With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and his hat put down on the floor between us,he caught both my hands and worked them straight up and down,as if I had been the last-patented Pump.
“I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat.”
But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird’s-nest with eggs in it,wouldn’t hear of parting with that piece of property,and persisted in standing talking over it in a most uncomfortable way.
“Which you have that growed,” said Joe, “and that swelled, and that gentle-folked;” Joe considered a little before he discovered this word;“as to be sure you are a honour to your king and country.”
“And you, Joe, look wonderfully well.”
“Thank God,” said Joe, “I’m ekerval to most. And your sister, she’s no worse than she were.And Biddy, she’s ever right and ready. And all friends is no backerder, if not no forarder. ’Ceptin Wopsle; he’s had a drop.”
All this time (still with both hands taking great care of the bird’s-nest),Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room,and round and round the flowered pattern of my dressing-gown.
“Had a drop, Joe?”
“Why yes,” said Joe, lowering his voice, “he’s left the Church and went into the playacting.Which the playacting have likeways brought him to London along with me. And his wish were,” said Joe, getting the bird’s-nest under his left arm for the moment,and groping in it for an egg with his right; “if no offence, as I would ’and you that.”
I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the crumpled play-bill of a small metropolitan theatre,announcing the first appearance, in that very week,of “the celebrated Provincial Amateur of Roscian renown,whose unique performance in the highest tragic walk of our National Bard has lately occasioned so great a sensation in local dramatic circles. ”
“Were you at his performance, Joe?” I inquired.
“I _were_,” said Joe, with emphasis and solemnity.
“Was there a great sensation?”
“Why,” said Joe, “yes, there certainly were a peck of orange-peel. Partickler when he see the ghost.Though I put it to yourself, sir, whether it were calc’lated to keep a man up to his work with a good hart,to be continiwally cutting in betwixt him and the Ghost with “Amen!” A man may have had a misfortun’ and been in the Church,” said Joe,lowering his voice to an argumentative and feeling tone,“but that is no reason why you should put him out at such a time. Which I meantersay,if the ghost of a man’s own father cannot be allowed to claim his attention, what can, Sir?Still more, when his mourning ’at is unfortunately made so small as that the weight of the black feathers brings it off, try to keep it on how you may.”
A ghost-seeing effect in Joe’s own countenance informed me that Herbert had entered the room. So,I presented Joe to Herbert, who held out his hand; but Joe backed from it, and held on by the bird’s-nest.
“Your servant, Sir,” said Joe, “which I hope as you and Pip”—here his eye fell on the Avenger,who was putting some toast on table, and so plainly denoted an intention to make that young gentleman one of the family,that I frowned it down and confused him more—“I meantersay, you two gentlemen,—which I hope as you get your elths in this close spot?For the present may be a werry good inn, according to London opinions,” said Joe, confidentially,“and I believe its character do stand it; but I wouldn’t keep a pig in it myself,—not in the case that I wished him to fatten wholesome and to eat with a meller flavour on him.”
Having borne this flattering testimony to the merits of our dwelling-place,and having incidentally shown this tendency to call me “sir,” Joe,being invited to sit down to table, looked all round the room for a suitable spot on which to deposit his hat,—as if it were only on some very few rare substances in nature that it could find a resting place,—and ultimately stood it on an extreme corner of the chimney-piece,from which it ever afterwards fell off at intervals.
“Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?” asked Herbert, who always presided of a morning.
“Thankee, Sir,” said Joe, stiff from head to foot,“I’ll take whichever is most agreeable to yourself.”
“What do you say to coffee?”
“Thankee, Sir,” returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the proposal,“since you _are_ so kind as make chice of coffee, I will not run contrairy to your own opinions.But don’t you never find it a little’eating?”
“Say tea then,” said Herbert, pouring it out.
Here Joe’s hat tumbled off the mantel-piece, and he started out of his chair and picked it up,and fitted it to the same exact spot. As if it were an absolute point of good breeding that it should tumble off again soon.
