Chapter 2

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older
than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the
neighbours because she had brought me up "by hand." Having at that
time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing
her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of
laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe
Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.

She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general
impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe
was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth
face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed to
have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild,
good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow - a
sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness.

My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a
prevailing redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether it
was possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap.
She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron,
fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square
impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles.
She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach
against Joe, that she wore this apron so much. Though I really see
no reason why she should have worn it at all: or why, if she did
wear it at all, she should not have taken it off, every day of her
life.

Joe's forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as
many of the dwellings in our country were - most of them, at that
time. When I ran home from the churchyard, the forge was shut up, and
Joe was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being
fellow-sufferers, and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a
confidence to me, the moment I raised the latch of the door and
peeped in at him opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner.

"Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And
she's out now, making it a baker's dozen."

"Is she?"

"Yes, Pip," said Joe; "and what's worse, she's got Tickler with
her."

At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my
waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at the
fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by
collision with my tickled frame.

"She sot down," said Joe, "and she got up, and she made a grab
at Tickler, and she Ram-paged out. That's what she did," said Joe,
slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and
looking at it: "she Ram-paged out, Pip."

"Has she been gone long, Joe?" I always treated him as a larger
species of child, and as no more than my equal.

"Well," said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, "she's been on
the Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's a-
coming! Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel
betwixt you."

I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide
open, and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the
cause, and applied Tickler to its further investigation. She
concluded by throwing me - I often served as a connubial missile - at
Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into the
chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great leg.

"Where have you been, you young monkey?" said Mrs. Joe, stamping
her foot. "Tell me directly what you've been doing to wear me away
with fret and fright and worrit, or I'd have you out of that corner
if you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys."

"I have only been to the churchyard," said I, from my stool,
crying and rubbing myself.

"Churchyard!" repeated my sister. "If it warn't for me you'd
have been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who brought
you up by hand?"

"You did," said I.

"And why did I do it, I should like to know?" exclaimed my
sister.

I whimpered, "I don't know."

"I don't!" said my sister. "I'd never do it again! I know
that. I may truly say I've never had this apron of mine off, since
born you were. It's bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife (and him a
Gargery) without being your mother."

My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked
disconsolately at the fire. For, the fugitive out on the marshes
with the ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the food,
and the dreadful pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those
sheltering premises, rose before me in the avenging coals.

"Hah!" said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station.
"Churchyard, indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two." One of
us, by-the-bye, had not said it at all. "You'll drive me to the
churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and oh, a pr-r-recious
pair you'd be without me!"

As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at
me over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself up,
and calculating what kind of pair we practically should make, under
the grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After that, he sat feeling
his right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about
with his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times.

My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread-and-butter
for us, that never varied. First, with her left hand she jammed the
loaf hard and fast against her bib - where it sometimes got a pin
into it, and sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got into our
mouths. Then she took some butter (not too much) on a knife and
spread it on the loaf, in an apothecary kind of way, as if she were
making a plaister - using both sides of the knife with a slapping
dexterity, and trimming and moulding the butter off round the crust.
Then, she gave the knife a final smart wipe on the edge of the
plaister, and then sawed a very thick round off the loaf: which she
finally, before separating from the loaf, hewed into two halves, of
which Joe got one, and I the other.

On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my
slice. I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dreadful
acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young man. I knew
Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that my
larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe.
Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of bread-and-butter down the leg
of my trousers.

The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this
purpose, I found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to make up my
mind to leap from the top of a high house, or plunge into a great
depth of water. And it was made the more difficult by the
unconscious Joe. In our already-mentioned freemasonry as
fellow-sufferers, and in his good-natured companionship with me, it
was our evening habit to compare the way we bit through our slices,
by silently holding them up to each other's admiration now and then -
which stimulated us to new exertions. To-night, Joe several times
invited me, by the display of his fast-diminishing slice, to enter
upon our usual friendly competition; but he found me, each time, with
my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my untouched bread-and-butter
on the other. At last, I desperately considered that the thing I
contemplated must be done, and that it had best be done in the least
improbable manner consistent with the circumstances. I took
advantage of a moment when Joe had just looked at me, and got my
bread-and-butter down my leg.

Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be
my loss of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice,
which he didn't seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth much
longer than usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after all
gulped it down like a pill. He was about to take another bite, and
had just got his head on one side for a good purchase on it, when his
eye fell on me, and he saw that my bread-and-butter was gone.

The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the
threshold of his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape my
sister's observation.

"What's the matter now?" said she, smartly, as she put down her
cup.

"I say, you know!" muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in very
serious remonstrance. "Pip, old chap! You'll do yourself a
mischief. It'll stick somewhere. You can't have chawed it, Pip."

"What's the matter now?" repeated my sister, more sharply than
before.

"If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I'd recommend you to
do it," said Joe, all aghast. "Manners is manners, but still your
elth's your elth."

By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on
Joe, and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a
little while against the wall behind him: while I sat in the corner,
looking guiltily on.

"Now, perhaps you'll mention what's the matter," said my sister,
out of breath, "you staring great stuck pig."

Joe looked at her in a helpless way; then took a helpless bite,
and looked at me again.

"You know, Pip," said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in his
cheek and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two were quite
alone, "you and me is always friends, and I'd be the last to tell
upon you, any time. But such a--" he moved his chair and looked
about the floor between us, and then again at me - "such a most
oncommon Bolt as that!"

"Been bolting his food, has he?" cried my sister.

"You know, old chap," said Joe, looking at me, and not at Mrs.
Joe, with his bite still in his cheek, "I Bolted, myself, when I was
your age - frequent - and as a boy I've been among a many Bolters;
but I never see your Bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you
ain't Bolted dead."

