Great Expectations
hair. That his age was about sixty. That he was a muscular man, strong
on his legs, and that he was browned and hardened by exposure to
weather. As he ascended the last stair or two, and the light of my lamp
included us both, I saw, with a stupid kind of amazement, that he was
holding out both his hands to me.
“Pray what is your business?” I asked him.
“My business?” he repeated, pausing. “Ah! Yes. I will explain my
business, by your leave.”
“Do you wish to come in?”
“Yes,” he replied; “I wish to come in, master.”
I had asked him the question inhospitably enough, for I resented the
sort of bright and gratified recognition that still shone in his face.
I resented it, because it seemed to imply that he expected me to
respond to it. But I took him into the room I had just left, and,
having set the lamp on the table, asked him as civilly as I could to
explain himself.
He looked about him with the strangest air,—an air of wondering
pleasure, as if he had some part in the things he admired,—and he
pulled off a rough outer coat, and his hat. Then, I saw that his head
was furrowed and bald, and that the long iron-grey hair grew only on
its sides. But, I saw nothing that in the least explained him. On the
contrary, I saw him next moment, once more holding out both his hands
to me.
“What do you mean?” said I, half suspecting him to be mad.
He stopped in his looking at me, and slowly rubbed his right hand over
his head. “It’s disapinting to a man,” he said, in a coarse broken
voice, “arter having looked for’ard so distant, and come so fur; but
you’re not to blame for that,—neither on us is to blame for that. I’ll
speak in half a minute. Give me half a minute, please.”
He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire, and covered his
forehead with his large brown veinous hands. I looked at him
attentively then, and recoiled a little from him; but I did not know
him.
“There’s no one nigh,” said he, looking over his shoulder; “is there?”
“Why do you, a stranger coming into my rooms at this time of the night,
ask that question?” said I.
“You’re a game one,” he returned, shaking his head at me with a
deliberate affection, at once most unintelligible and most
exasperating; “I’m glad you’ve grow’d up, a game one! But don’t catch
hold of me. You’d be sorry arterwards to have done it.”
I relinquished the intention he had detected, for I knew him! Even yet
I could not recall a single feature, but I knew him! If the wind and
the rain had driven away the intervening years, had scattered all the
intervening objects, had swept us to the churchyard where we first
stood face to face on such different levels, I could not have known my
convict more distinctly than I knew him now as he sat in the chair
before the fire. No need to take a file from his pocket and show it to
me; no need to take the handkerchief from his neck and twist it round
his head; no need to hug himself with both his arms, and take a
shivering turn across the room, looking back at me for recognition. I
knew him before he gave me one of those aids, though, a moment before,
I had not been conscious of remotely suspecting his identity.
He came back to where I stood, and again held out both his hands. Not
knowing what to do,—for, in my astonishment I had lost my
self-possession,—I reluctantly gave him my hands. He grasped them
heartily, raised them to his lips, kissed them, and still held them.
“You acted noble, my boy,” said he. “Noble, Pip! And I have never
forgot it!”
At a change in his manner as if he were even going to embrace me, I
laid a hand upon his breast and put him away.
“Stay!” said I. “Keep off! If you are grateful to me for what I did
when I was a little child, I hope you have shown your gratitude by
mending your way of life. If you have come here to thank me, it was not
necessary. Still, however you have found me out, there must be
something good in the feeling that has brought you here, and I will not
repulse you; but surely you must understand that—I—”
My attention was so attracted by the singularity of his fixed look at
me, that the words died away on my tongue.
“You was a-saying,” he observed, when we had confronted one another in
silence, “that surely I must understand. What, surely must I
understand?”
“That I cannot wish to renew that chance intercourse with you of long
ago, under these different circumstances. 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, none the less. You are wet, and you look
weary. Will you drink something before you go?”
He had replaced his neckerchief loosely, and had stood, keenly
observant of me, biting a long end of it. “I think,” he answered, still
with the end at his mouth and still observant of me, “that I _will_
drink (I thank you) afore 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. I tried to keep my hand steady while I did so, but his look
at me as he leaned back in his chair with the long draggled end of his
neckerchief between his teeth—evidently forgotten—made my hand very
difficult to master. When at last I put the glass to him, I saw with
amazement that his eyes were full of tears.