“When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery?”
“Were it yesterday afternoon?” said Joe, after coughing behind his hand,as if he had had time to catch the whooping-cough since he came. “No it were not. Yes it were. Yes.It were yesterday afternoon” (with an appearance of mingled wisdom, relief, and strict impartiality).
“Have you seen anything of London yet?”
“Why, yes, Sir,” said Joe, “me and Wopsle went off straight to look at the Blacking Ware’us.But we didn’t find that it come up to its likeness in the red bills at the shop doors;which I meantersay,” added Joe, in an explanatory manner,“as it is there drawd too architectooralooral.”
I really believe Joe would have prolonged this word (mightily expressive to my mind of some architecture that I know) into a perfect Chorus,but for his attention being providentially attracted by his hat, which was toppling. Indeed,it demanded from him a constant attention, and a quickness of eye and hand,very like that exacted by wicket-keeping. He made extraordinary play with it,and showed the greatest skill; now, rushing at it and catching it neatly as it dropped; now,merely stopping it midway, beating it up,and humouring it in various parts of the room and against a good deal of the pattern of the paper on the wall,before he felt it safe to close with it; finally splashing it into the slop-basin,where I took the liberty of laying hands upon it.
[Illustration]
As to his shirt-collar, and his coat-collar, they were perplexing to reflect upon,—insoluble mysteries both. Why should a man scrape himself to that extent,before he could consider himself full dressed?Why should he suppose it necessary to be purified by suffering for his holiday clothes?Then he fell into such unaccountable fits of meditation,with his fork midway between his plate and his mouth;had his eyes attracted in such strange directions; was afflicted with such remarkable coughs;sat so far from the table, and dropped so much more than he ate,and pretended that he hadn’t dropped it;that I was heartily glad when Herbert left us for the City.
I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling to know that this was all my fault,and that if I had been easier with Joe, Joe would have been easier with me.I felt impatient of him and out of temper with him;in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head.
“Us two being now alone, sir,”—began Joe.
“Joe,” I interrupted, pettishly, “how can you call me, sir?”
Joe looked at me for a single instant with something faintly like reproach.Utterly preposterous as his cravat was, and as his collars were,I was conscious of a sort of dignity in the look.
“Us two being now alone,” resumed Joe, “and me having the intentions and abilities to stay not many minutes more,I will now conclude—leastways begin—to mention what have led to my having had the present honour.For was it not,” said Joe, with his old air of lucid exposition,“that my only wish were to be useful to you,I should not have had the honour of breaking wittles in the company and abode of gentlemen.”
I was so unwilling to see the look again, that I made no remonstrance against this tone.
“Well, sir,” pursued Joe, “this is how it were. I were at the Bargemen t’other night, Pip;”—whenever he subsided into affection, he called me Pip,and whenever he relapsed into politeness he called me sir; “when there come up in his shay-cart,Pumblechook. Which that same identical,” said Joe, going down a new track,“do comb my ’air the wrong way sometimes, awful,by giving out up and down town as it were him which ever had your infant companionation and were looked upon as a playfellow by yourself. ”
“Nonsense. It was you, Joe.”
“Which I fully believed it were, Pip,” said Joe, slightly tossing his head,“though it signify little now, sir. Well, Pip; this same identical,which his manners is given to blusterous,come to me at the Bargemen (wot a pipe and a pint of beer do give refreshment to the workingman,sir, and do not over stimilate), and his word were, ‘Joseph,Miss Havisham she wish to speak to you.’”
“Miss Havisham, Joe?”
“‘She wish,’ were Pumblechook’s word, ‘to speak to you.’” Joe sat and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.
“Yes, Joe?Go on, please.”
“Next day, sir,” said Joe, looking at me as if I were a long way off, “having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss A.”
“Miss A., Joe?Miss Havisham?”
