Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (1860-1861) - Chapter 15
Chapter XV
As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's
room, my education under that preposterous female terminated. Not, however,
until Biddy had imparted to me everything she knew, from the little catalogue of
prices, to a comic song she had once bought for a half-penny. Although the only
coherent part of the latter piece of literature were the opening lines,
When I went to Lunnon town sirs, Too rul loo rul Too rul
loo rul Wasn't I done very brown sirs? Too rul loo rul Too rul loo rul
--still, in my desire to be wiser, I got this
composition by heart with the utmost gravity; nor do I recollect that I
questioned its merit, except that I thought (as I still do) the amount of Too
rul somewhat in excess of the poetry. In my hunger for information, I made
proposals to Mr. Wopsle to bestow some intellectual crumbs upon me, with which
he kindly complied. As it turned out, however, that he only wanted me for a
dramatic lay-figure, to be contradicted and embraced and wept over and bullied
and clutched and stabbed and knocked about in a variety of ways, I soon declined
that course of instruction; though not until Mr. Wopsle in his poetic fury had
severely mauled me.
Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This
statement sounds so well, that I cannot in my conscience let it pass
unexplained. I wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he might be
worthier of my society and less open to Estella's reproach.
The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of
study, and a broken slate and a short piece of slate-pencil were our educational
implements: to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I never knew Joe to
remember anything from one Sunday to another, or to acquire, under my tuition,
any piece of information whatever. Yet he would smoke his pipe at the Battery
with a far more sagacious air than anywhere else,--even with a learned air,--as
if he considered himself to be advancing immensely. Dear fellow, I hope he did.
It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on
the river passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low,
looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing on at the
bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels standing out to sea with
their white sails spread, I somehow thought of Miss Havisham and Estella; and
whenever the light struck aslant, afar off, upon a cloud or sail or green
hillside or water-line, it was just the same.--Miss Havisham and Estella and the
strange house and the strange life appeared to have something to do with
everything that was picturesque.
One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so
plumed himself on being "most awful dull," that I had given him up for
the day, I lay on the earthwork for some time with my chin on my hand, descrying
traces of Miss Havisham and Estella all over the prospect, in the sky and in the
water, until at last I resolved to mention a thought concerning them that had
been much in my head.
"Joe," said I; "don't you think I ought
to make Miss Havisham a visit?"
"Well, Pip," returned Joe, slowly considering.
"What for?"
"What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?"
"There is some wisits p'r'aps," said Joe,
"as for ever remains open to the question, Pip. But in regard to wisiting
Miss Havisham. She might think you wanted something,--expected something of
her."
"Don't you think I might say that I did not,
Joe?"
"You might, old chap," said Joe. "And she
might credit it. Similarly she mightn't."
Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and
he pulled hard at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it by repetition.
"You see, Pip," Joe pursued, as soon as he was
past that danger, "Miss Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss
Havisham done the handsome thing by you, she called me back to say to me as that
were all."
"Yes, Joe. I heard her."
"ALL," Joe repeated, very emphatically.
"Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her."
"Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her
meaning were,--Make a end on it!--As you was!--Me to the North, and you to the
South! --Keep in sunders!"
I had thought of that too, and it was very far from
comforting to me to find that he had thought of it; for it seemed to render it
more probable.
"But, Joe."
"Yes, old chap."
"Here am I, getting on in the first year of my
time, and, since the day of my being bound, I have never thanked Miss Havisham,
or asked after her, or shown that I remember her."
"That's true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her
out a set of shoes all four round,--and which I meantersay as even a set of
shoes all four round might not be acceptable as a present, in a total wacancy of
hoofs--"
"I don't mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I
don't mean a present." But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head
and must harp upon it. "Or even," said he, "if you was helped to
knocking her up a new chain for the front door,--or say a gross or two of
shark-headed screws for general use,--or some light fancy article, such as a
toasting-fork when she took her muffins,--or a gridiron when she took a sprat or
such like--"
"I don't mean any present at all, Joe," I
interposed.
"Well," said Joe, still harping on it as
though I had particularly pressed it, "if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn't.
No, I would not. For what's a door-chain when she's got one always up? And
shark-headers is open to misrepresentations. And if it was a toasting-fork,
you'd go into brass and do yourself no credit. And the oncommonest workman can't
show himself oncommon in a gridiron,-- for a gridiron IS a gridiron," said
Joe, steadfastly impressing it upon me, as if he were endeavouring to rouse me
from a fixed delusion, "and you may haim at what you like, but a gridiron
it will come out, either by your leave or again your leave, and you can't help
yourself--"
"My dear Joe," I cried, in desperation, taking
hold of his coat, "don't go on in that way. I never thought of making Miss
Havisham any present."
"No, Pip," Joe assented, as if he had been
contending for that, all along; "and what I say to you is, you are right,
Pip."
