Bab Bab 9 · When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all about Miss

. When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all about Miss

Havisham’s, and asked a number of questions. And I soon found myself

getting heavily bumped from behind in the nape of the neck and the

small of the back, and having my face ignominiously shoved against the

kitchen wall, because I did not answer those questions at sufficient

length.

If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of other

young people to anything like the extent to which it used to be hidden

in mine,—which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason to

suspect myself of having been a monstrosity,—it is the key to many

reservations. I felt convinced that if I described Miss Havisham’s as

my eyes had seen it, I should not be understood. Not only that, but I

felt convinced that Miss Havisham too would not be understood; and

although she was perfectly incomprehensible to me, I entertained an

impression that there would be something coarse and treacherous in my

dragging her as she really was (to say nothing of Miss Estella) before

the contemplation of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I

could, and had my face shoved against the kitchen wall.

The worst of it was that that bullying old Pumblechook, preyed upon by

a devouring curiosity to be informed of all I had seen and heard, came

gaping over in his chaise-cart at tea-time, to have the details

divulged to him. And the mere sight of the torment, with his fishy eyes

and mouth open, his sandy hair inquisitively on end, and his waistcoat

heaving with windy arithmetic, made me vicious in my reticence.

“Well, boy,” Uncle Pumblechook began, as soon as he was seated in the

chair of honour by the fire. “How did you get on up town?”

I answered, “Pretty well, sir,” and my sister shook her fist at me.

“Pretty well?” Mr. Pumblechook repeated. “Pretty well is no answer.

Tell us what you mean by pretty well, boy?”

Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy

perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on my forehead, my

obstinacy was adamantine. I reflected for some time, and then answered

as if I had discovered a new idea, “I mean pretty well.”

My sister with an exclamation of impatience was going to fly at me,—I

had no shadow of defence, for Joe was busy in the forge,—when Mr.

Pumblechook interposed with “No! Don’t lose your temper. Leave this lad

to me, ma’am; leave this lad to me.” Mr. Pumblechook then turned me

towards him, as if he were going to cut my hair, and said,—

“First (to get our thoughts in order): Forty-three pence?”

I calculated the consequences of replying “Four Hundred Pound,” and

finding them against me, went as near the answer as I could—which was

somewhere about eightpence off. Mr. Pumblechook then put me through my

pence-table from “twelve pence make one shilling,” up to “forty pence

make three and fourpence,” and then triumphantly demanded, as if he had

done for me, “_Now!_ How much is forty-three pence?” To which I

replied, after a long interval of reflection, “I don’t know.” And I was

so aggravated that I almost doubt if I did know.

Mr. Pumblechook worked his head like a screw to screw it out of me, and

said, “Is forty-three pence seven and sixpence three fardens, for

instance?”

“Yes!” said I. And although my sister instantly boxed my ears, it was

highly gratifying to me to see that the answer spoilt his joke, and

brought him to a dead stop.

“Boy! What like is Miss Havisham?” Mr. Pumblechook began again when he

had recovered; folding his arms tight on his chest and applying the

screw.

“Very tall and dark,” I told him.

“Is she, uncle?” asked my sister.

Mr. Pumblechook winked assent; from which I at once inferred that he

had never seen Miss Havisham, for she was nothing of the kind.

“Good!” said Mr. Pumblechook conceitedly. (“This is the way to have

him! We are beginning to hold our own, I think, Mum?”)

“I am sure, uncle,” returned Mrs. Joe, “I wish you had him always; you

know so well how to deal with him.”

“Now, boy! What was she a-doing of, when you went in today?” asked Mr.

Pumblechook.

“She was sitting,” I answered, “in a black velvet coach.”

Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another—as they well

might—and both repeated, “In a black velvet coach?”

“Yes,” said I. “And Miss Estella—that’s her niece, I think—handed her

in cake and wine at the coach-window, on a gold plate. And we all had

cake and wine on gold plates. And I got up behind the coach to eat

mine, because she told me to.”

“Was anybody else there?” asked Mr. Pumblechook.

“Four dogs,” said I.

“Large or small?”

“Immense,” said I. “And they fought for veal-cutlets out of a silver

basket.”

Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another again, in utter

amazement. I was perfectly frantic,—a reckless witness under the

torture,—and would have told them anything.

“Where _was_ this coach, in the name of gracious?” asked my sister.

“In Miss Havisham’s room.” They stared again. “But there weren’t any

horses to it.” I added this saving clause, in the moment of rejecting

four richly caparisoned coursers which I had had wild thoughts of

harnessing.

“Can this be possible, uncle?” asked Mrs. Joe. “What can the boy mean?”

“I’ll tell you, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “My opinion is, it’s a

sedan-chair. She’s flighty, you know,—very flighty,—quite flighty

enough to pass her days in a sedan-chair.”

“Did you ever see her in it, uncle?” asked Mrs. Joe.

“How could I,” he returned, forced to the admission, “when I never see

her in my life? Never clapped eyes upon her!”

“Goodness, uncle! And yet you have spoken to her?”

“Why, don’t you know,” said Mr. Pumblechook, testily, “that when I have

been there, I have been took up to the outside of her door, and the

door has stood ajar, and she has spoke to me that way. Don’t say you

don’t know _that_, Mum. Howsever, the boy went there to play. What did

you play at, boy?”

“We played with flags,” I said. (I beg to observe that I think of

myself with amazement, when I recall the lies I told on this occasion.)

“Flags!” echoed my sister.

“Yes,” said I. “Estella waved a blue flag, and I waved a red one, and

Miss Havisham waved one sprinkled all over with little gold stars, out

at the coach-window. And then we all waved our swords and hurrahed.”

“Swords!” repeated my sister. “Where did you get swords from?”

“Out of a cupboard,” said I. “And I saw pistols in it,—and jam,—and

pills. And there was no daylight in the room, but it was all lighted up

with candles.”

“That’s true, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook, with a grave nod. “That’s the

state of the case, for that much I’ve seen myself.” And then they both

stared at me, and I, with an obtrusive show of artlessness on my

countenance, stared at them, and plaited the right leg of my trousers

with my right hand.

If they had asked me any more questions, I should undoubtedly have

betrayed myself, for I was even then on the point of mentioning that

there was a balloon in the yard, and should have hazarded the statement

but for my invention being divided between that phenomenon and a bear

in the brewery. They were so much occupied, however, in discussing the

marvels I had already presented for their consideration, that I

escaped. The subject still held them when Joe came in from his work to

have a cup of tea. To whom my sister, more for the relief of her own

mind than for the gratification of his, related my pretended

experiences.

Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes and roll them all round the

kitchen in helpless amazement, I was overtaken by penitence; but only

as regarded him,—not in the least as regarded the other two. Towards

Joe, and Joe only, I considered myself a young monster, while they sat

debating what results would come to me from Miss Havisham’s

acquaintance and favour. They had no doubt that Miss Havisham would “do

something” for me; their doubts related to the form that something

would take. My sister stood out for “property.” Mr. Pumblechook was in

favour of a handsome premium for binding me apprentice to some genteel

trade,—say, the corn and seed trade, for instance. Joe fell into the

deepest disgrace with both, for offering the bright suggestion that I

might only be presented with one of the dogs who had fought for the

veal-cutlets. “If a fool’s head can’t express better opinions than

that,” said my sister, “and you have got any work to do, you had better

go and do it.” So he went.

After Mr. Pumblechook had driven off, and when my sister was washing

up, I stole into the forge to Joe, and remained by him until he had

done for the night. Then I said, “Before the fire goes out, Joe, I

should like to tell you something.”

“Should you, Pip?” said Joe, drawing his shoeing-stool near the forge.

“Then tell us. What is it, Pip?”

“Joe,” said I, taking hold of his rolled-up shirt sleeve, and twisting

it between my finger and thumb, “you remember all that about Miss

Havisham’s?”

“Remember?” said Joe. “I believe you! Wonderful!”

“It’s a terrible thing, Joe; it ain’t true.”

“What are you telling of, Pip?” cried Joe, falling back in the greatest

amazement. “You don’t mean to say it’s—”

“Yes I do; it’s lies, Joe.”

“But not all of it? Why sure you don’t mean to say, Pip, that there was

no black welwet co—eh?” For, I stood shaking my head. “But at least

there was dogs, Pip? Come, Pip,” said Joe, persuasively, “if there

warn’t no weal-cutlets, at least there was dogs?”

