Great Expectations E-Book

Charles Dickens.

• Herausgeber: Publisher s23429
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Finally The New Revised Edition is Available

Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens first serialised in All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It is regarded as one of his greatest and most sophisticated novels, and is one of his most enduringly popular, having been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times.

Great Expectations is written in a semi-autobiographical style, and is the story of the orphan Pip, writing his life from his early days of childhood until adulthood. The story can also be considered semi-autobiographical of Dickens, like much of his work, drawing on his experiences of life and people.

The action of the story takes place from Christmas Eve, 1812, when the protagonist is about seven years old, to the winter of 1840.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

Chapter XXIX

Chapter XXX

Chapter XXXI

Chapter XXXII

Chapter XXXIII

Chapter XXXIV

Chapter XXXV

Chapter XXXVI

Chapter XXXVII

Chapter XXXVIII

Chapter XXXIX

Chapter XL

Chapter XLI

Chapter XLII

Chapter XLIII

Chapter XLIV

Chapter XLV

Chapter XLVI

Chapter XLVII

Chapter XLVIII

Chapter XLIX

Chapter L

Chapter LI

Chapter LII

Chapter LIII

Chapter LIV

Chapter LV

Chapter LVI

Chapter LVII

Chapter LVIII

Chapter LIX

Chapter I

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip,

my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more

explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called

Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his

tombstone and my sister,—Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the

blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw

any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the

days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were

like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of

the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a

square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character

and turn of the inscription, “Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,” I

drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.

To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long,

which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were

sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine,—who gave up

trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal

struggle,—I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained

that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in

their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state

of existence.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river

wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad

impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been

gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time

I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with

nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this

parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried;

and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant

children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the

dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes

and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the

marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and

that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was

the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it

all and beginning to cry, was Pip.

“Hold your noise!” cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from

among the graves at the side of the church porch. “Keep still, you

little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!”

A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A

man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied

round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered

in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by

nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared,

and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me

by the chin.

“Oh! Don’t cut my throat, sir,” I pleaded in terror. “Pray don’t do

it, sir.”

“Tell us your name!” said the man. “Quick!”

“Pip, sir.”

“Once more,” said the man, staring at me. “Give it mouth!”

“Pip. Pip, sir.”

“Show us where you live,” said the man. “Pint out the place!”

I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the

alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down,

and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of

bread. When the church came to itself,—for he was so sudden and

strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the

steeple under my feet,—when the church came to itself, I say, I

was seated on a high tombstone, trembling while he ate the bread

ravenously.

“You young dog,” said the man, licking his lips, “what fat cheeks

you ha’ got.”

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for

my years, and not strong.

“Darn me if I couldn’t eat em,” said the man, with a threatening

shake of his head, “and if I han’t half a mind to’t!”

I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn’t, and held tighter to

the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon

it; partly, to keep myself from crying.

“Now lookee here!” said the man. “Where’s your mother?”

“There, sir!” said I.

He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his

shoulder.

“There, sir!” I timidly explained. “Also Georgiana. That’s my

mother.”

“Oh!” said he, coming back. “And is that your father alonger your

mother?”

“Yes, sir,” said I; “him too; late of this parish.”

“Ha!” he muttered then, considering. “Who d’ye live with,—

supposin’ you’re kindly let to live, which I han’t made up my mind

about?”

“My sister, sir,—Mrs. Joe Gargery,—wife of Joe Gargery, the

blacksmith, sir.”

“Blacksmith, eh?” said he. And looked down at his leg.

After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came

closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as

far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully

down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.

“Now lookee here,” he said, “the question being whether you’re to

be let to live. You know what a file is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you know what wittles is?”

“Yes, sir.”

After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give

me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.

“You get me a file.” He tilted me again. “And you get me wittles.”

He tilted me again. “You bring ‘em both to me.” He tilted me again.

“Or I’ll have your heart and liver out.” He tilted me again.

I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with

both hands, and said, “If you would kindly please to let me keep

upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn’t be sick, and perhaps I could

attend more.”

He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church

jumped over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in

an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these

fearful terms:—

“You bring me, tomorrow morning early, that file and them wittles.

