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Charles Dickens 26 page

Brandley to take her home, and was sitting apart among

some flowers, ready to go. I was with her, for I almost al-

ways accompanied them to and from such places.

‘Are you tired, Estella?’

‘Rather, Pip.’

‘You should be.’

‘Say rather, I should not be; for I have my letter to Satis

House to write, before I go to sleep.’

‘Recounting to-night’s triumph?’ said I. ‘Surely a very

poor one, Estella.’

‘What do you mean? I didn’t know there had been any.’

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‘Estella,’ said I, ‘do look at that fellow in the corner yon-

der, who is looking over here at us.’

‘Why should I look at him?’ returned Estella, with her

eyes on me instead. ‘What is there in that fellow in the cor-

ner yonder - to use your words - that I need look at?’

‘Indeed, that is the very question I want to ask you,’ said I.

‘For he has been hovering about you all night.’

‘Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures,’ replied Estella,

with a glance towards him, ‘hover about a lighted candle.

Can the candle help it?’

‘No,’ I returned; ‘but cannot the Estella help it?’

‘Well!’ said she, laughing, after a moment, ‘perhaps. Yes.

Anything you like.’

‘But, Estella, do hear me speak. It makes me wretched

that you should encourage a man so generally despised as

Drummle. You know he is despised.’

‘Well?’ said she.

‘You know he is as ungainly within, as without. A defi-

cient, illtempered, lowering, stupid fellow.’

‘Well?’ said she.

‘You know he has nothing to recommend him but mon-

ey, and a ridiculous roll of addle-headed predecessors; now,

don’t you?’

‘Well?’ said she again; and each time she said it, she

opened her lovely eyes the wider.

To overcome the difficulty of getting past that monosyl-

lable, I took it from her, and said, repeating it with emphasis,

‘Well! Then, that is why it makes me wretched.’

Now, if I could have believed that she favoured Drum-

Great Expectations

mle with any idea of making me - me - wretched, I should

have been in better heart about it; but in that habitual way

of hers, she put me so entirely out of the question, that I

could believe nothing of the kind.

‘Pip,’ said Estella, casting her glance over the room, ‘don’t

be foolish about its effect on you. It may have its effect on

others, and may be meant to have. It’s not worth discuss-

ing.’

‘Yes it is,’ said I, ‘because I cannot bear that people should

say, ‘she throws away her graces and attractions on a mere

boor, the lowest in the crowd.’

‘I can bear it,’ said Estella.

‘Oh! don’t be so proud, Estella, and so inflexible.’

‘Calls me proud and inflexible in this breath!’ said Estella,

opening her hands. ‘And in his last breath reproached me

for stooping to a boor!’

‘There is no doubt you do,’ said I, something hurried-

ly, ‘for I have seen you give him looks and smiles this very

night, such as you never give to - me.’

‘Do you want me then,’ said Estella, turning suddenly

with a fixed and serious, if not angry, look, ‘to deceive and



entrap you?’

‘Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?’

‘Yes, and many others - all of them but you. Here is Mrs.

Brandley. I’ll say no more.’

And now that I have given the one chapter to the theme

that so filled my heart, and so often made it ache and ache

again, I pass on, unhindered, to the event that had im-

pended over me longer yet; the event that had begun to be

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prepared for, before I knew that the world held Estella, and

in the days when her baby intelligence was receiving its first

distortions from Miss Havisham’s wasting hands.

In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the

bed of state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out

of the quarry, the tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place

was slowly carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was

slowly raised and fitted in the roof, the rope was rove to it

and slowly taken through the miles of hollow to the great

iron ring. All being made ready with much labour, and the

hour come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the night,

and the sharpened axe that was to sever the rope from the

great iron ring was put into his hand, and he struck with it,

and the rope parted and rushed away, and the ceiling fell.

So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that tended to the

end, had been accomplished; and in an instant the blow was

struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me.

 

Great Expectations

Chapter 19

I was three-and-twenty years of age. Not another word had

I heard to enlighten me on the subject of my expectations,

and my twenty-third birthday was a week gone. We had left

Barnard’s Inn more than a year, and lived in the Temple.

Our chambers were in Garden-court, down by the river.

Mr. Pocket and I had for some time parted company as

to our original relations, though we continued on the best

terms. Notwithstanding my inability to settle to anything -

which I hope arose out of the restless and incomplete tenure

on which I held my means - I had a taste for reading, and

read regularly so many hours a day. That matter of Herbert’s

was still progressing, and everything with me was as I have

brought it down to the close of the last preceding chapter.

