GREAT EXPECTATIONS
PART 6
Chapter XII
My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale
young gentleman. The more I thought of the fight, and recalled the pale young
gentleman on his back in various stages of puffy and incrimsoned countenance,
the more certain it appeared that something would be done to me. I felt that
the pale young gentleman's blood was on my head, and that the Law would avenge
it. Without having any definite idea of the penalties I had incurred, it was
clear to me that village boys could not go stalking about the country, ravaging
the houses of gentlefolks and pitching into the studious youth of England,
without laying themselves open to severe punishment. For some days, I even kept
close at home, and looked out at the kitchen door with the greatest caution and
trepidation before going on an errand, lest the officers of the County Jail
should pounce upon me. The pale young gentleman's nose had stained my trousers,
and I tried to wash out that evidence of my guilt in the dead of night. I had
cut my knuckles against the pale young gentleman's teeth, and I twisted my
imagination into a thousand tangles, as I devised incredible ways of accounting
for that damnatory circumstance when I should be haled before the Judges.
When the day came round for my return to the scene
of the deed of violence, my terrors reached their height. Whether myrmidons of
Justice, specially sent down from London, would be lying in ambush behind the
gate;—whether Miss Havisham, preferring to take personal vengeance for an
outrage done to her house, might rise in those grave-clothes of hers, draw a
pistol, and shoot me dead:—whether suborned boys—a numerous band of
mercenaries—might be engaged to fall upon me in the brewery, and cuff me until
I was no more;—it was high testimony to my confidence in the spirit of the pale
young gentleman, that I never imagined him accessory to these retaliations;
they always came into my mind as the acts of injudicious relatives of his,
goaded on by the state of his visage and an indignant sympathy with the family
features.
However, go to Miss Havisham's I must, and go I
did. And behold! nothing came of the late struggle. It was not alluded to in
any way, and no pale young gentleman was to be discovered on the premises. I
found the same gate open, and I explored the garden, and even looked in at the
windows of the detached house; but my view was suddenly stopped by the closed
shutters within, and all was lifeless. Only in the corner where the combat had
taken place could I detect any evidence of the young gentleman's existence.
There were traces of his gore in that spot, and I covered them with
garden-mould from the eye of man.
On the broad landing between Miss Havisham's own
room and that other room in which the long table was laid out, I saw a
garden-chair,—a light chair on wheels, that you pushed from behind. It had been
placed there since my last visit, and 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 learnt
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,—or anything but my daily dinner,—nor ever stipulate
that I should be paid for my services.
Estella was always about, and always let me in and
out, but never told me I might kiss her again. Sometimes, she would coldly
tolerate me; sometimes, she would condescend to me; sometimes, she would be
quite familiar with me; sometimes, she would tell me energetically that she
hated me. Miss Havisham would often ask me in a whisper, or when we were alone,
"Does she grow prettier and prettier, Pip?" And when I said yes (for
indeed she did), would seem to enjoy it greedily. Also, when we played at cards
Miss Havisham would look on, with a miserly relish of Estella's moods, whatever
they were. And sometimes, when her moods were so many and so contradictory of
one another that I was puzzled what to say or do, Miss Havisham would embrace
her with lavish fondness, murmuring something in her ear that sounded like
"Break their hearts my pride and hope, break their hearts and have no
mercy!"
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, but 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 told Joe about the pale young
gentleman, if I had not previously been betrayed into those enormous inventions
to which I had confessed. Under the circumstances, I felt that Joe could hardly
fail to discern in the pale young gentleman, an appropriate passenger to be put
into the black velvet coach; therefore, I said nothing of him. Besides, that
shrinking from having Miss Havisham and Estella discussed, which had come upon
me in the beginning, grew much more potent as time went on. I reposed complete
confidence in no one but Biddy; but I told poor Biddy everything. Why it came
natural to 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.