You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do

it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign

concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person

sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my

words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart

and your liver shall be tore out, roasted, and ate. Now, I ain’t

alone, as you may think I am. There’s a young man hid with me, in

comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears

the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to

himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver.

It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young

man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself

up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself

comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and

creep his way to him and tear him open. I am a keeping that young

man from harming of you at the present moment, with great

difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your

inside. Now, what do you say?”

I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what

broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the

Battery, early in the morning.

“Say Lord strike you dead if you don’t!” said the man.

I said so, and he took me down.

“Now,” he pursued, “you remember what you’ve undertook, and you

remember that young man, and you get home!”

“Goo-good night, sir,” I faltered.

“Much of that!” said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat.

“I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!”

At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms,—

clasping himself, as if to hold himself together,—and limped

towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among

the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he

looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead

people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a

twist upon his ankle and pull him in.

When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man

whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for

me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made

the best use of my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder,

and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself

in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the

great stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for

stepping-places when the rains were heavy or the tide was in.

The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I

stopped to look after him; and the river was just another

horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky

was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines

intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the

only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be

standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors

steered,—like an unhooped cask upon a pole,—an ugly thing when

you were near it; the other, a gibbet, with some chains hanging to

it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards

this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down,

and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn

when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to

gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked

all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of

him. But now I was frightened again, and ran home without

stopping.

Chapter II

My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than

I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the

neighbors because she had brought me up “by hand.” Having at that

time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing

her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of

laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe

Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.

She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general

impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand.

Joe was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his

smooth face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they

seemed to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a

mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear

fellow,—a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness.

My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing

redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was

possible she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap.

She was tall and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron,

fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square

impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles.

She made it a powerful merit in herself, and a strong reproach

against Joe, that she wore this apron so much. Though I really see

no reason why she should have worn it at all; or why, if she did

wear it at all, she should not have taken it off, every day of her

life.

Joe’s forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many

of the dwellings in our country were,—most of them, at that time.

When I ran home from the churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe

was sitting alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being fellow-sufferers,

and having confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me,

the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him

opposite to it, sitting in the chimney corner.

“Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And

she’s out now, making it a baker’s dozen.”

“Is she?”

“Yes, Pip,” said Joe; “and what’s worse, she’s got Tickler with

her.”

At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my

waistcoat round and round, and looked in great depression at the

fire. Tickler was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by

collision with my tickled frame.

“She sot down,” said Joe, “and she got up, and she made a grab at

Tickler, and she Rampaged out. That’s what she did,” said Joe,

slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and

looking at it; “she Rampaged out, Pip.”

“Has she been gone long, Joe?” I always treated him as a larger

species of child, and as no more than my equal.

“Well,” said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, “she’s been on

the Rampage, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She’s a

coming! Get behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel

betwixt you.”

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 further investigation. She

concluded by throwing me—I often served as a connubial missile—

at Joe, who, glad to get hold of me on any terms, passed me on into

the chimney and quietly fenced me up there with his great leg.

“Where have you been, you young monkey?” said Mrs. Joe, stamping her

foot. “Tell me directly what you’ve been doing to wear me away with

fret and fright and worrit, or I’d have you out of that corner if

you was fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys.”

“I have only been to the churchyard,” said I, from my stool, crying

and rubbing myself.

“Churchyard!” repeated my sister. “If it warn’t for me you’d have

been to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who brought you

up by hand?”

“You did,” said I.

“And why did I do it, I should like to know?” exclaimed my sister.

I whimpered, “I don’t know.”

“I don’t!” said my sister. “I’d never do it again! I know that. I

may truly say I’ve never had this apron of mine off since born you

were. It’s bad enough to be a blacksmith’s wife (and him a Gargery)

without being your mother.”

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 mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the dreadful

pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those sheltering

premises, rose before me in the avenging coals.

“Hah!” 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 O, 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 casting me and himself up, and

calculating what kind of pair we practically should make, under the

grievous circumstances foreshadowed. 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 trenchant way of cutting our bread and butter for

us, that never varied. First, with her left hand she jammed the

loaf hard and fast against her bib,—where it sometimes got a pin

into it, and sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got into our

mouths. Then she took some butter (not too much) on a knife and

spread it on the loaf, in an apothecary kind of way, as if she were

making a plaster,—using both sides of the knife with a slapping

dexterity, and trimming and moulding the butter off round the

crust. Then, she gave the knife a final smart wipe on the edge of

the plaster, and then sawed a very thick round off the loaf: which

she finally, before separating from the loaf, hewed into two

halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other.

