III How Pip Fell Heir to Great Expectations
The happy idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I woke, that the best step I could take towards making myself uncommon was to get out of Biddy everything she knew. In pursuance of this idea, I mentioned to Biddy, when I went to Mr. Wopsle’s aunt’s at night, that I had a particular reason for wishing to get on in life, and that I should feel very much obliged to her if she would impart all her learning to me. Biddy, who was the most obliging of girls, immediately said she would, and indeed began to carry out her promise within five minutes.
The books at the school were few and ragged, but we attacked them all valiantly during the course of the winter, and even refreshed our budding minds with newspaper scraps. And with every new piece of knowledge I could fancy myself saying to Miss Estella, “Now am I common?”
At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham’s, and my hesitating ring at the gate brought out Estella.
“You are to come this way to-day,” she said after admitting me, and took me to quite another part of the house.
We went in at a door, which stood open, and into a gloomy room with a low ceiling on the ground floor at the back. There was some company in the room, and Estella said to me as she joined it, “You are to go and stand there, boy, till you are wanted.” “There,” being the window, I crossed to it, and stood “there,” in a very uncomfortable state of mind, looking out.
Presently she brought a candle and led the way down a dark passage to a staircase. As we went up the stairs we met a man coming down. He was large and bald, with bushy black eyebrows and deep-set eyes which were disagreeably keen. He was nothing to me at the time, and yet I couldn’t help observe him.
He stopped and looked at me.
“How do you come here?” he asked.
“Miss Havisham sent for me, sir,” I explained.
“Well! Behave yourself. I have a pretty large experience of boys, and you’re a bad set of fellows. Now mind!” said he, biting the side of his great forefinger as he frowned at me, “you behave yourself!”
With those words he released me—which I was glad of, for his hand smelt of scented soap—and went his way downstairs. I wondered whether he could be a doctor; but no, I thought; he couldn’t be a doctor, or he would have a quieter manner. There was not much time to consider the subject, for we were soon in Miss Havisham’s room, where she and everything else were just as I had left them. Estella left me standing near the door, and I stood there until Miss Havisham cast her eyes upon me from the dressing-table.
“So!” she said, without being startled or surprised; “the days have worn away, have they?”
“Yes, ma’am. To-day is—”
“There, there, there!” with the impatient movement of her fingers. “I don’t want to know. Are you ready to play?”
I was obliged to answer in some confusion, “I don’t think I am, ma’am.”
“Not at cards again?” she demanded with a searching look.
“Yes, ma’am; I could do that, if I was wanted.”
“Since this house strikes you old and grave, boy,” said Miss Havisham, impatiently, “and you are unwilling to play, are you willing to work?”
I could answer this inquiry with a better heart than I had been able to find for the other question, and I said I was quite willing.
“Then go into that opposite room,” said she, pointing at the door behind me with her withered hand, “and wait there till I come.”
I did so, and after hearing mice scamper about the faintly lighted room for a few minutes, Miss Havisham entered and laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the Witch of the place.
“This,” said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, “is where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here.”
With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and there and die at once, the complete realization of the ghastly wax-work at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.
“What do you think that is?” she asked me, again pointing with her stick; “that, where those cobwebs are?”
“I can’t guess what it is, ma’am.”
“It’s a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!”
She looked all around the room in a glaring manner, and then said, leaning on me while her hand twitched my shoulder, “Come, come, come! Walk me, walk me!”
From this I made out that the work I had to do was to walk Miss Havisham round and round the room. So I started at once, she following at a fitful speed, twitching the hand upon my shoulder. After a while she said, “Call Estella,” and I did so. Then the company I had noticed before filed in and paid their respects, which Miss Havisham hardly seemed to hear.
While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham still walked with her hand on my shoulder, but more and more slowly. At last she stopped before the fire, and said, after muttering and looking at it some seconds,
“This is my birthday, Pip.”
I was going to wish her many happy returns, when she lifted her stick.
