Tales from Dickens, Charles Dickens [best book club books .TXT] 📗
- Author: Charles Dickens
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She was ill, but he nursed her back to health. Then he went to Yarmouth to fetch Mrs. Gummidge, and they and the little Em'ly that had been found took passage for Australia, where they might forget the dark past and find happiness in a new life.
But before they sailed fate had brought to naught the villainous plot that had been woven by Uriah Heep about Agnes and her father. And the one whom they had most to thank for this was Mr. Micawber.
Heep had met Mr. Micawber once, when the latter, as usual, was in money difficulties, and, thinking to make a tool of him, had hired him for his clerk. Little by little Heep had then got the other into his debt, till Mr. Micawber saw no prospect before him but the debtors' prison.
Threatening him with this, Heep tried to compel him to do various bits of dirty and dishonest work, at which the other's soul revolted until at length he made up his mind to expose his employer. So, pretending obedience, Mr. Micawber wormed himself into all of the sneaking Heep's affairs, found out the evidence of his guilt, and finally taking all the books and papers from the office safe, sent for David and his friend Tommy Traddles and told them all he had discovered. They found it was by forgery that Heep had got Agnes's father into his power in the first place, and that among others whom he had robbed was David's aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood, whose fortune he had stolen.
David and Tommy Traddles sent for Miss Betsy and for Agnes and her father, and they faced Uriah all together. He tried to brazen it out, but when he saw the empty safe he knew that all was known. They told him the only way he could save himself from prison was by giving back the business to Agnes's father, just as it had been years before, when David had lived there, and by restoring to Miss Betsy Trotwood every cent he had robbed her of. This he did with no very good grace and with an especial curse for David, whom he seemed to blame for it all.
In reward for Mr. Micawber's good services, Miss Betsy and Agnes's father paid off all his debts and gave him money enough to take him and his family to Australia. They sailed in the same vessel that carried Mr. Peggotty and little Em'ly.
Before it sailed little Em'ly had written a letter to Ham, whose promised wife she had been before she ran away with Steerforth, begging his forgiveness, and this letter she had asked David to give him after they had gone. Accordingly one day he went to Yarmouth to do this.
That night a terrible storm arose. The wind was so strong that it uprooted trees and threw down chimneys and rolled waves mountain high on the sand where stood the old deserted house-boat of the Peggottys. Next morning David was awakened with the news that a Spanish ship had gone ashore and was fast going to pieces, and he ran to the beach, where all the town was gathered.
He could see the doomed vessel plainly where the surf broke over her. Her masts had snapped short off and at every wave she rolled and beat the sand as if she would pound herself to fragments. Several figures were clinging to the broken masts, and one by one the waves beat them off, and they went down for ever.
At length but one was left, and he held on so long that a shout of encouragement went up from the throng. At this Ham, the bravest and strongest of all the hardy boatmen there, tied a rope about his waist and plunged into the sea to try to save him. But it was not to be. The same huge wave that dashed the vessel to pieces threw the rescuer back on the sand, dead. The body of the man he had tried to save was washed ashore, too, and it was that of James Steerforth, who had so wronged little Em'ly!
So poor, great-souled Ham died, honest and faithful to the last, giving his life for the man who had injured him. And so, too, James Steerforth met his fate on the very spot where he had done such evil, for his corpse was found among the fragments of the old Peggotty house-boat, which the tempest tore down that night.
After this David went abroad and stayed three years. He lived in Switzerland, and wrote novels that were printed in London and made him famous there.
And now, alone, he had time to think of all that made up his past. He thought of Dora, his child-wife, and sorrowed for her, and of the Peggottys and little Em'ly; but most of all he found himself thinking of Agnes, who, throughout his youth, had seemed like his guiding star.
So one day he went back to England and told her, and asked her if she would marry him. And with her sweet face on his breast she whispered that she had loved him all her life!
David and Agnes lived long and happily, and their children had three guardians who loved them all—Miss Betsy Trotwood, David's old nurse, Peggotty, and white-haired Mr. Dick, who taught them to fly kites and thought them the greatest children in the world. Tommy Traddles, when he had become a famous lawyer, often visited them, and once, too, Mr. Peggotty, older, but still hale and strong, came back from Australia to tell them how he had prospered and grown rich, and had always his little Em'ly beside him, and how Mr. Micawber had ceased to owe everybody money and had become a magistrate, and many other things.
