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

terror, mine must have done so then. But,

perhaps, nobody’s ever did?

It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day,

with a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock. I

tried it with the load upon my leg (and that made me think afresh

of the man with the load on his leg), and found the tendency of

exercise to bring the bread and butter out at my ankle, quite

unmanageable. Happily I slipped away, and deposited that part of

my conscience in my garret bedroom.

“Hark!” said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking a final

warm in the chimney corner before being sent up to bed; “was that

great guns, Joe?”

“Ah!” said Joe. “There’s another conwict off.”

“What does that mean, Joe?” said I.

Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said,

snappishly, “Escaped. Escaped.” Administering the definition like

Tar-water.

While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework, I put

my mouth into the forms of saying to Joe, “What’s a convict?” Joe

put his mouth into the forms of returning such a highly elaborate

answer, that I could make out nothing of it but the single word

“Pip.”

“There was a conwict off last night,” said Joe, aloud, “after

sunset-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears

they’re firing warning of another.”

“Who’s firing?” said I.

“Drat that boy,” interposed my sister, frowning at me over her

work, “what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you’ll be

told no lies.”

It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should

be told lies by her even if I did ask questions. But she never was

polite unless there was company.

At this point Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by taking the

utmost pains to open his mouth very wide, and to put it into the

form of a word that looked to me like “sulks.” Therefore, I

naturally pointed to Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth into the form of

saying, “her?” But Joe wouldn’t hear of that, at all, and again

opened his mouth very wide, and shook the form of a most emphatic

word out of it. But I could make nothing of the word.

“Mrs. Joe,” said I, as a last resort, “I should like to know—if

you wouldn’t much mind—where the firing comes from?”

“Lord bless the boy!” exclaimed my sister, as if she didn’t quite

mean that but rather the contrary. “From the Hulks!”

“Oh-h!” said I, looking at Joe. “Hulks!”

Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, “Well, I told you

so.”

“And please, what’s Hulks?” said I.

“That’s the way with this boy!” exclaimed my sister, pointing me

out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. “Answer

him one question, and he’ll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are

prison-ships, right ‘cross th’ meshes.” We always used that name

for marshes, in our country.

“I wonder who’s put into prison-ships, and why they’re put there?”

said I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.

It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. “I tell you

what, young fellow,” said she, “I didn’t bring you up by hand to

badger people’s lives out. It would be blame to me and not praise,

if I had. People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and

because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they

always begin by asking questions. Now, you get along to bed!”

I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went

up stairs in the dark, with my head tingling,—from Mrs. Joe’s

thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last

words,—I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the

hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun

by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.

Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often thought

that few people know what secrecy there is in the young under

terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be

terror. I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart

and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the

iron leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful

promise had been extracted; I had no hope of deliverance through my

all-powerful sister, who repulsed me at every turn; I am afraid to

think of what I might have done on requirement, in the secrecy of

my terror.

If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself

drifting down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks; a

ghostly pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I

passed the gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be

hanged there at once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep,

even if I had been inclined, for I knew that at the first faint

dawn of morning I must rob the pantry. There was no doing it in the

night, for there was no getting a light by easy friction then; to

have got one I must have struck it out of flint and steel, and

have made a noise like the very pirate himself rattling his chains.

As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window was

shot with gray, I got up and went down stairs; every board upon the

way, and every crack in every board calling after me, “Stop

thief!” and “Get up, Mrs. Joe!” In the pantry, which was far more

abundantly supplied than usual, owing to the season, I was very

much alarmed by a hare hanging up by the heels, whom I rather

thought I caught when my back was half turned, winking. I had no

time for verification, no time for selection, no time for anything,

for I had no time to spare. I stole some bread, some rind of

cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I tied up in my

pocket-handkerchief with my last night’s slice), some brandy from a

stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle I had secretly

used for making that intoxicating fluid, Spanish-liquorice-water,

up in my room: diluting the stone bottle from a jug in the kitchen

cupboard), a meat bone with very little on it, and a beautiful

round compact pork pie. I was nearly going away without the pie,

but I was tempted to mount upon a shelf, to look what it was that

was put away so carefully in a covered earthen ware dish in a

corner, and I found it was the pie, and I took it in the hope that

it was not intended for early use, and would not be missed for some

time.

There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with the forge; I

unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe’s

tools. Then I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the

door at which I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it,

and ran for the misty marshes.