Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📖

Chapter X

The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I

woke, that the best step I could take towards making myself

uncommon was to get out of Biddy everything she knew. In pursuance

of this luminous conception I mentioned to Biddy when I went to Mr.

Wopsle’s great-aunt’s at night, that I had a particular reason for

wishing to get on in life, and that I should feel very much obliged

to her if she would impart all her learning to me. Biddy, who was

the most obliging of girls, immediately said she would, and indeed

began to carry out her promise within five minutes.

The Educational scheme or Course established by Mr. Wopsle’s

great-aunt may be resolved into the following synopsis. The pupils

ate apples and put straws down one another’s backs, until Mr.

Wopsle’s great-aunt collected her energies, and made an

indiscriminate totter at them with a birch-rod. After receiving the

charge with every mark of derision, the pupils formed in line and

buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to hand. The book had an

alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling,—

that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this volume began to

circulate, Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt fell into a state of coma,

arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils then

entered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the

subject of Boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the

hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasted until Biddy

made a rush at them and distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped as

if they had been unskilfully cut off the chump end of something),

more illegibly printed at the best than any curiosities of

literature I have since met with, speckled all over with ironmould,

and having various specimens of the insect world smashed between

their leaves. This part of the Course was usually lightened by

several single combats between Biddy and refractory students. When

the fights were over, Biddy gave out the number of a page, and then

we all read aloud what we could,—or what we couldn’t—in a

frightful chorus; Biddy leading with a high, shrill, monotonous

voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or reverence for,

what we were reading about. When this horrible din had lasted a

certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, who

staggered at a boy fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was

understood to terminate the Course for the evening, and we emerged

into the air with shrieks of intellectual victory. It is fair to

remark that there was no prohibition against any pupil’s

entertaining himself with a slate or even with the ink (when there

was any), but that it was not easy to pursue that branch of study

in the winter season, on account of the little general shop in

which the classes were holden—and which was also Mr. Wopsle’s

great-aunt’s sitting-room and bedchamber—being but faintly

illuminated through the agency of one low-spirited dip-candle and

no snuffers.

It appeared to me that it would take time to become uncommon, under

these circumstances: nevertheless, I resolved to try it, and that

very evening Biddy entered on our special agreement, by imparting

some information from her little catalogue of Prices, under the

head of moist sugar, and lending me, to copy at home, a large old

English D which she had imitated from the heading of some

newspaper, and which I supposed, until she told me what it was, to

be a design for a buckle.

Of course there was a public-house in the village, and of course

Joe liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I had received strict

orders from my sister to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen,

that evening, on my way from school, and bring him home at my

peril. To the Three Jolly Bargemen, therefore, I directed my steps.

There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long

chalk scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which

seemed to me to be never paid off. They had been there ever since I

could remember, and had grown more than I had. But there was a

quantity of chalk about our country, and perhaps the people

neglected no opportunity of turning it to account.

It being Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather grimly

at these records; but as my business was with Joe and not with him,

I merely wished him good evening, and passed into the common room

at the end of the passage, where there was a bright large kitchen

fire, and where Joe was smoking his pipe in company with Mr. Wopsle

and a stranger. Joe greeted me as usual with “Halloa, Pip, old

chap!” and the moment he said that, the stranger turned his head

and looked at me.

He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen before. His head

was all on one side, and one of his eyes was half shut up, as if he

were taking aim at something with an invisible gun. He had a pipe

in his mouth, and he took it out, and, after slowly blowing all his

smoke away and looking hard at me all the time, nodded. So, I

nodded, and then he nodded again, and made room on the settle

beside him that I might sit down there.

But as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered that place

of resort, I said “No, thank you, sir,” and fell into the space Joe

made for me on the opposite settle. The strange man, after glancing

at Joe, and seeing that his attention was otherwise engaged, nodded

to me again when I had taken my seat, and then rubbed his leg—in

a very odd way, as it struck me.

“You was saying,” said the strange man, turning to Joe, “that you

was a blacksmith.”

“Yes. I said it, you know,” said Joe.

“What’ll you drink, Mr.—? You didn’t mention your name,

by the bye.”

Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him by it.

“What’ll you drink, Mr. Gargery? At my expense? To top up with?”

“Well,” said Joe, “to tell you the truth, I ain’t much in the habit

of drinking at anybody’s expense but my own.”

“Habit? No,” returned the stranger, “but once and away, and on a

Saturday night too. Come! Put a name to it, Mr. Gargery.”

“I wouldn’t wish to be stiff company,” said Joe. “Rum.”

“Rum,” repeated the stranger. “And will the other gentleman

originate a sentiment.”

“Rum,” said Mr. Wopsle.

“Three Rums!” cried the stranger, calling to the landlord. “Glasses

round!”

“This other gentleman,” observed Joe, by way of introducing Mr.

Wopsle, “is a gentleman that you would like to hear give it out.

Our clerk at church.”

“Aha!” said the stranger, quickly, and cocking his eye at me. “The

lonely church, right out on the marshes, with graves round it!”

“That’s it,” said Joe.

The stranger, with a comfortable kind of grunt over