All that little Philip Pirrip, usually called Pip, knew about his father
and mother, and five little brothers, was from seeing their tombstones
in the churchyard. He was taken care of by his sister, who was twenty
years older than himself. She had married a blacksmith, named Joe
Gargery, a kind, good man, while she, unfortunately, was a hard, stern
woman, and treated her little brother and her amiable husband with great
harshness. They lived in a marshy part of the country, about twenty
miles from the sea.
One cold raw day towards evening, when Pip was about six years old, he
wandered into the churchyard, and trying to make out what he could of
the inscriptions on his family tombstones, and the darkness coming on,
he felt very lonely and frightened, and began to cry.
"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, and a man started up from
among the graves close to him. "Keep still, you little imp, or I'll cut
your throat!"
He was a dreadful looking man, dressed in coarse grey cloth, with a
great iron on his leg. Wet, muddy and miserable, his teeth chattered in
his head, as he seized Pip by the chin.
"Oh! don't cut my throat, sir," cried Pip, in terror.
"Tell us your name!" said the man. "Quick!"
"Pip, sir."
"Once more," said the man, staring at him. "Give it mouth."
"Pip. Pip, sir."
"Show us where you live," said the man. "Point out the place."
Pip showed him the village, about a mile or more from the church.
The man looked at him for a moment, and then turned him upside down and
emptied his pockets. He found nothing in them but a piece of bread,
which he ate ravenously.
"Now lookee here," said the man. "Where's your mother?"
"There, sir," said Pip.
At this the man started to run away, but stopped and looked over his
shoulder.
"There, sir," explained Pip, showing him the tombstone.
"Oh, and is that your father along of your mother?"
"Yes, sir," said Pip.
"Ha!" muttered the man, "then who d'ye live with--supposin' you're
kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?"
"My sister, sir, Mrs. Joe Gargery, wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith,
sir."
"Blacksmith, eh?" said the man, and looked down at his leg. Then he
seized the trembling little boy by both arms, and glaring down at him,
he said,--
"Now lookee here, the question being whether you're to be let to
live--You know what a file is?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you know what wittles is?"
"Yes, sir."
"You get me a file, and you get me wittles--you bring 'em both to me."
All this time he was tilting poor Pip backwards till he was dreadfully
frightened and giddy.
"You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles--You
do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign
concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever,
and you shall be let to live." Then he let him go, saying--"You remember
what you've undertook, and you get home."
Pip ran home without stopping. Joe was sitting in the chimney corner,
and told him Mrs. Joe had been out to look for him, and taken Tickler
with her. Tickler was a cane, and Pip was rather depressed by this piece
of news.
Mrs. Joe came in almost directly, and after having given Pip a taste of
Tickler, she sat down to prepare the tea, and cutting a huge slice of
bread and butter, she gave half of it to Joe and half to Pip. Pip
managed, after some time, to slip his down the leg of his trousers, and
Joe, thinking he had swallowed it, was dreadfully alarmed and begged him
not to bolt his food like that. "Pip, old chap, you'll do yourself a
mischief,--it'll stick somewhere, you can't have chewed it, Pip. You
know, Pip, you and me is always friends, and I'd be the last to tell
upon you at any time, but such a--such a most uncommon bolt as that."
[Illustration: PIP AND THE CONVICT.
HALF DEAD WITH COLD AND HUNGER.]
"Been bolting his food, has he?" cried Mrs. Joe.
"You know, old chap," said Joe, "I bolted myself when I was your
age--frequent--and as a boy I've been among many bolters; but I never
see your bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you ain't bolted
dead."
Poor Pip passed a wretched night, thinking of the dreadful promise he
had made, and as soon as it was beginning to get light outside he got up
and crept downstairs.
As quickly as he could he took some bread, some cheese, about half a jar
of mince-meat he tied up in a handkerchief, with the slice of bread and
butter, some brandy from a stone bottle, a meat bone with very little on
it, and a pork pie, which he found on an upper shelf. Then he got a file
from among Joe's tools, and ran for the marshes.
Pip found the man waiting for him, half dead with cold and hunger, and
he ate the food in such a ravenous way that Pip, in spite of his terror,
was quite pitiful over him, and said, "I am glad you enjoy it."
"Thankee, my boy, I do."
Pip watched him trying to file the iron off his leg, and then, being
afraid of stopping longer away from home, he ran off.
Pip passed a wretched morning expecting every moment that the
disappearance of the pie would be found out. But Mrs. Joe was too much
taken up with preparing the dinner, for they were expecting visitors.
Just at the end of the dinner Pip thought his time had come to be found
out, for his sister said graciously to her guests--
"You must taste a most delightful and delicious present I have had. It's
a pie, a savory pork pie."
Pip could bear it no longer, and ran for the door, and there ran head
foremost into a party of soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held
out a pair of handcuffs to him saying--"Here you are, look sharp, come
on." But they had not come for him, they only wanted Joe to mend the
handcuffs, for they were on the search for two convicts who had escaped
and were somewhere hid in the marshes. This turned the attention of Mrs.
Joe from the disappearance of the pie without which she had come back,
in great astonishment. When the handcuffs were mended the soldiers went
off, accompanied by Joe and one of the visitors, and Joe took Pip and
carried him on his back.
Pip whispered, "I hope, Joe, we shan't find them," and Joe answered "I'd
give a shilling if they had cut and run, Pip."
But the soldiers soon caught them, and one was Pip's miserable
acquaintance, and once when the man looked at Pip, the child shook his
head to try and let him know he had said nothing.
But the convict, without looking at anyone, told the Sergeant he wanted
to say something to prevent other people being under suspicion, and said
he had taken some "wittles" from the blacksmith's. "It was some broken
wittles, that's what it was, and a dram of liquor, and a pie."
"Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?"
enquired the Sergeant.
"My wife did, at the very moment when you came in."
"So," said the convict, looking at Joe, "you're the blacksmith, are you?
Then I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie."
"God knows you're welcome to it," said Joe. "We don't know what you have
done, but we wouldn't have you starved to death for it, poor miserable
fellow creature. Would us, Pip?"
Then the boat came, and the convicts were taken back to prison, and Joe
carried Pip home.
Some years after, some mysterious friend sent money for Pip to be
educated and brought up as a gentleman, but it was only when Pip was
quite grown up that he discovered this mysterious friend was the
wretched convict who had frightened him so dreadfully that cold, dark
Christmas Eve.