“I don’t suffer it to be spoken of. I don’t suffer those who were here just now or any one to speak of it. They come here on the day, but they dare not refer to it.”
Of course I made no further effort to refer to it.
“On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of decay,” stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the table but not touching it, “was brought here. It and I have worn away together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me.”
She held the head of her stick against her heart as she stood looking at the table; she in her once white dress, all yellow and withered; the once white cloth all yellow and withered; everything around, in a state to crumble under a touch.
“When the ruin is complete,” said she, with a ghastly look, “and when they lay me dead, in my bride’s dress on the bride’s table—which shall be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him—so much the better if it is done on this day!”
She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her own figure lying there. I remained quiet. Estella returned, and she too remained quiet. It seemed to me that we continued thus a long time. In the heavy air of the room, and the heavy darkness that brooded in its remoter corners, I even had an alarming fancy that Estella and I might presently crumble to dust.
And thus passed my second visit to Miss Havisham’s.
On my next visit, the following week, I saw a garden-chair—a light chair on wheels, that you pushed from behind. I entered, that same day, on a regular occupation of pushing Miss Havisham in this chair (when she was tired of walking with her hand upon my shoulder) round her own room, and across the landing, and round the other room. Over and over and over again, we would make these journeys, and sometimes they would last as long as three hours at a stretch. I insensibly fall into a general mention of these journeys as numerous, because it was at once settled that I should return every alternate day at noon for these purposes, and because I am now going to sum up a period of at least eight or ten months.
As we began to be more used to one another, Miss Havisham talked more to me, and asked me such questions as, what had I learned and what was I going to be? I told her I was going to be apprenticed to Joe, I believed; and I enlarged upon my knowing nothing and wanting to know everything, in the hope that she might offer some help towards that desirable end. But she did not; on the contrary, she seemed to prefer my being ignorant. Neither did she ever give me any money nor anything but my daily dinner.
Estella was always there to let me in and out. Sometimes she would coldly tolerate me; sometimes she would condescend to me; sometimes she would be quite familiar with me; sometimes she would say she hated me. But always my admiration for her grew apace, and I was the more firmly resolved not to be common.
There was a song Joe used to hum fragments of at the forge, of which the burden was Old Clem. This was not a very ceremonious way of rendering homage to a patron saint; for I believe Old Clem stood in that relation towards smiths. It was a song that imitated the measure of beating upon iron, and was a mere lyrical excuse for the introduction of Old Clem’s respected name. Thus, you were to hammer boys round—Old Clem! With a thump and a sound—Old Clem! Beat it out, beat it out—Old Clem! With a clink for the stout—Old Clem! Blow the fire, blow the fire—Old Clem! Roaring dryer, soaring higher—Old Clem! One day soon after the appearance of the chair, Miss Havisham suddenly saying to me, with the impatient movement of her fingers, “There, there, there! Sing!” I was surprised into crooning this ditty as I pushed her over the floor. It happened so to catch her fancy that, she took it up in a low brooding voice as if she were singing in her sleep. After that, it became customary with us to have it as we moved about, and Estella would often join in; though the whole strain was so subdued, even when there were three of us, that it made less noise in the grim old house than the lightest breath of wind.
What could I become with these surroundings? How could my character fail to be influenced by them? Is it to be wondered at if my thoughts were dazed, as my eyes were, when I came out into the natural light from the misty yellow rooms?
Perhaps I might have talked it all over with Joe, had it not been for those enormous tales about coaches, dogs, and veal cutlets. But I felt a natural shrinking from having Miss Havisham and Estella discussed, which had come upon me in the beginning, and which grew much more potent as time went on. I reposed complete confidence in no one but Biddy; and so I told her everything. Why it came natural for me to do so, and why Biddy had a deep concern in everything I told her, I did not know then, though I think I know now.
