Chapter 15

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's room, my
education under that preposterous female terminated. 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
halfpenny. Although the only coherent part of the latter piece of
literature were the opening lines,

When I went to Lunnon town sirs, Too rul loo rul Too rul loo rul
Wasn'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. In my hunger for information,
I made proposals to Mr. Wopsle to bestow some intellectual crumbs
upon me; with which he kindly complied. As it turned out, however,
that he only wanted me for a dramatic lay-figure, to be contradicted
and embraced and wept over and bullied and clutched and stabbed and
knocked about in a variety of ways, I soon declined that course of
instruction; though not until Mr. Wopsle in his poetic fury had
severely mauled me.

Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This statement
sounds so well, that I cannot in my conscience let it pass
unexplained. I wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he
might be worthier of my society and less open to Estella's
reproach.

The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of study, and a
broken slate and a short piece of slate pencil were our educational
implements: to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I never
knew Joe to remember anything from one Sunday to another, or to
acquire, under my tuition, any piece of information whatever. Yet he
would smoke his pipe at the Battery with a far more sagacious air
than anywhere else - even with a learned air - as if he considered
himself to be advancing immensely. Dear fellow, I hope he did.

It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on the river
passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low,
looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing
on at the bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels
standing out to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow thought
of Miss Havisham and Estella; and whenever the light struck aslant,
afar off, upon a cloud or sail or green hill-side or water-line, it
was just the same. - Miss Havisham and Estella and the strange house
and the strange life appeared to have something to do with everything
that was picturesque.

One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so plumed
himself on being "most awful dull," that I had given him up for the
day, I lay on the earthwork for some time with my chin on my hand,
descrying traces of Miss Havisham and Estella all over the prospect,
in the sky and in the water, until at last I resolved to mention a
thought concerning them that had been much in my head.

"Joe," said I; "don't you think I ought to make Miss Havisham a
visit?"

"Well, Pip," returned Joe, slowly considering. "What for?"

"What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?"

"There is some wisits, p'r'aps," said Joe, "as for ever remains
open to the question, Pip. But in regard to wisiting Miss Havisham.
She might think you wanted something - expected something of her."

"Don't you think I might say that I did not, Joe?"

"You might, old chap," said Joe. "And she might credit it.
Similarly she mightn't."

Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he
pulled hard at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it by
repetition.

"You see, Pip," Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that danger,
"Miss Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss Havisham
done the handsome thing by you, she called me back to say to me as
that were all."

"Yes, Joe. I heard her."

"All," Joe repeated, very emphatically.

"Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her."

"Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning were -
Make a end on it! - As you was! - Me to the North, and you to the
South! - Keep in sunders!"

I had thought of that too, and it was very far from comforting
to me to find that he had thought of it; for it seemed to render it
more probable.

"But, Joe."

"Yes, old chap."

"Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, since
the day of my being bound, I have never thanked Miss Havisham, or
asked after her, or shown that I remember her."

"That's true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her out a set of
shoes all four round - and which I meantersay as even a set of shoes
all four round might not be acceptable as a present, in a total
wacancy of hoofs--"

"I don't mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I don't mean a
present."

But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head and must harp
upon it. "Or even," said he, "if you was helped to knocking her up a
new chain for the front door - or say a gross or two of shark-headed
screws for general use - or some light fancy article, such as a
toasting-fork when she took her muffins - or a gridiron when she took
a sprat or such like--"

"I don't mean any present at all, Joe," I interposed.

"Well," said Joe, still harping on it as though I had
particularly pressed it, "if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn't. No, I
would not. For what's a door-chain when she's got one always up? And
shark-headers is open to misrepresentations. And if it was a
toasting-fork, you'd go into brass and do yourself no credit. And
the oncommonest workman can't show himself oncommon in a gridiron -
for a gridiron is a gridiron," said Joe, steadfastly impressing it
upon me, as if he were endeavouring to rouse me from a fixed
delusion, "and you may haim at what you like, but a gridiron it will
come out, either by your leave or again your leave, and you can't
help yourself--"

"My dear Joe," I cried, in desperation, taking hold of his coat,
"don't go on in that way. I never thought of making Miss Havisham
any present."

"No, Pip," Joe assented, as if he had been contending for that,
all along; "and what I say to you is, you are right, Pip."

"Yes, Joe; but what I wanted to say, was, that as we are rather
slack just now, if you would give me a half-holiday to-morrow, I
think I would go up-town and make a call on Miss Est - Havisham."

"Which her name," said Joe, gravely, "ain't Estavisham, Pip,
unless she have been rechris'ened."

"I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine. What do you think
of it, Joe?"

