Great Expectations
at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it by repetition.
“You see, Pip,” Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that danger, “Miss
Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss Havisham done the
handsome thing by you, she called me back to say to me as that were
all.”
“Yes, Joe. I heard her.”
“ALL,” Joe repeated, very emphatically.
“Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her.”
“Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning were,—Make a end
on it!—As you was!—Me to the North, and you to the South!—Keep in
sunders!”
I had thought of that too, and it was very far from comforting to me to
find that he had thought of it; for it seemed to render it more
probable.
“But, Joe.”
“Yes, old chap.”
“Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, since the day
of my being bound, I have never thanked Miss Havisham, or asked after
her, or shown that I remember her.”
“That’s true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her out a set of shoes
all four round,—and which I meantersay as even a set of shoes all four
round might not be acceptable as a present, in a total wacancy of
hoofs—”
“I don’t mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I don’t mean a present.”
But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head and must harp upon
it. “Or even,” said he, “if you was helped to knocking her up a new
chain for the front door,—or say a gross or two of shark-headed screws
for general use,—or some light fancy article, such as a toasting-fork
when she took her muffins,—or a gridiron when she took a sprat or such
like—”
“I don’t mean any present at all, Joe,” I interposed.
“Well,” said Joe, still harping on it as though I had particularly
pressed it, “if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn’t. No, I would _not_. For
what’s a door-chain when she’s got one always up? And shark-headers is
open to misrepresentations. And if it was a toasting-fork, you’d go
into brass and do yourself no credit. And the oncommonest workman can’t
show himself oncommon in a gridiron,—for a gridiron IS a gridiron,”
said Joe, steadfastly impressing it upon me, as if he were endeavouring
to rouse me from a fixed delusion, “and you may haim at what you like,
but a gridiron it will come out, either by your leave or again your
leave, and you can’t help yourself—”
“My dear Joe,” I cried, in desperation, taking hold of his coat, “don’t
go on in that way. I never thought of making Miss Havisham any
present.”
“No, Pip,” Joe assented, as if he had been contending for that, all
along; “and what I say to you is, you are right, Pip.”
“Yes, Joe; but what I wanted to say, was, that as we are rather slack
just now, if you would give me a half-holiday to-morrow, I think I
would go uptown and make a call on Miss Est—Havisham.”
“Which her name,” said Joe, gravely, “ain’t Estavisham, Pip, unless she
have been rechris’ened.”
“I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine. What do you think of it,
Joe?”
In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well of it, he thought well of
it. But, he was particular in stipulating that if I were not received
with cordiality, or if I were not encouraged to repeat my visit as a
visit which had no ulterior object but was simply one of gratitude for
a favour received, then this experimental trip should have no
successor. By these conditions I promised to abide.
Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name was Orlick. He
pretended that his Christian name was Dolge,—a clear Impossibility,—but
he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition that I believe him to
have been the prey of no delusion in this particular, but wilfully to
have imposed that name upon the village as an affront to its
understanding. He was a broadshouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of
great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching. He never even
seemed to come to his work on purpose, but would slouch in as if by
mere accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his
dinner, or went away at night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the
Wandering Jew, as if he had no idea where he was going and no intention
of ever coming back. He lodged at a sluice-keeper’s out on the marshes,
and on working-days would come slouching from his hermitage, with his
hands in his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his
neck and dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on the
sluice-gates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always slouched,
locomotively, with his eyes on the ground; and, when accosted or
otherwise required to raise them, he looked up in a half-resentful,
half-puzzled way, as though the only thought he ever had was, that it
was rather an odd and injurious fact that he should never be thinking.
This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I was very small and
timid, he gave me to understand that the Devil lived in a black corner
of the forge, and that he knew the fiend very well: also that it was
necessary to make up the fire, once in seven years, with a live boy,
and that I might consider myself fuel. When I became Joe’s ’prentice,
Orlick was perhaps confirmed in some suspicion that I should displace
him; howbeit, he liked me still less. Not that he ever said anything,
or did anything, openly importing hostility; I only noticed that he
always beat his sparks in my direction, and that whenever I sang Old
Clem, he came in out of time.
Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next day, when I reminded Joe of
my half-holiday. He said nothing at the moment, for he and Joe had just
got a piece of hot iron between them, and I was at the bellows; but by
and by he said, leaning on his hammer,—
“Now, master! Sure you’re not a-going to favour only one of us. If
Young Pip has a half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick.” I suppose he
was about five-and-twenty, but he usually spoke of himself as an
ancient person.
“Why, what’ll you do with a half-holiday, if you get it?” said Joe.
“What’ll _I_ do with it! What’ll _he_ do with it? I’ll do as much with
it as _him_,” said Orlick.
“As to Pip, he’s going up town,” said Joe.
“Well then, as to Old Orlick, _he_’s a-going up town,” retorted that
worthy. “Two can go up town. Tain’t only one wot can go up town.
