Great Expectations
now, had so grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not
tear it away. In addition to the dread that, having led up to so much
mischief, it would be now more likely than ever to alienate Joe from me
if he believed it, I had a further restraining dread that he would not
believe it, but would assort it with the fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets
as a monstrous invention. However, I temporized with myself, of
course—for, was I not wavering between right and wrong, when the thing
is always done?—and resolved to make a full disclosure if I should see
any such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of
the assailant.
The Constables and the Bow Street men from London—for, this happened in
the days of the extinct red-waistcoated police—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. Also, they stood
about the door of the Jolly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks
that filled the whole neighbourhood with admiration; and they had a
mysterious manner of taking their drink, that was almost as good as
taking the culprit. But not quite, for they never did it.
Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister lay
very ill in bed. Her sight was disturbed, so that she saw objects
multiplied, and grasped at visionary teacups and wineglasses instead of
the realities; her hearing was greatly impaired; her memory also; and
her speech was unintelligible. When, at last, she came round so far as
to be helped downstairs, it was still necessary to keep my slate always
by her, that she might indicate in writing what she could not indicate
in speech. As she was (very bad handwriting apart) a more than
indifferent speller, and as Joe was a more than indifferent reader,
extraordinary complications arose between them which I was always
called in to solve. The administration of mutton instead of medicine,
the substitution of Tea for Joe, and the baker for bacon, were among
the mildest of my own mistakes.
However, her temper was greatly improved, and she was patient. A
tremulous uncertainty of the action of all her limbs soon became a part
of her regular state, and afterwards, at intervals of two or three
months, she would often put her hands to her head, and would then
remain for about a week at a time in some gloomy aberration of mind. We
were at a loss to find a suitable attendant for her, until a
circumstance happened conveniently to relieve us. Mr. Wopsle’s
great-aunt conquered a confirmed habit of living into which she had
fallen, and Biddy became a part of our establishment.
It may have been about a month after my sister’s reappearance in the
kitchen, when Biddy came to us with a small speckled box containing the
whole of her worldly effects, and became a blessing to the household.
Above all, she was a blessing to Joe, for the dear old fellow was sadly
cut up by the constant contemplation of the wreck of his wife, and had
been accustomed, while attending on her of an evening, to turn to me
every now and then and say, with his blue eyes moistened, “Such a fine
figure of a woman as she once were, Pip!” Biddy instantly taking the
cleverest charge of her as though she had studied her from infancy; Joe
became able in some sort to appreciate the greater quiet of his life,
and to get down to the Jolly Bargemen now and then for a change that
did him good. It was characteristic of the police people that they had
all more or less suspected poor Joe (though he never knew it), and that
they had to a man concurred in regarding him as one of the deepest
spirits they had ever encountered.
Biddy’s first triumph in her new office, was to solve a difficulty that
had completely vanquished me. I had tried hard at it, but had made
nothing of it. Thus it was:—
Again and again and again, my sister had traced upon the slate, a
character that looked like a curious T, and then with the utmost
eagerness had called our attention to it as something she particularly
wanted. I had in vain tried everything producible that began with a T,
from tar to toast and tub. At length it had come into my head that the
sign looked like a hammer, and on my lustily calling that word in my
sister’s ear, she had begun to hammer on the table and had expressed a
qualified assent. Thereupon, I had brought in all our hammers, one
after another, but without avail. Then I bethought me of a crutch, the
shape being much the same, and I borrowed one in the village, and
displayed it to my sister with considerable confidence. But she shook
her head to that extent when she was shown it, that we were terrified
lest in her weak and shattered state she should dislocate her neck.
When my sister found that Biddy was very quick to understand her, this
mysterious sign reappeared on the slate. Biddy looked thoughtfully at
it, heard my explanation, looked thoughtfully at my sister, looked
thoughtfully at Joe (who was always represented on the slate by his
initial letter), and ran into the forge, followed by Joe and me.
“Why, of course!” cried Biddy, with an exultant face. “Don’t you see?
It’s _him_!”
Orlick, without a doubt! She had lost his name, and could only signify
him by his hammer. We told him why we wanted him to come into the
kitchen, and he slowly laid down his hammer, wiped his brow with his
arm, took another wipe at it with his apron, and came slouching out,
with a curious loose vagabond bend in the knees that strongly
distinguished him.
