Tales from Dickens

In this trouble Agnes was his true friend. He had written her already of his love for Dora and she had advised him. Through her now he found employment as secretary to his old schoolmaster, Doctor Strong, who had given up the school at Dover and had moved to London. He told Dora, of course, all about his changed prospects, but Dora was like a little butterfly who knew only how to fly about among flowers; she hardly knew what poverty meant, and thought he was scolding when he told her.

David worked hard in the morning at Doctor Strong's, in the afternoons at the law office, and in the evenings he studied shorthand so he might come to be a newspaper reporter. And all this while he wrote to Dora every day.

It was one of these letters that at last betrayed their secret. Dora dropped it from her pocket and Miss Murdstone picked it up. She showed it to Dora's father and he sent at once for David and told him angrily that he could never marry his child and that he must not see Dora any more. And David went home disconsolate.

This might have ended their engagement for ever, but that same day Dora's father dropped dead of heart-disease. Instead of being rich he was found to have left no money at all, and Dora was taken to live with two aunts on the outskirts of London. David did not know what was best to do now, so he went to Dover to ask Agnes's advice.

He was shocked at the changes he found there. Her father looked ill and scarcely seemed himself. Uriah Heep, his new partner, with his ugly, fawning way and clammy hands, was living in their house and eating with them at their table. He had obtained more and more power over Mr. Wickfield and gloried in it. And the other seemed no longer to dare to oppose Uriah in anything.

But in spite of all this, Agnes talked bravely and cheerfully with David. Under her direction, he wrote a letter to Dora's aunts, declaring his love and asking permission to call, and they, pleased with his frankness, gave their permission. Before the year was out David began to earn money with his shorthand, reporting speeches in Parliament for a newspaper. He had discovered besides that he could write stories that the magazines were glad to buy. So one day David married Dora and they went to housekeeping in a tiny house of their own.

Life seemed very sweet to them both, though Dora, while she was the most loving little wife in the world, knew no more about housekeeping than a bird. The servants stole the silver spoons, and the storekeepers overcharged them, and the house was never tidy or comfortable. For a while David tried to make Dora learn these things, but when he chid her the tears would come, and she would throw her arms around his neck and sob that she was only his child-wife after all, and he would end by kissing her and telling her not to mind. She was most like a beautiful toy; and like a toy, she seemed made only to play with, just as she played with her dog Jip, instead of helping and encouraging David in his work.

But at length Dora fell ill – so ill that they knew she was too frail and weak to get well and strong again. David carried her down stairs every day, and every day the burden grew lighter. She never complained, but called him her poor, dear boy, and one day she whispered that she was only his child-wife and could never have been more, so that it was better as it was!

Agnes came, and was there when Dora died. But for her comfort all the world would have been blank for poor David as he sat alone, longing for the child-wife who could never be his again!

IV

DAVID FINDS ALL WELL AT LAST

More than once during this life of David's with his child-wife he had seen Mr. Peggotty. The brave old man had searched Europe for little Em'ly in vain; then he had come back to London, feeling somehow that some day she would stray there. He used to walk the streets by night, looking at every face he passed. In the room where he lived he kept a candle always lighted and one of her dresses hanging on a chair for her.

After Dora's death David joined in the search, and at length they did find poor little Em'ly. Steerforth had treated her cruelly and finally deserted her, and she had crept back to London heartbroken and repentant, hoping for nothing but to die within sight of those who had loved her so.

But nothing had dimmed Mr. Peggotty's love. Wretched as she was, he caught her in his arms, held her to his breast as he had done so often when she was a child, and told her she was still his own little Em'ly, just as she had always been.

She was ill, but he nursed her back to health. Then he went to Yarmouth to fetch Mrs. Gummidge, and they and the little Em'ly that had been found took passage for Australia, where they might forget the dark past and find happiness in a new life.

But before they sailed fate had brought to naught the villainous plot that had been woven by Uriah Heep about Agnes and her father. And the one whom they had most to thank for this was Mr. Micawber.

