Charles Dickens 10 page

‘Now, master!’

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‘Are you all right now?’ demanded Joe.

‘Ah! I am all right,’ said gruff Old Orlick.

‘Then, as in general you stick to your work as well as most

men,’ said Joe, ‘let it be a half-holiday for all.’

My sister had been standing silent in the yard, within

hearing - she was a most unscrupulous spy and listener -

and she instantly looked in at one of the windows.

‘Like you, you fool!’ said she to Joe, ‘giving holidays to

great idle hulkers like that. You are a rich man, upon my life,

to waste wages in that way. I wish I was his master!’

‘You’d be everybody’s master, if you durst,’ retorted

Orlick, with an ill-favoured grin.

(“Let her alone,’ said Joe.)

‘I’d be a match for all noodles and all rogues,’ returned

my sister, beginning to work herself into a mighty rage.

‘And I couldn’t be a match for the noodles, without being a

match for your master, who’s the dunder-headed king of the

noodles. And I couldn’t be a match for the rogues, without

being a match for you, who are the blackest-looking and the

worst rogue between this and France. Now!’

‘You’re a foul shrew, Mother Gargery, growled the jour-

neyman. ‘If that makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be

a good’un.’

(“Let her alone, will you?’ said Joe.)

‘What did you say?’ cried my sister, beginning to scream.

‘What did you say? What did that fellow Orlick say to me,

Pip? What did he call me, with my husband standing by? O!

O! O!’ Each of these exclamations was a shriek; and I must

remark of my sister, what is equally true of all the violent

Great Expectations

women I have ever seen, that passion was no excuse for her,

because it is undeniable that instead of lapsing into passion,

she consciously and deliberately took extraordinary pains

to force herself into it, and became blindly furious by regu-

lar stages; ‘what was the name he gave me before the base

man who swore to defend me? O! Hold me! O!’

‘Ah-h-h!’ growled the journeyman, between his teeth,

‘I’d hold you, if you was my wife. I’d hold you under the

pump, and choke it out of you.’

(“I tell you, let her alone,’ said Joe.)

‘Oh! To hear him!’ cried my sister, with a clap of her

hands and a scream together - which was her next stage.

‘To hear the names he’s giving me! That Orlick! In my own

house! Me, a married woman! With my husband standing

by! O! O!’ Here my sister, after a fit of clappings and scream-

ings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon her knees,

and threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down - which

were the last stages on her road to frenzy. Being by this time

a perfect Fury and a complete success, she made a dash at

the door, which I had fortunately locked.

What could the wretched Joe do now, after his disre-

garded parenthetical interruptions, but stand up to his

journeyman, and ask him what he meant by interfering be-

twixt himself and Mrs. Joe; and further whether he was man

enough to come on? Old Orlick felt that the situation admit-

ted of nothing less than coming on, and was on his defence

straightway; so, without so much as pulling off their singed

and burnt aprons, they went at one another, like two giants.

But, if any man in that neighbourhood could stand up long

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against Joe, I never saw the man. Orlick, as if he had been of

no more account than the pale young gentleman, was very

soon among the coal-dust, and in no hurry to come out of it.

Then, Joe unlocked the door and picked up my sister, who

had dropped insensible at the window (but who had seen

the fight first, I think), and who was carried into the house

and laid down, and who was recommended to revive, and

would do nothing but struggle and clench her hands in Joe’s

hair. Then, came that singular calm and silence which suc-

ceed all uproars; and then, with the vague sensation which

I have always connected with such a lull - namely, that it

was Sunday, and somebody was dead - I went up-stairs to

dress myself.

When I came down again, I found Joe and Orlick sweep-

ing up, without any other traces of discomposure than a

slit in one of Orlick’s nostrils, which was neither expressive

nor ornamental. A pot of beer had appeared from the Jolly

Bargemen, and they were sharing it by turns in a peaceable

manner. The lull had a sedative and philosophical influence

on Joe, who followed me out into the road to say, as a part-

ing observation that might do me good, ‘On the Rampage,

Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip - such is Life!’

With what absurd emotions (for, we think the feelings

that are very serious in a man quite comical in a boy) I

found myself again going to Miss Havisham’s, matters little

here. Nor, how I passed and repassed the gate many times

before I could make up my mind to ring. Nor, how I de-

bated whether I should go away without ringing; nor, how

I should undoubtedly have gone, if my time had been my

Great Expectations

own, to come back.

Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No Estella.

‘How, then? You here again?’ said Miss Pocket. ‘What do

you want?’

When I said that I only came to see how Miss Havisham

was, Sarah evidently deliberated whether or no she should

send me about my business. But, unwilling to hazard the re-

sponsibility, she let me in, and presently brought the sharp

message that I was to ‘come up.’

Everything was unchanged, and Miss Havisham was

alone.

‘Well?’ said she, fixing her eyes upon me. ‘I hope you

want nothing? You’ll get nothing.’

‘No, indeed, Miss Havisham. I only wanted you to know

that I am doing very well in my apprenticeship, and am al-

ways much obliged to you.’

‘There, there!’ with the old restless fingers. ‘Come now

and then; come on your birthday. - Ay!’ she cried suddenly,

turning herself and her chair towards me, ‘You are looking

round for Estella? Hey?’

I had been looking round - in fact, for Estella - and I

stammered that I hoped she was well.

‘Abroad,’ said Miss Havisham; ‘educating for a lady; far

out of reach; prettier than ever; admired by all who see her.

Do you feel that you have lost her?’

There was such a malignant enjoyment in her utterance

of the last words, and she broke into such a disagreeable

laugh, that I was at a loss what to say. She spared me the

trouble of considering, by dismissing me. When the gate

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was closed upon me by Sarah of the walnut-shell counte-

nance, I felt more than ever dissatisfied with my home and

with my trade and with everything; and that was all I took

by that motion.

As I was loitering along the High-street, looking in

disconsolately at the shop windows, and thinking what I

would buy if I were a gentleman, who should come out of

the bookshop but Mr. Wopsle. Mr Wopsle had in his hand

the affecting tragedy of George Barnwell, in which he had

that moment invested sixpence, with the view of heaping

every word of it on the head of Pumblechook, with whom

he was going to drink tea. No sooner did he see me, than

he appeared to consider that a special Providence had put a

‘prentice in his way to be read at; and he laid hold of me, and

insisted on my accompanying him to the Pumblechookian

parlour. As I knew it would be miserable at home, and as

the nights were dark and the way was dreary, and almost

any companionship on the road was better than none, I

made no great resistance; consequently, we turned into

Pumblechook’s just as the street and the shops were light-

ing up.

As I never assisted at any other representation of George

Barnwell, I don’t know how long it may usually take; but

I know very well that it took until half-past nine o’ clock

that night, and that when Mr. Wopsle got into Newgate, I

thought he never would go to the scaffold, he became so

much slower than at any former period of his disgraceful

career. I thought it a little too much that he should com-

plain of being cut short in his flower after all, as if he had not

Great Expectations

been running to seed, leaf after leaf, ever since his course

began. This, however, was a mere question of length and

wearisomeness. What stung me, was the identification of

the whole affair with my unoffending self. When Barnwell

began to go wrong, I declare that I felt positively apolo-

getic, Pumblechook’s indignant stare so taxed me with it.

Wopsle, too, took pains to present me in the worst light. At

once ferocious and maudlin, I was made to murder my un-

cle with no extenuating circumstances whatever; Millwood

put me down in argument, on every occasion; it became

sheer monomania in my master’s daughter to care a button

for me; and all I can say for my gasping and procrastinat-

ing conduct on the fatal morning, is, that it was worthy of

the general feebleness of my character. Even after I was hap-

pily hanged and Wopsle had closed the book, Pumblechook

sat staring at me, and shaking his head, and saying, ‘Take

warning, boy, take warning!’ as if it were a well-known fact

that I contemplated murdering a near relation, provided I

could only induce one to have the weakness to become my

benefactor.

It was a very dark night when it was all over, and when

I set out with Mr. Wopsle on the walk home. Beyond town,

we found a heavy mist out, and it fell wet and thick. The

turnpike lamp was a blur, quite out of the lamp’s usual place

apparently, and its rays looked solid substance on the fog.

We were noticing this, and saying how that the mist rose

with a change of wind from a certain quarter of our marsh-

es, when we came upon a man, slouching under the lee of

the turnpike house.

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‘Halloa!’ we said, stopping. ‘Orlick, there?’

‘Ah!’ he answered, slouching out. ‘I was standing by, a

minute, on the chance of company.’

‘You are late,’ I remarked.

Orlick not unnaturally answered, ‘Well? And you’re

late.’

