Chapter 27

“MY DEAR MR PIP: —

“I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for to let you know that he is going to London in company with Mr. Wopsle and would be glad to see you. He would call at Barnard’s Hotel Tuesday morning at nine o’clock. We talk of you in the kitchen every night, and wonder what you are saying and doing. No more, dear Mr. Pip, from your ever obliged, and affectionate servant,

“Biddy.”

“P.S. I hope and do not doubt it will be agreeable to see him, even though a gentleman, for you had ever a good heart, and he is a worthy, worthy man. I have read him all, excepting only the last little sentence.”

I received this letter by the post on Monday morning, and therefore its appointment was for next day. Let me confess exactly with what feelings I looked forward to Joe’s coming.

Not with pleasure; no; with considerable disturbance. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have paid money. My greatest hope was that he was coming to Barnard’s Inn, not to Hammersmith, and consequently would not fall in Bentley Drummle’s way. By this time, the rooms were different from what I had found sometimes before. I had even hired a servant.

This boy was ordered to be on duty at eight on Tuesday morning in the hall, and Herbert suggested certain things for breakfast that he thought Joe would like.

I came into town on the Monday night to be ready for Joe, and I got up early in the morning. Unfortunately the morning was drizzly.

I heard Joe on the staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy manner of coming up stairs. When at last he stopped outside our door, I could hear his finger tracing over the painted letters of my name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him breathing in at the keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single rap, and Pepper – such was the name of the boy – announced “Mr. Gargery!” Joe was wiping his feet for a long time, but at last he came in.

“Joe, how are you, Joe?”

“Pip, how ARE you, Pip?”

“I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat.”

But Joe was taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird’s-nest with eggs in it.

“Oh, how you have grown,” said Joe, “and swelled, and gentle-folked!” “And you, Joe, look wonderfully well.”

“Thank God,” said Joe, “And your sister, she’s no worse than she were. And Biddy, she’s ever right and ready.”

All this time (still with both hands taking great care of the bird’s-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room, and round and round the flowered pattern of my dressing-gown.

“And Wopsle,” said Joe, lowering his voice, “he’s left the Church and went into the playacting.”

“Were you at his performance, Joe?” I inquired.

“I was,” said Joe, with emphasis.

Herbert had entered the room. So, I presented Joe to Herbert, who held out his hand; but Joe backed from it, and held on by the bird’s-nest.

“Your servant, Sir,” said Joe, “For the present it may be a very good inn, according to London opinions; but I wouldn’t keep a pig in it myself.”

Joe, being invited to sit down to table, looked all round the room for a suitable spot on which to deposit his hat – and finally stood it on an extreme corner of the chimney-piece, from which it ever afterwards fell off at intervals.

“Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?” asked Herbert.

“Thank you, Sir,” said Joe, stiff from head to foot, “I’ll take whichever is most agreeable to yourself.”

“What do you say to coffee?”

“Thank you, Sir,” returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the proposal, “since you are so kind as make a cup of coffee, I will not run contrary to your own opinions.”

“Say tea then,” said Herbert, pouring it out.

Here Joe’s hat tumbled off the mantel-piece, and he started out of his chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact spot.

“When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery?”

“Was it yesterday afternoon?” said Joe, after coughing behind his hand. “No it was not. Yes it was. Yes. It was yesterday afternoon”.

“Have you seen anything of London yet?”

“Why, yes, Sir,” said Joe, “me and Wopsle went off straight to look at the Blacking Ware’us. It is there too architectooralooral.”

Joe’s attention was caught by his hat, which was toppling. Indeed, it demanded from him a constant attention. He made extraordinary play with it, and showed the greatest skill, rushing at it and catching it neatly as it dropped; now, beating it up, and finally splashing it into the slop-basin.

Joe sat so far from the table, and dropped so much more than he ate, and pretended that he hadn’t dropped it; that I was heartily glad when Herbert left us for the City.

“We are now alone, sir,” – began Joe.

“Joe,” I interrupted, “how can you call me sir?”

Joe looked at me for a single instant with something faintly like reproach.

“We are now alone, sir,” resumed Joe, “and I have the intentions and abilities to stay not many minutes more, I will now conclude – to mention what have led to my having had the present honor. Well, sir, this is how it was. I were at the Bargemen the other night, Pip; when there came up in his shay-cart, Pumblechook. Well, Pip; this Pumblechook came to me and his words were, ‘Joseph, Miss Havisham wishes to speak to you.’”

“Miss Havisham, Joe?”