Business had taken Herbert on a journey to Marseilles.

I was alone, and had a dull sense of being alone. Dispir-

ited and anxious, long hoping that to-morrow or next week

would clear my way, and long disappointed, I sadly missed

the cheerful face and ready response of my friend.

It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and

wet; and mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets. Day after

day, a vast heavy veil had been driving over London from

the East, and it drove still, as if in the East there were an

Eternity of cloud and wind. So furious had been the gusts,

that high buildings in town had had the lead stripped off

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their roofs; and in the country, trees had been torn up, and

sails of windmills carried away; and gloomy accounts had

come in from the coast, of shipwreck and death. Violent

blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and the

day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of

all.Alterations have been made in that part of the Temple

since that time, and it has not now so lonely a character as

it had then, nor is it so exposed to the river. We lived at

the top of the last house, and the wind rushing up the river

shook the house that night, like discharges of cannon, or

breakings of a sea. When the rain came with it and dashed

against the windows, I thought, raising my eyes to them as

they rocked, that I might have fancied myself in a storm-

beaten lighthouse. Occasionally, the smoke came rolling

down the chimney as though it could not bear to go out

into such a night; and when I set the doors open and looked

down the staircase, the staircase lamps were blown out; and

when I shaded my face with my hands and looked through

the black windows (opening them ever so little, was out of

the question in the teeth of such wind and rain) I saw that

the lamps in the court were blown out, and that the lamps

on the bridges and the shore were shuddering, and that the

coal fires in barges on the river were being carried away be-

fore the wind like red-hot splashes in the rain.

I read with my watch upon the table, purposing to close

my book at eleven o’clock. As I shut it, Saint Paul’s, and all

the many church-clocks in the City - some leading, some ac-

companying, some following - struck that hour. The sound

 

Great Expectations

was curiously flawed by the wind; and I was listening, and

thinking how the wind assailed and tore it, when I heard a

footstep on the stair.

What nervous folly made me start, and awfully connect

it with the footstep of my dead sister, matters not. It was past

in a moment, and I listened again, and heard the footstep

stumble in coming on. Remembering then, that the stair-

case-lights were blown out, I took up my reading-lamp and

went out to the stair-head. Whoever was below had stopped

on seeing my lamp, for all was quiet.

‘There is some one down there, is there not?’ I called out,

looking down.

‘Yes,’ said a voice from the darkness beneath.

‘What floor do you want?’

‘The top. Mr. Pip.’

‘That is my name. - There is nothing the matter?’

‘Nothing the matter,’ returned the voice. And the man

came on.

I stood with my lamp held out over the stair-rail, and he

came slowly within its light. It was a shaded lamp, to shine

upon a book, and its circle of light was very contracted; so

that he was in it for a mere instant, and then out of it. In the

instant, I had seen a face that was strange to me, looking up

with an incomprehensible air of being touched and pleased

by the sight of me.

Moving the lamp as the man moved, I made out that he

was substantially dressed, but roughly; like a voyager by sea.

That he had long iron-grey hair. That his age was about sixty.

That he was a muscular man, strong on his legs, and that he

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was browned and hardened by exposure to weather. As he

ascended the last stair or two, and the light of my lamp in-

cluded us both, I saw, with a stupid kind of amazement, that

he was holding out both his hands to me.

‘Pray what is your business?’ I asked him.

‘My business?’ he repeated, pausing. ‘Ah! Yes. I will ex-

plain my business, by your leave.’

‘Do you wish to come in?’

‘Yes,’ he replied; ‘I wish to come in, Master.’

I had asked him the question inhospitably enough, for

I resented the sort of bright and gratified recognition that

still shone in his face. I resented it, because it seemed to

imply that he expected me to respond to it. But, I took him

into the room I had just left, and, having set the lamp on the

table, asked him as civilly as I could, to explain himself.

He looked about him with the strangest air - an air of

wondering pleasure, as if he had some part in the things

he admired - and he pulled off a rough outer coat, and his

hat. Then, I saw that his head was furrowed and bald, and

that the long iron-grey hair grew only on its sides. But, I

saw nothing that in the least explained him. On the con-

trary, I saw him next moment, once more holding out both

his hands to me.

‘What do you mean?’ said I, half suspecting him to be

mad.

He stopped in his looking at me, and slowly rubbed his

right hand over his head. ‘It’s disapinting to a man,’ he said,

in a coarse broken voice, ‘arter having looked for’ard so

distant, and come so fur; but you’re not to blame for that -

 

Great Expectations

neither on us is to blame for that. I’ll speak in half a minute.

