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Values today we'll be continuing great Expectations by Charles Dickens Chapter 39 I was three and 20 years of age.

Not another word had I heard to enlighten me on the subject of my expectations, and my 23rd birthday was a week gone.

We had left Barnard's Inn more than a year and lived in the Temple.

Our chambers were in Garden Court down by the river.

Mr.

Pocket and I had for some time parted company as to our original relations, though we continued on the best terms, notwithstanding my inability to settle anything which I hope arose out of the restless and incomplete tenure on which I held my means.

I had a taste for reading and read regularly so many hours a day.

The matter of Herbert's was still progressing, and everything with me was as I have brought it down to the close of the last preceding chapter.

Business had taken Herbert on a journey to Marseilles.

I was alone and had a dull sense of being alone, dispirited and anxious, long hoping that tomorrow or next week would clear my way, and long disappointed, I sadly missed the cheerful face and ready response of my friend.

It was wretched weather stormy and wet, stormy and wet, and mud, mud, mud deep in all the streets, day after day.

A vast heavy veil had been driving over London from the east, and it drove still as if in the east there were an eternity of cloud and wind.

So furious had been the gusts that high buildings in town had had the lead stripped off their roofs, and in the country, trees had been torn up, and sails of windmills carried away, and gloomy accounts had come in from the coast of shipwreck and death.

Violent blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind.

And the day just closed as I sat down to read, had been the worst of all.

Alterations had been made in that part of the temple since that time, and it is now not so lonely a character as it had then, nor is it so exposed to the river.

We lived at the top of the last house, and the wind rushing up the river shook the house that night like discharges of cannon or breakings of a sea.

When the rain came with it and dashed against the windows, I thought, raising my eyes to them as they rocked, that I might have fancied myself in a storm beaten lighthouse.

Occasionally smoke came rolling down the chimney, as though it could not bear to go out into such a night.

And when I set the doors open and looked down the staircase, the staircase lamps were blown out.

And when I shaded my face with my hands and looked through the black windows, opening them, ever so little was out of the question in the teeth of such wind and rain.

I saw that the lamps in the court were blown out, and that the lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuddering, and that the coal fires and barges on the river were being carried away before the wind like red hot splashes in the rain.

I read with my watch upon the table, proposing to close my book at 11:00 as I shut it, St.

Paul's and all the many church clocks in the city, some leading, some accompanying, some following, struck that hour.

The sound was curiously flawed by the wind, and I was listening and thinking how the wind assailed and tore it when I heard a footstep on the stair.

What nervous folly made me start and awfully connect it with the footstep of my dead sister?

Matters not.

It was passed in a moment.

And I listened again and heard the footsteps stumble in, coming on.

Remembering then that the staircase lights were blown out, I took up my reading lamp and went out to the stairhead.

Whoever was below had stopped on, seeing my lamp, for all was quiet.

There's someone down there, is there not?

I called out, looking down yes, said.

A voice from the darkness beneath.

What floor do you want?

The top, Mr.

Pip.

That is my name.

There's nothing the matter.

Nothing the matter, returned the voice.

The man came on.

I stood with my lamp held out over the stair rail, and he came slowly within its light.

It was a shaded lamp to shine upon a book, and its circle of light was very contracted, so that he was in it for a mere instant, and then out of it in the instant I had seen a face that was strange to me, looking up with an incomprehensible air of being touched and pleased by the sight of me moving the lamp.

As the man moved, I made out that he was substantially dressed, but roughly like a voyager by sea, that he had long iron gray hair, that his age was about 60, that he was a muscular man, strong on his legs, and that he was browned and hardened by exposure to weather.

As he ascended the last stair or two, and the light of my lamp included us both, I saw with a stupid kind of amazement that he was holding out both his hands to me.

Pray, what is your business?

I asked him.

My business?

He repeated, pausing.

Ah, yes, I will explain my business by your leave.

Do you wish to come in?

Yes, he replied.

I wish to come in, master.

I had asked him the question inhospitably enough, for I resented the sort of bright and gratified recognition that still shone in his face.

I resented it, but it seemed to imply that he expected me to respond to it.

