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Charles Dickens > Great Expectations > Chapter 39

Great Expectations

Chapter 39





I was three-and-twenty years of age. Not another word had I heard

to enlighten me on the subject of my expectations, and my

twenty-third birthday was a week gone. We had left Barnard's Inn

more than a year, and lived in the Temple. Our chambers were in

Garden-court, down by the river.



Mr. Pocket and I had for some time parted company as to our original

relations, though we continued on the best terms. Notwithstanding my

inability to settle to anything - which I hope arose out of the

restless and incomplete tenure on which I held my means - I had a

taste for reading, and read regularly so many hours a day. That

matter of Herbert's was still progressing, and everything with me

was as I have brought it down to the close of the last preceding

chapter.



Business had taken Herbert on a journey to Marseilles. I was alone,

and had a dull sense of being alone. Dispirited and anxious, long

hoping that to-morrow or next week would clear my way, and long

disappointed, I sadly missed the cheerful face and ready response

of my friend.



It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet; and mud,

mud, mud, deep in all the streets. Day after day, a vast heavy veil

had been driving over London from the East, and it drove still, as

if in the East there were an Eternity of cloud and wind. So furious

had been the gusts, that high buildings in town had had the lead

stripped off their roofs; and in the country, trees had been torn

up, and sails of windmills carried away; and gloomy accounts had

come in from the coast, of shipwreck and death. Violent blasts of

rain had accompanied these rages of wind, and the day just closed

as I sat down to read had been the worst of all.



Alterations have been made in that part of the Temple since that

time, and it has not now so lonely a character as it had then, nor

is it so exposed to the river. We lived at the top of the last

house, and the wind rushing up the river shook the house that

night, like discharges of cannon, or breakings of a sea. When the

rain came with it and dashed against the windows, I thought,

raising my eyes to them as they rocked, that I might have fancied

myself in a storm-beaten lighthouse. Occasionally, the smoke came

rolling down the chimney as though it could not bear to go out into

such a night; and when I set the doors open and looked down the

staircase, the staircase lamps were blown out; and when I shaded my

face with my hands and looked through the black windows (opening

them ever so little, was out of the question in the teeth of such

wind and rain) I saw that the lamps in the court were blown out,

and that the lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuddering,

and that the coal fires in barges on the river were being carried

away before the wind like red-hot splashes in the rain.



I read with my watch upon the table, purposing to close my book at

eleven o'clock. As I shut it, Saint Paul's, and all the many

church-clocks in the City - some leading, some accompanying, some

following - struck that hour. The sound was curiously flawed by the

wind; and I was listening, and thinking how the wind assailed and

tore it, when I heard a footstep on the stair.



What nervous folly made me start, and awfully connect it with the

footstep of my dead sister, matters not. It was past in a moment,

and I listened again, and heard the footstep stumble in coming on.

Remembering then, that the staircase-lights were blown out, I took

up my reading-lamp and went out to the stair-head. Whoever was

below had stopped on seeing my lamp, for all was quiet.



"There is some one down there, is there not?" I called out, looking

down.



"Yes," said a voice from the darkness beneath.



"What floor do you want?"



"The top. Mr. Pip."



"That is my name. - There is nothing the matter?"



"Nothing the matter," returned the voice. And the man came on.



I stood with my lamp held out over the stair-rail, and he came

slowly within its light. It was a shaded lamp, to shine upon a

book, and its circle of light was very contracted; so that he was

in it for a mere instant, and then out of it. In the instant, I had

seen a face that was strange to me, looking up with an

incomprehensible air of being touched and pleased by the sight of

me.



Moving the lamp as the man moved, I made out that he was

substantially dressed, but roughly; like a voyager by sea. That he

had long iron-grey hair. That his age was about sixty. That he was

a muscular man, strong on his legs, and that he was browned and

hardened by exposure to weather. As he ascended the last stair or

two, and the light of my lamp included us both, I saw, with a

stupid kind of amazement, that he was holding out both his hands to

me.



"Pray what is your business?" I asked him.



"My business?" he repeated, pausing. "Ah! Yes. I will explain my

business, by your leave."



"Do you wish to come in?"



"Yes," he replied; "I wish to come in, Master."



I had asked him the question inhospitably enough, for I resented

the sort of bright and gratified recognition that still shone in

his face. I resented it, because it seemed to imply that he

expected me to respond to it. But, I took him into the room I had

just left, and, having set the lamp on the table, asked him as

civilly as I could, to explain himself.



He looked about him with the strangest air - an air of wondering

pleasure, as if he had some part in the things he admired - and he

pulled off a rough outer coat, and his hat. Then, I saw that his

head was furrowed and bald, and that the long iron-grey hair grew

only on its sides. But, I saw nothing that in the least explained

him. On the contrary, I saw him next moment, once more holding out

both his hands to me.



"What do you mean?" said I, half suspecting him to be mad.



He stopped in his looking at me, and slowly rubbed his right hand

over his head. "It's disapinting to a man," he said, in a coarse

broken voice, "arter having looked for'ard so distant, and come so

fur; but you're not to blame for that - neither on us is to blame

for that. I'll speak in half a minute. Give me half a minute,

please."



He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire, and covered his

forehead with his large brown veinous hands. I looked at him

attentively then, and recoiled a little from him; but I did not

know him.



"There's no one nigh," said he, looking over his shoulder; "is

there?"



"Why do you, a stranger coming into my rooms at this time of the

night, ask that question?" said I.



"You're a game one," he returned, shaking his head at me with a

deliberate affection, at once most unintelligible and most

exasperating; "I'm glad you've grow'd up, a game one! But don't

catch hold of me. You'd be sorry arterwards to have done it."



I relinquished the intention he had detected, for I knew him! Even

yet, I could not recall a single feature, but I knew him! If the

wind and the rain had driven away the intervening years, had

scattered all the intervening objects, had swept us to the

churchyard where we first stood face to face on such different

levels, I could not have known my convict more distinctly than I

knew him now as he sat in the chair before the fire. No need to

take a file from his pocket and show it to me; no need to take the

handkerchief from his neck and twist it round his head; no need to

hug himself with both his arms, and take a shivering turn across

the room, looking back at me for recognition. I knew him before he

gave me one of those aids, though, a moment before, I had not been

conscious of remotely suspecting his identity.



He came back to where I stood, and again held out both his hands.

Not knowing what to do - for, in my astonishment I had lost my

self-possession - I reluctantly gave him my hands. He grasped them

heartily, raised them to his lips, kissed them, and still held

them.



"You acted noble, my boy," said he. "Noble, Pip! And I have never

forgot it!"



At a change in his manner as if he were even going to embrace me, I

laid a hand upon his breast and put him away.



"Stay!" said I. "Keep off! If you are grateful to me for what I did

when I was a little child, I hope you have shown your gratitude by

mending your way of life. If you have come here to thank me, it was

not necessary. Still, however you have found me out, there must be

something good in the feeling that has brought you here, and I will

not repulse you; but surely you must understand that - I--"



My attention was so attracted by the singularity of his fixed look

at me, that the words died away on my tongue.



"You was a saying," he observed, when we had confronted one another

in silence, "that surely I must understand. What, surely must I

understand?"



"That I cannot wish to renew that chance intercourse with you of

long ago, under these different circumstances. I am glad to believe

you have repented and recovered yourself. I am glad to tell you so.

I am glad that, thinking I deserve to be thanked, you have come to

thank me. But our ways are different ways, none the less. You are

wet, and you look weary. Will you drink something before you go?"



He had replaced his neckerchief loosely, and had stood, keenly

observant of me, biting a long end of it. "I think," he answered,

still with the end at his mouth and still observant of me, "that I

will drink (I thank you) afore I go."



There was a tray ready on a side-table. I brought it to the table

near the fire, and asked him what he would have? He touched one of

the bottles without looking at it or speaking, and I made him some

hot rum-and-water. I tried to keep my hand steady while I did so,

but his look at me as he leaned back in his chair with the long

draggled end of his neckerchief between his teeth - evidently

forgotten - made my hand very difficult to master. When at last I

put the glass to him, I saw with amazement that his eyes were full

of tears.



Up to this time I had remained standing, not to disguise that I

wished him gone. But I was softened by the softened aspect of the

man, and felt a touch of reproach. "I hope," said I, hurriedly

putting something into a glass for myself, and drawing a chair to

the table, "that you will not think I spoke harshly to you just

now. I had no intention of doing it, and I am sorry for it if I

did. I wish you well, and happy!"