We went on in this way for a long time, and it seemed likely that we should continue to go on in this way for a long time, when, one day, Miss Havisham stopped short as she and I were walking, she leaning on my shoulder; and said with some displeasure,
“You are growing tall, Pip!”
She said no more at the time; but she presently stopped and looked at me again; and presently again; and after that, looked frowning and moody. On the next day of my attendance, when our usual exercise was over, and I had landed her at her dressing-table, she stayed me with a movement of her impatient fingers:
“Tell me the name again of that blacksmith of yours.”
“Joe Gargery, ma’am.”
“Meaning the master you were to be apprenticed to?”
“Yes, Miss Havisham.”
“You had better be apprenticed at once. Would Gargery come here with you, and bring your indentures, do you think?”
I signified that I had no doubt he would take it as an honor to be asked.
“Then let him come.”
“At any particular time, Miss Havisham?”
“There, there! I know nothing about times. Let him come soon, and come alone with you.”
So, on my very next visit, I conducted Joe, stiffly arrayed in his Sunday clothes, into Miss Havisham’s presence. She asked him several questions about himself and my apprenticeship, while the poor fellow twisted his hat in his hand and persisted in answering me. I am afraid I was the least bit ashamed of him, when I saw that Estella stood at the back of Miss Havisham’s chair, and that her eyes laughed mischievously.
Miss Havisham glanced at him as if she understood what he really was, better than I had thought possible, seeing what an awkward figure he cut; and took up a little bag from the table beside her.
“Pip has earned a premium here,” she said, “and here it is. There are five-and-twenty guineas in this bag. Give it to your master, Pip.”
As if he were absolutely out of his mind with the wonder awakened in him by her strange figure and the strange room, Joe, even at this pass, persisted in addressing me.
“This is wery liberal on your part, Pip,” said Joe, “and it is as such received and grateful welcome, though never looked for, far nor near nor nowheres. And now, old chap, may we do our duty! May you and me do our duty, both on us, by one and another, and by them which your liberal present—have—conweyed—to be—for the satisfaction of mind—of—them as never—” here Joe showed that he felt he had fallen into frightful difficulties, until he triumphantly rescued himself with the words, “and from myself far be it!” These words had such a round and convincing sound for him that he said them twice.
“Good-bye, Pip!” said Miss Havisham, after my papers were signed. “Let them out, Estella.”
“Am I to come again, Miss Havisham?” I asked.
“No. Gargery is your master now. Gargery! One word!”
Thus calling him back as I went out of the door, I heard her say to Joe, in a distinct emphatic voice, “The boy has been a good boy here, and that is his reward. Of course, as an honest man, you will expect no other and no more.”
How Joe got out of the room, I have never been able to determine; but I know that when he did get out he was steadily proceeding upstairs instead of coming down, and was deaf to all remonstrances until I went after him and laid hold of him. In another minute we were outside the gate, and it was locked, and Estella was gone. When we stood in the daylight alone again, Joe backed up against a wall, and said to me, “Astonishing!” And there he remained so long, saying, “Astonishing!” at intervals, so often, that I began to think his senses were never coming back. At length he prolonged his remark into “Pip, I do assure you this is as-TON-ishing!” and so, by degrees, became able to walk away.
It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.
Home had never been a pleasant place to me, because of my sister’s temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I believed in it. I had believed in the best parlor as a most elegant place; I had believed in the front door as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence. Within a single year all this was changed. Now, it was all coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any account.
How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own fault, how much Miss Havisham’s, how much my sister’s, is now of no moment to me or to any one. The change was made in me; the thing was done.
Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe’s apprentice, I should be distinguished and happy. Now that the reality was here, I only felt that I was dusty with the dust of small-coal, and that I had a weight upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather. I remember that at a later period of my “time,” I used to stand about the churchyard on Sunday evenings, when night was falling, comparing my own perspective with the windy marsh view, and making out some likeness between them by thinking how flat and low both were, and how on both there came an unknown way and a dark mist and then the sea. I was quite as dejected on the first working-day of my apprenticeship as in that after-time; but I am glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe while my indentures lasted. It is about the only thing I am glad to know of myself in that connection.
