Bargemen, with a message. Pip found Joe there, sitting with a
stranger--a secret-looking man, who held his head on one side and kept
one eye perpetually shut as if he were taking aim with a gun. This man,
when he heard Pip's name, looked at him with a curious wink, and when no
one but Pip was looking he took out of his pocket, to stir his drink
with, the very file Pip had stolen from Joe's forge.
Pip knew that minute that the man was a friend of the convict he had
aided. When Pip left the inn the stranger called him back and gave him a
shilling wrapped up in a piece of paper.
When he got home Mrs. Joe (who took the prize away from him) discovered
that the piece of paper was in reality two bank-notes, and both Joe and
she wondered at it. The blacksmith tried next day to find the stranger
to restore the money, but he had left the inn.
So it always remained a mystery--to all but Pip of course, who knew in
his heart that the convict had remembered his aid and had taken this
means of repaying him.
II
THE QUEER MISS HAVISHAM
One day, when Pip was considerably older, Uncle Pumblechook brought Mrs.
Joe word that a Miss Havisham, a lady who lived in his own town, had
heard of Pip, and wanted him to come to her house to see her.
Miss Havisham was a very queer lady, indeed; so queer that some said she
was crazy. But she was rich, and for this reason Mrs. Joe scrubbed Pip
and dressed him in his best clothes and sent him off in care of Uncle
Pumblechook, who took him as far as Miss Havisham's gate.
Miss Havisham, when a beautiful young lady, had been engaged to marry a
man named Compeyson, whom she loved very much. He was a wicked,
heartless villain, however, and had made her love him only that he might
persuade her to give him great sums of money.
The marriage day finally was fixed, her wedding-clothes were bought, the
house was decorated for the ceremony, the bride-cake was put on the
table in the dining-room and the guests arrived. But Compeyson, the
bridegroom, did not come.
Miss Havisham was dressing for the wedding when she received a cruel
note from him telling her he did not intend to marry her. She had put on
her white wedding gown and her lace veil and one of her satin
slippers--the other lay on the dressing-table. It was exactly twenty
minutes to nine o'clock when she read the note.
She fainted and afterward lay for a long time ill. When she recovered
she laid the whole place waste. She never afterward let the light of day
into the old mansion. The shutters were closed, candles were kept always
lighted, and all the clocks in the house were stopped at exactly twenty
minutes to nine o'clock. Not a thing in any room was changed. The
bride-cake rotted on the table, the decorations faded on the walls, and
day after day Miss Havisham sat in the dressing-room clad in her wedding
gown and veil, with one slipper on, the dead flowers on her table and
the trunks for her wedding journey scattered about half-packed. In time
she became shrunken and old and the white satin and lace became faded
yellow, but she never varied this habit of life.
Soon after her love disappointment she had written to her lawyer in
London, who was named Jaggers, asking him to find a baby girl for her
to adopt as her own. Now Mr. Jaggers had just defended in court a man
named Abel Magwitch, the tool of Compeyson, who had broken Miss
Havisham's heart. Compeyson had tempted Magwitch into passing some
stolen money and they had both been arrested. At the trial Compeyson
(sneak and liar as he was!) threw all the blame on his comrade, who was
duller and less sharp than he, and as a consequence, while Compeyson got
a light sentence, Magwitch, though really the more innocent of the two,
had been sent to the prison-ship for a term of many years. These two
men, by the way, were the pair who escaped from the hulks into the
marshes. Magwitch was Pip's convict of the churchyard, and Compeyson was
the one he had dragged back to capture. This Magwitch, at the time of
his arrest, had a baby daughter, who had fallen into Mr. Jaggers's care,
and in answer to Miss Havisham's request the lawyer had sent the little
girl to her, telling her nothing whatever of the child's parentage.
Miss Havisham had named the child Estella, and, seeing she would be a
very beautiful woman, had determined to bring her up heartless and cold,
to ruin as many men's lives as possible, so as to avenge her own wrongs
and broken heart.
So Estella had grown up in the dismal house, Miss Havisham's only
companion. Day by day she became more lovely, and even while she was
still a little girl, the same age as Pip, Miss Havisham was impatient
to begin teaching her her lesson.
