Chương Chương 15 · As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s room, my

. As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s room, my

education under that preposterous female terminated. Not, however,

until Biddy had imparted to me everything she knew, from the little

catalogue of prices, to a comic song she had once bought for a

half-penny. Although the only coherent part of the latter piece of

literature were the opening lines,

When I went to Lunnon town sirs,

Too rul loo rul

Too rul loo rul

Wasn’t I done very brown sirs?

Too rul loo rul

Too rul loo rul

—still, in my desire to be wiser, I got this composition by heart with

the utmost gravity; nor do I recollect that I questioned its merit,

except that I thought (as I still do) the amount of Too rul somewhat in

excess of the poetry. In my hunger for information, I made proposals to

Mr. Wopsle to bestow some intellectual crumbs upon me, with which he

kindly complied. As it turned out, however, that he only wanted me for

a dramatic lay-figure, to be contradicted and embraced and wept over

and bullied and clutched and stabbed and knocked about in a variety of

ways, I soon declined that course of instruction; though not until Mr.

Wopsle in his poetic fury had severely mauled me.

Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This statement sounds so

well, that I cannot in my conscience let it pass unexplained. I wanted

to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he might be worthier of my

society and less open to Estella’s reproach.

The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of study, and a broken

slate and a short piece of slate-pencil were our educational

implements: to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I never knew

Joe to remember anything from one Sunday to another, or to acquire,

under my tuition, any piece of information whatever. Yet he would smoke

his pipe at the Battery with a far more sagacious air than anywhere

else,—even with a learned air,—as if he considered himself to be

advancing immensely. Dear fellow, I hope he did.

It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on the river

passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low,

looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing on

at the bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels standing out

to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow thought of Miss

Havisham and Estella; and whenever the light struck aslant, afar off,

upon a cloud or sail or green hillside or water-line, it was just the

same.—Miss Havisham and Estella and the strange house and the strange

life appeared to have something to do with everything that was

picturesque.

One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so plumed himself

on being “most awful dull,” that I had given him up for the day, I lay

on the earthwork for some time with my chin on my hand, descrying

traces of Miss Havisham and Estella all over the prospect, in the sky

and in the water, until at last I resolved to mention a thought

concerning them that had been much in my head.

“Joe,” said I; “don’t you think I ought to make Miss Havisham a visit?”

“Well, Pip,” returned Joe, slowly considering. “What for?”

“What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?”

“There is some wisits p’r’aps,” said Joe, “as for ever remains open to

the question, Pip. But in regard to wisiting Miss Havisham. She might

think you wanted something,—expected something of her.”

“Don’t you think I might say that I did not, Joe?”

“You might, old chap,” said Joe. “And she might credit it. Similarly

she mightn’t.”

Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he pulled hard

at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it by repetition.

“You see, Pip,” Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that danger, “Miss

Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss Havisham done the

handsome thing by you, she called me back to say to me as that were

all.”

“Yes, Joe. I heard her.”

“ALL,” Joe repeated, very emphatically.

“Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her.”

“Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning were,—Make a end

on it!—As you was!—Me to the North, and you to the South!—Keep in

sunders!”

I had thought of that too, and it was very far from comforting to me to

find that he had thought of it; for it seemed to render it more

probable.

“But, Joe.”

“Yes, old chap.”

“Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, since the day

of my being bound, I have never thanked Miss Havisham, or asked after

her, or shown that I remember her.”

“That’s true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her out a set of shoes

all four round,—and which I meantersay as even a set of shoes all four

round might not be acceptable as a present, in a total wacancy of

hoofs—”

“I don’t mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I don’t mean a present.”

But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head and must harp upon

it. “Or even,” said he, “if you was helped to knocking her up a new

chain for the front door,—or say a gross or two of shark-headed screws

for general use,—or some light fancy article, such as a toasting-fork

when she took her muffins,—or a gridiron when she took a sprat or such

like—”

“I don’t mean any present at all, Joe,” I interposed.

“Well,” said Joe, still harping on it as though I had particularly

pressed it, “if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn’t. No, I would _not_. For

what’s a door-chain when she’s got one always up? And shark-headers is

open to misrepresentations. And if it was a toasting-fork, you’d go

into brass and do yourself no credit. And the oncommonest workman can’t

show himself oncommon in a gridiron,—for a gridiron IS a gridiron,”

said Joe, steadfastly impressing it upon me, as if he were endeavouring

to rouse me from a fixed delusion, “and you may haim at what you like,

but a gridiron it will come out, either by your leave or again your

leave, and you can’t help yourself—”

“My dear Joe,” I cried, in desperation, taking hold of his coat, “don’t

go on in that way. I never thought of making Miss Havisham any

present.”

“No, Pip,” Joe assented, as if he had been contending for that, all

along; “and what I say to you is, you are right, Pip.”

“Yes, Joe; but what I wanted to say, was, that as we are rather slack

just now, if you would give me a half-holiday to-morrow, I think I

would go uptown and make a call on Miss Est—Havisham.”

“Which her name,” said Joe, gravely, “ain’t Estavisham, Pip, unless she

have been rechris’ened.”

“I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine. What do you think of it,

Joe?”

In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well of it, he thought well of

it. But, he was particular in stipulating that if I were not received

with cordiality, or if I were not encouraged to repeat my visit as a

visit which had no ulterior object but was simply one of gratitude for

a favour received, then this experimental trip should have no

successor. By these conditions I promised to abide.

Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name was Orlick. He

pretended that his Christian name was Dolge,—a clear Impossibility,—but

he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition that I believe him to

have been the prey of no delusion in this particular, but wilfully to

have imposed that name upon the village as an affront to its

understanding. He was a broadshouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of

great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching. He never even

seemed to come to his work on purpose, but would slouch in as if by

mere accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his

dinner, or went away at night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the

Wandering Jew, as if he had no idea where he was going and no intention

of ever coming back. He lodged at a sluice-keeper’s out on the marshes,

and on working-days would come slouching from his hermitage, with his

hands in his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his

neck and dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on the

sluice-gates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always slouched,

locomotively, with his eyes on the ground; and, when accosted or

otherwise required to raise them, he looked up in a half-resentful,

half-puzzled way, as though the only thought he ever had was, that it

was rather an odd and injurious fact that he should never be thinking.

This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I was very small and

timid, he gave me to understand that the Devil lived in a black corner

of the forge, and that he knew the fiend very well: also that it was

necessary to make up the fire, once in seven years, with a live boy,

and that I might consider myself fuel. When I became Joe’s ’prentice,

Orlick was perhaps confirmed in some suspicion that I should displace

him; howbeit, he liked me still less. Not that he ever said anything,

or did anything, openly importing hostility; I only noticed that he

always beat his sparks in my direction, and that whenever I sang Old

Clem, he came in out of time.

Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next day, when I reminded Joe of

my half-holiday. He said nothing at the moment, for he and Joe had just

got a piece of hot iron between them, and I was at the bellows; but by

and by he said, leaning on his hammer,—

“Now, master! Sure you’re not a-going to favour only one of us. If

Young Pip has a half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick.” I suppose he

was about five-and-twenty, but he usually spoke of himself as an

ancient person.

“Why, what’ll you do with a half-holiday, if you get it?” said Joe.

“What’ll _I_ do with it! What’ll _he_ do with it? I’ll do as much with

it as _him_,” said Orlick.

“As to Pip, he’s going up town,” said Joe.

“Well then, as to Old Orlick, _he_’s a-going up town,” retorted that

worthy. “Two can go up town. Tain’t only one wot can go up town.

“Don’t lose your temper,” said Joe.

“Shall if I like,” growled Orlick. “Some and their uptowning! Now,

master! Come. No favouring in this shop. Be a man!”

The master refusing to entertain the subject until the journeyman was

in a better temper, Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew out a red-hot

bar, made at me with it as if he were going to run it through my body,

whisked it round my head, laid it on the anvil, hammered it out,—as if

it were I, I thought, and the sparks were my spirting blood,—and

finally said, when he had hammered himself hot and the iron cold, and

he again leaned on his hammer,—

“Now, master!”

“Are you all right now?” demanded Joe.

“Ah! I am all right,” said gruff Old Orlick.

“Then, as in general you stick to your work as well as most men,” said

Joe, “let it be a half-holiday for all.”

My sister had been standing silent in the yard, within hearing,—she was

a most unscrupulous spy and listener,—and she instantly looked in at

one of the windows.

“Like you, you fool!” said she to Joe, “giving holidays to great idle

hulkers like that. You are a rich man, upon my life, to waste wages in

that way. I wish _I_ was his master!”

“You’d be everybody’s master, if you durst,” retorted Orlick, with an

ill-favoured grin.

(“Let her alone,” said Joe.)

“I’d be a match for all noodles and all rogues,” returned my sister,

beginning to work herself into a mighty rage. “And I couldn’t be a

match for the noodles, without being a match for your master, who’s the

dunder-headed king of the noodles. And I couldn’t be a match for the

rogues, without being a match for you, who are the blackest-looking and

the worst rogue between this and France. Now!”

“You’re a foul shrew, Mother Gargery,” growled the journeyman. “If that

makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be a good’un.”

(“Let her alone, will you?” said Joe.)