As I put my glass to my lips, he glanced with surprise at the end

of his neckerchief, dropping from his mouth when he opened it, and

stretched out his hand. I gave him mine, and then he drank, and

drew his sleeve across his eyes and forehead.



"How are you living?" I asked him.



"I've been a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, other trades besides,

away in the new world," said he: "many a thousand mile of stormy

water off from this."



"I hope you have done well?"



"I've done wonderfully well. There's others went out alonger me as

has done well too, but no man has done nigh as well as me. I'm

famous for it."



"I am glad to hear it."



"I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy."



Without stopping to try to understand those words or the tone in

which they were spoken, I turned off to a point that had just come

into my mind.



"Have you ever seen a messenger you once sent to me," I inquired,

"since he undertook that trust?"



"Never set eyes upon him. I warn't likely to it."



"He came faithfully, and he brought me the two one-pound notes. I

was a poor boy then, as you know, and to a poor boy they were a

little fortune. But, like you, I have done well since, and you must

let me pay them back. You can put them to some other poor boy's

use." I took out my purse.



He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table and opened it, and

he watched me as I separated two one-pound notes from its contents.

They were clean and new, and I spread them out and handed them over

to him. Still watching me, he laid them one upon the other, folded

them long-wise, gave them a twist, set fire to them at the lamp,

and dropped the ashes into the tray.



"May I make so bold," he said then, with a smile that was like a

frown, and with a frown that was like a smile, "as ask you how you

have done well, since you and me was out on them lone shivering

marshes?"



"How?"



"Ah!"



He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the fire,

with his heavy brown hand on the mantelshelf. He put a foot up to

the bars, to dry and warm it, and the wet boot began to steam; but,

he neither looked at it, nor at the fire, but steadily looked at

me. It was only now that I began to tremble.



When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words that were

without sound, I forced myself to tell him (though I could not do

it distinctly), that I had been chosen to succeed to some property.



"Might a mere warmint ask what property?" said he.



I faltered, "I don't know."



"Might a mere warmint ask whose property?" said he.



I faltered again, "I don't know."



"Could I make a guess, I wonder," said the Convict, "at your income

since you come of age! As to the first figure now. Five?"



With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered action, I

rose out of my chair, and stood with my hand upon the back of it,

looking wildly at him.



"Concerning a guardian," he went on. "There ought to have been some

guardian, or such-like, whiles you was a minor. Some lawyer, maybe.

As to the first letter of that lawyer's name now. Would it be J?"



All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its

disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds,

rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had

to struggle for every breath I drew.



"Put it," he resumed, "as the employer of that lawyer whose name

begun with a J, and might be Jaggers - put it as he had come over

sea to Portsmouth, and had landed there, and had wanted to come on

to you. 'However, you have found me out,' you says just now. Well!

However, did I find you out? Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a

person in London, for particulars of your address. That person's

name? Why, Wemmick."



I could not have spoken one word, though it had been to save my

life. I stood, with a hand on the chair-back and a hand on my

breast, where I seemed to be suffocating - I stood so, looking

wildly at him, until I grasped at the chair, when the room began to

surge and turn. He caught me, drew me to the sofa, put me up

against the cushions, and bent on one knee before me: bringing the

face that I now well remembered, and that I shuddered at, very near

to mine.



"Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you! It's me wot has

done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that

guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I

spec'lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that

you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above

work. What odds, dear boy? Do I tell it, fur you to feel a

obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to know as that there

hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head so high that

he could make a gentleman - and, Pip, you're him!"



The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the

repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been

exceeded if he had been some terrible beast.



"Look'ee here, Pip. I'm your second father. You're my son - more to

me nor any son. I've put away money, only for you to spend. When I

was a hired-out shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but

faces of sheep till I half forgot wot men's and women's faces wos

like, I see yourn. I drops my knife many a time in that hut when I

was a-eating my dinner or my supper, and I says, 'Here's the boy

again, a-looking at me whiles I eats and drinks!' I see you there a

many times, as plain as ever I see you on them misty marshes. 'Lord

strike me dead!' I says each time - and I goes out in the air to

say it under the open heavens - 'but wot, if I gets liberty and

money, I'll make that boy a gentleman!' And I done it. Why, look at

you, dear boy! Look at these here lodgings o'yourn, fit for a lord!