‘We have been,’ said Mr. Wopsle, exalted with his late

performance, ‘we have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an in-

tellectual evening.’

Old Orlick growled, as if he had nothing to say about that,

and we all went on together. I asked him presently whether

he had been spending his half-holiday up and down town?

‘Yes,’ said he, ‘all of it. I come in behind yourself. I didn’t

see you, but I must have been pretty close behind you. By-

the-bye, the guns is going again.’

‘At the Hulks?’ said I.

‘Ay! There’s some of the birds flown from the cages. The

guns have been going since dark, about. You’ll hear one

presently.’

In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when

the wellremembered boom came towards us, deadened by

the mist, and heavily rolled away along the low grounds by

the river, as if it were pursuing and threatening the fugi-

tives.

‘A good night for cutting off in,’ said Orlick. ‘We’d be puz-

zled how to bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night.’

The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought

about it in silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of

the evening’s tragedy, fell to meditating aloud in his gar-

Great Expectations

den at Camberwell. Orlick, with his hands in his pockets,

slouched heavily at my side. It was very dark, very wet, very

muddy, and so we splashed along. Now and then, the sound

of the signal cannon broke upon us again, and again rolled

sulkily along the course of the river. I kept myself to myself

and my thoughts. Mr. Wopsle died amiably at Camberwell,

and exceedingly game on Bosworth Field, and in the great-

est agonies at Glastonbury. Orlick sometimes growled, ‘Beat

it out, beat it out - Old Clem! With a clink for the stout -

Old Clem!’ I thought he had been drinking, but he was not

drunk.

Thus, we came to the village. The way by which we ap-

proached it, took us past the Three Jolly Bargemen, which

we were surprised to find - it being eleven o’clock - in a state

of commotion, with the door wide open, and unwonted

lights that had been hastily caught up and put down, scat-

tered about. Mr. Wopsle dropped in to ask what was the

matter (surmising that a convict had been taken), but came

running out in a great hurry.

‘There’s something wrong,’ said he, without stopping, ‘up

at your place, Pip. Run all!’

‘What is it?’ I asked, keeping up with him. So did Orlick,

at my side.

‘I can’t quite understand. The house seems to have been

violently entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by

convicts. Somebody has been attacked and hurt.’

We were running too fast to admit of more being said,

and we made no stop until we got into our kitchen. It was

full of people; the whole village was there, or in the yard;

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and there was a surgeon, and there was Joe, and there was a

group of women, all on the floor in the midst of the kitchen.

The unemployed bystanders drew back when they saw me,

and so I became aware of my sister - lying without sense or

movement on the bare boards where she had been knocked

down by a tremendous blow on the back of the head, dealt

by some unknown hand when her face was turned towards

the fire - destined never to be on the Rampage again, while

she was the wife of Joe.

Great Expectations

Chapter 16

With my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first dis-

posed to believe that I must have had some hand in

the attack upon my sister, or at all events that as her near

relation, popularly known to be under obligations to her, I

was a more legitimate object of suspicion than any one else.

But when, in the clearer light of next morning, I began to

reconsider the matter and to hear it discussed around me

on all sides, I took another view of the case, which was more

reasonable.

Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his

pipe, from a quarter after eight o’clock to a quarter before

ten. While he was there, my sister had been seen standing

at the kitchen door, and had exchanged Good Night with a

farm-labourer going home. The man could not be more par-

ticular as to the time at which he saw her (he got into dense

confusion when he tried to be), than that it must have been

before nine. When Joe went home at five minutes before ten,

he found her struck down on the floor, and promptly called

in assistance. The fire had not then burnt unusually low, nor

was the snuff of the candle very long; the candle, however,

had been blown out.

Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house.

Neither, beyond the blowing out of the candle - which stood

on a table between the door and my sister, and was behind

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her when she stood facing the fire and was struck - was

there any disarrangement of the kitchen, excepting such

as she herself had made, in falling and bleeding. But, there

was one remarkable piece of evidence on the spot. She had

been struck with something blunt and heavy, on the head

and spine; after the blows were dealt, something heavy had

been thrown down at her with considerable violence, as she

lay on her face. And on the ground beside her, when Joe

picked her up, was a convict’s leg-iron which had been filed

asunder.