Up to this time I had remained standing, not to disguise that I wished
him gone. But I was softened by the softened aspect of the man, and
felt a touch of reproach. “I hope,” said I, hurriedly putting something
into a glass for myself, and drawing a chair to the table, “that you
will not think I spoke harshly to you just now. I had no intention of
doing it, and I am sorry for it if I did. I wish you well and happy!”
As I put my glass to my lips, he glanced with surprise at the end of
his neckerchief, dropping from his mouth when he opened it, and
stretched out his hand. I gave him mine, and then he drank, and drew
his sleeve across his eyes and forehead.
“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?”
“I’ve done wonderfully well. There’s others went out alonger me as has
done well too, but no man has done nigh as well as me. I’m famous for
it.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy.”
Without stopping to try to understand those words or the tone in which
they were spoken, I turned off to a point that had just come into my
mind.
“Have you ever seen a messenger you once sent to me,” I inquired,
“since he undertook that trust?”
“Never set eyes upon him. I warn’t likely to it.”
“He came faithfully, and he brought me the two one-pound notes. I was a
poor boy then, as you know, and to a poor boy they were a little
fortune. But, like you, I have done well since, and you must let me pay
them back. You can put them to some other poor boy’s use.” I took out
my purse.
He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table and opened it, and he
watched me as I separated two one-pound notes from its contents. They
were clean and new, and I spread them out and handed them over to him.
Still watching me, he laid them one upon the other, folded them
long-wise, gave them a twist, set fire to them at the lamp, and dropped
the ashes into the tray.
“May I make so bold,” he said then, with a smile that was like a frown,
and with a frown that was like a smile, “as ask you _how_ you have done
well, since you and me was 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. He put a foot up to the bars,
to dry and warm it, and the wet boot began to steam; but, he neither
looked at it, nor at the fire, but steadily looked at me. It was only
now that I began to tremble.
When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words that were without
sound, I forced myself to tell him (though I could not do it
distinctly), that I had been chosen to succeed to some property.
“Might a mere warmint ask what property?” said he.
I faltered, “I don’t know.”
“Might a mere warmint 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
since you come of age! As to the first figure now. Five?”
With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered action, I rose
out of my chair, and stood with my hand upon the back of it, looking
wildly at him.
“Concerning a guardian,” he went on. “There ought to have been some
guardian, or such-like, whiles you was a minor. Some lawyer, maybe. As
to the first letter of that lawyer’s name now. Would it be J?”
All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its
disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed
in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to
struggle for every breath I drew.
“Put it,” he resumed, “as the employer of that lawyer whose name begun
with a J, and might be Jaggers,—put it as he had come over sea to
Portsmouth, and had landed there, and had wanted to come on to you.
‘However, you have found me out,’ you says just now. Well! However, did
I find you out? Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a person in London, for
particulars of your address. That person’s name? Why, Wemmick.”
I could not have spoken one word, though it had been to save my life. I
stood, with a hand on the chair-back and a hand on my breast, where I
seemed to be suffocating,—I stood so, looking wildly at him, until I
grasped at the chair, when the room began to surge and turn. He caught
me, drew me to the sofa, put me up against the cushions, and bent on
one knee before me, bringing the face that I now well remembered, and
that I shuddered at, very near to mine.
“Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you! It’s me wot has done
it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea
should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I spec’lated and got
rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that you should live smooth;
I worked hard, that you should be above work. What odds, dear boy? Do I
tell it, fur you to feel a obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to
know as that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his
head so high that he could make a gentleman,—and, Pip, you’re him!”
The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the
repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded
if he had been some terrible beast.
“Look’ee here, Pip. I’m your second father. You’re my son,—more to me
nor any son. I’ve put away money, only for you to spend. When I was a
hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but faces of
sheep till I half forgot wot men’s and women’s faces wos like, I see
yourn. I drops my knife many a time in that hut when I was a-eating my
dinner or my supper, and I says, ‘Here’s the boy again, a looking at me
whiles I eats and drinks!’ I see you there a many times, as plain as
ever I see you on them misty marshes. ‘Lord strike me dead!’ I says
each time,—and I goes out in the air to say it under the open
heavens,—‘but wot, if I gets liberty and money, I’ll make that boy a
gentleman!’ And I done it. Why, look at you, dear boy! Look at these
here lodgings of yourn, fit for a lord! A lord? Ah! You shall show
money with lords for wagers, and beat ’em!”
In his heat and triumph, and in his knowledge that I had been nearly
fainting, he did not remark on my reception of all this. It was the one
grain of relief I had.