“Don’t lose your temper,” said Joe.
“Shall if I like,” growled Orlick. “Some and their uptowning! Now,
master! Come. No favouring in this shop. Be a man!”
The master refusing to entertain the subject until the journeyman was
in a better temper, Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew out a red-hot
bar, made at me with it as if he were going to run it through my body,
whisked it round my head, laid it on the anvil, hammered it out,—as if
it were I, I thought, and the sparks were my spirting blood,—and
finally said, when he had hammered himself hot and the iron cold, and
he again leaned on his hammer,—
“Now, master!”
“Are you all right now?” demanded Joe.
“Ah! I am all right,” said gruff Old Orlick.
“Then, as in general you stick to your work as well as most men,” said
Joe, “let it be a half-holiday for all.”
My sister had been standing silent in the yard, within hearing,—she was
a most unscrupulous spy and listener,—and she instantly looked in at
one of the windows.
“Like you, you fool!” said she to Joe, “giving holidays to great idle
hulkers like that. You are a rich man, upon my life, to waste wages in
that way. I wish _I_ was his master!”
“You’d be everybody’s master, if you durst,” retorted Orlick, with an
ill-favoured grin.
(“Let her alone,” said Joe.)
“I’d be a match for all noodles and all rogues,” returned my sister,
beginning to work herself into a mighty rage. “And I couldn’t be a
match for the noodles, without being a match for your master, who’s the
dunder-headed king of the noodles. And I couldn’t be a match for the
rogues, without being a match for you, who are the blackest-looking and
the worst rogue between this and France. Now!”
“You’re a foul shrew, Mother Gargery,” growled the journeyman. “If that
makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be a good’un.”
(“Let her alone, will you?” said Joe.)
“What did you say?” cried my sister, beginning to scream. “What did you
say? What did that fellow Orlick say to me, Pip? What did he call me,
with my husband standing by? Oh! oh! oh!” Each of these exclamations
was a shriek; and I must remark of my sister, what is equally true of
all the violent women I have ever seen, that passion was no excuse for
her, because it is undeniable that instead of lapsing into passion, she
consciously and deliberately took extraordinary pains to force herself
into it, and became blindly furious by regular stages; “what was the
name he gave me before the base man who swore to defend me? Oh! Hold
me! Oh!”
“Ah-h-h!” growled the journeyman, between his teeth, “I’d hold you, if
you was my wife. I’d hold you under the pump, and choke it out of you.”
(“I tell you, let her alone,” said Joe.)
“Oh! To hear him!” cried my sister, with a clap of her hands and a
scream together,—which was her next stage. “To hear the names he’s
giving me! That Orlick! In my own house! Me, a married woman! With my
husband standing by! Oh! Oh!” Here my sister, after a fit of clappings
and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon her knees, and
threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down,—which were the last stages
on her road to frenzy. Being by this time a perfect Fury and a complete
success, she made a dash at the door which I had fortunately locked.
What could the wretched Joe do now, after his disregarded parenthetical
interruptions, but stand up to his journeyman, and ask him what he
meant by interfering betwixt himself and Mrs. Joe; and further whether
he was man enough to come on? Old Orlick felt that the situation
admitted of nothing less than coming on, and was on his defence
straightway; so, without so much as pulling off their singed and burnt
aprons, they went at one another, like two giants. But, if any man in
that neighbourhood could stand uplong against Joe, I never saw the man.
Orlick, as if he had been of no more account than the pale young
gentleman, was very soon among the coal-dust, and in no hurry to come
out of it. Then Joe unlocked the door and picked up my sister, who had
dropped insensible at the window (but who had seen the fight first, I
think), and who was carried into the house and laid down, and who was
recommended to revive, and would do nothing but struggle and clench her
hands in Joe’s hair. Then came that singular calm and silence which
succeed all uproars; and then, with the vague sensation which I have
always connected with such a lull,—namely, that it was Sunday, and
somebody was dead,—I went upstairs to dress myself.
When I came down again, I found Joe and Orlick sweeping up, without any
other traces of discomposure than a slit in one of Orlick’s nostrils,
which was neither expressive nor ornamental. A pot of beer had appeared
from the Jolly Bargemen, and they were sharing it by turns in a
peaceable manner. The lull had a sedative and philosophical influence
on Joe, who followed me out into the road to say, as a parting
observation that might do me good, “On the Rampage, Pip, and off the
Rampage, Pip:—such is Life!”
With what absurd emotions (for we think the feelings that are very
serious in a man quite comical in a boy) I found myself again going to
Miss Havisham’s, matters little here. Nor, how I passed and repassed
the gate many times before I could make up my mind to ring. Nor, how I
debated whether I should go away without ringing; nor, how I should
undoubtedly have gone, if my time had been my own, to come back.
Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No Estella.
“How, then? You here again?” said Miss Pocket. “What do you want?”
When I said that I only came to see how Miss Havisham was, Sarah