“‘She wishes,’ were Pumblechook’s words, ‘to speak to you.’” Joe sat and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

“Yes, Joe? Go on, please.”

“Next day, sir,” said Joe, looking at me as if I were a long way off, “having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss A.”

“Miss A., Joe? Miss Havisham?”

“Which I say, sir,” replied Joe, with an air of legal formality, as if he were making his will, “Miss A., or Havisham. And she said: ‘Mr. Gargery. You are in correspondence with Mr. Pip?’ Having had a letter from you, I was able to say ‘I am.’

‘Would you tell him, then,’ said she, ‘that Estella has come home and would be glad to see him.’”

I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe.

“Biddy,” pursued Joe, “when I got home and asked her to write the message to you, she says, “I know he will be very glad to have it by word of mouth, it is holiday time, you want to see him, go!” I have now concluded, sir,” said Joe, rising from his chair, “and, Pip, I wish you ever well and ever prospering to a greater and a greater height.”

“But you are not going now, Joe?”

“Yes I am,” said Joe.

“But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?”

“No I am not,” said Joe.

Our eyes met, and all the “ir” melted out of that manly heart as he gave me his hand.

“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of so many partings, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a goldsmith. Divisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. You and me are not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else. I’m not proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me in these clothes. I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off the marshes. I’m right in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. And GOD bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!”

He touched me gently on the forehead, and went out. As soon as I could recover myself sufficiently, I hurried out after him and looked for him in the neighboring streets; but he was gone.

Chapter 28

It was clear that I must go to our town next day, and in the beginning it was equally clear that I must stay at Joe’s. But, when I had secured my box-place by tomorrow’s coach, I was not convinced on the last point, and began to invent reasons and make excuses for putting up at the Blue Boar. I should be an inconvenience at Joe’s; I was not expected, and my bed would not be ready; I should be too far from Miss Havisham’s.

It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my place, and, as winter had now come round, I should not arrive at my destination until two or three hours after dark. Our time of starting from the Cross Keys was two o’clock. I arrived on the ground with a quarter of an hour to spare, attended by my servant.

At that time it was customary to carry Convicts down to the dock-yards by stage-coach.

“You don’t mind them, Handel?” said Herbert.

“O no!”

“I thought you seemed as if you didn’t like them?”

“I can’t pretend that I do like them, and I suppose you don’t particularly. But I don’t mind them.”

“See! There they are,” said Herbert, “coming out of the Tap. What a degraded and vile sight it is!”

The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had irons on their legs – irons of a pattern that I knew well. They wore the dress that I knew well. Their keeper had a brace of pistols, and carried a thick-knobbed bludgeon under his arm. One was a taller and stouter man than the other; but I knew his half-closed eye at one glance. There stood the man whom I had seen on the settle at the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, and who had brought me down with his invisible gun!

But this was not the worst of it. It came out that the whole of the back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from London, and that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat in front behind the coachman. So, a choleric gentleman, who had taken the fourth place on that seat, flew into a most violent passion, and said that it was a very bad deal to mix him up with such company, and that it was poisonous, and infamous, and shameful, and I don’t know what else. At this time the coach was ready and the coachman impatient, and we were all preparing to get up.

“Good bye, Handel!” Herbert called out as we started. I thought what a blessed fortune it was, that he had found another name for me than Pip.

It is impossible to express my feelings. I felt the convict’s breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along my spine.

The weather was raw. It made us all sleepy before we had gone far. I could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind that blew at us. The convicts were closer to me than before. The very first words I heard them interchange were “Two One Pound notes.”

“How did he get them?” said the convict I had never seen.

“How should I know?” returned the other. “Given him by friends, I expect.”

“I wish,” said the other, with a bitter curse upon the cold, “that I had them here.”

“Two one pound notes, or friends?”

“Two one pound notes. Well? So he says —?”

“So he says,” resumed the convict I had recognized – “it was all said and done in half a minute – ‘You’re a going to be discharged?’ Yes, I was. Would I find out that boy that had fed him and kept his secret, and give him them two one pound notes? Yes, I would. And I did.”

“You fool,” growled the other. “I’d have spent them in wittles and drink.”

“What might have been your opinion of the place?”

“A most beastly place. Mudbank, mist, swamp, and work; work, swamp, mist, and mudbank.”

The coffee-room at the Blue Boar was empty, and I had not only ordered my dinner there, but had sat down to it, before the waiter knew me. As soon as he had apologized for his memory, he asked me if he should send the servant for Mr. Pumblechook?

“No,” said I, “certainly not.”