But I took him into the room I had just left, and, having set the lamp on the table, asked him as civilly as I could to explain himself.

He looked about him with the strangest air, an air of wondering pleasure, as if he had some part in the things he admired, and he pulled off a rough outer coat and his hat.

Then I saw that his head was furrowed and bald, and that the long iron gray hair grew only on its sides, but I saw nothing that in the least explained him.

On the contrary, I saw him next moment, once more holding out both his hands to me.

What do you mean?

Said I, half suspecting him to be mad.

He stopped and is looking at me, and slowly rubbed his right hand over his head.

It's disappointing to a man, he said in a coarse, broken voice, arter having looked forward so distant and come so fur.

But you're not to blame for that.

Neither on us as to blame for that.

I'll speak in half a minute.

Give me half a minute, please.

He had sat down on a chair that stood before the fire and covered his forehead with his large brown veinous hand.

I looked at him attentively then, and recoiled a little from him.

But I did not know him.

There is no one nigh, said he.

Looking over his shoulder.

Is there?

Why do you, a stranger, coming into my rooms at this time of the night, ask that question?

Said I.

You're a game one, he returned, shaking his head at me with a deliberate affection, at once most unintelligible and most exasperating.

I'm glad you've growed up a game one, but don't catch hold of me.

You'd be sorry afterwards to have done it.

I relinquished the intention he had detected, for I knew him.

Even yet I could not recall a single feature.

But I knew him.

If the wind and the rain had driven away, the intervening years had scattered.

All the intervening objects had slept us to the churchyard where we first stood face to face on such different levels, I could not have known my convict more distinctly than I knew him now as he sat in the chair before the fire.

No need to take a file from his pocket and show it to me, no need to take the handkerchief from his neck and twist it round his head.

No need to hug himself with both his arms and take a shivering turn across the room, looking back at me for recognition.

I knew him before he gave me one of those AIds, though a moment before I had not been conscious of remotely suspecting his identity.

He came back to where I stood and again held out both his hands, not knowing what to do, for in my astonishment I had lost myself possession.

I reluctantly gave him my hands.

He grasped them heartily, raised them to his lips, kissed them, and still held them.

You acted Noble, my boy, said he.

Noble, Pip, and I've never forgot it.

At a change in his manner, as if he were even going to embrace me, I laid a hand upon his breast and put him away.

Stay, said I.

Keep off.

If you're grateful to me for what I did when I was a little child, I hope you've shown your gratitude by mending your way of life.

If you've come here to thank me, it was not necessary.

Still, however you found me out, there must be something good in the feeling that has brought you here, and I will not repulse you.

But surely you must understand that I my attention was so attracted by the singularity of his fixed look at me that my words died away on my tongue.

You was a saying he observed when.

We had confronted one another in silence.

That surely I must understand.

What surely must I understand?

That I cannot wish to renew that chance intercourse with you of long ago under these different circumstances.

I'm glad to believe you've repented and recovered yourself.

I'm glad to tell you so.

I am glad that thinking I deserve to be thanked, you have come to thank me, that our ways are different ways nonetheless.

You are wet and you look weary.

Will you drink something before you go?

He had replaced his neck orchief loosely and had stood keenly observant of me, biting along end of it, I think, he answered, still with the end of his mouth and still observant of me.

That I will drink.

I thank you before I go.

There was a tray ready on a side table.

I brought it to the table near the fire and asked him what he would have.

He touched one of the bottles without looking at it or speaking, and I made him some hot rum and water.

I tried to keep my hands steady while I did so, but his look at me as he leaned back in his chair with the long draggled end of his neck or chiff between his teeth, evidently forgotten, made my hand very difficult to master.

When at last I put the glass to him, I saw with amazement that his eyes were full of tears.

Up to this time I had remained standing, not to disguise that I wished him gone.

But I was softened by the softened aspect of the man and felt a touch of reproach.

I hope, said I, hurriedly putting something into a glass for myself and drawing a chair to the table, you will not think I spoke harshly to you just now?

I had no intention of doing it, and I'm sorry for it if I did.

I wish you well and happy.

As I put my glass to my lips, he glanced with surprise at the end of his neck, or chiff dropping from his mouth.

