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Chapter 15

1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s room, my education under that preposterous female terminated. Not, however, until Biddy had imparted to me everything she knew, from the little catalogue of prices, to a comic song she had once bought for a half-penny. Although the only coherent part of the latter piece of literature were the opening lines,

2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 When I went to Lunnon town sirs,
Too rul loo rul
Too rul loo rul
Wasn’t I done very brown sirs?
Too rul loo rul
Too rul loo rul

3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 —still, in my desire to be wiser, I got this composition by heart with the utmost gravity; nor do I recollect that I questioned its merit, except that I thought (as I still do) the amount of Too rul somewhat in excess of the poetry. In my hunger for information, I made proposals to Mr. Wopsle to bestow some intellectual crumbs upon me, with which he kindly complied. As it turned out, however, that he only wanted me for a dramatic lay-figure, to be contradicted and embraced and wept over and bullied and clutched and stabbed and knocked about in a variety of ways, I soon declined that course of instruction; though not until Mr. Wopsle in his poetic fury had severely mauled me.

4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 1 Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This statement sounds so well, that I cannot in my conscience let it pass unexplained. I wanted to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he might be worthier of my society and less open to Estella’s reproach.

5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of study, and a broken slate and a short piece of slate-pencil were our educational implements: to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I never knew Joe to remember anything from one Sunday to another, or to acquire, under my tuition, any piece of information whatever. Yet he would smoke his pipe at the Battery with a far more sagacious air than anywhere else,—even with a learned air,—as if he considered himself to be advancing immensely. Dear fellow, I hope he did.

6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on the river passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low, looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing on at the bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels standing out to sea with their white sails spread, I somehow thought of Miss Havisham and Estella; and whenever the light struck aslant, afar off, upon a cloud or sail or green hillside or water-line, it was just the same.—Miss Havisham and Estella and the strange house and the strange life appeared to have something to do with everything that was picturesque.

7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so plumed himself on being “most awful dull,” that I had given him up for the day, I lay on the earthwork for some time with my chin on my hand, descrying traces of Miss Havisham and Estella all over the prospect, in the sky and in the water, until at last I resolved to mention a thought concerning them that had been much in my head.

8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 “Joe,” said I; “don’t you think I ought to make Miss Havisham a visit?”

9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 “Well, Pip,” returned Joe, slowly considering. “What for?”

10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 “What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?”

11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0 “There is some wisits p’r’aps,” said Joe, “as for ever remains open to the question, Pip. But in regard to wisiting Miss Havisham. She might think you wanted something,—expected something of her.”

12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 “Don’t you think I might say that I did not, Joe?”

13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 0 “You might, old chap,” said Joe. “And she might credit it. Similarly she mightn’t.”

14 Leave a comment on paragraph 14 0 Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he pulled hard at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it by repetition.

15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 “You see, Pip,” Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that danger, “Miss Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss Havisham done the handsome thing by you, she called me back to say to me as that were all.”

16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 “Yes, Joe. I heard her.”

17 Leave a comment on paragraph 17 0 “ALL,” Joe repeated, very emphatically.

18 Leave a comment on paragraph 18 0 “Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her.”

19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 0 “Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning were,—Make a end on it!—As you was!—Me to the North, and you to the South!—Keep in sunders!”

20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 I had thought of that too, and it was very far from comforting to me to find that he had thought of it; for it seemed to render it more probable.

21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 0 “But, Joe.”

22 Leave a comment on paragraph 22 0 “Yes, old chap.”

23 Leave a comment on paragraph 23 0 “Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, since the day of my being bound, I have never thanked Miss Havisham, or asked after her, or shown that I remember her.”

24 Leave a comment on paragraph 24 0 “That’s true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her out a set of shoes all four round,—and which I meantersay as even a set of shoes all four round might not be acceptable as a present, in a total wacancy of hoofs—”

25 Leave a comment on paragraph 25 0 “I don’t mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I don’t mean a present.”

26 Leave a comment on paragraph 26 0 But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head and must harp upon it. “Or even,” said he, “if you was helped to knocking her up a new chain for the front door,—or say a gross or two of shark-headed screws for general use,—or some light fancy article, such as a toasting-fork when she took her muffins,—or a gridiron when she took a sprat or such like—”

27 Leave a comment on paragraph 27 0 “I don’t mean any present at all, Joe,” I interposed.

28 Leave a comment on paragraph 28 0 “Well,” said Joe, still harping on it as though I had particularly pressed it, “if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn’t. No, I would not. For what’s a door-chain when she’s got one always up? And shark-headers is open to misrepresentations. And if it was a toasting-fork, you’d go into brass and do yourself no credit. And the oncommonest workman can’t show himself oncommon in a gridiron,—for a gridiron IS a gridiron,” said Joe, steadfastly impressing it upon me, as if he were endeavouring to rouse me from a fixed delusion, “and you may haim at what you like, but a gridiron it will come out, either by your leave or again your leave, and you can’t help yourself—”

29 Leave a comment on paragraph 29 0 “My dear Joe,” I cried, in desperation, taking hold of his coat, “don’t go on in that way. I never thought of making Miss Havisham any present.”

30 Leave a comment on paragraph 30 0 “No, Pip,” Joe assented, as if he had been contending for that, all along; “and what I say to you is, you are right, Pip.”

31 Leave a comment on paragraph 31 0 “Yes, Joe; but what I wanted to say, was, that as we are rather slack just now, if you would give me a half-holiday to-morrow, I think I would go uptown and make a call on Miss Est—Havisham.”

32 Leave a comment on paragraph 32 0 “Which her name,” said Joe, gravely, “ain’t Estavisham, Pip, unless she have been rechris’ened.”

33 Leave a comment on paragraph 33 0 “I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine. What do you think of it, Joe?”

34 Leave a comment on paragraph 34 0 In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well of it, he thought well of it. But, he was particular in stipulating that if I were not received with cordiality, or if I were not encouraged to repeat my visit as a visit which had no ulterior object but was simply one of gratitude for a favor received, then this experimental trip should have no successor. By these conditions I promised to abide.

35 Leave a comment on paragraph 35 0 Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name was Orlick. He pretended that his Christian name was Dolge,—a clear Impossibility,—but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition that I believe him to have been the prey of no delusion in this particular, but wilfully to have imposed that name upon the village as an affront to its understanding. He was a broadshouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching. He never even seemed to come to his work on purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or went away at night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the Wandering Jew, as if he had no idea where he was going and no intention of ever coming back. He lodged at a sluice-keeper’s out on the marshes, and on working-days would come slouching from his hermitage, with his hands in his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his neck and dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on the sluice-gates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always slouched, locomotively, with his eyes on the ground; and, when accosted or otherwise required to raise them, he looked up in a half-resentful, half-puzzled way, as though the only thought he ever had was, that it was rather an odd and injurious fact that he should never be thinking.

36 Leave a comment on paragraph 36 0 This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I was very small and timid, he gave me to understand that the Devil lived in a black corner of the forge, and that he knew the fiend very well: also that it was necessary to make up the fire, once in seven years, with a live boy, and that I might consider myself fuel. When I became Joe’s ‘prentice, Orlick was perhaps confirmed in some suspicion that I should displace him; howbeit, he liked me still less. Not that he ever said anything, or did anything, openly importing hostility; I only noticed that he always beat his sparks in my direction, and that whenever I sang Old Clem, he came in out of time.

37 Leave a comment on paragraph 37 0 Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next day, when I reminded Joe of my half-holiday. He said nothing at the moment, for he and Joe had just got a piece of hot iron between them, and I was at the bellows; but by and by he said, leaning on his hammer,—

38 Leave a comment on paragraph 38 0 “Now, master! Sure you’re not a going to favor only one of us. If Young Pip has a half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick.” I suppose he was about five-and-twenty, but he usually spoke of himself as an ancient person.

39 Leave a comment on paragraph 39 0 “Why, what’ll you do with a half-holiday, if you get it?” said Joe.

40 Leave a comment on paragraph 40 0 “What’ll I do with it! What’ll he do with it? I’ll do as much with it as him,” said Orlick.

41 Leave a comment on paragraph 41 0 “As to Pip, he’s going up town,” said Joe.

42 Leave a comment on paragraph 42 0 “Well then, as to Old Orlick, he‘s a going up town,” retorted that worthy. “Two can go up town. Tain’t only one wot can go up town.

43 Leave a comment on paragraph 43 0 “Don’t lose your temper,” said Joe.

44 Leave a comment on paragraph 44 0 “Shall if I like,” growled Orlick. “Some and their uptowning! Now, master! Come. No favoring in this shop. Be a man!”