In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well of it, he thought
well of it. But, he was particular in stipulating that if I were not
received with cordiality, or if I were not encouraged to repeat my
visit as a visit which had no ulterior object but was simply one of
gratitude for a favour received, then this experimental trip should
have no successor. By these conditions I promised to abide.

Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name was
Orlick. He pretended that his Christian name was Dolge - a clear
impossibility - but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition
that I believe him to have been the prey of no delusion in this
particular, but wilfully to have imposed that name upon the village
as an affront to its understanding. He was a broadshouldered
loose-limbed swarthy fellow of great strength, never in a hurry, and
always slouching. He never even seemed to come to his work on
purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere accident; and when he went
to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or went away at night, he
would slouch out, like Cain or the Wandering Jew, as if he had no
idea where he was going and no intention of ever coming back. He
lodged at a sluice-keeper's out on the marshes, and on working days
would come slouching from his hermitage, with his hands in his
pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his neck and
dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on the
sluice-gates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always slouched,
locomotively, with his eyes on the ground; and, when accosted or
otherwise required to raise them, he looked up in a half resentful,
half puzzled way, as though the only thought he ever had, was, that
it was rather an odd and injurious fact that he should never be
thinking.

This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I was very
small and timid, he gave me to understand that the Devil lived in a
black corner of the forge, and that he knew the fiend very well:
also that it was necessary to make up the fire, once in seven years,
with a live boy, and that I might consider myself fuel. When I
became Joe's 'prentice, Orlick was perhaps confirmed in some
suspicion that I should displace him; howbeit, he liked me still
less. Not that he ever said anything, or did anything, openly
importing hostility; I only noticed that he always beat his sparks in
my direction, and that whenever I sang Old Clem, he came in out of
time.

Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next day, when I reminded
Joe of my half-holiday. He said nothing at the moment, for he and
Joe had just got a piece of hot iron between them, and I was at the
bellows; but by-and-by he said, leaning on his hammer:

"Now, master! Sure you're not a-going to favour only one of us.
If Young Pip has a half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick." I
suppose he was about five-and-twenty, but he usually spoke of himself
as an ancient person.

"Why, what'll you do with a half-holiday, if you get it?" said
Joe.

"What'll I do with it! What'll he do with it? I'll do as much
with it as him," said Orlick.

"As to Pip, he's going up-town," said Joe.

"Well then, as to Old Orlick, he's a-going up-town," retorted
that worthy. "Two can go up-town. Tan't only one wot can go
up-town.

"Don't lose your temper," said Joe.

"Shall if I like," growled Orlick. "Some and their up-towning!
Now, master! Come. No favouring in this shop. Be a man!"

The master refusing to entertain the subject until the
journeyman was in a better temper, Orlick plunged at the furnace,
drew out a red-hot bar, made at me with it as if he were going to run
it through my body, whisked it round my head, laid it on the anvil,
hammered it out - as if it were I, I thought, and the sparks were my
spirting blood - and finally said, when he had hammered himself hot
and the iron cold, and he again leaned on his hammer:

"Now, master!"

"Are you all right now?" demanded Joe.

"Ah! I am all right," said gruff Old Orlick.

"Then, as in general you stick to your work as well as most
men," said Joe, "let it be a half-holiday for all."

My sister had been standing silent in the yard, within hearing -
she was a most unscrupulous spy and listener - and she instantly
looked in at one of the windows.

"Like you, you fool!" said she to Joe, "giving holidays to great
idle hulkers like that. You are a rich man, upon my life, to waste
wages in that way. I wish I was his master!"

"You'd be everybody's master, if you durst," retorted Orlick,
with an ill-favoured grin.

("Let her alone," said Joe.)

"I'd be a match for all noodles and all rogues," returned my
sister, beginning to work herself into a mighty rage. "And I
couldn't be a match for the noodles, without being a match for your
master, who's the dunder-headed king of the noodles. And I couldn't
be a match for the rogues, without being a match for you, who are the
blackest-looking and the worst rogue between this and France.
Now!"

"You're a foul shrew, Mother Gargery, growled the journeyman.
"If that makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be a good'un."

("Let her alone, will you?" said Joe.)

"What did you say?" cried my sister, beginning to scream. "What
did you say? What did that fellow Orlick say to me, Pip? What did
he call me, with my husband standing by? O! O! O!" Each of these
exclamations was a shriek; and I must remark of my sister, what is
equally true of all the violent women I have ever seen, that passion
was no excuse for her, because it is undeniable that instead of
lapsing into passion, she consciously and deliberately took
extraordinary pains to force herself into it, and became blindly
furious by regular stages; "what was the name he gave me before the
base man who swore to defend me? O! Hold me! O!"

"Ah-h-h!" growled the journeyman, between his teeth, "I'd hold
you, if you was my wife. I'd hold you under the pump, and choke it
out of you."

("I tell you, let her alone," said Joe.)

"Oh! To hear him!" cried my sister, with a clap of her hands
and a scream together - which was her next stage. "To hear the names
he's giving me! That Orlick! In my own house! Me, a married woman!
With my husband standing by! O! O!" Here my sister, after a fit of
clappings and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon her
knees, and threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down - which were
the last stages on her road to frenzy. Being by this time a perfect
Fury and a complete success, she made a dash at the door, which I had
fortunately locked.

What could the wretched Joe do now, after his disregarded
parenthetical interruptions, but stand up to his journeyman, and ask
him what he meant by interfering betwixt himself and Mrs. Joe; and
further whether he was man enough to come on? Old Orlick felt that
the situation admitted of nothing less than coming on, and was on his
defence straightway; so, without so much as pulling off their singed
and burnt aprons, they went at one another, like two giants. But, if
any man in that neighbourhood could stand up long against Joe, I
never saw the man. Orlick, as if he had been of no more account than
the pale young gentleman, was very soon among the coal-dust, and in
no hurry to come out of it. Then, Joe unlocked the door and picked
up my sister, who had dropped insensible at the window (but who had
seen the fight first, I think), and who was carried into the house
and laid down, and who was recommended to revive, and would do
nothing but struggle and clench her hands in Joe's hair. Then, came
that singular calm and silence which succeed all uproars; and then,
with the vague sensation which I have always connected with such a
lull - namely, that it was Sunday, and somebody was dead - I went
up-stairs to dress myself.

When I came down again, I found Joe and Orlick sweeping up,
without any other traces of discomposure than a slit in one of
Orlick's nostrils, which was neither expressive nor ornamental. A
pot of beer had appeared from the Jolly Bargemen, and they were
sharing it by turns in a peaceable manner. The lull had a sedative
and philosophical influence on Joe, who followed me out into the road
to say, as a parting observation that might do me good, "On the
Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip - such is Life!"

With what absurd emotions (for, we think the feelings that are
very serious in a man quite comical in a boy) I found myself again
going to Miss Havisham's, matters little here. Nor, how I passed and
repassed the gate many times before I could make up my mind to ring.
Nor, how I debated whether I should go away without ringing; nor, how
I should undoubtedly have gone, if my time had been my own, to come
back.

Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No Estella.

"How, then? You here again?" said Miss Pocket. "What do you
want?"

When I said that I only came to see how Miss Havisham was, Sarah
evidently deliberated whether or no she should send me about my
business. But, unwilling to hazard the responsibility, she let me
in, and presently brought the sharp message that I was to "come
up."

Everything was unchanged, and Miss Havisham was alone.

"Well?" said she, fixing her eyes upon me. "I hope you want
nothing? You'll get nothing."

"No, indeed, Miss Havisham. I only wanted you to know that I am
doing very well in my apprenticeship, and am always much obliged to
you."

"There, there!" with the old restless fingers. "Come now and
then; come on your birthday. - Ay!" she cried suddenly, turning
herself and her chair towards me, "You are looking round for Estella?
Hey?"

I had been looking round - in fact, for Estella - and I
stammered that I hoped she was well.

"Abroad," said Miss Havisham; "educating for a lady; far out of
reach; prettier than ever; admired by all who see her. Do you feel
that you have lost her?"

There was such a malignant enjoyment in her utterance of the
last words, and she broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I was
at a loss what to say. She spared me the trouble of considering, by
dismissing me. When the gate was closed upon me by Sarah of the
walnut-shell countenance, I felt more than ever dissatisfied with my
home and with my trade and with everything; and that was all I took
by that motion.

As I was loitering along the High-street, looking in
disconsolately at the shop windows, and thinking what I would buy if
I were a gentleman, who should come out of the bookshop but Mr.
Wopsle. Mr Wopsle had in his hand the affecting tragedy of George
Barnwell, in which he had that moment invested sixpence, with the
view of heaping every word of it on the head of Pumblechook, with
whom he was going to drink tea. No sooner did he see me, than he
appeared to consider that a special Providence had put a 'prentice in
his way to be read at; and he laid hold of me, and insisted on my
accompanying him to the Pumblechookian parlour. As I knew it would
be miserable at home, and as the nights were dark and the way was
dreary, and almost any companionship on the road was better than
none, I made no great resistance; consequently, we turned into
Pumblechook's just as the street and the shops were lighting up.