When he opened it and stretched out his hand, I gave him mine, and then he drank and drew his sleeve across his eyes and forehead.

How are you living?

I asked him.

I've been a sheep farmer, stockbreeder, other trades besides away in the New world, said he.

Many a thousand mile of stormy water off from this.

I hope you've done well.

I've done wonderfully well.

There's others went out along, or me, as has done well too, but no man has done nigh as well as me.

I'm famous for it.

I'm glad to hear it.

I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy.

Without stopping to try to understand those words or the tone in which they were spoken, I turned off to a point that had just come into my mind.

Have you ever seen a messenger you once sent to me?

I inquired since he undertook that trust.

Never set eyes upon him.

I weren't likely to it.

He came faithfully, and he brought me the two one pound notes.

I was a poor boy then, as you know, and to a poor boy they were a little fortune.

But like you, I've done well since, and you must let me pay them back.

You can put them to some other poor boy's use.

I took out my purse.

He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table and opened it, and he watched me as I separated two one pound notes from its contents.

They were clean and new, and I spread them out and handed them over to him, still watching me, he laid them one upon the other, folded them longwise, gave them a twist, set fire to them at the lamp, and dropped the ashes into the tray.

May I make so bold?

He said then with a smile that was like a frown, and with a frown that was like a smile, as.

Ask you how you've done well since you and me was out on them lone shivering marshes.

How?

Ah.

He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the fire with his heavy brown hand on the mantle shelf.

He put a foot up to the bars to dry and warm it, and the wet boot began to steam.

But he neither looked at it nor at the fire, but steadily looked at me.

It was only now that I began to tremble.

When my lips had parted and had shaped some words that were without sound, I forced myself to tell him, though I could not do it distinctly, that I'd been chosen to succeed to some property.

Might a mere warmet ask what property?

Said he.

I faltered.

I don't know.

Might a mere Warman ask whose property?

Said he.

I faltered again.

I don't know.

Could I make a guess?

I wonder, said the convict, at your income since you come of age, as to the first figure, now five.

With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered action, I rose out of my chair and stood with my hand upon the back of it, looking wildly at him.

Concerning a guardian, he went on, there ought to have been some guardian or such like, while she was a minor, some lawyer maybe.

As to the first letter of that lawyer's name, now would it be j.

All the truth of my position came flashing on me, and its disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to struggle for every breath I drew.

Put it, he resumed, as the employer of that lawyer whose name begun with a J, and might be jaggers put it as he had come overseas to Portsmouth and had landed there and had wanted to come on to you.

However you have found me out, you says just now.

Well, however did I find you out?

Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a person in London for particulars of your address.

That person's name.

Why, Wimick.

I could not have spoken one word, though it had been to save my life.

I stood with a hand on the chair back and a hand on my breast, where I seemed to be suffocating.

I stood so looking wildly at him until I grasped at the chair.

When the room began to surge and turn, he caught me, drew me to the sofa, put me up against the cushions and bent on one knee before me, bringing the face that I now well remembered and that I shuddered at very near to mine.

Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you.

It's me what has done it.

I swore that time, as sure as ever, I earned a guinea.

That guinea should go to you.

I swore afterwards, sure as ever, I speculated, and got rich.

You should get rich.

I lived rough that you should live smooth.

I worked hard that you should be above work.

What oDs, dear boy?

Do I tell it for you to feel an obligation?

Not a bit.

I tell it for you to know as that their hunted, dung hill dog what you kept life in, got his head so high that he could make a gentleman.

And, Pip, you're him.

The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the repugnance with which I shrank from him, could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast.

Looky here, Pip.

I'm your second father.

You're my son.

More to me, nor any son.

I've put away money only for you to spend.

WhEn I was a hired out shepherd in a solitary hut, not seeing no faces but faces of sheep, till I have forgot what men's and women's faces was like.

I see yarn.

I drops my knife many a time in that hut when I was a eaten my dinner or supper, and I says, here's the boy again, looking at me while I eats and drinks.

I see you there many times, as plain as ever.

I see you on them misty marshes.

Lord, strike me dead, I says each time, and I goes out in the air to say it under the open heavens.

