"I don't suffer it to be spoken of. I don't suffer those who were here
just now or any one to speak of it. They come here on the day, but they
dare not refer to it."
Of course _I_ made no further effort to refer to it.
"On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of
decay," stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the
table but not touching it, "was brought here. It and I have worn away
together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of
mice have gnawed at me."
She held the head of her stick against her heart as she stood looking at
the table; she in her once white dress, all yellow and withered; the
once white cloth all yellow and withered; everything around, in a state
to crumble under a touch.
"When the ruin is complete," said she, with a ghastly look, "and when
they lay me dead, in my bride's dress on the bride's table--which shall
be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him--so much the
better if it is done on this day!"
She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her own figure
lying there. I remained quiet. Estella returned, and she too remained
quiet. It seemed to me that we continued thus a long time. In the
heavy air of the room, and the heavy darkness that brooded in its
remoter corners, I even had an alarming fancy that Estella and I might
presently crumble to dust.
And thus passed my second visit to Miss Havisham's.
On my next visit, the following week, I saw a garden-chair--a light
chair on wheels, that you pushed from behind. I entered, that same day,
on a regular occupation of pushing Miss Havisham in this chair (when she
was tired of walking with her hand upon my shoulder) round her own room,
and across the landing, and round the other room. Over and over and
over again, we would make these journeys, and sometimes they would last
as long as three hours at a stretch. I insensibly fall into a general
mention of these journeys as numerous, because it was at once settled
that I should return every alternate day at noon for these purposes, and
because I am now going to sum up a period of at least eight or ten
months.
As we began to be more used to one another, Miss Havisham talked more to
me, and asked me such questions as, what had I learned and what was I
going to be? I told her I was going to be apprenticed to Joe, I
believed; and I enlarged upon my knowing nothing and wanting to know
everything, in the hope that she might offer some help towards that
desirable end. But she did not; on the contrary, she seemed to prefer
my being ignorant. Neither did she ever give me any money nor anything
but my daily dinner.
Estella was always there to let me in and out. Sometimes she would
coldly tolerate me; sometimes she would condescend to me; sometimes she
would be quite familiar with me; sometimes she would say she hated me.
But always my admiration for her grew apace, and I was the more firmly
resolved not to be common.
There was a song Joe used to hum fragments of at the forge, of which the
burden was Old Clem. This was not a very ceremonious way of rendering
homage to a patron saint; for I believe Old Clem stood in that relation
towards smiths. It was a song that imitated the measure of beating upon
iron, and was a mere lyrical excuse for the introduction of Old Clem's
respected name. Thus, you were to hammer boys round--Old Clem! With a
thump and a sound--Old Clem! Beat it out, beat it out--Old Clem! With
a clink for the stout--Old Clem! Blow the fire, blow the fire--Old
Clem! Roaring dryer, soaring higher--Old Clem! One day soon after the
appearance of the chair, Miss Havisham suddenly saying to me, with the
impatient movement of her fingers, "There, there, there! Sing!" I was
surprised into crooning this ditty as I pushed her over the floor. It
happened so to catch her fancy that, she took it up in a low brooding
voice as if she were singing in her sleep. After that, it became
customary with us to have it as we moved about, and Estella would often
join in; though the whole strain was so subdued, even when there were
three of us, that it made less noise in the grim old house than the
lightest breath of wind.
What could I become with these surroundings? How could my character fail
to be influenced by them? Is it to be wondered at if my thoughts were
dazed, as my eyes were, when I came out into the natural light from the
misty yellow rooms?
Perhaps I might have talked it all over with Joe, had it not been for
those enormous tales about coaches, dogs, and veal cutlets. But I felt
a natural shrinking from having Miss Havisham and Estella discussed,
which had come upon me in the beginning, and which grew much more potent
as time went on. I reposed complete confidence in no one but Biddy; and
so I told her everything. Why it came natural for me to do so, and why
Biddy had a deep concern in everything I told her, I did not know then,
though I think I know now.
We went on in this way for a long time, and it seemed likely that we
should continue to go on in this way for a long time, when, one day,
Miss Havisham stopped short as she and I were walking, she leaning on my
shoulder; and said with some displeasure,
"You are growing tall, Pip!"
She said no more at the time; but she presently stopped and looked at me
again; and presently again; and after that, looked frowning and moody.
On the next day of my attendance, when our usual exercise was over, and
I had landed her at her dressing-table, she stayed me with a movement of
her impatient fingers:
"Tell me the name again of that blacksmith of yours."
"Joe Gargery, ma'am."
"Meaning the master you were to be apprenticed to?"
"Yes, Miss Havisham."
"You had better be apprenticed at once. Would Gargery come here with
you, and bring your indentures, do you think?"
I signified that I had no doubt he would take it as an honor to be
asked.
"Then let him come."
"At any particular time, Miss Havisham?"
"There, there! I know nothing about times. Let him come soon, and come
alone with you."
So, on my very next visit, I conducted Joe, stiffly arrayed in his
Sunday clothes, into Miss Havisham's presence. She asked him several
questions about himself and my apprenticeship, while the poor fellow
twisted his hat in his hand and persisted in answering _me_. I am
afraid I was the least bit ashamed of him, when I saw that Estella stood
at the back of Miss Havisham's chair, and that her eyes laughed
mischievously.
