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

Chapter XVII

I now fell into a regular routine of apprenticeship life, which was

varied beyond the limits of the village and the marshes, by no

more remarkable circumstance than the arrival of my birthday and my

paying another visit to Miss Havisham. I found Miss Sarah Pocket

still on duty at the gate; I found Miss Havisham just as I had left

her, and she spoke of Estella in the very same way, if not in the

very same words. The interview lasted but a few minutes, and she

gave me a guinea when I was going, and told me to come again on my

next birthday. I may mention at once that this became an annual

custom. I tried to decline taking the guinea on the first occasion,

but with no better effect than causing her to ask me very angrily,

if I expected more? Then, and after that, I took it.

So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the

darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table

glass, that I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped

Time in that mysterious place, and, while I and everything else

outside it grew older, it stood still. Daylight never entered the

house as to my thoughts and remembrances of it, any more than as to

the actual fact. It bewildered me, and under its influence I

continued at heart to hate my trade and to be ashamed of home.

Imperceptibly I became conscious of a change in Biddy, however. Her

shoes came up at the heel, her hair grew bright and neat, her hands

were always clean. She was not beautiful,—she was common, and

could not be like Estella,—but she was pleasant and wholesome and

sweet-tempered. She had not been with us more than a year (I

remember her being newly out of mourning at the time it struck me),

when I observed to myself one evening that she had curiously

thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that were very pretty and very

good.

It came of my lifting up my own eyes from a task I was poring at—

writing some passages from a book, to improve myself in two ways at

once by a sort of stratagem—and seeing Biddy observant of what I

was about. I laid down my pen, and Biddy stopped in her needlework

without laying it down.

“Biddy,” said I, “how do you manage it? Either I am very stupid, or

you are very clever.”

“What is it that I manage? I don’t know,” returned Biddy, smiling.

She managed our whole domestic life, and wonderfully too; but I did

not mean that, though that made what I did mean more surprising.

“How do you manage, Biddy,” said I, “to learn everything that I

learn, and always to keep up with me?” I was beginning to be rather

vain of my knowledge, for I spent my birthday guineas on it, and

set aside the greater part of my pocket-money for similar

investment; though I have no doubt, now, that the little I knew was

extremely dear at the price.

“I might as well ask you,” said Biddy, “how you manage?”

“No; because when I come in from the forge of a night, any one can

see me turning to at it. But you never turn to at it, Biddy.”

“I suppose I must catch it like a cough,” said Biddy, quietly;

and went on with her sewing.

Pursuing my idea as I leaned back in my wooden chair, and looked at

Biddy sewing away with her head on one side, I began to think her

rather an extraordinary girl. For I called to mind now, that she

was equally accomplished in the terms of our trade, and the names

of our different sorts of work, and our various tools. In short,

whatever I knew, Biddy knew. Theoretically, she was already as good

a blacksmith as I, or better.

“You are one of those, Biddy,” said I, “who make the most of every

chance. You never had a chance before you came here, and see how

improved you are!”

Biddy looked at me for an instant, and went on with her sewing. “I

was your first teacher though; wasn’t I?” said she, as she sewed.

“Biddy!” I exclaimed, in amazement. “Why, you are crying!”

“No I am not,” said Biddy, looking up and laughing. “What put that

in your head?”

What could have put it in my head but the glistening of a tear as

it dropped on her work? I sat silent, recalling what a drudge she

had been until Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt successfully overcame that

bad habit of living, so highly desirable to be got rid of by some

people. I recalled the hopeless circumstances by which she had been

surrounded in the miserable little shop and the miserable little

noisy evening school, with that miserable old bundle of

incompetence always to be dragged and shouldered. I reflected that

even in those untoward times there must have been latent in Biddy

what was now developing, for, in my first uneasiness and discontent

I had turned to her for help, as a matter of course. Biddy sat

quietly sewing, shedding no more tears, and while I looked at her

and thought about it all, it occurred to me that perhaps I had not

been sufficiently grateful to Biddy. I might have been too

reserved, and should have patronized her more (though I did not use

that precise word in my meditations) with my confidence.

“Yes, Biddy,” I observed, when I had done turning it over, “you

were my first teacher, and that at a time when we little thought of

ever being together like this, in this kitchen.”

“Ah, poor thing!” replied Biddy. It was like her

self-forgetfulness to transfer the remark to my sister, and to get

up and be busy about her, making her more comfortable; “that’s

sadly true!”

“Well!” said I, “we must talk together a little more, as we used to

do. And I must consult you a little more, as I used to do. Let us

have a quiet walk on the marshes next Sunday, Biddy, and a long

chat.”

My sister was never left alone now; but Joe more than readily

undertook the care of her on that Sunday afternoon, and Biddy and I

went out together. It was summer-time, and lovely weather. When we

had passed the village and the church and the churchyard, and were

out on the marshes and began to see the sails of the ships as they

sailed on, I began to combine Miss Havisham and Estella with the

prospect, in my usual way. When we came to the river-side and sat

down on the bank, with the water rippling at our feet, making it

all more quiet than it would have been without that sound, I

resolved that it was a good time and place for the admission of

Biddy into my inner confidence.

“Biddy,” said I, after binding her to secrecy, “I want to be a

gentleman.”

“O, I wouldn’t, if I was you!” she returned. “I don’t think it

would answer.”

“Biddy,” said I, with some severity, “I have particular reasons for

wanting to be a gentleman.”

“You know best, Pip; but don’t you think you are happier as you

are?”

“Biddy,” I exclaimed, impatiently, “I am not at all happy as I am.

I am disgusted with my calling and with my life. I have never taken

to either, since I was bound. Don’t be absurd.”

“Was I absurd?” said Biddy, quietly raising her eyebrows; “I am

sorry for that; I didn’t mean to be. I only want you to do well,

and to be comfortable.”

“Well, then, understand once for all that I never shall or can be

comfortable—or anything but miserable—there, Biddy!—unless I

can lead a very different sort of life from the life I lead now.”

“That’s a pity!” said Biddy, shaking her head with a sorrowful air.

Now, I too had so often thought it a pity, that, in the singular

kind of quarrel with myself