I confess that I expected to see my sister denounce him, and that I was
disappointed by the different result. She manifested the greatest
anxiety to be on good terms with him, was evidently much pleased by his
being at length produced, and motioned that she would have him given
something to drink. She watched his countenance as if she were
particularly wishful to be assured that he took kindly to his
reception, she showed every possible desire to conciliate him, and
there was an air of humble propitiation in all she did, such as I have
seen pervade the bearing of a child towards a hard master. After that
day, a day rarely passed without her drawing the hammer on her slate,
and without Orlick’s slouching in and standing doggedly before her, as
if he knew no more than I did what to make of it.
Chapter XVII.
I now fell into a regular routine of apprenticeship life, which was
varied beyond the limits of the village and the marshes, by no more
remarkable circumstance than 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 may mention
at once that this became an annual custom. 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.
So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened
room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that
I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that
mysterious place, and, while I and everything else outside it grew
older, it stood still. Daylight never entered the house as to my
thoughts and remembrances of it, any more than as to the actual fact.
It bewildered me, and under its influence I continued at heart to hate
my trade and to be ashamed of home.
Imperceptibly I became conscious of a change in Biddy, however. Her
shoes came up at the heel, her hair grew bright and neat, her hands
were always clean. She was not beautiful,—she was common, and could not
be like Estella,—but she was pleasant and wholesome and sweet-tempered.
She had not been with us more than a year (I remember her being newly
out of mourning at the time it struck me), when I observed to myself
one evening that she had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes
that were very pretty and very good.
It came of my lifting up my own eyes from a task I was poring
at—writing some passages from a book, to improve myself in two ways at
once by a sort of stratagem—and seeing Biddy observant of what I was
about. I laid down my pen, and Biddy stopped in her needlework without
laying it down.
“Biddy,” said I, “how do you manage it? Either I am very stupid, or you
are very clever.”
“What is it that I manage? I don’t know,” returned Biddy, smiling.
She managed our whole domestic life, and wonderfully too; but I did not
mean that, though that made what I did mean more surprising.
“How do you manage, Biddy,” said I, “to learn everything that I learn,
and always to keep up with me?” I was beginning to be rather vain of my
knowledge, for I spent my birthday guineas on it, and set aside the
greater part of my pocket-money for similar investment; though I have
no doubt, now, that the little I knew was extremely dear at the price.
“I might as well ask you,” said Biddy, “how _you_ manage?”
“No; because when I come in from the forge of a night, any one can see
me turning to at it. But you never turn to at it, Biddy.”
“I suppose I must catch it like a cough,” said Biddy, quietly; and went
on with her sewing.
Pursuing my idea as I leaned back in my wooden chair, and looked at
Biddy sewing away with her head on one side, I began to think her
rather an extraordinary girl. For I called to mind now, that she was
equally accomplished in the terms of our trade, and the names of our
different sorts of work, and our various tools. In short, whatever I
knew, Biddy knew. Theoretically, she was already as good a blacksmith
as I, or better.
“You are one of those, Biddy,” said I, “who make the most of every
chance. You never had a chance before you came here, and see how
improved you are!”
Biddy looked at me for an instant, and went on with her sewing. “I was
your first teacher though; wasn’t I?” said she, as she sewed.
“Biddy!” I exclaimed, in amazement. “Why, you are crying!”
“No I am not,” said Biddy, looking up and laughing. “What put that in
your head?”
What could have put it in my head but the glistening of a tear as it
dropped on her work? I sat silent, recalling what a drudge she had been
until Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt successfully overcame that bad habit of
living, so highly desirable to be got rid of by some people. I recalled
the hopeless circumstances by which she had been surrounded in the
miserable little shop and the miserable little noisy evening school,
with that miserable old bundle of incompetence always to be dragged and
shouldered. I reflected that even in those untoward times there must
have been latent in Biddy what was now developing, for, in my first
uneasiness and discontent I had turned to her for help, as a matter of
course. Biddy sat quietly sewing, shedding no more tears, and while I
looked at her and thought about it all, it occurred to me that perhaps
I had not been sufficiently grateful to Biddy. I might have been too
reserved, and should have patronised her more (though I did not use
that precise word in my meditations) with my confidence.
“Yes, Biddy,” I observed, when I had done turning it over, “you were my
first teacher, and that at a time when we little thought of ever being
together like this, in this kitchen.”
“Ah, poor thing!” replied Biddy. It was like her self-forgetfulness to