Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Chapter
14
It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed
of home.
There may be black
ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment
may be retributive and well
deserved; but that it is a miserable thing,
I can testify.
Home had never been a very pleasant place
to me, because of my sister's
temper.
But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed
in it.
I had
believed in the best parlor as a most elegant
saloon; I had believed
in the front door, as a mysterious portal
of the Temple of State whose
solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice
of roast fowls; I had
believed in the kitchen as a chaste though
not magnificent apartment;
I had believed in the forge as the glowing
road to manhood and
independence.
Within a single year all this was changed.
Now it was all
coarse and common, and I would not have had
Miss Havisham and Estella
see it on any account.
How much of my ungracious condition of mind
may have been my own fault,
how much Miss Havisham's, how much my sister's,
is now of no moment to
me or to any one.
The change was made in me; the thing was done.
Well or
ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was
done.
Once, it had seemed to me that when I should
at last roll up my
shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe's
'prentice, I should be
distinguished and happy.
Now the reality was in my hold, I only felt
that I was dusty with the dust of small-coal,
and that I had a weight
upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil
was a feather.
There have
been occasions in my later life (I suppose
as in most lives) when I have
felt for a time as if a thick curtain had
fallen on all its interest
and romance, to shut me out from anything
save dull endurance any more.
Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and
blank, as when my way in
life lay stretched out straight before me
through the newly entered road
of apprenticeship to Joe.
I remember that at a later period of my "time,"
I used to stand about
the churchyard on Sunday evenings when night
was falling, comparing my
own perspective with the windy marsh view,
and making out some likeness
between them by thinking how flat and low
both were, and how on both
there came an unknown way and a dark mist
and then the sea.
I was quite
as dejected on the first working-day of my
apprenticeship as in that
after-time; but I am glad to know that I never
breathed a murmur to Joe
while my indentures lasted.
It is about the only thing I am glad to know
of myself in that connection.
For, though it includes what I proceed to
add, all the merit of what I
proceed to add was Joe's.
It was not because I was faithful, but because
Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and
went for a soldier or
a sailor.
It was not because I had a strong sense of
the virtue of
industry, but because Joe had a strong sense
of the virtue of industry,
that I worked with tolerable zeal against
the grain.
It is not possible
to know how far the influence of any amiable
honest-hearted duty-doing
man flies out into the world; but it is very
possible to know how it has
touched one's self in going by, and I know
right well that any good that
intermixed itself with my apprenticeship came
of plain contented Joe,
and not of restlessly aspiring discontented
me.
What I wanted, who can say?
How can I say, when I never knew?
What
I dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I,
being at my grimiest and
commonest, should lift up my eyes and see
Estella looking in at one
of the wooden windows of the forge.
I was haunted by the fear that she
would, sooner or later, find me out, with
a black face and hands, doing
the coarsest part of my work, and would exult
over me and despise me.
Often after dark, when I was pulling the bellows
for Joe, and we were
singing Old Clem, and when the thought how
we used to sing it at Miss
Havisham's would seem to show me Estella's
face in the fire, with her
pretty hair fluttering in the wind and her
eyes scorning me,--often at
such a time I would look towards those panels
of black night in the wall
which the wooden windows then were, and would
fancy that I saw her just
drawing her face away, and would believe that
she had come at last.
After that, when we went into supper, the
place and the meal would have
a more homely look than ever, and I would
feel more ashamed of home than
ever, in my own ungracious breast.
End of Chapter 14
