Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (speed reading book TXT) 📕

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