This was the reason Pip had received his invitation to Miss Havisham's
house. Though he had no idea of it, he was intended only as practice for
little Estella, who under Miss Havisham's teaching was growing up very
fond of admiration and very cold-hearted, too.
Pip thought Miss Havisham the strangest lady he had ever seen, and the
yellow satin, the candle-lighted rooms, and the stopped clocks seemed to
him very odd. But Estella was so pretty that from the first moment he
saw her he had no eyes for anything else. Even though she called him
clumsy and common, and seemed to delight in hurting his feelings, Pip
fell in love with her and could not help himself. Miss Havisham made
them play together and told him to come again the next week.
Pip went home in very bad humor on account of all the hurts which
Estella had given his feelings. Uncle Pumblechook, being very curious to
know all about his trip, bullied and questioned him so (beginning as
usual with the multiplication table) that Pip, perfectly frantic, told
him the most impossible tales. He said Miss Havisham was in a black
coach inside the house, and had cake and wine handed to her through the
coach window on a golden plate, and that he and she played with flags
and swords, while four dogs fought for veal cutlets out of a silver
basket.
But when Uncle Pumblechook told Joe these wonders, Pip was remorseful.
He went to the forge and confessed to Joe that he had been telling a
falsehood, and promised he would never do so again.
This visit was the first of many that Pip paid to the gloomy house whose
shutters were always closed. Next time he went he was taken into the
chamber where the decayed wedding-cake sat on the table. The room was
full of relatives of Miss Havisham (for it was her birthday), who spent
their lives flattering and cringing, hoping when she died she would
leave them some money.
After a time Pip went into the garden and there he met another relative
in the person of a pale young gentleman about his own age, but larger,
who promptly lowered his head, butted Pip in the stomach and invited him
to fight. Pip was so sure nobody else's head belonged in the pit of his
stomach that he obliged him at once, and as practice at the forge had
made him tough, it was not many minutes before the pale young gentleman
was lying on his back, looking up at him out of an exceedingly black eye
and with a bleeding countenance.
When Estella let Pip out of the gate that day he guessed that she had
seen the encounter and that somehow it had pleased her, for she gave him
her cheek to kiss. Yet he knew that at heart she thought him only a
coarse, common boy, fit to be treated rudely and insolently. This
thought rankled more and more in him. He made up his mind to study and
learn, and he got faithful little Biddy to teach him all she knew.
Pip saw no more of the pale young gentleman, though for almost a year he
went to Miss Havisham's every other day. Each time he saw Estella and
found himself loving her more and more. But she was always unkind, and
often, when she had been ruder than usual, he saw that Miss Havisham
seemed to take delight in his mortification. Sometimes she would fondle
Estella's hand, and he would hear her say:
"That's right! Break their hearts, my pride and hope! Break their hearts
and have no mercy!"
One day Miss Havisham sent for Joe, the blacksmith, and gave him a bag
of money, telling him that he was not to send Pip to her any more, but
that he should put him to work and teach him the trade of blacksmithing.
So Uncle Pumblechook took Pip to town that very day and had him bound to
Joe as an apprentice.
This was just what Pip had once looked forward to with pleasure. But now
it made him wretched. Through Estella's jeers he had come to feel that
blacksmithing was common and low. As he helped Joe to blow the forge
fire, he thought constantly of Estella's looks of disdain, yet in spite
of all he longed to see her.
On his first half-holiday he went to call on Miss Havisham. But there
was no Estella. Miss Havisham told him she had sent her abroad to be
educated as a lady, and when the miserable tears sprang to Pip's eyes,
she laughed.
When he got home he confided in Biddy. He told her how he loved Estella,
and that he wanted more than anything else in the world to be a
gentleman. Meanwhile he began to study hard in any spare time he had,
and Biddy helped him all she could.
Pip might have fallen in love with Biddy if he had not had Estella
always in his mind. Orlick, Joe's helper, indeed, thought he had done
so, and it made him hate Pip more than ever, for he was in love with
Biddy himself. He grew morose and quarrelsome and spoke so roughly to
Mrs. Joe one day that she was not satisfied till the blacksmith took off
his singed apron and knocked the surly Orlick flat in the coal dust.
This was a costly revenge for Mrs. Joe, however. Orlick never forgave
it, and a few nights after, when no one was at home but herself he crept
in behind her in the kitchen and struck her a terrible blow on the head
with a piece of iron.
Hours afterward Joe found her lying senseless, and though she lived to
recover a part of her senses, she never scolded or spoke again. She grew
well enough at last to sit all day in her chair, but was so helpless
that Biddy came to the house to be her nurse. It chanced that a prisoner
had escaped from the prison-boats on the night Mrs. Joe was injured,
and he was thought to be the one who attacked her. But Pip suspected
Orlick all the while.
So time went on. Once a year, on his birthday, Pip went to see Miss
Havisham, but he never saw Estella there. And nothing else of particular
importance occurred till he had been for four years Joe's apprentice.
One night, as Pip sat with Joe before the fire in The Three Jolly
Bargemen, they were called out by a gentleman whom Pip remembered to
have seen once at Miss Havisham's. It was, as a matter of fact, Mr.
Jaggers, her lawyer, who had sent Estella to her as a baby.
The lawyer walked home with them, for he had a wonderful piece of news
to relate. It was that an unknown benefactor, whose name he was not
permitted to tell, intended when he died to leave Pip a fortune. In the
meantime he wished to have him educated to become a gentleman, and as a
lad of Great Expectations, and, the better to accomplish this, he wished
Pip to go without delay to London.
This great good fortune seemed so marvelous that Pip could hardly
believe it. He had never imagined Miss Havisham intended to befriend
him, but now he guessed at once that she was this unknown benefactor.
And he jumped next to another conclusion even more splendid--that she
intended him sometime to marry Estella and was even then educating her
for him. Pip went home almost in a dream, too full of his own prospects
to see how sad Biddy was beneath her gladness for him, or how sorrowful
the good news made Joe.
That night Estella's face came before him, more full of disdain than
ever. As he thought of her and of the fine gentleman he was to be, the
humble kitchen and forge seemed to grow commoner and meaner by contrast.
He began to become a little spoiled and disdainful himself.
The news soon spread about, and every one who had looked down upon Pip
now gave him smiles and flattery. Uncle Pumblechook wept on his shoulder
and (instead of telling him, as usual, that he was sure to come to a bad
end) reminded him that he had always been his favorite.
Mr. Jaggers had given Pip a generous amount of money to buy new clothes
with, and these tended to make him more spoiled than ever. He began to
feel condescending toward Biddy, and found himself wondering whether,
when he should be rich and educated, Joe's manners would not make him
blush if they should meet.
And even when the day came for him to bid them good-by and he climbed
aboard the coach for London, he thought more of these things and his own
good luck than of the home he was parting from for ever, or of the true
and loving hearts he was leaving behind him.
This was an ignoble beginning for Pip and one that he came afterward to
remember with shame!
III
PIP DISCOVERS HIS BENEFACTOR
Mr. Jaggers, the lawyer in whose care Pip found himself in London, was
sharp and secret, and was so feared by criminals that they would never
go near his house, though he never locked his door, even at night.
He had a crusty clerk named Wemmick, as secret as he and a deal queerer.
Wemmick lived in a little wooden cottage that he called The Castle, and
which had its top cut out like a fort. It had a ditch all around it with
a plank drawbridge. When he got home from the office in the evening he
pulled up the drawbridge and ran up a flag on a flagstaff planted there.
And exactly at nine every night he fired off a brass cannon that he kept
in a latticework fortress beside it.
Wemmick was the first one Pip met in London, and the clerk took him to
the rooms where Mr. Jaggers had arranged for Pip to live, with the son
of a gentleman who was to be his teacher. This gentleman was a Mr.
Pocket, a relative (as Pip discovered) of Miss Havisham, which fact made
him all the more certain that she was his unknown friend. Mr. Pocket's
son was named Herbert, and the minute he and Pip first saw each other
they burst out laughing. For Herbert was none other than the pale young
gentleman who, years before in Miss Havisham's garden, Pip had last
seen looking up at him out of a very black eye.
They were excellent friends from that hour. They occupied the rooms
together when they were in London, and Pip also had a room of his own at
Mr. Pocket's house in the country.
Mr. Pocket was a helpless scholarly man who depended on Mrs. Pocket to
manage everything, and she depended on the servants. There were seven
little Pockets of various ages tumbling about the house, and Mrs.
Pocket's only idea of management seemed to be to send them all to bed
when any one of them was troublesome. At such times Mr. Pocket would
groan, put his hands in his hair, lift himself several inches out of his
chair and then let himself down again.
In spite of his oddities, however, Mr. Pocket was an excellent teacher,
and Pip in some ways made progress. But his Great Expectations taught
him bad habits. He found it so easy to spend money that he soon
overstepped the allowance Mr. Jaggers had told him was his, and not only
had got into debt himself, but had led Herbert, who was far poorer, into
debt also.
Joe came to see him only once, and then Pip's spoiled eyes overlooked
his true, rugged manliness and noted more clearly his awkward manners
and halting speech. Joe was quick to see this difference in the Pip he
had known and he did not stay long--only long enough to leave a message
from Miss Havisham: that Estella had returned from abroad and would be
glad to see him if he came.
Pip lost no time in making this visit, and started the very next day.
The old house looked just the same, but a new servant opened the gate
for him: it was Orlick, as low-browed and sullen and surly as ever, and
Pip saw at the first glance that his old hatred was still smoldering.
Miss Havisham was in her room, dressed in the same worn wedding dress,
and beside her, with diamonds on her neck and hair, sat Estella. Pip
hardly knew her, she had grown so beautiful. But she was proud and
wilful as of old, and though he felt the old love growing stronger every
moment, he felt no nearer to her than in those past wretched days of his
boyhood. Before he left, Miss Havisham asked him eagerly if Estella was
not more lovely, and, as he sat by her alone, she drew his head close to
her lips and whispered fiercely:
"Love her, love her, love her! If she favors you, love her! If she tears
your heart to pieces, love her, love her, love her!"
Though this visit took him so near the old forge, Pip did not go to see
Joe and Biddy. Indeed, only once in the months that followed did he see
them--when he went to attend the funeral of Mrs. Joe.
After that he had no need to leave the city to see Estella, for Miss
Havisham soon sent her to live in London. From there she required her to
write letters weekly, telling how many men she had fascinated and made
wretched. Pip saw her constantly and tortured himself with the growing
belief that Miss Havisham's training (the purpose of which he had begun
to guess) was really succeeding in crushing her heart, and was leaving
her with no power to love any one.
Thus, between hope and despair, Pip became of age. Mr. Jaggers now told
him that a certain large sum was his to spend each year. He was deeply
in debt and a great part of his first year's portion went to pay his
creditors. But with the remainder he did a good and unselfish deed: he
bought secretly a share in a good business for Herbert, so that his
comrade became a partner in it.
A great blow was now to fall upon Pip without warning--something that
changed the whole course of his life. One rainy night, when Herbert was
away from London, as he sat alone in their rooms, a heavy step stumbled
up the stair and a man entered. He was coarse and rough-looking and
tanned with exposure, with a furrowed bald head, tufted at the sides
with gray hair.
There was something strangely familiar to Pip in his face, but at first
he did not recognize him. Seeing this, the stranger threw down his hat,
twisted a handkerchief around his head, took a file from his pocket and
walked across the room with a curious shivering gait that brought back
to Pip's mind, like a lightning flash, the scene in the churchyard so
many years ago, when he had sat perched on a tombstone looking in
terror at that same man's face. And he knew all at once that the man was
the escaped convict of that day!
It was a strange tale the new-comer told then, one that Pip's heart sank
to hear. Miss Havisham had not been his benefactor after all. The one
whose money had educated him, had set him there in London to live the
life of a gentleman, the one to whom he was indebted for every penny he
owned, was Abel Magwitch, a criminal--the convict for whom he had once
stolen food years before!
Pip sank into a chair trembling as Magwitch, in a hoarse voice, told his
story. He told how the man Compeyson had led him into crime and then
deserted him. How he had hated the other so fiercely that after they
both had escaped from the prison-hulks he had dragged Compeyson back to
imprisonment even at the loss of his own liberty. How for that attempt
to escape he had been sentenced to transportation for life, and had been
sent to Botany Bay in Australia, where in time he became in a measure
free, though forbidden under penalty of death to return to England. How
he had never forgotten the little Pip who had tried to aid him, and how
he had sworn that he would repay him many times over. How he had taken
to sheep-raising and prospered, and became a rich man. How he had
written to Mr. Jaggers, the lawyer who had defended him, and paid him to
find Pip and educate him. And how at last he had dared even the death
penalty to come to England to see how he fared.