On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my

slice. I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dreadful

acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young man. I

knew Mrs. Joe’s housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that

my larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe.

Therefore I resolved to put my hunk of bread and butter down the

leg of my trousers.

The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this

purpose I found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to make up

my mind to leap from the top of a high house, or plunge into a

great depth of water. And it was made the more difficult by the

unconscious Joe. In our already-mentioned freemasonry as

fellow-sufferers, and in his good-natured companionship with me, it

was our evening habit to compare the way we bit through our slices,

by silently holding them up to each other’s admiration now and then,

—which stimulated us to new exertions. Tonight, Joe several times

invited me, by the display of his fast diminishing slice, to enter

upon our usual friendly competition; but he found me, each time,

with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and my untouched

bread and butter on the other. At last, I desperately considered

that the thing I contemplated must be done, and that it had best be

done in the least improbable manner consistent with the

circumstances. I took advantage of a moment when Joe had just

looked at me, and got my bread and butter down my leg.

Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be my

loss of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice,

which he didn’t seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth much

longer than usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after all

gulped it down like a pill. He was about to take another bite, and

had just got his head on one side for a good purchase on it, when

his eye fell on me, and he saw that my bread and butter was gone.

The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the

threshold of his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape

my sister’s observation.

“What’s the matter now?” said she, smartly, as she put down her

cup.

“I say, you know!” muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in very

serious remonstrance. “Pip, old chap! You’ll do yourself a

mischief. It’ll stick somewhere. You can’t have chawed it, Pip.”

“What’s the matter now?” repeated my sister, more sharply than

before.

“If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I’d recommend you to do

it,” said Joe, all aghast. “Manners is manners, but still your

elth’s your elth.”

By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe,

and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little

while against the wall behind him, while I sat in the corner,

looking guiltily on.

“Now, perhaps you’ll mention what’s the matter,” said my sister,

out of breath, “you staring great stuck pig.”

Joe looked at her in a helpless way, then took a helpless bite, and

looked at me again.

“You know, Pip,” said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in his

cheek, and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two were quite

alone, “you and me is always friends, and I’d be the last to tell

upon you, any time. But such a—” he moved his chair and looked

about the floor between us, and then again at me—“such a most

oncommon Bolt as that!”

“Been bolting his food, has he?” cried my sister.

“You know, old chap,” said Joe, looking at me, and not at Mrs. Joe,

with his bite still in his cheek, “I Bolted, myself, when I was

your age—frequent—and as a boy I’ve been among a many Bolters;

but I never see your Bolting equal yet, Pip, and it’s a mercy you

ain’t Bolted dead.”

My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair, saying

nothing more than the awful words, “You come along and be dosed.”

Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a fine

medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard;

having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At

the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as

a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling

like a new fence. On this particular evening the urgency of my case

demanded a pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat,

for my greater comfort, while Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm,

as a boot would be held in a bootjack. Joe got off with half a

pint; but was made to swallow that (much to his disturbance, as he

sat slowly munching and meditating before the fire), “because he had

had a turn.” Judging from myself, I should say he certainly had a

turn afterwards, if he had had none before.

Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy; but

when, in the case of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with

another secret burden down the leg of his trousers, it is (as I can

testify) a great punishment. The guilty knowledge that I was going

to rob Mrs. Joe—I never thought I was going to rob Joe, for I

never thought of any of the housekeeping property as his—united

to the necessity of always keeping one hand on my bread and butter

as I sat, or when I was ordered about the kitchen on any small

errand, almost drove me out of my mind. Then, as the marsh winds

made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the voice outside,

of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn me to secrecy,

declaring that he couldn’t and wouldn’t starve until tomorrow, but

must be fed now. At other times, I thought, What if the young man

who was with so much difficulty restrained from imbruing his hands

in me should yield to a constitutional impatience, or should

mistake the time, and should think himself accredited to my heart

and liver tonight, instead of tomorrow! If ever anybody’s hair

stood on end with terror, mine must have done so then. But,

perhaps, nobody’s ever did?

