Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter XXXIX Page 2
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 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
hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head so high that
he could make a gentleman,--and, Pip, you're him!"
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
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.
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
that he was so much in earnest; "you can't do better nor keep
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!
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
blight upon it,' I says, wotever it was I went for, '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
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
All on you owns stock and land; which on you owns a brought-up
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.
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
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
preservation would then have naturally and tenderly addressed my
heart.
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
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 otpractice 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
this stormy night he was as good as his word, and with me.
Crowding up with these reflections came the reflection that I had
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
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.