“Which I say, sir,” replied Joe, with an air of legal formality, as if he were making his will,“Miss A., or otherways Havisham. Her expression air then as follering: ‘Mr. Gargery. You air in correspondence with Mr. Pip?’ Having had a letter from you, I were able to say ‘I am.’ (When I married your sister, sir,I said ‘I will;’ and when I answered your friend, Pip, I said ‘I am.’) ‘Would you tell him, then,’ said she, ‘that which Estella has come home and would be glad to see him.’”
I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe.I hope one remote cause of its firing may have been my consciousness that if I had known his errand,I should have given him more encouragement.
“Biddy,” pursued Joe, “when I got home and asked her fur to write the message to you,a little hung back. Biddy says, ‘I know he will be very glad to have it by word of mouth,it is holiday time, you want to see him, go!’ I have now concluded, sir,” said Joe, rising from his chair, “and, Pip,I wish you ever well and ever prospering to a greater and a greater height.”
“But you are not going now, Joe?”
“Yes I am,” said Joe.
“But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?”
“No I am not,” said Joe.
Our eyes met, and all the “Sir” melted out of that manly heart as he gave me his hand.
“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say,and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith.Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come.If there’s been any fault at all to-day, it’s mine.You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private,and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be right,as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I’m wrong in these clothes.I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th’ meshes.You won’t find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress,with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won’t find half so much fault in me if,supposing as you should ever wish to see me,you come and put your head in at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, there,at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I’m awful dull,but I hope I’ve beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!”
I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was a simple dignity in him.The fashion of his dress could no more come in its way when he spoke these words than it could come in its way in Heaven.He touched me gently on the forehead, and went out. As soon as I could recover myself sufficiently,I hurried out after him and looked for him in the neighbouring streets; but he was gone.
Chapter XXVIII.
It was clear that I must repair to our town next day, and in the first flow of my repentance,it was equally clear that I must stay at Joe’s. But,when I had secured my box-place by to-morrow’s coach, and had been down to Mr. Pocket’s and back,I was not by any means convinced on the last point,and began to invent reasons and make excuses for putting up at the Blue Boar.I should be an inconvenience at Joe’s; I was not expected, and my bed would not be ready;I should be too far from Miss Havisham’s, and she was exacting and mightn’t like it.All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers,and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing.That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else’s manufacture is reasonable enough;but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make as good money!An obliging stranger, under pretence of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security’s sake,abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine,when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as notes!
Having settled that I must go to the Blue Boar,my mind was much disturbed by indecision whether or not to take the Avenger.It was tempting to think of that expensive Mercenary publicly airing his boots in the archway of the Blue Boar’s posting-yard;it was almost solemn to imagine him casually produced in the tailor’s shop,and confounding the disrespectful senses of Trabb’s boy. On the other hand,Trabb’s boy might worm himself into his intimacy and tell him things; or,reckless and desperate wretch as I knew he could be, might hoot him in the High Street.My patroness, too, might hear of him, and not approve. On the whole, I resolved to leave the Avenger behind.
It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my place, and, as winter had now come round,I should not arrive at my destination until two or three hours after dark.Our time of starting from the Cross Keys was two o’clock.I arrived on the ground with a quarter of an hour to spare, attended by the Avenger,—if I may connect that expression with one who never attended on me if he could possibly help it.
At that time it was customary to carry Convicts down to the dock-yards by stage-coach.As I had often heard of them in the capacity of outside passengers,and had more than once seen them on the high road dangling their ironed legs over the coach roof,I had no cause to be surprised when Herbert, meeting me in the yard,came up and told me there were two convicts going down with me.But I had a reason that was an old reason now for constitutionally faltering whenever I heard the word “convict. ”
“You don’t mind them, Handel?” said Herbert.
“O no!”
“I thought you seemed as if you didn’t like them?”
“I can’t pretend that I do like them, and I suppose you don’t particularly. But I don’t mind them.”
“See!There they are,” said Herbert, “coming out of the Tap. What a degraded and vile sight it is!”
