully in a covered earthen ware dish in a corner, and I

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

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

time.

There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with

the forge; I unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file

from among Joe’s tools. Then, I put the fastenings as I had

found them, opened the door at which I had entered when I

ran home last night, shut it, and ran for the misty marshes.

Great Expectations

Chapter 3

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

damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some

goblin had been crying there all night, and using the win-

dow for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw the damp lying



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

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

to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy; and the

marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post

directing people to our village - a direction which they nev-

er accepted, for they never came there - was invisible to me

until I was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up at it,

while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like

a phantom devoting me to the Hulks.

The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marsh-

es, so that instead of my running at everything, everything

seemed to run at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty

mind. The gates and dykes and banks came bursting at me

through the mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, ‘A

boy with Somebody-else’s pork pie! Stop him!’ The cattle

came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their

eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, ‘Holloa, young

thief!’ One black ox, with a white cravat on - who even had to

my awakened conscience something of a clerical air - fixed

me so obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head

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round in such an accusatory manner as I moved round, that

I blubbered out to him, ‘I couldn’t help it, sir! It wasn’t for

myself I took it!’ Upon which he put down his head, blew a

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

of his hind-legs and a flourish of his tail.

All this time, I was getting on towards the river; but how-

ever fast I went, I couldn’t warm my feet, to which the damp

cold seemed riveted, as the iron was riveted to the leg of the

man I was running to meet. I knew my way to the Battery,

pretty straight, for I had been down there on a Sunday with

Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, had told me that when I

was ‘prentice to him regularly bound, we would have such

Larks there! However, in the confusion of the mist, I found

myself at last too far to the right, and consequently had to

try back along the river-side, on the bank of loose stones

above the mud and the stakes that staked the tide out. Mak-

ing my way along here with all despatch, I had just crossed

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

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

the man sitting before me. His back was towards me, and

he had his arms folded, and was nodding forward, heavy

with sleep.

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

his breakfast, in that unexpected manner, so I went for-

ward softly and touched him on the shoulder. He instantly

jumped up, and it was not the same man, but another man!

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

a great iron on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold,

and was everything that the other man was; except that he

 

Great Expectations

had not the same face, and had a flat broad-brimmed low-

crowned felt that on. All this, I saw in a moment, for I had

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

hit at me - it was a round weak blow that missed me and al-

most knocked himself down, for it made him stumble - and

then he ran into the mist, stumbling twice as he went, and

I lost him.

‘It’s the young man!’ I thought, feeling my heart shoot as

I identified him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my

liver, too, if I had known where it was.

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

right man-hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he

had never all night left off hugging and limping - waiting for

me. He was awfully cold, to be sure. I half expected to see

him drop down before my face and die of deadly cold. His

eyes looked so awfully hungry, too, that when I handed him

the file and he laid it down on the grass, it occurred to me he

would have tried to eat it, if he had not seen my bundle. He

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

but left me right side upwards while I opened the bundle

and emptied my pockets.

‘What’s in the bottle, boy?’ said he.

‘Brandy,’ said I.

He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in

the most curious manner - more like a man who was put-

ting it away somewhere in a violent hurry, than a man who

was eating it - but he left off to take some of the liquor. He

shivered all the while, so violently, that it was quite as much

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

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teeth, without biting it off.

‘I think you have got the ague,’ said I.

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

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

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

‘I’ll eat my breakfast afore they’re the death of me,’ said

he. ‘I’d do that, if I was going to be strung up to that there

gallows as there is over there, directly afterwards. I’ll beat

the shivers so far, I’ll bet you.’

He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese,

and pork pie, all at once: staring distrustfully while he did

so at the mist all round us, and often stopping - even stop-

ping his jaws - to listen. Some real or fancied sound, some

clink upon the river or breathing of beast upon the marsh,

now gave him a start, and he said, suddenly:

‘You’re not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with

you?’

‘No, sir! No!’

‘Nor giv’ no one the office to follow you?’

‘No!’

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

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

a wretched warmint, hunted as near death and dunghill as

this poor wretched warmint is!’

Something clicked in his throat, as if he had works in

him like a clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared

his ragged rough sleeve over his eyes.

Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually

settled down upon the pie, I made bold to say, ‘I am glad

 

Great Expectations

you enjoy it.’

‘Did you speak?’

‘I said I was glad you enjoyed it.’

‘Thankee, my boy. I do.’