Meanwhile, councils went on in the kitchen at home,
fraught with almost insupportable aggravation to my exasperated spirit. That
ass, Pumblechook, used often to come over of a night for the purpose of
discussing my prospects with my sister; and I really do believe (to this hour
with less penitence than I ought to feel), that if these hands could have taken
a linchpin out of his chaise-cart, they would have done it. The miserable man
was a man of that confined stolidity of mind, that he could not discuss my
prospects without having me before him,—as it were, to operate upon,—and he
would drag me up from my stool (usually by the collar) where I was quiet in a
corner, and, putting me before the fire as if I were going to be cooked, would
begin by saying, "Now, Mum, here is this boy! Here is this boy which you
brought up by hand. Hold up your head, boy, and be forever grateful unto them
which so did do. Now, Mum, with respections to this boy!" And then he
would rumple my hair the wrong way,—which from my earliest remembrance, as
already hinted, I have in my soul denied the right of any fellow-creature to
do,—and would hold me before him by the sleeve,—a spectacle of imbecility only
to be equalled by himself.
Then, he and my sister would pair off in such
nonsensical speculations about Miss Havisham, and about what she would do with
me and for me, that I used to want—quite painfully—to burst into spiteful
tears, fly at Pumblechook, and pummel him all over. In these dialogues, my
sister spoke to me as if she were morally wrenching one of my teeth out at
every reference; while Pumblechook himself, self-constituted my patron, would
sit supervising me with a depreciatory eye, like the architect of my fortunes
who thought himself engaged on a very unremunerative job.
In these discussions, Joe bore no part. But he was
often talked at, while they were in progress, by reason of Mrs. Joe's
perceiving that he was not favorable to my being taken from the forge. I was
fully old enough now to be apprenticed to Joe; and when Joe sat with the poker
on his knees thoughtfully raking out the ashes between the lower bars, my
sister would so distinctly construe that innocent action into opposition on his
part, that she would dive at him, take the poker out of his hands, shake him,
and put it away. There was a most irritating end to every one of these debates.
All in a moment, with nothing to lead up to it, my sister would stop herself in
a yawn, and catching sight of me as it were incidentally, would swoop upon me
with, "Come! there's enough of you! You get along to bed; you've given
trouble enough for one night, I hope!" As if I had besought them as a
favor to bother my life out.
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!"
I thought it best to hint, through the medium of a
meditative look, that this might be occasioned by circumstances over which I
had no control.
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 along with you."
When I got home at night, and delivered this
message for Joe, my sister "went on the Rampage," in a more alarming
degree than at any previous period. She asked me and Joe whether we supposed
she was door-mats under our feet, and how we dared to use her so, and what
company we graciously thought she was fit for? When she had exhausted a torrent
of such inquiries, she threw a candlestick at Joe, burst into a loud sobbing,
got out the dustpan,—which was always a very bad sign,—put on her coarse apron,
and began cleaning up to a terrible extent. Not satisfied with a dry cleaning,
she took to a pail and scrubbing-brush, and cleaned us out of house and home,
so that we stood shivering in the back-yard. It was ten o'clock at night before
we ventured to creep in again, and then she asked Joe why he hadn't married a
Negress Slave at once? Joe offered no answer, poor fellow, but stood feeling
his whisker and looking dejectedly at me, as if he thought it really might have
been a better speculation.
Chapter XIII
It was a trial to my feelings, on the next day but
one, to see Joe arraying himself in his Sunday clothes to accompany me to Miss
Havisham's. However, as he thought his court-suit necessary to the occasion, it
was not for me to tell him that he looked far better in his working-dress; the
rather, because I knew he made himself so dreadfully uncomfortable, entirely on
my account, and that it was for me he pulled up his shirt-collar so very high
behind, that it made the hair on the crown of his head stand up like a tuft of
feathers.
At breakfast-time my sister declared her intention
of going to town with us, and being left at Uncle Pumblechook's and called for
"when we had done with our fine ladies"—a way of putting the case,
from which Joe appeared inclined to augur the worst. The forge was shut up for
the day, and Joe inscribed in chalk upon the door (as it was his custom to do
on the very rare occasions when he was not at work) the monosyllable HOUT,
accompanied by a sketch of an arrow supposed to be flying in the direction he
had taken.
We walked to town, my sister leading the way in a
very large beaver bonnet, and carrying a basket like the Great Seal of England
in plaited Straw, a pair of pattens, a spare shawl, and an umbrella, though it
was a fine bright day. I am not quite clear whether these articles were carried
penitentially or ostentatiously; but I rather think they were displayed as
articles of property,—much as Cleopatra or any other sovereign lady on the
Rampage might exhibit her wealth in a pageant or procession.
When we came to Pumblechook's, my sister bounced in
and left us. As it was almost noon, Joe and I held straight on to Miss
Havisham's house. Estella opened the gate as usual, and, the moment she
appeared, Joe took his hat off and stood weighing it by the brim in both his
hands; as if he had some urgent reason in his mind for being particular to half
a quarter of an ounce.
Estella took no notice of either of us, but led us
the way that I knew so well. I followed next to her, and Joe came last. When I
looked back at Joe in the long passage, he was still weighing his hat with the
greatest care, and was coming after us in long strides on the tips of his toes.
Estella told me we were both to go in, so I took
Joe by the coat-cuff and conducted him into Miss Havisham's presence. She was
seated at her dressing-table, and looked round at us immediately.
"Oh!" said she to Joe. "You are the
husband of the sister of this boy?"
I could hardly have imagined dear old Joe looking
so unlike himself or so like some extraordinary bird; standing as he did
speechless, with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if he
wanted a worm.
"You are the husband," repeated Miss
Havisham, "of the sister of this boy?"
It was very aggravating; but, throughout the
interview, Joe persisted in addressing Me instead of Miss Havisham.
"Which I meantersay, Pip," Joe now
observed in a manner that was at once expressive of forcible argumentation,
strict confidence, and great politeness, "as I hup and married your
sister, and I were at the time what you might call (if you was anyways
inclined) a single man."
"Well!" said Miss Havisham. "And you
have reared the boy, with the intention of taking him for your apprentice; is
that so, Mr. Gargery?"
"You know, Pip," replied Joe, "as
you and me were ever friends, and it were looked for'ard to betwixt us, as
being calc'lated to lead to larks. Not but what, Pip, if you had ever made
objections to the business,—such as its being open to black and sut, or
such-like,—not but what they would have been attended to, don't you see?"
"Has the boy," said Miss Havisham,
"ever made any objection? Does he like the trade?"
"Which it is well beknown to yourself,
Pip," returned Joe, strengthening his former mixture of argumentation, confidence,
and politeness, "that it were the wish of your own hart." (I saw the
idea suddenly break upon him that he would adapt his epitaph to the occasion,
before he went on to say) "And there weren't no objection on your part,
and Pip it were the great wish of your hart!"
It was quite in vain for me to endeavor to make him
sensible that he ought to speak to Miss Havisham. The more I made faces and
gestures to him to do it, the more confidential, argumentative, and polite, he
persisted in being to Me.
"Have you brought his indentures with
you?" asked Miss Havisham.
"Well, Pip, you know," replied Joe, as if
that were a little unreasonable, "you yourself see me put 'em in my 'at,
and therefore you know as they are here." With which he took them out, and
gave them, not to Miss Havisham, but to me. I am afraid I was ashamed of the
dear good fellow,—I know I was ashamed of him,—when I saw that Estella stood at
the back of Miss Havisham's chair, and that her eyes laughed mischievously. I
took the indentures out of his hand and gave them to Miss Havisham.
"You expected," said Miss Havisham, as
she looked them over, "no premium with the boy?"
"Joe!" I remonstrated, for he made no
reply at all. "Why don't you answer—"
"Pip," returned Joe, cutting me short as
if he were hurt, "which I meantersay that were not a question requiring a
answer betwixt yourself and me, and which you know the answer to be full well
No. You know it to be No, Pip, and wherefore should I say it?"
Miss Havisham glanced at him as if she understood
what he really was better than I had thought possible, seeing what he was
there; 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," said Joe,
conveying to me a sensation, first of burning and then of freezing, for I felt
as if that familiar expression were applied to Miss Havisham,—"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 by, Pip!" said Miss Havisham.
"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 up
stairs 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 conversational and able to walk
away.
I have reason to think that Joe's intellects were
brightened by the encounter they had passed through, and that on our way to
Pumblechook's he invented a subtle and deep design. My reason is to be found in
what took place in Mr. Pumblechook's parlor: where, on our presenting
ourselves, my sister sat in conference with that detested seedsman.