They had been treating their guard, I suppose, for they had a gaoler with them,and all three came out wiping their mouths on their hands.The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had irons on their legs,—irons of a pattern that I knew well. They wore the dress that I likewise knew well.Their keeper had a brace of pistols, and carried a thick-knobbed bludgeon under his arm;but he was on terms of good understanding with them, and stood with them beside him,looking on at the putting-to of the horses,rather with an air as if the convicts were an interesting Exhibition not formally open at the moment,and he the Curator. One was a taller and stouter man than the other,and appeared as a matter of course, according to the mysterious ways of the world,both convict and free, to have had allotted to him the smaller suit of clothes.His arms and legs were like great pincushions of those shapes,and his attire disguised him absurdly; but I knew his half-closed eye at one glance.There stood the man whom I had seen on the settle at the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night,and who had brought me down with his invisible gun!
It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no more than if he had never seen me in his life.He looked across at me, and his eye appraised my watch-chain,and then he incidentally spat and said something to the other convict,and they laughed and slued themselves round with a clink of their coupling manacle,and looked at something else. The great numbers on their backs, as if they were street doors;their coarse mangy ungainly outer surface, as if they were lower animals; their ironed legs,apologetically garlanded with pocket-handkerchiefs;and the way in which all present looked at them and kept from them;made them (as Herbert had said) a most disagreeable and degraded spectacle.
But this was not the worst of it. It came out that the whole of the back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from London,and that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat in front behind the coachman.Hereupon, a choleric gentleman, who had taken the fourth place on that seat,flew into a most violent passion, and said that it was a breach of contract to mix him up with such villainous company,and that it was poisonous, and pernicious, and infamous, and shameful, and I don’t know what else.At this time the coach was ready and the coachman impatient, and we were all preparing to get up,and the prisoners had come over with their keeper,—bringing with them that curious flavour of bread-poultice, baize, rope-yarn, and hearthstone, which attends the convict presence.
“Don’t take it so much amiss, sir,” pleaded the keeper to the angry passenger;“I’ll sit next you myself. I’ll put ’em on the outside of the row. They won’t interfere with you, sir. You needn’t know they’re there.”
“And don’t blame _me_,” growled the convict I had recognised. “_I_ don’t want to go._I_ am quite ready to stay behind. As fur as I am concerned any one’s welcome to _my_ place.”
“Or mine,” said the other, gruffly. “_I_ wouldn’t have incommoded none of you, if I’d had _my_ way.” Then they both laughed, and began cracking nuts,and spitting the shells about.—As I really think I should have liked to do myself,if I had been in their place and so despised.
At length, it was voted that there was no help for the angry gentleman,and that he must either go in his chance company or remain behind. So he got into his place,still making complaints, and the keeper got into the place next him,and the convicts hauled themselves up as well as they could,and the convict I had recognised sat behind me with his breath on the hair of my head.
“Good-bye, Handel!” Herbert called out as we started. I thought what a blessed fortune it was,that he had found another name for me than Pip.
It is impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the convict’s breathing,not only on the back of my head, but all along my spine.The sensation was like being touched in the marrow with some pungent and searching acid,it set my very teeth on edge. He seemed to have more breathing business to do than another man,and to make more noise in doing it; and I was conscious of growing high-shouldered on one side,in my shrinking endeavours to fend him off.
The weather was miserably raw, and the two cursed the cold.It made us all lethargic before we had gone far, and when we had left the Half-way House behind,we habitually dozed and shivered and were silent. I dozed off, myself,in considering the question whether I ought to restore a couple of pounds sterling to this creature before losing sight of him,and how it could best be done. In the act of dipping forward as if I were going to bathe among the horses,I woke in a fright and took the question up again.
But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since,although I could recognise nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and shadows of our lamps,I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind that blew at us.Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a screen against the wind,the convicts were closer to me than before.The very first words I heard them interchange as I became conscious,were the words of my own thought, “Two One Pound notes.”
“How did he get ’em?” said the convict I had never seen.
“How should I know?” returned the other. “He had ’em stowed away somehows. Giv him by friends, I expect.”
“I wish,” said the other, with a bitter curse upon the cold, “that I had ’em here.”
“Two one pound notes, or friends?”
“Two one pound notes. I’d sell all the friends I ever had for one,and think it a blessed good bargain. Well?So he says—?”
“So he says,” resumed the convict I had recognised,—“it was all said and done in half a minute,behind a pile of timber in the Dock-yard,—‘You’re a-going to be discharged?’ Yes, I was. Would I find out that boy that had fed him and kep his secret, and give him them two one pound notes?Yes, I would. And I did.”
“More fool you,” growled the other. “I’d have spent ’em on a Man, in wittles and drink.He must have been a green one. Mean to say he knowed nothing of you?”
“Not a ha’porth. Different gangs and different ships. He was tried again for prison breaking, and got made a Lifer.”
“And was that—Honour!—the only time you worked out, in this part of the country?”
“The only time.”
“What might have been your opinion of the place?”
“A most beastly place. Mudbank, mist, swamp, and work; work, swamp, mist, and mudbank.”
They both execrated the place in very strong language, and gradually growled themselves out, and had nothing left to say.
After overhearing this dialogue, I should assuredly have got down and been left in the solitude and darkness of the highway,but for feeling certain that the man had no suspicion of my identity. Indeed,I was not only so changed in the course of nature,but so differently dressed and so differently circumstanced,that it was not at all likely he could have known me without accidental help. Still,the coincidence of our being together on the coach,was sufficiently strange to fill me with a dread that some other coincidence might at any moment connect me,in his hearing, with my name. For this reason, I resolved to alight as soon as we touched the town,and put myself out of his hearing. This device I executed successfully.My little portmanteau was in the boot under my feet; I had but to turn a hinge to get it out;I threw it down before me, got down after it,and was left at the first lamp on the first stones of the town pavement. As to the convicts,they went their way with the coach, and I knew at what point they would be spirited off to the river.In my fancy, I saw the boat with its convict crew waiting for them at the slime-washed stairs, —again heard the gruff “Give way, you!” like an order to dogs,—again saw the wicked Noah’s Ark lying out on the black water.
I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my fear was altogether undefined and vague,but there was great fear upon me. As I walked on to the hotel, I felt that a dread,much exceeding the mere apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition, made me tremble.I am confident that it took no distinctness of shape,and that it was the revival for a few minutes of the terror of childhood.
The coffee-room at the Blue Boar was empty, and I had not only ordered my dinner there,but had sat down to it, before the waiter knew me.As soon as he had apologised for the remissness of his memory,he asked me if he should send Boots for Mr. Pumblechook?
“No,” said I, “certainly not.”
The waiter (it was he who had brought up the Great Remonstrance from the Commercials,on the day when I was bound) appeared surprised,and took the earliest opportunity of putting a dirty old copy of a local newspaper so directly in my way,that I took it up and read this paragraph:—
Our readers will learn, not altogether without interest,in reference to the recent romantic rise in fortune of a young artificer in iron of this neighbourhood (what a theme,by the way, for the magic pen of our as yet not universally acknowledged townsman TOOBY, the poet of our columns!) that the youth’s earliest patron, companion, and friend,was a highly respected individual not entirely unconnected with the corn and seed trade,and whose eminently convenient and commodious business premises are situate within a hundred miles of the High Street.It is not wholly irrespective of our personal feelings that we record HIM as the Mentor of our young Telemachus,for it is good to know that our town produced the founder of the latter’s fortunes.Does the thought-contracted brow of the local Sage or the lustrous eye of local Beauty inquire whose fortunes?We believe that Quintin Matsys was the BLACKSMITH of Antwerp. VERB. SAP.
I entertain a conviction, based upon large experience,that if in the days of my prosperity I had gone to the North Pole,I should have met somebody there, wandering Esquimaux or civilized man,who would have told me that Pumblechook was my earliest patron and the founder of my fortunes.
