Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (i want to read a book .txt) 📗
- Author: Charles Dickens
- Performer: 0141439564
Book online «Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (i want to read a book .txt) 📗». Author Charles Dickens
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.
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,—
“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.
“Why, what’ll you do with a half-holiday, if you get it?” said Joe.
“What’ll I do with it! What’ll he do with it? I’ll do as much with
it as him,” said Orlick.
“As to Pip, he’s going up town,” said Joe.
“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.
“Don’t lose your temper,” said Joe.
“Shall if I like,” growled Orlick. “Some and their up-towning! Now,
master! Come. No favoring in this shop. Be a man!”
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,—
“Now, master!”
“Are you all right now?” demanded Joe.
“Ah! I am all right,” said gruff Old Orlick.
“Then, as in general you stick to your work as well as most men,”
said Joe, “let it be a half-holiday for all.”
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.
“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!”
“You’d be everybody’s master, if you durst,” retorted Orlick, with
an ill-favored grin.
(“Let her alone,” said Joe.)
“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!”
“You’re a foul shrew, Mother Gargery, growled the journeyman. “If
that makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be a good’un.”
(“Let her alone, will you?” said Joe.)
“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!”
“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.”
(“I tell you, let her alone,” said Joe.)
“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.
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 up stairs to dress myself.
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!”
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.
Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No Estella.
“How, then? You here again?” said Miss Pocket. “What do you want?”
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.”
Everything was unchanged, and Miss Havisham was alone.
“Well?” said she, fixing her eyes upon me. “I hope you want
nothing? You’ll get nothing.”
“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.”
“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?”
I had been looking round,—in fact, for Estella,—and I stammered
that I hoped she was well.
“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?”
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.
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.
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
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