“What did you say?” cried my sister, beginning to scream. “What did you

say? What did that fellow Orlick say to me, Pip? What did he call me,

with my husband standing by? Oh! oh! oh!” Each of these exclamations

was a shriek; and I must remark of my sister, what is equally true of

all the violent women I have ever seen, that passion was no excuse for

her, because it is undeniable that instead of lapsing into passion, she

consciously and deliberately took extraordinary pains to force herself

into it, and became blindly furious by regular stages; “what was the

name he gave me before the base man who swore to defend me? Oh! Hold

me! Oh!”

“Ah-h-h!” growled the journeyman, between his teeth, “I’d hold you, if

you was my wife. I’d hold you under the pump, and choke it out of you.”

(“I tell you, let her alone,” said Joe.)

“Oh! To hear him!” cried my sister, with a clap of her hands and a

scream together,—which was her next stage. “To hear the names he’s

giving me! That Orlick! In my own house! Me, a married woman! With my

husband standing by! Oh! Oh!” Here my sister, after a fit of clappings

and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon her knees, and

threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down,—which were the last stages

on her road to frenzy. Being by this time a perfect Fury and a complete

success, she made a dash at the door which I had fortunately locked.

What could the wretched Joe do now, after his disregarded parenthetical

interruptions, but stand up to his journeyman, and ask him what he

meant by interfering betwixt himself and Mrs. Joe; and further whether

he was man enough to come on? Old Orlick felt that the situation

admitted of nothing less than coming on, and was on his defence

straightway; so, without so much as pulling off their singed and burnt

aprons, they went at one another, like two giants. But, if any man in

that neighbourhood could stand uplong against Joe, I never saw the man.

Orlick, as if he had been of no more account than the pale young

gentleman, was very soon among the coal-dust, and in no hurry to come

out of it. Then Joe unlocked the door and picked up my sister, who had

dropped insensible at the window (but who had seen the fight first, I

think), and who was carried into the house and laid down, and who was

recommended to revive, and would do nothing but struggle and clench her

hands in Joe’s hair. Then came that singular calm and silence which

succeed all uproars; and then, with the vague sensation which I have

always connected with such a lull,—namely, that it was Sunday, and

somebody was dead,—I went upstairs to dress myself.

[Illustration]

When I came down again, I found Joe and Orlick sweeping up, without any

other traces of discomposure than a slit in one of Orlick’s nostrils,

which was neither expressive nor ornamental. A pot of beer had appeared

from the Jolly Bargemen, and they were sharing it by turns in a

peaceable manner. The lull had a sedative and philosophical influence

on Joe, who followed me out into the road to say, as a parting

observation that might do me good, “On the Rampage, Pip, and off the

Rampage, Pip:—such is Life!”

With what absurd emotions (for we think the feelings that are very

serious in a man quite comical in a boy) I found myself again going to

Miss Havisham’s, matters little here. Nor, how I passed and repassed

the gate many times before I could make up my mind to ring. Nor, how I

debated whether I should go away without ringing; nor, how I should

undoubtedly have gone, if my time had been my own, to come back.

Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No Estella.

“How, then? You here again?” said Miss Pocket. “What do you want?”

When I said that I only came to see how Miss Havisham was, Sarah

evidently deliberated whether or no she should send me about my

business. But unwilling to hazard the responsibility, she let me in,

and presently brought the sharp message that I was to “come up.”

Everything was unchanged, and Miss Havisham was alone.

“Well?” said she, fixing her eyes upon me. “I hope you want nothing?

You’ll get nothing.”

“No indeed, Miss Havisham. I only wanted you to know that I am doing

very well in my apprenticeship, and am always much obliged to you.”

“There, there!” with the old restless fingers. “Come now and then; come

on your birthday.—Ay!” she cried suddenly, turning herself and her

chair towards me, “You are looking round for Estella? Hey?”

I had been looking round,—in fact, for Estella,—and I stammered that I

hoped she was well.

“Abroad,” said Miss Havisham; “educating for a lady; far out of reach;

prettier than ever; admired by all who see her. Do you feel that you

have lost her?”

There was such a malignant enjoyment in her utterance of the last

words, and she broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I was at a

loss what to say. She spared me the trouble of considering, by

dismissing me. When the gate was closed upon me by Sarah of the

walnut-shell countenance, I felt more than ever dissatisfied with my

home and with my trade and with everything; and that was all I took by

_that_ motion.

As I was loitering along the High Street, looking in disconsolately at

the shop windows, and thinking what I would buy if I were a gentleman,

who should come out of the bookshop but Mr. Wopsle. Mr. Wopsle had in

his hand the affecting tragedy of George Barnwell, in which he had that

moment invested sixpence, with the view of heaping every word of it on

the head of Pumblechook, with whom he was going to drink tea. No sooner

did he see me, than he appeared to consider that a special Providence

had put a ’prentice in his way to be read at; and he laid hold of me,

and insisted on my accompanying him to the Pumblechookian parlour. As I

knew it would be miserable at home, and as the nights were dark and the

way was dreary, and almost any companionship on the road was better

than none, I made no great resistance; consequently, we turned into

Pumblechook’s just as the street and the shops were lighting up.