Chapter XXIX.
Betimes in the morning I was up and out. It was too early yet to go to Miss Havisham’s,so I loitered into the country on Miss Havisham’s side of town,—which was not Joe’s side;I could go there to-morrow,—thinking about my patroness,and painting brilliant pictures of her plans for me.
She had adopted Estella, she had as good as adopted me,and it could not fail to be her intention to bring us together.She reserved it for me to restore the desolate house, admit the sunshine into the dark rooms,set the clocks a-going and the cold hearths a-blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the vermin,—in short, do all the shining deeds of the young Knight of romance, and marry the Princess.I had stopped to look at the house as I passed; and its seared red brick walls, blocked windows,and strong green ivy clasping even the stacks of chimneys with its twigs and tendons,as if with sinewy old arms, had made up a rich attractive mystery, of which I was the hero.Estella was the inspiration of it, and the heart of it, of course. But,though she had taken such strong possession of me,though my fancy and my hope were so set upon her,though her influence on my boyish life and character had been all-powerful, I did not,even that romantic morning, invest her with any attributes save those she possessed.I mention this in this place, of a fixed purpose,because it is the clue by which I am to be followed into my poor labyrinth.According to my experience, the conventional notion of a lover cannot be always true.The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the love of a man,I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once for all; I knew to my sorrow,often and often, if not always, that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace,against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all;I loved her none the less because I knew it,and it had no more influence in restraining me than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.
I so shaped out my walk as to arrive at the gate at my old time.When I had rung at the bell with an unsteady hand, I turned my back upon the gate,while I tried to get my breath and keep the beating of my heart moderately quiet.I heard the side-door open, and steps come across the courtyard; but I pretended not to hear,even when the gate swung on its rusty hinges.
Being at last touched on the shoulder, I started and turned. I started much more naturally then,to find myself confronted by a man in a sober grey dress.The last man I should have expected to see in that place of porter at Miss Havisham’s door.
“Orlick!”
“Ah, young master, there’s more changes than yours. But come in, come in.It’s opposed to my orders to hold the gate open.”
I entered and he swung it, and locked it, and took the key out. “Yes!” said he, facing round, after doggedly preceding me a few steps towards the house. “Here I am!”
“How did you come here?”
“I come here,” he retorted, “on my legs. I had my box brought alongside me in a barrow.”
“Are you here for good?”
“I ain’t here for harm, young master, I suppose?”
I was not so sure of that. I had leisure to entertain the retort in my mind,while he slowly lifted his heavy glance from the pavement, up my legs and arms, to my face.
“Then you have left the forge?” I said.
“Do this look like a forge?” replied Orlick, sending his glance all round him with an air of injury. “Now, do it look like it?”
I asked him how long he had left Gargery’s forge?
“One day is so like another here,” he replied, “that I don’t know without casting it up. However, I come here some time since you left.”
“I could have told you that, Orlick.”
“Ah!” said he, dryly. “But then you’ve got to be a scholar.”
By this time we had come to the house, where I found his room to be one just within the side-door,with a little window in it looking on the courtyard. In its small proportions,it was not unlike the kind of place usually assigned to a gate-porter in Paris.Certain keys were hanging on the wall, to which he now added the gate key;and his patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner division or recess. The whole had a slovenly,confined, and sleepy look, like a cage for a human dormouse; while he,looming dark and heavy in the shadow of a corner by the window,looked like the human dormouse for whom it was fitted up,—as indeed he was.
“I never saw this room before,” I remarked; “but there used to be no Porter here.”
“No,” said he; “not till it got about that there was no protection on the premises,and it come to be considered dangerous,with convicts and Tag and Rag and Bobtail going up and down.And then I was recommended to the place as a man who could give another man as good as he brought,and I took it. It’s easier than bellowsing and hammering.—That’s loaded, that is.”