But what if I gets liberty and money?

I'll make that boy a gentleman and I've done it.

Why, look at you, dear boy.

Look at these here lodgings.

Of yorn fit for a lord.

A lord.

Ah, you shall show money with lords.

For wagers and beat them in his heat and triumph.

And in his knowledge that I had been nearly fainting, he did not remark on my reception of all this.

It was the one grain of relief I had.

Looky here, he went on, taking my watch out of my pocket and turning towards him, a ring on my finger, while I recoiled from his touch, as if he had been a snake.

A golden and a beauty.

That's a gentleman's, I hope.

A diamond all set round with rubies.

That's a gentleman's, I hope.

Look at your linen.

Fine and beautiful.

Look at your clothes.

Better ain't to be got.

And your books, too.

Turning his eyes round the room, mounting.

Up on their shelves by hundreds.

And you read them, don't you?

I see you'd been a reading of them when I come in.

Ha.

You shall read them to me, dear boy.

And if they're in foreign languages, what I don't understand, I shall be just as proud as if I did.

Again he took both my hands and put them to his lips, while my blood ran cold within me.

Don't you mind talking, Pip?

Said he, after again drawing his sleeve over his eyes and forehead as a click came in his throat, which I well remembered.

And he was all the more horrible to me that he was so much in earnest.

You can't do better nor keep quiet, dear boy.

You ain't looked slowly forward to this as I have.

You wasn't prepared for this as I was.

But didn't you never think it might be me?

Oh, no, no, I returned.

Never?

Never.

Well, you see, it was me, and single handed.

Never a soul in it but my own self.

And Mr.

Jaggers.

Was there no one else?

I asked.

No, said he with a glance of surprise.

Who else should there be?

And, dear boy, how good looking you have growed.

There's bright eyes somewheres.

Eh?

Isn't there bright eyes somewhere?

What you love the thoughts on.

Oh, Estella, Estella, this shall be your dear boy, if money can buy him.

Not that a gentleman like you, so well set up as you can't win him off on his own game.

But money shall back you.

Let me finish what I was telling you, dear boy.

From that their hut and that their hiring out, I got money left me by my master, which died and had been the same as me, and got my liberty, and went for myself in every single thing I went for.

I went for you.

Lord, strike a blight upon him, I says.

Whatever it was I went for, if it ain't for him, it all prospered wonderfully.

As I give you to understand just now, I'm famous for it.

It was the money left me in the gains of the first few year.

What I sent home to Mr.

Jaggers.

All for you when he first come.

Arder you agreeable to my letter?

Oh, that he had never come.

That he had left me at the forge, far from contented, yet by comparison, happy.

And then, dear boy, it was a recompense to me.

Looky here.

To know in secret that I was making a gentleman.

The blood horses of them colonists might fling up the dust over me as I was walking.

What do I say?

I says to myself, I'm making a better gentleman, nor ever you'll be, when one of them says to another, he was a convict a few years ago and is an ignorant, common fellow now, for Ollie's lucky.

What do I say?

I says to myself, if I ain't a gentleman, nor yet ain't got no learning, I'm the owner of such all on you owns stock and land, which on you owns a brought up London gentleman.

This way I kept myself going, and this way I held steady.

Afford my mind that I would for certain come one day and see my boy and make myself known to him.

On his own ground.

He laid his hand on my shoulder.

I shuddered at the thought that for anything I knew, his hand might be stained with blood.

It weren't easy, Pip, for me to leave them parts, nor yet it weren't safe.

But I held to it, and the harder it was, the stronger I held.

I was determined and my mind firm.

Made up at last.

I'd done it, dear boy.

I'd done it.

I tried to collect my thoughts, but I was stunned.

Throughout, I had seemed to myself to attend more to the wind and the rain than to him.

Even now I could not separate his voice from those voices, though those were loud and his was silent.

Where will you put me?

He asked presently.

I must be put somewhere's dear boy.

To sleep, said I.

Yes, and to sleep long and sound.

He answered, for I've been sea tossed.

And seawashed months and months.

My friend and companion, said I, rising from the sofa, is absent.

You must have his room.

