บทที่ บทที่ 10 · The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I woke,

. The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I woke,

that the best step I could take towards making myself uncommon was to

get out of Biddy everything she knew. In pursuance of this luminous

conception I mentioned to Biddy when I went to Mr. Wopsle’s

great-aunt’s at night, that I had a particular reason for wishing to

get on in life, and that I should feel very much obliged to her if she

would impart all her learning to me. Biddy, who was the most obliging

of girls, immediately said she would, and indeed began to carry out her

promise within five minutes.

The Educational scheme or Course established by Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt

may be resolved into the following synopsis. The pupils ate apples and

put straws down one another’s backs, until Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt

collected her energies, and made an indiscriminate totter at them with

a birch-rod. After receiving the charge with every mark of derision,

the pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand

to hand. The book had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a

little spelling,—that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this

volume began to circulate, Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt fell into a state of

coma, arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils

then entered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the

subject of Boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the

hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasted until Biddy made a

rush at them and distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped as if they

had been unskilfully cut off the chump end of something), more

illegibly printed at the best than any curiosities of literature I have

since met with, speckled all over with ironmould, and having various

specimens of the insect world smashed between their leaves. This part

of the Course was usually lightened by several single combats between

Biddy and refractory students. When the fights were over, Biddy gave

out the number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we could,—or

what we couldn’t—in a frightful chorus; Biddy leading with a high,

shrill, monotonous voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or

reverence for, what we were reading about. When this horrible din had

lasted a certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt,

who staggered at a boy fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was

understood to terminate the Course for the evening, and we emerged into

the air with shrieks of intellectual victory. It is fair to remark that

there was no prohibition against any pupil’s entertaining himself with

a slate or even with the ink (when there was any), but that it was not

easy to pursue that branch of study in the winter season, on account of

the little general shop in which the classes were holden—and which was

also Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s sitting-room and bedchamber—being but

faintly illuminated through the agency of one low-spirited dip-candle

and no snuffers.

It appeared to me that it would take time to become uncommon, under

these circumstances: nevertheless, I resolved to try it, and that very

evening Biddy entered on our special agreement, by imparting some

information from her little catalogue of Prices, under the head of

moist sugar, and lending me, to copy at home, a large old English D

which she had imitated from the heading of some newspaper, and which I

supposed, until she told me what it was, to be a design for a buckle.

Of course there was a public-house in the village, and of course Joe

liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I had received strict orders

from my sister to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen, that

evening, on my way from school, and bring him home at my peril. To the

Three Jolly Bargemen, therefore, I directed my steps.

There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk

scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to

be never paid off. They had been there ever since I could remember, and

had grown more than I had. But there was a quantity of chalk about our

country, and perhaps the people neglected no opportunity of turning it

to account.

It being Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather grimly at

these records; but as my business was with Joe and not with him, I

merely wished him good evening, and passed into the common room at the

end of the passage, where there was a bright large kitchen fire, and

where Joe was smoking his pipe in company with Mr. Wopsle and a

stranger. Joe greeted me as usual with “Halloa, Pip, old chap!” and the

moment he said that, the stranger turned his head and looked at me.

He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen before. His head was

all on one side, and one of his eyes was half shut up, as if he were

taking aim at something with an invisible gun. He had a pipe in his

mouth, and he took it out, and, after slowly blowing all his smoke away

and looking hard at me all the time, nodded. So, I nodded, and then he

nodded again, and made room on the settle beside him that I might sit

down there.

But as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered that place of

resort, I said “No, thank you, sir,” and fell into the space Joe made

for me on the opposite settle. The strange man, after glancing at Joe,

and seeing that his attention was otherwise engaged, nodded to me again

when I had taken my seat, and then rubbed his leg—in a very odd way, as

it struck me.

“You was saying,” said the strange man, turning to Joe, “that you was a

blacksmith.”

“Yes. I said it, you know,” said Joe.

“What’ll you drink, Mr.—? You didn’t mention your name, by the bye.”

Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him by it. “What’ll

you drink, Mr. Gargery? At my expense? To top up with?”

“Well,” said Joe, “to tell you the truth, I ain’t much in the habit of

drinking at anybody’s expense but my own.”

“Habit? No,” returned the stranger, “but once and away, and on a

Saturday night too. Come! Put a name to it, Mr. Gargery.”

“I wouldn’t wish to be stiff company,” said Joe. “Rum.”

“Rum,” repeated the stranger. “And will the other gentleman originate a

sentiment.”

“Rum,” said Mr. Wopsle.

“Three Rums!” cried the stranger, calling to the landlord. “Glasses

round!”

“This other gentleman,” observed Joe, by way of introducing Mr. Wopsle,

“is a gentleman that you would like to hear give it out. Our clerk at

church.”

“Aha!” said the stranger, quickly, and cocking his eye at me. “The

lonely church, right out on the marshes, with graves round it!”

“That’s it,” said Joe.

The stranger, with a comfortable kind of grunt over his pipe, put his

legs up on the settle that he had to himself. He wore a flapping

broad-brimmed traveller’s hat, and under it a handkerchief tied over

his head in the manner of a cap: so that he showed no hair. As he

looked at the fire, I thought I saw a cunning expression, followed by a

half-laugh, come into his face.

“I am not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but it seems a

solitary country towards the river.”

“Most marshes is solitary,” said Joe.

“No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gypsies, now, or tramps, or

vagrants of any sort, out there?”