Miss Havisham glanced at him as if she understood what he really was,
better than I had thought possible, seeing what an awkward figure he
cut; and took up a little bag from the table beside her.
"Pip has earned a premium here," she said, "and here it is. There are
five-and-twenty guineas in this bag. Give it to your master, Pip."
As if he were absolutely out of his mind with the wonder awakened in him
by her strange figure and the strange room, Joe, even at this pass,
persisted in addressing me.
"This is wery liberal on your part, Pip," said Joe, "and it is as such
received and grateful welcome, though never looked for, far nor near nor
nowheres. And now, old chap, may we do our duty! May you and me do our
duty, both on us, by one and another, and by them which your liberal
present--have--conweyed--to be--for the satisfaction of mind--of--them
as never--" here Joe showed that he felt he had fallen into frightful
difficulties, until he triumphantly rescued himself with the words, "and
from myself far be it!" These words had such a round and convincing
sound for him that he said them twice.
"Good-bye, Pip!" said Miss Havisham, after my papers were signed. "Let
them out, Estella."
"Am I to come again, Miss Havisham?" I asked.
"No. Gargery is your master now. Gargery! One word!"
Thus calling him back as I went out of the door, I heard her say to Joe,
in a distinct emphatic voice, "The boy has been a good boy here, and
that is his reward. Of course, as an honest man, you will expect no
other and no more."
How Joe got out of the room, I have never been able to determine; but I
know that when he did get out he was steadily proceeding upstairs
instead of coming down, and was deaf to all remonstrances until I went
after him and laid hold of him. In another minute we were outside the
gate, and it was locked, and Estella was gone. When we stood in the
daylight alone again, Joe backed up against a wall, and said to me,
"Astonishing!" And there he remained so long, saying, "Astonishing!" at
intervals, so often, that I began to think his senses were never coming
back. At length he prolonged his remark into "Pip, I do assure you this
is as-TON-ishing!" and so, by degrees, became able to walk away.
It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be
black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive
and well deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.
Home had never been a pleasant place to me, because of my sister's
temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I believed in it. I had
believed in the best parlor as a most elegant place; I had believed in
the front door as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose
solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had
believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I
had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and
independence. Within a single year all this was changed. Now, it was
all coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and
Estella see it on any account.
How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own fault,
how much Miss Havisham's, how much my sister's, is now of no moment to
me or to any one. The change was made in me; the thing was done.
Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my
shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe's apprentice, I should be
distinguished and happy. Now that the reality was here, I only felt
that I was dusty with the dust of small-coal, and that I had a weight
upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather. I remember
that at a later period of my "time," I used to stand about the
churchyard on Sunday evenings, when night was falling, comparing my own
perspective with the windy marsh view, and making out some likeness
between them by thinking how flat and low both were, and how on both
there came an unknown way and a dark mist and then the sea. I was quite
as dejected on the first working-day of my apprenticeship as in that
after-time; but I am glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe
while my indentures lasted. It is about the only thing I _am_ glad to
know of myself in that connection.
For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit was Joe's.
It was not because I was faithful, but because Joe was faithful, that I
never ran away and went for a soldier or a sailor. It was not because I
had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, but because of Joe, that I
worked with tolerable zeal against the grain.
As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle's aunt's room, my education
under that lady ended. Not, however, until Biddy had imparted to me
everything she knew, from the little catalogue of prices to a comic song
she had once bought for a half-penny. Although the only coherent part
of the latter piece were the opening lines:
When I went to Lunnon town, sirs,
Too rul loo rul
Too rul loo rul
Was 't I done very brown, sirs?
Too rul loo rul
Too rul loo rul
--still, in my desire to be wiser, I got this composition by heart with
the utmost gravity; nor do I recollect that I questioned its merit,
except that I thought (as I still do) the amount of Too rul somewhat in
excess of the poetry.
Thus matters went until I reached the fourth year of my apprenticeship;
and they bade fair to end that way, but for an unusual event.
I had gone with Joe one Saturday night to a neighboring tavern to join
some friends. In the course of the conversation, a strange gentleman,
who had been listening to us, stepped between us and the fire, and said:
"I understand that one of you is a blacksmith, by name, Joseph Gargery.
Which is the man?"
"Here is the man," said Joe.
"You have an apprentice," pursued the stranger, "commonly known as Pip.
Is he here?"
"Here," I answered.
The stranger did not recognize me, but I did recognize him as the man I
had once met on the stair at Miss Havisham's.
"I wish to have a private talk with you both," he said. "Perhaps we had
better go to your house."
So, in a wondering silence we left the inn and walked home, where Joe,
vaguely recognizing the occasion to be important, opened the front door
and ushered us into the state parlor.
The stranger told us that he was a lawyer in London, and was now acting
as confidential agent for some one else. He wished to purchase my
apprenticeship papers from Joe, if Joe were willing to release me.
"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 the lawyer.
"The question is, Would you want anything? Do you want anything."
"The answer is," returned Joe, sternly, "No."
"Then 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!--at least, so I
thought at the time.
"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 that easy
condition. But if you have any objection, this is the time to mention
it."