It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day,

with a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock. 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.” Administering the definition like

Tar-water.

While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework, I put

my mouth into the forms of saying to Joe, “What’s a convict?” Joe

put his mouth into the forms of returning such a highly elaborate

answer, that I could make out nothing of it but the single word

“Pip.”

“There was a conwict off last night,” said Joe, aloud, “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, to imply that I should

be told lies by her even if I did ask questions. But she never was

polite unless there was company.

At this point Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by taking the

utmost pains to open his mouth very wide, and to put it into the

form of a word that looked to me like “sulks.” Therefore, I

naturally pointed to Mrs. Joe, and put my mouth into the form of

saying, “her?” But Joe wouldn’t hear of that, at all, and again

opened his mouth very wide, and shook the form of a most emphatic

word out of it. But I could make nothing of the word.

“Mrs. Joe,” said I, as a last resort, “I should like to know—if

you wouldn’t much mind—where the firing comes from?”

“Lord bless the boy!” exclaimed my sister, as if she didn’t quite

mean that but rather the contrary. “From the Hulks!”

“Oh-h!” said I, looking at Joe. “Hulks!”

Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, “Well, I told you

so.”

“And please, what’s Hulks?” said I.

“That’s the way with this boy!” exclaimed my sister, pointing me

out with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. “Answer

him one question, and he’ll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are

prison-ships, right ‘cross th’ meshes.” We always used that name

for marshes, in our country.

“I wonder who’s put into prison-ships, and why they’re put there?”

said I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.

It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. “I tell you

what, young fellow,” said she, “I didn’t bring you up by hand to

badger people’s lives out. It would be blame to me and not praise,

if I had. People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and

because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they

always begin by asking questions. Now, you get along to bed!”

I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went

up stairs in the dark, with my head tingling,—from Mrs. Joe’s

thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last

words,—I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the

hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun

by asking questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.

Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often thought

that few people know what secrecy there is in the young under

terror. No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be

terror. I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart

and liver; I was in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the

iron leg; I was in mortal terror of myself, from whom an awful

promise had been extracted; I had no hope of deliverance through my

all-powerful sister, who repulsed me at every turn; I am afraid to

think of what I might have done on requirement, in the secrecy of

my terror.

If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself

drifting down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks; a

ghostly pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I

passed the gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be

hanged there at once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep,

even if I had been inclined, for I knew that at the first faint

dawn of morning I must rob the pantry. There was no doing it in the

night, for there was no getting a light by easy friction then; to

have got one I must have struck it out of flint and steel, and

have made a noise like the very pirate himself rattling his chains.

As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window was

shot with gray, I got up and went down stairs; every board upon the

way, and every crack in every board calling after me, “Stop

thief!” and “Get up, Mrs. Joe!” In the pantry, which was far more

abundantly supplied than usual, owing to the season, I was very

much alarmed by a hare hanging up by the heels, whom I rather

thought I caught when my back was half turned, winking. I had no

time for verification, no time for selection, no time for anything,

for I had no time to spare. I stole some bread, some rind of

cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I tied up in my

pocket-handkerchief with my last night’s slice), some brandy from a

stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle I had secretly

used for making that intoxicating fluid, Spanish-liquorice-water,

up in my room: diluting the stone bottle from a jug in the kitchen

cupboard), a meat bone with very little on it, and a beautiful

round compact pork pie. I was nearly going away without the pie,

but I was tempted to mount upon a shelf, to look what it was that

was put away so carefully in a covered earthen ware dish in a

corner, and I found it was the pie, and I took it in the hope that

it was not intended for early use, and would not be missed for some

time.

There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with the forge; I

unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe’s

tools. Then I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the

door at which I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it,

and ran for the misty marshes.

Chapter III

It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on

the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying

there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief.

Now, I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like

a coarser sort of spiders’ webs; hanging itself from twig to twig

and blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the

marsh mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post

directing people to our village—a direction which they never

accepted, for they never came there—was invisible to me until I

was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up at it, while it

dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom

devoting me to the Hulks.

The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that

instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at

me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and

dikes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they

cried as plainly as could be, “A boy with Somebody’s else’s pork pie!

Stop him!” The cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring

out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, “Halloa,

young thief!” One black ox, with a white cravat on,—who even had

to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air,—fixed me so

obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such

an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I blubbered out to him,

“I couldn’t help it, sir! It wasn’t for myself I took it!” Upon

which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose,

and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and a flourish of his

tail.

All this time, I was getting on towards the river; but however fast

I went, I couldn’t warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed

riveted, as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was

running to meet. I knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight, for

I had been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an

old gun, had told me that when I was ‘prentice to him, regularly

bound, we would have such Larks there! However, in the confusion of

the mist, I found myself at last too far to the right, and

consequently had to try back along the river-side, on the bank of

loose stones above the mud and the stakes that staked the tide out.

Making my way along here with all despatch, I had just crossed a

ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery, and had just

scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man sitting

before me. His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded, and

was nodding forward, heavy with sleep.

I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him with his

breakfast, in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly and

touched him on the shoulder. He instantly jumped up, and it was not

the same man, but another man!

And yet this man was dressed in coarse gray, too, and had a great

iron on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was

everything that the other man was; except that he had not the same

face, and had a flat broad-brimmed low-crowned felt that on. All

this I saw in a moment, for I had only a moment to see it in: he

swore an oath at me, made a hit at me,—it was a round weak blow

that missed me and almost knocked himself down, for it made him

stumble,—and then he ran into the mist, stumbling twice as he went,

and I lost him.

“It’s the young man!” I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I

identified him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver,

too, if I had known where it was.

I was soon at the Battery after that, and there was the right

Man,—hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he had never all

night left off hugging and limping,—waiting for me. He was awfully

cold, to be sure. I half expected to see him drop down before my

face and die of deadly cold. His eyes looked so awfully hungry

too, that when I handed him the file and he laid it down on the

grass, it occurred to me he would have tried to eat it, if he had

not seen my bundle. He did not turn me upside down this time to

get at what I had, but left me right side upwards while I opened

the bundle and emptied my pockets.

“What’s in the bottle, boy?” said he.

“Brandy,” said I.

He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most

curious manner,—more like a man who was putting it away somewhere

in a violent hurry, than a man who was eating it,—but he left off

to take some of the liquor. He shivered all the while so

violently, that it was quite as much as he could do to keep the

neck of the bottle between his teeth, without biting it off.

“I think you have got the ague,” said I.

“I’m much of your opinion, boy,” said he.

“It’s bad about here,” I told him. “You’ve been lying out on the

meshes, and they’re dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too.”

“I’ll eat my breakfast afore they’re the death of me,” said he.

“I’d do that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows

as there is over there, directly afterwards. I’ll beat the shivers

so far, I’ll bet you.”

He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie,

all at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all

round us, and often stopping—even stopping his jaws—to listen.

Some real or fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing

of beast upon the marsh, now gave him a start, and he said,

suddenly,—

“You’re not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with you?”

“No, sir! No!”

“Nor giv’ no one the office to follow you?”

“No!”

“Well,” said he, “I believe you. You’d be but a fierce young hound

indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched

warmint hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched

warmint is!”

Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a

clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough

sleeve over his eyes.

Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled

down upon the pie, I made bold to say, “I am glad you enjoy it.”

“Did you speak?”

“I said I was glad you enjoyed it.”

“Thankee, my boy. I do.”

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. He was altogether too unsettled in his

mind over it, to appreciate it comfortably I thought, or to have

anybody to dine with him, without making a chop with his jaws at

the visitor. In all of which particulars he was very like the dog.

“I am afraid you won’t leave any of it for him,” said I, timidly;

after a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness

of making the remark. “There’s no more to be got where that came

from.” It was the certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer

the hint.

“Leave any for him? Who’s him?” said my friend, stopping in his

crunching of pie-crust.

“The young man. That you spoke of. That was hid with you.”

“Oh ah!” he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. “Him? Yes,

yes! He don’t want no wittles.”

“I thought he looked as if he did,” said I.

The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest scrutiny

and the greatest surprise.

“Looked? When?”

“Just now.”

“Where?”

“Yonder,” said I, pointing; “over there, where I found him nodding

asleep, and thought it was you.”

He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began to think

his first idea about cutting my throat had revived.

“Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat,” I explained,

trembling; “and—and”—I was very anxious to put this delicately

—“and with—the same reason for wanting to borrow a file. Didn’t

you hear the cannon last night?”

“Then there was firing!” he said to himself.

“I wonder you shouldn’t have been sure of that,” I returned, “for

we heard it up at home, and that’s farther away, and we were shut

in besides.”

“Why, see now!” said he. “When a man’s alone on these flats, with a

light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he

hears nothin’ all night, but guns firing, and voices calling.

Hears? He sees the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the

torches carried afore, closing in round him. Hears his number

called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets,

hears the orders ‘Make ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!’ and

is laid hands on—and there’s nothin’! Why, if I see one pursuing

party last night—coming up in order, Damn ‘em, with their tramp,

tramp—I see a hundred. And as to firing! Why, I see the mist

shake with the cannon, arter it was broad day,—But this man”; he

had said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my being there; “did

you notice anything in him?”

“He had a badly bruised face,” said I, recalling what I hardly knew

I knew.

“Not here?” exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly,

with the flat of his hand.

“Yes, there!”

“Where is he?” He crammed what little food was left, into the

breast of his gray jacket. “Show me the way he went. I’ll pull him

down, like a bloodhound. Curse this iron on my sore leg! Give us

hold of the file, boy.”

I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other man,

and he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down on the rank

wet grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not minding me or

minding his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody,

but which he handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it

than the file. I was very much afraid of him again, now that he had

worked himself into this fierce hurry, and I was likewise very much

afraid of keeping away from home any longer. I told him I must go,

but he took no notice, so I thought the best thing I could do was

to slip off. The last I saw of him, his head was bent over his knee

and he was working hard at his fetter, muttering impatient

imprecations at it and at his leg. The last I heard of him, I

stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still going.

Chapter IV

I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to

take me up. But not only was there no Constable there, but no

discovery had yet been made of the robbery. Mrs. Joe was

prodigiously busy in getting the house ready for the festivities of

the day, and Joe had been put upon the kitchen doorstep to keep

him out of the dustpan,—an article into which his destiny always

led him, sooner or later, when my sister was vigorously reaping the

floors of her establishment.

“And where the deuce 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 Carols. “Ah! well!” observed Mrs.

Joe. “You might ha’ done worse.” Not a doubt of that I thought.

“Perhaps if I warn’t a blacksmith’s wife, and (what’s the same

thing) a slave with her apron never off, I should have been to hear

the Carols,” said Mrs. Joe. “I’m rather partial to Carols, myself,

and that’s the best of reasons for my never hearing any.”

Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dustpan had

retired before us, drew the back of his hand across his nose with a

conciliatory air, when Mrs. Joe darted a look at him, and, when her

eyes were withdrawn, secretly crossed his two forefingers, and

exhibited them to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross

temper. This was so much her normal state, that Joe and I would

often, for weeks together, be, as to our fingers, like monumental

Crusaders as to their legs.

We were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled

pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome

mince-pie had been made yesterday morning (which accounted for the

mincemeat not being missed), and the pudding was already on the

boil. These extensive arrangements occasioned us to be cut off

unceremoniously in respect of breakfast; “for I ain’t,” said Mrs.

Joe,—“I ain’t a going to have no formal cramming and busting and

washing up now, with what I’ve got before me, I promise you!”

So, we had our slices served out, as if we were two thousand troops

on a forced march instead of a man and boy at home; and we took

gulps of milk and water, with apologetic countenances, from a jug

on the dresser. In the meantime, Mrs. Joe put clean white curtains

up, and tacked a new flowered flounce across the wide chimney to

replace the old one, and uncovered the little state parlor across

the passage, which was never uncovered at any other time, but

passed the rest of the year in a cool haze of silver paper, which

even extended to the four little white crockery poodles on the

mantel-shelf, each with a black nose and a basket of flowers in his

mouth, and each the counterpart of the other. Mrs. Joe was a very

clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her

cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by

their religion.

