Great Expectations
presence. I say we went over, but I was pushed over by Pumblechook,
exactly as if I had that moment picked a pocket or fired a rick;
indeed, it was the general impression in Court that I had been taken
red-handed; for, as Pumblechook shoved me before him through the crowd,
I heard some people say, “What’s he done?” and others, “He’s a young
’un, too, but looks bad, don’t he?” One person of mild and benevolent
aspect even gave me a tract ornamented with a woodcut of a malevolent
young man fitted up with a perfect sausage-shop of fetters, and
entitled TO BE READ IN MY CELL.
The Hall was a queer place, I thought, with higher pews in it than a
church,—and with people hanging over the pews looking on,—and with
mighty Justices (one with a powdered head) leaning back in chairs, with
folded arms, or taking snuff, or going to sleep, or writing, or reading
the newspapers,—and with some shining black portraits on the walls,
which my unartistic eye regarded as a composition of hardbake and
sticking-plaster. Here, in a corner my indentures were duly signed and
attested, and I was “bound”; Mr. Pumblechook holding me all the while
as if we had looked in on our way to the scaffold, to have those little
preliminaries disposed of.
When we had come out again, and had got rid of the boys who had been
put into great spirits by the expectation of seeing me publicly
tortured, and who were much disappointed to find that my friends were
merely rallying round me, we went back to Pumblechook’s. And there my
sister became so excited by the twenty-five guineas, that nothing would
serve her but we must have a dinner out of that windfall at the Blue
Boar, and that Pumblechook must go over in his chaise-cart, and bring
the Hubbles and Mr. Wopsle.
It was agreed to be done; and a most melancholy day I passed. For, it
inscrutably appeared to stand to reason, in the minds of the whole
company, that I was an excrescence on the entertainment. And to make it
worse, they all asked me from time to time,—in short, whenever they had
nothing else to do,—why I didn’t enjoy myself? And what could I
possibly do then, but say I _was_ enjoying myself,—when I wasn’t!
However, they were grown up and had their own way, and they made the
most of it. That swindling Pumblechook, exalted into the beneficent
contriver of the whole occasion, actually took the top of the table;
and, when he addressed them on the subject of my being bound, and had
fiendishly congratulated them on my being liable to imprisonment if I
played at cards, drank strong liquors, kept late hours or bad company,
or indulged in other vagaries which the form of my indentures appeared
to contemplate as next to inevitable, he placed me standing on a chair
beside him to illustrate his remarks.
My only other remembrances of the great festival are, That they
wouldn’t let me go to sleep, but whenever they saw me dropping off,
woke me up and told me to enjoy myself. That, rather late in the
evening Mr. Wopsle gave us Collins’s ode, and threw his bloodstained
sword in thunder down, with such effect, that a waiter came in and
said, “The Commercials underneath sent up their compliments, and it
wasn’t the Tumblers’ Arms.” That, they were all in excellent spirits on
the road home, and sang, O Lady Fair! Mr. Wopsle taking the bass, and
asserting with a tremendously strong voice (in reply to the inquisitive
bore who leads that piece of music in a most impertinent manner, by
wanting to know all about everybody’s private affairs) that _he_ was
the man with his white locks flowing, and that he was upon the whole
the weakest pilgrim going.
Finally, I remember that 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.
Chapter XIV.
It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be
black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive
and well deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.
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 best parlour as a most elegant saloon; I had believed
in the front door, as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose
solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had
believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I
had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and
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.
How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own fault,
how much Miss Havisham’s, how much my sister’s, is now of no moment to
me or to any one. The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well
or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.
Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my
shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe’s ’prentice, I should be
distinguished and happy. Now the reality was in my hold, I only felt
that I was dusty with the dust of small-coal, and that I had a weight
upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather. There have
been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I
have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its
interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance
any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my
way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly
entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.