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

and I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog’s

way of eating, and the man’s. The man took strong sharp

sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather

snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast; and he

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

there was danger in every direction, of somebody’s com-

ing to take the pie away. He was altogether too unsettled in

his mind over it, to appreciate it comfortably, I thought, or

to have anybody to dine with him, without making a chop

with his jaws at the visitor. In all of which particulars he

was very like the dog.

‘I am afraid you won’t leave any of it for him,’ said I, tim-

idly; after a silence during which I had hesitated as to the

politeness of making the remark. ‘There’s no more to be got

where that came from.’ It was the certainty of this fact that

impelled me to offer the hint.

‘Leave any for him? Who’s him?’ said my friend, stopping

in his crunching of pie-crust.

‘The young man. That you spoke of. That was hid with

you.’

‘Oh ah!’ he returned, with something like a gruff laugh.

‘Him? Yes, yes! He don’t want no wittles.’

‘I thought he looked as if he did,’ said I.

The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keen-

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est scrutiny and the greatest surprise.

‘Looked? When?’

‘Just now.’

‘Where?’

‘Yonder,’ said I, pointing; ‘over there, where I found him

nodding asleep, and thought it was you.’

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

to think his first idea about cutting my throat had revived.

‘Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat,’ I explained,

trembling; ‘and - and’ - I was very anxious to put this deli-

cately - ‘and with - the same reason for wanting to borrow a

file. Didn’t you hear the cannon last night?’

‘Then, there was firing!’ he said to himself.

‘I wonder you shouldn’t have been sure of that,’ I re-

turned, ‘for we heard it up at home, and that’s further away,

and we were shut in besides.’

‘Why, see now!’ said he. ‘When a man’s alone on these

flats, with a light head and a light stomach, perishing of

cold and want, he hears nothin’ all night, but guns firing,

and voices calling. Hears? He sees the soldiers, with their

red coats lighted up by the torches carried afore, closing in

round him. Hears his number called, hears himself chal-

lenged, hears the rattle of the muskets, hears the orders

‘Make ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!’ and is laid

hands on - and there’s nothin’! Why, if I see one pursuing

party last night - coming up in order, Damn ‘em, with their

tramp, tramp - I see a hundred. And as to firing! Why, I see

the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad day - But

this man;’ he had said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my

 

Great Expectations

being there; ‘did you notice anything in him?’

‘He had a badly bruised face,’ said I, recalling what I

hardly knew I knew.

‘Not here?’ exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek

mercilessly, with the flat of his hand.

‘Yes, there!’

‘Where is he?’ He crammed what little food was left, into

the breast of his grey jacket. ‘Show me the way he went. I’ll

pull him down, like a bloodhound. Curse this iron on my

sore leg! Give us hold of the file, boy.’

I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the

other man, and he looked up at it for an instant. But he was

down on the rank wet grass, filing at his iron like a mad-

man, and not minding me or minding his own leg, which

had an old chafe upon it and was bloody, but which he han-

dled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it than the

file. I was very much afraid of him again, now that he had

worked himself into this fierce hurry, and I was likewise

very much afraid of keeping away from home any longer. I

told him I must go, but he took no notice, so I thought the

best thing I could do was to slip off. The last I saw of him,

his head was bent over his knee and he was working hard at

his fetter, muttering impatient imprecations at it and at his

leg. The last I heard of him, I stopped in the mist to listen,

and the file was still going.

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Chapter 4

I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, wait-

ing to take me up. But not only was there no Constable

there, but no discovery had yet been made of the robbery.

Mrs. Joe was prodigiously busy in getting the house ready

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

kitchen door-step to keep him out of the dust-pan - an ar-

ticle into which his destiny always led him sooner or later,

when my sister was vigorously reaping the floors of her es-

tablishment.

‘And where the deuce ha’ you been?’ was Mrs. Joe’s

Christmas salutation, when I and my conscience showed

ourselves.

I said I had been down to hear the Carols. ‘Ah! well!’ ob-

served Mrs. Joe. ‘You might ha’ done worse.’ Not a doubt of

that, I thought.

‘Perhaps if I warn’t a blacksmith’s wife, and (what’s the

same thing) a slave with her apron never off, I should have

been to hear the Carols,’ said Mrs. Joe. ‘I’m rather partial to

Carols, myself, and that’s the best of reasons for my never

hearing any.’

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

dust-pan had retired before us, drew the back of his hand

across his nose with a conciliatory air when Mrs. Joe darted

a look at him, and, when her eyes were withdrawn, secretly

 

Great Expectations

crossed his two forefingers, and exhibited them to me, as

our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross temper. This was so

much her normal state, that Joe and I would often, for weeks

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

as to their legs.

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

pickled pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls.

A handsome mince-pie had been made yesterday morning

(which accounted for the mincemeat not being missed), and

the pudding was already on the boil. These extensive ar-

rangements occasioned us to be cut off unceremoniously in

respect of breakfast; ‘for I an’t,’ said Mrs. Joe, ‘I an’t a-going

to have no formal cramming and busting and washing up

now, with what I’ve got before me, I promise you!’

So, we had our slices served out, as if we were two thou-

sand troops on a forced march instead of a man and boy at

home; and we took gulps of milk and water, with apologetic

countenances, from a jug on the dresser. In the meantime,

Mrs. Joe put clean white curtains up, and tacked a new flow-

ered-flounce across the wide chimney to replace the old one,

and uncovered the little state parlour across the passage,

which was never uncovered at any other time, but passed

the rest of the year in a cool haze of silver paper, which even

extended to the four little white crockery poodles on the

mantelshelf, each with a black nose and a basket of flowers

in his mouth, and each the counterpart of the other. Mrs.

Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of

making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unaccept-

able than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and

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some people do the same by their religion.

My sister having so much to do, was going to church vi-

cariously; that is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working

clothes, Joe was a well-knit characteristic-looking black-

smith; in his holiday clothes, he was more like a scarecrow

in good circumstances, than anything else. Nothing that

he wore then, fitted him or seemed to belong to him; and

everything that he wore then, grazed him. On the pres-

ent festive occasion he emerged from his room, when the

blithe bells were going, the picture of misery, in a full suit of

Sunday penitentials. As to me, I think my sister must have

had some general idea that I was a young offender whom

an Accoucheur Policemen had taken up (on my birthday)

and delivered over to her, to be dealt with according to

the outraged majesty of the law. I was always treated as if

I had insisted on being born, in opposition to the dictates

of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuad-

ing arguments of my best friends. Even when I was taken

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

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

me have the free use of my limbs.

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

moving spectacle for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suf-

fered outside, was nothing to what I underwent within. The

terrors that had assailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had gone

near the pantry, or out of the room, were only to be equalled

by the remorse with which my mind dwelt on what my

hands had done. Under the weight of my wicked secret, I

pondered whether the Church would be powerful enough

Great Expectations

to shield me from the vengeance of the terrible young man,

if I divulged to that establishment. I conceived the idea that

the time when the banns were read and when the clergy-

man said, ‘Ye are now to declare it!’ would be the time for

me to rise and propose a private conference in the vestry. I

am far from being sure that I might not have astonished our

small congregation by resorting to this extreme measure,

but for its being Christmas Day and no Sunday.

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

Mr. Hubble the wheelwright and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle

Pumblechook (Joe’s uncle, but Mrs. Joe appropriated him),

who was a well-to-do corn-chandler in the nearest town,

and drove his own chaise-cart. The dinner hour was half-

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

and Mrs. Joe dressed, and the dinner dressing, and the

front door unlocked (it never was at any other time) for the

company to enter by, and everything most splendid. And

still, not a word of the robbery.

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

feelings, and the company came. Mr. Wopsle, united to a

Roman nose and a large shining bald forehead, had a deep

voice which he was uncommonly proud of; indeed it was

understood among his acquaintance that if you could only

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

he himself confessed that if the Church was ‘thrown open,’

meaning to competition, he would not despair of making

his mark in it. The Church not being ‘thrown open,’ he

was, as I have said, our clerk. But he punished the Amens

tremendously; and when he gave out the psalm - always giv-

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ing the whole verse - he looked all round the congregation

first, as much as to say, ‘You have heard my friend overhead;

oblige me with your opinion of this style!’

I opened the door to the company - making believe that

it was a habit of ours to open that door - and I opened it first

to Mr. Wopsle, next to Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all

to Uncle Pumblechook. N.B., I was not allowed to call him

uncle, under the severest penalties.

‘Mrs. Joe,’ said Uncle Pumblechook: a large hard-breath-

ing middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull

staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his head,

so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked, and

had that moment come to; ‘I have brought you, as the com-

pliments of the season - I have brought you, Mum, a bottle

of sherry wine - and I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of

port wine.’

Every Christmas Day he presented himself, as a pro-

found novelty, with exactly the same words, and carrying

the two bottles like dumb-bells. Every Christmas Day, Mrs.

Joe replied, as she now replied, ‘Oh, Un - cle Pum - ble -

chook! This IS kind!’ Every Christmas Day, he retorted, as

he now retorted, ‘It’s no more than your merits. And now

are you all bobbish, and how’s Sixpennorth of halfpence?’

meaning me.

We dined on these occasions in the kitchen, and ad-

journed, for the nuts and oranges and apples, to the parlour;

which was a change very like Joe’s change from his working

clothes to his Sunday dress. My sister was uncommonly live-

ly on the present occasion, and indeed was generally more

 

Great Expectations

gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble than in other com-

pany. I remember Mrs. Hubble as a little curly sharp-edged

person in sky-blue, who held a conventionally juvenile posi-

tion, because she had married Mr. Hubble - I don’t know at

what remote period - when she was much younger than he. I

remember Mr Hubble as a tough high-shouldered stooping

old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraordi-

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

some miles of open country between them when I met him

coming up the lane.

Among this good company I should have felt myself, even

if I hadn’t robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not because

I was squeezed in at an acute angle of the table-cloth, with

the table in my chest, and the Pumblechookian elbow in my

eye, nor because I was not allowed to speak (I didn’t want to

speak), nor because I was regaled with the scaly tips of the

drumsticks of the fowls, and with those obscure corners of

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

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

only have left me alone. But they wouldn’t leave me alone.

They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they failed to

point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick

the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little

bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by

these moral goads.

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

said grace with theatrical declamation - as it now appears to

me, something like a religious cross of the Ghost in Ham-

let with Richard the Third - and ended with the very proper

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aspiration that we might be truly grateful. Upon which my

sister fixed me with her eye, and said, in a low reproachful

voice, ‘Do you hear that? Be grateful.’

‘Especially,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, ‘be grateful, boy, to

them which brought you up by hand.’

Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me

with a mournful presentiment that I should come to no

good, asked, ‘Why is it that the young are never grateful?’

This moral mystery seemed too much for the company until

Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, ‘Naterally wicious.’

Everybody then murmured ‘True!’ and looked at me in a

particularly unpleasant and personal manner.

Joe’s station and influence were something feebler (if

possible) when there was company, than when there was

none. But he always aided and comforted me when he could,

in some way of his own, and he always did so at dinner-time

by giving me gravy, if there were any. There being plenty of

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

half a pint.

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

sermon with some severity, and intimated - in the usual hy-

pothetical case of the Church being ‘thrown open’ - what

kind of sermon he would have given them. After favouring

them with some heads of that discourse, he remarked that

he considered the subject of the day’s homily, ill-chosen;

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

many subjects ‘going about.’

‘True again,’ said Uncle Pumblechook. ‘You’ve hit it, sir!

Plenty of subjects going about, for them that know how

 

Great Expectations

to put salt upon their tails. That’s what’s wanted. A man

needn’t go far to find a subject, if he’s ready with his salt-

box.’ Mr. Pumblechook added, after a short interval of

reflection, ‘Look at Pork alone. There’s a subject! If you want

a subject, look at Pork!’

‘True, sir. Many a moral for the young,’ returned Mr.

Wopsle; and I knew he was going to lug me in, before he

said it; ‘might be deduced from that text.’

(“You listen to this,’ said my sister to me, in a severe pa-

renthesis.)

Joe gave me some more gravy.

‘Swine,’ pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and

pointing his fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my

Christian name; ‘Swine were the companions of the prodi-

gal. The gluttony of Swine is put before us, as an example to

the young.’ (I thought this pretty well in him who had been

praising up the pork for being so plump and juicy.) ‘What is

detestable in a pig, is more detestable in a boy.’

‘Or girl,’ suggested Mr. Hubble.

‘Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble,’ assented Mr. Wopsle,

rather irritably, ‘but there is no girl present.’

‘Besides,’ said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me,

‘think what you’ve got to be grateful for. If you’d been born

a Squeaker—‘

‘He was, if ever a child was,’ said my sister, most emphati-

cally.

Joe gave me some more gravy.

‘Well, but I mean a four-footed Squeaker,’ said Mr. Pum-

blechook. ‘If you had been born such, would you have been

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here now? Not you—‘

‘Unless in that form,’ said Mr. Wopsle, nodding towards

the dish.

‘But I don’t mean in that form, sir,’ returned Mr. Pum-

blechook, who had an objection to being interrupted; ‘I

mean, enjoying himself with his elders and betters, and


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