Give me half a minute, please.’

He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire, and

covered his forehead with his large brown veinous hands.

I looked at him attentively then, and recoiled a little from

him; but I did not know him.

‘There’s no one nigh,’ said he, looking over his shoulder;

‘is there?’

‘Why do you, a stranger coming into my rooms at this

time of the night, ask that question?’ said I.

‘You’re a game one,’ he returned, shaking his head at me

with a deliberate affection, at once most unintelligible and

most exasperating; ‘I’m glad you’ve grow’d up, a game one!

But don’t catch hold of me. You’d be sorry arterwards to

have done it.’

I relinquished the intention he had detected, for I knew

him! Even yet, I could not recall a single feature, but I knew

him! If the wind and the rain had driven away the inter-

vening years, had scattered all the intervening objects, had

swept us to the churchyard where we first stood face to face

on such different levels, I could not have known my con-

vict more distinctly than I knew him now as he sat in the

chair before the fire. No need to take a file from his pocket

and show it to me; no need to take the handkerchief from

his neck and twist it round his head; no need to hug him-

self with both his arms, and take a shivering turn across

the room, looking back at me for recognition. I knew him

before he gave me one of those aids, though, a moment be-

fore, I had not been conscious of remotely suspecting his

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identity.

He came back to where I stood, and again held out both

his hands. Not knowing what to do - for, in my astonish-

ment I had lost my self-possession - I reluctantly gave him

my hands. He grasped them heartily, raised them to his lips,

kissed them, and still held them.

‘You acted noble, my boy,’ said he. ‘Noble, Pip! And I

have never forgot it!’

At a change in his manner as if he were even going to em-

brace me, I laid a hand upon his breast and put him away.

‘Stay!’ said I. ‘Keep off! If you are grateful to me for what

I did when I was a little child, I hope you have shown your

gratitude by mending your way of life. If you have come

here to thank me, it was not necessary. Still, however you

have found me out, there must be something good in the

feeling that has brought you here, and I will not repulse you;

but surely you must understand that - I—‘

My attention was so attracted by the singularity of his

fixed look at me, that the words died away on my tongue.

‘You was a saying,’ he observed, when we had confront-

ed one another in silence, ‘that surely I must understand.

What, surely must I understand?’

‘That I cannot wish to renew that chance intercourse with

you of long ago, under these different circumstances. I am

glad to believe you have repented and recovered yourself. I

am glad to tell you so. I am glad that, thinking I deserve to

be thanked, you have come to thank me. But our ways are

different ways, none the less. You are wet, and you look wea-

ry. Will you drink something before you go?’

 

Great Expectations

He had replaced his neckerchief loosely, and had stood,

keenly observant of me, biting a long end of it. ‘I think,’ he

answered, still with the end at his mouth and still observant

of me, ‘that I will drink (I thank you) afore I go.’

There was a tray ready on a side-table. I brought it to the

table near the fire, and asked him what he would have? He

touched one of the bottles without looking at it or speaking,

and I made him some hot rum-and-water. I tried to keep my

hand steady while I did so, but his look at me as he leaned

back in his chair with the long draggled end of his neck-

erchief between his teeth - evidently forgotten - made my

hand very difficult to master. When at last I put the glass to

him, I saw with amazement that his eyes were full of tears.

Up to this time I had remained standing, not to disguise

that I wished him gone. But I was softened by the softened

aspect of the man, and felt a touch of reproach. ‘I hope,’ said

I, hurriedly putting something into a glass for myself, and

drawing a chair to the table, ‘that you will not think I spoke

harshly to you just now. I had no intention of doing it, and I

am sorry for it if I did. I wish you well, and happy!’

As I put my glass to my lips, he glanced with surprise at

the end of his neckerchief, dropping from his mouth when

he opened it, and stretched out his hand. I gave him mine,

and then he drank, and drew his sleeve across his eyes and

forehead.

‘How are you living?’ I asked him.

‘I’ve been a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, other trades be-

sides, away in the new world,’ said he: ‘many a thousand

mile of stormy water off from this.’

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‘I hope you have done well?’

‘I’ve done wonderfully well. There’s others went out

alonger me as has done well too, but no man has done nigh

as well as me. I’m famous for it.’

‘I am glad to hear it.’

‘I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy.’

Without stopping to try to understand those words or

the tone in which they were spoken, I turned off to a point

that had just come into my mind.