45 Leave a comment on paragraph 45 0 The master refusing to entertain the subject until the journeyman was in a better temper, Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew out a red-hot bar, made at me with it as if he were going to run it through my body, whisked it round my head, laid it on the anvil, hammered it out,—as if it were I, I thought, and the sparks were my spirting blood,—and finally said, when he had hammered himself hot and the iron cold, and he again leaned on his hammer,—

46 Leave a comment on paragraph 46 0 “Now, master!”

47 Leave a comment on paragraph 47 0 “Are you all right now?” demanded Joe.

48 Leave a comment on paragraph 48 0 “Ah! I am all right,” said gruff Old Orlick.

49 Leave a comment on paragraph 49 0 “Then, as in general you stick to your work as well as most men,” said Joe, “let it be a half-holiday for all.”

50 Leave a comment on paragraph 50 0 My sister had been standing silent in the yard, within hearing,—she was a most unscrupulous spy and listener,—and she instantly looked in at one of the windows.

51 Leave a comment on paragraph 51 0 “Like you, you fool!” said she to Joe, “giving holidays to great idle hulkers like that. You are a rich man, upon my life, to waste wages in that way. I wish I was his master!”

52 Leave a comment on paragraph 52 0 “You’d be everybody’s master, if you durst,” retorted Orlick, with an ill-favored grin.

53 Leave a comment on paragraph 53 0 (“Let her alone,” said Joe.)

54 Leave a comment on paragraph 54 0 “I’d be a match for all noodles and all rogues,” returned my sister, beginning to work herself into a mighty rage. “And I couldn’t be a match for the noodles, without being a match for your master, who’s the dunder-headed king of the noodles. And I couldn’t be a match for the rogues, without being a match for you, who are the blackest-looking and the worst rogue between this and France. Now!”

55 Leave a comment on paragraph 55 0 “You’re a foul shrew, Mother Gargery,” growled the journeyman. “If that makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be a good’un.”

56 Leave a comment on paragraph 56 0 (“Let her alone, will you?” said Joe.)

57 Leave a comment on paragraph 57 0 “What did you say?” cried my sister, beginning to scream. “What did you say? What did that fellow Orlick say to me, Pip? What did he call me, with my husband standing by? Oh! oh! oh!” Each of these exclamations was a shriek; and I must remark of my sister, what is equally true of all the violent women I have ever seen, that passion was no excuse for her, because it is undeniable that instead of lapsing into passion, she consciously and deliberately took extraordinary pains to force herself into it, and became blindly furious by regular stages; “what was the name he gave me before the base man who swore to defend me? Oh! Hold me! Oh!”

58 Leave a comment on paragraph 58 0 “Ah-h-h!” growled the journeyman, between his teeth, “I’d hold you, if you was my wife. I’d hold you under the pump, and choke it out of you.”

59 Leave a comment on paragraph 59 0 (“I tell you, let her alone,” said Joe.)

60 Leave a comment on paragraph 60 0 “Oh! To hear him!” cried my sister, with a clap of her hands and a scream together,—which was her next stage. “To hear the names he’s giving me! That Orlick! In my own house! Me, a married woman! With my husband standing by! Oh! Oh!” Here my sister, after a fit of clappings and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon her knees, and threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down,—which were the last stages on her road to frenzy. Being by this time a perfect Fury and a complete success, she made a dash at the door which I had fortunately locked.

61 Leave a comment on paragraph 61 0 What could the wretched Joe do now, after his disregarded parenthetical interruptions, but stand up to his journeyman, and ask him what he meant by interfering betwixt himself and Mrs. Joe; and further whether he was man enough to come on? Old Orlick felt that the situation admitted of nothing less than coming on, and was on his defence straightway; so, without so much as pulling off their singed and burnt aprons, they went at one another, like two giants. But, if any man in that neighborhood could stand uplong against Joe, I never saw the man. Orlick, as if he had been of no more account than the pale young gentleman, was very soon among the coal-dust, and in no hurry to come out of it. Then Joe unlocked the door and picked up my sister, who had dropped insensible at the window (but who had seen the fight first, I think), and who was carried into the house and laid down, and who was recommended to revive, and would do nothing but struggle and clench her hands in Joe’s hair. Then came that singular calm and silence which succeed all uproars; and then, with the vague sensation which I have always connected with such a lull,—namely, that it was Sunday, and somebody was dead,—I went upstairs to dress myself.