A lord? Ah! You shall show money with lords for wagers, and beat

'em!"



In his heat and triumph, and in his knowledge that I had been

nearly fainting, he did not remark on my reception of all this. It

was the one grain of relief I had.



"Look'ee here!" he went on, taking my watch out of my pocket, and

turning towards him a ring on my finger, while I recoiled from his

touch as if he had been a snake, "a gold 'un and a beauty: that's a

gentleman's, I hope! A diamond all set round with rubies; that's a

gentleman's, I hope! Look at your linen; fine and beautiful! Look

at your clothes; better ain't to be got! And your books too,"

turning his eyes round the room, "mounting up, on their shelves, by

hundreds! And you read 'em; don't you? I see you'd been a reading

of 'em when I come in. Ha, ha, ha! You shall read 'em to me, dear

boy! And if they're in foreign languages wot I don't understand, I

shall be just as proud as if I did."



Again he took both my hands and put them to his lips, while my

blood ran cold within me.



"Don't you mind talking, Pip," said he, after again drawing his

sleeve over his eyes and forehead, as the click came in his throat

which I well remembered - and he was all the more horrible to me

that he was so much in earnest; "you can't do better nor keep

quiet, dear boy. You ain't looked slowly forward to this as I have;

you wosn't prepared for this, as I wos. But didn't you never think

it might be me?"



"O no, no, no," I returned, "Never, never!"



"Well, you see it wos me, and single-handed. Never a soul in it but

my own self and Mr. Jaggers."



"Was there no one else?" I asked.



"No," said he, with a glance of surprise: "who else should there

be? And, dear boy, how good looking you have growed! There's bright

eyes somewheres - eh? Isn't there bright eyes somewheres, wot you

love the thoughts on?"



O Estella, Estella!



"They shall be yourn, dear boy, if money can buy 'em. Not that a

gentleman like you, so well set up as you, can't win 'em off of his

own game; but money shall back you! Let me finish wot I was a-

telling you, dear boy. From that there hut and that there

hiring-out, I got money left me by my master (which died, and had

been the same as me), and got my liberty and went for myself. In

every single thing I went for, I went for you. 'Lord strike a

blight upon it,' I says, wotever it was I went for, 'if it ain't

for him!' It all prospered wonderful. As I giv' you to understand

just now, I'm famous for it. It was the money left me, and the

gains of the first few year wot I sent home to Mr. Jaggers - all for

you - when he first come arter you, agreeable to my letter."



O, that he had never come! That he had left me at the forge - far

from contented, yet, by comparison happy!



"And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me, look'ee here, to

know in secret that I was making a gentleman. The blood horses of

them colonists might fling up the dust over me as I was walking;

what do I say? I says to myself, 'I'm making a better gentleman nor

ever you'll be!' When one of 'em says to another, 'He was a

convict, a few year ago, and is a ignorant common fellow now, for

all he's lucky,' what do I say? I says to myself, 'If I ain't a

gentleman, nor yet ain't got no learning, I'm the owner of such.

All on you owns stock and land; which on you owns a brought-up

London gentleman?' This way I kep myself a-going. And this way I

held steady afore my mind that I would for certain come one day and

see my boy, and make myself known to him, on his own ground."



He laid his hand on my shoulder. I shuddered at the thought that

for anything I knew, his hand might be stained with blood.



"It warn't easy, Pip, for me to leave them parts, nor yet it warn't

safe. But I held to it, and the harder it was, the stronger I held,

for I was determined, and my mind firm made up. At last I done it.

Dear boy, I done it!"



I tried to collect my thoughts, but I was stunned. Throughout, I

had seemed to myself to attend more to the wind and the rain than

to him; even now, I could not separate his voice from those voices,

though those were loud and his was silent.



"Where will you put me?" he asked, presently. "I must be put

somewheres, dear boy."



"To sleep?" said I.



"Yes. And to sleep long and sound," he answered; "for I've been

sea-tossed and sea-washed, months and months."



