Two: Great Expectations: Charles Dickens

My sister Mrs Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation that 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 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.  I really saw no reason why she should have worn it at all; or if she wore it, she should not have taken it off everyday.

Joe's forge adjoined our wooden house, and most of the dwellings were wooden in those days.  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 confidence as such, Joe imparted confidence in me, the moment I raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him, sitting in chimney corner.

"Mrs Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you Pip.  And she is out now, making it a Baker's dozen".

"Is she?"

"Yes, Pip," said Joe; "and what was worse, she' s got tickler with her.

At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my wastecoat 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 Ram-paged out.  That's what she did," said Joe, slowly clearing the fire between the lower bars between the poker , and looking at it, he said, " she Ram-paged 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 Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's about 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 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 have 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 Gargeys." 

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

"Churchyard!" repeated my sister.  "If it weren'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 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 put on the marshes with the ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was  to commit a larceny on those sheltering premises, rose before me in the avenging coals .

"Hah!" said Mrs Joe, restoring the 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,  between you, one of these days, and oh, precious pair you'd be without me!"

As she applied herself to set 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 on a knife with slapping dexterity and trimming, and moulding the butter off round the crust.  Then she gave the final smart wipe on the edge of the plaister , and then spread a very thick round off the loaf, hewed into two halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other.

Though I was hungry, I dared not to eat my slice.  I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dreadful acquaintance, his ally the still more dreadful young man.  I knew Mrs Joe's housekeeping, a strictest one, and my larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe. So I resolved to put my hunk of bread-and-butter down the leg of my trousers, and waited for an opportunity to search the safe of my sister. Joe was not aware of my decision.

But 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 --- wich stimulated us to new exersions.

"What is the matter now," said Mrs Joe, smartly putting down her cup.

"I say, you know!" muttered Joe shaking his head at me in a very serious remonstrance.  "Pip, old chap!  You will do yourself a mischief.  It 'll stick somewhere. You can't have chawed it.

"What is the matter now?" repeated my sister more sharply.

"If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I would recommend you to do it," said Joe all aghast.  Manners is manners. But still your health is your wealth." 

Mrs Joe was quite desperate, and pounced on Joe, taking him by 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 will mention what's the matter," said my sister, out of breath, "you are staring great stuck pig."

Joe looked at her in a helpless way; then took a helpless bite in his cheek, 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, me and you is always friends, and I would 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 uncommon 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 have been among many bolters; but I never see your bolting equally yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you aren'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 equal to its nastiness.  At the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me, as a choice restorative, and it was going about smelling like a new fence.  This 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.  From my experience I think he had a turn afterwards.

Conscience is dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy.  But in my case that secret burden co-operate with another secret burden down the leg of my trousers.  The guilty knowledge that I was going to rob Mrs Joe united the necessity of keeping one hand always on my bread and butter as I sat, or when I was ordered about the kitchen on any small errand.  As the marsh winds made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the voice outside, of the man with iron on his leg.  At other times I thought of the young man who was restrained by man with iron on his leg.  Then I thought of my heart and liver.  If ever anybody's hair stood on end with terror mine must have done.

It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for the next day, with a copper stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock.  I tried it with a load upon my leg (and that made me think afresh of the man with the load on his legs) and found me the tendency of excercise 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.

"Look! said I when I had done my stirring, "there's another convict off.

"What does that mean, Joe?" 

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

While Mrs Joe sat with her head bending over her needle work, I put my mouth into the forms of saying to Joe: "What's a convict?" Joy imitating me with the mouth gave a long answer from which I could make out only the word "Pip." 

"There was a convict last night," said Joe aloud, "after sunset.  And they fired warning him.  Now it appears they are warning him again." 

"Who is firing?" said I.

"Drat that boy," interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work, "what a questionair he is.  Ask no question  and you will be told no lies.  It was not polite to herself 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 augmented my curiosity by taking pains to open his mouth very wide, and put it into the form of a word that looked to me like "sulks".  Naturally I pointed to Mrs Joe and put my mouth into the form of saying "her".  But Joe couldn't understand what I meant, 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 mind -- where the firing come from?" 

"Lord bless the boy!" exclaimed my sister, as if she didn't mean that but the contrary.  "From the Hulks!"

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

Joe gave a reproachable cough, as much as to say:  "well I told you so."

" And please, what's Hulks ?" 

"That's the way with the 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;  are prison ships, right across the marshes.  We always use the name meshes for marshes in our country.

"I wonder who are put in prison ships, and why they are put there?" said I, in a general way, and with quite 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 live out. It would be blame to me, and not praise, if I had.  People are put in hulks 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 upstairs in the dark with my head tingling --- for Mrs Joe's thimble having played tambourine upon it, to accompany her last words --- I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience of 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 I have found that few people know what secrecy is there in the young under terror.  I was in mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart and liver.  I was in mortal terror of the man with the iron leg.  I was in mortal terror of myself.  I was in mortal terror of my all powerful sister.

I have not slept all the night.  And when I slept, I drifted down the river on a spring tide to the Hulks.  A ghostly pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I passed the gibbet-station.  I thought I had better come ashore and be hanged.  I was afraid to sleep, and I was thinking of robbing the pantry. In the faint dawn how can I rob without light. I must have struck it out of flint and steel. And the noise when the steel strikes, like that of pirate rattling his chains.

As soon as the black great velvet pall

outside my little window was shot with grey 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, owing to the season far more supplies.  I was alarmed by a hare hanging up by the heels, whom I 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 minced meat (which I tied up in my poker-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 from the kitchen cupboard ) a meatbone with very little on it, and a beautiful round compact pork pie.  It was carefully put away in a covered earthenware dish in a corner.

There was a door in the kitchen communicating with the forge; I unlocked and unbolted the door, and got a file from 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.

END OF CHAPTER TWO