Great Expectations / Большие надежды

”

“There, there!” with the old restless fingers. “Come now and then; come on your birthday. – Ay!” she cried suddenly, turning herself and her chair towards me, “You are looking round for Estella? Hey?”

I had been looking round – in fact, for Estella – and I stammered that I hoped she was well.

“Abroad,” said Miss Havisham; “educating for a lady; far out of reach; prettier than ever; admired by all who see her. Do you feel that you have lost her?”

There was such a malignant enjoyment in her last words, and she broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I was at a loss what to say.

When the gate was closed upon me by Sarah, I felt more than ever dissatisfied with my home and with my trade and with everything.

As I was loitering along the High Street, looking in disconsolately at the shop windows, and thinking what I would buy if I were a gentleman, who should come out of the shop but Mr. Wopsle.

“There’s something wrong,” said he, without stopping, “up at your place, Pip.

Run all!”

“What is it?” I asked, keeping up with him.

“I can’t quite understand. The house seems to have been entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts. Somebody has been attacked and hurt.”

We were running, and we made no stop until we got into our kitchen. It was full of people; the whole village was there, or in the yard; and there was a surgeon, and there was Joe, and there were a group of women, all on the floor in the midst of the kitchen.

My sister was lying without sense or movement on the bare boards.

Chapter 16

Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe, from a quarter after eight o’clock to a quarter before ten. While he was there, my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door, and had exchanged Good Night with a farm-worker going home. When Joe went home at five minutes before ten, he found her struck down on the floor, and promptly called in assistance.

My sister had been struck with something blunt and heavy, on the head and spine. And on the ground beside her, when Joe picked her up, was a convict’s leg-iron which had been filed asunder.

Knowing what I knew, I believed the iron to be my convict’s iron – the iron I had seen and heard him filing at, on the marshes – but my mind did not accuse him of having put it to its latest use.

It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon.