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Charles Dickens 4 page

interested in us, but just lifted their heads and took a sleepy

stare, and then lay down again. The sergeant made some

kind of report, and some entry in a book, and then the con-

vict whom I call the other convict was drafted off with his

guard, to go on board first.

My convict never looked at me, except that once. While

we stood in the hut, he stood before the fire looking thought-

fully at it, or putting up his feet by turns upon the hob, and

looking thoughtfully at them as if he pitied them for their

recent adventures. Suddenly, he turned to the sergeant, and

remarked:

‘I wish to say something respecting this escape. It may

prevent some persons laying under suspicion alonger me.’

‘You can say what you like,’ returned the sergeant, stand-

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ing coolly looking at him with his arms folded, ‘but you

have no call to say it here. You’ll have opportunity enough

to say about it, and hear about it, before it’s done with, you

know.’

‘I know, but this is another pint, a separate matter. A man

can’t starve; at least I can’t. I took some wittles, up at the

willage over yonder - where the church stands a’most out

on the marshes.’

‘You mean stole,’ said the sergeant.

‘And I’ll tell you where from. From the blacksmith’s.’

‘Halloa!’ said the sergeant, staring at Joe.

‘Halloa, Pip!’ said Joe, staring at me.

‘It was some broken wittles - that’s what it was - and a

dram of liquor, and a pie.’

‘Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie,

blacksmith?’ asked the sergeant, confidentially.

‘My wife did, at the very moment when you came in.

Don’t you know, Pip?’

‘So,’ said my convict, turning his eyes on Joe in a moody

manner, and without the least glance at me; ‘so you’re the

blacksmith, are you? Than I’m sorry to say, I’ve eat your

pie.’‘God knows you’re welcome to it - so far as it was ever

mine,’ returned Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe.

‘We don’t know what you have done, but we wouldn’t have

you starved to death for it, poor miserable fellow-creatur. -

Would us, Pip?’

The something that I had noticed before, clicked in the

man’s throat again, and he turned his back. The boat had

 

Great Expectations

returned, and his guard were ready, so we followed him to

the landing-place made of rough stakes and stones, and

saw him put into the boat, which was rowed by a crew of

convicts like himself. No one seemed surprised to see him,

or interested in seeing him, or glad to see him, or sorry to

see him, or spoke a word, except that somebody in the boat

growled as if to dogs, ‘Give way, you!’ which was the signal

for the dip of the oars. By the light of the torches, we saw

the black Hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the

shore, like a wicked Noah’s ark. Cribbed and barred and

moored by massive rusty chains, the prison-ship seemed in

my young eyes to be ironed like the prisoners. We saw the

boat go alongside, and we saw him taken up the side and

disappear. Then, the ends of the torches were flung hissing



into the water, and went out, as if it were all over with him.

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Chapter 6

My state of mind regarding the pilfering from which I

had been so unexpectedly exonerated, did not impel

me to frank disclosure; but I hope it had some dregs of good

at the bottom of it.

I do not recall that I felt any tenderness of conscience

in reference to Mrs. Joe, when the fear of being found out

was lifted off me. But I loved Joe - perhaps for no better rea-

son in those early days than because the dear fellow let me

love him - and, as to him, my inner self was not so easily

composed. It was much upon my mind (particularly when

I first saw him looking about for his file) that I ought to tell

Joe the whole truth. Yet I did not, and for the reason that

I mistrusted that if I did, he would think me worse than I

was. The fear of losing Joe’s confidence, and of thenceforth

sitting in the chimney-corner at night staring drearily at

my for ever lost companion and friend, tied up my tongue.

I morbidly represented to myself that if Joe knew it, I nev-

er afterwards could see him at the fireside feeling his fair

whisker, without thinking that he was meditating on it.

That, if Joe knew it, I never afterwards could see him glance,

however casually, at yesterday’s meat or pudding when it

came on to-day’s table, without thinking that he was debat-

ing whether I had been in the pantry. That, if Joe knew it,

and at any subsequent period of our joint domestic life re-

 

Great Expectations

marked that his beer was flat or thick, the conviction that he

suspected Tar in it, would bring a rush of blood to my face.

In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right,

as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be

wrong. I had had no intercourse with the world at that time,

and I imitated none of its many inhabitants who act in this

manner. Quite an untaught genius, I made the discovery of

the line of action for myself.

As I was sleepy before we were far away from the prison-

ship, Joe took me on his back again and carried me home.

He must have had a tiresome journey of it, for Mr. Wopsle,

being knocked up, was in such a very bad temper that if

the Church had been thrown open, he would probably have

excommunicated the whole expedition, beginning with Joe

and myself. In his lay capacity, he persisted in sitting down

in the damp to such an insane extent, that when his coat

was taken off to be dried at the kitchen fire, the circumstan-

tial evidence on his trousers would have hanged him if it

had been a capital offence.

By that time, I was staggering on the kitchen floor like

a little drunkard, through having been newly set upon my

feet, and through having been fast asleep, and through

waking in the heat and lights and noise of tongues. As I

came to myself (with the aid of a heavy thump between the

shoulders, and the restorative exclamation ‘Yah! Was there

ever such a boy as this!’ from my sister), I found Joe tell-

ing them about the convict’s confession, and all the visitors

suggesting different ways by which he had got into the pan-

try. Mr. Pumblechook made out, after carefully surveying

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the premises, that he had first got upon the roof of the forge,

and had then got upon the roof of the house, and had then

let himself down the kitchen chimney by a rope made of his

bedding cut into strips; and as Mr. Pumblechook was very

positive and drove his own chaise-cart - over everybody - it

was agreed that it must be so. Mr. Wopsle, indeed, wildly

cried out ‘No!’ with the feeble malice of a tired man; but, as

he had no theory, and no coat on, he was unanimously set

at nought - not to mention his smoking hard behind, as he

stood with his back to the kitchen fire to draw the damp out:

which was not calculated to inspire confidence.

This was all I heard that night before my sister clutched

me, as a slumberous offence to the company’s eyesight, and

assisted me up to bed with such a strong hand that I seemed

to have fifty boots on, and to be dangling them all against

the edges of the stairs. My state of mind, as I have described

it, began before I was up in the morning, and lasted long

after the subject had died out, and had ceased to be men-

tioned saving on exceptional occasions.

 

Great Expectations

Chapter 7

At the time when I stood in the churchyard, reading the

family tombstones, I had just enough learning to be

able to spell them out. My construction even of their simple

meaning was not very correct, for I read ‘wife of the Above’

as a complimentary reference to my father’s exaltation to a

better world; and if any one of my deceased relations had

been referred to as ‘Below,’ I have no doubt I should have

formed the worst opinions of that member of the family.

Neither, were my notions of the theological positions to

which my Catechism bound me, at all accurate; for, I have

a lively remembrance that I supposed my declaration that I

was to ‘walk in the same all the days of my life,’ laid me un-

der an obligation always to go through the village from our

house in one particular direction, and never to vary it by

turning down by the wheelwright’s or up by the mill.

When I was old enough, I was to be apprenticed to Joe,

and until I could assume that dignity I was not to be what

Mrs. Joe called ‘Pompeyed,’ or (as I render it) pampered.

Therefore, I was not only odd-boy about the forge, but if any

neighbour happened to want an extra boy to frighten birds,

or pick up stones, or do any such job, I was favoured with

the employment. In order, however, that our superior posi-

tion might not be compromised thereby, a money-box was

kept on the kitchen mantel-shelf, in to which it was publicly

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made known that all my earnings were dropped. I have an

impression that they were to be contributed eventually to-

wards the liquidation of the National Debt, but I know I had

no hope of any personal participation in the treasure.

Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt kept an evening school in the

village; that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of lim-

ited means and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep

from six to seven every evening, in the society of youth who

paid twopence per week each, for the improving opportu-

nity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage, and Mr.

Wopsle had the room up-stairs, where we students used to

overhear him reading aloud in a most dignified and terrif-

ic manner, and occasionally bumping on the ceiling. There

was a fiction that Mr. Wopsle ‘examined’ the scholars, once

a quarter. What he did on those occasions was to turn up

his cuffs, stick up his hair, and give us Mark Antony’s ora-

tion over the body of Caesar. This was always followed by

Collins’s Ode on the Passions, wherein I particularly ven-

erated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge, throwing his blood-stained

sword in thunder down, and taking the War-denouncing

trumpet with a withering look. It was not with me then, as

it was in later life, when I fell into the society of the Passions,

and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the

disadvantage of both gentlemen.

Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, besides keeping this Education-

al Institution, kept - in the same room - a little general shop.

She had no idea what stock she had, or what the price of

anything in it was; but there was a little greasy memoran-

dum-book kept in a drawer, which served as a Catalogue

Great Expectations

of Prices, and by this oracle Biddy arranged all the shop

transaction. Biddy was Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s grand-

daughter; I confess myself quiet unequal to the working out

of the problem, what relation she was to Mr. Wopsle. She

was an orphan like myself; like me, too, had been brought

up by hand. She was most noticeable, I thought, in respect

of her extremities; for, her hair always wanted brushing, her

hands always wanted washing, and her shoes always want-

ed mending and pulling up at heel. This description must

be received with a week-day limitation. On Sundays, she

went to church elaborated.

Much of my unassisted self, and more by the help of Bid-

dy than of Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, I struggled through the

alphabet as if it had been a bramble-bush; getting consider-

ably worried and scratched by every letter. After that, I fell

among those thieves, the nine figures, who seemed every

evening to do something new to disguise themselves and

baffle recognition. But, at last I began, in a purblind groping

way, to read, write, and cipher, on the very smallest scale.

One night, I was sitting in the chimney-corner with my

slate, expending great efforts on the production of a letter

to Joe. I think it must have been a fully year after our hunt

upon the marshes, for it was a long time after, and it was

winter and a hard frost. With an alphabet on the hearth at

my feet for reference, I contrived in an hour or two to print

and smear this epistle:

‘MI DEER JO i OPE U R KR WITE WELL i OPE i SHAL

SON B HABELL 4 2 TEEDGE U JO AN THEN WE SHORL

B SO GLODD AN WEN i M PRENGTD 2 U JO WOT LARX

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AN BLEVE ME INF XN PIP.’

There was no indispensable necessity for my communi-

cating with Joe by letter, inasmuch as he sat beside me and

we were alone. But, I delivered this written communication

(slate and all) with my own hand, and Joe received it as a

miracle of erudition.

‘I say, Pip, old chap!’ cried Joe, opening his blue eyes wide,

‘what a scholar you are! An’t you?’

‘I should like to be,’ said I, glancing at the slate as he held

it: with a misgiving that the writing was rather hilly.

‘Why, here’s a J,’ said Joe, ‘and a O equal to anythink!

Here’s a J and a O, Pip, and a J-O, Joe.’

I had never heard Joe read aloud to any greater extent

than this monosyllable, and I had observed at church last

Sunday when I accidentally held our Prayer-Book upside

down, that it seemed to suit his convenience quite as well

as if it had been all right. Wishing to embrace the present

occasion of finding out whether in teaching Joe, I should

have to begin quite at the beginning, I said, ‘Ah! But read

the rest, Jo.’

‘The rest, eh, Pip?’ said Joe, looking at it with a slowly

searching eye, ‘One, two, three. Why, here’s three Js, and

three Os, and three J-O, Joes in it, Pip!’

I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my forefinger, read

him the whole letter.

‘Astonishing!’ said Joe, when I had finished. ‘You ARE a

scholar.’

‘How do you spell Gargery, Joe?’ I asked him, with a

modest patronage.

 

Great Expectations

‘I don’t spell it at all,’ said Joe.

‘But supposing you did?’

‘It can’t be supposed,’ said Joe. ‘Tho’ I’m oncommon fond

of reading, too.’

‘Are you, Joe?’

‘On-common. Give me,’ said Joe, ‘a good book, or a good

newspaper, and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no

better. Lord!’ he continued, after rubbing his knees a little,

‘when you do come to a J and a O, and says you, ‘Here, at last,

is a J-O, Joe,’ how interesting reading is!’

I derived from this last, that Joe’s education, like Steam,

was yet in its infancy, Pursuing the subject, I inquired:

‘Didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little

as me?’

‘No, Pip.’

‘Why didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as

little as me?’

‘Well, Pip,’ said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling

himself to his usual occupation when he was thoughtful,

of slowly raking the fire between the lower bars: ‘I’ll tell

you. My father, Pip, he were given to drink, and when he

were overtook with drink, he hammered away at my moth-

er, most onmerciful. It were a’most the only hammering he

did, indeed, ‘xcepting at myself. And he hammered at me

with a wigour only to be equalled by the wigour with which

he didn’t hammer at his anwil. - You’re a-listening and un-

derstanding, Pip?’

‘Yes, Joe.’

‘ Consequence, my mother and me we ran away from

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my father, several times; and then my mother she’d go out

to work, and she’d say, ‘Joe,’ she’d say, ‘now, please God,

you shall have some schooling, child,’ and she’d put me

to school. But my father were that good in his hart that he

couldn’t abear to be without us. So, he’d come with a most

tremenjous crowd and make such a row at the doors of the

houses where we was, that they used to be obligated to have

no more to do with us and to give us up to him. And then he

took us home and hammered us. Which, you see, Pip,’ said

Joe, pausing in his meditative raking of the fire, and looking

at me, ‘were a drawback on my learning.’

‘Certainly, poor Joe!’

‘Though mind you, Pip,’ said Joe, with a judicial touch

or two of the poker on the top bar, ‘rendering unto all their

doo, and maintaining equal justice betwixt man and man,

my father were that good in his hart, don’t you see?’

I didn’t see; but I didn’t say so.

‘Well!’ Joe pursued, ‘somebody must keep the pot a bil-

ing, Pip, or the pot won’t bile, don’t you know?’

I saw that, and said so.

‘ Consequence, my father didn’t make objections to my

going to work; so I went to work to work at my present call-

ing, which were his too, if he would have followed it, and I

worked tolerable hard, I assure you, Pip. In time I were able

to keep him, and I kept him till he went off in a purple lep-

tic fit. And it were my intentions to have had put upon his

tombstone that Whatsume’er the failings on his part, Re-

member reader he were that good in his hart.’

Joe recited this couplet with such manifest pride and

 

Great Expectations

careful perspicuity, that I asked him if he had made it him-

self.‘I made it,’ said Joe, ‘my own self. I made it in a moment. It

was like striking out a horseshoe complete, in a single blow.

I never was so much surprised in all my life - couldn’t credit

my own ed - to tell you the truth, hardly believed it were my

own ed. As I was saying, Pip, it were my intentions to have

had it cut over him; but poetry costs money, cut it how you

will, small or large, and it were not done. Not to mention

bearers, all the money that could be spared were wanted

for my mother. She were in poor elth, and quite broke. She

weren’t long of following, poor soul, and her share of peace

come round at last.’

Joe’s blue eyes turned a little watery; he rubbed, first one

of them, and then the other, in a most uncongenial and un-

comfortable manner, with the round knob on the top of the

poker.

‘It were but lonesome then,’ said Joe, ‘living here alone,

and I got acquainted with your sister. Now, Pip;’ Joe looked

firmly at me, as if he knew I was not going to agree with

him; ‘your sister is a fine figure of a woman.’

I could not help looking at the fire, in an obvious state

of doubt.

‘Whatever family opinions, or whatever the world’s opin-

ions, on that subject may be, Pip, your sister is,’ Joe tapped

the top bar with the poker after every word following, ‘a

- fine - figure - of - a - woman!’

I could think of nothing better to say than ‘I am glad you

think so, Joe.’

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‘So am I,’ returned Joe, catching me up. ‘I am glad I think

so, Pip. A little redness or a little matter of Bone, here or

there, what does it signify to Me?’

I sagaciously observed, if it didn’t signify to him, to

whom did it signify?

‘Certainly!’ assented Joe. ‘That’s it. You’re right, old chap!

When I got acquainted with your sister, it were the talk how

she was bringing you up by hand. Very kind of her too, all

the folks said, and I said, along with all the folks. As to you,’

Joe pursued with a countenance expressive of seeing some-

thing very nasty indeed: ‘if you could have been aware how

small and flabby and mean you was, dear me, you’d have

formed the most contemptible opinion of yourself!’

Not exactly relishing this, I said, ‘Never mind me, Joe.’

‘But I did mind you, Pip,’ he returned with tender sim-

plicity. ‘When I offered to your sister to keep company, and

to be asked in church at such times as she was willing and

ready to come to the forge, I said to her, ‘And bring the poor

little child. God bless the poor little child,’ I said to your sis-

ter, ‘there’s room for him at the forge!’

I broke out crying and begging pardon, and hugged Joe

round the neck: who dropped the poker to hug me, and

to say, ‘Ever the best of friends; an’t us, Pip? Don’t cry, old

chap!’

When this little interruption was over, Joe resumed:

‘Well, you see, Pip, and here we are! That’s about where

it lights; here we are! Now, when you take me in hand in

my learning, Pip (and I tell you beforehand I am awful dull,

most awful dull), Mrs. Joe mustn’t see too much of what

 

Great Expectations

we’re up to. It must be done, as I may say, on the sly. And

why on the sly? I’ll tell you why, Pip.’

He had taken up the poker again; without which, I doubt

if he could have proceeded in his demonstration.

‘Your sister is given to government.’

‘Given to government, Joe?’ I was startled, for I had some

shadowy idea (and I am afraid I must add, hope) that Joe

had divorced her in a favour of the Lords of the Admiralty,

or Treasury.

‘Given to government,’ said Joe. ‘Which I meantersay the

government of you and myself.’

‘Oh!’

‘And she an’t over partial to having scholars on the prem-

ises,’ Joe continued, ‘and in partickler would not be over

partial to my being a scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a

sort or rebel, don’t you see?’

I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far

as ‘Why—’ when Joe stopped me.

‘Stay a bit. I know what you’re a-going to say, Pip; stay a

bit! I don’t deny that your sister comes the Mo-gul over us,

now and again. I don’t deny that she do throw us back-falls,

and that she do drop down upon us heavy. At such times as

when your sister is on the Ram-page, Pip,’ Joe sank his voice

to a whisper and glanced at the door, ‘candour compels fur

to admit that she is a Buster.’

Joe pronounced this word, as if it began with at least

twelve capital Bs.

‘Why don’t I rise? That were your observation when I

broke it off, Pip?’

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‘Yes, Joe.’

‘Well,’ said Joe, passing the poker into his left hand,

that he might feel his whisker; and I had no hope of him

whenever he took to that placid occupation; ‘your sister’s a

master-mind. A master-mind.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked, in some hope of bringing him to

a stand. But, Joe was readier with his definition than I had

expected, and completely stopped me by arguing circularly,

and answering with a fixed look, ‘Her.’

‘And I an’t a master-mind,’ Joe resumed, when he had

unfixed his look, and got back to his whisker. ‘And last of

all, Pip - and this I want to say very serious to you, old chap

- I see so much in my poor mother, of a woman drudging

and slaving and breaking her honest hart and never get-

ting no peace in her mortal days, that I’m dead afeerd of

going wrong in the way of not doing what’s right by a wom-

an, and I’d fur rather of the two go wrong the t’other way,

and be a little ill-conwenienced myself. I wish it was only

me that got put out, Pip; I wish there warn’t no Tickler for

you, old chap; I wish I could take it all on myself; but this is

the up-and-down-and-straight on it, Pip, and I hope you’ll

overlook shortcomings.’

Young as I was, I believe that I dated a new admiration of

Joe from that night. We were equals afterwards, as we had

been before; but, afterwards at quiet times when I sat look-

ing at Joe and thinking about him, I had a new sensation of

feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart.

‘However,’ said Joe, rising to replenish the fire; ‘here’s the

Dutch-clock a working himself up to being equal to strike

 

Great Expectations

Eight of ‘em, and she’s not come home yet! I hope Uncle

Pumblechook’s mare mayn’t have set a fore-foot on a piece

o’ ice, and gone down.’

Mrs. Joe made occasional trips with Uncle Pumblechook

on market-days, to assist him in buying such household

stuffs and goods as required a woman’s judgment; Uncle

Pumblechook being a bachelor and reposing no confidenc-

es in his domestic servant. This was market-day, and Mrs.

Joe was out on one of these expeditions.

Joe made the fire and swept the hearth, and then we went

to the door to listen for the chaise-cart. It was a dry cold

night, and the wind blew keenly, and the frost was white

and hard. A man would die to-night of lying out on the

marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars, and con-

sidered how awful if would be for a man to turn his face up

to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all

the glittering multitude.

‘Here comes the mare,’ said Joe, ‘ringing like a peal of

bells!’

The sound of her iron shoes upon the hard road was

quite musical, as she came along at a much brisker trot than

usual. We got a chair out, ready for Mrs. Joe’s alighting, and

stirred up the fire that they might see a bright window, and

took a final survey of the kitchen that nothing might be out

of its place. When we had completed these preparations,

they drove up, wrapped to the eyes. Mrs. Joe was soon land-

ed, and Uncle Pumblechook was soon down too, covering

the mare with a cloth, and we were soon all in the kitchen,

carrying so much cold air in with us that it seemed to drive

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all the heat out of the fire.

‘Now,’ said Mrs. Joe, unwrapping herself with haste and

excitement, and throwing her bonnet back on her shoulders

where it hung by the strings: ‘if this boy an’t grateful this

night, he never will be!’

I looked as grateful as any boy possibly could, who was

wholly uninformed why he ought to assume that expres-

sion.

‘It’s only to be hoped,’ said my sister, ‘that he won’t be

Pomp-eyed. But I have my fears.’

‘She an’t in that line, Mum,’ said Mr. Pumblechook. ‘She

knows better.’

She? I looked at Joe, making the motion with my lips and

eyebrows, ‘She?’ Joe looked at me, making the motion with

his lips and eyebrows, ‘She?’ My sister catching him in the

act, he drew the back of his hand across his nose with his

usual conciliatory air on such occasions, and looked at her.

‘Well?’ said my sister, in her snappish way. ‘What are you

staring at? Is the house a-fire?’

‘ - Which some individual,’ Joe politely hinted, ‘men-

tioned - she.’

‘And she is a she, I suppose?’ said my sister. ‘Unless you

call Miss Havisham a he. And I doubt if even you’ll go so

far as that.’

‘Miss Havisham, up town?’ said Joe.

‘Is there any Miss Havisham down town?’ returned my

sister.

‘She wants this boy to go and play there. And of course

he’s going. And he had better play there,’ said my sister,

Great Expectations

shaking her head at me as an encouragement to be extreme-

ly light and sportive, ‘or I’ll work him.’

I had heard of Miss Havisham up town - everybody for

miles round, had heard of Miss Havisham up town - as an

immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dis-

mal house barricaded against robbers, and who led a life of

seclusion.

‘Well to be sure!’ said Joe, astounded. ‘I wonder how she


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