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Pip
by
“Swords!” repeated my sister. “Where did you get swords from?”
“Out of the cupboard,” said I. “And I saw pistols in it–and jam–and pills. And there was only candlelight in the room.”
If they had asked me any more questions I should undoubtedly have betrayed myself for I was just on the point of mentioning that there was a balloon in the yard and should have hazarded the statement, but that my invention was divided between that phenomenon and a bear in the brewery.
My hearers were so much occupied, however, in discussing the marvels I had already presented to them, that I escaped. The subject still held them when Joe came in, and my experiences were at once related to him. Now, when I saw his big blue eyes open in helpless amazement, I became penitent, but only in regard to him. And so, after Mr. Pumblechook had driven off, and my sister was busy, I stole into the forge and confessed my guilt.
“You remember all that about Miss Havisham’s?” I said.
“Remember!” said Joe. “I believe you! Wonderful!”
“It’s a terrible thing, Joe. It ain’t true.”
“What are you a-telling of, Pip?” cried Joe. “You don’t mean to say it!”
“Yes, I do;–it’s lies, Joe.”
“But not all of it? Why, sure you don’t mean to say, Pip, that there was no black welvet co-ch?” For I stood there shaking my head. “But at least there was dogs, Pip? Come, Pip, if there warn’t no weal cutlets, at least there was dogs? A puppy, come.”
“No, Joe,” I said. “There was nothing of the kind.”
As I fixed my eyes hopelessly on him, he looked at me in dismay. “Pip, old chap,” he said, “this won’t do, I say. Where do you expect to go to? What possessed you?”
“I don’t know what possessed me,” I replied, hanging my head, “but I wish you hadn’t taught me to call knaves at cards Jacks, and I wish my boots weren’t so thick, nor my hands so coarse.”
Then I told Joe that I felt very miserable, but I hadn’t liked to tell Mrs. Joe and Uncle Pumblechook about the beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham’s who was so proud, and that she had said I was common, and that I wished I was not common, and that the lies had come out of it somehow, though I didn’t know how.
“Well,” said Joe after a good deal of thought, “there’s one thing you may be sure of, Pip, namely, that lies is lies. Howsoever they come, they didn’t ought to come, and they come from the father of lies and work round to the same. Don’t you tell no more of ’em, Pip. They ain’t the way to get out of being common, old chap. And as to being common, I don’t make it out at all clear. You’re sure an uncommon scholar.”
This I denied in the face of Joe’s most forcible arguments, and at the end of our talk, I said, “You are not angry with me, Joe?”
“No, old chap, but if you can’t get to being uncommon through going straight, you’ll never get to do it through going crooked. So don’t tell no more on ’em, Pip. Don’t never do it no more.”
When I got up to my little room and said my prayers, I thought over Joe’s advice and knew that it was right, and yet my mind was in such a disturbed and unthankful state, that for a long time I lay awake, not thinking over my sins, but still mourning that Joe and Mrs. Joe and I were all common.
That was a memorable day for me, and it wrought great changes in me. I began to see things and people from a new point of view, and from that day dates the beginning of my great expectations.
One night, a little later, I was at the village Public House with Joe, who was smoking his pipe with friends. In the room there was a stranger, who, when he heard me addressed as Pip, turned and looked at me. He kept looking hard at me, and nodding at me, and I returned his nods as politely as possible. Presently, after seeing that Joe was not looking, he nodded again and then rubbed his leg–in a very odd way, it struck me–and later, he stirred his rum and water pointedly at me, and he tasted it pointedly at me. And he did both, not with the spoon but with a file. He did this so that nobody but I saw the file, and then he wiped it and put it in his pocket I knew it to be Joe’s file, and I knew that he was my convict the minute I saw the instrument. I sat gazing at him, spell-bound, but he took very little more notice of me; only when Joe and I started to go, he stopped us.