"Yes, Joe; but what I wanted to say, was, that as
we are rather slack just now, if you would give me a half-holiday to-morrow, I
think I would go up-town and make a call on Miss Est--Havisham."
"Which her name," said Joe, gravely,
"ain't Estavisham, Pip, unless she have been rechris'ened."
"I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine. What
do you think of it, Joe?"
In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well of it, he
thought well of it. But, he was particular in stipulating that if I were not
received with cordiality, or if I were not encouraged to repeat my visit as a
visit which had no ulterior object but was simply one of gratitude for a favor
received, then this experimental trip should have no successor. By these
conditions I promised to abide.
Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name
was Orlick. He pretended that his Christian name was Dolge,--a clear
Impossibility,--but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition that I believe
him to have been the prey of no delusion in this particular, but wilfully to
have imposed that name upon the village as an affront to its understanding. He
was a broadshouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of great strength, never in a
hurry, and always slouching. He never even seemed to come to his work on
purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere accident; and when he went to the
Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or went away at night, he would slouch out,
like Cain or the Wandering Jew, as if he had no idea where he was going and no
intention of ever coming back. He lodged at a sluice-keeper's out on the
marshes, and on working-days would come slouching from his hermitage, with his
hands in his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his neck and
dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on the sluice-gates, or
stood against ricks and barns. He always slouched, locomotively, with his eyes
on the ground; and, when accosted or otherwise required to raise them, he looked
up in a half-resentful, half-puzzled way, as though the only thought he ever had
was, that it was rather an odd and injurious fact that he should never be
thinking.
This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I was
very small and timid, he gave me to understand that the Devil lived in a black
corner of the forge, and that he knew the fiend very well: also that it was
necessary to make up the fire, once in seven years, with a live boy, and that I
might consider myself fuel. When I became Joe's 'prentice, Orlick was perhaps
confirmed in some suspicion that I should displace him; howbeit, he liked me
still less. Not that he ever said anything, or did anything, openly importing
hostility; I only noticed that he always beat his sparks in my direction, and
that whenever I sang Old Clem, he came in out of time.
Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next day, when I
reminded Joe of my half-holiday. He said nothing at the moment, for he and Joe
had just got a piece of hot iron between them, and I was at the bellows; but by
and by he said, leaning on his hammer,--
"Now, master! Sure you're not a going to favor only
one of us. If Young Pip has a half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick." I
suppose he was about five-and-twenty, but he usually spoke of himself as an
ancient person.
"Why, what'll you do with a half-holiday, if you
get it?" said Joe.
"What'll I do with it! What'll he do with it? I'll
do as much with it as him," said Orlick.
"As to Pip, he's going up town," said Joe.
"Well then, as to Old Orlick, he's a going up
town," retorted that worthy. "Two can go up town. Tain't only one wot
can go up town.
"Don't lose your temper," said Joe.
"Shall if I like," growled Orlick. "Some
and their up-towning! Now, master! Come. No favoring in this shop. Be a
man!"
The master refusing to entertain the subject until the
journeyman was in a better temper, Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew out a
red-hot bar, made at me with it as if he were going to run it through my body,
whisked it round my head, laid it on the anvil, hammered it out,--as if it were
I, I thought, and the sparks were my spirting blood,--and finally said, when he
had hammered himself hot and the iron cold, and he again leaned on his hammer,--
"Now, master!"
"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-favored 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
journeyman. "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? Oh! oh! oh!" Each of
these exclamations was a shriek; and I must remark of my sister, what is equally
true of all the violent 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 regular stages; "what was the name he gave me
before the base man who swore to defend me? Oh! Hold me! Oh!"
"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! Oh! Oh!" Here my sister, after a fit of
clappings and screamings, 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
disregarded parenthetical interruptions, but stand up to his journeyman, and ask
him what he meant by interfering betwixt himself and Mrs. Joe; and further
whether he was man enough to come on? Old Orlick felt that the situation
admitted 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 neighborhood could stand
uplong 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 succeed 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 sweeping
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 parting 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 debated
whether I should go away without ringing; nor, how I should undoubtedly have
gone, if my time had been my 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 responsibility, 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 always 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 was closed upon me by Sarah of the walnut-shell countenance, 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 parlor. 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 lighting 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 complain of being cut short in his flower after
all, as if he had not 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
apologetic, 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 uncle 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
procrastinating conduct on the fatal morning, is, that it was worthy of the
general feebleness of my character. Even after I was happily 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 marshes, when we came upon a man, slouching under
the lee of the turnpike house.
"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
intellectual 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 by, 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 well-remembered 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 fugitives.
"A good night for cutting off in," said
Orlick. "We'd be puzzled 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 garden 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 greatest 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
approached 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 scattered
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; and there was a surgeon, and there was
Joe, and there were 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.