62 Leave a comment on paragraph 62 0 When I came down again, I found Joe and Orlick sweeping up, without any other traces of discomposure than a slit in one of Orlick’s nostrils, which was neither expressive nor ornamental. A pot of beer had appeared from the Jolly Bargemen, and they were sharing it by turns in a peaceable manner. The lull had a sedative and philosophical influence on Joe, who followed me out into the road to say, as a parting observation that might do me good, “On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage, Pip:—such is Life!”

63 Leave a comment on paragraph 63 0 With what absurd emotions (for we think the feelings that are very serious in a man quite comical in a boy) I found myself again going to Miss Havisham’s, matters little here. Nor, how I passed and repassed the gate many times before I could make up my mind to ring. Nor, how I debated whether I should go away without ringing; nor, how I should undoubtedly have gone, if my time had been my own, to come back.

64 Leave a comment on paragraph 64 0 Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No Estella.

65 Leave a comment on paragraph 65 0 “How, then? You here again?” said Miss Pocket. “What do you want?”

66 Leave a comment on paragraph 66 0 When I said that I only came to see how Miss Havisham was, Sarah evidently deliberated whether or no she should send me about my business. But unwilling to hazard the responsibility, she let me in, and presently brought the sharp message that I was to “come up.”

67 Leave a comment on paragraph 67 0 Everything was unchanged, and Miss Havisham was alone.

68 Leave a comment on paragraph 68 0 “Well?” said she, fixing her eyes upon me. “I hope you want nothing? You’ll get nothing.”

69 Leave a comment on paragraph 69 0 “No indeed, Miss Havisham. I only wanted you to know that I am doing very well in my apprenticeship, and am always much obliged to you.”

70 Leave a comment on paragraph 70 0 “There, there!” with the old restless fingers. “Come now and then; come on your birthday.—Ay!” she cried suddenly, turning herself and her chair towards me, “You are looking round for Estella? Hey?”

71 Leave a comment on paragraph 71 0 I had been looking round,—in fact, for Estella,—and I stammered that I hoped she was well.

72 Leave a comment on paragraph 72 1 “Abroad,” said Miss Havisham; “educating for a lady; far out of reach; prettier than ever; admired by all who see her. Do you feel that you have lost her?”

73 Leave a comment on paragraph 73 0 There was such a malignant enjoyment in her utterance of the last words, and she broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I was at a loss what to say. She spared me the trouble of considering, by dismissing me. When the gate was closed upon me by Sarah of the walnut-shell countenance, I felt more than ever dissatisfied with my home and with my trade and with everything; and that was all I took by that motion.

74 Leave a comment on paragraph 74 0 As I was loitering along the High Street, looking in disconsolately at the shop windows, and thinking what I would buy if I were a gentleman, who should come out of the bookshop but Mr. Wopsle. Mr. Wopsle had in his hand the affecting tragedy of George Barnwell, in which he had that moment invested sixpence, with the view of heaping every word of it on the head of Pumblechook, with whom he was going to drink tea. No sooner did he see me, than he appeared to consider that a special Providence had put a ‘prentice in his way to be read at; and he laid hold of me, and insisted on my accompanying him to the Pumblechookian parlor. As I knew it would be miserable at home, and as the nights were dark and the way was dreary, and almost any companionship on the road was better than none, I made no great resistance; consequently, we turned into Pumblechook’s just as the street and the shops were lighting up.

75 Leave a comment on paragraph 75 0 As I never assisted at any other representation of George Barnwell, I don’t know how long it may usually take; but I know very well that it took until half-past nine o’ clock that night, and that when Mr. Wopsle got into Newgate, I thought he never would go to the scaffold, he became so much slower than at any former period of his disgraceful career. I thought it a little too much that he should complain of being cut short in his flower after all, as if he had not been running to seed, leaf after leaf, ever since his course began. This, however, was a mere question of length and wearisomeness. What stung me, was the identification of the whole affair with my unoffending self. When Barnwell began to go wrong, I declare that I felt positively apologetic, Pumblechook’s indignant stare so taxed me with it. Wopsle, too, took pains to present me in the worst light. At once ferocious and maudlin, I was made to murder my uncle with no extenuating circumstances whatever; Millwood put me down in argument, on every occasion; it became sheer monomania in my master’s daughter to care a button for me; and all I can say for my gasping and procrastinating conduct on the fatal morning, is, that it was worthy of the general feebleness of my character. Even after I was happily hanged and Wopsle had closed the book, Pumblechook sat staring at me, and shaking his head, and saying, “Take warning, boy, take warning!” as if it were a well-known fact that I contemplated murdering a near relation, provided I could only induce one to have the weakness to become my benefactor.

