Part 10

I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open, and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause, and applied Tickler to its farther investigation.

"Where have you been?" she demanded, between tickles.

"I have only been to the churchyard," said I, crying and rubbing myself.

"Churchyard!" repeated my sister. "If it warn't for me you'd been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there! Who brought you up by hand?"

My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsolately at the fire. For the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was under to steal, from under my sister's very roof, rose before me in the avenging coals.

"Ha!" said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. "Churchyard, indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two." (One of us, by the by, had not said it at all.) "You'll drive _me_ to the churchyard betwixt you, one of these days, and oh, a pr-r-recious pair you'd be without me!"

As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at me over his leg, as if he were mentally calculating what kind of pair we should make, under such circumstances. After that, he sat feeling his right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about with his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times.

My sister had a sudden, severe way of cutting and buttering bread, which never varied. Now she ripped me off a section of loaf, bidding me eat and be thankful. Though I was hungry, I dared not eat; for she was a strict housekeeper who would miss any further slices, and I must not let that dreadful man out in the churchyard go hungry. So I resolved to put my hunk of bread and butter down the leg of my trousers--a plan which I presently found the chance to carry out.

It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day with a copper-stick. I tried it with the load upon my leg (and that made me think afresh of the man with the load on _his_ leg), and found the tendency of exercise to bring the bread-and-butter out at my ankle quite unmanageable. Happily, I slipped away and deposited that part of my conscience in my garret bedroom.

"Hark!" said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking a final warm in the chimney corner before being sent up to bed; "was that great guns, Joe?"

"Ah!" said Joe. "There's another conwict off."

"What does that mean, Joe?" said I.

Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said snappishly, "Escaped. Escaped."

"There was a conwict off last night," added Joe, "after sunset-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears they're firing warning of another."

"Who's firing?" said I.

"Drat that boy," interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work, "what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies."

It was not very polite to herself, I thought, as she always answered. But she never was polite, unless there was company.

Presently Joe said to me in a quiet kind of whisper. "Hulks, Pip; prison ships. They're firing because one of the thieves on the hulks is got away."

Thieves! Prison ships! And here I was planning to rob my sister of the bread and butter; and honest Joe of a file! Truly conscience is a fearful thing, yet there was no turning back for me.

That night the rest of the dreadful deed was done. Just before daybreak I crept out, carrying the file which I had found among Joe's tools, the slice of bread, and a pie which was too convenient in the pantry, and which I took in the hope it was not intended for early use and would not be missed for some time.

I found the man with the iron waiting for me, crouched behind a tombstone.

"Are you alone?" he asked hoarsely.

"Yes, sir."

"No one following you?"

"No, sir."

"Well," said he, "I believe you. Give me them wittles, quick."

I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now noticed a decided similarity between the dog's way of eating and the man's. The man took strong, sharp, sudden bites, just like the dog. He swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast; and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought there was danger in every direction of somebody's coming to take the pie away.

"Now give us hold of the file, boy," he said, when he had finished swallowing.

I did so, and he bent to the iron like a madman, and began filing it away in quick, fierce rasps. I judged this a good time to slip away, and he paid no further attention to me. The last I heard of him, the file was still going.

"And where the mischief ha' you been?" was Mrs. Joe's Christmas salutation, when I and my conscience showed ourselves.

I said I had been down to hear the chimes.

"Ah, well!" observed Mrs. Joe. "You might ha' done worse."

Not a doubt of that, I thought.

We were to have a superb dinner--so Joe slyly told me--consisting of a leg of pork and greens, a pair of roast stuffed fowls, and a handsome pie which had been baked the day before.

I started when he spoke about the pie, but his blue eyes beamed upon me kindly.

My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously; that is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working clothes, Joe was a well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday clothes, he was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than anything else. Nothing that he wore then fitted him or seemed to belong to him. On the present festive occasion he emerged from his room, when the blithe bells were ringing, the picture of misery, in a full suit of Sunday penitentials. As to me, I think my sister must have had some general idea that I was a young offender who must be punished each holy-day by being put into clothes so tight that I could on no account move my arms and legs without danger of something bursting.

Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving spectacle for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suffered outside was nothing to what I underwent within. The terrors that had assailed me whenever Mrs. Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of the room, were only to be equalled by the remorse with which my mind dwelt on what my hands had done. Under the weight of my wicked secret, I pondered whether even the Church would be powerful enough to shield me from the wrath to come.

Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us; and Mr. Hubble, the wheelwright, and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumblechook (Joe's uncle, but Mrs. Joe appropriated him), who was a well-to-do cornchandler in the nearest town, and drove his own chaise-cart. The dinner hour was half-past one.

When Joe and I got home, we found the table laid, and Mrs. Joe dressed, and the dinner dressing, and the front door unlocked (it never was at any other time) for the company to enter by, and everything most splendid. And still, not a word of the robbery.

Oh, the agony of that festive dinner! During each helping of my plate I ate mechanically, hardly daring to lift my eyes, and clutching frantically at the leg of the table for support. With each mouthful we drew nearer to that pie--and discovery! But as they chattered away, I felt a faint hope that they might perhaps forget the pie.

They did not, for presently my sister said to Joe, "Clean plates--cold."

I got a fresh hold on the table leg. I foresaw I was doomed.

"You must taste," said my sister, addressing the guests with her best grace, "you must finish with a pie, in honor of Uncle Pumblechook."

The company murmured their compliments. Uncle Pumblechook, sensible of having deserved well of his fellow-creatures, said,--quite vivaciously, all things considered,--"Well, Mrs. Joe, we'll do our best endeavors; let us have a cut at this same pie."

My sister went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the pantry. I saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife. I saw reawakening appetite in the Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble remark that "a bit of savory pie would lay atop of anything you could mention, and do no harm," and I heard Joe say "you shall have some, Pip." I have never been absolutely certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror, merely in spirit, or in the bodily hearing of the company. I felt that I could bear no more, and that I must run away. I released the leg of the table, and ran for my life.

But I ran no farther than the house door, for there I ran headforemost into a party of soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held out a pair of handcuffs to me, saying, "Here you are, look sharp, come on!"

The vision of a file of soldiers caused the dinner party to rise from the table in confusion, and caused Mrs. Joe, re-entering the kitchen empty-handed, to stop short and stare, in her wondering lament of "Gracious goodness, gracious me, what's gone--with the--pie!"

"Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen," said the sergeant, "but as I have mentioned at the door to this smart young shaver" (which he hadn't), "I am on a chase in the name of the king, and I want the blacksmith."

"And pray, what might you want with him?" retorted my sister, quick to resent his being wanted at all.

"Missis," returned the gallant sergeant, "speaking for myself, I should reply, the honor and pleasure of his fine wife's acquaintance; speaking for the king, I answer, a little job done."

This was received as rather neat in the sergeant; insomuch that Mr. Pumblechook cried audibly, "Good again!"

"You see, blacksmith," said the sergeant, who had by this time picked out Joe with his eye, "we have had an accident with these, and I find the lock of one of 'em goes wrong, and the coupling don't act pretty. As they are wanted for immediate service, will you throw your eye over them?"

Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the job would necessitate the lighting of his forge fire, and would take nearer two hours than one.

"Will it? Then will you set about it at once, blacksmith," said the off-hand sergeant, "as it's on his Majesty's service. And if my men can bear a hand anywhere, they'll make themselves useful." With that, he called to his men, who came trooping into the kitchen one after another, and piled their arms in a corner.

All these things I saw without then knowing that I saw them, for I was in an agony of apprehension. But, beginning to perceive that the handcuffs were not for me, and that the military had so far got the better of the pie as to put it in the background, I collected a little more of my scattered wits.

The soldiers were out hunting for the convicts that had escaped. And as soon as Joe had mended the handcuffs, they fell in line and started again for the marshes. Joe caught an appealing look from me, and timidly asked if he and I might go along with them. The consent was given and away we went.

After a rough journey over bogs and through briars, a loud shout from the soldiers in front announced that one of the fugitives had been caught. We ran hastily up and peered into a ditch. It was my convict.

He was hustled into the handcuffs and hustled up a hill where stood a rough hut or sentry-box, and here we halted to rest.

My convict never looked at me, except once. While we were in the hut, he stood before the fire looking thoughtfully at it, or putting up his feet by turns upon the hob. Suddenly he turned to the sergeant and remarked:

"I wish to say something respecting this escape. It may prevent some persons laying under suspicion alonger me."

"You can say what you like," returned the sergeant, standing coolly looking at him with his arms folded, "but you have no call to say it here. You'll have opportunity enough to say about it, and hear about it, before it's done with, you know."

"I know, but this is another p'int, a separate matter. A man can't starve; at least _I_ can't. I took some wittles, up at the village over yonder--where the church stands a'most out on the marshes."

