Чарльз Диккенс / Charles Dickens

Большие надежды / Great Expectations

Подготовка текста, комментарии и словарь С. А. Матвеева; иллюстрации М. М. Салтыкова

© Матвеев С. А., подготовка текста, комментарии, словарь

© ООО «Издательство АСТ»

Chapter 1

My father’s family name was Pirrip,[1] and my Christian name was Philip.[2] So, I called myself Pip.[3]

My sister – Mrs. Joe Gargery,[4] who married the blacksmith. I never saw my father or my mother. The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a stout, dark man, with curly black hair.

That day I was at the churchyard. I was very sad and began to cry.

“Keep still,[5] you little devil!” cried a terrible voice, and a man stood up among the graves, “or I’ll cut your throat!”

A fearful man with a great chain on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head.

“Oh! Don’t cut my throat, sir,” I pleaded in terror. “Pray don’t do it, sir.”

“Tell me your name!” said the man. “Quick!”

“Pip. Pip, sir.”

“Show me where you live,” said the man.

I pointed to where our village lay, a mile or more from the church.

“Now look here!” said the man. “Where’s your mother?”

“There, sir!” said I. “She lies there.”

“Oh!” said he. “And is that your father with your mother?”

“Yes, sir,” said I; “him too.”

“Ha!” he muttered then. “Who do you live with?”

“My sister, sir – Mrs. Joe Gargery – wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir.”

“Blacksmith, eh?” said he. And looked down at his leg. You know what a file is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you know what wittles[6] is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So you get me a file. And you get me wittles. Or I’ll have your heart and liver out.[7]”

I was dreadfully frightened. He held me by the arms, and went on in these fearful terms: —

“You bring me, tomorrow morning early, that file and the wittles. You will do it, and you will never say a word about me. So you will live. If you do not do this, my friend will take your heart and liver out. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open.[8] Now, what do you say?”

I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him some food I could, and I would come to him early in the morning.

“Now,” he said, “you remember what you’ve promised, and you remember that man, and you get home!”

“Good night, sir,” I faltered and ran away.

Chapter 2

My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbors because she had brought me up “by hand.[9]”

She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth face, and with blue eyes. He was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow.

Joe’s forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many of the dwellings in our country were – most of them, at that time. When I ran home from the churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I were fellow-sufferers.[10] I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him, sitting in the chimney corner.

“Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And she’s out now.”

“Is she? Has she been gone long, Joe?”

“Well,” said Joe, “about five minutes, Pip. She’s a coming! Get behind the door, old chap.[11]”

I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, came in.

“Where have you been, you young monkey?” said Mrs. Joe, stamping her foot.

“I have only been to the churchyard,” said I, from my stool, crying and rubbing myself.

“Churchyard!” repeated my sister. “Churchyard, indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two. You’ll drive me to the churchyard, one of these days!”

She applied herself to set the tea-things. But, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my slice. I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dreadful acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful man.

It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day, with a copper-stick, from seven to eight. I decided to steal some food afterwards and bring it to my new “friend”. Suddenly I heard shots.

“Hark!” said I, when I had done my stirring; “was that great guns, Joe?”

“Ah!” said Joe. “A convict ran away.”

“What does that mean, Joe?” said I.

Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said, snappishly, “Escaped.”

I asked Joe, “What’s a convict?”

“There was a convict off last night,[12]” said Joe, aloud, “after sunset. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears they’re firing warning of another.”

“Who’s firing?” said I.

“Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no lies,” said my sister.

It was not very polite to herself, I thought. But she never was polite unless there was company.

“Mrs. Joe,” said I, as a last resort, “Please tell me, where the firing comes from?”

“Lord bless the boy![13]” 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!”

“And please, what’s Hulks?” said I.

“Hulks are prison-ships![14]” exclaimed my sister.

It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. “I tell you what, young fellow,” said she, “People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad things.”

I was in mortal terror of the man who wanted my heart and liver; I was in mortal terror of the iron leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had been extracted.

In the early morning I got up and went downstairs; every board upon the way, and every crack in every board calling after me, “Stop thief!” and “Get up, Mrs. Joe!” I stole some bread, some cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat, some brandy from a bottle, a meat bone and a beautiful round compact pork pie.

There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with the forge; I unlocked that door, and got a file from among Joe’s tools. Then I opened the door at which I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it, and ran for the misty marshes.

Chapter 3

It was a rainy morning, and very damp. The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me. The gates and dikes and banks cried as plainly as could be, “A boy with Somebody’s else’s pork pie! Stop him!” The cattle came upon me, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, “Halloa, young thief!”

All this time, I was getting on towards the river. I had just crossed a ditch, and had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man sitting before me. His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded, and was nodding forward, heavy with sleep. But it was not the same man, but another man!

And yet this man was dressed in coarse gray, too, and had a great iron on his leg. All this I saw in a moment, for I had only a moment to see it in: he ran into the mist, stumbling twice as he went, and I lost him.

“It’s the man!” I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I identified him.

Soon I saw the right Man, waiting for me. He was awfully cold, to be sure. His eyes looked so awfully hungry too.

“What’s in the bottle, boy?” said he.

“Brandy,” said I.

“I think you have got the ague,” said I.

“Sure, boy,” said he.

“It’s bad about here,” I told him. “You’ve been lying out on the meshes, and they’re dreadful aguish.”

“You’re not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with you?”

“No, sir! No!”

“Well,” said he, “I believe you.”

Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough sleeve over his eyes.

“I am glad you enjoy the food,” said I.

“What?”

“I said I was glad you enjoyed it.”

“Thank you, my boy. I do.”

I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog’s way of eating, and the man’s. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog.

“I am afraid you won’t leave any food for him,” said I, timidly.

“Leave for him? Who’s him?” said my friend.

“The man. That you spoke of.”

“Oh ah!” he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. “Him? Yes, yes! He don’t want any wittles.”

“I thought he looked as if he did,” said I.

The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the greatest surprise.

“Looked? When?”

“Just now.”

“Where?”

“Yonder,” said I, pointing; “over there, where I found him sleeping, and I thought it was you.”

He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began to think his first idea about cutting my throat had revived.

“Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat,” I explained, trembling. “Didn’t you hear the cannon last night?”

“Then there was firing!” he said to himself.

“He had a badly bruised face,” said I, recalling what I hardly knew I knew.

“Not here?” exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek.

“Yes, there!”

“Where is he?” He crammed what little food was left, into the breast of his gray jacket. “Show me the way he went. I’ll pull him down,[15] like a bloodhound. But first give me the file, boy.”

I indicated in what direction the other man had gone away, and he looked up at it for an instant. But then he sat on the wet grass and began to file his iron like a madman. I told him I must go, but he took no notice.

Chapter 4

I expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to take me up.[16] But Mrs. Joe was busy in getting the house ready for the festivities of the day.

We were to have a wonderful dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome mince-pie had been made yesterday morning, and the pudding was already on the boil.

Mr. Wopsle,[17] the clerk at church, was to dine with us; and Mr. Hubble[18] and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumblechook[19] (Joe’s uncle), who lived in the nearest town, and drove his own chaise-cart. The dinner hour was half-past one. Everything was most splendid, and not a word of the robbery.

The time came, without bringing with it any relief to my feelings, and the company came.

I opened the door to the company, and I opened it first to Mr. Wopsle, next to Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all to Uncle Pumblechook.

“Mrs. Joe,” said Uncle Pumblechook, a large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, and dull staring eyes, “I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of sherry wine – and I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of port wine.”

Every Christmas Day he presented himself, as a profound novelty, with exactly the same words.

We dined on these occasions in the kitchen. My sister was lively on the present occasion, and indeed was generally more gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble than in other company.

Among this good company I should have felt myself, even if I hadn’t robbed the pantry, in a false position. They wouldn’t leave me alone. It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace with theatrical declamation,[20] and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful. My sister said, in a low voice, “Do you hear that? Be grateful.”

“Especially,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “be grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by hand.”

Mrs. Hubble shook her head and asked, “Why is it that the young are never grateful?” Mr. Hubble answered, “They are just vicious.” Everybody then murmured “True!” and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner.

“You must taste,” said my sister, addressing the guests with her best grace – “you must taste such a delightful and delicious present of Uncle Pumblechook’s! You must know, it’s a pie; a pork pie.”

My sister went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the pantry. I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife. I felt that I could bear no more, and that I must run away. I ran for my life.

But I ran no farther than the house door. There stood a party of soldiers with their muskets.

Chapter 5

The sergeant and I were in the kitchen when Mrs. Joe stood staring.

“Excuse me, ladies and gentleman,” said the sergeant, “but I am on a chase in the name of the king, and I want the blacksmith.”

“And pray what might you want with him?” retorted my sister.

“Missis,” returned the gallant sergeant, “speaking for the king, I answer, a little job. You see, blacksmith, we have had an accident with handcuffs, and I find the lock of one of them goes wrong, and the coupling don’t act pretty. As they are wanted for immediate service, will you throw your eye over them?[21]”

Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the job would take two hours.

“Would you give me the time?” said the sergeant, addressing himself to Mr. Pumblechook.

“It’s just gone half past two.”

“That’s not so bad,” said the sergeant, reflecting; “How far are the marshes? Not above a mile, I reckon?”

“Just a mile,” said Mrs. Joe.

“Convicts, sergeant?” asked Mr. Wopsle.

“Ay!” returned the sergeant, “two. They are out on the marshes, and we are going to catch them.”

At last, Joe’s job was done. As Joe got on his coat, he proposed that some of us should go down with the soldiers. Mr. Pumblechook and Mr. Hubble declined, but Mr. Wopsle said he would go, if Joe would. Joe said he was agreeable, and would take me, if Mrs. Joe approved. Mrs. Joe said, “If you bring the boy back with his head blown to bits by a musket, don’t ask me to put it together again.”

When we were all out in the raw air and were steadily moving towards the marshs, I whispered to Joe, “I hope, Joe, we shan’t find them.” and Joe whispered to me, “I’d give a shilling if they had run, Pip.”

The weather was cold and threatening, the way dreary, darkness coming on, and the people had good fires and were celebtaring the day. A few faces hurried to glowing windows and looked after us, but none came out. Joe took me on his back. With my heart thumping, I looked all about for any sign of the convicts. Finally, I saw them both. The soldiers stopped.

After that they began to run. After a while, we could hear one voice calling “Murder!” and another voice, “Convicts! Guard! This way for the runaway convicts!” The soldiers ran like deer, and Joe too.

“Here are both men!” cried the sergeant. “Surrender, you two!”

Water was splashing, and mud was flying.

“Mind!” said my convict, wiping blood from his face with his ragged sleeves, and shaking torn hair from his fingers: “I took him! I give him up to you! Mind that!”

The other was bruised and torn all over.

“Take notice, guard – he tried to murder me,” were his first words.

“Tried to murder him?” said my convict, disdainfully. “Try, and not do it? I took him; that’s what I done. dragged him here. He’s a gentleman, if you please, this villain. Now, the Hulks has got its gentleman again, through me!”

The other one still gasped, “He tried – he tried to – murder me.”

“Look here!” said my convict to the sergeant. “I tried to kill him? No, no, no.”

The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his companion, repeated, “He tried to murder me. I should have been a dead man if you had not come up.”

“He lies!” said my convict, with fierce energy.

My convict never looked at me, except that once. He turned to the sergeant, and remarked,

“I wish to say something. It may prevent some persons laying under suspicion alonger me.[22]”

“You can say what you like,” returned the sergeant, standing coolly looking at him with his arms folded, “but you’ll have opportunity enough to say about it, and hear about it, you know.”

“A man can’t starve; at least I can’t. I took some wittles, at the village over there.”

“You mean stole,” said the sergeant.

“And I’ll tell you where from. From the blacksmith’s.”

“Halloa!” said the sergeant, staring at Joe.

“Halloa, Pip!” said Joe, staring at me.

“It was some wittles – that’s what it was – and liquor, and a pie.”

“You’re welcome,” returned Joe, “We don’t know what you have done, but we wouldn’t have you starved, poor miserable fellow. Would us, Pip?”

Something clicked in the man’s throat, and he turned his back.

Chapter 6

The fear of losing Joe’s confidence, and of sitting in the chimney corner at night staring at my forever lost companion and friend, tied up my tongue. In a word, I was too cowardly to tell Joe the truth.

As I was sleepy before we were far away from the prison-ship, Joe took me on his back again and carried me home.

By that time, I was fast asleep, and through waking in the heat and lights and noise of tongues. As I came to myself (with the aid of a heavy thump between the shoulders), I found Joe telling them about the convict’s confession, and all the visitors suggesting different ways by which he had got into the pantry. Everybody agreed that it must be so.

Chapter 7

When I was old enough, I was to be apprenticed to Joe. Therefore, I was not only odd-boy about the forge, but if any neighbor happened to want an extra boy to frighten birds, or pick up stones, or do any such job, I was favoured with the employment.

“Didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?” asked I one day.

“No, Pip.”

“Why didn’t you ever go to school?”

“Well, Pip,” said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling himself to his usual occupation when he was thoughtful; “I’ll tell you. My father, Pip, liked to drink much. You’re listening and understanding, Pip?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“So my mother and me we ran away from my father several times. Sometimes my mother said, ‘Joe, you shall have some schooling, child,’ and she’d put me to school. But my father couldn’t live without us. So, he’d come with a crowd and took us from the houses where we were. He took us home and hammered us. You see, Pip, it was a drawback on my learning.[23]”

“Certainly, poor Joe!”

“My father didn’t make objections to my going to work; so I went to work. In time I was able to keep him, and I kept him till he went off.”

Joe’s blue eyes turned a little watery; he rubbed first one of them, and then the other, in a most uncomfortable manner, with the round knob on the top of the poker.

“I got acquainted with your sister,” said Joe, “living here alone. Now, Pip,” – Joe looked firmly at me as if he knew I was not going to agree with him; – “your sister is a fine figure of a woman.[24]”

I could think of nothing better to say than “I am glad you think so, Joe.”

“So am I,” returned Joe. “That’s it. You’re right, old chap! When I got acquainted with your sister, she was bringing you up by hand. Very kind of her too, all the folks said, and I said, along with all the folks.”

I said, “Never mind me,[25] Joe.”

“When I offered to your sister to keep company, and to be asked in church at such times as she was willing and ready to come to the forge, I said to her, ‘And bring the poor little child. God bless the poor little child,’ I said to your sister, ‘there’s room for him at the forge!’”

I broke out crying and begging pardon, and hugged Joe round the neck: who dropped the poker to hug me, and to say, “We are the best friends; aren’t we, Pip? Don’t cry, old chap!”

Joe resumed,

“Well, you see; here we are! Your sister a master-mind.[26] A master-mind.”

“However,” said Joe, rising to replenish the fire; “Here comes the mare!”

Mrs. Joe and Uncle Pumblechook was soon near, covering the mare with a cloth, and we were soon all in the kitchen.

“Now,” said Mrs. Joe with haste and excitement, and throwing her bonnet back on her shoulders, “if this boy isn’t grateful this night, he never will be! Miss Havisham[27] wants this boy to go and play in her house. And of course he’s going.”

I had heard of Miss Havisham – everybody for miles round had heard of her – as an immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who led a life of seclusion.

“I wonder how she come to know Pip!” said Joe, astounded.

“Who said she knew him?” cried my sister. “Couldn’t she ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go and play there? Uncle Pumblechook thinks that that is the boy’s fortune. So he offered to take him into town tonight in his own chaise-cart, and to take him with his own hands to Miss Havisham’s tomorrow morning.”

I was then delivered over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as if he were the Sheriff. He said: “Boy, be forever grateful to all friends, but especially unto them which brought you up by hand!”

“Good-bye, Joe!”

“God bless you, Pip, old chap!”

I had never parted from him before, and I could at first see no stars from the chaise-cart. I did not understand why I was going to play at Miss Havisham’s, and what I was expected to play at.

Chapter 8

Mr. Pumblechook and I breakfasted at eight o’clock in the parlor behind the shop. I considered Mr. Pumblechook wretched company.[28] On my politely bidding him Good morning, he said, “Seven times nine, boy?[29]” And how should I be able to answer, in a strange place, on an empty stomach![30] I was very hungry, but the math[31] lesson lasted all through the breakfast. “Seven?” “And four?” “And eight?” “And six?” “And two?” “And ten?” And so on.

For such reasons, I was very glad when ten o’clock came and we started for Miss Havisham’s. Within a quarter of an hour we came to Miss Havisham’s house, which was of old brick, and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. While we waited at the gate, Mr. Pumblechook said, “And fourteen?” but I pretended not to hear him.

A window was raised, and a clear voice demanded “What name?” To which my conductor replied, “Pumblechook.” The voice returned, “Quite right,” and the window was shut again, and a young lady came across the courtyard, with keys in her hand.

“This,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “is Pip.”

“This is Pip, is it?” returned the young lady, who was very pretty and seemed very proud; “come in, Pip.”

Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped him with the gate.

“Oh!” she said. “Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?”

“If Miss Havisham wished to see me,” returned Mr. Pumblechook, discomfited.

“Ah!” said the girl; “but you see she didn’t.”

She said it so finally, that Mr. Pumblechook could not protest. I was afraid that he would come ask me through the gate, “And sixteen?” But he didn’t.

My young conductress locked the gate, and we went across the courtyard. It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in every crevice. The cold wind seemed to blow colder there than outside the gate.

She saw me looking at it, and she said, “Now, boy, you are at the Manor House.”

“Is that the name of this house, miss?”

“One of its names, boy.”

She called me “boy” very often, and with a carelessness that was far from complimentary, but she was of about my own age. She seemed much older than I, of course, being a girl, and beautiful and self-possessed.

We went into the house by a side door, the great front entrance had two chains across it outside – and the first thing I noticed was, that the passages were all dark, and that she had left a candle burning there.

At last we came to the door of a room, and she said, “Go in.”

I answered, “After you, miss.”

To this she returned: “Don’t be ridiculous, boy; I am not going in.” And scornfully walked away, and – what was worse – took the candle with her.

This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid. However, I knocked and entered, and found myself in a pretty large room, well lighted with wax candles. No glimpse of daylight was to be seen in it. It was a dressing-room, as I supposed from the furniture. But prominent in it was a draped table with a gilded looking-glass, and that I made out at first sight to be a fine lady’s dressing-table.

In an arm-chair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see.

She was dressed in rich materials – satins, and lace, and silks – all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table.

“Who is it?” said the lady at the table.

“Pip, ma’am.”

“Pip?”

“Mr. Pumblechook’s boy, ma’am. Come – to play.”

“Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close.”

It saw that her watch had stopped at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

“Look at me,” said Miss Havisham. “You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?”

“No.”

“Do you know what I touch here?” she said, laying her hands, one upon the other, on her left side.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What do I touch?”

“Your heart.”

“Broken!”

She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, and with a weird smile.

“I am tired,” said Miss Havisham. “I want diversion. Play. I sometimes have sick fancies, and I have a sick fancy that I want to see some play. There, there!” with an impatient movement of the fingers of her right hand; “play, play, play!”

I stood looking at Miss Havisham.

“Are you sullen and obstinate?”

“No, ma’am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can’t play just now. It’s so new here, and so strange, and so fine – and melancholy —.” I stopped, fearing I might say too much, or had already said it, and we took another look at each other.

Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes from me, and looked at the dress she wore, and at the dressing-table, and finally at herself in the looking-glass.

“So new to him,” she muttered, “so old to me; so strange to him, so familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us! Call Estella.[32]”

As she was still looking at the reflection of herself, I thought she was still talking to herself, and kept quiet.

“Call Estella,” she repeated, flashing a look at me. “You can do that. Call Estella. At the door.”

To stand in the dark and to roar out Estella’s name, was almost as bad as playing to order.[33] But she answered at last, and her light came along the dark passage like a star.

Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close, and took up a jewel from the table “Your own, one day, my dear, and you will use it well. Let me see you play cards with this boy.”

“With this boy? Why, he is a common laboring boy![34]”

Miss Havisham answered, “Well? You can break his heart.”

“What do you play, boy?” asked Estella of myself, with the greatest disdain.

“Nothing but beggar my neighbor,[35] miss.”

“Beggar him,[36]” said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.

It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been ragged. So the lady sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards.

“What coarse hands he has, this boy!” said Estella with disdain, before our first game was out. “And what thick boots!”

Her contempt for me was very strong. She won the game, and I dealt. She denounced me for a stupid, clumsy laboring-boy.

“You say nothing of her,” remarked Miss Havisham to me. “She says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her. What do you think of her?”

“I don’t like to say,” I stammered.

“Tell me in my ear,” said Miss Havisham, bending down.

“I think she is very proud,” I replied, in a whisper.

“Anything else?”

“I think she is very pretty.”

“Anything else?”

“I think she is very insulting.”

“Anything else?”

“I think I should like to go home.”

“And never see her again, though she is so pretty?”

“I am not sure that I shouldn’t like to see her again, but I should like to go home now.”

“You shall go soon,” said Miss Havisham, aloud. “Play the game out.[37]”

I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me. She threw the cards down on the table.

“When shall I have you here again?” said Miss Havisham. “Let me think.”

I was beginning to remind her that today was Wednesday.

“I know nothing of days of the week; I know nothing of weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat. Go, Pip.”

I followed the candle down, as I had followed the candle up, and she stood it in the place where we had found it. She opened the side entrance.

“You are to wait here, you boy,” said Estella; and disappeared and closed the door.

She came back, with some bread and meat and a little mug of beer. She put the mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave me the bread and meat without looking at me, as insolently as if I were a dog in disgrace. I was so humiliated, hurt, offended, angry, sorry. Tears started to my eyes. The moment they sprang there, the girl looked at me with a quick delight. This gave me power to keep them back and to look at her. She gave a contemptuous toss and left me.

But when she was gone, I looked about me for a place to hide my face in and cried. As I cried, I kicked the wall, and took a hard twist at my hair.

Then I noticed Estella. She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me.

“Why don’t you cry?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“You do,” said she. “You have been crying, and you are near crying again now.”

She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and locked the gate upon me. I went straight to Mr. Pumblechook’s, and was immensely glad to find him not at home. So on what day I was wanted at Miss Havisham’s again, I walked to our forge, remembering that I was a common laboring-boy; that my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick.

Chapter 9

When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all about Miss Havisham’s, and asked a number of questions. I felt convinced that if I described Miss Havisham’s as my eyes had seen it, I should not be understood. Consequently, I said as little as I could.

The worst of it was that that old Pumblechook came gaping over in his chaise-cart at tea-time, to have the details divulged to him.

“Well, boy,” Uncle Pumblechook began, as soon as he was seated in the chair of honor[38] by the fire. “How did you get on up town?[39]”

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?”

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?[40]”

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 said, “Is forty-three pence seven and sixpence three fardens, for instance?[41]”

“Yes!” said I. The answer spoilt his joke, and brought him to a dead stop.

“Boy! What like is Miss Havisham?[42]” 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. (“This is the way to have him,[43] 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 and would have told them anything.

“Where was this coach, in the name of gracious?[44]” asked my sister.

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

“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.[45] 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, “when I never see her in my life?”

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

“Why, don’t you know,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “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. But the boy went there to play. What did you play at, boy?”

“We played with flags,” I said.

“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 stared at them.

Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes and roll them all round the kitchen in helpless amazement; 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. They had no doubt that Miss Havisham would “do something” for me. My sister stood out for “property.” Mr. Pumblechook was in favour of a handsome premium[46] for schooling.

After Mr. Pumblechook had driven off, and when my sister was washing up, I went 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. “Then tell me. What is it, Pip?”

“Joe,” said I, taking hold of his 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 isn’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?” I stood shaking my head. “But at least there were dogs, Pip? Come, Pip,” said Joe, “at least there were dogs?”

“No, Joe.”

“A dog?” said Joe. “A puppy? Come?”

“No, Joe, there was nothing at all of the kind. It’s terrible, Joe; isn’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 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.

“There’s one thing you may be sure of, Pip,” said Joe, after some rumination, “namely, that lies is lies. Don’t you tell more of them, Pip. That isn’t the way to get out of being common, old chap. But you are uncommon in some things. You’re uncommon small. There was a flag, perhaps?”

“No, Joe.”

“I’m sorry there wasn’t a flag, Pip. Look here, Pip, at what is said to you by a true friend. Don’t tell more lies, Pip, and live well and die happy.”

“You are not angry with me, Joe?”

“No, old chap. But when you go up stairs to bed, Pip, please think about my words. That’s all, old chap, and never do it more.”

When I got up to my little room and said my prayers, I did not forget Joe’s recommendation. I thought how Joe and my sister were 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.[47]

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

Chapter 10

Of course there was a public-house[48] 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,[49] that evening, on my way from school, and bring him home. 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.

It was Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather sadly 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.

“You were saying,” said the strange man, turning to Joe, “that you were a blacksmith.”

“Yes. I said it, you know,” said Joe.

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

Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him by it. “What’ll you drink, Mr. Gargery? At my expense?[50]”

“Well,” said Joe, “to tell you the truth, I am not 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!”

“I don’t want to spoil the company,” said Joe. “Rum.”

“Rum,” repeated the stranger.

“Rum,” said Mr. Wopsle.

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

“This other gentleman,” observed Joe, by way of introducing Mr. Wopsle, “is our clerk at church.”

“Aha!” said the stranger, quickly. “The lonely church, right out on the marshes, with graves round it!”

“That’s it,” said Joe.

The stranger put his legs up on the settle. 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 of any sort, out there?”

“No,” said Joe; “none but a runaway convict now and then.[51] Eh, Mr. Wopsle?”

Mr. Wopsle assented; but not warmly.

The stranger looked at me again – still cocking his eye, as if he were taking aim at me with his invisible gun – and said, “He’s a nice boy. What is his name?”

“Pip,” said Joe.

“Son of yours?”

“Well,” said Joe, “well – no. No, he isn’t.”

“Nephew?” 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 nephew.”

“What is he?” asked the stranger.

Mr. Wopsle expounded the ties between me and Joe.

The strange man looked at nobody but me. He said nothing, 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 it was 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.

“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 will 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. 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.

On the way home, if I had been in a humor 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 could think of nothing else.

My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented ourselves in the kitchen, and Joe told her about the bright shilling. “A bad one,[52] I’m sure,” said Mrs. Joe triumphantly, “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?”

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 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 a teapot on the top of a press in the state parlor. There they remained, a nightmare to me, many and many a night and day.

Chapter 11

At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham’s. Estella locked the gate it after admitting me, as she had done before, and again preceded me into the dark passage where her candle stood. She took no notice of me until she had the candle in her hand, when she looked over her shoulder, saying, “You are to come this way today,[53]” and took me to quite another part of the house.

The passage was a long one. We traversed but one side of the square, however, and at the end of it she stopped, and put her candle down and opened a door. Here I found myself in a small paved courtyard. There was a clock in the outer wall of this house. Like the clock in Miss Havisham’s room, and like Miss Havisham’s watch, it had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

We went in at the door, which stood open, and into a gloomy room with a low ceiling, on the ground-floor at the back.

As we were going with our candle along the dark passage, Estella stopped all of a sudden, and, facing round, said with her face quite close to mine —

“Well?”

“Well, miss?” I answered, almost falling over her and checking myself.

She stood looking at me, and, of course, I stood looking at her.

“Am I pretty?”

“Yes; I think you are very pretty.”

“Am I insulting?”

“Not so much so as you were last time,” said I.

“Not so much so?”

“No.”

She fired when she asked the last question, and she slapped my face with such force as she had, when I answered it.

“Now?” said she. “You little coarse monster,[54] what do you think of me now?”

“I shall not tell you.”

“Why don’t you cry again, you little wretch?[55]”

“Because I’ll never cry for you again,” said I.

We went on our way up stairs after this episode; and, as we were going up, we met a gentleman groping his way down.