"Well?" cried my sister, addressing us
both at once. "And what's happened to you? I wonder you condescend to come
back to such poor society as this, I am sure I do!"
"Miss Havisham," said Joe, with a fixed
look at me, like an effort of remembrance, "made it wery partick'ler that
we should give her—were it compliments or respects, Pip?"
"Compliments," I said.
"Which that were my own belief," answered
Joe; "her compliments to Mrs. J. Gargery—"
"Much good they'll do me!" observed my
sister; but rather gratified too.
"And wishing," pursued Joe, with another
fixed look at me, like another effort of remembrance, "that the state of
Miss Havisham's elth were sitch as would have—allowed, were it, Pip?"
"Of her having the pleasure," I added.
"Of ladies' company," said Joe. And drew
a long breath.
"Well!" cried my sister, with a mollified
glance at Mr. Pumblechook. "She might have had the politeness to send that
message at first, but it's better late than never. And what did she give young
Rantipole here?"
"She giv' him," said Joe,
"nothing."
Mrs. Joe was going to break out, but Joe went on.
"What she giv'," said Joe, "she giv'
to his friends. 'And by his friends,' were her explanation, 'I mean into the
hands of his sister Mrs. J. Gargery.' Them were her words; 'Mrs. J. Gargery.'
She mayn't have know'd," added Joe, with an appearance of reflection,
"whether it were Joe, or Jorge."
My sister looked at Pumblechook: who smoothed the
elbows of his wooden arm-chair, and nodded at her and at the fire, as if he had
known all about it beforehand.
"And how much have you got?" asked my
sister, laughing. Positively laughing!
"What would present company say to ten
pound?" demanded Joe.
"They'd say," returned my sister, curtly,
"pretty well. Not too much, but pretty well."
"It's more than that, then," said Joe.
That fearful Impostor, Pumblechook, immediately
nodded, and said, as he rubbed the arms of his chair, "It's more than
that, Mum."
"Why, you don't mean to say—" began my
sister.
"Yes I do, Mum," said Pumblechook;
"but wait a bit. Go on, Joseph. Good in you! Go on!"
"What would present company say,"
proceeded Joe, "to twenty pound?"
"Handsome would be the word," returned my
sister.
"Well, then," said Joe, "It's more
than twenty pound."
That abject hypocrite, Pumblechook, nodded again,
and said, with a patronizing laugh, "It's more than that, Mum. Good again!
Follow her up, Joseph!"
"Then to make an end of it," said Joe,
delightedly handing the bag to my sister; "it's five-and-twenty
pound."
"It's five-and-twenty pound, Mum," echoed
that basest of swindlers, Pumblechook, rising to shake hands with her;
"and it's no more than your merits (as I said when my opinion was asked),
and I wish you joy of the money!"
If the villain had stopped here, his case would
have been sufficiently awful, but he blackened his guilt by proceeding to take
me into custody, with a right of patronage that left all his former criminality
far behind.
"Now you see, Joseph and wife," said
Pumblechook, as he took me by the arm above the elbow, "I am one of them
that always go right through with what they've begun. This boy must be bound,
out of hand. That's my way. Bound out of hand."
"Goodness knows, Uncle Pumblechook," said
my sister (grasping the money), "we're deeply beholden to you."
"Never mind me, Mum," returned that
diabolical cornchandler. "A pleasure's a pleasure all the world over. But
this boy, you know; we must have him bound. I said I'd see to it—to tell you
the truth."
The Justices were sitting in the Town Hall near at
hand, and we at once went over to have me bound apprentice to Joe in the
Magisterial presence. I say we went over, but I was pushed over by Pumblechook,
exactly as if I had that moment picked a pocket or fired a rick; indeed, it was
the general impression in Court that I had been taken red-handed; for, as
Pumblechook shoved me before him through the crowd, I heard some people say,
"What's he done?" and others, "He's a young 'un, too, but looks
bad, don't he?" One person of mild and benevolent aspect even gave me a
tract ornamented with a woodcut of a malevolent young man fitted up with a
perfect sausage-shop of fetters, and entitled TO BE READ IN MY CELL.
