Great Expectations
happiness. At those times, I would decide conclusively that my
disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge was gone, and that I was
growing up in a fair way to be partners with Joe and to keep company
with Biddy,—when all in a moment some confounding remembrance of the
Havisham days would fall upon me like a destructive missile, and
scatter my wits again. Scattered wits take a long time picking up; and
often before I had got them well together, they would be dispersed in
all directions by one stray thought, that perhaps after all Miss
Havisham was going to make my fortune when my time was out.
If my time had run out, it would have left me still at the height of my
perplexities, I dare say. It never did run out, however, but was
brought to a premature end, as I proceed to relate.
Chapter XVIII.
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.
A highly popular murder had been committed, and Mr. Wopsle was imbrued
in blood to the eyebrows. He gloated over every abhorrent adjective in
the description, and identified himself with every witness at the
Inquest. He faintly moaned, “I am done for,” as the victim, and he
barbarously bellowed, “I’ll serve you out,” as the murderer. He gave
the medical testimony, in pointed imitation of our local practitioner;
and he piped and shook, as the aged turnpike-keeper who had heard
blows, to an extent so very paralytic as to suggest a doubt regarding
the mental competency of that witness. The coroner, in Mr. Wopsle’s
hands, became Timon of Athens; the beadle, Coriolanus. He enjoyed
himself thoroughly, and we all enjoyed ourselves, and were delightfully
comfortable. In this cosey state of mind we came to the verdict Wilful
Murder.
Then, and not sooner, I became aware of a strange gentleman leaning
over the back of the settle opposite me, looking on. There was an
expression of contempt on his face, and he bit the side of a great
forefinger as he watched the group of faces.
“Well!” said the stranger to Mr. Wopsle, when the reading was done,
“you have settled it all to your own satisfaction, I have no doubt?”
Everybody started and looked up, as if it were the murderer. He looked
at everybody coldly and sarcastically.
“Guilty, of course?” said he. “Out with it. Come!”
“Sir,” returned Mr. Wopsle, “without having the honour of your
acquaintance, I do say Guilty.” Upon this we all took courage to unite
in a confirmatory murmur.
“I know you do,” said the stranger; “I knew you would. I told you so.
But now I’ll ask you a question. Do you know, or do you not know, that
the law of England supposes every man to be innocent, until he is
proved—proved—to be guilty?”
“Sir,” Mr. Wopsle began to reply, “as an Englishman myself, I—”
“Come!” said the stranger, biting his forefinger at him. “Don’t evade
the question. Either you know it, or you don’t know it. Which is it to
be?”
He stood with his head on one side and himself on one side, in a
bullying, interrogative manner, and he threw his forefinger at Mr.
Wopsle,—as it were to mark him out—before biting it again.
“Now!” said he. “Do you know it, or don’t you know it?”
“Certainly I know it,” replied Mr. Wopsle.
“Certainly you know it. Then why didn’t you say so at first? Now, I’ll
ask you another question,”—taking possession of Mr. Wopsle, as if he
had a right to him,—“_do_ you know that none of these witnesses have
yet been cross-examined?”
Mr. Wopsle was beginning, “I can only say—” when the stranger stopped
him.
“What? You won’t answer the question, yes or no? Now, I’ll try you
again.” Throwing his finger at him again. “Attend to me. Are you aware,
or are you not aware, that none of these witnesses have yet been
cross-examined? Come, I only want one word from you. Yes, or no?”
Mr. Wopsle hesitated, and we all began to conceive rather a poor
opinion of him.
“Come!” said the stranger, “I’ll help you. You don’t deserve help, but
I’ll help you. Look at that paper you hold in your hand. What is it?”
“What is it?” repeated Mr. Wopsle, eyeing it, much at a loss.
“Is it,” pursued the stranger in his most sarcastic and suspicious
manner, “the printed paper you have just been reading from?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Undoubtedly. Now, turn to that paper, and tell me whether it
distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that his legal
advisers instructed him altogether to reserve his defence?”
“I read that just now,” Mr. Wopsle pleaded.