“Whom have we here?” asked the gentleman, stopping and looking at me.

“A boy,” said Estella.

He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark complexion, with an exceedingly large head, and a corresponding large hand. He took my chin in his large hand and turned up my face to have a look at me by the light of the candle. He was bald on the top of his head, and had bushy black eyebrows.

“Boy of the neighborhood? Hey?” said he.

“Yes, sir,” said I.

“How do you come here?”

“Miss Havisham sent for me, sir,” I explained.

“Well! Behave yourself,” said he, biting the side of his great forefinger as he frowned at me, “you behave yourself![56]”

With those words, he released me and went his way down stairs. There was not much time to consider the subject, for we were soon in Miss Havisham’s room, where she and everything else were just as I had left them. Estella left me standing near the door, and I stood there until Miss Havisham cast her eyes upon me from the dressing-table.

“So!” she said, “the days have worn away, have they?”

“Yes, ma’am. Today is – ”

“There, there, there![57]” with the impatient movement of her fingers. “I don’t want to know. Are you ready to play?”

“I don’t think I am, ma’am.”

“Not at cards again?” she demanded, with a searching look.

“Yes, ma’am; I could do that.”

“Since you are unwilling to play, boy,” said Miss Havisham, impatiently, “are you willing to work?”

I said I was quite willing.

“Then go into that opposite room,” said she, pointing at the door behind me with her withered hand, “and wait there till I come.”

I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indicated. From that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had an airless smell that was oppressive. The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on the table, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together.

Black beetles had fascinated my attention, and I was watching them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder. In her other hand she had a stick on which she leaned, and she looked like the witch.

“This,” said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, “is where I will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here.”

I shrank under her touch.

“What do you think that is?” she asked me, again pointing with her stick; “that, where those cobwebs are?”

“I can’t guess what it is, ma’am.”

“It’s a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!”

She looked all round the room in a glaring manner, and then said, leaning on me while her hand twitched my shoulder, “Come, come, come! Walk me, walk me![58]”

She was not strong, and after a little time said, “Slower!” After a while she said, “Call Estella!” so I went out on the landing and roared that name as I had done on the previous occasion. When her light appeared, I returned to Miss Havisham, and we started away again round and round the room.

Estella brought with her the three ladies and the gentleman, I didn’t know what to do.

“Dear Miss Havisham,” said a guest. “How well you look!”

“I do not,” returned Miss Havisham. “I am yellow skin and bone. And how are you, Camilla?” said Miss Havisham.

“Thank you, Miss Havisham,” she returned, “I am as well as can be expected.”

Miss Havisham and I had never stopped all this time, but kept going round and round the room.

“Matthew[59] couldnot come,” said Camilla.

“Matthew will come and see me at last,” said Miss Havisham, sternly, when I am laid on that table. That will be his place – there,” striking the table with her stick, “at my head! And yours will be there! And your husband’s there! And Sarah Pocket’s[60] there! And Georgiana’s[61] there! Now you all know where to take your stations when you come to feast upon me when you come to feast upon me.[62] And now go!”

She now said, “Walk me, walk me!” and we went on again.

“Bless you, Miss Havisham dear!” said the guests.

While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham still walked with her hand on my shoulder, but more and more slowly. At last she stopped before the fire, and said, after muttering and looking at it some seconds —

“This is my birthday, Pip.”

I was going to wish her many happy returns, when she lifted her stick.

“I don’t want it to be spoken of.[63] They come here on the day, but they dare not refer to it.”

Of course I made no further effort to refer to it.

“On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of decay was brought here. It and I have worn away together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me.”

She held the head of her stick against her heart.

“When the ruin is complete,” said she, with a ghastly look, “and when they lay me dead, in my bride’s dress on the bride’s table – which shall be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him, – so much the better if it is done on this day![64]”

She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her own figure lying there. I remained quiet. Estella returned, and she too remained quiet. It seemed to me that we continued thus for a long time.

At last, Miss Havisham said, “Let me see you two play cards; why have you not begun?” With that, we returned to her room, and sat down as before; I was beggared, as before; and again, as before, Miss Havisham watched us all the time, directed my attention to Estella’s beauty.

When we had played some half-dozen games, a day was appointed for my return, and I was taken down into the yard to be fed in the former dog-like manner. There, too, I was again left to wander about as I liked.

I found myself in the dismal corner upon which I had looked out of the window. I looked in and, to my great surprise, saw a pale young gentleman with red eyelids and light hair.

This pale young gentleman quickly disappeared, and reappeared beside me.

“Halloa!” said he, “young fellow!”

I said, “Halloa!”

“Who let you in?” said he.

“Miss Estella.”

“Come and fight,” said the pale young gentleman.

What could I do but follow him?

“Stop a minute,” he said, “I ought to give you a reason for fighting. There it is!” In a most irritating manner he pulled my hair, dipped his head, and butted it into my stomach.

His spirit inspired me with great respect. He seemed to have no strength, and he never hit me hard. He got heavily bruised, for I am sorry to say that the more I hit him, the harder I hit him; but he came up again and again and again, until at last he got a bad fall with the back of his head against the wall. He went on his knees backwards and said, “That means you have won.”

He seemed so brave and innocent, that I felt but a gloomy satisfaction in my victory. However, I said, “Can I help you?” and he said “No thank you,” and I said “Good afternoon,” and he said “Same to you.”

When I got into the courtyard, I found Estella waiting with the keys. But she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had kept her waiting; and there was a bright flush upon her face, as though something had happened to delight her. Instead of going straight to the gate, too, she stepped back into the passage, and beckoned me.

“Come here! You may kiss me, if you like.”

I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. But I felt that the kiss was worth nothing.

Chapter 12

As we began to be more used to one another, Miss Havisham talked more to me, and asked me such questions as what had I learnt and what was I going to be? I told her I was going to be apprenticed to Joe, I believed. But I wanted to study, and I told her many times about that. I hoped that she might offer some help towards that desirable end. But she did not; on the contrary, she seemed to prefer my being ignorant. Neither did she ever give me any money – or anything but my daily dinner – nor ever say that I should be paid for my services.

Estella always let me in and out, but never told me I might kiss her again. Sometimes, she would condescend to me; sometimes, she would be quite familiar with me; sometimes, she would tell me that she hated me. Miss Havisham would often ask me in a whisper, or when we were alone, “Does she grow prettier and prettier, Pip?” And when I said yes (for indeed she did), would seem to enjoy it. Miss Havisham would embrace her with lavish love, murmuring something in her ear that sounded like “Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy!”

One day Miss Havisham stopped short as she and I were walking, she leaning on my shoulder; and said with some displeasure —

“You are growing tall, Pip! Tell me the name of that blacksmith of yours.”

“Joe Gargery, ma’am.”

“Meaning the master you were to be apprenticed to?[65]”

“Yes, Miss Havisham.”

“Would Gargery come here with you?”

“At any particular time, Miss Havisham?”

“There, there! I know nothing about times. Let him come soon, and come along with you.”

Chapter 13

On the next day, Joe was arraying himself in his Sunday clothes to accompany me to Miss Havisham’s. The forge was shut up for the day.

We walked to town. As it was almost noon, Joe and I held straight on to Miss Havisham’s house. Estella opened the gate as usual, and, the moment she appeared, Joe took his hat off.

Estella took no notice of either of us, but led us the way that I knew so well. I followed next to her, and Joe came last.

Estella told me we were both to go in, so I conducted Joe into Miss Havisham’s presence. She was seated at her dressing-table, and looked round at us immediately.

“Oh!” said she to Joe. “You are the husband of the sister of this boy?”

Dear old Joe was looking like some extraordinary bird; standing speechless, with his mouth open as if he wanted a worm.

“You are the husband,” repeated Miss Havisham, “of the sister of this boy?”

It was very aggravating; but, throughout the interview, Joe was addressing me instead of Miss Havisham.

“Yes, you see, Pip, as I married your sister.”

“Well!” said Miss Havisham. “And you have reared the boy, with the intention of taking him for your apprentice; is that so, Mr. Gargery?”

“You know, Pip,” replied Joe, “as you and me were friends… But, Pip, if you had ever made objections to that, nobody would force you, don’t you see?”

“Has the boy,” said Miss Havisham, “ever made any objection? Does he like the trade?”

“Pip,” returned Joe, “I think, there were not any objection on your part, right?”

It was quite in vain for me to make him understand that he ought to speak to Miss Havisham.

“Have you brought his indentures with you?” asked Miss Havisham.

“Well, Pip, you know,” replied Joe, “you saw me put them in my bag, and therefore you know as they are here.” With which he took them out, and gave them, not to Miss Havisham, but to me. I am afraid I was ashamed of the dear good fellow – I know I was ashamed of him – when I saw that Estella stood at the back of Miss Havisham’s chair, and that her eyes laughed.

“You expected,” said Miss Havisham, as she looked them over, “no premium with the boy?”

“Joe!” I cried, for he made no reply at all. “Why don’t you answer – ”

“Pip,” returned Joe, “that is not a question requiring a answer between yourself and me. Should I say it?”Miss Havisham glanced at him and took up a little bag from the table beside her.

“Pip has earned a premium here,” she said, “and here it is. There are five-and-twenty guineas in this bag. Give it to your master, Pip.”

“This is very liberal on your part,[66] Pip,” said Joe, “ And now, old chap,” may we do our duty![67]

“Goodbye, Pip!” said Miss Havisham. “Let them out, Estella.”

“Am I to come again, Miss Havisham?” I asked.

“No. Gargery is your master now.”

We got out of the room. In another minute we were outside the gate, and it was locked, and Estella was gone. When we stood in the daylight alone again, Joe backed up against a wall, and said to me, “Astonishing!”

When I got into my little bedroom, I was truly wretched, and had a strong conviction on me that I should never like Joe’s trade. I had liked it once, but once was not now.[68]

Chapter 14

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of my sister’s temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed in it. I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to independence. Within a single year all this was changed. Now it was all coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any account.[69]

Once, it had seemed to me that when I should be very proud and happy when I enter the forge. Now the reality was quite different, I only felt that I was dusty with the dust of small-coal.

It was not because I was faithful, but because Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went for a soldier or a sailor. It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of industry,[70] but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, that I worked very hard.

What I wanted, who can say? How can I say, when I never knew? What I dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I should lift up my eyes and see Estella looking in at one of the wooden windows of the forge. I was haunted by the fear that she would, sooner or later, find me out, with a black face and hands, doing the coarsest part of my work, and would despise me. Often after dark, when I was pulling the bellows for Joe, I would look towards those panels of black night in the wall which the wooden windows then were, and would believe that she had come at last.

After that, when we went in to supper, the place and the meal would have a more homely look than ever, and I would feel more ashamed of home than ever.

Chapter 15

“Joe,” said I one day; “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?[71]”

“Pip,” said Joe, “Miss Havisham 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 believe it. Or she might not.”

Joe pulled hard at his pipe.

“You see, Pip,” Joe pursued, “Miss Havisham said “goodbye” to you, That’s all.”

“Yes, Joe. I heard her.”

“ALL,” Joe repeated, very emphatically.

“Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her.”

“Me to the North, and you to the South!”

“But, Joe.”

“Yes, old chap.”

“I have never thanked Miss Havisham, or asked after her, or shown that I remember her. My dear Joe, if you would give me a half-holiday tomorrow, I think I would go to the town and make a call on Miss Est – Havisham.”

“Her name,” said Joe, gravely, “isn’t Estavisham, Pip.”

So, tomorrow I found myself again going to Miss Havisham’s. 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 began to think if I was the right person to let me in. Finally, 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 last words, and she broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I was at a loss what to say. When the gate was closed upon me by Sarah, I felt more than ever dissatisfied with my home and with my trade and with everything.

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 shop but Mr. Wopsle.

“There’s something wrong,” said he, without stopping, “up at your place, Pip. Run all!”

“What is it?” I asked, keeping up with him.

“I can’t quite understand. The house seems to have been entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts. Somebody has been attacked and hurt.”

We were running, 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. My sister was lying without sense or movement on the bare boards.

Chapter 16

Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe, from a quarter after eight o’clock to a quarter before ten. While he was there, my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door, and had exchanged Good Night with a farm-worker going home. When Joe went home at five minutes before ten, he found her struck down on the floor, and promptly called in assistance.

My sister had been struck with something blunt and heavy, on the head and spine. And on the ground beside her, when Joe picked her up, was a convict’s leg-iron which had been filed asunder.

Knowing what I knew, I believed the iron to be my convict’s iron – the iron I had seen and heard him filing at, on the marshes – but my mind did not accuse him of having put it to its latest use.

It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon.

The Constables and the Bow Street men from London[72] were about the house for a week or two, and did pretty much what I have heard and read of like authorities doing in other such cases. They took up several obviously wrong people, and they ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas, and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas, instead of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances.

Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister lay very ill in bed. Her sight was disturbed, so that she saw objects multiplied; her hearing was greatly impaired; her memory also; and her speech was unintelligible.[73]

Chapter 17

I now fell into a regular routine of apprenticeship life. The most remarkable event was the arrival of my birthday and my paying another visit to Miss Havisham. I found Miss Sarah Pocket still on duty at the gate; I found Miss Havisham just as I had left her, and she spoke of Estella in the very same way, if not in the very same words. The interview lasted but a few minutes, and she gave me a guinea when I was going, and told me to come again on my next birthday.

I tried to decline taking the guinea on the first occasion, but with no better effect than causing her to ask me very angrily, if I expected more? Then, and after that, I took it.

The dull old house did not change, the yellow light in the darkened room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass stood still. Daylight never entered the house. It bewildered me, and under its influence I continued at heart to hate my trade and to be ashamed of home.

Wopsle’s second cousin Biddy used to come to help me and Joe. Biddy was a kind and intelligent but poor young woman. She was not beautiful – she was common, and could not be like Estella – but she was pleasant and wholesome and sweet-tempered. She had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that were very pretty and very good. I liked to talk to her, and she usually listened to me with great attention.

“Biddy,” said I one day, “we must talk together. And I must consult you a little more. Let us have a quiet walk on the marshes next Sunday, Biddy, and a long chat.”

Joe more than readily undertook the care of my sister on that Sunday afternoon, and Biddy and I went out together. It was summer-time, and lovely weather. When we had passed the village and the church and the churchyard, and were out on the marshes and began to see the sails of the ships as they sailed on, I resolved that it was a good time and place for the admission of Biddy into my inner confidence.

“Biddy,” said I, “I want to be a gentleman.”

“O, I wouldn’t, if I was you!” she returned. “What for?”

“Biddy,” said I, with some severity, “I have particular reasons for wanting to be a gentleman.”

“You know best, Pip; but don’t you think you are happier as you are?”

“Biddy,” I exclaimed, impatiently, “I am not at all happy as I am. I am disgusted with my calling and with my life. Don’t be absurd.”

“Was I absurd?” said Biddy, quietly raising her eyebrows; “I am sorry for that; I didn’t mean to be. I only want you to do well, and to be comfortable.”

“I could lead a very different sort of life from the life I lead now. See how I am going on. Dissatisfied and uncomfortable, coarse and common!”

Biddy turned her face suddenly towards mine, and looked far more attentively at me than she had looked at the sailing ships.

“It was neither a very true nor a very polite thing to say,” she remarked, directing her eyes to the ships again. “Who said it?”

I answered, “The beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham’s, and she’s more beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her dreadfully, and I want to be a gentleman on her account.[74]”

“Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over?[75]” Biddy quietly asked me, after a pause.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I admire her dreadfully.”

Biddy was the wisest of girls, and she tried to reason no more with me. She put her hand upon my hands, one after another, and gently took them out of my hair.

“I am glad of one thing,” said Biddy, “and that is your confidence, Pip. And I am glad of another thing, and that is, that of course you know you may depend upon my keeping it. Shall we walk a little farther, or go home?”

“Biddy,” I cried, getting up, putting my arm round her neck, and giving her a kiss, “I shall always tell you everything.”

“Till you’re a gentleman,” said Biddy.

“You know I never shall be, so that’s always.”

“Ah!” said Biddy, quite in a whisper. And then repeated, with her former pleasant change, “shall we walk a little farther, or go home?”

I said to Biddy we would walk a little farther. I said to myself, “Pip, what a fool you are!”

We talked a good deal as we walked, and all that Biddy said seemed right.

“Biddy,” said I, when we were walking homeward, “If I could only get myself to fall in love with you, that would be the thing for me.[76]”

“But you never will, you see,” said Biddy.

Biddy was immeasurably better than Estella, and the plain honest working life to which I was born had nothing in it to be ashamed of, but offered me sufficient means of self-respect and happiness. At those times, I would decide conclusively that I was becoming a partner with Joe and Biddy.

Chapter 18

It was in the fourth year of my apprenticeship to Joe, and it was a Saturday night. There was a group assembled round the fire at the Three Jolly Bargemen, attentive to Mr. Wopsle as he read the newspaper aloud. Of that group I was one.

I noticed a strange gentleman leaning over the back of the settle opposite me, looking on.

“From information I have received,” said he, looking round at us, “I have reason to believe there is a blacksmith among you, by name Joseph – or Joe – Gargery. Which is the man?”

“Here is the man,” said Joe.

The strange gentleman beckoned him out of his place, and Joe went.

“You have an apprentice,” pursued the stranger, “commonly known as Pip? Is he here?”

“I am here!” I cried.

The stranger did not recognize me, but I recognized him as the gentleman I had met on the stairs, on the occasion of my second visit to Miss Havisham.

“I wish to have a private conference with you two,” said he, when he had surveyed me at his leisure. “It will take a little time. Perhaps we had better go to your place of residence. I prefer not to anticipate my communication here.”

Amidst a wondering silence, we three walked out of the Jolly Bargemen, and in a wondering silence walked home. While going along, the strange gentleman occasionally looked at me, and occasionally bit the side of his finger. As we neared home, Joe vaguely acknowledging the occasion as an impressive and ceremonious one, went on ahead to open the front door. Our conference was held in the state parlor, which was feebly lighted by one candle.

It began with the strange gentleman’s sitting down at the table, drawing the candle to him, and looking over some entries in his pocket-book. He then put up the pocket-book and set the candle a little aside, after peering round it into the darkness at Joe and me, to ascertain which was which.

“My name,” he said, “is Jaggers,[77] and I am a lawyer in London. I am pretty well known. I have unusual business with you. If my advice had been asked, I should not have been here.”

Finding that he could not see us very well from where he sat, he got up, and threw one leg over the back of a chair and leaned upon it.

“Now, Joseph Gargery, I am ready to relieve you of this young fellow. You would not object to cancel his indentures at his request and for his good? You want nothing for so doing?”

“Lord forbid that I should want anything for not standing in Pip’s way,” said Joe, staring.

“Lord forbidding is pious, but the question is, Would you want anything? Do you want anything?” returned Mr. Jaggers.

“The answer is,” returned Joe, sternly, “No.”

I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as if he considered him a fool.

“Very well,” said Mr. Jaggers. “Now, I return to this young fellow. He has Great Expectations.”

Joe and I gasped, and looked at one another.

“I am instructed to communicate to him,” said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his finger at me sideways, “that he will come into a handsome property.[78] Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of that property,[79] that he be immediately removed from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman – in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations.”

My dream came true; Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale.[80]

“Now, Mr. Pip,” pursued the lawyer, “You are to understand, first, that it is the request of the person from whom I take my instructions that you always bear the name of Pip. But if you have any objection, this is the time to mention it.”

My heart was beating very fast, I could scarcely stammer I had no objection.

“Good. Now you are to understand, Mr. Pip, that the name of the person who is your liberal benefactor remains a profound secret, until the person chooses to reveal it. I am empowered to mention[81] that it is the intention of the person to reveal it at first hand by word of mouth to yourself. When or where that intention may be carried out, I cannot say; no one can say. It may be years hence. But if you have any objection to it, this is the time to mention it. Speak out.”

Once more, I stammered with difficulty that I had no objection.

“I should think not! Now, Mr. Pip, we come next, to mere details of arrangement. We have to choose your tutor. Have you ever heard of any tutor whom you would prefer to another?”

I replied in the negative.

“There is a certain tutor, of whom I have some knowledge,” said Mr. Jaggers. “I don’t recommend him; because I never recommend anybody. The gentleman I speak of is one Mr. Matthew Pocket.[82]”

Ah! I caught at the name directly. Miss Havisham’s relation. The Matthew whose place was to be at Miss Havisham’s head, when she lay dead, in her bride’s dress on the bride’s table.

“You know the name?” said Mr. Jaggers, looking at me, and then shutting up his eyes while he waited for my answer.

My answer was, that I had heard of the name.

“Oh!” said he. “You have heard of the name. You had better try him in his own house. The way shall be prepared for you, and you can see his son first, who is in London. When will you come to London?”

I said (glancing at Joe, who stood looking on, motionless), that I could come directly.

“First,” said Mr. Jaggers, “you should have some new clothes, and they should not be working-clothes. Say in a week. You’ll want some money. Shall I leave you twenty guineas?”

He took out a long purse, and counted them out on the table and pushed them over to me.

“Well, Joseph Gargery? You look astonished?”

“I am!” said Joe, in a very decided manner.

“But what,” said Mr. Jaggers, swinging his purse – “what if it was in my instructions to make you a present, as compensation?”

“As compensation what for?” Joe demanded.

“For the loss of his services.”

Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the touch of a woman. “Pip is hearty welcome,” said Joe, “to go free with his services, to honor and fortune, as no words can tell him. But if you think as Money can make compensation to me for the loss of the little child – what come to the forge – and ever the best of friends! – ”

Mr. Jaggers had looked at him, as one who recognized in Joe the village idiot,[83] and in me his keeper. When it was over, he said, weighing in his hand the purse he had ceased to swing:

“Now, Joseph Gargery, I warn you this is your last chance. If you mean to take a present that I have, speak out, and you shall have it. If on the contrary you mean to say – ” Here, to his great amazement, he was stopped by Joe’s words.

“I mean,” cried Joe, “that if you come into my place badgering me, come out! If you’re a man, come on! Stand or fall by!”

I drew Joe away. Mr. Jaggers delivered his remarks. They were these.

“Well, Mr. Pip, I think the sooner you leave here – as you are to be a gentleman – the better. Let it stand for this day week,[84] and you shall receive my printed address in the meantime.”

He went out, I thanked him and ran home again, and there I found that Joe had already locked the front, and was seated by the kitchen fire with a hand on each knee, gazing intently at the burning coals. I too sat down before the fire and gazed at the coals, and nothing was said for a long time.

My sister was in her chair in her corner, and Biddy sat at her needle-work before the fire, and Joe sat next Biddy, and I sat next Joe in the corner opposite my sister.

“Joe, have you told Biddy?” asked I.

“No, Pip,” returned Joe, still looking at the fire, and holding his knees tight, “ I left it to yourself, Pip.”

“I would rather you told, Joe.”

“Pip’s a gentleman of fortune then,” said Joe, “and God bless him in it!”

Biddy dropped her work, and looked at me. Joe held his knees and looked at me. I looked at both of them. After a pause, they both heartily gratulated me; but there was a certain touch of sadness in their congratulations.

Biddy said no more. I soon exchanged an affectionate good night with her and Joe, and went up to bed. When I got into my little room, I sat down and took a long look at it.

The sun had been shining brightly all day on the roof of my attic, and the room was warm. As I put the window open and stood looking out, I saw Joe come slowly forth at the dark door, below; and then I saw Biddy come, and bring him a pipe and light it for him. He never smoked so late.

Chapter 19

Joe and Biddy were very sympathetic and pleasant when I spoke of our approaching separation; but they only referred to it when I did. No more low, wet grounds, no more dikes, no more of these grazing cattle – I was for London; not for smith’s work in general! I made my exultant way to the wood, and, lying down there, fell asleep.

When I awoke, I was much surprised to find Joe sitting beside me, smoking his pipe. He greeted me with a cheerful smile on my opening my eyes, and said —

“I decided to follow you, Pip.”

“Joe, I am very glad you did so.”

“Thank you, Pip.”

“You may be sure, dear Joe,” I went on, after we had shaken hands, “that I shall never forget you.”

“No, no, Pip!” said Joe, in a comfortable tone, “I’m sure of that. Ay, ay, old chap!”

When we had walked home and had had tea, I took Biddy into our little garden by the side of the lane, and said I had a favour to ask of her.

“And it is, Biddy,” said I, “that you will not omit any opportunity of helping Joe on, a little.”

“How helping him on?” asked Biddy, with a steady sort of glance.

“Well! Joe is a dear good fellow – in fact, I think he is the dearest fellow that ever lived – but he is rather backward in some things. For instance, Biddy, in his learning and his manners.”

Although I was looking at Biddy as I spoke, and although she opened her eyes very wide when I had spoken, she did not look at me.

“O, his manners! won’t his manners do then?[85]” asked Biddy, plucking a black-currant leaf.

“My dear Biddy, they do very well here – ”

“O! they do very well here?” interrupted Biddy, looking closely at the leaf in her hand.

“I mean a higher sphere.[86]”

“And don’t you think he knows that?” asked Biddy.

It was such a very provoking question, that I said, snappishly —

“Biddy, what do you mean?”

“Have you never considered that he may be proud?”

“Proud?” I repeated, with disdainful emphasis.

“O! there are many kinds of pride,” said Biddy, looking full at me and shaking her head; “pride is not all of one kind[87] – ”

“Well? What are you stopping for?” said I.

“He may be too proud,” resumed Biddy, “to let any one take him out of a place that he fills well and with respect. To tell you the truth, I think he is.”

“Now, Biddy,” said I, “I did not expect to see this in you. You are envious, Biddy, and grudging. You are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune.”

“If you have the heart to think so,” returned Biddy, “say so. Say so over and over again, if you have the heart to think so.”

But, morning once more brightened my view, and I extended my clemency to Biddy, and we dropped the subject. Putting on the best clothes I had, I went into town as early as I could hope to find the shops open, and presented myself before Mr. Trabb,[88] the tailor.

“Well!” said Mr. Trabb. “How are you, and what can I do for you?”

“Mr. Trabb,” said I, “it looks like boasting; but I have come into a handsome property. I am going up to my guardian in London, and I want a fashionable suit of clothes.”

“My dear sir,” said Mr. Trabb, “may I congratulate you? Would you do me the favour of stepping into the shop?”

I selected the materials for a suit, with the assistance of Mr. Trabb. Mr. Trabb measured and calculated me in the parlor.

After this memorable event, I went to the hatter’s, and the shoemaker’s, and the hosier’s. I also went to the coach-office[89] and took my place for seven o’clock on Saturday morning.

So, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, passed; and on Friday morning I went to pay my visit to Miss Havisham.

I went to Miss Havisham’s by all the back ways, and rang at the bell. Sarah Pocket came to the gate, and positively reeled back when she saw me so changed.

“You?” said she. “You? Good gracious! What do you want?”

“I am going to London, Miss Pocket,” said I, “and want to say goodbye to Miss Havisham.”

Miss Havisham was taking exercise in the room with the long spread table, leaning on her crutch stick. She stopped and turned.

“Don’t go, Sarah,” she said. “Well, Pip?”

“I start for London, Miss Havisham, tomorrow,” I was exceedingly careful what I said, “and I thought you would kindly not mind[90] my taking leave of you. I have come into such good fortune since I saw you last, Miss Havisham, and I am so grateful for it, Miss Havisham!”

“Ay, ay!” said she, looking at envious Sarah, with delight. “I have seen Mr. Jaggers. I have heard about it, Pip. So you go tomorrow?”

“Yes, Miss Havisham.”

“And you are adopted by a rich person?”

“Yes, Miss Havisham.”

“Not named?”

“No, Miss Havisham.”

“And Mr. Jaggers is made your guardian?”

“Yes, Miss Havisham.”

“Well!” she went on; “you have a promising career before you. Be good – deserve it – and abide by Mr. Jaggers’s instructions.”

She looked at me, and looked at Sarah. “Goodbye, Pip! – you will always keep the name of Pip, you know.”

“Yes, Miss Havisham.”

“Goodbye, Pip!”

She stretched out her hand, and I went down on my knee and put it to my lips. Sarah Pocket conducted me down. I said “Goodbye, Miss Pocket;” but she merely stared, and did not seem collected enough to know that I had spoken.

The world lay spread before me.

This is the end of the first stage of Pip’s expectations.[91]

Chapter 20

The journey from our town to London was a journey of about five hours.

Mr. Jaggers had sent me his address; it was, Little Britain,[92] and he had written after it on his card, “just out of Smithfield.[93] We stopped in a gloomy street, at certain offices with an open door, where was painted MR. JAGGERS.

“How much?” I asked the coachman.

The coachman answered, “A shilling – unless you wish to make it more.”

I naturally said I had no wish to make it more.

“Then it must be a shilling,” observed the coachman. I went into the front office with my little bag in my hand and asked, Was Mr. Jaggers at home?

“He is not,” returned the clerk. “He is in Court at present. Am I addressing Mr. Pip?”

I signified that he was addressing Mr. Pip.

“Mr. Jaggers left word, would you wait in his room.”

Mr. Jaggers’s room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a most dismal place. There were not so many papers about, as I should have expected to see; and there were some odd objects about, that I should not have expected to see – such as an old rusty pistol, a sword, several strange-looking boxes and packages.

I sat down in the chair placed over against Mr. Jaggers’s chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of the place. But I sat wondering and waiting in Mr. Jaggers’s close room, and got up and went out.

At length, as I was looking out at the Little Britain, I saw Mr. Jaggers coming across the road towards me.

My guardian then took me into his own room, and while he lunched, informed me what arrangements he had made for me. I was to go to “Barnard’s Inn,[94]” to young Mr. Pocket’s rooms, where a bed had been sent in for my accommodation. “You will find your credit good, Mr. Pip,” said my guardian, but I shall by this means be able to check your bills.”

I asked Mr. Jaggers if I could send for a coach? He said it was not worth while, I was so near my destination; Wemmick[95] should walk round with me.

Chapter 21

Mr. Wemmick was a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face.

“So you were never in London before?” said Mr. Wemmick to me.

“No,” said I.

“I was new here once,” said Mr. Wemmick.

“You are well acquainted with it now?”

“Why, yes,” said Mr. Wemmick.

“Is it a very wicked place?” I asked, more for the sake[96] of saying something than for information.

“You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered in London. But there are plenty of people anywhere, who’ll do that for you.”

His mouth was such a post-office of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling.

“Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket lives?” I asked Mr. Wemmick.

“Yes,” said he, nodding in the direction. “At Hammersmith,[97] west of London.”

“Is that far?”

“Well! Say five miles.”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes, I know him. I know him!”

Barnard’s Inn. I had supposed that establishment to be an hotel kept by Mr. Barnard. I found Barnard to be a disembodied spirit, or a fiction, and his inn the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together.

I looked in dismay at Mr. Wemmick. “Ah!” said he; “the retirement reminds you of the country.”

He led me into a corner and conducted me up a flight of stairs – to a set of chambers on the top floor. MR. POCKET, JUN., was painted on the door, and there was a label on the letter-box, “Return shortly.[98]”

“You don’t want me any more?” asked Mr. Wemmick.

“No, thank you,” said I.

“As I keep the cash,” Mr. Wemmick observed, “we shall most likely meet pretty often. Good day.”

“Good day.”

I put out my hand, and Mr. Wemmick at first looked at it as if he thought I wanted something. Then he looked at me, and said, correcting himself —

“To be sure! Yes. You’re in the habit of shaking hands?”

I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of the London fashion, but said yes.

When we had shaken hands and he was gone, I opened the staircase window. Mr. Pocket, Junior, returned in half an hour. He had a paper-bag under each arm and some strawberries in one hand, and was out of breath.

“Mr. Pip?” said he.

“Mr. Pocket?” said I.

“Dear me!” he exclaimed. “I am extremely sorry. The fact is, I have been out on your account – for I thought, coming from the country, you might like a little fruit after dinner, and I went to Covent Garden Market[99] to get it good. Pray come in, allow me to lead the way. We might like to take a walk about London. I am sure I shall be very happy to show London to you. As to our table, you won’t find that bad, I hope, for it will be supplied from our coffee-house here,[100] and at your expense,[101] such being Mr. Jaggers’s directions. As to our lodging, it’s not by any means splendid, because I have my own bread to earn, and my father hasn’t anything to give me, and I shouldn’t be willing to take it, if he had. This is our sitting-room – just such chairs and tables and carpet and so forth, you see. This is your bedroom; the furniture’s hired for the occasion, but I trust it will answer the purpose; if you should want anything, I’ll go and fetch it. The chambers are retired, and we shall be alone together, but we shan’t fight, I dare say. But, I beg your pardon, you’re holding the fruit all this time. Pray let me take these bags from you. I am quite ashamed.”

Suddenly Mr. Pocket, Junior, said, falling back —

“Lord bless me, you’re the prowling boy!”

“And you,” said I, “are the pale young gentleman!”

Chapter 22

The pale young gentleman and I stood contemplating one another in Barnard’s Inn, until we both burst out laughing.

“Well!” said the pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand good-humoredly, “it’s all over now, I hope you’ll forgive me.”

I derived from this speech that Mr. Herbert Pocket[102] (for Herbert was the pale young gentleman’s name) did not remember anything.

“Miss Havisham had sent for me, to see if she could take a fancy to me. But she couldn’t – she didn’t.”

I thought it polite to remark that I was surprised to hear that.

“Bad taste,” said Herbert, laughing, “but a fact. Yes, she had sent for me on a trial visit, and if I had come out of it successfully, I suppose I should have been provided for; perhaps I should have been engaged to Estella.”

“How did you bear your disappointment?” I asked.

“Pooh!” said he, “I didn’t care much for it. She’s a Tartar.[103]”

“Miss Havisham?”

“I don’t say no to that, but I meant Estella. That girl’s hard and haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the male sex.[104]”

“What relation is she to Miss Havisham?”

“None,” said he. “Only adopted.”

“Why should she wreak revenge on all the male sex? What revenge?”

“Lord, Mr. Pip!” said he. “Don’t you know?”

“No,” said I.

“Dear me! It’s quite a story, and shall be saved till dinner-time. And now let me take the liberty of asking you a question. How did you come there, that day?”

I told him, and he was attentive until I had finished, and then burst out laughing again.

“Mr. Jaggers is your guardian, I understand?” he went on.

“Yes.”

“You know he is Miss Havisham’s man of business and solicitor, and has her confidence when nobody else has?”

I answered with a constraint, that I had seen Mr. Jaggers in Miss Havisham’s house on the very day of our combat, but never at any other time.

“He was so obliging[105] as to suggest my father for your tutor, and he called on my father to propose it. Of course he knew about my father from his connection with Miss Havisham. My father is Miss Havisham’s cousin.”

Herbert Pocket was still a pale young gentleman. He had not a handsome face, but it was better than handsome: being extremely amiable and cheerful.

As he was so communicative, I told him my small story, and stressed on my being forbidden to inquire who my benefactor was. I further mentioned that as I had been brought up a blacksmith in a country place, and knew very little of the ways of politeness, I would take it as a great kindness in him if he would give me a hint whenever he saw going wrong.

“With pleasure,” said he, “Will you do me the favour to begin at once to call me by my Christian name, Herbert?”

I thanked him and said I would. I informed him in exchange that my Christian name was Philip.

“No,” said he, smiling, “Would you mind Handel[106] for a familiar name? There’s a charming piece of music by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith.[107]”

“I should like it very much.”

“Then, my dear Handel,” said he, turning round as the door opened, “here is the dinner!”

It was a nice little dinner. Everything made the feast delightful. We had made some progress in the dinner, when I reminded Herbert of his promise to tell me about Miss Havisham.

“True,” he replied. “ Let me introduce the topic, Handel, by mentioning that in London it is not the custom to put the knife in the mouth – for fear of accidents – and that while the fork is reserved for that use. Also, the spoon is not generally used over-hand, but under.[108]”

He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively way, that we both laughed and I scarcely blushed.

“Now,” he pursued, “concerning Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham, you must know, was a spoilt child. Her mother died when she was a baby, and her father denied her nothing.[109] Her father was a country gentleman down in your part of the world, and was a brewer. Well! Mr. Havisham was very rich and very proud. So was his daughter.”

“Miss Havisham was an only child?” I hazarded.

“Stop a moment, I am coming to that. No, she was not an only child; she had a half-brother.[110] Her father privately married again – his cook, I rather think.”

“I thought he was proud,” said I.

“My good Handel, so he was. He married his second wife privately, because he was proud, and in course of time she died. When she was dead, I apprehend he first told his daughter what he had done, and then the son became a part of the family, residing in the house you are acquainted with. As the son grew a young man, he turned out riotous, extravagant – altogether bad. At last his father disinherited him; but he softened when he was dying, and gave him something, though less than to Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham was now an heiress.[111] Her half-brother had debts. There were stronger differences between him and her than there had been between him and his father. Now, I come to the cruel part of the story. There appeared a certain man, who made love to Miss Havisham. I never saw him (for this happened five-and-twenty years ago, before you and I were, Handel), but I have heard my father mention that he was a showy man.[112] Well! This man pursued Miss Havisham closely. And she passionately loved him. There is no doubt that she perfectly idolized him. Your guardian was not at that time in Miss Havisham’s counsels, and she was too haughty and too much in love to be advised by any one. Her relations were poor, with the exception of my father; he was poor enough, but not jealous. The only independent one among them, he warned her that she was doing too much for this man. She took the first opportunity of angrily ordering my father out of the house, in his presence, and my father has never seen her since.”

I thought of her having said, “Matthew will come and see me at last when I am laid dead upon that table;” and I asked Herbert whether his father was so inveterate against her?

“It’s not that,” said he, “To return to the man and make an end of him. The marriage day was fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour was planned out, the wedding guests were invited. The day came, but not the bridegroom. He wrote her a letter – ”

“Which she received,” I struck in, “when she was dressing for her marriage? At twenty minutes to nine?”

“At the hour and minute,” said Herbert, nodding, “at which she afterwards stopped all the clocks.”

“Is that all the story?” I asked.

“All I know of it. But I have forgotten one thing. It has been supposed that the man to whom she gave her misplaced confidence acted throughout in concert[113] with her half-brother; that it was a conspiracy between them; and that they shared the profits.”

“I wonder he didn’t marry her and get all the property,” said I.

“He may have been married already,” said Herbert. “But I don’t know that.”

“What became of the two men?” I asked, after considering the subject.

“They fell into deeper shame and degradation – if there can be deeper – and ruin.”

“Are they alive now?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said just now that Estella was not related to Miss Havisham, but adopted. When adopted?”

Herbert shrugged his shoulders. “There has always been an Estella, since I have heard of a Miss Havisham. I know no more. And now, Handel, all that I know about Miss Havisham, you know.”

“And all that I know,” I retorted, “you know.”

On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine, Herbert went to the counting-house. He was to come away in an hour or two to attend me to Hammersmith, and I was to wait about for him. We went back to Barnard’s Inn and got my little bag, and then took coach for Hammersmith. We arrived there at two or three o’clock in the afternoon, and had very little way to walk to Mr. Pocket’s house. Lifting the latch of a gate, we passed direct into a little garden overlooking the river, where Mr. Pocket’s children were playing about.

Mrs. Pocket was sitting on a garden chair under a tree, reading, with her legs upon another garden chair; and Mrs. Pocket’s two nurse-maids were looking about them while the children played. “Mamma,” said Herbert, “this is young Mr. Pip.”

Chapter 23

Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I was not sorry to see him. He was a young-looking man, in spite of his very gray hair, and his manner seemed quite natural. When he had talked with me a little, he said to Mrs. Pocket, “Belinda,[114] I hope you have welcomed Mr. Pip?[115]” And she looked up from her book, and said, “Yes.”

I found out within a few hours, that Mrs. Pocket was the only daughter of a certain gentleman. The young lady had grown up highly ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless. I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. Pocket had been educated at Harrow[116] and at Cambridge;[117] and he had had the happiness of marrying Mrs. Pocket very early in life.

After dinner the children were introduced. There were four little girls, and two little boys. One of the little girls have prematurely taken upon herself some charge of the others.

I looked awkwardly at the tablecloth while this was going on. A pause succeeded. But the time was going on, and soon the evening came.

There was a sofa where Mr. Pocket stood, and he dropped upon it in the attitude of the Dying Gladiator.[118] Still in that attitude he said, with a hollow voice, “Good night, Mr. Pip.” So I decided to go to bed and leave him.

Chapter 24

After two or three days, when I had established myself in my room, Mr. Pocket and I had a long talk together. He knew more of my intended career than I knew myself.

He advised my attending certain places in London. Through his way of saying this, and much more to similar purpose, he placed himself on confidential terms with me in an admirable manner.

I thought if I could retain my bedroom in Barnard’s Inn, my life would be agreeably varied. So I went off to Little Britain and expressed my wish to Mr. Jaggers.

“If I could buy the furniture now hired for me,” said I, “and one or two other little things, I should be quite at home there.”

“Go it![119]” said Mr. Jaggers, with a short laugh. “Well! How much do you want?”

I said I didn’t know how much.

“Come!” retorted Mr. Jaggers. “How much? Fifty pounds?”

“O, not nearly so much.”

“Five pounds?” said Mr. Jaggers.

This was such a great fall, that I said in discomfiture, “O, more than that.”

“More than that, eh!” retorted Mr. Jaggers, lying in wait for me, with his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, and his eyes on the wall behind me; “how much more?”

“It is so difficult to fix a sum,” said I, hesitating.

“Come!” said Mr. Jaggers. “Twice five; will that do? Three times five; will that do? Four times five; will that do?”

“Twenty pounds, of course,” said I, smiling.

“Wemmick!” said Mr. Jaggers, opening his office door. “Take Mr. Pip’s written order, and pay him twenty pounds.”

Mr. Jaggers never laughed. As he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick was brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick that I hardly knew what to make of Mr. Jaggers’s manner.

“Tell him that, and he’ll take it as a compliment,” answered Wemmick. “It’s not personal; it’s professional: only professional.”

Wemmick was at his desk, lunching – and crunching – on a dry hard biscuit; pieces of which he threw from time to time into his mouth, as if he were posting them.

“Always seems to me,” said Wemmick, “as if he had set a man-trap and was watching it. Suddenly – click – you’re caught!”

I said I supposed he was very skilful?

“Deep,” said Wemmick, “as Australia. If there was anything deeper,” added Wemmick, bringing his pen to paper, “he’d be it.”

Then I asked if there were many clerks? to which he replied —

“We don’t run much into clerks,[120] because there’s only one Jaggers. There are only four of us. Would you like to see them? You are one of us, as I may say.”

I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had paid me my money from a cash-box in a safe, the key of which safe he kept somewhere down his back, we went up stairs. The house was dark and shabby. In the front first floor, a clerk who looked something between a publican and a rat-catcher[121] – a large pale, puffed, swollen man – was attentively engaged with three or four people of shabby appearance. In the room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with dangling hair was similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes. In a back room, a high-shouldered man,[122] who was dressed in old black clothes, was stooping over his work of making fair copies of the notes of the other two gentlemen, for Mr. Jaggers’s own use.

This was all the establishment. When we went down stairs again, Wemmick led me into my guardian’s room, and said, “This you’ve seen already.”

Then he went on to say, in a friendly manner:

“If at any odd time when you have nothing better to do, you wouldn’t mind coming over to see me at Walworth,[123] I could offer you a bed, and I should consider it an honor. I have not much to show you; but such two or three curiosities as I have got you might like to look over; and I am fond of[124] a bit of garden and a summer-house.”

I said I should be delighted to accept his invitation.

“Thank you,” said he. “Have you dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Well,” said Wemmick, “he’ll give you wine, and good wine. I’ll give you punch, and not bad punch. And now I’ll tell you something. When you go to dine with Mr. Jaggers, look at his housekeeper.”

“Shall I see something very uncommon?”

“Well,” said Wemmick, “you’ll see a wild beast tamed.”

I told him I would do so, with all the interest and curiosity that his preparation awakened.

Chapter 25

When I had been in Mr. Pocket’s family a month or two, Mr. and Mrs. Camilla[125] turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket’s sister. Georgiana, whom I had seen at Miss Havisham’s on the same occasion, also turned up. She was a cousin – an indigestive single woman. These people hated me with the hatred of disappointment. Towards Mr. Pocket they showed the complacent forbearance.

These were the surroundings among which I settled down, and applied myself to my education. I soon began to spend an amount of money that within a few short months I should have thought almost fabulous; but I stuck to my books. There was no other merit in this, than my having sense enough to feel my deficiencies.

I had not seen Mr. Wemmick for some weeks, when I thought I would write him a note and propose to go home with him on a certain evening. He replied that it would give him much pleasure, and that he would expect me at the office at six o’clock. Thither I went, and there I found him, putting the key of his safe down his back as the clock struck.

“Did you think of walking down to Walworth?” said he.

“Certainly,” said I, “if you approve.”

Wemmick’s house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots of garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted.

“My own doing,” said Wemmick. “Looks pretty; doesn’t it?”

I highly commended it, I think it was the smallest house I ever saw; with the queerest gothic windows,[126] and a gothic door almost too small to get in at.

“That’s a real flagstaff, you see,” said Wemmick, “and on Sundays I run up a real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed this bridge, I hoist it.”

The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide and two deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which he hoisted it up; smiling as he did so, and not merely mechanically.

“At nine o’clock every night, Greenwich time,[127]” said Wemmick, “the gun fires. There it is, you see! Then, at the back, out of sight, there’s a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits.”

Then, he conducted me to a bower; and in this retreat our glasses were already set forth. Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose margin the bower was raised.

“I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my own gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades,[128]” said Wemmick, in acknowledging my compliments. “Well; it’s a good thing, you know. It pleases the Aged. You wouldn’t mind being at once introduced to the Aged, would you?”

I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle. There we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel coat: clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for, but deaf.

“Well aged parent,” said Wemmick, shaking hands with him in a cordial way, “how are you?”

“All right, John; all right!” replied the old man.

“Here’s Mr. Pip, aged parent,” said Wemmick, “and I wish you could hear his name. Nod away at him, Mr. Pip; that’s what he likes. Nod away at him, if you please.”

“This is a fine place of my son’s, sir,” cried the old man, while I nodded as hard as I possibly could.

“You’re as proud of it; aren’t you, Aged?” said Wemmick, contemplating the old man, with his hard face really softened; “there’s a nod for you;” giving him a tremendous one; “there’s another for you;” giving him a still more tremendous one; “you like that, don’t you? If you’re not tired, Mr. Pip, will you nod away at him again? You can’t think how it pleases him.”

I nodded away at him several more, and he was in great spirits.[129] We left him bestirring himself to feed the fowls, and we sat down. Wemmick told me, as he smoked a pipe, that it had taken him many years to bring the property up to its present condition.

“Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick?”

“O yes,” said Wemmick, “I have got hold of it!”

“Is it indeed? I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it?”

“Never seen it,” said Wemmick. “Never heard of it. Never seen the Aged. Never heard of him. No; the office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me. If it’s not in any way disagreeable to you, you’ll oblige me by doing the same. I don’t wish it spoken about.”

Before supper Wemmick showed me his collection of curiosities. They were mostly of a felonious character: the pen with which a celebrated forgery had been committed, a razor or two, some locks of hair, and several manuscript confessions written under condemnation.

There was a neat little girl in attendance, who looked after the Aged in the day. When she had laid the supper-cloth, the bridge was lowered, and she went away for the night. The supper was excellent; and I was heartily pleased with my whole entertainment.

Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid I heard him cleaning my boots. After that, he fell to gardening, and I saw him from my gothic window pretending to employ the Aged, and nodding at him in a most devoted manner. Our breakfast was as good as the supper, and at half-past eight precisely we started for Little Britain. By degrees,[130] Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along. At last, when we got to his place of business and he pulled out his key from his coat-collar, he looked quite different.

Chapter 26

My guardian was in his room, washing his hands with his scented soap, when I went into the office from Walworth; and he called me to him, and gave me the invitation for myself and friends which Wemmick had prepared me to receive. “No ceremony,” he stipulated, “and no dinner dress, and say tomorrow.” I asked him where we should come to (for I had no idea where he lived), and replied, “Come here, and I’ll take you home with me.”

He washed his hands after his clients, as if he were a surgeon or a dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose, which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer’s shop. It had an unusually large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he would wash his hands, and wipe them and dry them all over this towel. When I and my friends repaired to him at six o’clock next day, we found him with his head butted into this closet, not only washing his hands, but laving his face. And even when he had done all that, and had gone all round the jack-towel, he took out his penknife and scraped the case out of his nails before he put his coat on.

He conducted us to Gerrard Street, Soho,[131] to a house on the south side of that street. He took out his key and opened the door, and we all went into a stone hall, bare, gloomy, and little used. So, up a dark brown staircase into a series of three dark brown rooms on the first floor. There were carved garlands on the walls.

Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms; the second was his dressing-room; the third, his bedroom. He told us that he held the whole house, but rarely used more of it than we saw. The table was comfortably laid – no silver in the service, of course – and a variety of bottles and decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert.

There was a bookcase in the room; I saw from the backs of the books, that they were about evidence, criminal law, criminal biography, trials, acts of Parliament, and such things. The furniture was all very solid and good, like his watch-chain. In a corner was a little table of papers with a shaded lamp: so that he seemed to bring the office home with him in that respect too.

My friends were: Bentley Drummle,[132] a coarse young man, I met him at Mr. Pocket’s house, as Drummle was also to be trained in skills; and Startop,[133] who – like Bentley Drummle – was my fellow student, but unlike Drummle, he was kind.

Mr. Jaggers had scarcely seen my three companions until now – for he and I had walked together. To my surprise, he seemed to be interested in Drummle.

“Pip,” said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder and moving me to the window, “I don’t know one from the other. Who’s the Spider?”

“The spider?” said I.

“The blotchy, sulky fellow.”

“That’s Bentley Drummle,” I replied; “the one with the delicate face is Startop.”

Mr. Jaggers returned, “Bentley Drummle is his name, is it? I like the look of that fellow.”

He immediately began to talk to Drummle. I was looking at the two, when there came between me and them the housekeeper, with the first dish for the table.

She was a woman of about forty, I supposed – but I may have thought her younger than she was. Rather tall, of a nimble figure, extremely pale, with large faded eyes, and a quantity of streaming hair. I had seen Macbeth[134] at the theatre, a night or two before, and that her face looked to me as if it were all disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of the Witches’ caldron.[135]

She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm with a finger to notify that dinner was ready, and vanished. We took our seats at the round table, and my guardian kept Drummle on one side of him, while Startop sat on the other. It was a noble dish of fish that the housekeeper had put on table, and we had mutton afterwards, and then bird. Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all of the best, were given out by our host. No other attendant than the housekeeper appeared. She set on every dish; and I always saw in her face, a face rising out of the caldron.

Dinner went off very well. For myself, I found that I was expressing my tendency to lavish expenditure, and to patronize Herbert, and to boast of my great prospects, before I quite knew that I had opened my lips. It was so with all of us.

When we had got to the cheese, that our conversation turned upon our rowing feats, and that Drummle was not very good in rowing. Drummle informed our host that he much preferred our room to our company, and that as to skill he was more than our master, and that as to strength he could scatter us like chaff. Drummle was baring and spanning his arm to show how muscular it was, and we all fell to baring and spanning our arms in a ridiculous manner.

My guardian was leaning back in his chair biting the side of his forefinger and showing an interest in Drummle, that, to me, was quite inexplicable. Suddenly, he clapped his large hand on the housekeeper’s, like a trap, as she stretched it across the table. So suddenly and smartly did he do this, that we all stopped in our foolish contention.

“If you talk of strength,” said Mr. Jaggers, “I’ll show you a wrist. Molly, let them see your wrist.”

Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put her other hand behind her waist. “Master,” she said, in a low voice, with her eyes attentively fixed upon him. “Don’t.”

“I’ll show you a wrist,” repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an determination to show it. “Molly, let them see your wrist.”

“Master,” she again murmured. “Please!”

“Molly,” said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but looking at the opposite side of the room, “let them see both your wrists. Show them. Come!”

He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up on the table. She brought her other hand from behind her, and held the two out side by side. The last wrist was much disfigured[136] – deeply scarred and scarred across and across. When she held her hands out she took her eyes from Mr. Jaggers, and turned them watchfully on every one of the rest of us in succession.

“There’s power here,[137]” said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the sinews with his forefinger. “Very few men have the power of wrist that this woman has. I have had occasion to notice many hands; but I never saw stronger in that respect, man’s or woman’s, than these.”

While he said these words in a leisurely, critical style, she continued to look at every one of us in regular succession as we sat. The moment he ceased, she looked at him again. “That’ll do, Molly,[138]” said Mr. Jaggers, giving her a slight nod; “you have been admired, and can go.” She withdrew her hands and went out of the room, and Mr. Jaggers filled his glass and passed round the wine.

“At half-past nine, gentlemen,” said he, “we must break up.[139] Pray make the best use of your time.[140] I am glad to see you all. Mr. Drummle, I drink to you.”

Drummle showed his morose depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and more offensive degree, until he became downright intolerable. But Mr. Jaggers followed him with the same strange interest. He actually seemed to serve as a zest to Mr. Jaggers’s wine.

In our boyish want of discretion I dare say we took too much to drink, and I know we talked too much. We became particularly hot upon some boorish sneer of Drummle’s, to the effect that we were too free with our money. It led to my remarking, that Startop had lent him money in my presence but a week or so before.

“Well,” retorted Drummle; “he’ll be paid.”

“I don’t mean to imply that he won’t,” said I, “but it might make you hold your tongue about us and our money, I should think.”

“You should think!” retorted Drummle. “Oh Lord!”

“I dare say,” I went on, meaning to be very severe, “that you wouldn’t lend money to any of us if we wanted it.”

“You are right,” said Drummle. “I wouldn’t lend one of you a sixpence. I wouldn’t lend anybody a sixpence.”

“Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I should say.”

“You should say,” repeated Drummle. “Oh Lord!”

This was so very aggravating.

“Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I’ll tell you what passed between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed that money.”

“I don’t want to know what passed between Herbert there and you,” growled Drummle. And I think he added in a lower growl, that we might both go to the devil.

Startop took him in hand, though with a much better grace than I had shown, and exhorted him to be a little more agreeable.

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting down the glass, and hauling out his gold repeater by its massive chain, “I am exceedingly sorry to announce that it’s half past nine.”

On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we got to the street door, Startop was cheerily calling Drummle “old boy,” as if nothing had happened. But the old boy was so far from responding, that he would not even walk to Hammersmith on the same side of the way; so Herbert and I, who remained in town, saw them going down the street on opposite sides.

As the door was not yet shut, I thought I would leave Herbert there for a moment, and run up stairs again to say a word to my guardian. I found him in his dressing-room surrounded by his stock of boots, already hard at it, washing his hands of us.

I told him I had come up again to say how sorry I was that anything disagreeable should have occurred, and that I hoped he would not blame me much.

“Pooh!” said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through the water-drops; “it’s nothing, Pip. I like that Spider though.”

He had turned towards me now, and was shaking his head, and blowing, and towelling himself.

“I am glad you like him, sir,” said I – “but I don’t.”

“No, no,” my guardian assented; “don’t have too much to do with him. Keep as clear of him as you can. But I like the fellow, Pip; he is one of the true sort. Why, if I was a fortune-teller – ”

Looking out of the towel, he caught my eye.