"You mean stole," said the sergeant.

"And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's."

"Hallo!" said the sergeant, staring at Joe.

"Hallo, Pip!" said Joe, staring at me.

"It was some broken wittle--that's what it was--and a dram of liquor, and a pie."

"Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?" asked the sergeant, confidentially.

"My wife did, at the very moment when you came in. Don't you know, Pip?"

"So," said my convict, turning his eyes on Joe in a moody manner, and without the least glance at me; "so you're the blacksmith, are you? Then I'm sorry to say I've eat your pie."

"God knows you're welcome to it--so far as it was ever mine," returned Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe. "We don't know what you have done, but we wouldn't have you starve to death for it, poor miserable fellow-creatur. Would us, Pip?"

Something that I had noticed before clicked in the man's throat again, and he turned his back. The boat had returned, and his guard were ready, so we followed him to the landing-place made of rough stakes and stones, and saw him put into the boat, which was rowed by a crew of convicts like himself. No one seemed surprised to see him, but they looked at him stolidly and rowed him back to the hulks as a matter of course.

My state of mind regarding the pie was curious. I do not recall that I felt any tenderness of conscience in reference to Mrs. Joe, when the fear of being found out was lifted off me. But I loved Joe--perhaps for no better reason in those early days than because the dear fellow let me love him--and, as to him, my inner self was not so easily composed. It was much upon my mind (particularly when I first saw him looking about for his file) that I ought to tell Joe the whole truth. Yet I did not, and for the reason that I mistrusted that if I did he would think me worse than I was. The fear of losing Joe's confidence and of thenceforth sitting in the chimney corner at night staring drearily at my forever lost companion and friend, tied up my tongue. And so the whole truth never came out.

*II. PIP AND ESTELLA*

At this time I was only an errand boy around the forge, and my education was limited to spelling out the names on the tombstones. So in the evenings they sent me to school to Mr. Wopsle's aunt, a worthy woman who used to go to sleep regularly from six to seven while her small class was supposed to study.

But I was lucky enough to find a friend in her granddaughter, Biddy. She was about my own age, and, while her shoes were generally untied and her hands sometimes dirty, her heart was in the right place and she had a good head. So with her help I struggled through my letters as if they had been a bramble-bush, getting considerably worried and scratched by each letter in turn. Then came the dreaded nine figures to add to my troubles. But at last I learned to read and cipher.

I do not know which was the prouder, Joe or I, when I wrote him my first letter (which was hardly needed, as he sat beside me while I wrote it).

"I say, Pip, old chap!" he cried, opening his eyes very wide, "what a scholar you are! Ain't you?"

"I should like to be," I answered, looking at the slate with satisfaction.

Mrs. Joe made occasional trips with Uncle Pumblechook on market-days, to assist him in buying such household stuffs and goods as required a woman's judgment; Uncle Pumblechook being a bachelor and reposing no confidences in his domestic servant. On this particular evening she came home from such a trip, bringing Uncle Pumblechook with her.

"Now," said she, unwrapping herself with haste and excitement, and throwing her bonnet back on her shoulders where it hung by the strings, "if this boy ain't grateful this night, he never will be!"

I looked as grateful as any boy possibly could, who was wholly uninformed why he ought to assume that expression.

"You have heard of Miss Havisham up town, haven't you?" continued my sister, addressing Joe. "She wants this boy to go and play there. And of course he's going. And he had _better_ play there," said my sister, shaking her head at me as an encouragement to be extremely light and sportive, "or I'll work him!"

I had heard of Miss Havisham up town--everybody for miles round had heard of Miss Havisham up town--as an immensely rich and grim lady who lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who led a life of seclusion.

"Well to be sure!" said Joe, astounded. "I wonder how she come to know Pip!"

"Noodle!" cried my sister. "Who said she knew him? Couldn't she ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go and play there? And couldn't Uncle Pumblechook, being always considerate and thoughtful of us, mention this boy that I have been a willing slave to? And couldn't Uncle Pumblechook, being sensible that for anything we can tell, this boy's fortune may be made by his going to Miss Havisham's, offer to take him into town to-night in his own chaise-cart, and to keep him to-night, and to take him with his own hands to Miss Havisham's to-morrow morning? And Lor-a-mussy me!" cried my sister, casting off her bonnet in sudden desperation, "here I stand talking to mere Mooncalfs, with Uncle Pumblechook waiting, and the mare catching cold at the door, and the boy grimed with dirt from the hair of his head to the sole of his foot!"