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; and everything that he wore then grazed him. On the

present festive occasion he emerged from his room, when the blithe

bells were going, 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 whom an Accoucheur

Policeman had taken up (on my birthday) and delivered over to her,

to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law. I

was always treated as if I had insisted on being born in

opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and

against the dissuading arguments of my best friends. Even when I

was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to

make them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me

have the free use of my limbs.

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 the Church would be powerful enough to

shield me from the vengeance of the terrible young man, if I

divulged to that establishment. I conceived the idea that the time

when the banns were read and when the clergyman said, “Ye are now

to declare it!” would be the time for me to rise and propose a

private conference in the vestry. I am far from being sure that I

might not have astonished our small congregation by resorting to

this extreme measure, but for its being Christmas Day and no

Sunday.

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.

The time came, without bringing with it any relief to my feelings,

and the company came. Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a

large shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which he was

uncommonly proud of; indeed it was understood among his

acquaintance that if you could only give him his head, he would

read the clergyman into fits; he himself confessed that if the

Church was “thrown open,” meaning to competition, he would not

despair of making his mark in it. The Church not being “thrown

open,” he was, as I have said, our clerk. But he punished the

Amens tremendously; and when he gave out the psalm,—always giving

the whole verse,—he looked all round the congregation first, as

much as to say, “You have heard my friend overhead; oblige me with

your opinion of this style!”

I opened the door to the company,—making believe that it was a

habit of ours to open that door,—and I opened it first to Mr.

Wopsle, next to Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all to Uncle

Pumblechook. N.B. I was not allowed to call him uncle, under the

severest penalties.

“Mrs. Joe,” said Uncle Pumblechook, a large hard-breathing

middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes,

and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as

if he had just been all but choked, and had that moment come to,

“I have brought you as the compliments of the season—I have

brought you, Mum, a bottle of sherry wine—and I have brought you,

Mum, a bottle of port wine.”

Every Christmas Day he presented himself, as a profound novelty,

with exactly the same words, and carrying the two bottles like

dumb-bells. Every Christmas Day, Mrs. Joe replied, as she now

replied, “O, Un—cle Pum-ble—chook! This is kind!” Every

Christmas Day, he retorted, as he now retorted, “It’s no more than

your merits. And now are you all bobbish, and how’s Sixpennorth of

halfpence?” meaning me.

We dined on these occasions in the kitchen, and adjourned, for the

nuts and oranges and apples to the parlor; which was a change

very like Joe’s change from his working-clothes to his Sunday

dress. My sister was uncommonly lively on the present occasion, and

indeed was generally more gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble

than in other company. I remember Mrs. Hubble as a little curly

sharp-edged person in sky-blue, who held a conventionally juvenile

position, because she had married Mr. Hubble,—I don’t know at what

remote period,—when she was much younger than he. I remember Mr

Hubble as a tough, high-shouldered, stooping old man, of a sawdusty

fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my

short days I always saw some miles of open country between them

when I met him coming up the lane.

Among this good company I should have felt myself, even if I hadn’t

robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not because I was squeezed

in at an acute angle of the tablecloth, with the table in my

chest, and the Pumblechookian elbow in my eye, nor because I was

not allowed to speak (I didn’t want to speak), nor because I was

regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and

with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when living,

had had the least reason to be vain. No; I should not have minded

that, if they would only have left me alone. But they wouldn’t

leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost, if they

failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and

stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little

bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by these

moral goads.

It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace

with theatrical declamation,—as it now appears to me, something

like a religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the

Third,—and ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be

truly grateful. Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and

said, in a low reproachful voice, “Do you hear that? Be grateful.”

“Especially,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “be grateful, boy, to them which

brought you up by hand.”

Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful

presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, “Why is it that

the young are never grateful?” This moral mystery seemed too much

for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying,

“Naterally wicious.” Everybody then murmured “True!” and looked at

me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner.

Joe’s station and influence were something feebler (if possible)

when there was company than when there was none. But he always

aided and comforted me when he could, in some way of his own, and

he always did so at dinner-time by giving me gravy, if there were

any. There being plenty of gravy to-day, Joe spooned into my plate,

at this point, about half a pint.

A little later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle reviewed the sermon with

some severity, and intimated—in the usual hypothetical case of

the Church being “thrown open”—what kind of sermon he would have

given them. After favoring them with some heads of that discourse,

he remarked that he considered the subject of the day’s homily,

ill chosen; which was the less excusable, he added, when there were

so many subjects “going about.”