My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair:
saying nothing more than the awful words, "You come along and be
dosed."

Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a fine
medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard;
having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At
the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a
choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling
like a new fence. On this particular evening the urgency of my case
demanded a pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat, for
my greater comfort, while Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm, as a
boot would be held in a boot-jack. Joe got off with half a pint; but
was made to swallow that (much to his disturbance, as he sat slowly
munching and meditating before the fire), "because he had had a
turn." Judging from myself, I should say he certainly had a turn
afterwards, if he had had none before.

Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy; but
when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with
another secret burden down the leg of his trousers, it is (as I can
testify) a great punishment. The guilty knowledge that I was going
to rob Mrs. Joe - I never thought I was going to rob Joe, for I never
thought of any of the housekeeping property as his - united to the
necessity of always keeping one hand on my bread-and-butter as I sat,
or when I was ordered about the kitchen on any small errand, almost
drove me out of my mind. Then, as the marsh winds made the fire glow
and flare, I thought I heard the voice outside, of the man with the
iron on his leg who had sworn me to secrecy, declaring that he
couldn't and wouldn't starve until to-morrow, but must be fed now.
At other times, I thought, What if the young man who was with so much
difficulty restrained from imbruing his hands in me, should yield to
a constitutional impatience, or should mistake the time, and should
think himself accredited to my heart and liver to-night, instead of
to-morrow! If ever anybody's hair stood on end with terror, mine
must have done so then. But, perhaps, nobody's ever did?

It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next
day, with a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock. I
tried it with the load upon my leg (and that made me think afresh of
the man with the load on his leg), and found the tendency of exercise
to bring the bread-and-butter out at my ankle, quite unmanageable.
Happily, I slipped away, and deposited that part of my conscience in
my garret bedroom.

"Hark!" said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking a
final warm in the chimney corner before being sent up to bed; "was
that great guns, Joe?"

"Ah!" said Joe. "There's another conwict off."

"What does that mean, Joe?" said I.

Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said,
snappishly, "Escaped. Escaped." Administering the definition like
Tar-water.

While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework, I
put my mouth into the forms of saying to Joe, "What's a convict?"
Joe put his mouth into the forms of returning such a highly elaborate
answer, that I could make out nothing of it but the single word
"Pip."

"There was a conwict off last night," said Joe, aloud, "after
sun-set-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now, it appears
they're firing warning of another."

"Who's firing?" said I.

"Drat that boy," interposed my sister, frowning at me over her
work, "what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you'll be told
no lies."

It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I
should be told lies by her, even if I did ask questions. But she
never was polite, unless there was company.

At this point, Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by taking the
utmost pains to open his mouth very wide, and to put it into the form
of a word that looked to me like "sulks." Therefore, I naturally
pointed to Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth into the form of saying "her?"
But Joe wouldn't hear of that, at all, and again opened his mouth
very wide, and shook the form of a most emphatic word out of it. But
I could make nothing of the word.

"Mrs. Joe," said I, as a last resort, "I should like to know -
if you wouldn't much mind - where the firing comes from?"

"Lord bless the boy!" exclaimed my sister, as if she didn't
quite mean that, but rather the contrary. "From the Hulks!"

"Oh-h!" said I, looking at Joe. "Hulks!"

Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, "Well, I told
you so."

"And please what's Hulks?" said I.

"That's the way with this boy!" exclaimed my sister, pointing me
out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. "Answer
him one question, and he'll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are
prison-ships, right 'cross th' meshes." We always used that name for
marshes, in our country.

"I wonder who's put into prison-ships, and why they're put
there?" said I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.

It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. "I tell you
what, young fellow," said she, "I didn't bring you up by hand to
badger people's lives out. It would be blame to me, and not praise,
if I had. People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and
because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always
begin by asking questions. Now, you get along to bed!"

I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went
upstairs in the dark, with my head tingling - from Mrs. Joe's thimble
having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last words - I
felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the Hulks were
handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking
questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.

Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often
thought that few people know what secrecy there is in the young,
under terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be
terror. I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart
and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the ironed
leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had
been extracted; I had no hope of deliverance through my all-powerful
sister, who repulsed me at every turn; I am afraid to think of what I
might have done, on requirement, in the secrecy of my terror.

If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself
drifting down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks; a
ghostly pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I
passed the gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be
hanged there at once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep,
even if I had been inclined, for I knew that at the first faint dawn
of morning I must rob the pantry. There was no doing it in the
night, for there was no getting a light by easy friction then; to
have got one, I must have struck it out of flint and steel, and have
made a noise like the very pirate himself rattling his chains.

As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window
was shot with grey, I got up and went down stairs; every board upon
the way, and every crack in every board, calling after me, "Stop
thief!" and "Get up, Mrs. Joe!" In the pantry, which was far more
abundantly supplied than usual, owing to the season, I was very much
alarmed, by a hare hanging up by the heels, whom I rather thought I
caught, when my back was half turned, winking. I had no time for
verification, no time for selection, no time for anything, for I had
no time to spare. I stole some bread, some rind of cheese, about
half a jar of mincemeat (which I tied up in my pocket-handkerchief
with my last night's slice), some brandy from a stone bottle (which I
decanted into a glass bottle I had secretly used for making that
intoxicating fluid, Spanish-liquorice-water, up in my room: diluting
the stone bottle from a jug in the kitchen cupboard), a meat bone
with very little on it, and a beautiful round compact pork pie. I
was nearly going away without the pie, but I was tempted to mount
upon a shelf, to look what it was that was put away so carefully in a
covered earthen ware dish in a corner, and I found it was the pie,
and I took it, in the hope that it was not intended for early use,
and would not be missed for some time.

There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with the forge; I
unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe's
tools. Then, I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the
door at which I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it, and
ran for the misty marshes.