‘Have you ever seen a messenger you once sent to me,’ I

inquired, ‘since he undertook that trust?’

‘Never set eyes upon him. I warn’t likely to it.’

‘He came faithfully, and he brought me the two one-

pound notes. I was a poor boy then, as you know, and to

a poor boy they were a little fortune. But, like you, I have

done well since, and you must let me pay them back. You

can put them to some other poor boy’s use.’ I took out my

purse.

He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table and

opened it, and he watched me as I separated two one-

pound notes from its contents. They were clean and new,

and I spread them out and handed them over to him. Still

watching me, he laid them one upon the other, folded them

long-wise, gave them a twist, set fire to them at the lamp,

and dropped the ashes into the tray.

‘May I make so bold,’ he said then, with a smile that was

like a frown, and with a frown that was like a smile, ‘as ask

you how you have done well, since you and me was out on

them lone shivering marshes?’

Great Expectations

‘How?’

‘Ah!’

He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the

fire, with his heavy brown hand on the mantelshelf. He put

a foot up to the bars, to dry and warm it, and the wet boot

began to steam; but, he neither looked at it, nor at the fire,

but steadily looked at me. It was only now that I began to

tremble.

When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words

that were without sound, I forced myself to tell him (though

I could not do it distinctly), that I had been chosen to suc-

ceed to some property.

‘Might a mere warmint ask what property?’ said he.

I faltered, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Might a mere warmint ask whose property?’ said he.

I faltered again, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Could I make a guess, I wonder,’ said the Convict, ‘at

your income since you come of age! As to the first figure

now. Five?’

With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disor-

dered action, I rose out of my chair, and stood with my

hand upon the back of it, looking wildly at him.

‘Concerning a guardian,’ he went on. ‘There ought to

have been some guardian, or such-like, whiles you was a

minor. Some lawyer, maybe. As to the first letter of that law-

yer’s name now. Would it be J?’

All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its

disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all

kinds, rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down

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by them and had to struggle for every breath I drew.

‘Put it,’ he resumed, ‘as the employer of that lawyer whose

name begun with a J, and might be Jaggers - put it as he had

come over sea to Portsmouth, and had landed there, and

had wanted to come on to you. ‘However, you have found

me out,’ you says just now. Well! However, did I find you

out? Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a person in London,

for particulars of your address. That person’s name? Why,

Wemmick.’

I could not have spoken one word, though it had been

to save my life. I stood, with a hand on the chair-back and

a hand on my breast, where I seemed to be suffocating - I

stood so, looking wildly at him, until I grasped at the chair,

when the room began to surge and turn. He caught me, drew

me to the sofa, put me up against the cushions, and bent on

one knee before me: bringing the face that I now well re-

membered, and that I shuddered at, very near to mine.

‘Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s

me wot has done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned

a guinea, that guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards,

sure as ever I spec’lated and got rich, you should get rich.

I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard,

that you should be above work. What odds, dear boy? Do I

tell it, fur you to feel a obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you

to know as that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life

in, got his head so high that he could make a gentleman -

and, Pip, you’re him!’

The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I

had of him, the repugnance with which I shrank from him,

 

Great Expectations

could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible

beast.

‘Look’ee here, Pip. I’m your second father. You’re my son

- more to me nor any son. I’ve put away money, only for you

to spend. When I was a hired-out shepherd in a solitary

hut, not seeing no faces but faces of sheep till I half forgot

wot men’s and women’s faces wos like, I see yourn. I drops

my knife many a time in that hut when I was a-eating my

dinner or my supper, and I says, ‘Here’s the boy again, a-

looking at me whiles I eats and drinks!’ I see you there a

many times, as plain as ever I see you on them misty marsh-

es. ‘Lord strike me dead!’ I says each time - and I goes out in

the air to say it under the open heavens - ‘but wot, if I gets

liberty and money, I’ll make that boy a gentleman!’ And

I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! Look at these here

lodgings o’yourn, fit for a lord! A lord? Ah! You shall show

money with lords for wagers, and beat ‘em!’

In his heat and triumph, and in his knowledge that I had

been nearly fainting, he did not remark on my reception of

all this. It was the one grain of relief I had.

‘Look’ee here!’ he went on, taking my watch out of my

pocket, and turning towards him a ring on my finger, while

I recoiled from his touch as if he had been a snake, ‘a gold

‘un and a beauty: that’s a gentleman’s, I hope! A diamond all

set round with rubies; that’s a gentleman’s, I hope! Look at

your linen; fine and beautiful! Look at your clothes; better

ain’t to be got! And your books too,’ turning his eyes round

the room, ‘mounting up, on their shelves, by hundreds! And

you read ‘em; don’t you? I see you’d been a reading of ‘em

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when I come in. Ha, ha, ha! You shall read ‘em to me, dear

boy! And if they’re in foreign languages wot I don’t under-

stand, I shall be just as proud as if I did.’

Again he took both my hands and put them to his lips,

while my blood ran cold within me.

‘Don’t you mind talking, Pip,’ said he, after again draw-

ing his sleeve over his eyes and forehead, as the click came

in his throat which I well remembered - and he was all the

more horrible to me that he was so much in earnest; ‘you

can’t do better nor keep quiet, dear boy. You ain’t looked

slowly forward to this as I have; you wosn’t prepared for

this, as I wos. But didn’t you never think it might be me?’

‘O no, no, no,’ I returned, ‘Never, never!’

‘Well, you see it wos me, and single-handed. Never a soul

in it but my own self and Mr. Jaggers.’

‘Was there no one else?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said he, with a glance of surprise: ‘who else should

there be? And, dear boy, how good looking you have growed!

There’s bright eyes somewheres - eh? Isn’t there bright eyes

somewheres, wot you love the thoughts on?’

O Estella, Estella!

‘They shall be yourn, dear boy, if money can buy ‘em. Not

that a gentleman like you, so well set up as you, can’t win

‘em off of his own game; but money shall back you! Let me

finish wot I was a- telling you, dear boy. From that there hut

and that there hiring-out, I got money left me by my master

(which died, and had been the same as me), and got my lib-

erty and went for myself. In every single thing I went for, I

went for you. ‘Lord strike a blight upon it,’ I says, wotever it

 

Great Expectations

was I went for, ‘if it ain’t for him!’ It all prospered wonder-

ful. As I giv’ you to understand just now, I’m famous for it.

It was the money left me, and the gains of the first few year

wot I sent home to Mr. Jaggers - all for you - when he first

come arter you, agreeable to my letter.’

O, that he had never come! That he had left me at the

forge - far from contented, yet, by comparison happy!

‘And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me, look’ee

here, to know in secret that I was making a gentleman. The

blood horses of them colonists might fling up the dust over

me as I was walking; what do I say? I says to myself, ‘I’m

making a better gentleman nor ever you’ll be!’ When one of

‘em says to another, ‘He was a convict, a few year ago, and is

a ignorant common fellow now, for all he’s lucky,’ what do I

say? I says to myself, ‘If I ain’t a gentleman, nor yet ain’t got

no learning, I’m the owner of such. All on you owns stock

and land; which on you owns a brought-up London gentle-

man?’ This way I kep myself a-going. And this way I held

steady afore my mind that I would for certain come one

day and see my boy, and make myself known to him, on his

own ground.’

He laid his hand on my shoulder. I shuddered at the

thought that for anything I knew, his hand might be stained

with blood.

‘It warn’t easy, Pip, for me to leave them parts, nor yet it

warn’t safe. But I held to it, and the harder it was, the stron-

ger I held, for I was determined, and my mind firm made up.

At last I done it. Dear boy, I done it!’

I tried to collect my thoughts, but I was stunned.

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Throughout, I had seemed to myself to attend more to the

wind and the rain than to him; even now, I could not sep-

arate his voice from those voices, though those were loud

and his was silent.

‘Where will you put me?’ he asked, presently. ‘I must be

put somewheres, dear boy.’

‘To sleep?’ said I.

‘Yes. And to sleep long and sound,’ he answered; ‘for I’ve

been sea-tossed and sea-washed, months and months.’

‘My friend and companion,’ said I, rising from the sofa,

‘is absent; you must have his room.’

‘He won’t come back to-morrow; will he?’

‘No,’ said I, answering almost mechanically, in spite of

my utmost efforts; ‘not to-morrow.’

‘Because, look’ee here, dear boy,’ he said, dropping his

voice, and laying a long finger on my breast in an impressive

manner, ‘caution is necessary.’

‘How do you mean? Caution?’

‘By G - , it’s Death!’

‘What’s death?’

‘I was sent for life. It’s death to come back. There’s been

overmuch coming back of late years, and I should of a cer-

tainty be hanged if took.’

Nothing was needed but this; the wretched man, after

loading wretched me with his gold and silver chains for

years, had risked his life to come to me, and I held it there in

my keeping! If I had loved him instead of abhorring him; if

I had been attracted to him by the strongest admiration and


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