“True again,” said Uncle Pumblechook. “You’ve hit it, sir! Plenty of

subjects going about, for them that know how to put salt upon their

tails. That’s what’s wanted. A man needn’t go far to find a

subject, if he’s ready with his salt-box.” Mr. Pumblechook added,

after a short interval of reflection, “Look at Pork alone. There’s

a subject! If you want a subject, look at Pork!”

“True, sir. Many a moral for the young,” returned Mr. Wopsle,—and I

knew he was going to lug me in, before he said it; “might be

deduced from that text.”

(“You listen to this,” said my sister to me, in a severe

parenthesis.)

Joe gave me some more gravy.

“Swine,” pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and pointing his

fork at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my Christian name,—

“swine were the companions of the prodigal. The gluttony of Swine

is put before us, as an example to the young.” (I thought this

pretty well in him who had been praising up the pork for being so

plump and juicy.) “What is detestable in a pig is more detestable

in a boy.”

“Or girl,” suggested Mr. Hubble.

“Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble,” assented Mr. Wopsle, rather

irritably, “but there is no girl present.”

“Besides,” said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, “think what

you’ve got to be grateful for. If you’d been born a Squeaker—”

“He was, if ever a child was,” said my sister, most emphatically.

Joe gave me some more gravy.

“Well, but I mean a four-footed Squeaker,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “If

you had been born such, would you have been here now? Not you—”

“Unless in that form,” said Mr. Wopsle, nodding towards the dish.

“But I don’t mean in that form, sir,” returned Mr. Pumblechook, who

had an objection to being interrupted; “I mean, enjoying himself

with his elders and betters, and improving himself with their

conversation, and rolling in the lap of luxury. Would he have been

doing that? No, he wouldn’t. And what would have been your

destination?” turning on me again. “You would have been disposed of

for so many shillings according to the market price of the article,

and Dunstable the butcher would have come up to you as you lay in

your straw, and he would have whipped you under his left arm, and

with his right he would have tucked up his frock to get a penknife

from out of his waistcoat-pocket, and he would have shed your

blood and had your life. No bringing up by hand then. Not a bit of

it!”

Joe offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take.

“He was a world of trouble to you, ma’am,” said Mrs. Hubble,

commiserating my sister.

“Trouble?” echoed my sister; “trouble?” and then entered on a

fearful catalogue of all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and

all the acts of sleeplessness I had committed, and all the high

places I had tumbled from, and all the low places I had tumbled

into, and all the injuries I had done myself, and all the times she

had wished me in my grave, and I had contumaciously refused to go

there.

I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with

their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in

consequence. Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle’s Roman nose so aggravated me,

during the recital of my misdemeanours, that I should have liked to

pull it until he howled. But, all I had endured up to this time

was nothing in comparison with the awful feelings that took

possession of me when the pause was broken which ensued upon my

sister’s recital, and in which pause everybody had looked at me (as

I felt painfully conscious) with indignation and abhorrence.

“Yet,” said Mr. Pumblechook, leading the company gently back to the

theme from which they had strayed, “Pork—regarded as biled —is

rich, too; ain’t it?”

“Have a little brandy, uncle,” said my sister.

O Heavens, it had come at last! He would find it was weak, he would

say it was weak, and I was lost! I held tight to the leg of the

table under the cloth, with both hands, and awaited my fate.

My sister went for the stone bottle, came back with the stone

bottle, and poured his brandy out: no one else taking any. The

wretched man trifled with his glass,—took it up, looked at it

through the light, put it down,—prolonged my misery. All this

time Mrs. Joe and Joe were briskly clearing the table for the pie

and pudding.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. Always holding tight by the leg of

the table with my hands and feet, I saw the miserable creature

finger his glass playfully, take it up, smile, throw his head back,

and drink the brandy off. Instantly afterwards, the company were

seized with unspeakable consternation, owing to his springing to

his feet, turning round several times in an appalling spasmodic

whooping-cough dance, and rushing out at the door; he then became

visible through the window, violently plunging and expectorating,

making the most hideous faces, and apparently out of his mind.

I held on tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him. I didn’t know