He won't come back tomorrow, will he?

No, said I, answering almost mechanically in spite of my utmost efforts.

Not tomorrow, because looky here, dear boy.

He said, dropping his voice and laying a long finger on my breast in an impressive manner.

Caution is necessary.

How do you mean caution, Bug?

It's death.

What's death?

I was sent for life.

It's death to come back.

There's been over much coming back of late years.

And I should have a certainty be hanged if took.

Nothing was needed but this.

The wretched man, after loading wretched me with his gold and silver chains for years, had risked his life to come to me, and I held it there in my keeping.

If I had loved him instead of abhorring him, if I had been attracted to him by the strongest admiration and affection.

Instead of shrinking from him with the strongest repugnance, it could have been no worse.

On the contrary, it would have been better, for his preservation would then have naturally and tenderly addressed my heart.

My first care was to close the shutters so that no light might be seen from without.

And then to close and make fast the doors.

While I did so.

He stood at the table drinking rum and eating biscuit.

And when I saw him thus engaged.

I saw my convict on the marshes.

At his meal again, it almost seemed to me as if he must stoop down presently to file at his leg.

When I'd gone into Herbert's room and had shut off any other communication between it and the staircase.

Then through the room in which our conversation had been held, asked him if he would go to bed.

He said yes, but asked me for some of my gentleman's linen to put on in the morning.

I brought it out and laid it ready for him.

And my blood again ran cold.

When he again took me by both hands to give me good night.

I got away from him without knowing how I did it, and mended the fire in the room where we had been together, and sat down by it, afraid to go to bed for an hour or more.

I remained too stunned to think.

And it was not until I began to think that I began fully to know how wrecked I was and how the ship in which I had sailed was gone to pieces.

Miss Havisham's intentions towards me all a mere dream.

A Stella not designed for me.

I only suffered in saddest house as a convenience, a sting for the greedy relations.

A model with a mechanical heart to practice on when no other practice was at hand.

Those were the first marts I had.

But sharpest and deepest pain of all it was for the convict guilty of.

I knew not what crimes.

And liable to be taken out of those rooms where I sat thinking and hanged at the old Bailey door.

That I had deserted Joe.

I would not have gone back to Joe now.

I would not have gone back to Biddy now for any consideration simply, I suppose, because my sense of my own worthless conduct to them was greater than every consideration.

No wisdom on earth could have given me the comfort that I should have derived from their simplicity and fidelity.

But I could never, never undo what I had done.

In every rage of wind and rush of rain, I heard pursuers.

Twice I could have sworn there was a knocking and whispering at the outer door.

With these fears upon me, I began either to imagine or recall that I had had mysterious warnings of this man's approach, that for weeks gone by I had passed faces in the streets which I had thought like his, that these likenesses had grown more numerous as he, coming over the sea, had drawn nearer, that his wicked spirit had somehow sent these messengers to mine, and that now, on the stormy night, he was as good as his word.

And with me crowding up with these reflections, came the reflection that I had seen him with my childish eyes to be a desperately violent man, that I had heard that other convict reiterate that he had tried to murder him, that I had seen him down in the ditch, tearing and fighting like a wild beast.

Out of such remembrances, I brought into the light of the fire a half formed terror that it might not be safe to be shut up there with him in the dead of the wild, solitary night.

This dilated until it filled the room and impelled me to take a candle and go in and look at my dreadful burden.

He had rolled a handkerchief round his head and his face was set and lowering in his sleep.

But he was asleep, and quietly too, though he had a pistol lying on the pillow.

Assured of this, I softly removed the key to the outside of his door and turned it on him before I again sat down by the fire.

Gradually I slipped from the chair and lay on the floor when I awoke, without having parted in my sleep with the perception of my wretchedness, the clocks of the eastward churches were striking five.

The candles were wasted out, the fire was dead, and the wind and rain intensified the thick black darkness.

This is the end of the second stage of Pip's expectations.

Thank you for joining bite at a time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of great expectations.

Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter@Bytetimebooks.com, and check out the shop.

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What's SA.

Let's see what we can find take it chapter by chapter one at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb take it word for word line by line one bite at a time close.