“No,” said Joe; “none but a runaway convict now and then. And we don’t

find _them_, easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle?”

Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of old discomfiture, assented;

but not warmly.

“Seems you have been out after such?” asked the stranger.

“Once,” returned Joe. “Not that we wanted to take them, you understand;

we went out as lookers on; me, and Mr. Wopsle, and Pip. Didn’t us,

Pip?”

“Yes, Joe.”

The stranger looked at me again,—still cocking his eye, as if he were

expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gun,—and said, “He’s a

likely young parcel of bones that. What is it you call him?”

“Pip,” said Joe.

“Christened Pip?”

“No, not christened Pip.”

“Surname Pip?”

“No,” said Joe, “it’s a kind of family name what he gave himself when a

infant, and is called by.”

“Son of yours?”

“Well,” said Joe, meditatively, not, of course, that it could be in

anywise necessary to consider about it, but because it was the way at

the Jolly Bargemen to seem to consider deeply about everything that was

discussed over pipes,—“well—no. No, he ain’t.”

“Nevvy?” said the strange man.

“Well,” said Joe, with the same appearance of profound cogitation, “he

is not—no, not to deceive you, he is _not_—my nevvy.”

“What the Blue Blazes is he?” asked the stranger. Which appeared to me

to be an inquiry of unnecessary strength.

Mr. Wopsle struck in upon that; as one who knew all about

relationships, having professional occasion to bear in mind what female

relations a man might not marry; and expounded the ties between me and

Joe. Having his hand in, Mr. Wopsle finished off with a most

terrifically snarling passage from Richard the Third, and seemed to

think he had done quite enough to account for it when he added, “—as

the poet says.”

And here I may remark that when Mr. Wopsle referred to me, he

considered it a necessary part of such reference to rumple my hair and

poke it into my eyes. I cannot conceive why everybody of his standing

who visited at our house should always have put me through the same

inflammatory process under similar circumstances. Yet I do not call to

mind that I was ever in my earlier youth the subject of remark in our

social family circle, but some large-handed person took some such

ophthalmic steps to patronise me.

All this while, the strange man looked at nobody but me, and looked at

me as if he were determined to have a shot at me at last, and bring me

down. But he said nothing after offering his Blue Blazes observation,

until the glasses of rum and water were brought; and then he made his

shot, and a most extraordinary shot it was.

It was not a verbal remark, but a proceeding in dumb-show, and was

pointedly addressed to me. He stirred his rum and water pointedly at

me, and he tasted his rum and water pointedly at me. And he stirred it

and he tasted it; not with a spoon that was brought to him, but _with a

file_.

He did this so that nobody but I saw the file; and when he had done it

he wiped the file and put it in a breast-pocket. I knew it to be Joe’s

file, and I knew that he knew my convict, the moment I saw the

instrument. I sat gazing at him, spell-bound. But he now reclined on

his settle, taking very little notice of me, and talking principally

about turnips.

There was a delicious sense of cleaning-up and making a quiet pause

before going on in life afresh, in our village on Saturday nights,

which stimulated Joe to dare to stay out half an hour longer on

Saturdays than at other times. The half-hour and the rum and water

running out together, Joe got up to go, and took me by the hand.

“Stop half a moment, Mr. Gargery,” said the strange man. “I think I’ve

got a bright new shilling somewhere in my pocket, and if I have, the

boy shall have it.”

He looked it out from a handful of small change, folded it in some

crumpled paper, and gave it to me. “Yours!” said he. “Mind! Your own.”

I thanked him, staring at him far beyond the bounds of good manners,

and holding tight to Joe. He gave Joe good-night, and he gave Mr.

Wopsle good-night (who went out with us), and he gave me only a look

with his aiming eye,—no, not a look, for he shut it up, but wonders may

be done with an eye by hiding it.

On the way home, if I had been in a humour for talking, the talk must

have been all on my side, for Mr. Wopsle parted from us at the door of

the Jolly Bargemen, and Joe went all the way home with his mouth wide

open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible. But I was in a

manner stupefied by this turning up of my old misdeed and old

acquaintance, and could think of nothing else.

My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented ourselves in

the kitchen, and Joe was encouraged by that unusual circumstance to

tell her about the bright shilling. “A bad un, I’ll be bound,” said

Mrs. Joe triumphantly, “or he wouldn’t have given it to the boy! Let’s

look at it.”

I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good one. “But what’s

this?” said Mrs. Joe, throwing down the shilling and catching up the

paper. “Two One-Pound notes?”

Nothing less than two fat sweltering one-pound notes that seemed to

have been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all the cattle-markets

in the county. Joe caught up his hat again, and ran with them to the

Jolly Bargemen to restore them to their owner. While he was gone, I sat

down on my usual stool and looked vacantly at my sister, feeling pretty

sure that the man would not be there.

Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was gone, but that he,

Joe, had left word at the Three Jolly Bargemen concerning the notes.

Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper, and put them under

some dried rose-leaves in an ornamental teapot on the top of a press in

the state parlour. There they remained, a nightmare to me, many and

many a night and day.

I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking of the

strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of the

guiltily coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms of

conspiracy with convicts,—a feature in my low career that I had

previously forgotten. I was haunted by the file too. A dread possessed

me that when I least expected it, the file would reappear. I coaxed

myself to sleep by thinking of Miss Havisham’s, next Wednesday; and in

my sleep I saw the file coming at me out of a door, without seeing who

held it, and I screamed myself awake.