With that, she pounced on me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my face was squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put under taps of water-butts, and I was soaped and kneaded, and towelled, and thumped, and harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite beside myself.

When my ablutions were completed, I was put into clean linen of the stiffest character, like a young penitent into sackcloth, and was trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. I was then delivered over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as if he were the Sheriff, saying pompously, "Boy, be forever grateful to all friends, but especially unto them which brought you up by hand!"

"Good-bye, Joe!"

"God bless you, Pip, old chap!"

I had never parted from him before, and what with my feelings and what with soap-suds, I could at first see no stars from the chaise-cart. But they twinkled out one by one, without throwing any light on the questions as to why on earth I was going to play at Miss Havisham's, and what on earth I was expected to play at.

I spent the night at Uncle Pumblechook's, and the next morning after breakfast we proceeded to Miss Havisham's. It was a dismal looking house with a great many iron bars to it. Some of the windows had been walled up, and the others were rustily barred. There was a courtyard in front, which was also barred; so we had to wait, after ringing the bell, for some one to open it.

Presently a window was raised, and a clear voice demanded, "What name?"

"Pumblechook," was the reply.

The voice returned, "Quite right," and the window was shut again, and a young lady came across the courtyard, with keys in her hand.

"This," said Mr. Pumblechook, "is Pip."

"This is Pip, is it?" returned the young lady, who was very pretty and seemed very proud; "come in, Pip."

Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped him with the gate.

"Oh!" she said. "Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?"

"If Miss Havisham wished to see me," returned Mr. Pumblechook, discomfited.

"Ah!" said the girl; "but you see she don't."

She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way, that Mr. Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled dignity, could not protest.

We went into the house by a side door--the great front entrance had two chains across it outside--and the first thing I noticed was that the passages were all dark, and that she had left a candle burning there. She took it up, and we went through more passages and up a staircase, and still it was all dark, and only the candle lighted us.

At last we came to the door of a room and she said, "Go in."

I answered, more in shyness than politeness, "After you, miss."

To this she returned, "Don't be ridiculous, boy; I am not going in." And scornfully walked away, and--what was worse--took the candle with her.

This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid. However, the only thing to do being to knock at the door, I knocked, and was told from within to enter. I entered, therefore, and found myself in a pretty large room, well lighted with wax candles. No glimpse of daylight was to be seen in it. It was a dressing-room, as I supposed from the furniture, though much of it was of forms and uses then quite unknown to me. But prominent in it was a draped table with a gilded looking-glass, and that I made out at first sight to be a fine lady's dressing-table.

In an arm-chair, with an elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see.

She was dressed in rich materials,--satins and lace and silks,--all of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about. She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on,--the other was on the table near her hand,--her veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on, and her handkerchief, gloves, some flowers, and a prayer-book lay confusedly heaped about the looking-glass.

"Who is it?" said the lady at the table.

"Pip, ma'am."

"Pip?"

"Mr. Pumblechook's boy, ma'am. Come--to play."

"Look at me," said Miss Havisham. "You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?"

I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie comprehended in the answer "No."

"I am tired," said Miss Havisham. "I want diversion, and I have done with men and women. Play."

I looked foolish and bewildered, not knowing what to do.

"I sometimes have sick fancies," she went on, "and I have a sick fancy that I want to see some play. There, there!" with an impatient movement of the fingers of her right hand; "play, play, play!"

For a moment, with the fear of my sister's working me before my eyes, I had a desperate idea of starting round the room in the assumed character of Mr. Pumblechook's chaise-cart. But I felt myself so unequal to the performance that I gave it up, and stood looking at Miss Havisham in what I suppose she took for a dogged manner, inasmuch as she said, when we had taken a good look at each other,

"Are you sullen and obstinate?"

"No, ma'am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can't play just now. If you complain of me I shall get into trouble with my sister, so I would do it if I could; but it's so new here, and so strange, and so fine, and melancholy--" I stopped, fearing I might say too much.

"Call Estella," she commanded, looking at me. "You can do that."

To stand in a strange house calling a scornful young lady by her first name was almost as bad as playing to order. But she answered at last.

"My dear," said Miss Havisham, "let me see you play cards with this boy."

"What do you play, boy?" asked Estella, with the greatest disdain.

"Nothing but 'beggar my neighbor,' Miss."

"Beggar him," said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.

It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, with the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn.