The Story of Pip as Told by Himself
I. HOW PIP HELPED THE CONVICT
My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer than Pip. So I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister—Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones.
Ours was the marsh country down by the river, within twenty miles of the sea. My most vivid memory of these early days was of a raw evening about dusk. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak spot where I chanced to be wandering all alone was the churchyard; that the low, leaden line beyond was the river; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry was myself—Pip.
“Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch.
He was a fearful looking man, clad in coarse gray, covered with mud and brambles, and with a great clanking chain upon his leg.
“Tell us your name!” said the man.
“Quick!”
“Pip, sir.”
“Show us where you live,” said the man. “P’int out the place!”
I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the trees a mile or more from the church.
The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside-down and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself—for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head-over-heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet—when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously.
“You young dog,” said the man, licking his lips, “what fat cheeks you ha’ got.”
I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my years, and not strong.
“Darn me if I couldn’t eat ’em,” said the man, with a threatening shake of his head, “and if I ha’nt half a mind to’t!”
I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn’t, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly to keep myself upon it; partly to keep myself from crying.
“Now lookee here!” said the man. “Where’s your mother?”
“There, sir!” said I.
He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder.
“There, sir!” I timidly explained, pointing to an inscription on a stone; “that’s my mother.”
“Oh!” said he, coming back. “And is that your father alonger your mother?”
“Yes, sir,” said I; “him too; ‘late of this parish.’”
“Ha!” he muttered then, considering. “Who d’ ye live with—supposin’ you’re kindly let to live, which I ha’nt made up my mind about?”
“My sister, sir—Mrs. Joe Gargery—wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir.”
“Blacksmith, eh?” said he, and looked down at his leg.
After darkly looking at his leg and at me several times, he came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me, so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.
“Now lookee here,” he said, “the question being whether you’re to be let to live. You know what a file is?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you know what wittles is?”
“Yes, sir.”
After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.
“You get me a file.” He tilted me again. “And you get me some wittles. If you don’t—!”
He tilted me again and shook me till my teeth chattered.
“In—indeed—I will, sir,” said I, “if you will only let me go. I’ll run all the way home.”
“Well, see that you come back. But to-morrow morning will do—early—before day. I’ll wait for you here.”
As he released me, I needed no second bidding, but scurried away as fast as I could, and soon reached the blacksmith shop.
My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbors because she had brought me up “by hand.” Having at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.
She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow—a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness.
My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap. She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened behind with two loops, and having a bib in front that was stuck full of pins and needles.
Joe’s forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many of the dwellings in our country were—most of them, at that time. When I ran home from the churchyard the forge was shut up, and Joe was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner.
“Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times looking for you, Pip. And she’s out now, making it a baker’s dozen.”
“Is she?”
“Yes, Pip,” said Joe; “and what’s worse, she’s got Tickler with her.”
At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled frame.
“She sot down,” said Joe, “and she got up, and she made a grab at Tickler, and she Rampaged out. That’s what she did,” said Joe, slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and looking at it; “she Rampaged out, Pip.”
“Has she been gone long, Joe?” I always treated him as no more than my equal.
“Well,” said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, “she’s been on the Rampage, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She’s a coming! Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel betwixt you.”
I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open, and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause, and applied Tickler to its farther investigation.
“Where have you been?” she demanded, between tickles.
“I have only been to the churchyard,” said I, crying and rubbing myself.
“Churchyard!” repeated my sister. “If it warn’t for me you’d been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there! Who brought you up by hand?”
My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsolately at the fire. For the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was under to steal, from under my sister’s very roof, rose before me in the avenging coals.
“Ha!” said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. “Churchyard, indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two.” (One of us, by the by, had not said it at all.) “You’ll drive me to the churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and oh, a pr-r-recious pair you’d be without me!”
As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at me over his leg, as if he were mentally calculating what kind of pair we should make, under such circumstances. After that, he sat feeling his right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about with his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times.
My sister had a sudden, severe way of cutting and buttering bread, which never varied. Now she ripped me off a section of loaf, bidding me eat and be thankful. Though I was hungry, I dared not eat; for she was a strict housekeeper who would miss any further slices, and I must not let that dreadful man out in the churchyard go hungry. So I resolved to put my hunk of bread and butter down the leg of my trousers—a plan which I presently found the chance to carry out.
It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day with a copper-stick. I tried it with the load upon my leg (and that made me think afresh of the man with the load on his leg), and found the tendency of exercise to bring the bread-and-butter out at my ankle quite unmanageable. Happily, I slipped away and deposited that part of my conscience in my garret bedroom.
“Hark!” said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking a final warm in the chimney corner before being sent up to bed; “was that great guns, Joe?”
“Ah!” said Joe. “There’s another conwict off.”
“What does that mean, Joe?” said I.
Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said snappishly, “Escaped. Escaped.”
“There was a conwict off last night,” added Joe, “after sunset-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears they’re firing warning of another.”
“Who’s firing?” said I.
“Drat that boy,” interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work, “what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no lies.”
It was not very polite to herself, I thought, as she always answered. But she never was polite, unless there was company.
Presently Joe said to me in a quiet kind of whisper. “Hulks, Pip; prison ships. They’re firing because one of the thieves on the hulks is got away.”
Thieves! Prison ships! And here I was planning to rob my sister of the bread and butter; and honest Joe of a file! Truly conscience is a fearful thing, yet there was no turning back for me.
That night the rest of the dreadful deed was done. Just before daybreak I crept out, carrying the file which I had found among Joe’s tools, the slice of bread, and a pie which was too convenient in the pantry, and which I took in the hope it was not intended for early use and would not be missed for some time.
I found the man with the iron waiting for me, crouched behind a tombstone.
“Are you alone?” he asked hoarsely.
“Yes, sir.”
“No one following you?”
“No, sir.”
“Well,” said he, “I believe you. Give me them wittles, quick.”
I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog’s way of eating and the man’s. The man took strong, sharp, sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast; and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought there was danger in every direction of somebody’s coming to take the pie away.
“Now give us hold of the file, boy,” he said, when he had finished swallowing.
I did so, and he bent to the iron like a madman, and began filing it away in quick, fierce rasps. I judged this a good time to slip away, and he paid no further attention to me. The last I heard of him, the file was still going.
“And where the mischief ha’ you been?” was Mrs. Joe’s Christmas salutation, when I and my conscience showed ourselves.
I said I had been down to hear the chimes.
“Ah, well!” observed Mrs. Joe. “You might ha’ done worse.”
Not a doubt of that, I thought.
We were to have a superb dinner—so Joe slyly told me—consisting of a leg of pork and greens, a pair of roast stuffed fowls, and a handsome pie which had been baked the day before.
I started when he spoke about the pie, but his blue eyes beamed upon me kindly.
My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously; that is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working clothes, Joe was a well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday clothes, he was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than anything else. Nothing that he wore then fitted him or seemed to belong to him. On the present festive occasion he emerged from his room, when the blithe bells were ringing, the picture of misery, in a full suit of Sunday penitentials. As to me, I think my sister must have had some general idea that I was a young offender who must be punished each holy-day by being put into clothes so tight that I could on no account move my arms and legs without danger of something bursting.
Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving spectacle for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suffered outside was nothing to what I underwent within. The terrors that had assailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of the room, were only to be equalled by the remorse with which my mind dwelt on what my hands had done. Under the weight of my wicked secret, I pondered whether even the Church would be powerful enough to shield me from the wrath to come.
Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us; and Mr. Hubble, the wheelwright, and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumblechook (Joe’s uncle, but Mrs. Joe appropriated him), who was a well-to-do cornchandler in the nearest town, and drove his own chaise-cart. The dinner hour was half-past one.
When Joe and I got home, we found the table laid, and Mrs. Joe dressed, and the dinner dressing, and the front door unlocked (it never was at any other time) for the company to enter by, and everything most splendid. And still, not a word of the robbery.
Oh, the agony of that festive dinner! During each helping of my plate I ate mechanically, hardly daring to lift my eyes, and clutching frantically at the leg of the table for support. With each mouthful we drew nearer to that pie—and discovery! But as they chattered away, I felt a faint hope that they might perhaps forget the pie.
They did not, for presently my sister said to Joe, “Clean plates—cold.”
I got a fresh hold on the table leg. I foresaw I was doomed.
“You must taste,” said my sister, addressing the guests with her best grace, “you must finish with a pie, in honor of Uncle Pumblechook.”
The company murmured their compliments. Uncle Pumblechook, sensible of having deserved well of his fellow-creatures, said,—quite vivaciously, all things considered,—“Well, Mrs. Joe, we’ll do our best endeavors; let us have a cut at this same pie.”
My sister went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the pantry. I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife. I saw reawakening appetite in the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble remark that “a bit of savory pie would lay atop of anything you could mention, and do no harm,” and I heard Joe say “you shall have some, Pip.” I have never been absolutely certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror, merely in spirit, or in the bodily hearing of the company. I felt that I could bear no more, and that I must run away. I released the leg of the table, and ran for my life.
But I ran no farther than the house door, for there I ran headforemost into a party of soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held out a pair of handcuffs to me, saying, “Here you are, look sharp, come on!”
The vision of a file of soldiers caused the dinner party to rise from the table in confusion, and caused Mrs. Joe, re-entering the kitchen empty-handed, to stop short and stare, in her wondering lament of “Gracious goodness, gracious me, what’s gone—with the—pie!”
“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” said the sergeant, “but as I have mentioned at the door to this smart young shaver” (which he hadn’t), “I am on a chase in the name of the king, and I want the blacksmith.”
“And pray, what might you want with him?” retorted my sister, quick to resent his being wanted at all.
“Missis,” returned the gallant sergeant, “speaking for myself, I should reply, the honor and pleasure of his fine wife’s acquaintance; speaking for the king, I answer, a little job done.”
This was received as rather neat in the sergeant; insomuch that Mr. Pumblechook cried audibly, “Good again!”
“You see, blacksmith,” said the sergeant, who had by this time picked out Joe with his eye, “we have had an accident with these, and I find the lock of one of ’em goes wrong, and the coupling don’t act pretty. As they are wanted for immediate service, will you throw your eye over them?”
Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the job would necessitate the lighting of his forge fire, and would take nearer two hours than one.
“Will it? Then will you set about it at once, blacksmith,” said the off-hand sergeant, “as it’s on his Majesty’s service. And if my men can bear a hand anywhere, they’ll make themselves useful.” With that, he called to his men, who came trooping into the kitchen one after another, and piled their arms in a corner.
All these things I saw without then knowing that I saw them, for I was in an agony of apprehension. But, beginning to perceive that the handcuffs were not for me, and that the military had so far got the better of the pie as to put it in the background, I collected a little more of my scattered wits.
The soldiers were out hunting for the convicts that had escaped. And as soon as Joe had mended the handcuffs, they fell in line and started again for the marshes. Joe caught an appealing look from me, and timidly asked if he and I might go along with them. The consent was given and away we went.
After a rough journey over bogs and through briars, a loud shout from the soldiers in front announced that one of the fugitives had been caught. We ran hastily up and peered into a ditch. It was my convict.
He was hustled into the handcuffs and hustled up a hill where stood a rough hut or sentry-box, and here we halted to rest.
My convict never looked at me, except once. While we were in the hut, he stood before the fire looking thoughtfully at it, or putting up his feet by turns upon the hob. 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, standing 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 p’int, a separate matter. A man can’t starve; at least I can’t. I took some wittles, up at the village 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.”
“Hallo!” said the sergeant, staring at Joe.
“Hallo, Pip!” said Joe, staring at me.
“It was some broken wittle—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? Then 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 starve to death for it, poor miserable fellow-creatur. Would us, Pip?”
Something that I had noticed before clicked in the man’s throat again, and he turned his back. The boat had 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, but they looked at him stolidly and rowed him back to the hulks as a matter of course.
My state of mind regarding the pie was curious. 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 reason 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 forever lost companion and friend, tied up my tongue. And so the whole truth never came out.