“But I am not a fortune-teller,” he said, letting his head drop into a festoon of towel, and towelling away at his two ears. “You know what I am, don’t you? Good night, Pip.”

“Good night, sir.”

In about a month after that, the Spider’s time with Mr. Pocket was up for good, and, to the great relief of all the house, he went home to the family hole.

Chapter 27

“MY DEAR MR PIP: —

“I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for to let you know that he is going to London in company with Mr. Wopsle and would be glad to see you. He would call at Barnard’s Hotel Tuesday morning at nine o’clock. We talk of you in the kitchen every night, and wonder what you are saying and doing. No more, dear Mr. Pip, from your ever obliged, and affectionate servant,

“Biddy.”

“P.S. I hope and do not doubt it will be agreeable to see him, even though a gentleman, for you had ever a good heart, and he is a worthy, worthy man. I have read him all, excepting only the last little sentence.”

I received this letter by the post on Monday morning, and therefore its appointment was for next day. Let me confess exactly with what feelings I looked forward to Joe’s coming.

Not with pleasure; no; with considerable disturbance. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have paid money. My greatest hope was that he was coming to Barnard’s Inn, not to Hammersmith, and consequently would not fall in Bentley Drummle’s way. By this time, the rooms were different from what I had found sometimes before. I had even hired a servant.

This boy was ordered to be on duty at eight on Tuesday morning in the hall, and Herbert suggested certain things for breakfast that he thought Joe would like.

I came into town on the Monday night to be ready for Joe, and I got up early in the morning. Unfortunately the morning was drizzly.

I heard Joe on the staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy manner of coming up stairs. When at last he stopped outside our door, I could hear his finger tracing over the painted letters of my name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him breathing in at the keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single rap, and Pepper[141] – such was the name of the boy – announced “Mr. Gargery!” Joe was wiping his feet for a long time, but at last he came in.

“Joe, how are you, Joe?”

“Pip, how ARE you, Pip?”

“I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat.”

But Joe was taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird’s-nest with eggs in it.

“Oh, how you have grown,” said Joe, “and swelled, and gentle-folked!” “And you, Joe, look wonderfully well.”

“Thank God,” said Joe, “And your sister, she’s no worse than she were. And Biddy, she’s ever right and ready.”

All this time (still with both hands taking great care of the bird’s-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room, and round and round the flowered pattern of my dressing-gown.

“And Wopsle,” said Joe, lowering his voice, “he’s left the Church and went into the playacting.[142]”

“Were you at his performance, Joe?” I inquired.

“I was,” said Joe, with emphasis.

Herbert had entered the room. So, I presented Joe to Herbert, who held out his hand; but Joe backed from it, and held on by the bird’s-nest.

“Your servant, Sir,” said Joe, “For the present it may be a very good inn, according to London opinions; but I wouldn’t keep a pig in it myself.[143]”

Joe, being invited to sit down to table, looked all round the room for a suitable spot on which to deposit his hat – and finally stood it on an extreme corner of the chimney-piece, from which it ever afterwards fell off at intervals.

“Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?” asked Herbert.

“Thank you, Sir,” said Joe, stiff from head to foot, “I’ll take whichever is most agreeable to yourself.”

“What do you say to coffee?”

“Thank you, Sir,” returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the proposal, “since you are so kind as make a cup of coffee, I will not run contrary to your own opinions.”

“Say tea then,” said Herbert, pouring it out.

Here Joe’s hat tumbled off the mantel-piece, and he started out of his chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact spot.

“When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery?”

“Was it yesterday afternoon?” said Joe, after coughing behind his hand. “No it was not. Yes it was. Yes. It was yesterday afternoon”.

“Have you seen anything of London yet?”

“Why, yes, Sir,” said Joe, “me and Wopsle went off straight to look at the Blacking Ware’us.[144] It is there too architectooralooral.[145]”

Joe’s attention was caught by his hat, which was toppling. Indeed, it demanded from him a constant attention. He made extraordinary play with it, and showed the greatest skill, rushing at it and catching it neatly as it dropped; now, beating it up, and finally splashing it into the slop-basin.

Joe sat so far from the table, and dropped so much more than he ate, and pretended that he hadn’t dropped it; that I was heartily glad when Herbert left us for the City.

“We are now alone, sir,” – began Joe.

“Joe,” I interrupted, “how can you call me sir?”

Joe looked at me for a single instant with something faintly like reproach.

“We are now alone, sir,” resumed Joe, “and I have the intentions and abilities to stay not many minutes more, I will now conclude – to mention what have led to my having had the present honor. Well, sir, this is how it was. I were at the Bargemen the other night, Pip; when there came up in his shay-cart, Pumblechook. Well, Pip; this Pumblechook came to me and his words were, ‘Joseph, Miss Havisham wishes to speak to you.’”

“Miss Havisham, Joe?”

“‘She wishes,’ were Pumblechook’s words, ‘to speak to you.’” Joe sat and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

“Yes, Joe? Go on, please.”

“Next day, sir,” said Joe, looking at me as if I were a long way off, “having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss A.”

“Miss A., Joe? Miss Havisham?”

“Which I say, sir,” replied Joe, with an air of legal formality, as if he were making his will, “Miss A., or Havisham. And she said: ‘Mr. Gargery. You are in correspondence with Mr. Pip?’ Having had a letter from you, I was able to say ‘I am.’

‘Would you tell him, then,’ said she, ‘that Estella has come home and would be glad to see him.’”

I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe.

“Biddy,” pursued Joe, “when I got home and asked her to write the message to you, she says, “I know he will be very glad to have it by word of mouth, it is holiday time, you want to see him, go!” I have now concluded, sir,” said Joe, rising from his chair, “and, Pip, I wish you ever well and ever prospering to a greater and a greater height.”

“But you are not going now, Joe?”

“Yes I am,” said Joe.

“But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?”

“No I am not,” said Joe.

Our eyes met, and all the “ir” melted out of that manly heart as he gave me his hand.

“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of so many partings, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a goldsmith. Divisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. You and me are not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else. I’m not proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me in these clothes. I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off the marshes. I’m right in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. And GOD bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!”

He touched me gently on the forehead, and went out. As soon as I could recover myself sufficiently, I hurried out after him and looked for him in the neighboring streets; but he was gone.

Chapter 28

It was clear that I must go to our town next day, and in the beginning it was equally clear that I must stay at Joe’s. But, when I had secured my box-place by tomorrow’s coach, I was not convinced on the last point, and began to invent reasons and make excuses for putting up at the Blue Boar.[146] I should be an inconvenience at Joe’s; I was not expected, and my bed would not be ready; I should be too far from Miss Havisham’s.

It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my place, and, as winter had now come round, I should not arrive at my destination until two or three hours after dark. Our time of starting from the Cross Keys[147] was two o’clock. I arrived on the ground with a quarter of an hour to spare, attended by my servant.

At that time it was customary to carry Convicts down to the dock-yards by stage-coach.

“You don’t mind them, Handel?” said Herbert.

“O no!”

“I thought you seemed as if you didn’t like them?”

“I can’t pretend that I do like them, and I suppose you don’t particularly. But I don’t mind them.”

“See! There they are,” said Herbert, “coming out of the Tap. What a degraded and vile sight it is!”

The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had irons on their legs – irons of a pattern that I knew well. They wore the dress that I knew well. Their keeper had a brace of pistols, and carried a thick-knobbed bludgeon under his arm. One was a taller and stouter man than the other; but I knew his half-closed eye at one glance. There stood the man whom I had seen on the settle at the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, and who had brought me down with his invisible gun!

But this was not the worst of it. It came out that the whole of the back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from London, and that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat in front behind the coachman. So, a choleric gentleman, who had taken the fourth place on that seat, flew into a most violent passion, and said that it was a very bad deal to mix him up with such company, and that it was poisonous, and infamous, and shameful, and I don’t know what else. At this time the coach was ready and the coachman impatient, and we were all preparing to get up.

“Good bye, Handel!” Herbert called out as we started. I thought what a blessed fortune it was, that he had found another name for me than Pip.

It is impossible to express my feelings. I felt the convict’s breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along my spine.

The weather was raw. It made us all sleepy before we had gone far. I could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind that blew at us. The convicts were closer to me than before. The very first words I heard them interchange were “Two One Pound notes.”

“How did he get them?” said the convict I had never seen.

“How should I know?” returned the other. “Given him by friends, I expect.”

“I wish,” said the other, with a bitter curse upon the cold, “that I had them here.”

“Two one pound notes, or friends?”

“Two one pound notes. Well? So he says —?”

“So he says,” resumed the convict I had recognized – “it was all said and done in half a minute – ‘You’re a going to be discharged?’ Yes, I was. Would I find out that boy that had fed him and kept his secret, and give him them two one pound notes? Yes, I would. And I did.”

“You fool,” growled the other. “I’d have spent them in wittles and drink.”

“What might have been your opinion of the place?”

“A most beastly place. Mudbank, mist, swamp, and work; work, swamp, mist, and mudbank.”

The coffee-room at the Blue Boar was empty, and I had not only ordered my dinner there, but had sat down to it, before the waiter knew me. As soon as he had apologized for his memory, he asked me if he should send the servant for Mr. Pumblechook?

“No,” said I, “certainly not.”

Chapter 29

Next morning I was thinking about my patroness, and painting brilliant pictures of her plans for me.

She had adopted Estella, I can say that she had adopted me. The truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. I loved her none the less because I knew it.

I arrived at the gate at my old time. I had come to the house, where I found his room to be one just within the side-door, with a little window in it looking on the courtyard. In its small proportions, it was not unlike the kind of place usually assigned to a gate-porter in Paris. Certain keys were hanging on the wall.

I turned down the long passage. At the end of the passage I found Sarah Pocket.

“Oh!” said she. “You, is it, Mr. Pip?”

“It is, Miss Pocket. I am glad to tell you that Mr. Pocket and family are all well.”

“Are they any wiser?” said Sarah, with a dismal shake of the head; “they had better be wiser, than well. Ah, Matthew, Matthew! You know your way, sir?”

I ascended to the door of Miss Havisham’s room. “Pip,” I heard her say, immediately; “come in, Pip.”

She was in her chair near the old table, in the old dress, with her two hands crossed on her stick, her chin resting on them, and her eyes on the fire. Sitting near her, with the white shoe, that had never been worn, in her hand, and her head bent as she looked at it, was an elegant lady whom I had never seen.

“Come in, Pip,” Miss Havisham continued to mutter; “come in, Pip, how do you do, Pip? so you kiss my hand as if I were a queen, eh? – Well?”

She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes, and repeated in a grimly manner —

“Well?”

“I heard, Miss Havisham,” said I, rather at a loss, “that you were so kind as to wish me to come and see you, and I came directly.”

“Well?”

The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella’s eyes. But she was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so much more womanly! I felt, as I looked at her, that I slipped back into the coarse and common boy again.

She gave me her hand. I stammered something about the pleasure I felt in seeing her again, and about my having looked forward to it, for a long, long time.

“Do you find her much changed, Pip?” asked Miss Havisham, with her greedy look.

“When I came in, Miss Havisham, I thought there was nothing of Estella in the face or figure; but now it all settles down so curiously into the old – ”

“What? You are not going to say into the old Estella?” Miss Havisham interrupted. “She was proud and insulting, and you wanted to go away from her. Don’t you remember?”

I said that that was long ago, and that I knew no better then, and the like. Estella smiled with perfect composure, and said she had been very disagreeable.

“Is he changed?” Miss Havisham asked her.

“Very much,” said Estella, looking at me.

“Less coarse and common?” said Miss Havisham, playing with Estella’s hair.

Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her hand, and laughed again, and looked at me, and put the shoe down. She treated me as a boy still, but she lured me on.[148]

We sat in the dreamy room, and I learnt that she had just come home from France, and that she was going to London.

It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the day, and return to the hotel at night, and to London tomorrow. So, Estella and I went out into the garden by the gate through which I had strayed to my encounter with the pale young gentleman, now Herbert. As we drew near to the place of encounter, she stopped and said —

“I decided to hide and see that fight that day; and I enjoyed it very much.”

“You rewarded me very much.”

“Did I?” she replied.

“He and I are great friends now.”

“Are you? I think I recollect though, that you are his father’s student?”

“Yes.”

“Since your change of fortune and prospects, you have changed your companions,” said Estella.

“Naturally,” said I.

“What was fit company for you once,” she added, in a haughty tone; “would be quite unfit company for you now.”

The garden was very big, and after we had made the round of it twice or thrice, we came out again into the yard. I showed her where I had seen her walking on the casks, that first old day, and she said, with a cold and careless look in that direction, “Did I?” I reminded her where she had come out of the house and given me my meat and drink, and she said, “I don’t remember.” “Not remember that you made me cry?” said I. “No,” said she, and shook her head and looked about her.

“You must know,” said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant and beautiful woman might, “that I have no heart – maybe I have no memory as well. You know what I mean. I have no softness there, no – sympathy-sentiment – nonsense. I am serious, you had better believe it at once. I have not bestowed my tenderness anywhere.[149] I have never had any such thing. What is the matter? Are you scared again?”

“I should be, if I believed what you said just now,” I replied.

“Then you don’t? Very well. It is said, at any rate.[150] Let us make one more round of the garden, and then go in. Come! You will not shed tears for my cruelty today; you will be my Page,[151] and give me your shoulder.”

We walked round the ruined garden twice or thrice more, and it was all in bloom for me.

There was no discrepancy of years between us to remove her far from me; we were of nearly the same age; but the air of inaccessibility which her beauty and her manner gave her, tormented me in the midst of my delight.

At last we went back into the house, and there I heard, with surprise, that my guardian had come down to see Miss Havisham on business, and would come back to dinner.

When Estella had gone and we two left alone, Miss Havisham turned to me, and said in a whisper —

“Is she beautiful, graceful, well-grown? Do you admire her?”

“Everybody must who sees her, Miss Havisham.”

She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head close down to hers as she sat in the chair. “Love her, love her, love her! How does she use you?[152]”

Before I could answer (if I could have answered so difficult a question at all) she repeated, “Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger it will tear deeper – love her, love her, love her!”

I could feel the muscles of the thin arm round my neck that possessed her.

“Hear me, Pip! I adopted her, to be loved. I bred her and educated her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she might be loved. Love her!”

She said the word often enough, and there could be no doubt that she meant to say it.

“I’ll tell you,” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, “what real love is. It is blind devotion, self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter – as I did!”

When she came to that, and to a wild cry that followed that, I caught her round the waist. For she rose up in the chair, in her dress, and struck at the air.

All this passed in a few seconds. As I drew her down into her chair, I saw my guardian in the room.

Miss Havisham had seen him as soon as I, and was (like everybody else) afraid of him. She made a strong attempt to compose herself, and stammered that he was as punctual as ever.

“As punctual as ever,” he repeated, coming up to us. “(How do you do, Pip? Shall I give you a ride, Miss Havisham? Once round?) And so you are here, Pip?”

I told him when I had arrived, and how Miss Havisham had wished me to come and see Estella. To which he replied, “Ah! Very fine young lady!” Then he pushed Miss Havisham in her chair before him, with one of his large hands, and put the other in his trousers-pocket.

“Well, Pip! How often have you seen Miss Estella before?” said he, when he came to a stop.

“How often?”

“Ah! How many times? Ten thousand times?”

“Oh! Certainly not so many.”

“Twice?”

“Jaggers,” interposed Miss Havisham, much to my relief, “leave my Pip alone, and go with him to your dinner.”

We groped our way down the dark stairs together.

“Pray, sir,” said I, “may I ask you a question?”

“You may,” said he, “and I may decline to answer it. Put your question.”

“Estella’s name. Is it Havisham or —?” I had nothing to add.

“Or what?” said he.

“Is it Havisham?”

“It is Havisham.”

We played until nine o’clock, and then it was arranged that when Estella came to London I should be forewarned of her coming and should meet her at the coach; and then I took leave of her, and touched her and left her.

My guardian lay at the Boar in the next room to mine. Far into the night, Miss Havisham’s words, “Love her, love her, love her!” sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, and said to my pillow, “I love her, I love her, I love her!” hundreds of times.

Ah me! I thought those were high and great emotions. But I never thought there was anything low and small in my keeping away from Joe, because I knew she would be contemptuous of him. Joe had brought the tears into my eyes; they had soon dried, God forgive me! soon dried.

Chapter 30

The coach, with Mr. Jaggers inside, came up in due time, and I took my box-seat again, and arrived in London safe – but not sound, for my heart was gone. As soon as I arrived, I sent a codfish and barrel of oysters to Joe, and then went on to Barnard’s Inn.

I found Herbert dining on cold meat, and delighted to welcome me back. I felt that I must open my breast that very evening to my friend.

Dinner done and we sitting with our feet upon the fender, I said to Herbert, “My dear Herbert, I have something very particular to tell you.”

“My dear Handel,” he returned, “I shall esteem and respect your confidence.”

“It concerns myself, Herbert,” said I, “and one other person.”

Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with his head on one side, and looked at me because I didn’t go on.

“Herbert,” said I, laying my hand upon his knee, “I love – I adore – Estella.”

Herbert replied in an easy way, “Exactly. Well?”

“Well, Herbert? Is that all you say? Well?”

“What next, I mean?” said Herbert. “Of course I know that.”

“How do you know it?” said I.

“How do I know it, Handel? Why, from you.”

“I never told you.”

“Told me! You have always adored her, ever since I have known you. You brought your adoration and your bag here together. Told me! Why, you have always told me all day long. When you told me your own story, you told me plainly that you began adoring her the first time you saw her, when you were very young indeed.”

“Very well, then,” said I, to whom this was a new and not unwelcome light, “I have never left off adoring her. And she has come back, a most beautiful and most elegant creature. And I saw her yesterday. And if I adored her before, I now adore her more and more.”

“Lucky for you then, Handel,” said Herbert, “Have you any idea yet, of Estella’s views on the adoration question?”

I shook my head. “Oh! She is thousands of miles away, from me,” said I.

“Patience, my dear Handel: time enough,[153] time enough.”

“What a hopeful disposition you have!” said I, admiring his cheery ways.

“I ought to have,” said Herbert, “for I have not much else. I was going to say a word or two, Handel, concerning my feelings.”

“Then you are?[154]” said I.

“I am,” said Herbert; “but it’s a secret.”

I assured him of my keeping the secret.

“May I ask the name?” I said.

“Name of Clara,” said Herbert.

“Live in London?”

“Yes. Perhaps I ought to mention,” said Herbert, “that she is rather below my mother’s family notions. Her father is an invalid now.”

“Living on —?”

“On the first floor,” said Herbert. Which was not at all what I meant, for I had intended my question to apply to his means. “I have never seen him, since I have known Clara. But I have heard him constantly. He makes tremendous rows – roars, and pegs at the floor with some frightful instrument.” Herbert looked at me and then laughed heartily.

At night I miserably thought of Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all cancelled, and that I had to give my hand in marriage to Herbert’s Clara, or play Hamlet before twenty thousand people, without knowing twenty words of it.

Chapter 31

One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I received a note by the post. It had no beginning, as Dear Mr. Pip, or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear Anything, but ran thus: —

“I am to come to London the day after tomorrow by the midday coach. I believe it was settled you should meet me? At all events Miss Havisham has that impression, and I write in obedience to it. She sends you her regard.

Yours, ESTELLA.”

If there had been time, I should probably have ordered several suits of clothes for this occasion. My appetite vanished instantly, and I knew no peace or rest until the day arrived. I was worse than ever, and began haunting the coach-office in Wood Street, Cheapside, before the coach had left the Blue Boar in our town. I had performed the first half-hour of a watch of four or five hours, when Wemmick ran against me.

“Halloa, Mr. Pip,” said he; “how do you do?”

I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was coming up by coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged.

“Both flourishing thank you,” said Wemmick, “and particularly the Aged. He’s a wonderful father. He’ll be eighty-two next birthday. I plan to fire eighty-two times. Where do you think I am going to?”

“To the office?” said I, for he was tending in that direction.

“Next thing to it,” returned Wemmick, “I am going to Newgate. Mr. Pip! Would you like to have a look at Newgate? Have you time to spare?”

I had so much time to spare, that the proposal came as a relief. I joined Mr. Wemmick, and I had received, accepted his offer.

Chapter 32

We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed through the lodge into the interior of the jail. It was visiting time when Wemmick took me in, and the prisoners, behind bars in yards, were talking to friends; and a frowzy, ugly, disorderly, depressing scene it was.

It struck me that Wemmick walked among the prisoners much as a gardener might walk among his plants. He was saying, “What, Captain Tom? Are you there? Ah, indeed!” and also, “Is that Black Bill behind the cistern? Why I didn’t look for you these two months; how do you find yourself?[155]” Wemmick was highly popular.

We walked through Wemmick’s greenhouse, until he turned to me and said, “Notice the man I shall shake hands with.”

“Colonel, to you!” said Wemmick; “how are you, Colonel?”

“All right, Mr. Wemmick.”

“Everything was done that could be done, but the evidence was too strong for us, Colonel.”

“Yes, it was too strong, sir – but I don’t care.”

“No, no,” said Wemmick, coolly, “you don’t care.” Then, turning to me, “Served His Majesty this man. Was a soldier in the line and bought his discharge.[156]”

I said, “Indeed?” and the man’s eyes looked at me, and then looked over my head, and then looked all round me, and then he drew his hand across his lips and laughed.

“By the way,” said Wemmick. “You were quite a pigeon-fancier.” The man looked up at the sky. “Could you commission any friend of yours to bring me a pair, of you’ve no further use for them?[157]”

“It shall be done, sir.”

“All right,” said Wemmick, “they shall be taken care of.[158] Good afternoon, Colonel. Good bye!”

They shook hands again, and as we walked away Wemmick said to me, “A Coiner,[159] a very good workman. The Recorder’s report is made to-day, and he is sure to be executed on Monday. Still you see, a pair of pigeons are portable property all the same.[160]”

Mr. Wemmick and I parted at the office in Little Britain, and I returned to my watch in the street of the coach-office, with some three hours on hand. I thought of the beautiful young Estella, proud, coming towards me, and I thought with absolute abhorrence of the contrast between the jail and her. At last, I saw her face at the coach window and her hand waving to me.

Chapter 33

In her travelling-dress, Estella seemed more delicately beautiful than she had ever seemed yet, even in my eyes. I thought I saw Miss Havisham’s influence in the change.

“I am going to Richmond,[161]” she told me. “There are two Richmonds, one in Surrey[162] and one in Yorkshire,[163] and mine is the Surrey Richmond. The distance is ten miles. I am to have a carriage. This is my purse, and you are to pay my charges out of it. O, you must take the purse! We have no choice, you and I, but to obey our instructions.”

As she looked at me in giving me the purse, I hoped there was an inner meaning in her words. She said them not with displeasure.

“A carriage will have to be sent for,[164] Estella. Will you rest here a little?”

“Yes, I am to rest here a little, and I am to drink some tea, and you are to take care of me the while.”

“Where are you going to, at Richmond?” I asked Estella.

“I am going to live,” said she, “at a great expense, with a lady there, who has the power – or says she has – of taking me about, and introducing me, and showing people to me and showing me to people.”

“I suppose you will be glad of variety and admiration?”

“Yes, I suppose so. How is your life at Mr. Pocket’s?”

“I live quite pleasantly there.”

“Your friend Mr. Matthew, I believe, is superior to the rest of his family?”

“Very superior indeed. He is nobody’s enemy – ”

“He really is disinterested,” interposed Estella, “and above small jealousy and spite, I have heard?”

“I am sure I have every reason to say so.[165]”

She gave me her hand. I held it and put it to my lips.

“You ridiculous boy,” said Estella, “will you never take warning? Or do you kiss my hand in the same spirit in which I once let you kiss my cheek?”

“What spirit was that?” said I.

“I must think a moment. A spirit of contempt.”

“If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek again?”

“You should have asked before you touched the hand. But, yes, if you like.”

I leaned down, and her calm face was like a statue’s. “Now,” said Estella, gliding away the instant I touched her cheek, “you are to take care that I have some tea, and you are to take me to Richmond.”

When we passed through Hammersmith, I showed her where Mr. Matthew Pocket lived, and said it was no great way from Richmond, and that I hoped I should see her sometimes.

“O yes, you are to see me; you are to come when you think proper; you are to be mentioned to the family; indeed you are already mentioned.”

I inquired was it a large household she was going to be a member of?

“No; there are only two; mother and daughter. The mother is a lady of some station.[166]”

“I wonder Miss Havisham could part with you again so soon.”

“It is a part of Miss Havisham’s plans for me, Pip,” said Estella, with a sigh, as if she were tired; “I am to write to her constantly and see her and report how I go on – I and the jewels – for they are nearly all mine now.”

It was the first time she had ever called me by my name. Of course she did so purposely, and knew that I should treasure it up.

Chapter 34

As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had begun to notice their effect upon myself and those around me. I lived in a state of chronic uneasiness respecting my behaviour to Joe. My conscience was not by any means comfortable about Biddy. When I woke up in the night, I used to think, that I should have been happier and better if I had never seen Miss Havisham’s face, and had worked with Joe in the honest old forge. When I sat alone looking at the fire, I thought, there was no fire like the forge fire and the kitchen fire at home.

My lavish habits led Herbert’s easy nature into expenses that he could not afford, corrupted his life, and disturbed his peace with anxieties and regrets.

Moreover, I began to contract a quantity of debt. Herbert soon followed me. At Startop’s suggestion, we put ourselves down for election into a club called The Finches of the Grove.[167] The members were dining expensively once a fortnight, quarrelling among themselves as much as possible after dinner, and causing six waiters to get drunk on the stairs. That’s all.

The Finches spent their money foolishly (the Hotel we dined at was in Covent Garden), and the first Finch I saw when I had the honor of joining the Grove was Bentley Drummle.

I was usually at Hammersmith about half the week, and when I was at Hammersmith I haunted Richmond.

We spent as much money as we could. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did.

At certain times – I would say to Herbert, as if it were a remarkable discovery —

“My dear Herbert, we are getting on badly.[168]”

“My dear Handel,” Herbert would say to me, in all sincerity, if you will believe me, those very words were on my lips, by a strange coincidence.”

“Then, Herbert,” I would respond, “let us look into out affairs.”

We ordered something rather special for dinner, with a bottle of something similarly out of the common way, in order that our minds might be fortified for the occasion.

I would then take a sheet of paper, and write across the top of it, in a neat hand, the heading, “Pip’s debts”; with Barnard’s Inn and the date very carefully added. Herbert would also take a sheet of paper, and write across it with similar formalities, “Herbert’s debts.”

Each of us would then refer to a confused heap of papers at his side, which had been thrown into drawers, worn into holes in pockets, half burnt in lighting candles, stuck for weeks into the looking-glass, and otherwise damaged. The sound of our pens going refreshed us exceedingly.

When we had written a little while, I would ask Herbert how he got on?

“The figures are mounting up, Handel,” Herbert would say; “upon my life, they are mounting up.”

“Be firm, Herbert,” I would retort. “Look into your affairs.”

“What a fellow of resource you are![169]” my friend would reply, with admiration. “Really your business powers are very remarkable.”

I thought so too. I established with myself, on these occasions, the reputation of a first-rate man of business – prompt, decisive, energetic, clear, cool-headed. One evening we heard a letter dropped through the slit in the said door, and fall on the ground. “It’s for you, Handel,” said Herbert, going out and coming back with it.

The letter was signed Trabb & Co.,[170] and its contents were simply, that they begged to inform me that Mrs. J. Gargery had departed this life on Monday last at twenty minutes past six in the evening, and that my attendance was requested on Monday next at three o’clock in the afternoon.