76 Leave a comment on paragraph 76 0 It was a very dark night when it was all over, and when I set out with Mr. Wopsle on the walk home. Beyond town, we found a heavy mist out, and it fell wet and thick. The turnpike lamp was a blur, quite out of the lamp’s usual place apparently, and its rays looked solid substance on the fog. We were noticing this, and saying how that the mist rose with a change of wind from a certain quarter of our marshes, when we came upon a man, slouching under the lee of the turnpike house.

77 Leave a comment on paragraph 77 0 “Halloa!” we said, stopping. “Orlick there?”

78 Leave a comment on paragraph 78 0 “Ah!” he answered, slouching out. “I was standing by a minute, on the chance of company.”

79 Leave a comment on paragraph 79 0 “You are late,” I remarked.

80 Leave a comment on paragraph 80 0 Orlick not unnaturally answered, “Well? And you‘re late.”

81 Leave a comment on paragraph 81 0 “We have been,” said Mr. Wopsle, exalted with his late performance,—”we have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an intellectual evening.”

82 Leave a comment on paragraph 82 0 Old Orlick growled, as if he had nothing to say about that, and we all went on together. I asked him presently whether he had been spending his half-holiday up and down town?

83 Leave a comment on paragraph 83 0 “Yes,” said he, “all of it. I come in behind yourself. I didn’t see you, but I must have been pretty close behind you. By the by, the guns is going again.”

84 Leave a comment on paragraph 84 0 “At the Hulks?” said I.

85 Leave a comment on paragraph 85 0 “Ay! There’s some of the birds flown from the cages. The guns have been going since dark, about. You’ll hear one presently.”

86 Leave a comment on paragraph 86 0 In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when the well-remembered boom came towards us, deadened by the mist, and heavily rolled away along the low grounds by the river, as if it were pursuing and threatening the fugitives.

87 Leave a comment on paragraph 87 0 “A good night for cutting off in,” said Orlick. “We’d be puzzled how to bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night.”

88 Leave a comment on paragraph 88 0 The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought about it in silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of the evening’s tragedy, fell to meditating aloud in his garden at Camberwell. Orlick, with his hands in his pockets, slouched heavily at my side. It was very dark, very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed along. Now and then, the sound of the signal cannon broke upon us again, and again rolled sulkily along the course of the river. I kept myself to myself and my thoughts. Mr. Wopsle died amiably at Camberwell, and exceedingly game on Bosworth Field, and in the greatest agonies at Glastonbury. Orlick sometimes growled, “Beat it out, beat it out,—Old Clem! With a clink for the stout,—Old Clem!” I thought he had been drinking, but he was not drunk.

89 Leave a comment on paragraph 89 0 Thus, we came to the village. The way by which we approached it took us past the Three Jolly Bargemen, which we were surprised to find—it being eleven o’clock—in a state of commotion, with the door wide open, and unwonted lights that had been hastily caught up and put down scattered about. Mr. Wopsle dropped in to ask what was the matter (surmising that a convict had been taken), but came running out in a great hurry.

90 Leave a comment on paragraph 90 0 “There’s something wrong,” said he, without stopping, “up at your place, Pip. Run all!”

91 Leave a comment on paragraph 91 0 “What is it?” I asked, keeping up with him. So did Orlick, at my side.

92 Leave a comment on paragraph 92 0 “I can’t quite understand. The house seems to have been violently entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts. Somebody has been attacked and hurt.”

93 Leave a comment on paragraph 93 0 We were running too fast to admit of more being said, and we made no stop until we got into our kitchen. It was full of people; the whole village was there, or in the yard; and there was a surgeon, and there was Joe, and there were a group of women, all on the floor in the midst of the kitchen. The unemployed bystanders drew back when they saw me, and so I became aware of my sister,—lying without sense or movement on the bare boards where she had been knocked down by a tremendous blow on the back of the head, dealt by some unknown hand when her face was turned towards the fire,—destined never to be on the Rampage again, while she was the wife of Joe.

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