Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [top 10 best books of all time txt] 📗

Chapter XV

As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s room, my

education under that preposterous female terminated. 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 of

literature were the opening lines,

When I went to Lunnon town sirs, Too rul loo rul Too rul loo rul

Wasn’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. In my hunger for information, I

made proposals to Mr. Wopsle to bestow some intellectual crumbs upon

me, with which he kindly complied. As it turned out, however, that

he only wanted me for a dramatic lay-figure, to be contradicted and

embraced and wept over and bullied and clutched and stabbed and

knocked about in a variety of ways, I soon declined that course of

instruction; though not until Mr. Wopsle in his poetic fury had

severely mauled me.

Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This statement

sounds so well, that I cannot in my conscience let it pass

unexplained. I wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he

might be worthier of my society and less open to Estella’s

reproach.

The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of study, and a

broken slate and a short piece of slate-pencil were our educational

implements: to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I never

knew Joe to remember anything from one Sunday to another, or to

acquire, under my tuition, any piece of information whatever. Yet

he would smoke his pipe at the Battery with a far more sagacious

air than anywhere else,—even with a learned air,—as if he

considered himself to be advancing immensely. Dear fellow, I hope

he did.

It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on the river

passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low,

looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing

on at the bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels

standing out to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow

thought of Miss Havisham and Estella; and whenever the light struck

aslant, afar off, upon a cloud or sail or green hillside or

water-line, it was just the same.—Miss Havisham and Estella and

the strange house and the strange life appeared to have something

to do with everything that was picturesque.

One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so plumed

himself on being “most awful dull,” that I had given him up for the

day, I lay on the earthwork for some time with my chin on my hand,

descrying traces of Miss Havisham and Estella all over the

prospect, in the sky and in the water, until at last I resolved to

mention a thought concerning them that had been much in my head.

“Joe,” said I; “don’t you think I ought to make Miss Havisham a

visit?”

“Well, Pip,” returned Joe, slowly considering. “What for?”

“What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?”

“There is some wisits p’r’aps,” said Joe, “as for ever remains

open to the question, Pip. But in regard to wisiting Miss Havisham.

She might think you wanted something,—expected something of her.”

“Don’t you think I might say that I did not, Joe?”

“You might, old chap,” said Joe. “And she might credit it.

Similarly she mightn’t.”

Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he pulled

hard at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it by repetition.

“You see, Pip,” Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that danger,

“Miss Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss Havisham

done the handsome thing by you, she called me back to say to me as

that were all.”

“Yes, Joe. I heard her.”

“ALL,” Joe repeated, very emphatically.

“Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her.”

“Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning were,—Make

a end on it!—As you was!—Me to the North, and you to the South!

—Keep in sunders!”

I had thought of that too, and it was very far from comforting to

me to find that he had thought of it; for it seemed to render it

more probable.

“But, Joe.”

“Yes, old chap.”

“Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, since the

day of my being bound, I have never thanked Miss Havisham, or asked

after her, or shown that I remember her.”

“That’s true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her out a set of

shoes all four round,—and which I meantersay as even a set of

shoes all four round might not be acceptable as a present, in a

total wacancy of hoofs—”

“I don’t mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I don’t mean a

present.”

But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head and must harp

upon it. “Or even,” said he, “if you was helped to knocking her up

a new chain for the front door,—or say a gross or two of

shark-headed screws for general use,—or some light fancy article,

such as a toasting-fork when she took her muffins,—or a gridiron

when she took a sprat or such like—”

“I don’t mean any present at all, Joe,” I interposed.

“Well,” said Joe, still harping on it as though I had particularly

pressed it, “if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn’t. No, I would not.

For what’s a door-chain when she’s got one always up? And

shark-headers is open to misrepresentations. And if it was a

toasting-fork, you’d go into brass and do yourself no credit. And

the oncommonest workman can’t show himself oncommon in a gridiron,—

for a gridiron IS a gridiron,” said Joe, steadfastly impressing it

upon me, as if he were endeavouring to rouse me from a fixed

delusion, “and you may haim at what you like, but a gridiron it

will come out, either by your leave or again your leave, and you

can’t help yourself—”

“My dear Joe,” I cried, in desperation, taking hold of his coat,

“don’t go on in that way. I never thought of making Miss Havisham

any present.”

“No, Pip,” Joe assented, as if he had been contending for that, all

along; “and what I say to you is, you are right, Pip.”

“Yes, Joe; but what I wanted to say, was, that as we are rather

slack just now, if you would give me a half-holiday tomorrow, I

think I would go up-town and make a call on Miss Est—Havisham.”

“Which her name,” said Joe, gravely, “ain’t Estavisham, Pip, unless

she have been rechris’ened.”

“I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine. What do you think of

it, Joe?”

In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well of it, he thought well

of it. But, he was particular in stipulating that if I were not

received with cordiality, or if I were not encouraged to repeat my

visit as a visit which had no ulterior object but was simply one of

gratitude for a favor received, then this experimental trip should

have no successor. By these conditions I promised to abide.

Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name was Orlick.

He pretended that his Christian name was Dolge,—a clear

Impossibility,—but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition

that I believe him to have been the prey of no delusion in this

particular, but wilfully to have imposed that name upon the village

as an affront to its understanding. He was a broadshouldered

loose-limbed swarthy fellow of great strength, never in a hurry,

and always slouching. He never even seemed to come to his work on

purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere accident; and when he

went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or went away at

night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the Wandering Jew, as if

he had no idea where he was going and no intention of ever coming

back. He lodged at a sluice-keeper’s out on the marshes, and on

working-days would come slouching from his hermitage, with his

hands in his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round

his neck and dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day

on the sluice-gates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always

slouched, locomotively, with his eyes on the ground; and, when

accosted or otherwise required to raise them, he looked up in a

half-resentful, half-puzzled way, as though the only thought he

ever had was, that it was rather an odd and injurious fact that he

should