Heep had met Mr. Micawber once, when the latter, as usual, was in money difficulties, and, thinking to make a tool of him, had hired him for his clerk. Little by little Heep had then got the other into his debt, till Mr. Micawber saw no prospect before him but the debtors' prison.

Threatening him with this, Heep tried to compel him to do various bits of dirty and dishonest work, at which the other's soul revolted until at length he made up his mind to expose his employer. So, pretending obedience, Mr. Micawber wormed himself into all of the sneaking Heep's affairs, found out the evidence of his guilt, and finally taking all the books and papers from the office safe, sent for David and his friend Tommy Traddles and told them all he had discovered. They found it was by forgery that Heep had got Agnes's father into his power in the first place, and that among others whom he had robbed was David's aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood, whose fortune he had stolen.

David and Tommy Traddles sent for Miss Betsy and for Agnes and her father, and they faced Uriah all together. He tried to brazen it out, but when he saw the empty safe he knew that all was known. They told him the only way he could save himself from prison was by giving back the business to Agnes's father, just as it had been years before, when David had lived there, and by restoring to Miss Betsy Trotwood every cent he had robbed her of. This he did with no very good grace and with an especial curse for David, whom he seemed to blame for it all.

In reward for Mr. Micawber's good services, Miss Betsy and Agnes's father paid off all his debts and gave him money enough to take him and his family to Australia. They sailed in the same vessel that carried Mr. Peggotty and little Em'ly.

Before it sailed little Em'ly had written a letter to Ham, whose promised wife she had been before she ran away with Steerforth, begging his forgiveness, and this letter she had asked David to give him after they had gone. Accordingly one day he went to Yarmouth to do this.

That night a terrible storm arose. The wind was so strong that it uprooted trees and threw down chimneys and rolled waves mountain high on the sand where stood the old deserted house-boat of the Peggottys. Next morning David was awakened with the news that a Spanish ship had gone ashore and was fast going to pieces, and he ran to the beach, where all the town was gathered.

He could see the doomed vessel plainly where the surf broke over her. Her masts had snapped short off and at every wave she rolled and beat the sand as if she would pound herself to fragments. Several figures were clinging to the broken masts, and one by one the waves beat them off, and they went down for ever.

At length but one was left, and he held on so long that a shout of encouragement went up from the throng. At this Ham, the bravest and strongest of all the hardy boatmen there, tied a rope about his waist and plunged into the sea to try to save him. But it was not to be. The same huge wave that dashed the vessel to pieces threw the rescuer back on the sand, dead. The body of the man he had tried to save was washed ashore, too, and it was that of James Steerforth, who had so wronged little Em'ly!

So poor, great-souled Ham died, honest and faithful to the last, giving his life for the man who had injured him. And so, too, James Steerforth met his fate on the very spot where he had done such evil, for his corpse was found among the fragments of the old Peggotty house-boat, which the tempest tore down that night.

After this David went abroad and stayed three years. He lived in Switzerland, and wrote novels that were printed in London and made him famous there.

And now, alone, he had time to think of all that made up his past. He thought of Dora, his child-wife, and sorrowed for her, and of the Peggottys and little Em'ly; but most of all he found himself thinking of Agnes, who, throughout his youth, had seemed like his guiding star.

So one day he went back to England and told her, and asked her if she would marry him. And with her sweet face on his breast she whispered that she had loved him all her life!

David and Agnes lived long and happily, and their children had three guardians who loved them all – Miss Betsy Trotwood, David's old nurse, Peggotty, and white-haired Mr. Dick, who taught them to fly kites and thought them the greatest children in the world. Tommy Traddles, when he had become a famous lawyer, often visited them, and once, too, Mr. Peggotty, older, but still hale and strong, came back from Australia to tell them how he had prospered and grown rich, and had always his little Em'ly beside him, and how Mr. Micawber had ceased to owe everybody money and had become a magistrate, and many other things.

David had one thing, however, to tell Mr. Peggotty, and that was of a certain prisoner he had seen in one of the country's greatest prisons, sentenced for life for an attempt to rob the Bank of England, and whose name was – Uriah Heep.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Published 1860–1861

CHARACTERS

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I

PIP AND THE CONVICT

In England, in a lonely village not far from London, there once lived a little orphan boy named Philip Pirrip, whom everybody called, for short, "Pip." His parents had died when he was a baby, and he had been brought up by his older sister, the wife of Joe Gargery, a blacksmith whose forge looked out across wide marshes and a river that flowed through them.

Joe, the blacksmith, was a fair-faced man with flaxen whiskers and very bright blue eyes. He was a mild, honest, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow, tender-hearted and kind to little Pip and yet a Hercules for strength.

Very different, indeed, was "Mrs. Joe," as everybody spoke of her. She was tall and bony and had black hair, a red skin and a continual habit of scolding. She may have loved Pip in her way, but that way was a very cross-grained one. She treated Joe, the big blacksmith, and Pip, the little boy, just alike, and they were both equally in dread of her. This made them quite like partners. Whenever Pip came into the house he used to look at Joe's fingers; if Joe crossed them that was a sign Mrs. Joe was cross and that Pip was to look out for himself.

Joe had an uncle named Pumblechook, who was a corn seller in the next town and a pompous old hypocrite. He had a way of standing Pip before him, rumpling up his hair and asking him hard questions out of the multiplication table. And whenever he told a story of any one who was ungrateful or wicked he would glower at Pip in a way that made him feel very uncomfortable.

Another who came as often and was almost as dismal to see was Wopsle, the clerk, who read the lesson in church every Sunday. He had an idea he would make a great actor and used to recite whole pages from Shakespeare when he could find any one to listen to him.

Worst of all was a workman of Joe's named Orlick. He was a loose-limbed, swarthy, slouching giant with a hangdog look. He used to tell Pip that the devil lived in a certain corner of the forge, and once in every seven years the fire had to be rekindled with a live boy. Orlick at heart disliked everybody – especially harmless little Pip – and often quarreled with Mrs. Joe.

Beside the blacksmith, the only one who understood Pip was a little girl named Biddy, about his own age and an orphan, too. She liked him and used to help him with his lessons at school.

But in spite of Joe and Biddy, Pip was sometimes so lonely and miserable that he would steal off alone to the village churchyard, where his father and mother lay buried, to cry.

One afternoon – it was the day before Christmas – Pip was more wretched than usual, and was sitting crying among the graves when suddenly a rough voice spoke behind him. "Keep still, you little imp!" it said, "or I'll cut your throat!" With the words a man rose up from behind a tombstone and seized him.

He was a fearful-looking man, dressed all in gray clothes, with a great iron band riveted on his leg. His shoes were torn, he had no hat and wore a ragged, dirty handkerchief tied around his head. He was soaked with water, caked with mud and limped and shivered as he walked. He set Pip on a tombstone and tilted him so far back that the church steeple seemed to turn a somersault, growling at him in a terrible voice.

Pip had never been so frightened in his life. With a trembling voice he begged his captor to spare him. The man asked him his name and where he lived, and told him he would let him go on one condition. He had to promise to come next morning at daybreak to a certain spot in the marshes and to bring a file and something to eat. And the man said if Pip did not do so, or if he told any one what he was going to do, he would catch him again and cut out his heart and eat it.

This terrible threat frightened poor little Pip more than ever. His voice shook so that he could hardly promise, and when the man set him down he ran home as fast as his legs would carry him.

The evening was a miserable one. Pip thought he would save his own supper for the man in case he should not be able to get into his sister's pantry, so instead of eating his bread and butter he slipped it down his trouser-leg.

Before long a great gun began to boom, and he asked Joe what it was. The blacksmith told him that in the river across the marshes were anchored some big hulks of ships, like wicked Noah's arks, where convicts were kept prisoners, and that the gun was a signal that some of these convicts had escaped. Then Pip knew the man he had promised to help was a criminal – perhaps a murderer – who had got away and was hiding from the soldiers.

All night he did not sleep. He hated to steal the food, but he felt certain he would be killed if he did not. So at dawn he slipped down stairs, got a file from the forge, unlocked the pantry, took some bread and cheese and a pork pie that Uncle Pumblechook had sent for Christmas dinner, and ran out through the foggy morning to the marshes.