David had one thing, however, to tell Mr. Peggotty, and that was of a certain prisoner he had seen in one of the country's greatest prisons, sentenced for life for an attempt to rob the Bank of England, and whose name was—Uriah Heep.
GREAT EXPECTATIONSPublished 1860–1861
PIP AND THE CONVICT
In England, in a lonely village not far from London, there once lived a little orphan boy named Philip Pirrip, whom everybody called, for short, "Pip." His parents had died when he was a baby, and he had been brought up by his older sister, the wife of Joe Gargery, a blacksmith whose forge looked out across wide marshes and a river that flowed through them.
Joe, the blacksmith, was a fair-faced man with flaxen whiskers and very bright blue eyes. He was a mild, honest, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow, tender-hearted and kind to little Pip and yet a Hercules for strength.
Very different, indeed, was "Mrs. Joe," as everybody spoke of her. She was tall and bony and had black hair, a red skin and a continual habit of scolding. She may have loved Pip in her way, but that way was a very cross-grained one. She treated Joe, the big blacksmith, and Pip, the little boy, just alike, and they were both equally in dread of her. This made them quite like partners. Whenever Pip came into the house he used to look at Joe's fingers; if Joe crossed them that was a sign Mrs. Joe was cross and that Pip was to look out for himself.
Joe had an uncle named Pumblechook, who was a corn seller in the next town and a pompous old hypocrite. He had a way of standing Pip before him, rumpling up his hair and asking him hard questions out of the multiplication table. And whenever he told a story of any one who was ungrateful or wicked he would glower at Pip in a way that made him feel very uncomfortable.
Another who came as often and was almost as dismal to see was Wopsle, the clerk, who read the lesson in church every Sunday. He had an idea he would make a great actor and used to recite whole pages from Shakespeare when he could find any one to listen to him.
Worst of all was a workman of Joe's named Orlick. He was a loose-limbed, swarthy, slouching giant with a hangdog look. He used to tell Pip that the devil lived in a certain corner of the forge, and once in every seven years the fire had to be rekindled with a live boy. Orlick at heart disliked everybody—especially harmless little Pip—and often quarreled with Mrs. Joe.
Beside the blacksmith, the only one who understood Pip was a little girl named Biddy, about his own age and an orphan, too. She liked him and used to help him with his lessons at school.
But in spite of Joe and Biddy, Pip was sometimes so lonely and miserable that he would steal off alone to the village churchyard, where his father and mother lay buried, to cry.
One afternoon—it was the day before Christmas—Pip was more wretched than usual, and was sitting crying among the graves when suddenly a rough voice spoke behind him. "Keep still, you little imp!" it said, "or I'll cut your throat!" With the words a man rose up from behind a tombstone and seized him.
He was a fearful-looking man, dressed all in gray clothes, with a great iron band riveted on his leg. His shoes were torn, he had no hat and wore a ragged, dirty handkerchief tied around his head. He was soaked with water, caked with mud and limped and shivered as he walked. He set Pip on a tombstone and tilted him so far back that the church steeple seemed to turn a somersault, growling at him in a terrible voice.
Pip had never been so frightened in his life. With a trembling voice he begged his captor to spare him. The man asked him his name and where he lived, and told him he would let him go on one condition. He had to promise to come next morning at daybreak to a certain spot in the marshes and to bring a file and something to eat. And the man said if Pip did not do so, or if he told any one what he was going to do, he would catch him again and cut out his heart and eat it.
This terrible threat frightened poor little Pip more than ever. His voice shook so that he could hardly promise, and when the man set him down he ran home as fast as his legs would carry him.
The evening was a miserable one. Pip thought he would save his own supper for the man in case he should not be able to get into his sister's pantry, so instead of eating his bread and butter he slipped it down his trouser-leg.
Before long a great gun began to boom, and he asked Joe what it was. The blacksmith told him that in the river across the marshes were anchored some big hulks
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