Great Expectations (AQA GCSE English Literature): Exam Questions

"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 grow'd up, a game one! But don't catch hold of me. You'd be sorry arterwards 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 swept 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 my selfpossession,—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 have 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 are grateful to me for what I did when I was a little child, I hope you have shown your gratitude by mending your way of life. If you have come here to thank me, it was not necessary.” 

Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close, and took up a jewel from the table, and tried its effect upon her fair young bosom and against her pretty brown hair. ‘Your own, one day, my dear, and you will use it well. Let me see you play cards with this boy.’ 

‘With this boy! Why, he is a common labouring-boy!’ 

I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer – only it seemed so unlikely – ‘Well? You can break his heart.’ 

‘What do you play, boy?’ asked Estella of myself, with the greatest disdain. 

‘Nothing but beggar my neighbour, Miss.’ 

‘Beggar him,’ said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.

It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent; and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud. 

So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frillings and trimmings on her bridal dress, looking like earthy paper. I knew nothing then of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies buried in ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly seen; but, I have often thought since, that she must have looked as if the admission of the natural light of day would have struck her to dust. 

When I awoke, I was much surprised to find Joe sitting beside me, smoking his pipe. He greeted me with a cheerful smile on my opening my eyes, and said: 

‘As being the last time, Pip, I thought I’d foller.’ 

‘And, Joe, I am very glad you did so.’ 

‘Thankee, Pip.’ 

‘You may be sure, dear Joe,’ I went on, after we had shaken hands, ‘that I shall never forget you.’ 

‘No, no, Pip!’ said Joe, in a comfortable tone, ‘I'm sure of that. Ay, ay, old chap! Bless you, it were only necessary to get it well round in a man’s mind, to be certain on it. But it took a bit of time to get it well round, the change come so oncommon plump; didn’t it?’ 

Somehow, I was not best pleased with Joe’s being so mightily secure of me. I should have liked him to have betrayed emotion, or to have said, ‘It does you credit, Pip,’ or something of that sort. Therefore, I made no remark on Joe’s first head: merely saying as to his second, that the tidings had indeed come suddenly, but that I had always wanted to be a gentleman, and had often speculated on what I would do, if I were one. 

‘Have you though?’ said Joe. ‘Astonishing!’ 

‘It’s a pity now, Joe,’ said I, ‘that you did not get on a little more, when we had our lessons here; isn’t it?’ 

‘Well, I don’t know,’ returned Joe. ‘I’m so awful dull. I’m only master of my own trade. It were always a pity as I was so awful dull; but it’s no more of a pity now, than it was—this day twelvemonth—don’t you see!’ 

What I had meant was, that when I came into my property and was able to do something for Joe, it would have been much more agreeable if he had been better qualified for a rise in station. He was so perfectly innocent of my meaning, however, that I thought I would mention it to Biddy in preference.

It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now I saw the damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort of spiders’ webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade. On every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh-mist was so thick, that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village—a direction which they never accepted, for they never came there—was invisible to me until I was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a phantom devoting me to the Hulks. 

The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me. This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dykes and banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly as could be, ‘A boy with Somebody-else’s pork pie! Stop him!’ The cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes, and steaming out of their nostrils, ‘Halloa, young thief!’ One black ox, with a white cravat on—who even had to my awakened conscience something of a clerical air—fixed me so obstinately with his eyes, and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved round, that I blubbered out to him, ‘I couldn’t help it, sir! It wasn’t for myself I took it!’ Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hindlegs, and a flourish of his tail.

All this time I was getting on towards the river; but however fast I went, I couldn’t warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed riveted, as the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was running to meet. I knew my way to the Battery, pretty straight, for I had been down there on a Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, had told me that when I was ‘prentice to him, regularly bound, we would have such Larks there! However, in the confusion of the mist, I found myself at last too far to the right, and consequently had to try back along the river-side, on the bank of loose stones above the mud and the stakes that staked the tide out. Making my way along here with all despatch, I had just crossed a ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery, and had just scrambled up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man sitting before me. His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded, and was nodding forward, heavy with sleep. 

‘Hold your noise!’ cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. ‘Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!’ 

A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin. 

‘O! Don’t cut my throat, sir,’ I pleaded in terror. ‘Pray don’t do it, sir.’ 

‘Tell us your name!’ said the man. ‘Quick!’ 

‘Pip, sir.’ 

‘Once more,’ said the man, staring at me. ‘Give it mouth!’ 

‘Pip. Pip, sir.’ 

‘Show us where you live,’ said the man. ‘Pint out the place!’ 

I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church. 

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself—for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet—when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously. 

‘You young dog,’ said the man, licking his lips, ‘what fat cheeks you ha’ got.’ 

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized, for my years, and not strong. 

‘Darn Me if I couldn’t eat ’em,’ said the man, with a threatening shake of his head, ‘and if I han’t half a mind to’t!’ 

I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn’t, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying. 

‘Now lookee here!’ said the man. ‘Where’s your mother?’ 

‘There, sir!’ said I. 

He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder. 

‘There, sir!’ I timidly explained. ‘Also Georgiana. That’s my mother.’

‘But you are not going now, Joe?’ 

‘Yes I am,’ said Joe. 

‘But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?’ 

‘No I am not,’ said Joe. 

Our eyes met, and all the ‘Sir’ melted out of that manly heart as he gave me his hand. 

‘Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man’s a blacksmith, and one’s a whitesmith, and one’s a goldsmith, and one’s a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there’s been any fault at all to-day, it’s mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain’t that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I’m wrong in these clothes. I’m wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th’ meshes. You won’t find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won’t find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I’m awful dull, but I hope I’ve beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!’ 

I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was a simple dignity in him. The fashion of his dress could no more come in its way when he spoke these words, than it could come in its way in Heaven. He touched me gently on the forehead, and went out. As soon as I could recover myself sufficiently, I hurried out after him and looked for him in the neighbouring streets; but he was gone.

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 faintly 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 honoured 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-bye!’