He had not got quite there when he came on a man in gray, sitting on the ground, with an iron fetter on his leg. Pip thought he was the one he was in search of, but as soon as the other turned his face he saw by a bruise on the cheek that he was not. This second man in gray, as soon as he saw him, sprang to his feet and ran away.

Greatly wondering, Pip went on, and at the right spot he found the man who had frightened him in the graveyard. He seemed now to be almost starved, for he snatched the food and ate it like a hungry dog. He asked Pip if he had seen any one else on his way there, and Pip told him of the other man in gray who also wore an iron on his leg.

He asked Pip to describe the other, and when Pip told of the bruised cheek, the man he was feeding flew into a rage. He began to curse, and, seizing the file, set to filing like mad at his fetter. Pip could see that he hated the other convict, and was sorry he had escaped; but he had fulfilled his promise now, so he turned and ran home again, and the last thing he heard was the rasp of the file as the man worked madly at the iron.

Very guilty Pip felt all that Christmas morning. He went to church with Joe, and after service Uncle Pumblechook, Wopsle, the clerk, and other company came to dinner. He could not enjoy the good things to eat, for he knew now his sister must discover that the pork pie was gone. Just as she went to get it he got up from the table to run away, but as he opened the door he ran plump into a file of soldiers.

He was sure at first they had come to arrest him for helping the convict, but he was soon relieved, when the officer at their head explained that they were on their way to search the marshes for the escaped men and wanted the blacksmith to mend a broken handcuff.

In the flurry of their arrival the pork pie was forgotten, while Joe mended the handcuff in the forge. When the soldiers left, the blacksmith set Pip on his broad shoulder, and he and Wopsle went striding with them to see the result of the hunt.

It was sunset as the party entered the marshes, and the searchers opened out into a wide line. On a sudden all stopped, for a confused shouting had come from the distance. They ran toward it, cocking their guns, and Wopsle and Joe, with Pip on his shoulder, followed. The shouts became plainer and plainer. All at once they came to a ditch and in it the convict Pip had fed and the one with the bruised cheek were struggling fiercely together.

The soldiers seized and handcuffed them both, the man with the bruised cheek pale and trembling, the other boasting that he had dragged the man he hated back to captivity, even though it cost him his own freedom.

While the soldiers were preparing to take their prisoners back, Pip's convict saw the boy standing there with Joe. Pip hoped he would not think he had had anything to do with bringing the soldiers. He was pretty sure the man did not, because he presently told the officer, in every one's hearing, that the night before he had broken into a house where a blacksmith lived, near a church, and had stolen a pork pie. Joe heard this and so Pip knew that he himself would be clear of any blame.

The convicts were taken back to their cells and Joe and Pip went home to tell the company of their adventure. But neither then nor ever afterward did Pip find courage to tell Joe the part he had played; for Pip loved the honest blacksmith and did not want him to think him worse than he really was.

Time went on and Pip grew older and bigger, and though he never forgot the adventure of the churchyard, yet the memory of it grew dimmer. In the next few years only one thing happened to recall it to him.

One evening Mrs. Joe sent Pip to the village inn, The Three Jolly Bargemen, with a message. Pip found Joe there, sitting with a stranger – a secret-looking man, who held his head on one side and kept one eye perpetually shut as if he were taking aim with a gun. This man, when he heard Pip's name, looked at him with a curious wink, and when no one but Pip was looking he took out of his pocket, to stir his drink with, the very file Pip had stolen from Joe's forge.

Pip knew that minute that the man was a friend of the convict he had aided. When Pip left the inn the stranger called him back and gave him a shilling wrapped up in a piece of paper.

When he got home Mrs. Joe (who took the prize away from him) discovered that the piece of paper was in reality two bank-notes, and both Joe and she wondered at it. The blacksmith tried next day to find the stranger to restore the money, but he had left the inn.

So it always remained a mystery – to all but Pip of course, who knew in his heart that the convict had remembered his aid and had taken this means of repaying him.

II

THE QUEER MISS HAVISHAM

One day, when Pip was considerably older, Uncle Pumblechook brought Mrs. Joe word that a Miss Havisham, a lady who lived in his own town, had heard of Pip, and wanted him to come to her house to see her.

Miss Havisham was a very queer lady, indeed; so queer that some said she was crazy. But she was rich, and for this reason Mrs. Joe scrubbed Pip and dressed him in his best clothes and sent him off in care of Uncle Pumblechook, who took him as far as Miss Havisham's gate.

Miss Havisham, when a beautiful young lady, had been engaged to marry a man named Compeyson, whom she loved very much. He was a wicked, heartless villain, however, and had made her love him only that he might persuade her to give him great sums of money.

The marriage day finally was fixed, her wedding-clothes were bought, the house was decorated for the ceremony, the bride-cake was put on the table in the dining-room and the guests arrived. But Compeyson, the bridegroom, did not come.

Miss Havisham was dressing for the wedding when she received a cruel note from him telling her he did not intend to marry her. She had put on her white wedding gown and her lace veil and one of her satin slippers – the other lay on the dressing-table. It was exactly twenty minutes to nine o'clock when she read the note.

She fainted and afterward lay for a long time ill. When she recovered she laid the whole place waste. She never afterward let the light of day into the old mansion. The shutters were closed, candles were kept always lighted, and all the clocks in the house were stopped at exactly twenty minutes to nine o'clock. Not a thing in any room was changed. The bride-cake rotted on the table, the decorations faded on the walls, and day after day Miss Havisham sat in the dressing-room clad in her wedding gown and veil, with one slipper on, the dead flowers on her table and the trunks for her wedding journey scattered about half-packed. In time she became shrunken and old and the white satin and lace became faded yellow, but she never varied this habit of life.

Soon after her love disappointment she had written to her lawyer in London, who was named Jaggers, asking him to find a baby girl for her to adopt as her own. Now Mr. Jaggers had just defended in court a man named Abel Magwitch, the tool of Compeyson, who had broken Miss Havisham's heart. Compeyson had tempted Magwitch into passing some stolen money and they had both been arrested. At the trial Compeyson (sneak and liar as he was!) threw all the blame on his comrade, who was duller and less sharp than he, and as a consequence, while Compeyson got a light sentence, Magwitch, though really the more innocent of the two, had been sent to the prison-ship for a term of many years. These two men, by the way, were the pair who escaped from the hulks into the marshes. Magwitch was Pip's convict of the churchyard, and Compeyson was the one he had dragged back to capture. This Magwitch, at the time of his arrest, had a baby daughter, who had fallen into Mr. Jaggers's care, and in answer to Miss Havisham's request the lawyer had sent the little girl to her, telling her nothing whatever of the child's parentage.

Miss Havisham had named the child Estella, and, seeing she would be a very beautiful woman, had determined to bring her up heartless and cold, to ruin as many men's lives as possible, so as to avenge her own wrongs and broken heart.

So Estella had grown up in the dismal house, Miss Havisham's only companion. Day by day she became more lovely, and even while she was still a little girl, the same age as Pip, Miss Havisham was impatient to begin teaching her her lesson.

This was the reason Pip had received his invitation to Miss Havisham's house. Though he had no idea of it, he was intended only as practice for little Estella, who under Miss Havisham's teaching was growing up very fond of admiration and very cold-hearted, too.

Pip thought Miss Havisham the strangest lady he had ever seen, and the yellow satin, the candle-lighted rooms, and the stopped clocks seemed to him very odd. But Estella was so pretty that from the first moment he saw her he had no eyes for anything else. Even though she called him clumsy and common, and seemed to delight in hurting his feelings, Pip fell in love with her and could not help himself. Miss Havisham made them play together and told him to come again the next week.

Pip went home in very bad humor on account of all the hurts which Estella had given his feelings. Uncle Pumblechook, being very curious to know all about his trip, bullied and questioned him so (beginning as usual with the multiplication table) that Pip, perfectly frantic, told him the most impossible tales. He said Miss Havisham was in a black coach inside the house, and had cake and wine handed to her through the coach window on a golden plate, and that he and she played with flags and swords, while four dogs fought for veal cutlets out of a silver basket.