Chapter 35

It was the first time that a grave had opened in my road of life. The figure of my sister in her chair by the kitchen fire, haunted me night and day. In my rooms, with which she had never been at all associated, there was at once the smell of death.

Whatever my fortunes might have been, I could scarcely have recalled my sister with much tenderness. Having written to Joe, to offer him consolation, and to assure him that I would come to the funeral, I passed the days in the curious state of mind. I went down early in the morning, and alighted at the Blue Boar in good time to walk over to the forge.

It was fine summer weather. At last I came within sight of the house, and saw that Trabb and Co. had put in a funereal execution and taken possession. Poor dear Joe, entangled in a little black cloak tied in a large bow under his chin, was seated apart at the upper end of the room. When I bent down and said to him, “Dear Joe, how are you?” he said, “Pip, old chap, you knew her when she was a fine figure of a – ” and clasped my hand and said no more.

“Biddy,” said I, “I think you might have written to me about these sad matters.”

“Do you, Mr. Pip?” said Biddy. “I should have written if I had thought that.”

“How are you going to live, Biddy? If you want any mo – ”

“How am I going to live?” repeated Biddy, striking in, with a momentary flush upon her face. “I’ll tell you, Mr. Pip. I am going to try to get the place of mistress in the new school nearly finished here. I can be well recommended by all the neighbors, and I hope I can be industrious and patient, and teach myself while I teach others. You know, Mr. Pip,” pursued Biddy, with a smile, as she raised her eyes to my face, “the new schools are not like the old, but I learnt a good deal from you after that time, and have had time since then to improve.”

Chapter 36

Herbert and I went on from bad to worse, in the way of increasing our debts.

I had taken care to have it well understood in Little Britain when my birthday was. On the day before it, I received an official note from Wemmick, informing me that Mr. Jaggers would be glad if I would call upon him at five in the afternoon of the auspicious day. This convinced us that something great was to happen. But Wemmick said nothing respecting it, and motioned me with a nod into my guardian’s room.

It was November, and my guardian was standing before his fire leaning his back against the chimney-piece, with his hands under his coattails.[171]

“Well, Pip,” said he, “I must call you Mr. Pip today. Congratulations, Mr. Pip.”

We shook hands and I thanked him.

“Take a chair, Mr. Pip,” said my guardian.

As I sat down, I felt at a disadvantage, which reminded me of that old time when I had been put upon a tombstone.

“Now my young friend,” my guardian began, “I am going to have a word or two with you.”

“If you please, sir.”

“What do you suppose,” said Mr. Jaggers, “what do you suppose you are living at the rate of?[172]”

“At the rate of, sir?”

“At,” repeated Mr. Jaggers, still looking at the ceiling, “the – rate – of?” And then looked all round the room, and paused with his pocket-handkerchief in his hand, half-way to his nose.

Reluctantly, I confessed myself quite unable to answer the question. This reply seemed agreeable to Mr. Jaggers, who said, “I thought so!” and blew his nose[173] with an air of satisfaction.

“Now, I have asked you a question, my friend,” said Mr. Jaggers. “Have you anything to ask me?”

“Of course it would be a great relief to me to ask you several questions, sir; but I remember your prohibition.”

“Ask one,” said Mr. Jaggers.

“Is my benefactor to be made known to me today?”

“No. Ask another.”

“Have—I – anything to receive, sir?” On that, Mr. Jaggers said, triumphantly, “I thought we should come to it!” and called to Wemmick to give him that piece of paper. Wemmick appeared, handed it in, and disappeared.

“Now, Mr. Pip,” said Mr. Jaggers, “attend, if you please. Your name occurs pretty often in Wemmick’s cash-book; but you are in debt, of course?”

“I am afraid I must say yes, sir.”

“You know you must say yes; don’t you?” said Mr. Jaggers.

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t ask you what you owe, because you don’t know; and if you did know, you wouldn’t tell me; you would say less. Yes, yes, my friend,” cried Mr. Jaggers, waving his forefinger to stop me as I made a show of protesting: “You’ll excuse me, but I know better than you. Now, take this piece of paper in your hand. You have got it? Very good. Now, unfold it and tell me what it is.”

“This is a bank-note,” said I, “for five hundred pounds.”

“That is a bank-note,” repeated Mr. Jaggers, “for five hundred pounds. And a very handsome sum of money too, I think. You consider it so?”

“How could I do otherwise!”

“Ah! But answer the question,” said Mr. Jaggers.

“Undoubtedly.”

“You consider it, undoubtedly, a handsome sum of money. Now, that handsome sum of money, Pip, is your own. It is a present to you on this day, in earnest of your expectations.[174] And at the rate of that handsome sum of money per annum, and at no higher rate, you are to live until the donor of the whole appears. As I have told you before, I am the mere agent. I execute my instructions, and I am paid for doing so.”

I was beginning to express my gratitude to my benefactor for the great freedom with which I was treated, when Mr. Jaggers stopped me. “I am not paid, Pip,” said he, coolly, “to carry your words to any one.[175]”

“There was a question just now, Mr. Jaggers. I hope I am doing nothing wrong in asking it again?”

“What is it?” said he.

“Is it likely,” I said, after hesitating, “that my patron will soon – ” there I delicately stopped.

“Will soon what?” asked Mr. Jaggers.

“Will soon come to London,” said I, “or summon me anywhere else?”

“Now, here,” replied Mr. Jaggers, “we must come back to the evening when we first met in your village. What did I tell you then, Pip?”

“You told me, Mr. Jaggers, that it might be years hence when that person appeared.”

“Just so,” said Mr. Jaggers, “that’s my answer.”

We looked at one another until I withdrew my eyes, and looked thoughtfully at the floor. When I raised my eyes again, I found that he had been looking at me all the time, and was doing so still.

“If that is all you have to say, sir,” I remarked, “there can be nothing left for me to say.”

He nodded assent, and pulled out his watch, and asked me where I was going to dine? I replied at my own chambers, with Herbert. As a necessary sequence, I asked him if he would favour us with his company, and he promptly accepted the invitation. But he insisted on walking home with me, in order that I might make no extra preparation for him, and first he had a letter or two to write, and (of course) had his hands to wash. So I said I would go into the outer office and talk to Wemmick.

The fact was, that when the five hundred pounds had come into my pocket, a thought had come into my head which had been often there before; and it appeared to me that Wemmick was a good person to advise with concerning such thought.

“Mr. Wemmick,” said I, “I want to ask your opinion. I am very desirous to help a friend. This friend is trying to get on in commercial life,[176] but has no money, and finds it difficult to make a beginning. Now I want somehow to help him to a beginning.”

“With money down?” said Wemmick.

“With some money down,” I replied.

“Mr. Pip,” said Wemmick, “take a walk and pitch your money into the Thames; serve a friend with it – but it’s a less pleasant and profitable end.”

“This is very discouraging,” said I. “Then is it your opinion,” I inquired, with some little indignation, “that a man should never – ”

“ – Invest portable property in a friend?” said Wemmick. “Certainly he should not. Unless he wants to get rid of the friend.[177]

“And that,” said I, “is your deliberate opinion, Mr. Wemmick?”

“That,” he returned, “is my deliberate opinion in this office.”

“Ah!” said I, pressing him, “but would that be your opinion at Walworth?”

“Mr. Pip,” he replied, with gravity, “Walworth is one place, and this office is another. Much as the Aged is one person, and Mr. Jaggers is another.”

Chapter 37

“My son, sir,” said the old man, when I was visiting Mr. Wemmick’s in Walworth, “had thought that you might come to see us, and he left word that he would soon be home from his afternoon’s walk. He is very regular in his walks, is my son. Very regular in everything, is my son.”

I nodded at the old gentleman, and we went in and sat down by the fireside.

“You made acquaintance with my son, sir,” said the old man, while he warmed his hands at the blaze, “at his office, I expect?” I nodded. “Hah! I have heard that my son is a wonderful hand at his business,[178] sir?” I nodded hard. “Yes; so they tell me. His business is the Law?” I nodded harder.

The old man cried with great triumph, “My son’s come home!” and we both went out to the drawbridge.

I informed Wemmick that I was anxious in behalf of Herbert Pocket, and I told him how we had first met, and how we had fought. I glanced at Herbert’s home, and at his character, and at his having no means but such as he was dependent on his father for; those, uncertain. For all these reasons (I told Wemmick), and because he was my young companion and friend, and I had a great affection for him, I wished my own good fortune to reflect some rays upon him, and therefore I sought advice from Wemmick’s experience and knowledge of men and affairs, how I could best try with my resources to help Herbert to some present income – say of a hundred a year, to keep him in good hope and heart[179] – and gradually to buy him on to some small partnership. I begged Wemmick, in conclusion, to understand that my help must always be hidden from Herbert’s knowledge or suspicion.

Wemmick was silent for a little while, and then said with a kind of start, “Well you know, Mr. Pip, I must tell you one thing. This is devilish good of you.[180] Skiffins[181] is an accountant and agent. I’ll look him up and go to work for you.[182]”

“I thank you ten thousand times.”

Before a week was out, I received a note from Wemmick, dated Walworth, stating that he hoped he had made some advance in that matter. So, I went out to Walworth again, and yet again, and yet again, and I saw him by appointment in the City several times, but never held any communication with him on the subject in or near Little Britain. Finally, we found a young merchant, not long established in business, who wanted intelligent help, and who wanted capital, and who in due course of time and receipt would want a partner. Between him and me, secret articles were signed of which Herbert was the subject, and I paid him half of my five hundred pounds down.

The whole business was so cleverly managed, that Herbert had not the least suspicion of my role in it. I never shall forget the radiant face with which he came home one afternoon, and told me of his meeting one Clarriker[183] (the young merchant’s name), and of Clarriker’s extraordinary inclination towards him. Day by day his hopes grew stronger and his face brighter. I had the greatest difficulty in restraining my tears of triumph when I saw him so happy. The thing was done, and he has that day entered Clarriker’s House, and he has talked to me for a whole evening in a flush of pleasure and success. I did really cry in good earnest when I went to bed, to think that my expectations had done some good to somebody.

But I must give one chapter to Estella.

Chapter 38

The lady with whom Estella was placed, Mrs. Brandley[184] by name, was a widow, with one daughter several years older than Estella. The mother looked young, and the daughter looked old; the mother’s complexion was pink, and the daughter’s was yellow; the mother liked frivolity, and the daughter liked theology.[185] They were in what is called a good position, and visited, and were visited by, numbers of people. Mrs. Brandley had been a friend of Miss Havisham’s before the time of her seclusion.

In Mrs. Brandley’s house and out of Mrs. Brandley’s house, I suffered every kind and degree of torture that Estella could cause me. She used me to tease other admirers. If I had been her secretary, steward, half-brother, poor relation – if I had been a younger brother of her appointed husband – I could not have seemed to myself further from my hopes when I was nearest to her. But I had the privilege of calling her by her name and hearing her call me by mine.

She had admirers without end. No doubt my jealousy made an admirer of every one who went near her; but there were more than enough of them without that.

I saw her often at Richmond, I heard of her often in town, and I used often to take her and the Brandleys on the water; there were picnics, fe^te days,[186] plays, operas, concerts, parties, all sorts of pleasures, through which I pursued her – and they were all miseries to me. I never had one hour’s happiness in her society.

Sometimes she would seem to pity me.

“Pip, Pip,” she said one evening, when we sat apart at a darkening window of the house in Richmond; “will you never take warning?”

“Of what?”

“Of me. If you don’t know what I mean, you are blind.”

“At any rate,” said I, “You wrote to me to come to you, this time.”

“That’s true,” said Estella, with a cold careless smile that always chilled me.

After looking at the twilight without, for a little while, she went on to say:

“Miss Havisham wishes to have me for a day. You are to take me there, and bring me back, if you will. She would rather I did not travel alone. Can you take me?”

“Can I take you, Estella!”

“You can then? The day after tomorrow, if you please. You are to pay all charges out of my purse, You hear the condition of your going?”

“And must obey,” said I.

Miss Havisham never wrote to me. We went down on the next day, and we found her in the room where I had first beheld her, and it is needless to add that there was no change in her house.

From Estella she looked at me, with a searching glance. “How does she use you,[187] Pip; how does she use you?” she asked me again, with her witch-like eagerness. But, when we sat by her flickering fire at night, she was most weird.

It happened that some sharp words arose between Estella and Miss Havisham. We were seated by the fire, and Miss Havisham still had Estella’s arm drawn through her own, and still clutched Estella’s hand in hers, when Estella gradually began to detach herself. She had shown a proud impatience more than once before, and had rather endured that fierce affection than accepted or returned it.

“What!” said Miss Havisham, flashing her eyes upon her, “are you tired of me?”

“Only a little tired of myself,” replied Estella, disengaging her arm, and moving to the great chimney-piece, where she stood looking down at the fire.

“Speak the truth!” cried Miss Havisham, passionately striking her stick upon the floor; “you are tired of me.”

Estella looked at her with perfect composure, and again looked down at the fire. Her graceful figure and her beautiful face expressed a self-possessed indifference.

“You cold, cold heart!” exclaimed Miss Havisham.

“What?” said Estella; “do you reproach me for being cold? You?”

“Are you not?” was the fierce retort.

“You should know,” said Estella. “I am what you have made me.[188] Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the failure; in short, take me.”

“O, look at her, look at her!” cried Miss Havisham, bitterly; “Look at her so hard and thankless![189]”

“What would you have?” said Estella, “You have been very good to me, and I owe everything to you. What would you have?”

“Love,” replied the other.

“You have it.”

“I have not,” said Miss Havisham.

“Mother by adoption,” retorted Estella, “mother by adoption, I have said that I owe everything to you. All I possess is freely yours. Beyond that, I have nothing. And if you ask me to give you, what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities.”

“Did I never give her love!” cried Miss Havisham, turning wildly to me. “Let her call me mad, let her call me mad!”

“Why should I call you mad,” returned Estella.

“So proud, so proud!” moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her gray hair with both her hands.

“Who taught me to be proud?” returned Estella. “Who praised me when I learnt my lesson?”

“So hard, so hard!” moaned Miss Havisham.

“Who taught me to be hard?” returned Estella. “Who praised me when I learnt my lesson?”

“But to be proud and hard to me!” Miss Havisham quite shrieked, as she stretched out her arms. “Estella, Estella, Estella, to be proud and hard to me!”

Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm wonder.

“I cannot think,” said Estella, raising her eyes after a silence “why you should be so unreasonable when I come to see you after a separation.”

It was with a depressed heart that I walked in the night.

It is impossible to turn this leaf of my life, without putting Bentley Drummle’s name upon it.

On a certain occasion when the Finches were assembled, Drummle toasted a lady.[190] What was my indignant surprise when he called upon the company to pledge him to “Estella!”

“Estella who?” said I.

“Never you mind,” retorted Drummle.

“Estella of where?” said I.

“Of Richmond, gentlemen,” said Drummle, “and a beauty.”

“I know that lady,” said Herbert, across the table, when the toast had been honored.

“Do you?” said Drummle.

“And so do I,” I added, with a scarlet face.

“Do you?” said Drummle. “O, Lord!”

It was easy for me to find out, and I did soon find out, that Drummle had begun to follow her closely,[191] and that she allowed him to do it.

At a certain Ball at Richmond I asked her, “Are you tired, Estella?”

“Rather, Pip.”

“You should be.”

“Estella, it makes me wretched that you should encourage a man so generally despised as Drummle. You know he is despised.”

“Well?” said she.

“You know he is a deficient, ill-tempered, lowering, stupid fellow.”

“Well?” said she; and each time she said it, she opened her lovely eyes the wider.

Chapter 39

I was three-and-twenty years of age. Nothing had I heard to enlighten me on the subject of my expectations. We had left Barnard’s Inn more than a year, and lived in the Temple. Our chambers were in Garden-court,[192] down by the river.

Business had taken Herbert on a journey to Marseilles.[193] I was alone, and had a dull sense of being alone. Dispirited and anxious, I sadly missed the cheerful face and ready response of my friend.

It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet; and mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets.

I read with my watch upon the table, purposing to close my book at eleven o’clock. As I shut it, all the many church-clocks in the City – some leading, some accompanying, some following – struck that hour. Suddenly I heard the footstep stumble in coming on.

“There is some one down there, is there not?” I called out, looking down.

“Yes,” said a voice from the darkness beneath.

“What floor do you want?”

“The top. Mr. Pip.”

“That is my name. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing the matter,” returned the voice. And the man came on. In the instant, I had seen a smiling face that was strange to me. The man looked as a voyager by sea. He had long gray hair. His age was about sixty. He was a muscular man, strong on his legs.

“Pray what is your business?” I asked him.

“My business?” he repeated, pausing. “Ah! Yes. I will explain my business.”

“Do you wish to come in?”

“Yes,” he replied; “I wish to come in, master.”

He looked about him with the strangest air – an air of wondering pleasure.

“What do you want?” said I, half suspecting him to be mad.

He stopped in his looking at me, and slowly rubbed his right hand over his head. He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire, and covered his forehead with his large brown hands. I looked at him attentively then, and recoiled a little from him; but I did not know him.

“I’m glad you’ve grown up,” said he, shaking his head.

I knew him! Even yet I could not recall a single feature, but I knew him! It was my convict. He grasped my hands heartily, raised them to his lips, kissed them, and still held them.

“You acted noble,[194] my boy,” said he. “Noble, Pip! And I have never forgot it!”

“Oh!” said I. “If you are grateful to me for what I did when I was a little child… If you have come here to thank me, it was not necessary. I am glad to believe you have repented and recovered yourself. I am glad to tell you so. I am glad that, thinking I deserve to be thanked, you have come to thank me. But our ways are different ways. You are wet, and you look weary. Will you drink something before you go?”

“I think,” he answered with the end at his mouth, “that I will drink (I thank you) before I go.”

There was a tray ready on a side-table. I brought it to the table near the fire, and asked him what he would have? He touched one of the bottles without looking at it or speaking, and I made him some hot rum and water.

“How are you living?” I asked him.

“I’ve been a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, other trades besides, away in the new world,” said he; “many a thousand mile of stormy water off from this.”

“I hope you have done well?[195]”

“I’ve done wonderfully well. I’m famous for it.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

“I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy.”

“May I ask you,” he said then, with a smile that was like a frown, and with a frown that was like a smile, “how you have done well, since you and me were out on them lone shivering marshes?”

“How?”

“Ah!”

He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the fire, with his heavy brown hand on the mantel-shelf. I answered that I had got some property.

“Might I ask what property?” said he.

I faltered, “I don’t know.”

“Might I ask whose property?” said he.

I faltered again, “I don’t know.”

“Could I make a guess, I wonder,” said the Convict, “at your income! As to the first figure now. Five? Concerning a guardian, as to the first letter of that lawyer’s name now. Would it be J? His name is Jaggers. How did I find you? I wrote to a person in London. That person’s name? Why, Wemmick.”

I could not have spoken one word. I stood, with a hand on the chair-back and a hand on my breast, where I seemed to be suffocating. He caught me, drew me to the sofa, put me up against the cushions, and bent on one knee before me.

“Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you![196] I swore that time, if I earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you. I swore afterwards, you should get rich. I worked hard, that you should be above work. Look here, Pip. I’m your second father. You’re my son. I’ve put away money, only for you to spend. I decided: when I get liberty and money, I’ll make that boy a gentleman! And I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! A lord? Ah! You’re richer than many lords!”

In his heat and triumph, he did not notice my reaction to all this.

“Look here!” he went on, taking my watch out of my pocket, and turning towards him a ring on my finger, “gold and beauty: that’s gentleman’s, I hope! A diamond all set round with rubies; that’s a gentleman’s, I hope! Look at your linen; fine and beautiful! Look at your clothes; nothing is better! And your books too,” turning his eyes round the room, “on their shelves, by hundreds! And you read them; don’t you? I see were reading them when I came in. Ha, ha, ha! You will read them to me, dear boy!”

Again he took both my hands and put them to his lips, while my blood ran cold within me.

“Do not talk, Pip,” said he. “Didn’t you never think it might be me?”

“O no, no, no,” I returned, “Never, never!”

“Well, you see it was me.”

I tried to collect my thoughts, but I was stunned.

“Where will you put me?” he asked, presently. “I must be put somewhere, dear boy.”

“To sleep?” said I.

“Yes. And to sleep long,” he answered.

“My friend and companion,” said I, rising from the sofa, “is absent; you must have his room.”

“He won’t come back tomorrow; will he?”

“No,” said I, answering almost mechanically; “not tomorrow.”

“Because, look here, dear boy,” he said, dropping his voice, and laying a long finger on my breast in an impressive manner, “caution is necessary.”

“How do you mean? Caution?”

“I was sent for life.[197] It’s death to come back.[198]”

When I had gone into Herbert’s room, and had shut off any other communication between it and the staircase than through the room in which our conversation had been held, I asked him if he would go to bed? He said yes, but asked me for some of my “gentleman’s linen” to put on in the morning. I brought it out, and laid it ready for him, and my blood again ran cold when he again took me by both hands to give me good night.

THIS IS THE END OF THE SECOND STAGE OF PIP’S EXPECTATIONS.

Chapter 40

I could not keep him concealed in the chambers. I asked the watchman, whether he had seen anybody or not. Yes, he said; a stranger asked for you.”

“My uncle,” I muttered.

“You saw him, sir?”

“Yes. Oh yes.”

“And the person with him?”

“And the person with him!” I repeated. “What sort of person?”

The watchman had not particularly noticed; he had a dust-coloured kind of clothes on, under a dark coat.

I came back and began to wait for Him to come to breakfast. By and by, his door opened and he came out. I thought he had a worse look by daylight.

“I do not even know,” said I, speaking low as he took his seat at the table, “by what name to call you. I have given out that you are my uncle.”

“That’s it, dear boy! Call me uncle.”

“You assumed some name, I suppose, on board ship?”

“Yes, dear boy. I took the name of Provis.[199]”

“Do you mean to keep that name?”

“Why, yes, dear boy, it’s as good as another – unless you’d like another.”

“What is your real name?” I asked him in a whisper.

“Magwitch,” he answered, in the same tone; “Abel Magwitch.[200]”

“When you came in at the gate and asked the watchman the way here, had you anyone with you?”

“With me? No, dear boy.”

“Are you known in London?”

“I hope not!” said he.

“Were you tried[201] – in London?”

“Which time?” said he, with a sharp look.

“The last time.”

He nodded. “First knew Mr. Jaggers that way. Jaggers was for me.[202]”

He ate in a way that was very disagreeable, and all his actions were uncouth, noisy, and greedy. He looked terribly like a hungry old dog.

“This,” said he, “this is the gentleman what I made! The real genuine One! It does me good to look at you, Pip, dear boy!”

He took out of his pocket a great thick pocket-book, bursting with papers, and tossed it on the table.

“There’s something worth spending in that book, dear boy. It’s yours. All I’ve got isn’t mine; it’s yours!”

“Stop!” said I, almost in a frenzy of fear and dislike, “I want to speak to you. I want to know what is to be done. I want to know how you are to be kept out of danger, how long you are going to stay, what projects you have.”

“Well, dear boy, the danger isn’t so great.”

“Is there no chance person who might identify you in the street?” said I.

“Well,” he returned, “not many. Here I am. Pip, I’m here, because I wanted to see you.”

I decided to find him a quiet lodging nearby. I then went from shop to shop, making necessary purchases to the change in his appearance. After that I went to Little Britain.

Mr. Jaggers was at his desk, but, seeing me enter, got up immediately and stood before his fire.

“Now, Pip,” said he, “be careful.”

“I will, sir,” I returned.

“Don’t commit yourself,[203]” said Mr. Jaggers, “and don’t commit any one. You understand – any one. Don’t tell me anything: I don’t want to know anything; I am not curious.”

Of course I saw that he knew the man was come.

“I merely want, Mr. Jaggers,” said I, “to assure myself that what I have been told is true. I have no hope of its being untrue, but at least I may verify it.”

Mr. Jaggers nodded. “But did you say ‘told’ or ‘informed’?” he asked me, with his head on one side, and not looking at me, but looking in a listening way at the floor. “Told would seem to imply verbal communication.[204] You can’t have verbal communication with a man in New South Wales,[205] you know.”

“I will say, informed, Mr. Jaggers.”

“Good.”

“I have been informed by a person named Abel Magwitch, that he is the benefactor so long unknown to me.”

“That is the man,” said Mr. Jaggers, “in New South Wales.”

“And only he?” said I.

“And only he,” said Mr. Jaggers.

“I am always supposed it was Miss Havisham.”

“Pip,” returned Mr. Jaggers, turning his eyes upon me coolly, and taking a bite at his forefinger, “I am not at all responsible for that.”

“I have no more to say,” said I, with a sigh, after standing silent for a little while. “I have verified my information, and there’s an end.”

“And Magwitch – in New South Wales – having at last disclosed himself, I communicated to Magwitch – in New South Wales – when he first wrote to me – from New South Wales. I cautioned him that he was not at all likely to obtain a pardon;[206] that his coming back would cause the extreme penalty of the law.[207] I gave Magwitch that caution,” said Mr. Jaggers, looking hard at me; “I wrote it to New South Wales. Good day, Pip, glad to have seen you. Good day, Pip!”

We shook hands, and he looked hard at me as long as he could see me.

Next day the clothes I had ordered all came home, and he put them on. One night I was roused by the welcome footstep on the staircase.

“Quiet! It’s Herbert!” I said.

“Handel, my dear fellow, how are you, and again how are you, and again how are you? Handel, my – Halloa! I beg your pardon.”

He was stopped in his running on and in his shaking hands with me, by seeing Provis.

“Herbert, my dear friend,” said I, shutting the double doors, while Herbert stood staring and wondering, “something very strange has happened. This is a visitor of mine.”

Chapter 41

“Though, look here, Pip’s comrade,” he said to Herbert, “I know the life very well. I made Pip a gentleman, and Pip is going to make you a gentleman. Dear boy, and Pip’s comrade, you two may count upon me.”

Herbert said, “Certainly,” but looked as if there were no specific consolation in this, and remained perplexed and dismayed. It was midnight before I took him round to Essex Street,[208] and saw him safely in at his own dark door. When it closed upon him, I experienced the first moment of relief I had known since the night of his arrival.

Herbert received me with open arms, and I had never felt before so well what it is to have a friend. When he had spoken some words of sympathy and encouragement, we sat down to consider the question, What was to be done?

“What,” said I to Herbert, – “what is to be done?”

“My poor dear Handel,” he replied, holding his head, “I am too stunned to think.”

“So was I, Herbert. Still, something must be done. He is intent upon various new expenses[209] – horses, and carriages, and lavish appearances of all kinds. He must be stopped somehow.”

“You mean that you can’t accept – ”

“How can I?” I interposed, as Herbert paused. “Think of him! Look at him! Yet I am afraid the dreadful truth is, Herbert, that he is attached to me, strongly attached to me!”

“My poor dear Handel,” Herbert repeated.

“Then,” said I, “after all, stopping here, never taking another penny from him, think what I owe him already! Then again: I am heavily in debt – very heavily for me, who have now no expectations, and I am fit for nothing.[210]”

“Well, well, well!” Herbert remonstrated. “Don’t say fit for nothing.”

“What am I fit for? I know only one thing that I am fit for, and that is, to go for a soldier.[211]”

“Anyhow, my dear Handel,” said Herbert presently, “soldiering won’t do. Besides, it’s absurd. You would be infinitely better in Clarriker’s house. I am working up towards a partnership, you know.”

Poor fellow! He little suspected with whose money. But what was to be done?

“The first and the main thing to be done,” said Herbert, “is to get him out of England. You will have to go with him.”

Herbert got up, and linked his arm in mine, and we slowly walked to and fro together, studying the carpet.

“Handel,” said Herbert, stopping, “you feel convinced that you can take no further benefits from him; do you?”

“Fully. Surely you would, too, if you were in my place?”

“And you feel convinced that you must break with him?”

“Herbert, can you ask me?”

“Then you must get him out of England.”

We went to bed. I had the wildest dreams concerning him.

He came round at the appointed time, took out his knife, and sat down to his meal. He was full of plans. When he had made an end of his breakfast, and was wiping his knife on his leg, I said to him, without a word of preface —

“I told my friend of the struggle that the soldiers found you engaged in on the marshes. You remember?”

“Remember!” said he. “I think so!”

“We want to know something about that man – and about you.”

Chapter 42

“Dear boy and Pip’s comrade. I am not a going to tell you my life like a song, or a story-book. In jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail, in jail and out of jail. That’s all. That’s my life.

I knew my name to be Magwitch, Abel Magwitch. Tramping, begging, thieving,[212] working sometimes when I could. A deserting soldier learnt me to read; and a travelling Giant[213] learnt me to write.

At Epsom races,[214] twenty years ago, I got acquainted with a man. His right name was Compeyson;[215] and that’s the man, dear boy, whom I was pounding in the ditch.

‘What can you do?’ said Compeyson.

‘Eat and drink,’ said I.

Compeyson laughed, looked at me again very noticing, gave me five shillings, and appointed me for next night.

I went to Compeyson next night, and Compeyson took me on to be his partner. And what was Compeyson’s business? Compeyson’s business was the swindling, handwriting forging, stolen bank-note passing, and such like.[216] He was as cold as death, and he had the head of the Devil.

There was another in with Compeyson, Arthur.[217] Arthur and Compeyson had made a bad thing with a rich lady some years before, and they’d made a pot of money by it.[218] At last, me and Compeyson was both committed for felony. Compeyson said to me, ‘Separate defences, no communication,’ and that was all.

Compeyson blamed me, and everybody was convinced that I was to blame alone. So my punishment was much harder. When we’re sentenced, he got seven years, and I got fourteen. I said to Compeyson that I’d smash his face!”

“Is he dead?” I asked, after a silence.

“Is who dead, dear boy?”

“Compeyson.”

“He hopes I am, if he’s alive, you may be sure,” with a fierce look. “I never heard anymore of him.”

Herbert had been writing with his pencil in the cover of a book. He softly pushed the book over to me, as Provis stood smoking with his eyes on the fire, and I read in it: —

“Young Havisham’s name was Arthur. Compeyson is the man who was Miss Havisham’s lover.”

I shut the book and nodded slightly to Herbert. We did not say anything, and both looked at Provis as he stood smoking by the fire.

Chapter 43

If Compeyson were alive and should discover his return, I could hardly doubt the consequence. Compeyson is afraid of Provis and will become an informer.

I did not tell Provis about Estella. But, I said to Herbert that, before I could go abroad, I must see both Estella and Miss Havisham. I resolved to go out to Richmond next day, and I went.

Mrs. Brandley told me that Estella had gone into the country. Where? To Miss Havisham, as usual.

Another night consultation with Herbert after Provis led us to the conclusion that nothing should be said about going abroad until I came back from Miss Havisham’s.

When I drove up to the Blue Boar after a drizzly ride, whom should I see come out under the gateway, toothpick in hand, to look at the coach, but Bentley Drummle!

“Oh!” said I, “it’s you, is it? How do you do?”

“You have just come down?” said Mr. Drummle.

“Yes,” said I.

“Beastly place,” said Drummle. “Your part of the country, I think.”

Here Mr. Drummle looked at his boots and I looked at mine, and then Mr. Drummle looked at my boots, and I looked at his.

“Have you been here long?” I asked, determined not to yield an inch of the fire.

“Long enough to be tired of it,” returned Drummle, pretending to yawn.

“Do you stay here long?”

“Can’t say,” answered Mr. Drummle. “Do you?”

“Can’t say,” said I. “Mr. Drummle, I did not seek this conversation, and I don’t think it an agreeable one.”

“I am sure it’s not,” said he.

“And therefore,” I went on, “I will suggest that we hold no kind of communication in future.”

“Quite my opinion,” said Drummle. “But don’t lose your temper. Haven’t you lost enough without that?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Waiter!” said Drummle, instead of answering me.

The waiter reappeared.

“Look here. You quite understand that the young lady doesn’t ride today, and that I dine at the young lady’s?”

“Quite so, sir!”

Chapter 44

In the room where the dressing-table stood, and where the wax candles burnt on the wall, I found Miss Havisham and Estella; Miss Havisham seated near the fire, and Estella on a cushion at her feet. Estella was knitting, and Miss Havisham was looking on. They both raised their eyes as I went in.

“And what wind,” said Miss Havisham, “blows you here, Pip?”

“Miss Havisham,” said I, “I went to Richmond yesterday, to speak to Estella.”

I took the chair by the dressing-table.

“What I had to say to Estella, Miss Havisham, I will say before you. It will not surprise you, it will not displease you. I am very unhappy.”

Miss Havisham continued to look steadily at me.

“I have found out who my patron is. It is not a fortunate discovery, and is not likely ever to enrich me in reputation, station, fortune, anything. It is not my secret, but another’s.”

“Miss Havisham, you deeply wrong both Mr. Matthew Pocket and his son Herbert.”

“They are your friends,” said Miss Havisham.

“They made themselves my friends,” said I.

Still looking at me keenly, Miss Havisham asked:

“What do you want, then?”

“Estella,” said I, turning to her now, and trying to command my trembling voice, “you know I love you. You know that I have loved you long and dearly.”

She raised her eyes to my face.

“I should have said this sooner, but I refrained from saying it. But I must say it now.”

Estella shook her head.

“I know,” said I, in answer to that action – “I know. I have no hope that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am ignorant what may become of me very soon, how poor I may be, or where I may go. Still, I love you. I have loved you ever since I first saw you in this house.”

Looking at me perfectly unmoved and with her fingers busy, she shook her head again.

“It seems,” said Estella, very calmly, “that there are sentiments, fancies – I don’t know how to call them – which I am not able to comprehend. When you say you love me, I know what you mean, as a form of words; but nothing more. You address nothing in my breast,[219] you touch nothing there. I don’t care for what you say at all. I have tried to warn you of this; now, have I not?”

I said in a miserable manner, “Yes.”

“Yes. I can do no more.”

“Is it not true,” said I, “that Bentley Drummle is in town here, and pursuing you?”

“It is quite true,” she replied.

“That you encourage him, and ride out with him, and that he dines with you this very day?”

She seemed a little surprised that I should know it, but again replied, “Quite true.”

“You cannot love him, Estella!”

Her fingers stopped for the first time, as she retorted rather angrily, “What have I told you? Do you still think, in spite of it, that I do not mean what I say?”

“You would never marry him, Estella?”

She looked towards Miss Havisham, and considered for a moment with her work in her hands. Then she said, “Why not tell you the truth? I am going to be married to him.”

I dropped my face into my hands.

“I am going,” she said again, in a gentler voice, “to be married to him. The preparations for my marriage are making, and I shall be married soon.”

“Such a mean brute, such a stupid brute!” I urged, in despair. “O Estella! How could I see you Drummle’s wife?”

“You will forget me in a week.”

“You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read since I first came here! You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets! O God bless you, God forgive you!”

I held her hand to my lips some moments, and so I left her.

It was past midnight when I crossed London Bridge. The night-porter examined me with much attention. To help his memory I mentioned my name.

“Here’s a note, sir. The messenger said that you should read it immediately.”

Much surprised by the request, I took the note. It was directed to Philip Pip, Esquire, and on the top were the words, “PLEASE READ THIS, HERE.” I opened it, the watchman holding up his light, and read inside, in Wemmick’s writing —

“DON’T GO HOME.”

Chapter 45

I drove to the Hummums[220] in Covent Garden. In those times a bed was always to be got there at any hour of the night.

What a doleful night! How anxious, how dismal, how long! There was a strong smell in the room of hot dust.

Why was I not to go home? What had happened at home? When should I go home? These questions were occupying my mind.

I had left directions that I was to be called at seven; for I decided to see Wemmick before seeing any one else.

“Halloa, Mr. Pip!” said Wemmick. “You did come home, then?”

“Yes,” I returned; “but I didn’t go home.”

“That’s all right,” said he, rubbing his hands. “I left a note for you at each of the Temple gates, on the chance.[221]”

I thanked him for his friendship and caution, and our discourse proceeded in a low tone.

“Now, Mr. Pip, you know,” said Wemmick, “you and I understand one another. We are in our private and personal capacities.”

I cordially assented. I was so very nervous.

“I heard there by chance, yesterday morning,” said Wemmick, “that a certain person – I don’t know who it may really be – we won’t name this person – ”

“Not necessary,” said I.

“ – Had made some noise in a certain part of the world where many people go. He disappeared from such place. I also heard that you at your chambers in Garden Court, Temple, had been watched, and might be watched again.”

“By whom?” said I.

“I wouldn’t go into that,[222]” said Wemmick, “it might clash with official responsibilities.”

“You have heard of a man of bad character, whose name is Compeyson?”

He answered with one other nod.

“Is he living?”

One other nod.

“Is he in London?”

He gave me one other nod.

“Now,” said Wemmick, “questioning is over. I went to Garden Court to find you; not finding you, I went to Clarriker’s to find Mr. Herbert. I did not mention any names. Mr. Herbert knows the house by the river-side, between Limehouse and Greenwich,[223] which is kept by a very respectable widow. It could be a house for our friend, right?”

Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, looked at his watch, and began to get his coat on.

“And now, Mr. Pip,” said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, “I have probably done the most I can do. Here’s the address. And let me give you some advice. Lay hold of his portable property.[224] You don’t know what may happen to him. Don’t let anything happen to the portable property.”

I soon fell asleep before Wemmick’s fire. When it was quite dark, I left.

Chapter 46

I found the house very easily.

“All is well, Handel,” said Herbert, “and he is quite satisfied, though eager to see you. A curious place, Handel; isn’t it?”

It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean.

In his two cabin rooms at the top of the house, which were fresh and airy, I found Provis comfortably settled. His coming back was a venture, he said, and he had always known it to be a venture.

Herbert, who had been looking at the fire, here said that something had come into his thoughts. “We are both good watermen, Handel, and could take him down the river ourselves when the right time comes.”

I liked this scheme, and Provis was quite elated by it.

“I don’t like to leave you here,” I said to Provis, “though I cannot doubt that you are safer here than near me. Good bye!”

“Dear boy,” he answered, clasping my hands, “I don’t know when we may meet again, and I don’t like good bye. Say good night!”

“Good night! Herbert will go regularly between us, and when the time comes you may be certain I shall be ready. Good night, good night!”

We thought it best that he should stay in his own rooms; and we left him on the landing outside his door.

All things were as quiet in the Temple as ever I had seen them. The windows of the rooms on that side, lately occupied by Provis, were dark and still.

Next day I set myself to get the boat. It was soon done, and the boat was brought round to the Temple stairs, and lay where I could reach her within a minute or two. Then, I began to practice: sometimes alone, sometimes with Herbert. But I was always full of fears for the man who was in hiding, that Magwitch.

Chapter 47

Some weeks passed without bringing any change. We waited for Wemmick, and he made no sign.

My affairs began to wear a gloomy appearance, and I was pressed for money by more than one creditor. Even I myself began to know the want of money (I mean of ready money in my own pocket). But I had quite determined that it would be a heartless fraud to take more money from my patron in the existing state of my uncertain thoughts and plans. Therefore, I had sent him the pocket-book by Herbert, to hold in his own keeping, and I felt a kind of satisfaction.

It was an unhappy life that I lived. Condemned to inaction, I rowed about in my boat, and waited, waited, waited, as I best could.

One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at dusk. As it was a raw evening, and I was cold, I thought I would comfort myself with dinner at once. Afterwards I went to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle had achieved his triumph was in that water-side neighborhood, and to that theatre I resolved to go.

After the play I greeted Mr. Wopsle.

“How do you do?” said I, shaking hands with him as we turned down the street together. “I saw that you saw me.”

“Saw you, Mr. Pip!” he returned. “Yes, of course I saw you. But who else was there?”

“Who else?”

“It is the strangest thing,” said Mr. Wopsle, drifting into his lost look again. “You’ll hardly believe what I am going to tell you. I could hardly believe it myself, if you told me.”

“Indeed?” said I.

“No, indeed. Mr. Pip, you remember in old times a certain Christmas Day, when you were quite a child, and I dined at Gargery’s, and some soldiers came to the door to get a pair of handcuffs mended?”

“I remember it very well.”

“And you remember that there was a chase after two convicts, and that we joined in it, and that Gargery took you on his back, and that I took the lead?”

“I remember it all very well.” Better than he thought.

“Then, Mr. Pip, one of those two prisoners sat behind you tonight. I saw him over your shoulder.”

“But,” I asked him then, “which of the two do you suppose you saw?”

“The one who had been mauled,” he answered readily, “and I’ll swear I saw him! The more I think of him, the more certain I am of him.”

“This is very curious!” said I, with the best assumption I could put on of its being nothing more to me. “Very curious indeed!”

I put such questions to Mr. Wopsle as, When did the man come in? He could not tell me that; he saw me, and over my shoulder he saw the man. How was he dressed? He thought, in black.

It was between twelve and one o’clock when I reached the Temple, and the gates were shut. No one was near me when I went in and went home.

Herbert had come in, and we held a very serious council by the fire. But there was nothing to be done.

Chapter 48

The second meeting occurred about a week after the first. I was strolling along the street, when a large hand was laid upon my shoulder. It was Mr. Jaggers’s hand.

“As we are going in the same direction, Pip, we may walk together. Where are you going to?”

“To the Temple, I think,” said I.

“Don’t you know?” said Mr. Jaggers.

“Well,” I returned, “I do not know, for I have not made up my mind.[225]”

“You are going to dine?” said Mr. Jaggers. “Are you engaged?”

“No, I am not engaged.”

“Then,” said Mr. Jaggers, “come and dine with me.”

I was going to excuse myself, when he added, “Wemmick’s coming.” So I changed my excuse into an acceptance.

At the office in Little Britain there was the usual letter-writing, hand-washing, candle-snuffing, and safe-locking, that closed the business of the day. We went to Gerrard Street, all three together. And, as soon as we got there, dinner was served. Wemmick turned his eyes on Mr. Jaggers whenever he raised them from the table, and was as dry and distant to me as if there were twin Wemmicks, and this was the wrong one.

“Did you send that note of Miss Havisham’s to Mr. Pip, Wemmick?” Mr. Jaggers asked, soon after we began dinner.

“No, sir,” returned Wemmick; “it was going by post, when you brought Mr. Pip into the office. Here it is.” He handed it to Mr. Jaggers instead of to me.

“It’s a note of two lines, Pip,” said Mr. Jaggers, handing it on, “Miss Havisham tells me that she wants to see you. You’ll go down?”

“Yes,” said I, casting my eyes over the note.

“When do you think of going down?”

“At once, I think.”

“If Mr. Pip has the intention of going at once,” said Wemmick to Mr. Jaggers, “he needn’t write an answer, you know.”

I settled that I would go tomorrow, and said so.

“So, Pip! Our friend the Spider,” said Mr. Jaggers, “has played his cards. He has won the pool.[226] So here’s to Mrs. Bentley Drummle. Now, Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly, how slow you are today!”

It was a dull evening. We took our leave early, and left together. Mr. Jaggers went away. I felt that the right Wemmick was on his way back.

“Well!” said Wemmick, “that’s over!”

I asked him if he had ever seen Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter, Mrs. Bentley Drummle.

“Wemmick,” said I, “do you remember telling me, before I first went to Mr. Jaggers’s private house, to notice that housekeeper?”

“Did I?” he replied. “Ah, I dare say I did,” he added, suddenly.

“A wild beast tamed, you called her.”

“And what do you call her?”

“The same. How did Mr. Jaggers tame her, Wemmick?”

“That’s his secret. She has been with him for many years.”

“I wish you would tell me her story. You know that what is said between you and me goes no further.”

“Well!” Wemmick replied, “I don’t know her story – that is, I don’t know all of it. But what I do know I’ll tell you. We are in our private and personal capacities, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Twenty years ago that woman was tried at the Old Bailey[227] for murder, and was acquitted. She was a very handsome young woman, and I believe had some gypsy blood in her.”

“But she was acquitted.”

“Mr. Jaggers was for her,” pursued Wemmick, with a look full of meaning, “and worked the case in a way quite astonishing. He worked it himself at the police-office, day after day for many days. The murdered person was a woman – a woman ten years older, very much larger, and very much stronger. It was a case of jealousy. They both led tramping lives, and this woman in Gerrard Street here had been married very young to a tramping man, and was fury in her jealousy. The murdered woman was found dead in a barn. There had been a violent struggle, perhaps a fight. Mr. Jaggers saved Molly.”

“Has she been in his service ever since?[228]”

“Yes; but not only that,” said Wemmick, “They said she had a child.”

“Do you remember the sex of the child?”

“A girl.”

“You have nothing more to say to me tonight?”

We exchanged a cordial good-night, and I went home.

Chapter 49

I went down again by the coach next day.

An elderly woman, whom I had seen before as one of the servants who lived in the small house across the back courtyard, opened the gate. The lighted candle stood in the dark passage within, as usual, and I took it up and ascended the staircase alone. Miss Havisham was not in her own room, but was in the larger room. Her eyes rested on me. She stared, and said in a low voice, “Is it real?”

“It is I, Pip. Mr. Jaggers gave me your note yesterday, and I have lost no time.”

“Thank you. Thank you.”

As I brought another of the ragged chairs to the hearth and sat down, I remarked a new expression on her face, as if she were afraid of me.

“Are you very unhappy now?”

I could not reply at the moment, for my voice failed me. She put her left arm across the head of her stick, and softly laid her forehead on it.

“I am far from happy, Miss Havisham.”

After a little while, she raised her head, and looked at the fire again.

“O!” she cried. “What have I done! What have I done!”

“If you mean, Miss Havisham, what have you done to injure me, let me answer. Very little. I should have loved her under any circumstances.[229] Is she married?”

“Yes. What have I done! What have I done!” She wrung her hands, and crushed her white hair, and returned to this cry over and over again. “What have I done!”

I knew not how to answer, or how to comfort her.

“What have I done! What have I done!” And so again, twenty, fifty times over, What had she done! “Pip – my dear! My dear! Believe this: when she first came to me, I meant to save her from misery like my own. At first, I meant no more.”

“Well, well!” said I. “I hope so.”

“But as she grew, and promised to be very beautiful, I gradually did worse, and with my praises, and with my jewels, and with my teachings, and with this figure of myself always before her, I stole her heart away, and put ice in its place. If you knew all my story,” she pleaded, “you would have some compassion for me and a better understanding of me.”

“Miss Havisham,” I answered, as delicately as I could, “I believe I may say that I do know your story, and have known it ever since I first left this neighborhood. But may I ask you a question relative to Estella?”

She was seated on the ground, with her arms on the ragged chair, and her head leaning on them. She looked at me when I said this, and replied, “Go on.”

“Whose child was Estella?”

She shook her head.

“You don’t know?”

She shook her head again.

“But Mr. Jaggers brought her here, or sent her here?”

“Brought her here. I told him that I wanted a little girl to rear and love. He told me that he would try to find an orphan child. One night he brought her here asleep, and I called her Estella.”

“Might I ask her age then?”

“Two or three. She herself knows nothing, but that she was left an orphan and I adopted her.”

What more could I hope to learn here? Miss Havisham had told me all she knew of Estella, I had said and done what I could to ease her mind. We parted.

This place and time, and the great terror of this illusion, though it was but momentary, caused me to feel an awe. But before my going out I went up again.

I looked into the room where I had left Miss Havisham, and I saw her seated in the ragged chair upon the hearth close to the fire, with her back towards me. In the moment when I was withdrawing my head to go quietly away, I saw a great flaming light spring up. In the same moment I saw her running at me.

I had a coat on. I got it off, closed with her, threw her down, and got it over her. Then, I looked round and saw the disturbed beetles and spiders running away over the floor, and the servants coming in with breathless cries at the door.

Miss Havisham did not move, and I was afraid to move or even touch her. Assistance was sent for,[230] and I held her until it came.

I found, on questioning the servants, that Estella was in Paris, and I got a promise from the surgeon that he would write to her by the next post.

Chapter 50

My left arm was burned to the elbow, and it was very painful. My right hand was not so badly burnt but that I could move the fingers. My hair had been caught by the fire, but not my head or face.

My first question when I saw Herbert had been of course, whether all was well down the river? He replied in the affirmative.

“I sat with Provis last night, Handel, two hours. Do you know, Handel, he improves?”

“I said to you I thought he was softened when I last saw him.”

“So you did. And so he is. He was very communicative last night, and told me more of his life. He told me about some woman that he had had great trouble with. Shall I tell you?”

“Tell me by all means. Every word.”

“It seems,” said Herbert, “that the woman was a young woman, and a jealous woman, Handel, to the last degree.”

“To what last degree?”

“Murder.”

“How did she murder? Whom did she murder?”

“She was tried for it,” said Herbert, “and Mr. Jaggers defended her, and the reputation of that defence first made his name known to Provis. This acquitted young woman and Provis had a little child; a little child of whom Provis was exceedingly fond. After the acquittal she disappeared, and thus he lost the child and the child’s mother.”

“Herbert,” said I, after a short silence, in a hurried way, “The man we have in hiding down the river, is Estella’s Father.”

Chapter 51

There were some occasions when Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick went over the office accounts, and put all things straight. On these occasions, Wemmick took his books and papers into Mr. Jaggers’s room, and one of the up-stairs clerks came down into the outer office. Finding such clerk on Wemmick’s post that morning, I knew what was going on. “Miss Havisham was good enough to ask me,” I said, “whether she could do nothing for me, and I told her No.”

“Everybody should know his own business,” said Mr. Jaggers. And I saw Wemmick’s lips form the words “portable property.”

“I should not have told her No, if I had been you,” said Mr Jaggers; “but every man ought to know his own business best.”

“I did ask something of Miss Havisham, however, sir. I asked her to give me some information relative to her adopted daughter, and she gave me all she possessed.”

“Did she?” said Mr. Jaggers.

“I know more of the history of Miss Havisham’s adopted child than Miss Havisham herself does, sir. I know her mother.”

Mr. Jaggers looked at me, and repeated “Mother?”

“I have seen her mother within these three days.”

“Yes?” said Mr. Jaggers.

“And so have you, sir. And you have seen her still more recently.”

“Yes?” said Mr. Jaggers.

“Perhaps I know more of Estella’s history than even you do,” said I. “I know her father too.”

“So! You know the young lady’s father, Pip?” said Mr. Jaggers.

“Yes,” I replied, “and his name is Provis – from New South Wales.”

“And on what evidence, Pip,” asked Mr. Jaggers, very coolly, as he paused with his handkerchief half way to his nose, “does Provis make this claim?”

“He does not make it,” said I, “and has never made it, and has no knowledge or belief that his daughter is alive.”

“Hah!” said Mr. Jaggers at last, as he moved towards the papers on the table. “For whose sake would you reveal the secret? For the father’s? I think he would not be much the better for the mother. For the mother’s? I think if she had done such a deed she would be safer where she was. For the daughter’s? I think it would hardly serve her to establish her parentage[231] for the information of her husband. Now, Wemmick, what item was it you were at when Mr. Pip came in?[232]”

Chapter 52

Clarriker informed me that the affairs of the House were steadily progressing, that he would now be able to establish a small branch-house in the East, and that Herbert in his new partnership capacity would go out and take charge of it.

It was the month of March. My right arm was restored.

On a Monday morning, when Herbert and I were at breakfast, I received the following letter from Wemmick by the post.

“Walworth. Burn this as soon as read. Early in the week, or say Wednesday, you might do what you know of.[233] Now burn.”

When I had shown this to Herbert and had put it in the fire, we considered what to do. I could not row.

“I have thought it over again and again,” said Herbert, “and I think I know what to do: we will take Startop. A good fellow, a skilled hand, and enthusiastic and honorable.”

I had thought of him more than once.

“But how much would you tell him, Herbert?”

“It is necessary to tell him very little. Let him know that there is urgent reason for your getting Provis aboard and away. You go with him?”

“No doubt.”

“Where?”

I thought about Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp[234] – he must be out of England. Any foreign steamer that would take us up would do.[235]

We found that a steamer for Hamburg was likely to suit our purpose best, and we directed our thoughts chiefly to that vessel. Herbert went to see Startop at his lodgings. We both did what we had to do without any hindrance, and when we met again. I, for my part, was prepared with passports; Herbert had seen Startop, and he was more than ready to join.

Chapter 53

Herbert lay asleep in his bed, and our old fellow-student lay asleep on the sofa. I made up the fire, and got some coffee ready for them. In good time they too started up strong and well, and we admitted the sharp morning air at the windows, and looked at the tide that was still flowing towards us.

“When it turns at nine o’clock,” said Herbert, cheerfully, “look out for us, and stand ready, you over there at Mill Pond Bank![236]”

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. I took a bag. Of all my worldly possessions I took no more than the few necessaries that filled the bag. My mind was wholly set on Provis’s safety.

We loitered down to the Temple stairs, and stood there. After that we went on board and cast off; Herbert in the bow, I steering. It was then half-past eight.

Our plan was this. The steamer for Hamburg and the steamer for Rotterdam would start from London at about nine on Thursday morning. We should know at what time to expect them, and would hail the first; so that, if by any accident we were not taken abroad, we should have another chance. We knew the distinguishing marks of each vessel.

The crisp air, the sunlight, the movement on the river, and the moving river itself freshened me with new hope.

Now I, sitting in the stern, could see, with a faster beating heart, Mill Pond Bank and Mill Pond stairs.

“Is he there?” said Herbert.

“Not yet.”

“Right! He was not to come down till he saw us. Can you see his signal?”

“Not well from here; but I think I see it. – Now I see him! Pull both. Easy, Herbert. Oars!”

Provis had his boat-cloak on him, and looked a natural part of the scene. It was remarkable that he was the least anxious of any of us.

“If you knew, dear boy,” he said to me, “what it is to sit here with my dear boy and have my smoke, after being between four walls! But you don’t know what it is.”

“I think I know the delights of freedom,” I answered.

“Ah,” said he, shaking his head gravely. “But you don’t know it equal to me.”

“If all goes well,” said I, “you will be perfectly free and safe again within a few hours.”

“Well,” he returned, drawing a long breath, “I hope so.”

The air felt cold upon the river, but it was a bright day, and the sunshine was very cheering. The tide ran strong.

Our oarsmen[237] were still fresh. We got ashore among some slippery stones while we ate and drank what we had with us, and looked about. It was like my own marsh country, flat and monotonous, and with a dim horizon.

We pushed off again. It was much harder work now, but Herbert and Startop rowed and rowed and rowed until the sun went down.

Finally we ran alongside a little causeway made of stones. Leaving the rest in the boat, I stepped ashore, and found the light to be in a window of a public-house. It was a dirty place enough; but there was a good fire in the kitchen, and there were eggs and bacon to eat, and various liquors to drink. Also, there were two double-bedded rooms. No other company was in the house than the landlord, his wife, and a worker.

I lay down with the greater part of my clothes on, and slept well for a few hours. When I awoke, the wind had risen, and the sign of the house was creaking and banging about. I looked out of the window and I saw two men looking into our boat.

My first impulse was to call up Herbert, and show him the two men going away. But reflecting, before I got into his room, which was at the back of the house, that he and Startop had had a harder day than I, and were fatigued, I forbore. Going back to my window, I could see the two men moving over the marsh. In that light, however, I soon lost them, and, feeling very cold, lay down to think of the matter, and fell asleep again.

We were up early.

Provis smoked his pipe as we went along, and sometimes stopped to clap me on the shoulder. It seemed that it was I who was in danger, not he, and that he was reassuring me. We spoke very little. By that time it was ten minutes of one o’clock, and we began to look out for the steamer’s smoke.

But, it was half-past one before we saw the smoke, and soon afterwards we saw behind it the smoke of another steamer. As they were coming on at full speed, we got the two bags ready, and took that opportunity of saying good by to Herbert and Startop. We had all shaken hands cordially, and neither Herbert’s eyes nor mine were quite dry, when I saw a strange boat a little way ahead of us.

The galley was visible, it was coming head on. I called to Herbert and Startop to keep before the tide, that she might see us lying by for her, and I adjured Provis to sit quite still, wrapped in his cloak. He answered cheerily, “Trust to me, dear boy,” and sat like a statue. Meantime the galley had crossed us.

“You have a returned Transport there,[238]” said the man who held the lines. “That’s the man, wrapped in the cloak. His name is Abel Magwitch, otherwise Provis. I apprehend that man, and call upon him to surrender, and you to assist.”

At the same moment, without giving any audible direction to his crew, he ran the galley abroad of us. They were holding on to us, before we knew what they were doing. This caused great confusion on board the steamer,[239] and I heard them calling to us. In the same moment I saw the face of the other convict of long ago, and heard a great cry on board the steamer, and a loud splash in the water, and felt the boat sink from under me.

Magwitch fell in the water with his enemy. They drowned together, and Magwitch went up alone. He began to swim, but he was not swimming freely. He was taken on board, and instantly manacled at the wrists and ankles.

Magwitch – Provis no longer – had received some very severe injury in the chest, and a deep cut in the head. The injury to his chest (which rendered his breathing extremely painful) he thought he had received against the side of the galley.

Chapter 54

We remained at the public-house until the tide turned, and then Magwitch was carried down to the galley and put on board. Herbert and Startop were to get to London by land, as soon as they could. We had a doleful parting, and when I took my place by Magwitch’s side, I felt that that was my place while he lived.

In the hunted, wounded creature who held my hand in his, I only saw a man who had been my benefactor, and who had felt affectionately and gratefully towards me with great constancy through a series of years. I only saw in him a much better man than I had been to Joe.

His breathing became more difficult and painful, and often he could not repress a groan. That he would be leniently treated, I could not hope.[240] He who had been presented in the worst light at his trial, who had since broken prison and had been tried again, who had returned from transportation under a life sentence, and who had occasioned the death of the man who was the cause of his arrest.

“Dear boy,” he said, “I’m quite content. I’ve seen my boy, and he can be a gentleman without me.”

No. I had thought about that, while we had been there side by side. No. I understood Wemmick’s hint now. I foresaw that Magwitch’s possessions would be forfeited to the Crown.[241]

“Look here, dear boy,” said he. “Only come to see me. Sit where I can see you, and I don’t ask anymore.”

“I will never leave you,” said I, “I will be as true to you as you have been to me!”

Chapter 55

He was taken to the Police Court next day. Mr. Jaggers told me that the case must be over in five minutes, and that no power on earth could prevent its going against us.

Mr. Jaggers was angry with me for having “let money slip through my fingers.” I understood that very well. I was not connected with Magwitch by any tie.

It was at this dark time of my life that Herbert returned home one evening and said —

“My dear Handel, I fear I shall soon have to leave you. I shall go to Cairo, and I am very much afraid I must go, Handel, when you most need me.”

“Herbert, I shall always need you, because I shall always love you; but my need is no greater now than at another time.”

“You will be so lonely.”

“My dear fellow,” said Herbert, “have you thought of your future?”

“No, for I have been afraid to think of any future.”

“My dear dear Handel, in the branch house of ours, Handel, we must have a – ”

I saw that his delicacy was avoiding the right word, so I said, “A clerk.”

“A clerk. And I hope that he may expand (as a clerk of your acquaintance has expanded) into a partner. Now, Handel – in short, my dear boy, will you come to me?”

I thanked him heartily, but said I could not yet make sure of joining him as he so kindly offered.

On the Saturday in that same week, I took my leave of Herbert. Then I went into a coffee-house; and on the stairs I encountered Wemmick, who was coming down.

“You don’t blame me, I hope, Mr. Pip?” said Wemmick, “I am sure I tried to serve you, with all my heart.”

“I am as sure of that, Wemmick, as you can be, and I thank you most earnestly for all your interest and friendship.”

“Thank you, thank you very much. It’s a bad job,” said Wemmick, scratching his head, “So much portable property! Lost! Gone!”

“What I think of, Wemmick, is the poor owner of the property.”

Chapter 56

Magwitch lay in prison very ill. He had broken two ribs, they had wounded one of his lungs, and he breathed with great pain and difficulty. He spoke so low; therefore he spoke very little. But he was ever ready to listen to me; and it became the first duty of my life to say to him, and read to him.

I saw him every day; he wasted, and became slowly weaker and worse, day by day.

The trial was very short and very clear. The punishment for his return to the land that had cast him out, was death, so he had to prepare himself to die.

I earnestly hoped and prayed that he might die before the execution. As the days went on, I noticed more and more that he would lie looking at the white ceiling.

The number of the days had risen to ten, when I saw a greater change in him than I had seen yet. His eyes were turned towards the door, and lighted up as I entered.

“Dear boy,” he said, as I sat down by his bed: “Thank you, dear boy. God bless you! You’ve never deserted me, dear boy.”

I pressed his hand in silence, for I could not forget that I had once meant to desert him.

He lay on his back, breathing with great difficulty.

“Are you in much pain today?”

“I don’t complain, dear boy.”

“You never do complain.”

He had spoken his last words. He smiled, and I understood his touch to mean that he wished to lift my hand, and lay it on his breast. I laid it there, and he smiled again, and put both his hands upon it.

“Dear Magwitch, I must tell you now, at last. You understand what I say?”

A gentle pressure on my hand.

“You had a child once, whom you loved and lost.”

A stronger pressure on my hand.

“She lived, and found powerful friends. She is living now. She is a lady and very beautiful. And I love her!”

With a last faint effort, he raised my hand to his lips. The placid look at the white ceiling came back, and passed away, and his head dropped quietly on his breast.

I knew there were no better words that I could say beside his bed, than “O Lord, be merciful to him a sinner![242]”

Chapter 57

I was in debt, and had scarcely any money, and began to be seriously alarmed by the state of my affairs. My illness was coming on me now.

For a day or two, I lay on the sofa, or on the floor with a heavy head and aching limbs, and no purpose, and no power. One day I saw two men looking at me.

“What do you want?” I asked, starting; “I don’t know you.”

“Well, sir,” returned one of them, bending down and touching me on the shoulder, “I dare say, but you’re arrested.”

“What is the debt?”

“Hundred and twenty-three pound, fifteen, six. Jeweller’s account, I think.”

“You see my state,” said I. “I would come with you if I could; but indeed I am quite unable. If you take me from here, I think I shall die by the way.”

I had a fever and was avoided, I suffered greatly, I often lost my reason.

After I had turned the worst point of my illness, I opened my eyes in the night, and I saw, in the great chair at the bedside, Joe. I opened my eyes in the day, and, sitting on the window-seat, smoking his pipe in the shaded open window, still I saw Joe. I asked for cooling drink, and the dear hand that gave it me was Joe’s. I sank back on my pillow after drinking, and the face that looked so hopefully and tenderly upon me was the face of Joe.

At last, one day, I took courage, and said, “Is it Joe?”

And the dear old home-voice answered, “Yes, that’s me, old chap.”

After which, Joe withdrew to the window, and stood with his back towards me, wiping his eyes.

“How long, dear Joe?”

“You mean, Pip, how long have your illness lasted, dear old chap?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“It’s the end of May, Pip. Tomorrow is the first of June.”

“And have you been here all that time, dear Joe?”

“Yes, old chap. When the news of your illness were brought by letter, Biddy said, ‘Go to him, without loss of time.’”

I kissed his hand, and lay quiet, while he proceeded to write a note to Biddy, with my love in it. Evidently Biddy had taught Joe to write.

I asked Joe about Miss Havisham. He shook his head.

“Is she dead, Joe?”

“Why you see, old chap,” said Joe, “She isn’t living.”

“Dear Joe, have you heard what becomes of her property?”

“Well, old chap,” said Joe, “it do appear that she had settled the most of it on Miss Estella. But she left four thousand to Mr. Matthew Pocket.”

“Have you heard, Joe,” I asked him that evening, upon further consideration, as he smoked his pipe at the window, “who my patron was?”

“I heard,” returned Joe, “it was not Miss Havisham, old chap.”

“Did you hear who it was, Joe?”

“Well! I heard it was a person who sent the person who gave you the bank-notes at the Jolly Bargemen, Pip.”

“So it was.”

“Astonishing!” said Joe, in the placidest way.

“Did you hear that he was dead, Joe?” I presently asked, with increasing diffidence.

“I think so,” said Joe.”

“Did you hear anything of his circumstances, Joe?”

“Not much, Pip.”

“If you would like to hear, Joe – ” I was beginning, when Joe got up and came to my sofa.

“Look here, old chap,” said Joe, bending over me. “We are the best of friends; aren’t us, Pip?”

I was ashamed to answer him.

“Very good, then,” said Joe, as if I had answered; “that’s all right. Let’s not speak about unnecessary things, right? You are quite tired, you must have your supper and your wine and water, and sleep.”

Time was flying, and I was recovering. We had a quiet day on the Sunday, and we rode out into the country, and then walked in the fields.

“I feel thankful that I have been ill, Joe,” I said. “It has been a memorable time for me. We have had a time together, Joe, that I can never forget.”

When I got up in the morning, refreshed and stronger yet, I was full of my resolution to tell Joe all, without delay. I would tell him before breakfast. I went to his room, and he was not there. Not only was he not there, but his box was gone.

I hurried then to the breakfast-table, and on it found a letter.

“I have departured for you are well again, dear Pip and will do better without Joe.”

Enclosed in the letter was a receipt for the debt and costs on which I had been arrested. Joe had paid the money, and the receipt was in his name.

What remained for me now, but to follow him to the dear old forge, and something had formed into a settled purpose.

The purpose was, that I would go to Biddy, that I would show her how humbled and repentant I came back, that I would tell her how I had lost all I once hoped for. Then I would say to her, “Biddy, I think you once liked me very well, when my errant heart was quieter and better with you than it ever has been since. If you can like me only half as well once more, if you can take me with all my faults and disappointments on my head, if you can receive me like a forgiven child, I hope I am a little worthier of you that I was[243] – not much, but a little. And now, dear Biddy, if you can tell me that you will go through the world with me, you will surely make it a better world for me, and me a better man for it, and I will try hard to make it a better world for you.”

Such was my purpose.

Chapter 58

It was evening when I arrived, much fatigued by the journey I had so often made so easily. Early in the morning, while my breakfast was getting ready, I strolled round by Miss Havisham’s House. There were printed bills on the gate and on bits of carpet hanging out of the windows, announcing a sale by auction of the Household Furniture and Effects, next week. The House itself was to be sold as old building materials, and pulled down.

When I got back to my breakfast in the Boar’s coffee-room, I found Mr. Pumblechook conversing with the landlord. Mr. Pumblechook was waiting for me, and addressed me in the following terms:

“Young man, I am sorry to see you brought low.[244] But what else could be expected! what else could be expected!”

I sat down to my breakfast. Mr. Pumblechook stood over me and poured out my tea.

“Hah!” he said, handing me the bread and butter. “Are you going to Joseph?”

“What does it matter to you,” said I, firing, “where I am going?”

The June weather was delicious. The sky was blue, the larks were soaring high over the green corn. They awakened a tender emotion in me; for my heart was softened by my return.

I went softly towards the forge, when Joe and Biddy stood before me, arm in arm.

At first Biddy gave a cry, but in another moment she was in my embrace. I wept to see her, and she wept to see me; I, because she looked so fresh and pleasant; she, because I looked so worn and white.

“But dear Biddy, how smart you are!”

“Yes, dear Pip.”

“And Joe, how smart you are!”

“Yes, dear old Pip, old chap.”

I looked at both of them, from one to the other, and then —

“It’s my wedding-day!” cried Biddy, in a burst of happiness, “and I am married to Joe!”

My first thought was one of great thankfulness[245] that I had never breathed this last baffled hope to Joe. How often, while he was with me in my illness, had it risen to my lips!

“Dear Biddy,” said I, “you have the best husband in the whole world. And, dear Joe, you have the best wife in the whole world, and she will make you as happy as even you deserve to be, you dear, good, noble Joe!”

Joe looked at me with a quivering lip, and fairly put his sleeve before his eyes.

“And Joe and Biddy both, receive my humble thanks for all you have done for me! But I must say more. Dear Joe, I hope you will have children to love, and that some little fellow will sit in this chimney-corner of a winter night. Now let me go up and look at my old little room, and rest there a few minutes by myself. And then, dear Joe and Biddy, we’ll say good bye!”

I sold all I had, and put aside as much as I could – and I went out and joined Herbert. Within a month, I had quitted England, and within two months I was clerk to Clarriker and Co. We were not in a grand way of business, but we had a good name, and worked for our profits, and did very well.

Chapter 59

For eleven years, I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my eyes – when, upon an evening in December, an hour or two after dark, I laid my hand softly on the latch of the old kitchen door. I touched it so softly that I was not heard. There, smoking his pipe in the old place by the kitchen firelight, as strong as ever, though a little gray, sat Joe; and there sitting on my own little stool looking at the fire, was – I again!

“We gave him the name of Pip for your sake,[246] dear old chap,” said Joe, delighted, when I took another stool by the child’s.

“Biddy,” said I, when I talked with her after dinner, as her little girl lay sleeping in her lap, “you must give Pip to me one of these days; or lend him.”

“No, no,” said Biddy, gently. “You must marry.”

“I don’t think I shall, Biddy. I am already quite an old bachelor.”

“Dear Pip,” said Biddy, “tell me as an old, old friend. Have you quite forgotten her?

“My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life. But that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by, Biddy – all gone by!”

Nevertheless, I knew, while I said those words, that I secretly intended to visit the site of the old house that evening, alone, for her sake. Yes, even so. For Estella’s sake.

I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, and as being separated from her husband, who had used her with great cruelty,[247] and who had become quite renowned as a compound of pride, avarice, and brutality. And I had heard of the death of her husband, from an accident consequent on his ill-treatment of a horse.

I walked over to the old spot before dark. There was no house now, no building whatever left, but the wall of the old garden. I pushed the gate in the fence open, and went in.

When I was looking along the desolate garden walk, I noticed a solitary figure in it. As I came nearer, I saw it to be the figure of a woman. Then it uttered my name, and I cried out —

“Estella!”

“I am greatly changed. I wonder you know me.[248]”

The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its indescribable majesty and its indescribable charm remained.

We sat down on a bench that was near, and I said, “After so many years, it is strange that we should thus meet again, Estella, here where our first meeting was! Do you often come back?”

“I have never been here since.”

“Nor I.”

The moon began to rise. Estella said, “I have very often hoped and intended to come back, but have been prevented by many circumstances. Poor, poor old place! The ground belongs to me. It is my only possession. Everything else has gone from me, little by little, but I have kept this. And you, – you live abroad still?”

“Still.”

“And do well, I am sure?”

“I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore – yes, I do well.”

“I have often thought of you,” said Estella.

“Have you?”

“Very often.”

“You have always held your place in my heart,” I answered.

And we were silent again until she spoke.

“So, be as considerate and good to me as you were, and tell me we are friends,” said Estella.

“We are friends,” said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose from the bench.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and in tranquil light I saw no shadow.

Англо-русский словарь к тексту

А

aboard – на борту

absent – отсутствующий

absolute – совершенный

absurd – нелепый

accept – принимать

acceptance – принятие

accessory – дополнение

accident – несчастный случай

accommodation – жильё

accompany – сопровождать

according – соответственно

account – описание; рассчитывать

accountant – бухгалтер

accustomed – привыкший; приученный

achieve – достигать; добиваться

acknowledge – признавать

acquaint – быть знакомым

acquaintance – знакомый

acquittal – оправдание

acquit – оправдывать

across – через

act – поступок; поступать

action – деятельность; действие; поступок

actually – действительно; в сущности

adapt – приспосабливать(ся)

add – добавлять

adjoin – примыкать, прилегать

adjure – молить; заклинать

administration – управление

admirable – замечательный; восхитительный

admission – доступ; вход

admit – допускать; признавать

adopt – усыновлять

adoption – усыновление

adoration – обожание

adore – обожать; поклоняться

advance – аванс

affectionate – любящий; нежный

affectionately – любяще; нежно

afterward – потом; впоследствии; позже

aged – старый; пожилой

aggravate – отягчать; усугублять

ague – малярия; лихорадка

aguish – малярийный; лихорадочный

ahead – впереди

ajar – приоткрытый

alarmingly – тревожно

alight – сходить; высаживаться

ally – союзник

amiable – дружелюбный; добродушный

amidst – среди; между

anxiety – беспокойство; тревога

anxious – озабоченный; беспокоящийся; волнующийся

apply – обращаться

appoint – назначать

apprehend – понимать

apprentice – ученик; подмастерье

apprenticeship – учение; ученичество

apron – передник; фартук

archly – лукаво

array – надевать одежду

ascend – подниматься

ascertain – выяснять; удостоверяться

ashame – стыдить

ashore – на берегу; на берег

aside – в стороне; в сторону

aspiration – стремление; сильное желание

assemble – собирать

assent – согласие

assiduity – усердие; усидчивость

assign – назначать (на должность)

assist – помогать; содействовать

assistance – помощь; содействие

associate – связывать; ассоциировать

assume – предполагать; допускать

assumption – предположение; допущение

assure – уверять; заверять; убеждаться

astound – поражать; изумлять

asunder – порознь; отдельно

attend – присутствовать

attendance – присутствие; посещение

attic – мансарда; чердак

auction – аукцион

auspicious – благоприятный

avarice – алчность; жадность

awe – трепет

В

badger – изводить; травить; издеваться

baffle – ставить в тупик; сбивать с толку

bang – шататься, заниматься бездельем

bare – голый; оголять

beckon – манить (жестом); кивать

behold (beheld, beheld) – смотреть; узреть

bellow – реветь

beneath – вниз; ниже

benefactor – благодетель; благотворитель

benefit – выгода; польза; пенсия; пособие

bestir – встряхнуться; активизироваться

bestow – даровать; награждать

bewilder – ставить в тупик

bid (bade, bidden) – предлагать

bill – счёт; купюра

bite (bit, bitten) – кусать

blacksmith – кузнец

blame – осуждать, винить

blaze – гореть ярким пламенем

bless – благословлять; благодарить; славословить

bloodhound – ищейка (порода собак)

bloom – цветение

blotchy – покрытый пятнами; в пятнах

bludgeon – дубинка

blunt – грубоватый

blush – краснеть (от смущения, стыда)

boar – кабан; вепрь

bonnet – шляпка

bonny – красивый, хороший, дивный

boorish – невоспитанный; грубый

bound – ограничивать

brace – приободриться

brewer – пивовар

bride – невеста

bridegroom – жених

brisk – живой; проворный

bruise – поставить синяк, кровоподтёк, ссадину

brutality – жестокость; зверство

burly – дородный; дюжий

burst (burst; burst) – взрываться

bushy – покрытый кустарником; кустистый; густой

C

caldron – котёл

capricious – капризный; непостоянный

carpenter – плотник

carriage – повозка

carry – нести

cask – бочка

causeway – гать

caution – осторожность; предостерегать

cease – прекращать

ceremonious – чопорный

chaff – мякина

chap – парень; малый

charge – назначать цену

chase – гнать

chasm – глубокая расселина

cheery – весёлый; живой

chest – грудная клетка

choleric – раздражительный

chorus – хор; припев

churchyard – церковное кладбище

cistern – бак

claim – требовать, претендовать; заявлять права (на что-л.)

clap – хлопать

clash – сталкиваться

clasp – сжимать

clemency – милосердие; снисходительность

cloak – плащ

cloth – тряпка

clothes – одежда

clumsy – неуклюжий; неповоротливый

clutch – схватить; зажать

coach – карета

coachman – кучер

coal – уголь

coarse – грубый

cobweb – паутина

codfish – пескарь

cogitation – обдумывание; размышление

commend – хвалить

commission – комиссия

commit – совершать

compact – компактный; плотный

compassion – жалость; сочувствие

complacent – самодовольный

complexion – цвет лица

compliment – комплимент

complimentary – похвальный; лестный

compose – составлять; сочинять

composure – спокойствие

compound – смесь

condemn – осуждать; порицать

condemnation – осуждение; приговор

condescend – снисходить; удостаивать

confess – признаваться; сознаваться

confession – признание

confidence – уверенность, самонадеянность

confidential – конфиденциальный; секретный

confidentially – по секрету; конфиденциально

confuse – спутывать; смущать

confusion – смятение; замешательство; беспорядок; путаница, неразбериха

conscience – совесть

consequence – (по)следствие

consequent – вытекающий; являющийся результатом

consequently – следовательно; поэтому; в результате

considerate – внимательный; деликатный; тактичный

consideration – рассмотрение; обсуждение

conspiracy – конспирация

constable – полицейский

constant – постоянный

constantly – постоянно; непрерывно

constraint – усилие; принуждение

consult – советоваться

consultation – консультация; совещание

contemplate – созерцать; рассматривать

contempt – презрение

contemptuous – презрительный; высокомерный

contemptuously – презрительно

content – довольство

contention – спор; ссора

contrary – противоположный

conversation – разговор, беседа

converse – разговаривать; беседовать

convict – осуждённый; заключённый

conviction – осуждение

convince – убеждать

corpse – труп

correspond – соответствовать

corrupt – портить(ся)

counsel – обсуждение; совещание

course – ход, течение

court – суд

courtyard – двор

cowardly – трусливый

crack – трещать

creak – скрипеть

creep (crept, crept) – ползать

crevice – щель

criminal – преступник

crisp – бодрящий, свежий

crumple – комкать; мять

crunch – хрустеть

crush – давить; мять

crutch – костыль

cunning – хитрый

curb – обуздывать; сдерживать

curl – локон; завиток

curse – проклятие; проклинать

cushion – подушка

customary – обычный; привычный

D

dangle – свисать; качаться

decanter – графин

decay – разложение, разрушение

decisive – окончательный, решающий; решительный

declamation – декламация

decline – отклонять

deed – действие, поступок

defend – защищать

deficiency – нехватка; недостаток

deficient – несовершенный; недостающий

degradation – деградация; упадок

degrade – приходить в упадок; деградировать

delay – задержка, отсрочка, промедление

deliberate – преднамеренный; заведомый

deliberately – преднамеренно; умышленно; осмотрительно

delicacy – утончённость, тонкость

delicate – изысканный

delicately – тонко, со вкусом; нежно; мягко; точно, тонко; деликатно, тактично

delight – радость; доставлять наслаждение

deliver – доставлять

denounce – осуждать; обвинять

deposit – класть, положить

depreciation – обесценивание; умаление, уничижение

depress – подавлять, угнетать

depressed – подавленный, унылый

derive – извлекать, получать

desert – оставлять, покидать

deserve – заслуживать

desirable – желательный; соблазнительный

desire – желание, стремление

desirous – желающий, жаждущий

desolate – заброшенный, запущенный

despise – презирать

dessert – десерт, сладкое

destination – цель; назначение

destined – предназначенный, предначертанный

detach – разъединять; отделять

determination – решительность

determine – определять, устанавливать

devour – пожирать

diffidence – робость, застенчивость

dike – дамба; плотина

dim – тусклый

dine – обедать

dingy – тусклый; выцветший

dip – погружаться

disagreeable – неприятный, непривлекательный

discharge – освобождать

disclose – раскрывать, показывать

discomfit – приводить в замешательство

discomfiture – замешательство, растерянность

disconsolately – безутешно

discouragement – обескураживание

discourse – разговор, беседа

discrepancy – несоответствие, расхождение

discretion – рассудительность; благоразумие

disdain – презрение; пренебрежение; презирать

disdainful – презрительный; надменный

disembody – делать бесплотным

disengage – выпутывать, высвобождать

disfigure – обезображивать

disgrace – позор, бесчестье

disgust – отвращение; внушать отвращение

disinherit – лишать наследства

dismal – мрачный, унылый, гнетущий

dismay – испуг, тревога; пугаться, тревожиться

disorderly – неуправляемый

disperse – разгонять (толпу)

dispirited – удручённый, унылый

dispose – расставлять; распоряжаться

disposition – нрав, характер

dissatisfy – не удовлетворять

disturbance – вмешательство; беспокойство

ditch – канава; ров

diversion – развлечение

divulge – разглашать, обнародовать

doleful – скорбный

drawbridge – разводной мост

dreamy – мечтательный

dreary – мрачный, унылый

drift – плыть

drizzly – моросящий

dull – тусклый, скучный

dusk – сумерки

E

eager – поспешный

eagerness – пыл, рвение

earnestly – серьёзно

ease – свобода, непринуждённость

elate – поднимать настроение; подбодрять

elderly – пожилой

emphasis – придание особого значения

emphatically – выразительно

empower – уполномочивать; давать возможность

enclose – окружать, огораживать

encounter – неожиданная встреча, столкновение; неожиданно встретиться, сталкиваться; наталкиваться

encourage – ободрять, поощрять; потворствовать; подстрекать

endure – переносить, терпеть

engage – вовлекать, привлекать; приглашать; объявлять помолвку

enlighten – просвещать, информировать

entangle – запутывать

entrap – обмануть; запутать

errant – заблудший

esteem – уважение

evidently – очевидно, ясно

exceedingly – чрезвычайно

exclaim – восклицать

exclamation – восклицание

exclude – исключать

execute – казнить

execution – выполнение, исполнение

exhort – убеждать; уговаривать

expenditure – трата, расход; потребление

expensively – дорого

experienced – опытный, знающий

expound – растолковывать, разъяснять

extend – простирать(ся)

extra – дополнительный

extract – вытаскивать, вытягивать; извлекать, получать

extravagant – расточительный

extreme – крайний

extremely – крайне

exultant – ликующий

F

fabulous роскошный

fade – обесцвечивать(ся), угасать

faint – падать в обморок

faintly – слабо

fair – красивый

fairly – легонько

falter – спотыкаться, колебаться

fancier – любитель

fancy – воображать; желать

farden – фартинг

fascinate – завораживать

fashion – манера

fashionable – модный

fearful – страшный, ужасный

feast – пир, пиршество

feature – лицо

feebly – слабо

felonious – преступный

felony – преступление

fender – решётка

ferocious – свирепый, лютый

ferociously – свирепо, люто

ferry(boat) – паром

festal – праздничный

festivity – празднество, торжество

festoon – гирлянда

fetch – приводить, приносить

fever – жар; высокая температура

fiction – вымысел, выдумка

fierce – свирепый, лютый

fiery – огненный, пламенный

file – напильник

fill – наполнять

finally – наконец

firelight – свет от камина

fireside – место около камина

fitful – неровный, прерывистый

flabby – вялый, дряблый

flagstaff – флагшток

flaming – пылающий, горящий

flannel – фланель

flap – взмахивать

flash – сверкать

flat – плоский

flaxen – льняной

flighty – ветреный, взбалмошный, капризный

flourish – процветать

flow – течение, поток, струя; течь, стекаться

flush – краснеть

forbear (forbore, forborne) – воздерживаться

forbearance – воздержанность, терпеливость, терпение

forbid (forbade, forbidden) – запрещать

foresee (foresaw, foreseen) – предвидеть

forewarn – предупреждать

forfeit – терять

forge – кузница

forgery – подделка, подлог

forgive (forgave, forgiven) – прощать

form – форма, вид; образовывать

formation – образование, формирование

former – предшествующий

forth – вперёд, дальше

fortify – укреплять

fortnight – две недели

fortune-teller – гадалка

fowl – птица

frantic – неистовый, безумный

fraud – обман, мошенничество

frenzy – неистовство, бешенство

frivolity – легкомыслие

frowzy – спёртый, затхлый

fugitive – беглец

furnish – обставлять

G

gain – приобретать

gallant – храбрый, доблестный

galley – камбуз

game – игра

gape – зевать, глазеть

garland – гирлянда

gasp – задыхаться

genuine – подлинный, настоящий

ghastly – страшный, кошмарный, ужасный

gild – золотить

glance – взгляд; взглянуть

glared – сверкать

glide – скользить

glimpse – проблеск

gloomy – мрачный; гнетущий; хмурый; унылый

glow – светить, сиять

gnaw – грызть

goldsmith – золотых дел мастер

gravely – серьёзно

gravity – серьёзность; важность

graze – пасти

greedy – жадный; алчный

greenhouse – теплица

greet – приветствовать

grim – мрачный; неумолимый

groan – стон; стонать

grope – идти ощупью

growl – рычать

grown – взрослый

grudge – недоброжелательность

gruff – резкий, неприветливый

guess – полагать, угадывать

gypsy – цыганский

H

hail – приветствовать

hammer – молоток

handcuffs – наручники

handkerchief – носовой платок

handwriting – почерк

hardly – едва (ли)

harmonious – гармоничный

haste – поспешность

haughty – высокомерный, надменный

haul – вытягиваться

haunt – неотвязно преследовать

hazard – опасность, риск

hearty – сердечный

hence – отсюда, следовательно

here – здесь, сюда

highly – весьма, очень

hindrance – помеха, препятствие

hint – намёк; намекать

hire – нанимать

hoist – поднимать (флаг, парус)

hollow – впадина

homeward – домой; восвояси

honorable – почётный; почтенный

hosiery – чулочные изделия; трикотаж

household – домашнее хозяйство

housekeeper – домохозяин

hug – объятие, обнимать

hulk – баржа

humble – скромный; покорный, смиренный

humiliate – унижать

I

immeasurably – неизмеримо

imp – дьяволёнок, чертёнок, бесёнок

impair – ухудшать, портить

imply – подразумевать, намекать

impressive – внушительный, впечатляющий, сильный

inch – дюйм

inclination – склонность

income – доход, приход

inconvenience – неудобство, беспокойство

increase – увеличиваться, возрастать

indentures – договор между учеником и хозяином, договор ученичества

indicate – указывать

indifference – равнодушие, безразличие

indigestible – неудобоваримый; трудно перевариваемый

indignant – возмущённый; негодующий

indignation – негодование, возмущение

industrious – усердный

inexplicable – необъяснимый

infer – заключать, делать вывод

injury – повреждение; вред

inn – гостиница, трактир; постоялый двор

inner – внутренний; скрытый

insolently – высокомерно

intend – намереваться

interchange – обменивать

interior – внутренний

interval – антракт

invest – вкладывать, инвестировать

inveterate – закоренелый

irresistible – неотразимый, непреодолимый

K

keen – острый; пронизывающий

keenly – пристально

keeper – сторож

keyhole – замочная скважина

kick – пинать

kindly – любезно

kindness – доброта

knit – вязать

knob – ручка, кнопка

knock – стук; стучать, ударять

L

lace – кружево

lad – парень

landlord – хозяин (дома, гостиницы)

lane – дорожка, тропинка

lap – колено

latch – щеколда; защёлка

lavish – щедрый, расточительный

lean – прислоняться, облокачиваться

legal – законный

leisure – досуг

lend (lent, lent) – давать взаймы; одалживать

liberal – щедрый

liberty – свобода

lick – лизать

likely – вероятно; скорее всего

limb – член; конечность

lingerie – женское бельё

link – связь; связывать

lively – живой

living – живой

lock – замок; запирать на замок

lodge – домик; обитать

loiter – шататься, околачиваться, слоняться (без дела)

loop – делать петлю; закреплять петлёй

lover – ухажёр

lower – понижать

M

manly – мужской

manuscript – рукопись

mark – метка, пятно; отмечать

marsh – болото

massive – массивный

meantime – между тем, тем временем

melancholy – грусть, печаль

melt – таять

memorable – памятный

mend – чинить, ремонтировать

merchant – купец

merciful – милосердный

mercy – милосердие; пощада

mere – простой

merit – заслуга; достоинство

mesh – канава

messenger – курьер, связной, посыльный

midday – полдень

middle – середина; средний

midst – середина

mild – мягкий; кроткий, тихий

mincemeat – начинка из рубленного изюма, миндаля

miserable – жалкий, несчастный

misery – страдание; мучение

misty – туманный

moody – унылый, угрюмый

morose – угрюмый

mortal – смертный

motion – движение; двигать

mound – насыпь; холмик

mount – подниматься

murder – убивать

murmur – бормотать

mutter – бормотать

N

nail – ноготь

nearby – расположенный поблизости; близлежащий, соседний

nearly – почти

neat – опрятный, аккуратный; изящный

neatly – искусно

needless – ненужный; лишний; неуместный

nevertheless – тем не менее

niece – племянница

night – ночь, вечер

nimble – проворный; живой; шустрый; быстрый; ловкий

noble – благородный

nod – кивок; кивать

noon – полдень

notify – извещать, уведомлять

notion – понятие; представление

novelty – новизна

O

oar – весло

obedience – послушание

obey – подчиняться

oblige – обязывать

observe – наблюдать, замечать

obstinate – упрямый; настойчивый; упорный

obtain – получать

occasion – случай

occupy – занимать

occur – происходить

odd – странный

offend – обижать

offensive – оскорбительный

omit – опускать; пропускать

oppressive – гнетущий

otherwise – по-другому, другим способом, иначе

outer – внешний, наружный

overlook – выходить на

owe – быть должным

P

parlor – гостиная

party – группа, отряд

pass – проходить, проезжать

passage – кусок, часть

pave – мостить

peep – взглянуть

peer – всматриваться

peg – крючок; колышек

penalty – наказание; штраф

perplex – смущать, озадачивать

pious – набожный

pitch – смола

placid – спокойный, безмятежный

plank – доска

plead – защищать

pledge – обещание; давать обещание

plot – участок земли

pluck – дёргать

poker – покер

pray – молить(ся); умолять

prayer – молитва

precede – предшествовать

precisely – точно

prepare – готовить, приготавливать(ся)

presently – вскоре

press – нажимать; надавливать

pressure – давление

proceed – продолжать; исходить

profit – польза, выгода

profitable – полезный, выгодный

profound – глубокий; проницательный

prohibition – запрещение

project – проект

project – выдаваться

prominent – заметный

prompt – быстрый, немедленный

promptly – сразу же

pronounce – объявлять

proper – собственный

property – собственность; имущество

prosper – процветать

prove – доказывать

provide – обеспечивать; снабжать

provoke – вызывать; провоцировать

prowle – красться

puff – пыхтеть

punch – пунш

purse – кошелёк

pursue – преследовать

Q

queer – странный; чудаковатый

quit – оставлять, покидать

quite – совсем, вполне

quiver – дрожать; трепетать

R

radiant – лучистый

rap – слегка ударять

raw – сырой; необработанный

ray – луч

readily – с готовностью

readiness – готовность

rear – воспитывать

reassure – успокаивать

recall – вспоминать

receipt – расписка, квитанция

reckon – считать, подсчитывать

recoil – отскочить, отпрянуть

recollect – вспоминать; припоминать

reel – пошатываться

refer – осведомляться; ссылаться

reflect – отражать

refrain – сдерживаться

refresh – освежать

regard – относиться, считать кого-либо кем-либо

relate – иметь отношение

release – освобождать, избавлять

relief – облегчение

relieve – облегчать, успокаивать

reluctantly – неохотно

remain – оставаться

remark – знак; отмечать

remarkable – удивительный; замечательный

remind – напоминать

renew – возобновлять

renowned – прославленный, известный

replenish – пополнять

repress – подавлять

require – требовать

reserve – беречь

reside – проживать

residence – проживание, пребывание, местожительство

resolution – решение

resolve – решать

resort – прибежище

resource – запасы; ресурсы

respond – отвечать

restless – беспокойный, неугомонный

restore – возвращать

restrain – сдерживать

resume – возобновлять

retain – удерживать

retire – уходить, удаляться

retirement – уединение

retort – отвечать резко; парировать

retreat – отступление

return – возвращение; возвращать(ся)

reveal – обнаруживать

revenge – месть

review – пересмотр, просмотр

revive – возрождать; оживлять

reward – награждать

rinse – полоскать

riotous – безудержный, шумный

rise (rose, risen) – поднимать(ся)

roar – рёв, рык; реветь; рычать

rob – грабить, обворовывать

roll – катить(ся)

rough – шероховатый, неровный; грубый

routine – заведённый порядок, определённый режим

row – грести

rub – тереть

ruby – рубин

rude – грубый

rum – ром

rush – мчаться, броситься

rusty – ржавый

S

satin – атлас; атласный

sauce – соус

save – спасать

scarcely – едва

scare – пугать

scatter – разбрасывать

scheme – план

score – счёт

scornfully – презрительно

scramble – карабкаться

scrape – скобление, чистка

scratch – царапать

screen – ширма

screw – винт; завинчивать

search – искать

seat – место; сидеть

secure – закреплять

sequence – последовательность; ряд; порядок

settle – устанавливать, погружать

severe – строгий, суровый

shabby – потрёпанный, поношенный

shame – стыд; стыдить

shameful – позорный, постыдный

shoot – стрелять

shriek – визжать, взвизгнуть; пронзительно кричать

shrill – пронзительный

shrink – ссыхаться; сокращаться

shrug – пожимать плечами

sideways – в сторону

sight – взгляд

sink (sank, sunk) – погружаться

skilful – искусный, умелый, ловкий, опытный

skill – искусство, мастерство

skylight – световой люк; слуховое окно

slap – шлёпать

slight – незначительный, лёгкий

slip – скользить

slippery – скользкий

smart – остроумный

smash – разбивать

smear – размазывать

smooth – гладкий, ровный

sneer – усмехаться

soar – парить, высоко летать

solicitor – присяжный, поверенный

solitary – одинокий

span – перекрывать

spare – тратить

spareribs – свиные рёбрышки

sparkle – сверкать; искриться

specific – определённый, конкретный, особенный

spectre – привидение

splash – плеск; плескаться

splendid – великолепный

spoil (spoilt, spoiled) – портить

spot – место

sprinkle – брызгать

squeeze – сжимать; давить

stammer – заикаться, запинаться

stamp – топать

stare – смотреть в упор

steadily – постоянно

steady – прочный, устойчивый, твёрдый

steer – править; управлять

stern – строгий; суровый; непреклонный

sternly – строго; сурово; непреклонно

steward – стюард, управляющий

stiff – жёсткий

stimulate – побуждать

stir – взбалтывать; смешивать

stock – запас

stormy – штормовой

stout – отважный

stray – заблудиться

stretch – вытягивать, вытянуть; растягивать

strict – строгий; точный

stroll – гулять; прогуливаться

stuff – набивать, начинять

stumble – спотыкаться

stun – оглушать; ошеломлять

submission – подчинение; покорность

succeed – удаваться

succession – последовательность

sudden – внезапный

suffer – испытывать страдания

sufficient – достаточный

suffocate – душить

suit – устраивать, подходить; костюм

sullen – угрюмый; сердитый, мрачный

surely – надёжно

surrender – сдаваться

surround – окружать, обступать

survey – рассматривать

swamp – болото

swell (swelled; swollen) – раздуваться

swindle – обманывать

swing – качаться

sword – меч

sympathetic – сочувственный

sympathy – сочувствие

T

tame – ручной; приручать; укрощать

taste – вкус; пробовать

temper – нрав

temporary – временный

tenderly – нежно

term – условие; термин; называть

terrier – терьер

therefore – поэтому, следовательно

thither – туда

thorn – колючка, шип

thoughtful – задумчивый

throughout – везде; повсюду

thus – следовательно, таким образом

tide – морской прилив

tie – связывать, завязывать

tight – плотный

timidly – робко, пугливо; застенчиво

topple – опрокидывать(ся)

toss – бросать

trade – ремесло; профессия

train – тренировать

tramp – бродить

tranquil – спокойный

trap – капкан

traverse – пересекать

treat – обращаться, обходиться

tremble – дрожать

tremendous – громадный; страшный

trial – суд

triumph – торжество

tumble – бросать(ся)

tutor – наставник

twist – крутить

twitch – подёргиваться, дёргаться

U

uncouth – грубый, неотёсанный

understand (understood, understood) – понимать

unfold – развёртывать

unlike – непохожий

unlock – отпирать

unmoved – равнодушный

unreasonable – безрассудный; не(благо)разумный

unwelcome – нежеланный; неприятный

unwilling – несклонный, нерасположенный

upper – верхний

up-stairs – наверху, наверх

urge – убеждать

urgent – срочный, безотлагательный

utter – стонать; произносить

V

vaguely – неопределённо, смутно, неясно

vanish – исчезать, пропадать

variety – разнообразие

various – различный, разный, разнообразный

veal – телятина

veil – вуаль; закрывать вуалью

velvet – бархат

venture – рискнуть; отважиться

verbal – устный

verify – проверять

vessel – сосуд

vicious – порочный; злобный

vile – гнусный, низкий, мерзкий

villain – злодей, негодяй

virtue – добродетель

W

wander – бродить, странствовать

watchfully – внимательно

weary – усталый; утомительный

weigh – взвешивать

weird – таинственный, сверхъестественный; странный, жуткий

wicked – злой, злобный

witch – ведьма

worth – стоящий

worthy – достойный

wound – рана; ранить

wrap – об(в)ёртывать

wrath – гнев

wretch – негодяй

wretched – несчастный, жалкий

wring (wrung; wrung) – скручивать; выжимать

Y

yard – ярд; двор

yawn – зевать

Примечания

1

Pirrip – Пиррип

2

Philip – Филип

3

Pip – Пип

4

Joe Gargery – Джо Гарджери

5

Keep still! – Замолчи!

6

wittles – жратва

7

Or I’ll have your heart and liver out. – А не то я вырву у тебя сердце с печёнкой.

8

tear him open – зарежет его

9

she had brought me up “by hand” – она воспитала меня «своими руками»

10

fellow-sufferers – товарищи по несчастью

11

old chap – старина

12

There was a convict off last night. – Вчера вечером один арестант дал тягу.

13

Lord bless the boy! – Наказание с этим мальчишкой!

14

prison-ships – плавучая тюрьма

15

I’ll pull him down. – Я выслежу его.

16

to take me up – чтобы взять меня под стражу

17

Wopsle – Уопсл

18

Hubble – Хабл

19

Pumblechook – Памблчук

20

theatrical declamation – театральная декламация

21

will you throw your eye over them? – не будете ли вы так добры взглянуть на них?

22

It may prevent some persons laying under suspicion alonger me. – Это для того, чтобы подозрение не пало на кого другого.

23

it was a drawback on my learning – моему ученью это здорово мешало

24

a fine figure of a woman – видная женщина

25

Never mind me. – Ну что говорить обо мне.

26

Your sister a master-mind. – Твоя сестра – ума палата.

27

Havisham – Хэвишем

28

I considered Mr. Pumblechook wretched company. – В обществе мистера Памблчука я чувствовал себя отвратительно.

29

Seven times nine, boy? – Сколько будет семью девять, мальчик?

30

on an empty stomach – на пустой желудок

31

math = mathematics – математика

32

Estella – Эстелла

33

playing to order – игра по заказу

34

a common laboring boy – самый обыкновенный деревенский мальчишка

35

Nothing but beggar my neighbor. – Ни во что другое, как кроме в «дурачка».

36

Beggar him. – Оставь его в дураках.

37

Play the game out. – Доиграй до конца.

38

the chair of honor – почётное место

39

How did you get on up town?” – Как ты провёл время в городе?

40

Forty-three pence? – Сколько составят сорок три пенса?

41

for instance – например

42

What like is Miss Havisham? – Какая из себя мисс Хэвишем?

43

This is the way to have him. – Вот как надо с ним обращаться.

44

in the name of gracious – боже милостивый

45

sedan-chair – портшез (лёгкое переносное кресло, в котором можно сидеть полулёжа; паланкин)

46

handsome premium – щедрая плата

47

were far above the level of such common doings – были намного выше такой обыкновенной жизни

48

public-house – трактир, харчевня

49

Three Jolly Bargemen – “Три Весёлых матроса” (название трактира)

50

At my expense? – За мой счёт?

51

but a runaway convict now and then – разве что беглого арестанта

52

A bad one. – Фальшивый.

53

You are to come this way today. – Сегодня ты пойдёшь вот сюда.

54

you little coarse monster – ты, заморыш несчастный

55

you little wretch – ты, маленький гадёныш

56

You behave yourself! – Веди себя хорошо!

57

There, there, there! – Не надо! Не надо!

58

Walk me, walk me! – Веди меня! Веди меня!

59

Matthew – Мэтью

60

Sarah Pocket – Сара Покет

61

Georgiana’s – Джорджиана

62

when you come to feast upon me – когда вы придёте пировать надо мной

63

I don’t want it to be spoken of. – Я не разрешаю об этом говорить.

64

so much the better if it is done on this day! – хорошо бы и это случилось в день моего рождения!

65

Meaning the master you were to be apprenticed to? – Это к нему ты должен был идти в подмастерья?

66

This is very liberal on your part. – Это очень щедро с твоей стороны.

67

may we do our duty! – будем исполнять свой долг!

68

I had liked it once, but once was not now. – Когда-то оно мне нравилось, но сейчас – другое дело.

69

on any account – когда-либо

70

virtue of industry – трудолюбие

71

What is any visit made for? – Зачем люди вообще ходят в гости?

72

the Bow Street men from London – лондонские сущики с Боу-стрит

73

her speech was unintelligible – её речь была бессвязной

74

on her account – из-за неё

75

to spite her or to gain her over? – чтобы досадить ей или чтобы добиться её?

76

that would be the thing for me – всё было бы хорошо для меня

77

Jaggers – Джеггерс

78

he will come into a handsome property – он унаследует изрядное состояние

79

present possessor of that property – настоящий обладатель данной собственности

80

to make my fortune on a grand scale – сделать меня богачом

81

I am empowered to mention – я уполномочен заявить

82

Matthew Pocket – Мэтью Покет

83

village idiot – деревенский дурачок

84

Let it stand for this day week. – Пусть это будет через неделю.

85

won’t his manners do then? – разве его манеры недостаточно хороши?

86

a higher sphere – более высокие круги

87

pride is not all of one kind – гордость не у всех одинаковая

88

Trabb – Трэбб

89

coach-office – контора дилижансов

90

you would kindly not mind – вы не сочтёте за дерзость

91

the first stage of expectations – первая пора надежд

92

Little Britain – Литл-Бритен

93

just out of Smithfield – не доезжая Смитфилда

94

Barnard’s Inn – «Подворье Барнарда»

95

Wemmick – Уэммик

96

for the sake – ради

97

Hammersmith – Хэммерсмит

98

Return shortly. – Скоро вернусь.

99

Covent Garden Market – Ковент-Гарденский рынок

100

from our coffee-house here – из ближайшего трактира

101

at your expense – за ваш счёт

102

Herbert Pocket – Герберт Покет

103

Tartar – тиран

104

to wreak revenge on all the male sex – отомстить всей мужской половине рода человеческого

105

he was so obliging – он был так любезен

106

Handel – Гендель

107

Harmonious Blacksmith – «Гармонический кузнец» (название пьесы немецкого и английского композитора эпохи барокко Г.Ф. Генделя)

108

the spoon is not generally used over-hand, but under – ложку лучше захватывать пальцами не сверху, а снизу

109

denied her nothing – ни в чём ей не отказывал

110

a half-brother – сводный брат

111

Miss Havisham was now an heiress. – Мисс Хэвишем стала теперь наследницей.

112

a showy man – видный мужчина

113

acted throughout in concert – действовал заодно

114

Belinda – Белинда

115

you have welcomed Mr. Pip – ты познакомилась с мистером Пипом

116

Harrow – Хэрроу (одна из известнейших и старейших британских публичных школ для мальчиков)

117

Cambridge – Кембридж

118

Dying Gladiator – умирающий гладиатор

119

Go it! – Что ж, действуйте!

120

We don’t run much into clerks. – Много клерков держать нам нет смысла.

121

something between a publican and a rat-catcher – некая помесь трактирщика с крысоловом

122

a high-shouldered man – сутулый человек

123

Walworth – Уолворт

124

I am fond of – я очень люблю

125

Camilla – Камилла

126

gothic windows – готические окна

127

Greenwich time – по гринвичскому времени

128

Jack of all Trades – мастер на все руки

129

he was in great spirits – он совсем развеселился

130

by degrees – постепенно

131

Gerrard Street, Soho – Джеррард-стрит, Сохо

132

Bentley Drummle – Бентли Драмл

133

Startop – Стартоп

134

Macbeth – «Макбет» (одна из наиболее известных трагедий Уильяма Шекспира)

135

Witches’ caldron – котёл ведьм

136

was much disfigured – было сильно обезображено

137

There’s power here. – Вот где сила.

138

That’ll do, Molly. – Достаточно, Молли.

139

we must break up – мы должны разойтись

140

Pray make the best use of your time. – Пожалуйста, не теряйте времени.

141

Pepper – Пеппер

142

went into the playacting – подался в актёры

143

but I wouldn’t keep a pig in it myself – но я бы и свинью не стал бы здесь держать

144

Blacking Ware’us – фабрика ваксы

145

too architectooralooral – слишком архитектуритуритурна

146

Blue Boar – «Синий кабан» (название гостиницы)

147

Cross Keys – «Скрещённые ключи»

148

she lured me on – она меня завлекала

149

I have not bestowed my tenderness anywhere. – Я никого не одарила своей благосклонностью.

150

at any rate – в любом случае

151

you will be my Page – вы будете моим пажом

152

How does she use you? – Как она с тобой обходится?

153

time enough – времени достаточно

154

Then you are? – Значит, и ты тоже?

155

how do you find yourself? – как поживаете?

156

bought his discharge – выкупился с военной службы

157

of you’ve no further use for them – если вам они больше не нужны

158

they shall be taken care of – о них позаботятся

159

a coiner – фальшивомонетчик

160

a pair of pigeons are portable property all the same – парочка голубей – это всё-таки движимое имущество

161

Richmond – Ричмонд

162

Surrey – Сэррэй

163

Yorkshire – Йоркшир

164

A carriage will have to be sent for. – За каретой придётся послать.

165

I have every reason to say so. – У меня есть все основания это утверждать.

166

The mother is a lady of some station. – Мать занимает в обществе довольно высокое положение.

167

The Finches of the Grove – «Зяблики в роще» (название клуба)

168

we are getting on badly – дела наши идут плохо

169

What a fellow of resource you are! – Ты просто чуда как находчив!

170

Trabb & Co. – «Трэбб и K°»

171

coattails – фалды сюртука

172

What do you suppose you are living at the rate of? – Как вы думаете, сколько вы проживаете в год?

173

blew his nose – высморкался

174

in earnest of your expectations – задаток в счёт ваших надежд

175

to carry your words to any one – чтобы я передавал ваши слова кому-либо

176

is trying to get on in commercial life – пытается посвятить себя коммерческой деятельности

177

to get rid of the friend – избавиться от друга

178

I have heard that my son is a wonderful hand at his business. – Я слышал, что мой сын – дока по своей части.

179

to keep him in good hope and heart – для поддержания в нём бодрости духа

180

This is devilish good of you. – С вашей стороны это чёрт знает как хорошо.

181

Skiffins – Скиффинс

182

I’ll look him up and go to work for you. – Я с ним потолкую, и мы для вас что-нибудь придумаем.

183

Clarriker – Кларрикер

184

Mrs. Brandley – миссис Брэндли

185

the daughter liked theology – дочери нравилось богословие

186

fe^te days – праздники

187

How does she use you? – Как она с тобой обращается?

188

I am what you have made me. – Я такая, какой вы меня сделали.

189

Look at her so hard and thankless! – Посмотрите на неё – жестокую и неблагодарную!

190

toasted a lady – провозгласил тост за здоровье дамы

191

to follow her closely – ухаживать за ней

192

Garden-court – Гарден-корт

193

Marseilles – Марсель

194

You acted noble. – Ты поступил благородно.

195

I hope you have done well? – Надеюсь, вы преуспели в жизни?

196

I’ve made a gentleman on you! – Я сделал из тебя джентльмена!

197

I was sent for life. – Меня выслали пожизненно.

198

It’s death to come back. – Вернуться – значит смерть.

199

Provis – Провис

200

Abel Magwitch – Абель Мэгвич

201

Were you tried? – Вас судили?

202

Jaggers was for me. – Джеггерс меня защищал.

203

Don’t commit yourself. – Не ставьте себя в затруднительное положение.

204

Told would seem to imply verbal communication. – «Мне сказали» подразумевает личное общение.

205

New South Wales – Новый Южный Уэльс

206

he was not at all likely to obtain a pardon – у него нет никаких шансов на помилование

207

the extreme penalty of the law – наивысшая мера наказания

208

Essex Street – Эссекс-стрит

209

He is intent upon various new expenses. – Он уже носится с новыми тратами.

210

I am fit for nothing. – Я ни на что не годен.

211

to go for a soldier – пойти в солдаты

212

thieving – воровство

213

travelling Giant – странствующий великан

214

at Epsom races – на скачках в Эпсоне

215

Compeyson – Компесон

216

and such like – и тому подобное

217

Arthur – Артур

218

and they’d made a pot of money by it – и нажили на этом кучу денег

219

You address nothing in my breast. – Вы ничего не пробуждаете в моей груди.

220

Hummums – «Хаммамс» (название гостиницы)

221

on the chance – на всякий случай

222

I wouldn’t go into that. – Я предпочитаю в это не вдаваться.

223

between Limehouse and Greenwich – между Лаймхаусом и Гринвичем

224

Lay hold of his portable property. – Обеспечьте за собой его движимое имущество.

225

for I have not made up my mind – потому что я ещё не решил

226

He has won the pool. – Он сорвал банк.

227

Old Bailey – Олд-Бейли

228

Has she been in his service ever since? – И с тех пор она у него служит?

229

I should have loved her under any circumstances. – Я полюбил бы её несмотря ни на что.

230

Assistance was sent for. – Послали за помощью.

231

it would hardly serve her to establish her parentage – вряд ли это поспособствует установлению её происхождения

232

What item was it you were at when Mr. Pip came in? – На чём мы остановились перед тем, как вошёл мистер Пип?

233

you might do what you know of – вы можете сделать то, о чём вам известно

234

Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp – Гамбург, Роттердам, Антверпен

235

Any foreign steamer that would take us up would do. – Подошёл бы любой иностранный пароход, который согласится нас взять.

236

at Mill Pond Bank – на берегу Мельничнго пруда

237

oarsmen – гребцы

238

You have a returned Transport there. – Среди вас имеется самовольно вернувшийся ссыльный.

239

on board the steamer – на борту парохода

240

That he would be leniently treated, I could not hope. – Я не надеялся, что к нему проявят снисхождение.

241

would be forfeited to the Crown – отойдёт в казну

242

O Lord, be merciful to him a sinner! – Боже! Будь милостив к нему, грешнику!

243

I hope I am a little worthier of you that I was. – Я надеюсь, что сумею быть немного достойнее тебя, чем раньше.

244

I am sorry to see you brought low. – Я сожалею, что вас постигло несчастье.

245

great thankfulness – величайшая благодарность

246

for your sake – в твою честь

247

who had used her with great cruelty – который обращался с ней очень жестоко

248

I wonder you know me. – Удивительно, как вы меня узнали.

Content

Чарльз Диккенс / Charles Dickens
Большие надежды / Great Expectations

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Англо-русский словарь к тексту

А

В

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

Y

Примечания