Now, Joe, examining this iron with a smith’s eye, de-

clared it to have been filed asunder some time ago. The hue

and cry going off to the Hulks, and people coming thence

to examine the iron, Joe’s opinion was corroborated. They

did not undertake to say when it had left the prison-ships to

which it undoubtedly had once belonged; but they claimed

to know for certain that that particular manacle had not

been worn by either of the two convicts who had escaped

last night. Further, one of those two was already re-taken,

and had not freed himself of his iron.

Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own

here. I believed the iron to be my convict’s iron - the iron

I had seen and heard him filing at, on the marshes - but

my mind did not accuse him of having put it to its latest

use. For, I believed one of two other persons to have become

possessed of it, and to have turned it to this cruel account.

Either Orlick, or the strange man who had shown me the

file.Now, as to Orlick; he had gone to town exactly as he told

Great Expectations

us when we picked him up at the turnpike, he had been seen

about town all the evening, he had been in divers compa-

nies in several public-houses, and he had come back with

myself and Mr. Wopsle. There was nothing against him,

save the quarrel; and my sister had quarrelled with him,

and with everybody else about her, ten thousand times. As

to the strange man; if he had come back for his two bank-

notes there could have been no dispute about them, because

my sister was fully prepared to restore them. Besides, there

had been no altercation; the assailant had come in so silent-

ly and suddenly, that she had been felled before she could

look round.

It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon,

however undesignedly, but I could hardly think otherwise.

I suffered unspeakable trouble while I considered and re-

considered whether I should at last dissolve that spell of my

childhood, and tell Joe all the story. For months afterwards,

I every day settled the question finally in the negative, and

reopened and reargued it next morning. The contention

came, after all, to this; - the secret was such an old one now,

had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that I

could not tear it away. In addition to the dread that, hav-

ing led up to so much mischief, it would be now more likely

than ever to alienate Joe from me if he believed it, I had a

further restraining dread that he would not believe it, but

would assort it with the fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets as a

monstrous invention. However, I temporized with myself,

of course - for, was I not wavering between right and wrong,

when the thing is always done? - and resolved to make a full

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disclosure if I should see any such new occasion as a new

chance of helping in the discovery of the assailant.

The Constables, and the Bow Street men from London

- for, this happened in the days of the extinct red-waistcoat-

ed police - were about the house for a week or two, and did

pretty much what I have heard and read of like authorities

doing in other such cases. They took up several obviously

wrong people, and they ran their heads very hard against

wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit the circumstanc-

es to the ideas, instead of trying to extract ideas from the

circumstances. Also, they stood about the door of the Jol-

ly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks that filled

the whole neighbourhood with admiration; and they had a

mysterious manner of taking their drink, that was almost

as good as taking the culprit. But not quite, for they never

did it.

Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed,

my sister lay very ill in bed. Her sight was disturbed, so that

she saw objects multiplied, and grasped at visionary tea-

cups and wine-glasses instead of the realities; her hearing

was greatly impaired; her memory also; and her speech was

unintelligible. When, at last, she came round so far as to be

helped down-stairs, it was still necessary to keep my slate

always by her, that she might indicate in writing what she

could not indicate in speech. As she was (very bad hand-

writing apart) a more than indifferent speller, and as Joe

was a more than indifferent reader, extraordinary compli-

cations arose between them, which I was always called in

to solve. The administration of mutton instead of medicine,

Great Expectations

the substitution of Tea for Joe, and the baker for bacon, were

among the mildest of my own mistakes.

However, her temper was greatly improved, and she

was patient. A tremulous uncertainty of the action of all

her limbs soon became a part of her regular state, and af-

terwards, at intervals of two or three months, she would

often put her hands to her head, and would then remain for

about a week at a time in some gloomy aberration of mind.

We were at a loss to find a suitable attendant for her, un-

til a circumstance happened conveniently to relieve us. Mr.

Wopsle’s great-aunt conquered a confirmed habit of living

into which she had fallen, and Biddy became a part of our

establishment.

It may have been about a month after my sister’s reap-

pearance in the kitchen, when Biddy came to us with a

small speckled box containing the whole of her worldly ef-

fects, and became a blessing to the household. Above all, she

was a blessing to Joe, for the dear old fellow was sadly cut up

by the constant contemplation of the wreck of his wife, and

had been accustomed, while attending on her of an evening,

to turn to me every now and then and say, with his blue eyes

moistened, ‘Such a fine figure of a woman as she once were,

Pip!’ Biddy instantly taking the cleverest charge of her as

though she had studied her from infancy, Joe became able

in some sort to appreciate the greater quiet of his life, and to

get down to the Jolly Bargemen now and then for a change

that did him good. It was characteristic of the police people

that they had all more or less suspected poor Joe (though

he never knew it), and that they had to a man concurred

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in regarding him as one of the deepest spirits they had ever

encountered.