The Hall was a queer place, I thought, with higher
pews in it than a church,—and with people hanging over the pews looking on,—and
with mighty Justices (one with a powdered head) leaning back in chairs, with
folded arms, or taking snuff, or going to sleep, or writing, or reading the
newspapers,—and with some shining black portraits on the walls, which my
unartistic eye regarded as a composition of hardbake and sticking-plaster.
Here, in a corner my indentures were duly signed and attested, and I was
"bound"; Mr. Pumblechook holding me all the while as if we had looked
in on our way to the scaffold, to have those little preliminaries disposed of.
When we had come out again, and had got rid of the
boys who had been put into great spirits by the expectation of seeing me
publicly tortured, and who were much disappointed to find that my friends were
merely rallying round me, we went back to Pumblechook's. And there my sister
became so excited by the twenty-five guineas, that nothing would serve her but
we must have a dinner out of that windfall at the Blue Boar, and that
Pumblechook must go over in his chaise-cart, and bring the Hubbles and Mr.
Wopsle.
It was agreed to be done; and a most melancholy day
I passed. For, it inscrutably appeared to stand to reason, in the minds of the
whole company, that I was an excrescence on the entertainment. And to make it
worse, they all asked me from time to time,—in short, whenever they had nothing
else to do,—why I didn't enjoy myself? And what could I possibly do then, but
say I was enjoying myself,—when I wasn't!
However, they were grown up and had their own way,
and they made the most of it. That swindling Pumblechook, exalted into the
beneficent contriver of the whole occasion, actually took the top of the table;
and, when he addressed them on the subject of my being bound, and had
fiendishly congratulated them on my being liable to imprisonment if I played at
cards, drank strong liquors, kept late hours or bad company, or indulged in
other vagaries which the form of my indentures appeared to contemplate as next
to inevitable, he placed me standing on a chair beside him to illustrate his
remarks.
My only other remembrances of the great festival
are, That they wouldn't let me go to sleep, but whenever they saw me dropping
off, woke me up and told me to enjoy myself. That, rather late in the evening
Mr. Wopsle gave us Collins's ode, and threw his bloodstained sword in thunder
down, with such effect, that a waiter came in and said, "The Commercials
underneath sent up their compliments, and it wasn't the Tumblers' Arms."
That, they were all in excellent spirits on the road home, and sang, O Lady
Fair! Mr. Wopsle taking the bass, and asserting with a tremendously strong
voice (in reply to the inquisitive bore who leads that piece of music in a most
impertinent manner, by wanting to know all about everybody's private affairs)
that he was the man with his white locks flowing, and that he was upon the
whole the weakest pilgrim going.
Finally, I remember that when I got into my little
bedroom, I was truly wretched, and had a strong conviction on me that I should
never like Joe's trade. I had liked it once, but once was not now.
Chapter XIV
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 very pleasant place to me,
because of my sister's temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed
in it. I had believed in the best parlor as a most elegant saloon; 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. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it 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 'prentice, I should
be distinguished and happy. Now the reality was in my hold, 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. There have been occasions in my
later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a
thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from
anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy
and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through
the newly entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.
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 of what I proceed to add 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 Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, that I
worked with tolerable zeal against the grain. It is not possible to know how
far the influence of any amiable honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into
the world; but it is very possible to know how it has touched one's self in
going by, and I know right well that any good that intermixed itself with my
apprenticeship came of plain contented Joe, and not of restlessly aspiring
discontented me.
What I wanted, who can say? How can I say, when I
never knew? What I dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I, being at my
grimiest and commonest, should lift up my eyes and see Estella looking in at
one of the wooden windows of the forge. I was haunted by the fear that she
would, sooner or later, find me out, with a black face and hands, doing the
coarsest part of my work, and would exult over me and despise me. Often after
dark, when I was pulling the bellows for Joe, and we were singing Old Clem, and
when the thought how we used to sing it at Miss Havisham's would seem to show
me Estella's face in the fire, with her pretty hair fluttering in the wind and
her eyes scorning me,—often at such a time I would look towards those panels of
black night in the wall which the wooden windows then were, and would fancy
that I saw her just drawing her face away, and would believe that she had come
at last.
After that, when we went in to supper, the place
and the meal would have a more homely look than ever, and I would feel more
ashamed of home than ever, in my own ungracious breast.
To be continued