For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit was Joe’s. It was not because I was faithful, but because Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went for a soldier or a sailor. It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, but because of Joe, that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain.
As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle’s aunt’s room, my education under that lady ended. 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 were the opening lines:
When I went to Lunnon town, sirs,
Too rul loo rul
Too rul loo rul
Was ’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.
Thus matters went until I reached the fourth year of my apprenticeship; and they bade fair to end that way, but for an unusual event.
I had gone with Joe one Saturday night to a neighboring tavern to join some friends. In the course of the conversation, a strange gentleman, who had been listening to us, stepped between us and the fire, and said:
“I understand that one of you is a blacksmith, by name, Joseph Gargery. Which is the man?”
“Here is the man,” said Joe.
“You have an apprentice,” pursued the stranger, “commonly known as Pip. Is he here?”
“Here,” I answered.
The stranger did not recognize me, but I did recognize him as the man I had once met on the stair at Miss Havisham’s.
“I wish to have a private talk with you both,” he said. “Perhaps we had better go to your house.”
So, in a wondering silence we left the inn and walked home, where Joe, vaguely recognizing the occasion to be important, opened the front door and ushered us into the state parlor.
The stranger told us that he was a lawyer in London, and was now acting as confidential agent for some one else. He wished to purchase my apprenticeship papers from Joe, if Joe were willing to release me.
“Lord forbid that I should want anything for not standing in Pip’s way,” said Joe, staring.
“Lord forbidding is pious, but not to the purpose,” returned the lawyer. “The question is, Would you want anything? Do you want anything.”
“The answer is,” returned Joe, sternly, “No.”
“Then I am instructed to communicate to him,” said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his finger at me, sideways, “that he will come into a handsome property. Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of that property, that he be immediately removed from his present sphere of life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman—in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations.”
My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality; Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale!—at least, so I thought at the time.
“Now, Mr. Pip,” pursued the lawyer, “I address the rest of what I have to say to you. You are to understand, first, that it is the request of the person from whom I take my instructions, that you always bear the name of Pip. You will have no objection, I dare say, to that easy condition. But if you have any objection, this is the time to mention it.”
I gasped, but had no objection.
“The second condition,” he resumed, “is that you are not to know the name of your benefactor, for the present. I will act as your guardian and see that you are educated properly. You desire an education, don’t you?”
I replied that I had always longed for it.
“Good. Then we will see to getting you a tutor. But first you should have some new clothes to come away in. When will you be ready to leave? Say this day week. You’ll want some money. Shall I leave you twenty guineas?”
He produced a long purse, with the greatest coolness, and counted them out on the table and pushed them over to me. This was the first time he had taken his leg from the chair. He sat astride of the chair when he had pushed the money over, and sat swinging his purse and eyeing Joe.
“Well, Joseph Gargery? You look dumbfoundered?”
“I am!” said Joe, in a very decided manner.
“It was understood that you wanted nothing for yourself, remember?”
“It were understood,” said Joe. “And it are understood. And it ever will be similar according.”
“But what,” said the lawyer, swinging his purse, “what if it was in my instructions to make you a present, as compensation?”
“As compensation what for?” Joe demanded.
“For the loss of his services.”
Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the touch of a woman. I have often thought of him since, like the steam-hammer, that can crush a man or pat an egg-shell, in his combination of strength with gentleness. “Pip is that hearty welcome,” said Joe, “to go free with his services, to honor and fortun’, as no words can tell him. But if you think as Money can make compensation to me for the loss of the little child—what come to the forge—and ever the best of friends—”
Oh, dear, good Joe, whom I was so ready to leave and so unthankful to, I see you again, with your muscular blacksmith’s arm before your eyes, and your broad chest heaving, and your voice dying away. Oh, dear, good, faithful, tender Joe, I feel the loving tremble of your hand upon my arm, as solemnly this day as if it had been the rustle of an angel’s wing!
