Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [top 10 best books of all time txt] 📗
- Author: Charles Dickens
- Performer: 0141439564
Book online «Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [top 10 best books of all time txt] 📗». Author Charles Dickens
confined stolidity of mind, that he could not discuss my prospects
without having me before him,—as it were, to operate upon,—and he
would drag me up from my stool (usually by the collar) where I was
quiet in a corner, and, putting me before the fire as if I were
going to be cooked, would begin by saying, “Now, Mum, here is this
boy! Here is this boy which you brought up by hand. Hold up your
head, boy, and be forever grateful unto them which so did do. Now,
Mum, with respections to this boy!” And then he would rumple my
hair the wrong way,—which from my earliest remembrance, as already
hinted, I have in my soul denied the right of any fellow-creature
to do,—and would hold me before him by the sleeve,—a spectacle of
imbecility only to be equalled by himself.
Then, he and my sister would pair off in such nonsensical
speculations about Miss Havisham, and about what she would do with
me and for me, that I used to want—quite painfully—to burst
into spiteful tears, fly at Pumblechook, and pummel him all over.
In these dialogues, my sister spoke to me as if she were morally
wrenching one of my teeth out at every reference; while Pumblechook
himself, self-constituted my patron, would sit supervising me with
a depreciatory eye, like the architect of my fortunes who thought
himself engaged on a very unremunerative job.
In these discussions, Joe bore no part. But he was often talked at,
while they were in progress, by reason of Mrs. Joe’s perceiving that
he was not favorable to my being taken from the forge. I was fully
old enough now to be apprenticed to Joe; and when Joe sat with the
poker on his knees thoughtfully raking out the ashes between the
lower bars, my sister would so distinctly construe that innocent
action into opposition on his part, that she would dive at him,
take the poker out of his hands, shake him, and put it away. There
was a most irritating end to every one of these debates. All in a
moment, with nothing to lead up to it, my sister would stop herself
in a yawn, and catching sight of me as it were incidentally, would
swoop upon me with, “Come! there’s enough of you! You get along to
bed; you’ve given trouble enough for one night, I hope!” As if I
had besought them as a favor to bother my life out.
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!”
I thought it best to hint, through the medium of a meditative look,
that this might be occasioned by circumstances over which I had no
control.
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 along with you.”
When I got home at night, and delivered this message for Joe, my
sister “went on the Rampage,” in a more alarming degree than at any
previous period. She asked me and Joe whether we supposed she was
door-mats under our feet, and how we dared to use her so, and what
company we graciously thought she was fit for? When she had
exhausted a torrent of such inquiries, she threw a candlestick at
Joe, burst into a loud sobbing, got out the dustpan,—which was
always a very bad sign,—put on her coarse apron, and began
cleaning up to a terrible extent. Not satisfied with a dry
cleaning, she took to a pail and scrubbing-brush, and cleaned us
out of house and home, so that we stood shivering in the back-yard.
It was ten o’clock at night before we ventured to creep in again,
and then she asked Joe why he hadn’t married a Negress Slave at
once? Joe offered no answer, poor fellow, but stood feeling his
whisker and looking dejectedly at me, as if he thought it really
might have been a better speculation.
It was a trial to my feelings, on the next day but one, to see Joe
arraying himself in his Sunday clothes to accompany me to Miss
Havisham’s. However, as he thought his court-suit necessary to the
occasion, it was not for me tell him that he looked far better in
his working-dress; the rather, because I knew he made himself so
dreadfully uncomfortable, entirely on my account, and that it was
for me he pulled up his shirt-collar so very high behind, that it
made the hair on the crown of his head stand up like a tuft of
feathers.
At breakfast-time my sister declared her intention of going to town
with us, and being left at Uncle Pumblechook’s and called for “when
we had done with our fine ladies”—a way of putting the case, from
which Joe appeared inclined to augur the worst. The forge was shut
up for the day, and Joe inscribed in chalk upon the door (as it was
his custom to do on the very rare occasions when he was not at
work) the monosyllable HOUT, accompanied by a sketch of an arrow
supposed to be flying in the direction he had taken.
We walked to town, my sister leading the way in a very large beaver
bonnet, and carrying a basket like the Great Seal of England in
plaited Straw, a pair of pattens, a spare shawl, and an umbrella,
though it was a fine bright day. I am not quite clear whether these
articles were carried penitentially or ostentatiously; but I
rather think they were displayed as articles of property,—much as
Cleopatra or any other sovereign lady on the Rampage might exhibit
her wealth in a pageant or procession.
When we came to Pumblechook’s, my sister bounced in and left us. As
it was almost noon, Joe and I held straight on to Miss Havisham’s
house. Estella opened the gate as usual, and, the moment she
appeared, Joe took his hat off and stood weighing it by the brim in
both his hands; as if he had some urgent reason in his mind for
being particular to half a quarter of an ounce.
Estella took no notice of either of us, but led us the way that I
knew so well. I followed next to her, and Joe came last. When I
looked back at Joe in the long passage, he was still weighing his
hat with the greatest care, and was coming after us in long strides
on the tips of his toes.
Estella told me we were both to go in, so I took Joe by the
coat-cuff and conducted him into Miss Havisham’s presence. She was
seated at her dressing-table, and looked round at us immediately.
“Oh!” said she to Joe. “You are the husband of the sister of this
boy?”
I could hardly have imagined dear old Joe looking so unlike himself
or so like some extraordinary bird; standing as he did
speechless, with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open
as if he wanted a worm.
“You are the husband,” repeated Miss Havisham, “of the sister of
this boy?”
It was very aggravating; but, throughout the interview, Joe
persisted in addressing Me instead of Miss Havisham.
“Which I meantersay, Pip,” Joe now observed in a manner that was at
once expressive of forcible argumentation, strict confidence, and
great politeness, “as I hup and married your sister, and I were at
the time what you might call (if you was anyways inclined) a single
man.”
“Well!” said Miss Havisham. “And you have reared the boy, with the
intention of taking him for your apprentice; is that so, Mr.
Gargery?”
“You know, Pip,” replied Joe, “as you and me were ever friends, and
it were looked for’ard to betwixt us, as being calc’lated to lead
to larks. Not but what, Pip, if you had ever made objections to the
business,—such as its being open to black and sut, or such-like,—
not but what they would have been attended to, don’t you see?”
“Has the boy,” said Miss Havisham, “ever made any objection? Does
he like the trade?”
“Which it is well beknown to yourself, Pip,” returned Joe,
strengthening his former mixture of argumentation, confidence, and
politeness, “that it were the wish of your own hart.” (I saw the
idea suddenly break upon him that he would adapt his epitaph to the
occasion, before he went on to say) “And there weren’t no objection
on your part, and Pip it were the great wish of your hart!”
It was quite in vain for me to endeavor to make him sensible that
he ought to speak to Miss Havisham. The more I made faces and
gestures to him to do it, the more confidential, argumentative, and
polite, he persisted in being to Me.
“Have you brought his indentures with you?” asked Miss Havisham.
“Well, Pip, you know,” replied Joe, as if that were a little
unreasonable, “you yourself see me put ‘em in my ‘at, and therefore
you know as they are here.” With which he took them out, and gave
them, not to Miss Havisham, but to me. I am afraid I was ashamed of
the dear good fellow,—I know I was ashamed of him,—when I saw
that Estella stood at the back of Miss Havisham’s chair, and that
her eyes laughed mischievously. I took the indentures out of his
hand and gave them to Miss Havisham.
“You expected,” said Miss Havisham, as she looked them over, “no
premium with the boy?”
“Joe!” I remonstrated, for he made no reply at all. “Why don’t you
answer—”
“Pip,” returned Joe, cutting me short as if he were hurt, “which I
meantersay that were not a question requiring a answer betwixt
yourself and me, and which you know the answer to be full well No.
You know it to be No, Pip, and wherefore should I say it?”
Miss Havisham glanced at him as if she understood what he really
was better than I had thought possible, seeing what he was there;
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,” said Joe, conveying to
me a sensation, first of burning and then of freezing, for I felt
as if that familiar expression were applied to Miss Havisham,—“and
now, old chap, may we do our duty! May you and me do our duty, both
on us, by one and
Comments (0)