Great Expectations

Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, besides keeping this Educational Institution, kept – in the same room – a little general shop. She had no idea what stock she had, or what the price of anything in it was; but there was a little greasy memorandum-book kept in a drawer, which served as a Catalogue of Prices, and by this oracle Biddy arranged all the shop transactions. Biddy was Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s granddaughter; I confess myself quite unequal to the working-out of the problem, what relation she was to Mr. Wopsle. She was an orphan like myself; like me, too, had been brought up by hand. She was most noticeable, I thought, in respect of her extremities; for, her hair always wanted brushing, her hands always wanted washing, and her shoes always wanted mending and pulling up at heel. This description must be received with a week-day limitation. On Sundays, she went to church elaborated.

Much of my unassisted self, and more by the help of Biddy than of Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if it had been a bramble-bush; getting considerably worried and scratched by every letter. After that, I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, who seemed every evening to do something new to disguise themselves and baffle recognition. But, at last I began, in a purblind groping way, to read, write, and cipher, on the very smallest scale.

One night, I was sitting in the chimney corner with my slate, expending great effort on the production of a letter to Joe. I think it must have been a full year after our hunt upon the marshes, for it was a long time after, and it was winter and a hard frost. With an alphabet on the hearth at my feet for reference, I contrived in an hour or two to print and smear this epistle:

“MI DEER JO i OPE U R KR WITE WELL i OPE i SHAL SON B HABELL 4 2 TEEDGE U JO AN THEN WE SHORL B SO GLODD AN WEN i M PRENGTD 2 u JO WOT LARX AN BL EVE ME INF XN PIP.”

There was no indispensable necessity for my communicating with Joe by letter, inasmuch as he sat beside me and we were alone. But, I delivered this written communication (slate and all) with my own hand, and Joe received it as a miracle of erudition.

“I say, Pip, old chap!” cried Joe, opening his blue eyes wide, “what a scholar you are! An’t you?”

“I should like to be,” said I, glancing at the slate as he held it: with a misgiving that the writing was rather hilly.

“Why, here’s a J,” said Joe, “and a O equal to anythink! Here’s a J and a O, Pip, and a J-O, Joe.”

I had never heard Joe read aloud to any greater extent than this monosyllable, and I had observed at church last Sunday when I accidentally held our Prayer-Book upside down, that it seemed to suit his convenience quite as well as if it had been all right. Wishing to embrace the present occasion of finding out whether in teaching Joe, I should have to begin quite at the beginning, I said, “Ah! But read the rest, Joe.”

“The rest, eh, Pip?” said Joe, looking at it with a slowly searching eye, “One, two, three. Why, here’s three Js, and three Os, and three J-O, Joes in it, Pip!”

I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my forefinger, read him the whole letter.

“Astonishing!” said Joe, when I had finished. “You are a scholar.”

“How do you spell Gargery, Joe?” I asked him, with a modest patronage.

“I don’t spell it at all,” said Joe.

“But supposing you did?”

“It can’t be supposed,” said Joe. “Tho’ I’m oncommon fond of reading, too.”

“Are you, Joe?”

“On-common. Give me,” said Joe, “a good book, or a good newspaper, and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord!” he continued, after rubbing his knees a little, “when you do come to a J and a O, and says you, ‘Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,’ how interesting reading is!”

I derived from this, that Joe’s education, like Steam, was yet in its infancy. Pursuing the subject, I inquired:

“Didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?”

“No, Pip.”

“Why didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?”

“Well, Pip,” said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling himself to his usual occupation when he was thoughtful, of slowly raking the fire between the lower bars: “I’ll tell you. My father, Pip, he were given to drink, and when he were overtook with drink, he hammered away at my mother, most onmerciful. It were a’most the only hammering he did, indeed, ’xcepting at myself. And he hammered at me with a wigour only to be equalled by the wigour with which he didn’t hammer at his anwil. – You’re a listening and understanding, Pip?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“’Consequence, my mother and me we ran away from my father, several times; and then my mother she’d go out to work, and she’d say, ‘Joe,’ she’d say, ‘now, please God, you shall have some schooling, child,’ and she’d put me to school. But my father were that good in his hart that he couldn’t abear to be without us. So, he’d come with a most tremenjous crowd and make such a row at the doors of the houses where we was, that they used to be obligated to have no more to do with us and to give us up to him. And then he took us home and hammered us. Which, you see, Pip,” said Joe, pausing in his meditative raking of the fire, and looking at me, “were a draw-back on my learning.”