As I never assisted at any other representation of George
Barnwell, I don't know how long it may usually take; but I know very
well that it took until half-past nine o' clock that night, and that
when Mr. Wopsle got into Newgate, I thought he never would go to the
scaffold, he became so much slower than at any former period of his
disgraceful career. I thought it a little too much that he should
complain of being cut short in his flower after all, as if he had not
been running to seed, leaf after leaf, ever since his course began.
This, however, was a mere question of length and wearisomeness. What
stung me, was the identification of the whole affair with my
unoffending self. When Barnwell began to go wrong, I declare that I
felt positively apologetic, Pumblechook's indignant stare so taxed me
with it. Wopsle, too, took pains to present me in the worst light.
At once ferocious and maudlin, I was made to murder my uncle with no
extenuating circumstances whatever; Millwood put me down in argument,
on every occasion; it became sheer monomania in my master's daughter
to care a button for me; and all I can say for my gasping and
procrastinating conduct on the fatal morning, is, that it was worthy
of the general feebleness of my character. Even after I was happily
hanged and Wopsle had closed the book, Pumblechook sat staring at me,
and shaking his head, and saying, "Take warning, boy, take warning!"
as if it were a well-known fact that I contemplated murdering a near
relation, provided I could only induce one to have the weakness to
become my benefactor.

It was a very dark night when it was all over, and when I set
out with Mr. Wopsle on the walk home. Beyond town, we found a heavy
mist out, and it fell wet and thick. The turnpike lamp was a blur,
quite out of the lamp's usual place apparently, and its rays looked
solid substance on the fog. We were noticing this, and saying how
that the mist rose with a change of wind from a certain quarter of
our marshes, when we came upon a man, slouching under the lee of the
turnpike house.

"Halloa!" we said, stopping. "Orlick, there?"

"Ah!" he answered, slouching out. "I was standing by, a minute,
on the chance of company."

"You are late," I remarked.

Orlick not unnaturally answered, "Well? And you're late."

"We have been," said Mr. Wopsle, exalted with his late
performance, "we have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an intellectual
evening."

Old Orlick growled, as if he had nothing to say about that, and
we all went on together. I asked him presently whether he had been
spending his half-holiday up and down town?

"Yes," said he, "all of it. I come in behind yourself. I
didn't see you, but I must have been pretty close behind you.
By-the-bye, the guns is going again."

"At the Hulks?" said I.

"Ay! There's some of the birds flown from the cages. The guns
have been going since dark, about. You'll hear one presently."

In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when the
wellremembered boom came towards us, deadened by the mist, and
heavily rolled away along the low grounds by the river, as if it were
pursuing and threatening the fugitives.

"A good night for cutting off in," said Orlick. "We'd be
puzzled how to bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night."

The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought about it
in silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of the evening's
tragedy, fell to meditating aloud in his garden at Camberwell.
Orlick, with his hands in his pockets, slouched heavily at my side.
It was very dark, very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed along. Now
and then, the sound of the signal cannon broke upon us again, and
again rolled sulkily along the course of the river. I kept myself to
myself and my thoughts. Mr. Wopsle died amiably at Camberwell, and
exceedingly game on Bosworth Field, and in the greatest agonies at
Glastonbury. Orlick sometimes growled, "Beat it out, beat it out -
Old Clem! With a clink for the stout - Old Clem!" I thought he had
been drinking, but he was not drunk.

Thus, we came to the village. The way by which we approached
it, took us past the Three Jolly Bargemen, which we were surprised to
find - it being eleven o'clock - in a state of commotion, with the
door wide open, and unwonted lights that had been hastily caught up
and put down, scattered about. Mr. Wopsle dropped in to ask what was
the matter (surmising that a convict had been taken), but came
running out in a great hurry.

"There's something wrong," said he, without stopping, "up at
your place, Pip. Run all!"

"What is it?" I asked, keeping up with him. So did Orlick, at
my side.

"I can't quite understand. The house seems to have been
violently entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts.
Somebody has been attacked and hurt."

We were running too fast to admit of more being said, and we
made no stop until we got into our kitchen. It was full of people;
the whole village was there, or in the yard; and there was a surgeon,
and there was Joe, and there was a group of women, all on the floor
in the midst of the kitchen. The unemployed bystanders drew back
when they saw me, and so I became aware of my sister - lying without
sense or movement on the bare boards where she had been knocked down
by a tremendous blow on the back of the head, dealt by some unknown
hand when her face was turned towards the fire - destined never to be
on the Rampage again, while she was the wife of Joe.