“Never mind what you read just now, sir; I don’t ask you what you read
just now. You may read the Lord’s Prayer backwards, if you like,—and,
perhaps, have done it before to-day. Turn to the paper. No, no, no my
friend; not to the top of the column; you know better than that; to the
bottom, to the bottom.” (We all began to think Mr. Wopsle full of
subterfuge.) “Well? Have you found it?”
“Here it is,” said Mr. Wopsle.
“Now, follow that passage with your eye, and tell me whether it
distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that he was
instructed by his legal advisers wholly to reserve his defence? Come!
Do you make that of it?”
Mr. Wopsle answered, “Those are not the exact words.”
“Not the exact words!” repeated the gentleman bitterly. “Is that the
exact substance?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Wopsle.
“Yes,” repeated the stranger, looking round at the rest of the company
with his right hand extended towards the witness, Wopsle. “And now I
ask you what you say to the conscience of that man who, with that
passage before his eyes, can lay his head upon his pillow after having
pronounced a fellow-creature guilty, unheard?”
We all began to suspect that Mr. Wopsle was not the man we had thought
him, and that he was beginning to be found out.
“And that same man, remember,” pursued the gentleman, throwing his
finger at Mr. Wopsle heavily,—“that same man might be summoned as a
juryman upon this very trial, and, having thus deeply committed
himself, might return to the bosom of his family and lay his head upon
his pillow, after deliberately swearing that he would well and truly
try the issue joined between Our Sovereign Lord the King and the
prisoner at the bar, and would a true verdict give according to the
evidence, so help him God!”
We were all deeply persuaded that the unfortunate Wopsle had gone too
far, and had better stop in his reckless career while there was yet
time.
The strange gentleman, with an air of authority not to be disputed, and
with a manner expressive of knowing something secret about every one of
us that would effectually do for each individual if he chose to
disclose it, left the back of the settle, and came into the space
between the two settles, in front of the fire, where he remained
standing, his left hand in his pocket, and he biting the forefinger of
his right.
“From information I have received,” said he, looking round at us as we
all quailed before him, “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 recognise me, but I recognised him as the
gentleman I had met on the stairs, on the occasion of my second visit
to Miss Havisham. I had known him the moment I saw him looking over the
settle, and now that I stood confronting him with his hand upon my
shoulder, I checked off again in detail his large head, his dark
complexion, his deep-set eyes, his bushy black eyebrows, his large
watch-chain, his strong black dots of beard and whisker, and even the
smell of scented soap on his great hand.
“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; you will impart as much or as little of it as you
please to your friends afterwards; I have nothing to do with that.”
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 parlour, 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, and I am a lawyer in London. I am
pretty well known. I have unusual business to transact with you, and I
commence by explaining that it is not of my originating. If my advice
had been asked, I should not have been here. It was not asked, and you
see me here. What I have to do as the confidential agent of another, I
do. No less, no more.”
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; thus
having one foot on the seat of the chair, and one foot on the ground.
“Now, Joseph Gargery, I am the bearer of an offer to relieve you of
this young fellow your apprentice. You would not object to cancel his
indentures at his request and for his good? You would 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 not to the purpose,” returned Mr.
Jaggers. “The question is, Would you want anything? Do you want
anything?”
“The answer is,” returned Joe, sternly, “No.”
I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as if he considered him a fool
for his disinterestedness. But I was too much bewildered between
breathless curiosity and surprise, to be sure of it.
“Very well,” said Mr. Jaggers. “Recollect the admission you have made,
and don’t try to go from it presently.”
“Who’s a-going to try?” retorted Joe.
“I don’t say anybody is. Do you keep a dog?”
“Yes, I do keep a dog.”
“Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better.
Bear that in mind, will you?” repeated Mr. Jaggers, shutting his eyes
and nodding his head at Joe, as if he were forgiving him something.
“Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got
to make is, that 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.
Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of that
property, that he be immediately removed from his present sphere of
life and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman,—in a word,
as a young fellow of great expectations.”
My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality; Miss
Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale.
“Now, Mr. Pip,” pursued the lawyer, “I address the rest of what I have
to say, to you. 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. You will have no objection, I dare say, to your great
expectations being encumbered with that easy condition. But if you have
any objection, this is the time to mention it.”