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

I sometimes used to wonder whether it was

possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap.

She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron,

fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square

impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles.

She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach

against Joe, that she wore this apron so much. Though I really see

no reason why she should have worn it at all; or why, if she did

wear it at all, she should not have taken it off, every day of her

life.

Joe’s forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many

of the dwellings in our country were,—most of them, at that time.

When I ran home from the churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe

was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being fellow-sufferers,

and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me,

the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him

opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner.

“Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And

she’s out now, making it a baker’s dozen.”

“Is she?”

“Yes, Pip,” said Joe; “and what’s worse, she’s got Tickler with

her.”

At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my

waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at the

fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by

collision with my tickled frame.

“She sot down,” said Joe, “and she got up, and she made a grab at

Tickler, and she Rampaged out. That’s what she did,” said Joe,

slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and

looking at it; “she Rampaged out, Pip.”

“Has she been gone long, Joe?” I always treated him as a larger

species of child, and as no more than my equal.

“Well,” said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, “she’s been on

the Rampage, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She’s a

coming! Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel

betwixt you.”

I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open,

and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the

cause, and applied Tickler to its further investigation. She

concluded by throwing me—I often served as a connubial missile—

at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into

the chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great leg.

“Where have you been, you young monkey?” said Mrs. Joe, stamping her

foot. “Tell me directly what you’ve been doing to wear me away with

fret and fright and worrit, or I’d have you out of that corner if

you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys.”

“I have only been to the churchyard,” said I, from my stool, crying

and rubbing myself.

“Churchyard!” repeated my sister. “If it warn’t for me you’d have

been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who brought you

up by hand?”

“You did,” said I.

“And why did I do it, I should like to know?” exclaimed my sister.

I whimpered, “I don’t know.”

“I don’t!” said my sister. “I’d never do it again! I know that. I

may truly say I’ve never had this apron of mine off since born you

were. It’s bad enough to be a blacksmith’s wife (and him a Gargery)

without being your mother.”

My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsolately

at the fire. For the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed

leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the dreadful

pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those sheltering

premises, rose before me in the avenging coals.

“Hah!” said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. “Churchyard,

indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two.” One of us,

by the by, had not said it at all. “You’ll drive me to the

churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and O, a pr-r-recious

pair you’d be without me!”

As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at me

over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself up, and

calculating what kind of pair we practically should make, under the

grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After that, he sat feeling his

right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about

with his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times.

My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread and butter for

us, that never varied. First, with her left hand she jammed the

loaf hard and fast against her bib,—where it sometimes got a pin

into it, and sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got into our

mouths. Then she took some butter (not too much) on a knife and

spread it on the loaf, in an apothecary kind of way, as if she were

making a plaster,—using both sides of the knife with a slapping

dexterity, and trimming and moulding the butter off round the

crust. Then, she gave the knife a final smart wipe on the edge of

the plaster, and then sawed a very thick round off the loaf: which

she finally, before separating from the loaf, hewed into two

halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other.

On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my

slice. I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dreadful

acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young man. I

knew Mrs. Joe’s housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that

my larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe.

Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of bread and butter down the

leg of my trousers.

The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this

purpose I found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to make up

my mind to leap from the top of a high house, or plunge into a

great depth of water. And it was made the more difficult by the

unconscious Joe. In our already-mentioned freemasonry as

fellow-sufferers, and in his good-natured companionship with me, it

was our evening habit to compare the way we bit through our slices,

by silently holding them up to each other’s admiration now and then,

—which stimulated us to new exertions. Tonight, Joe several times

invited me, by the display of his fast diminishing slice, to enter

upon our usual friendly competition; but he found me, each time,

with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my untouched

bread and butter on the other. At last, I desperately considered

that the thing I contemplated must be done, and that it had best be

done in the least improbable manner consistent with the

circumstances. I took advantage of a moment when Joe had just

looked at me, and got my bread and butter down my leg.

Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be my

loss of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice,

which he didn’t seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth much

longer than usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after all

gulped it down like a pill. He was about to take another bite, and

had just got his head on one side for a good purchase on it, when

his eye fell on me, and he saw that my bread and butter was gone.

The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the

threshold of his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape

my sister’s observation.

“What’s the matter now?” said she, smartly, as she put down her

cup.

“I say, you know!” muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in very

serious remonstrance. “Pip, old chap! You’ll do yourself a

mischief. It’ll stick somewhere. You can’t have chawed it, Pip.”

“What’s the matter now?” repeated my sister, more sharply than

before.

“If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I’d recommend you to do

it,” said Joe, all aghast. “Manners is manners, but still your

elth’s your elth.”

By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe,

and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little

while against the wall behind him, while I sat in the corner,

looking guiltily on.

“Now, perhaps you’ll mention what’s the matter,” said my sister,

out of breath, “you staring great stuck pig.”

Joe looked at her in a helpless way, then took a helpless bite, and

looked at me again.

“You know, Pip,” said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in his

cheek, and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two were quite

alone, “you and me is always friends, and I’d be the last to tell

upon you, any time. But such a—” he moved his chair and looked

about the floor between us, and then again at me—“such a most

oncommon Bolt as that!”

“Been bolting his food, has he?” cried my sister.

“You know, old chap,” said Joe, looking at me, and not at Mrs. Joe,

with his bite still in his cheek, “I Bolted, myself, when I was

your age—frequent—and as a boy I’ve been among a many Bolters;

but I never see your Bolting equal yet, Pip, and it’s a mercy you

ain’t Bolted dead.”

My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair, saying

nothing more than the awful words, “You come along and be dosed.”

Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a fine

medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard;

having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At

the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as

a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling

like a new fence. On this particular evening the urgency of my case

demanded a pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat,

for my greater comfort, while Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm,

as a boot would be held in a bootjack. Joe got off with half a

pint; but was made to swallow that (much to his disturbance, as he

sat slowly munching and meditating before the fire), “because he had

had a turn.” Judging from myself, I should say he certainly had a

turn afterwards, if he had had none before.

Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy; but

when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with

another secret burden down the leg of his trousers, it is (as I can

testify) a great punishment. The guilty knowledge that I was going

to rob Mrs. Joe—I never thought I was going to rob Joe, for I

never thought of any of the housekeeping property as his—united

to the necessity of always keeping one hand on my bread and butter

as I sat, or when I was ordered about the kitchen on any small

errand, almost drove me out of my mind. Then, as the marsh winds

made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the voice outside,

of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn me to secrecy,

declaring that he couldn’t and wouldn’t starve until tomorrow, but

must be fed now. At other times, I thought, What if the young man

who was with so much difficulty restrained from imbruing his hands

in me should yield to a constitutional impatience, or should

mistake the time, and should think himself accredited to my heart

and liver tonight, instead of tomorrow! If ever anybody’s hair

stood on end with