“Certainly, poor Joe!”

“Though mind you, Pip,” said Joe, with a judicial touch or two of the poker on the top bar, “rendering unto all their doo, and maintaining equal justice betwixt man and man, my father were that good in his hart, don’t you see?”

I didn’t see; but I didn’t say so.

“Well!” Joe pursued, “somebody must keep the pot a biling, Pip, or the pot won’t bile, don’t you know.”

I saw that, and said so.

“’Consequence, my father didn’t make objections to my going to work; so I went to work at my present calling, which were his too, if he would have followed it, and I worked tolerable hard, I assure you, Pip. In time I were able to keep him, and I kep him till he went off in a purple leptic fit. And it were my intentions to have had put upon his tombstone that Whatsume’er the failings on his part, Remember reader he were that good in his hart.”

Joe recited this couplet with such manifest pride and careful perspicuity, that I asked him if he had made it himself?

“I made it,” said Joe, “my own self. I made it in a moment. It was like striking out a horseshoe complete, in a single blow. I never was so much surprised in all my life – couldn’t credit my own ed – to tell you the truth, hardly believed it were my own ed. As I was saying, Pip, it were my intentions to have had it cut over him; but poetry costs money, cut it how you will, small or large, and it were not done. Not to mention bearers, all the money that could be spared were wanted for my mother. She were in poor elth, and quite broke. She weren’t long of following, poor soul, and her share of peace come round at last.”

Joe’s blue eyes turned a little watery; he rubbed, first one of them, and then the other, in a most uncongenial and uncomfortable manner, with the round knob on the top of the poker.

“It were but lonesome then,” said Joe, “living here alone, and I got acquainted with your sister. Now, Pip;” Joe looked firmly at me, as if he knew I was not going to agree with him; “your sister is a fine figure of a woman.”

I could not help looking at the fire, in an obvious state of doubt.

“Whatever family opinions, or whatever the world’s opinions, on that subject may be, Pip, your sister is,” Joe tapped the top bar with the poker after every word following “a – fine – figure – of – a – woman!”

I could think of nothing better to say than “I am glad you think so, Joe.”

“So am I,” returned Joe, catching me up. “I am glad I think so, Pip. A little redness, or a little matter of Bone, here or there, what does it signify to Me?”

I sagaciously observed, if it didn’t signify to him, to whom did it signify?

“Certainly!” assented Joe. “That’s it. You’re right, old chap! When I got acquainted with your sister, it were the talk how she was bringing you up by hand. Very kind of her too, all the folks said, and I said, along with all the folks. As to you,” Joe pursued, with a countenance expressive of seeing something very nasty indeed: “if you could have been aware how small and flabby and mean you was, dear me, you’d have formed the most contemptible opinions of yourself!”

Not exactly relishing this, I said, “Never mind me, Joe.”

“But I did mind you, Pip,” he returned with tender simplicity. “When I offered to your sister to keep company, and to be asked in church at such times as she was willing and ready to come to the forge, I said to her, ‘And bring the poor little child. God bless the poor little child,’ I said to your sister, ‘there’s room for him at the forge!’”

I broke out crying and begging pardon, and hugged Joe round the neck: who dropped the poker to hug me, and to say, “Ever the best of friends; an’t us, Pip? Don’t cry, old chap!”

When this little interruption was over, Joe resumed:

“Well, you see, Pip, and here we are! That’s about where it lights; here we are! Now, when you take me in hand in my learning, Pip (and I tell you beforehand I am awful dull, most awful dull), Mrs. Joe mustn’t see too much of what we’re up to. It must be done, as I may say, on the sly. And why on the sly? I’ll tell you why, Pip.”