As I never assisted at any other representation of George Barnwell, I

don’t know how long it may usually take; but I know very well that it

took until half-past nine o’ clock that night, and that when Mr. Wopsle

got into Newgate, I thought he never would go to the scaffold, he

became so much slower than at any former period of his disgraceful

career. I thought it a little too much that he should complain of being

cut short in his flower after all, as if he had not been running to

seed, leaf after leaf, ever since his course began. This, however, was

a mere question of length and wearisomeness. What stung me, was the

identification of the whole affair with my unoffending self. When

Barnwell began to go wrong, I declare that I felt positively

apologetic, Pumblechook’s indignant stare so taxed me with it. Wopsle,

too, took pains to present me in the worst light. At once ferocious and

maudlin, I was made to murder my uncle with no extenuating

circumstances whatever; Millwood put me down in argument, on every

occasion; it became sheer monomania in my master’s daughter to care a

button for me; and all I can say for my gasping and procrastinating

conduct on the fatal morning, is, that it was worthy of the general

feebleness of my character. Even after I was happily hanged and Wopsle

had closed the book, Pumblechook sat staring at me, and shaking his

head, and saying, “Take warning, boy, take warning!” as if it were a

well-known fact that I contemplated murdering a near relation, provided

I could only induce one to have the weakness to become my benefactor.

It was a very dark night when it was all over, and when I set out with

Mr. Wopsle on the walk home. Beyond town, we found a heavy mist out,

and it fell wet and thick. The turnpike lamp was a blur, quite out of

the lamp’s usual place apparently, and its rays looked solid substance

on the fog. We were noticing this, and saying how that the mist rose

with a change of wind from a certain quarter of our marshes, when we

came upon a man, slouching under the lee of the turnpike house.

“Halloa!” we said, stopping. “Orlick there?”

“Ah!” he answered, slouching out. “I was standing by a minute, on the

chance of company.”

“You are late,” I remarked.

Orlick not unnaturally answered, “Well? And _you_’re late.”

“We have been,” said Mr. Wopsle, exalted with his late performance,—“we

have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an intellectual evening.”

Old Orlick growled, as if he had nothing to say about that, and we all

went on together. I asked him presently whether he had been spending

his half-holiday up and down town?

“Yes,” said he, “all of it. I come in behind yourself. I didn’t see

you, but I must have been pretty close behind you. By the by, the guns

is going again.”

“At the Hulks?” said I.

“Ay! There’s some of the birds flown from the cages. The guns have been

going since dark, about. You’ll hear one presently.”

In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when the

well-remembered boom came towards us, deadened by the mist, and heavily

rolled away along the low grounds by the river, as if it were pursuing

and threatening the fugitives.

“A good night for cutting off in,” said Orlick. “We’d be puzzled how to

bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night.”

The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought about it in

silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of the evening’s

tragedy, fell to meditating aloud in his garden at Camberwell. Orlick,

with his hands in his pockets, slouched heavily at my side. It was very

dark, very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed along. Now and then, the

sound of the signal cannon broke upon us again, and again rolled

sulkily along the course of the river. I kept myself to myself and my

thoughts. Mr. Wopsle died amiably at Camberwell, and exceedingly game

on Bosworth Field, and in the greatest agonies at Glastonbury. Orlick

sometimes growled, “Beat it out, beat it out,—Old Clem! With a clink

for the stout,—Old Clem!” I thought he had been drinking, but he was

not drunk.

Thus, we came to the village. The way by which we approached it took us

past the Three Jolly Bargemen, which we were surprised to find—it being

eleven o’clock—in a state of commotion, with the door wide open, and

unwonted lights that had been hastily caught up and put down scattered

about. Mr. Wopsle dropped in to ask what was the matter (surmising that

a convict had been taken), but came running out in a great hurry.

“There’s something wrong,” said he, without stopping, “up at your

place, Pip. Run all!”

“What is it?” I asked, keeping up with him. So did Orlick, at my side.

“I can’t quite understand. The house seems to have been violently

entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts. Somebody has

been attacked and hurt.”

We were running too fast to admit of more being said, and we made no

stop until we got into our kitchen. It was full of people; the whole

village was there, or in the yard; and there was a surgeon, and there

was Joe, and there were a group of women, all on the floor in the midst

of the kitchen. The unemployed bystanders drew back when they saw me,

and so I became aware of my sister,—lying without sense or movement on

the bare boards where she had been knocked down by a tremendous blow on

the back of the head, dealt by some unknown hand when her face was

turned towards the fire,—destined never to be on the Rampage again,

while she was the wife of Joe.