Biddy’s first triumph in her new office, was to solve a dif-

ficulty that had completely vanquished me. I had tried hard

at it, but had made nothing of it. Thus it was:

Again and again and again, my sister had traced upon

the slate, a character that looked like a curious T, and then

with the utmost eagerness had called our attention to it as

something she particularly wanted. I had in vain tried ev-

erything producible that began with a T, from tar to toast

and tub. At length it had come into my head that the sign

looked like a hammer, and on my lustily calling that word

in my sister’s ear, she had begun to hammer on the table

and had expressed a qualified assent. Thereupon, I had

brought in all our hammers, one after another, but with-

out avail. Then I bethought me of a crutch, the shape being

much the same, and I borrowed one in the village, and dis-

played it to my sister with considerable confidence. But she

shook her head to that extent when she was shown it, that

we were terrified lest in her weak and shattered state she

should dislocate her neck.

When my sister found that Biddy was very quick to un-

derstand her, this mysterious sign reappeared on the slate.

Biddy looked thoughtfully at it, heard my explanation,

looked thoughtfully at my sister, looked thoughtfully at Joe

(who was always represented on the slate by his initial let-

ter), and ran into the forge, followed by Joe and me.

‘Why, of course!’ cried Biddy, with an exultant face.

‘Don’t you see? It’s him!’

Great Expectations

Orlick, without a doubt! She had lost his name, and could

only signify him by his hammer. We told him why we want-

ed him to come into the kitchen, and he slowly laid down

his hammer, wiped his brow with his arm, took another

wipe at it with his apron, and came slouching out, with a

curious loose vagabond bend in the knees that strongly dis-

tinguished him.

I confess that I expected to see my sister denounce him,

and that I was disappointed by the different result. She

manifested the greatest anxiety to be on good terms with

him, was evidently much pleased by his being at length

produced, and motioned that she would have him given

something to drink. She watched his countenance as if she

were particularly wishful to be assured that he took kindly

to his reception, she showed every possible desire to concili-

ate him, and there was an air of humble propitiation in all

she did, such as I have seen pervade the bearing of a child

towards a hard master. After that day, a day rarely passed

without her drawing the hammer on her slate, and without

Orlick’s slouching in and standing doggedly before her, as if

he knew no more than I did what to make of it.

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Chapter 17

I now fell into a regular routine of apprenticeship life,

which was varied, beyond the limits of the village and the

marshes, by no more remarkable circumstance than the ar-

rival of my birthday and my paying another visit to Miss

Havisham. I found Miss Sarah Pocket still on duty at the

gate, I found Miss Havisham just as I had left her, and she

spoke of Estella in the very same way, if not in the very same

words. The interview lasted but a few minutes, and she gave

me a guinea when I was going, and told me to come again

on my next birthday. I may mention at once that this be-

came an annual custom. I tried to decline taking the guinea

on the first occasion, but with no better effect than causing

her to ask me very angrily, if I expected more? Then, and

after that, I took it.

So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light

in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by

the dressing-table glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the

clocks had stopped Time in that mysterious place, and,

while I and everything else outside it grew older, it stood

still. Daylight never entered the house as to my thoughts

and remembrances of it, any more than as to the actual fact.

It bewildered me, and under its influence I continued at

heart to hate my trade and to be ashamed of home.

Imperceptibly I became conscious of a change in Bid-

Great Expectations

dy, however. Her shoes came up at the heel, her hair grew

bright and neat, her hands were always clean. She was not

beautiful - she was common, and could not be like Estella

- but she was pleasant and wholesome and sweet-tempered.

She had not been with us more than a year (I remember

her being newly out of mourning at the time it struck me),

when I observed to myself one evening that she had curi-

ously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that were very

pretty and very good.

It came of my lifting up my own eyes from a task I was

poring at - writing some passages from a book, to improve

myself in two ways at once by a sort of stratagem - and see-

ing Biddy observant of what I was about. I laid down my

pen, and Biddy stopped in her needlework without laying

it down.

‘Biddy,’ said I, ‘how do you manage it? Either I am very

stupid, or you are very clever.’

‘What is it that I manage? I don’t know,’ returned Biddy,

smiling.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 419