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Read books online » Fiction » Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📖

Book online «Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📖». Author Charles Dickens



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short distance off, and I went towards it

under the sweet green limes, listening for the clink of Joe’s

hammer. Long after I ought to have heard it, and long after I had

fancied I heard it and found it but a fancy, all was still. The

limes were there, and the white thorns were there, and the

chestnut-trees were there, and their leaves rustled harmoniously

when I stopped to listen; but, the clink of Joe’s hammer was not in

the midsummer wind.

Almost fearing, without knowing why, to come in view of the forge,

I saw it at last, and saw that it was closed. No gleam of fire, no

glittering shower of sparks, no roar of bellows; all shut up, and

still.

But the house was not deserted, and the best parlor seemed to be

in use, for there were white curtains fluttering in its window, and

the window was open and gay with flowers. I went softly towards it,

meaning to peep over the flowers, when Joe and Biddy stood before

me, arm in arm.

At first Biddy gave a cry, as if she thought it was my apparition,

but in another moment she was in my embrace. I wept to see her, and

she wept to see me; I, because she looked so fresh and pleasant;

she, because I looked so worn and white.

“But dear Biddy, how smart you are!”

“Yes, dear Pip.”

“And Joe, how smart you are!”

“Yes, dear old Pip, old chap.”

I looked at both of them, from one to the other, and then—

“It’s my wedding-day!” cried Biddy, in a burst of happiness, “and I

am married to Joe!”

They had taken me into the kitchen, and I had laid my head down on

the old deal table. Biddy held one of my hands to her lips, and

Joe’s restoring touch was on my shoulder. “Which he warn’t strong

enough, my dear, fur to be surprised,” said Joe. And Biddy said, “I

ought to have thought of it, dear Joe, but I was too happy.” They

were both so overjoyed to see me, so proud to see me, so touched by

my coming to them, so delighted that I should have come by accident

to make their day complete!

My first thought was one of great thankfulness that I had never

breathed this last baffled hope to Joe. How often, while he was

with me in my illness, had it risen to my lips! How irrevocable

would have been his knowledge of it, if he had remained with me but

another hour!

“Dear Biddy,” said I, “you have the best husband in the whole

world, and if you could have seen him by my bed you would have—

But no, you couldn’t love him better than you do.”

“No, I couldn’t indeed,” said Biddy.

“And, dear Joe, you have the best wife in the whole world, and she

will make you as happy as even you deserve to be, you dear, good,

noble Joe!”

Joe looked at me with a quivering lip, and fairly put his sleeve

before his eyes.

“And Joe and Biddy both, as you have been to church to-day, and are

in charity and love with all mankind, receive my humble thanks for

all you have done for me, and all I have so ill repaid! And when I

say that I am going away within the hour, for I am soon going

abroad, and that I shall never rest until I have worked for the

money with which you have kept me out of prison, and have sent it

to you, don’t think, dear Joe and Biddy, that if I could repay it a

thousand times over, I suppose I could cancel a farthing of the

debt I owe you, or that I would do so if I could!”

They were both melted by these words, and both entreated me to say

no more.

“But I must say more. Dear Joe, I hope you will have children to

love, and that some little fellow will sit in this chimney-corner

of a winter night, who may remind you of another little fellow gone

out of it for ever. Don’t tell him, Joe, that I was thankless;

don’t tell him, Biddy, that I was ungenerous and unjust; only tell

him that I honored you both, because you were both so good and

true, and that, as your child, I said it would be natural to him to

grow up a much better man than I did.”

“I ain’t a going,” said Joe, from behind his sleeve, “to tell him

nothink o’ that natur, Pip. Nor Biddy ain’t. Nor yet no one ain’t.”

“And now, though I know you have already done it in your own kind

hearts, pray tell me, both, that you forgive me! Pray let me hear

you say the words, that I may carry the sound of them away with me,

and then I shall be able to believe that you can trust me, and

think better of me, in the time to come!”

“O dear old Pip, old chap,” said Joe. “God knows as I forgive you,

if I have anythink to forgive!”

“Amen! And God knows I do!” echoed Biddy.

Now let me go up and look at my old little room, and rest there a few

minutes by myself. And then, when I have eaten and drunk with you,

go with me as far as the finger-post, dear Joe and Biddy, before we

say good by!”

I sold all I had, and put aside as much as I could, for a

composition with my creditors,—who gave me ample time to pay them

in full,—and I went out and joined Herbert. Within a month, I had

quitted England, and within two months I was clerk to Clarriker and

Co., and within four months I assumed my first undivided

responsibility. For the beam across the parlor ceiling at Mill

Pond Bank had then ceased to tremble under old Bill Barley’s

growls and was at peace, and Herbert had gone away to marry Clara,

and I was left in sole charge of the Eastern Branch until he

brought her back.

Many a year went round before I was a partner in the House; but

I lived happily with Herbert and his wife, and lived frugally, and

paid my debts, and maintained a constant correspondence with Biddy

and Joe. It was not until I became third in the Firm, that

Clarriker betrayed me to Herbert; but he then declared that the

secret of Herbert’s partnership had been long enough upon his

conscience, and he must tell it. So he told it, and Herbert was as

much moved as amazed, and the dear fellow and I were not the worse

friends for the long concealment. I must not leave it to be

supposed that we were ever a great House, or that we made mints of

money. We were not in a grand way of business, but we had a good

name, and worked for our profits, and did very well. We owed so

much to Herbert’s ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I

often wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude,

until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the

inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me.

Chapter LIX

For eleven years, I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my bodily

Eyes,—though they had both been often before my fancy in the

East,—when, upon an evening in December, an hour or two after dark,

I laid my hand softly on the latch of the old kitchen door. I

touched it so softly that I was not heard, and looked in unseen.

There, smoking his pipe in the old place by the kitchen firelight,

as hale and as strong as ever, though a little gray, sat Joe; and

there, fenced into the corner with Joe’s leg, and sitting on my own

little stool looking at the fire, was—I again!

“We giv’ him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old chap,” said

Joe, delighted, when I took another stool by the child’s side (but I

did not rumple his hair), “and we hoped he might grow a little bit

like you, and we think he do.”

I thought so too, and I took him out for a walk next morning, and

we talked immensely, understanding one another to perfection. And I

took him down to the churchyard, and set him on a certain tombstone

there, and he showed me from that elevation which stone was sacred

to the memory of Philip Pirrip, late of this Parish, and Also

Georgiana, Wife of the Above.

“Biddy,” said I, when I talked with her after dinner, as her little

girl lay sleeping in her lap, “you must give Pip to me one of

these days; or lend him, at all events.”

“No, no,” said Biddy, gently. “You must marry.”

“So Herbert and Clara say, but I don’t think I shall, Biddy. I have

so settled down in their home, that it’s not at all likely. I am

already quite an old bachelor.”

Biddy looked down at her child, and put its little hand to her

lips, and then put the good matronly hand with which she had

touched it into mine. There was something in the action, and in the

light pressure of Biddy’s wedding-ring, that had a very pretty

eloquence in it.

“Dear Pip,” said Biddy, “you are sure you don’t fret for her?”

“O no,—I think not, Biddy.”

“Tell me as an old, old friend. Have you quite forgotten her?

“My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life that ever had a

foremost place there, and little that ever had any place there. But

that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by, Biddy,—

all gone by!”

Nevertheless, I knew, while I said those words, that I secretly

intended to revisit the site of the old house that evening, alone,

for her sake. Yes, even so. For Estella’s sake.

I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, and as being

separated from her husband, who had used her with great cruelty,

and who had become quite renowned as a compound of pride, avarice,

brutality, and meanness. And I had heard of the death of her

husband, from an accident consequent on his ill-treatment of a

horse. This release had befallen her some two years before; for

anything I knew, she was married again.

The early dinner hour at Joe’s, left me abundance of time, without

hurrying my talk with Biddy, to walk over to the old spot before

dark. But, what with loitering on the way to look at old objects

and to think of old times, the day had quite declined when I came

to the place.

There was no house now, no brewery, no building whatever left, but

the wall of the old garden. The cleared space had been enclosed

with a rough fence, and looking over it, I saw that some of the

old ivy had struck root anew, and was growing green on low quiet

mounds of ruin. A gate in the fence standing ajar, I pushed it

open, and went in.

A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the moon was not

yet up to scatter it. But, the stars were shining beyond the mist,

and the moon was coming, and the evening was not dark. I could

trace out where every part of the old house had been, and where the

brewery had been, and where the gates, and where the casks. I had

done so, and was looking along the desolate garden walk, when I

beheld a solitary figure in it.

The figure showed itself aware of me, as I advanced. It had been

moving towards me, but it stood still.

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