He had taken up the poker again; without which, I doubt if he could have proceeded in his demonstration.

“Your sister is given to government.”

“Given to government, Joe?” I was startled, for I had some shadowy idea (and I am afraid I must add, hope) that Joe had divorced her in favour of the Lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury.

“Given to government,” said Joe. “Which I meantersay the government of you and myself.”

“Oh!”

“And she an’t over partial to having scholars on the premises,” Joe continued, “and in partickler would not be over partial to my being a scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort of rebel, don’t you see?”

I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far as “Why—” when Joe stopped me.

“Stay a bit. I know what you’re a going to say, Pip; stay a bit! I don’t deny that your sister comes the Mo-gul over us, now and again. I don’t deny that she do throw us back-falls, and that she do drop down upon us heavy. At such times as when your sister is on the Ram-page, Pip,” Joe sank his voice to a whisper and glanced at the door, “cander compels fur to admit that she is a Buster.”

Joe pronounced this word, as if it began with at least twelve capital Bs.

“Why don’t I rise? That were your obserwation when I broke it off, Pip?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“Well,” said Joe, passing the poker into his left hand, that he might feel his whisker; and I had no hope of him whenever he took to that placid occupation; “your sister’s a master-mind. A master-mind.”

“What’s that?” I asked, in some hope of bringing him to a stand. But, Joe was readier with his definition than I had expected, and completely stopped me by arguing circularly, and answering with a fixed look, “Her.”

“And I an’t a master-mind,” Joe resumed, when he had unfixed his look, and got back to his whisker. “And last of all, Pip – and this I want to say very serous to you, old chap – I see so much in my poor mother, of a woman drudging and slaving and breaking her honest hart and never getting no peace in her mortal days, that I’m dead afeerd of going wrong in the way of not doing what’s right by a woman, and I’d fur rather of the two go wrong the t’other way, and be a little ill-conwenienced myself. I wish it was only me that got put out, Pip; I wish there warn’t no Tickler for you, old chap; I wish I could take it all on myself; but this is the up-and-down-and-straight on it, Pip, and I hope you’ll overlook short-comings.”

Young as I was, I believe that I dated a new admiration of Joe from that night. We were equals afterwards, as we had been before; but, afterwards at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and thinking about him, I had a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my heart.

“Howsumever,” said Joe, rising to replenish the fire; “here’s the Dutch clock a working himself up to being equal to strike Eight of ’em, and she’s not come home yet! I hope Uncle Pumblechook’s mare mayn’t have set a fore-foot on a piece o’ ice, and gone down.”

Mrs. Joe made occasional trips with Uncle Pumblechook on market-days, to assist him in buying such household stuffs and goods as required a woman’s judgment; Uncle Pumblechook being a bachelor and reposing no confidences in his domestic servant. This was market-day, and Mrs. Joe was out on one of these expeditions.

Joe made the fire and swept the hearth, and then we went to the door to listen for the chaise-cart. It was a dry cold night, and the wind blew keenly, and the frost was white and hard. A man would die to-night of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.

“Here comes the mare,” said Joe, “ringing like a peal of bells!”

The sound of her iron shoes upon the hard road was quite musical, as she came along at a much brisker trot than usual. We got a chair out, ready for Mrs. Joe’s alighting, and stirred up the fire that they might see a bright window, and took a final survey of the kitchen that nothing might be out of its place. When we had completed these preparations, they drove up, wrapped to the eyes. Mrs. Joe was soon landed, and Uncle Pumblechook was soon down too, covering the mare with a cloth, and we were soon all in the kitchen, carrying so much cold air in with us that it seemed to drive all the heat out of the fire.

“Now,” said Mrs. Joe, unwrapping herself with haste and excitement, and throwing her bonnet back on her shoulders where it hung by the strings: “if this boy an’t grateful this night, he never will be!”

I looked as grateful as any boy possibly could, who was wholly uninformed why he ought to assume that expression.

“It’s only to be hoped,” said my sister, “that he won’t be Pompeyed. But I have my fears.”

“She ain’t in that line, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “She knows better.”

She? I looked at Joe, making the motion with my lips and eyebrows, “She?” Joe looked at me, making the motion with his lips and eyebrows, “She?” My sister catching him in the act, he drew the back of his hand across his nose with his usual conciliatory air on such occasions, and looked at her.

“Well?” said my sister, in her snappish way. “What are you staring at? Is the house a-fire?”

“– Which some indiwidual,” Joe politely hinted, “mentioned – she.”

“And she is a she, I suppose?” said my sister. “Unless you call Miss Havisham a he. And I doubt if even you’ll go so far as that.”

“Miss Havisham, up town?” said Joe.

“Is there any Miss Havisham down town?” returned my sister. “She wants this boy to go and play there. And of course he’s going. And he had better play there,” said my sister, shaking her head at me as an encouragement to be extremely light and sportive, “or I’ll work him.”

I had heard of Miss Havisham up town – everybody for miles round, had heard of Miss Havisham up town – as an immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who led a life of seclusion.

“Well to be sure!” said Joe, astounded. “I wonder how she came to know Pip!”

“Noodle!” cried my sister. “Who said she knew him?”

“– Which some indiwidual,” Joe again politely hinted, “mentioned that she wanted him to go and play there.”

“And couldn’t she ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go and play there? Isn’t it just barely possible that Uncle Pumblechook may be a tenant of hers, and that he may sometimes – we won’t say quarterly or half yearly, for that would be requiring too much of you – but sometimes – go there to pay his rent? And couldn’t she then ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go and play there? And couldn’t Uncle Pumblechook, being always considerate and thoughtful for us – though you may not think it, Joseph,” in a tone of the deepest reproach, as if he were the most callous of nephews, “then mention this boy, standing Prancing here” – which I solemnly declare I was not doing – “that I have for ever been a willing slave to?”

“Good again!” cried Uncle Pumblechook. “Well put! Prettily pointed! Good indeed! Now Joseph, you know the case.”

“No, Joseph,” said my sister, still in a reproachful manner, while Joe apologetically drew the back of his hand across and across his nose, “you do not yet – though you may not think it – know the case. You may consider that you do, but you do not, Joseph. For you do not know that Uncle Pumblechook, being sensible that for anything we can tell, this boy’s fortune may be made by his going to Miss Havisham’s, has offered to take him into town tonight in his own chaise-cart, and to keep him to-night, and to take him with his own hands to Miss Havisham’s to-morrow morning. And Lor-a-mussy me!” cried my sister, casting off her bonnet in sudden desperation, “here I stand talking to mere Mooncalfs, with Uncle Pumblechook waiting, and the mare catching cold at the door, and the boy grimed with crock and dirt from the hair of his head to the sole of his foot!”

With that, she pounced upon me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my face was squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put under taps of water-butts, and I was soaped, and kneaded, and towelled, and thumped, and harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite beside myself. (I may here remark that I suppose myself to be better acquainted than any living authority, with the ridgy effect of a wedding-ring, passing unsympathetically over the human countenance.)

When my ablutions were completed, I was put into clean linen of the stiffest character, like a young penitent into sackcloth, and was trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. I was then delivered over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as if he were the Sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that I knew he had been dying to make all along: “Boy, be for ever grateful to all friends, but especially unto them which brought you up by hand!”

“Good-by, Joe!”

“God bless you, Pip, old chap!”

I had never parted from him before, and what with my feelings and what with soap-suds, I could at first see no stars from the chaise-cart. But they twinkled out one by one, without throwing any light on the questions why on earth I was going to play at Miss Havisham’s and what on earth I was expected to play at.

CHAPTER 8

Mr. Pumblechook’s premises in the High-street of the market town, were of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of a corn-chandler and seedsman should be. It appeared to me that he must be a very happy man indeed, to have so many little drawers in his shop; and I wondered when I peeped into one or two on the lower tiers, and saw the tied-up brown paper packets inside, whether the flower-seeds and bulbs ever wanted of a fine day to break out of those jails, and bloom.