“No, Joe.”

“A dog?” said Joe. “A puppy? Come?”

“No, Joe, there was nothing at all of the kind.”

As I fixed my eyes hopelessly on Joe, Joe contemplated me in dismay.

“Pip, old chap! This won’t do, old fellow! I say! Where do you expect

to go to?”

“It’s terrible, Joe; ain’t it?”

“Terrible?” cried Joe. “Awful! What possessed you?”

“I don’t know what possessed me, Joe,” I replied, letting his shirt

sleeve go, and sitting down in the ashes at his feet, hanging my head;

“but I wish you hadn’t taught me to call Knaves at cards Jacks; and I

wish my boots weren’t so thick nor my hands so coarse.”

And then I told Joe that I felt very miserable, and that I hadn’t been

able to explain myself to Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, who were so rude to

me, and that there had been a beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham’s

who was dreadfully proud, and that she had said I was common, and that

I knew I was common, and that I wished I was not common, and that the

lies had come of it somehow, though I didn’t know how.

This was a case of metaphysics, at least as difficult for Joe to deal

with as for me. But Joe took the case altogether out of the region of

metaphysics, and by that means vanquished it.

“There’s one thing you may be sure of, Pip,” said Joe, after some

rumination, “namely, that lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn’t

ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to

the same. Don’t you tell no more of ’em, Pip. _That_ ain’t the way to

get out of being common, old chap. And as to being common, I don’t make

it out at all clear. You are oncommon in some things. You’re oncommon

small. Likewise you’re a oncommon scholar.”

“No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe.”

“Why, see what a letter you wrote last night! Wrote in print even! I’ve

seen letters—Ah! and from gentlefolks!—that I’ll swear weren’t wrote in

print,” said Joe.

“I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You think much of me. It’s only

that.”

“Well, Pip,” said Joe, “be it so or be it son’t, you must be a common

scholar afore you can be a oncommon one, I should hope! The king upon

his throne, with his crown upon his ed, can’t sit and write his acts of

Parliament in print, without having begun, when he were a unpromoted

Prince, with the alphabet.—Ah!” added Joe, with a shake of the head

that was full of meaning, “and begun at A too, and worked his way to Z.

And _I_ know what that is to do, though I can’t say I’ve exactly done

it.”

There was some hope in this piece of wisdom, and it rather encouraged

me.

“Whether common ones as to callings and earnings,” pursued Joe,

reflectively, “mightn’t be the better of continuing for to keep company

with common ones, instead of going out to play with oncommon

ones,—which reminds me to hope that there were a flag, perhaps?”

“No, Joe.”

“(I’m sorry there weren’t a flag, Pip). Whether that might be or

mightn’t be, is a thing as can’t be looked into now, without putting

your sister on the Rampage; and that’s a thing not to be thought of as

being done intentional. Lookee here, Pip, at what is said to you by a

true friend. Which this to you the true friend say. If you can’t get to

be oncommon through going straight, you’ll never get to do it through

going crooked. So don’t tell no more on ’em, Pip, and live well and die

happy.”

“You are not angry with me, Joe?”

“No, old chap. But bearing in mind that them were which I meantersay of

a stunning and outdacious sort,—alluding to them which bordered on

weal-cutlets and dog-fighting,—a sincere well-wisher would adwise, Pip,

their being dropped into your meditations, when you go upstairs to bed.

That’s all, old chap, and don’t never do it no more.”

When I got up to my little room and said my prayers, I did not forget

Joe’s recommendation, and yet my young mind was in that disturbed and

unthankful state, that I thought long after I laid me down, how common

Estella would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith; how thick his boots, and

how coarse his hands. I thought how Joe and my sister were then sitting

in the kitchen, and how I had come up to bed from the kitchen, and how

Miss Havisham and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far above

the level of such common doings. I fell asleep recalling what I “used

to do” when I was at Miss Havisham’s; as though I had been there weeks

or months, instead of hours; and as though it were quite an old subject

of remembrance, instead of one that had arisen only that day.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it

is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it,

and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read

this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of

thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the

formation of the first link on one memorable day.