His voice shook as he told how he had slaved through all the years,
looking forward only to this moment when he should come back to see the
little Pip whom he had made into a gentleman.
Poor Pip! It was an end to all his dreams of Miss Havisham and of
Estella. He shrank from Magwitch, horrified at the bare thought of what
he owed to him. He forced himself to utter some trembling words and set
food before the convict, watching him as he ate like a ravenous old dog.
His heart was like lead, all his plans knocked askew. Even while he
pitied the old man, he shrank from him as if from a wild beast, with all
his childish dread increased a hundredfold.
At length Pip put Magwitch in Herbert's room to sleep, but all that
night he himself lay tossing and sleepless, staring into the darkness
and listening to the rain outside.
IV
PIP COMES TO HIMSELF
The days that followed were one long agony to Pip. When Herbert returned
he told him the whole story. Herbert was shocked and surprised, but he
was true to his friendship and together they planned what to do.
It was clear to Pip that he could not spend any more of Magwitch's
money; indeed, recoiling from him as he did, he would gladly have repaid
every penny if it had been possible. To make the matter worse, it seemed
that Magwitch had brought a great deal of money with him and was
determined that Pip should move into a fashionable house, buy fast
horses, keep servants and live most expensively.
Pip hesitated to tell Magwitch his decision, however, for what the
convict now planned showed how much he had thought of him and loved him
in his rough way during all his years in Australia.
Meanwhile he and Herbert kept Magwitch hidden as much as possible, and
gave out that the old man was Pip's uncle, on a visit from the country.
Unluckily, however, Magwitch's presence in London had been seen. He had
been recognized in the street and followed to Pip's rooms. And the man
who saw him was his bitterest enemy--Compeyson, the breaker of Miss
Havisham's heart, who had first made Magwitch a criminal, and whom the
convict so hated. Compeyson had served out his term, and was now free.
He saw his chance to pay the old grudge with Magwitch's life. In order,
however, to make sure of his capture he decided to entice Pip away and
bring the police upon Magwitch when he would have no one to warn him.
Meanwhile, unconscious of this plot, Pip made a last visit to Miss
Havisham. He felt now that he was again poor and without prospects, and
with small hope of winning Estella.
But finding her there, in Miss Havisham's presence, he told her how
dearly he had always loved her since the first day they had met. She
seemed moved by his distress, but her heart had not yet awakened. She
told him that she was about to marry one whom he knew for a coarse,
brutal man, in every way beneath her. And then Pip knew for certain that
Miss Havisham's bitter teaching had borne its fruit at last, and that
Estella was to marry this man, not because she loved him, but merely as
a final stab to all the other worthier ones.
In spite of her years of self-torture and revengeful thoughts, Miss
Havisham had still a spark of real pity. As Pip reminded her of the
wreck she had made of him, through Estella, and through allowing him
falsely to believe her his benefactor, his agony struck her with
remorse. She put her hand to her heart as he ended, and as he left them
he saw through his own tears her hand still pressed to her side and her
faded face ghastly in the candlelight.
Sick with despair, Pip went back to London, to learn from Wemmick, Mr.
Jaggers's friendly clerk, that the rooms were being watched, and that he
and Herbert (who in the absence of Pip had confided in him) had removed
Magwitch to another lodging--a room overlooking the river, from which it
would be easier, if worst came to worst, to get him on a ship and so out
of the country.
To do this it was necessary to wait for a favorable chance. So Pip,
providing for Magwitch's comfort meantime, bought a boat, and he and
Herbert rowed daily up and down the river, so that when the time came to
row the convict to some sea-going ship they would know the turns of the
stream.
Pip soon learned that Compeyson was their spy. Wopsle, who in Pip's
boyhood had been the clerk in the village church, had turned actor (he
made, to be sure, a very poor one!), and was now playing in London. In
the theater one night he recognized in the audience the pale-faced
convict whom he had once, with Joe, the blacksmith, and little Pip, seen
dragged back to capture by his more powerful fellow. Pip had long ago
learned from Magwitch that this man was Compeyson, and when Wopsle said
he had seen him sitting directly back of Pip at the play, the latter
realized that they had this bitter enemy to reckon with, and that
Magwitch was in terrible danger.