But at the time I was lost in the mazes of my future fortunes, and could not retrace the by-paths we had trodden together. I begged Joe to be comforted. Joe scooped his eyes with his disengaged wrist, as if he were bent on gouging himself, but said not another word.
After the lawyer had taken his leave, Joe and I went into the kitchen, where we found Biddy and my sister, and told them of my good fortune.
They dropped their sewing and looked at me. Joe held his knees and looked at me. I looked at them, in turn. After a pause they heartily congratulated me; but there was a certain touch of sadness in their congratulations that I rather resented.
Now that I was actually going away I became quite gloomy. I did not know why, but I sat in the chimney corner looking at the fire, my elbow on my knee; and while the others tried to make the conversation cheerful, I grew gloomier than ever.
But the bright sunlight of the next morning dispelled my doubts and fears, and I began to count the days eagerly. I went down to Trabb’s, the tailor’s, and got measured for a wonderful suit of clothes, much to the consternation of Trabb’s boy, who thought himself equal to any blacksmith that ever lived. Then I went to the hatter’s and the bootmaker’s and the hosier’s, and felt rather like Mother Hubbard’s dog, whose outfit required the services of so many trades. I also went to the coach-office and took my place for seven o’clock Saturday morning. And everywhere about the village the news of my great expectations preceded me and I was heartily stared at.
Uncle Pumblechook was especially officious at this time. He acted as though he were the sole cause of all this.
“To think,” said he, swelling up, “that I should have been the humble instrument of this proud reward.”
He thought, like all the rest of us, that Miss Havisham was my unknown benefactor. It was a natural mistake, as she had been kind to me in her way; and I had seen the lawyer at her house. But it was a mistake after all and led to other unhappy blunders ere I learned the truth.
For, many years afterward, I found that “my convict”—the man I had helped down in the churchyard—was none other than the friend who had left me this fortune. He had escaped again from the hulks and, coming into a considerable property, had arranged with the lawyer to use it in making a gentleman out of the little boy he had found crying on the tombstone. But, as I say, none of us knew it or suspected it at first.
And now, those six days which were to have run out so slowly, had run out fast and were gone, and to-morrow looked me in the face more steadily than I could look at it. As the six evenings had dwindled away to five, to four, to three, to two, I had become more and more appreciative of the society of Joe and my sister and Biddy. On this last evening, I dressed myself out in my new clothes, for their delight, and sat in my splendor until bedtime. We had a hot supper on the occasion, graced by the inevitable roast fowl, and we had some flip to finish with. We were all very low, and none the higher for pretending to be in spirits.
It was a hurried breakfast, the next morning, with no taste in it. I got up from the meal, saying with a sort of briskness, as if it had only just occurred to me, “Well! I suppose I must be off!” and then I kissed my sister, and kissed Biddy, and threw my arms around Joe’s neck. Then I took up my little portmanteau and walked out. The last I saw of them was, when I presently heard a scuffle behind me, and, looking back, saw Joe throwing an old shoe after me and Biddy throwing another old shoe. I stopped then, to wave my hat, and dear old Joe waved his strong right arm above his head, crying huskily “Hooroar!” and Biddy put her apron to her face.
I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to go than I had supposed it would be, and reflecting that it would never have done to have an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of all the High-street. I whistled and made nothing of going. But the village was very peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were solemnly rising, as if to show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all beyond was so unknown and great, that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I broke into tears. It was by the finger-post at the end of the village, and I laid my hand upon it, and said, “Good-bye, oh, my dear, dear friend!”
So subdued was I by those tears, that when I was on the coach, and it was clear of the town, I deliberated with an aching heart whether I would not get down when we changed horses, and walk back, and have another evening at home, and a better parting. But while I deliberated, we had changed and changed again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me. My boyhood was over. Henceforth I was to play a man’s part—a man with Great Expectations.