"My friend and companion," said I, rising from the sofa, "is

absent; you must have his room."



"He won't come back to-morrow; will he?"



"No," said I, answering almost mechanically, in spite of my utmost

efforts; "not to-morrow."



"Because, look'ee here, dear boy," he said, dropping his voice, and

laying a long finger on my breast in an impressive manner, "caution

is necessary."



"How do you mean? Caution?"



"By G - , it's Death!"



"What's death?"



"I was sent for life. It's death to come back. There's been

overmuch coming back of late years, and I should of a certainty be

hanged if took."



Nothing was needed but this; the wretched man, after loading

wretched me with his gold and silver chains for years, had risked

his life to come to me, and I held it there in my keeping! If I had

loved him instead of abhorring him; if I had been attracted to him

by the strongest admiration and affection, instead of shrinking

from him with the strongest repugnance; it could have been no

worse. On the contrary, it would have been better, for his

preservation would then have naturally and tenderly addressed my

heart.



My first care was to close the shutters, so that no light might be

seen from without, and then to close and make fast the doors. While

I did so, he stood at the table drinking rum and eating biscuit;

and when I saw him thus engaged, I saw my convict on the marshes at

his meal again. It almost seemed to me as if he must stoop down

presently, to file at his leg.



When I had gone into Herbert's room, and had shut off any other

communication between it and the staircase than through the room in

which our conversation had been held, I asked him if he would go to

bed? He said yes, but asked me for some of my "gentleman's linen"

to put on in the morning. I brought it out, and laid it ready for

him, and my blood again ran cold when he again took me by both

hands to give me good night.



I got away from him, without knowing how I did it, and mended the

fire in the room where we had been together, and sat down by it,

afraid to go to bed. For an hour or more, I remained too stunned to

think; and it was not until I began to think, that I began fully to

know how wrecked I was, and how the ship in which I had sailed was

gone to pieces.



Miss Havisham's intentions towards me, all a mere dream; Estella

not designed for me; I only suffered in Satis House as a

convenience, a sting for the greedy relations, a model with a

mechanical heart to practise on when no other practice was at hand;

those were the first smarts I had. But, sharpest and deepest pain

of all - it was for the convict, guilty of I knew not what crimes,

and liable to be taken out of those rooms where I sat thinking, and

hanged at the Old Bailey door, that I had deserted Joe.



I would not have gone back to Joe now, I would not have gone back

to Biddy now, for any consideration: simply, I suppose, because my

sense of my own worthless conduct to them was greater than every

consideration. No wisdom on earth could have given me the comfort

that I should have derived from their simplicity and fidelity; but

I could never, never, undo what I had done.



In every rage of wind and rush of rain, I heard pursuers. Twice, I

could have sworn there was a knocking and whispering at the outer

door. With these fears upon me, I began either to imagine or recall

that I had had mysterious warnings of this man's approach. That,

for weeks gone by, I had passed faces in the streets which I had

thought like his. That, these likenesses had grown more numerous,

as he, coming over the sea, had drawn nearer. That, his wicked

spirit had somehow sent these messengers to mine, and that now on

this stormy night he was as good as his word, and with me.



Crowding up with these reflections came the reflection that I had

seen him with my childish eyes to be a desperately violent man;

that I had heard that other convict reiterate that he had tried to

murder him; that I had seen him down in the ditch tearing and

fighting like a wild beast. Out of such remembrances I brought into

the light of the fire, a half-formed terror that it might not be

safe to be shut up there with him in the dead of the wild solitary

night. This dilated until it filled the room, and impelled me to

take a candle and go in and look at my dreadful burden.



He had rolled a handkerchief round his head, and his face was set

and lowering in his sleep. But he was asleep, and quietly too,

though he had a pistol lying on the pillow. Assured of this, I

softly removed the key to the outside of his door, and turned it on

him before I again sat down by the fire. Gradually I slipped from

the chair and lay on the floor. When I awoke, without having parted

in my sleep with the perception of my wretchedness, the clocks of

the Eastward churches were striking five, the candles were wasted

out, the fire was dead, and the wind and rain intensified the thick

black darkness.



THIS IS THE END OF THE SECOND STAGE OF PIP'S EXPECTATIONS.

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