It was in the early morning after my arrival that I entertained this speculation. On the previous night, I had been sent straight to bed in an attic with a sloping roof, which was so low in the corner where the bedstead was, that I calculated the tiles as being within a foot of my eyebrows. In the same early morning, I discovered a singular affinity between seeds and corduroys. Mr. Pumblechook wore corduroys, and so did his shopman; and somehow, there was a general air and flavour about the corduroys, so much in the nature of seeds, and a general air and flavour about the seeds, so much in the nature of corduroys, that I hardly knew which was which. The same opportunity served me for noticing that Mr. Pumblechook appeared to conduct his business by looking across the street at the saddler, who appeared to transact his business by keeping his eye on the coach-maker, who appeared to get on in life by putting his hands in his pockets and contemplating the baker, who in his turn folded his arms and stared at the grocer, who stood at his door and yawned at the chemist. The watch-maker, always poring over a little desk with a magnifying glass at his eye, and always inspected by a group in smock-frocks poring over him through the glass of his shop-window, seemed to be about the only person in the High-street whose trade engaged his attention.

Mr. Pumblechook and I breakfasted at eight o’clock in the parlour behind the shop, while the shopman took his mug of tea and hunch of bread-and-butter on a sack of peas in the front premises. I considered Mr. Pumblechook wretched company. Besides being possessed by my sister’s idea that a mortifying and penitential character ought to be imparted to my diet – besides giving me as much crumb as possible in combination with as little butter, and putting such a quantity of warm water into my milk that it would have been more candid to have left the milk out altogether – his conversation consisted of nothing but arithmetic. On my politely bidding him Good morning, he said, pompously, “Seven times nine, boy!” And how should I be able to answer dodged in that way, in a strange place, on an empty stomach! I was hungry, but before I had swallowed a morsel, he began a running sum that lasted all through the breakfast. “Seven?” “And four?” “And eight?” “And six?” “And two?” “And ten?” And so on. And after each figure was disposed of, it was as much as I could do to get a bite or a sup, before the next came; while he sat at his ease guessing nothing, and eating bacon and hot roll, in (if I may be allowed the expression) a gorging and gormandising manner.

For such reasons, I was very glad when ten o’clock came and we started for Miss Havisham’s; though I was not at all at my ease regarding the manner in which I should acquit myself under that lady’s roof. Within a quarter of an hour we came to Miss Havisham’s house, which was of old brick, and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were rustily barred. There was a courtyard in front, and that was barred; so, we had to wait, after ringing the bell, until some one should come to open it. While we waited at the gate, I peeped in (even then Mr. Pumblechook said, “And fourteen?” but I pretended not to hear him), and saw that at the side of the house there was a large brewery. No brewing was going on in it, and none seemed to have gone on for a long long time.

A window was raised, and a clear voice demanded “What name?” To which my conductor replied, “Pumblechook.” The voice returned, “Quite right,” and the window was shut again, and a young lady came across the court-yard, with keys in her hand.

“This,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “is Pip.”

“This is Pip, is it?” returned the young lady, who was very pretty and seemed very proud; “come in, Pip.”

Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped him with the gate.

“Oh!” she said. “Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?”

“If Miss Havisham wished to see me,” returned Mr. Pumblechook, discomfited.

“Ah!” said the girl; “but you see she don’t.”

She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way, that Mr. Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled dignity, could not protest. But he eyed me severely – as if I had done anything to him! – and departed with the words reproachfully delivered: “Boy! Let your behaviour here be a credit unto them which brought you up by hand!” I was not free from apprehension that he would come back to propound through the gate, “And sixteen?” But he didn’t.

My young conductress locked the gate, and we went across the court-yard. It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in every crevice. The brewery buildings had a little lane of communication with it; and the wooden gates of that lane stood open, and all the brewery beyond, stood open, away to the high enclosing wall; and all was empty and disused. The cold wind seemed to blow colder there, than outside the gate; and it made a shrill noise in howling in and out at the open sides of the brewery, like the noise of wind in the rigging of a ship at sea.