Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [top 10 best books of all time txt] 📗
- Author: Charles Dickens
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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 ain’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 serious 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
shortcomings.”
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.
“However,” 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 forefoot 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 tonight of lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I
looked at the stars, and considered how awful if 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 ain’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 afire?”
“—Which some individual,” 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 come to
know Pip!”
“Noodle!” cried my sister. “Who said she knew him?”
“—Which some individual,” 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 tonight, and to take him with
his own hands to Miss Havisham’s tomorrow 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 forever grateful to all
friends, but especially unto them which brought you up by hand!”
“Good-bye, Joe!”
“God bless you, Pip, old chap!”
I had never parted from him before, and what with my feelings and
what with soapsuds, 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.
Mr. Pumblechook’s premises in the High Street of the market town,
were of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of
a cornchandler 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 flavor about the corduroys, so much in
the nature of seeds, and a general air and flavor 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 coachmaker, 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 watchmaker, always
poring over a little desk with a magnifying-glass at his eye, and
always inspected by a group of 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 parlor
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
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