I remember that at a later period of my “time,” I used to stand about
the churchyard on Sunday evenings when night was falling, comparing my
own perspective with the windy marsh view, and making out some likeness
between them by thinking how flat and low both were, and how on both
there came an unknown way and a dark mist and then the sea. I was quite
as dejected on the first working-day of my apprenticeship as in that
after-time; but I am glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe
while my indentures lasted. It is about the only thing I _am_ glad to
know of myself in that connection.
For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit of what I
proceed to add was Joe’s. 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, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry,
that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain. It is not possible
to know how far the influence of any amiable honest-hearted duty-doing
man flies out into the world; but it is very possible to know how it
has touched one’s self in going by, and I know right well that any good
that intermixed itself with my apprenticeship came of plain contented
Joe, and not of restlessly aspiring discontented me.
What I wanted, who can say? How can _I_ say, when I never knew? What I
dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I, being at my grimiest and
commonest, 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 exult over me and despise me.
Often after dark, when I was pulling the bellows for Joe, and we were
singing Old Clem, and when the thought how we used to sing it at Miss
Havisham’s would seem to show me Estella’s face in the fire, with her
pretty hair fluttering in the wind and her eyes scorning me,—often at
such a time I would look towards those panels of black night in the
wall which the wooden windows then were, and would fancy that I saw her
just drawing her face away, 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, in my own ungracious breast.
Chapter XV.
As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s room, my
education under that preposterous female terminated. Not, however,
until Biddy had imparted to me everything she knew, from the little
catalogue of prices, to a comic song she had once bought for a
half-penny. Although the only coherent part of the latter piece of
literature were the opening lines,
When I went to Lunnon town sirs,
Too rul loo rul
Too rul loo rul
Wasn’t I done very brown sirs?
Too rul loo rul
Too rul loo rul
—still, in my desire to be wiser, I got this composition by heart with
the utmost gravity; nor do I recollect that I questioned its merit,
except that I thought (as I still do) the amount of Too rul somewhat in
excess of the poetry. In my hunger for information, I made proposals to
Mr. Wopsle to bestow some intellectual crumbs upon me, with which he
kindly complied. As it turned out, however, that he only wanted me for
a dramatic lay-figure, to be contradicted and embraced and wept over
and bullied and clutched and stabbed and knocked about in a variety of
ways, I soon declined that course of instruction; though not until Mr.
Wopsle in his poetic fury had severely mauled me.
Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This statement sounds so
well, that I cannot in my conscience let it pass unexplained. I wanted
to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he might be worthier of my
society and less open to Estella’s reproach.
The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of study, and a broken
slate and a short piece of slate-pencil were our educational
implements: to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I never knew
Joe to remember anything from one Sunday to another, or to acquire,
under my tuition, any piece of information whatever. Yet he would smoke
his pipe at the Battery with a far more sagacious air than anywhere
else,—even with a learned air,—as if he considered himself to be
advancing immensely. Dear fellow, I hope he did.
It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on the river
passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low,
looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing on
at the bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels standing out
to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow thought of Miss
Havisham and Estella; and whenever the light struck aslant, afar off,
upon a cloud or sail or green hillside or water-line, it was just the
same.—Miss Havisham and Estella and the strange house and the strange
life appeared to have something to do with everything that was
picturesque.
One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so plumed himself
on being “most awful dull,” that I had given him up for the day, I lay
on the earthwork for some time with my chin on my hand, descrying
traces of Miss Havisham and Estella all over the prospect, in the sky
and in the water, until at last I resolved to mention a thought
concerning them that had been much in my head.
“Joe,” said I; “don’t you think I ought to make Miss Havisham a visit?”
“Well, Pip,” returned Joe, slowly considering. “What for?”
“What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?”
“There is some wisits p’r’aps,” said Joe, “as for ever remains open to
the question, Pip. But in regard to wisiting Miss Havisham. She might
think you wanted something,—expected something of her.”
“Don’t you think I might say that I did not, Joe?”
“You might, old chap,” said Joe. “And she might credit it. Similarly
she mightn’t.”
Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he pulled hard