Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Chapter 12
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.
End of Chapter 12