Pip

“ Pip, simple soul, knew nothing and cared less about the gentle art of husband-hunting. He felt himself irresistibly drawn towards this young couple. He abandoned himself to sentimental sympathy, and drove his car or smoked his pipe with his eyes fixed resolutely before him, thinking of Elsie and wondering if his own turn would ever come.
One day, as they were returning from a long afternoon's spin, the car suddenly slowed down to a stop, and with the complete and maddening finality of its kind refused to move another inch. ”

“ The most confirmed believer in the decadence of the Anglo-Saxon race might have been converted by the sight of the company round Squire Chell's table that night. Young men and maidens, healthy, noisy, effervescent, ate and drank, babbled and laughed, flirted and squabbled with whole-hearted thoroughness from the soup to the savoury; and Pip, sitting silently ecstatic by Elsie, beheld the scene and suddenly realised that life was very good. ”

“ He was fingering the silk-coated wire. "This pipe's awful thin. A marble would never get down it."
"No, but the soup will twickle down all right," said Pipette, whose mind, busy with works of mercy, soared far above these utilitarian details. (In later years she was a confirmed bazaar organiser.)
"We'll ring and tell him first, shall we?" suggested Pip.
"Yes, let's!" murmured Pipette joyfully.
She turned the call-handle, and Pip held the receiver, just as he had seen Mr. Evans do. After a decent interval he remarked into the cup—
"Are you there, Mr. Pipes? This is us." ”

“ The Gresley Works contained seven hundred men, and it was not likely, Pip thought, that young Gresley, who, though he was seen frequently about the shops, spent most of his time in the drawing-office, would recognise even his most admired friend amid a horde of grimy mechanics.
But for all that they met, as they were bound to do. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Pip's reliability and general smartness soon raised him from the ruck of his mates, and presently his increasing responsibilities began to bring him in contact with those in authority. ”

“ He had only taken a few steps when his course was arrested by the sound of a crash and a dull thud behind him. He whirled round again to see what had happened. Pip was no longer balanced on the bar, but lay on the floor beneath, a motionless heap of arms and legs and striped pyjamas. ”

“ A man can no more take a wicket than he can take a city unless he gives his mind to it, and it must be confessed that up to the luncheon interval Pip had been wool-gathering. His interview with Cullyngham, his rather brief night's rest, and his tiff with Elsie had kept his wits wandering. Now, braced by the knowledge that Cullyngham was speeding on his way south, that Elsie was sitting safely on the pavilion lawn, and that—most blessed of rest cures!—there was work, hard work, before him, Pip rolled up his sleeves, set his field, and bowled. ”

“ On clearing the lodge-gates Pip turned the car to the left, and they spun down the London road. For an hour they travelled, sometimes slowing through a village or changing gear up a hill, but usually running at top speed, rolling up the miles like shavings under a jack-plane. Pip sat gripping his wheel, intent on his work. Lottie, rigid and upright beside him, looked straight before her, with her hands clasped tightly together under the rug. ”

“ Marsh, it appeared, in a fit of laughable absent-mindedness, had filled the last place in the list with the name of Pip, instead of that of one Elliot, who had occupied that position in the previous round.
"Rum mistake to make," said Mumford, with obvious sincerity.
"Very," said Pip shortly.
"Rather a jest," continued the imaginative Mumford, "if he didn't notice it, and you turned out on the day with the rest of the Eleven instead of Elliott!" ”

“ That jealous little person, finding one day that Pip had suddenly deserted her, and was at that moment actually sharing his morning bun with his fiancée in the boot-room, incontinently burst in upon the lovers, and after a brief but decisive interview despatched her rival howling from the room, remaining herself to share the bun with the newly restored Pip, who, to be quite frank, had been finding the rôle of a Romeo, however passive, rather exacting. ”

“ Wemmick was the first one Pip met in London, and the clerk took him to the rooms where Mr. Jaggers had arranged for Pip to live, with the son of a gentleman who was to be his teacher. This gentleman was a Mr. Pocket, a relative (as Pip discovered) of Miss Havisham, which fact made him all the more certain that she was his unknown friend. Mr. Pocket's son was named Herbert, and the minute he and Pip first saw each other they burst out laughing. ”

“ Miss Innes glanced in Pip's direction.
"So it is. I can recognise him," she answered, with an air of gratified surprise. "Will you take me to have some strawberries now, please?"
The couple departed, leaving Pip still hove-to on the horizon.
"Rum things, women," mused the captain. "This girl's quite out of the common. I thought at first she must be keen on Pip, or something; but she doesn't seem even to know him. Not often you get a woman taking a purely sporting interest in a man like that!" ”

“ Elsie walked on. Her face was set, and her blue-grey eyes had a steely look. In her hand she carried a golf-ball—not the one which poor Pip had "discovered" in the hole, but another, her own, the genuine article. She had spied it, lying in an absolutely unplayable position under a stone, almost immediately after Pip had left her to her handkerchief. She had picked it up, and was on her way back to the green to inform her opponent that the match was his, when she was startled by a mighty shout, and arrived in time to witness the whole of Pip's elaborate conjuring-trick. ”

“ Pip thought he could make his table pay if he had some flowers to set it off. But that was not all; he was envious of others’ success. The fair had been characterized by the usual amount of “human nature” displayed on such occasions, and Pip now exhibited his peculiarities. For ten cents he bought a few white flowers at a hot-house, and then thought he would get ahead of the boys and be at the barn at an early hour, making sure for himself any possible customers. ”

“ BOOK TWO THE MAKING OF A MAN CHAPTER VII A CRICKET WEEK I By the time that Pip had reached his twenty-fifth year his name was scarcely less familiar to the man in the street than that of the leading picture-postcard divinity, and considerably more so than that, say, of the President of the Royal Academy. The English are a strange race, and worship strange gods. Pip's admission to the national Pantheon had been secured by the fact of his having been mainly responsible for the sensational dismissal of the Australians, for an infinitesimal score, in the second innings of the third Test Match. ”

“ We are going to fill them with soap and water after prep, and put a notice beside them telling him not to stick on so much of it. I'm writing it now. How many e's are there in beastly?"
"Dunno," replied Pip shortly.
"Will you come and help?"
"No. He looks rather a decent chap. He's only been here a week; he may not know about white boots."
[Pg 109] "Ought to, then," snapped the bloodthirsty Mumford. "Other people find things out all right."
"Not all," grunted Pip. "How about stamps?" ”

“ Stay and have some cake first. Perhaps you will excuse me if I smoke a pipe. Masters have their vices, you see. I haven't smoked for nearly three hours."
So the pair sat, Pip with a large piece of cake balanced delicately on his knee, morbidly anxious not to spill crumbs on the floor; and Hanbury lolling back in his armchair, smoking his pipe and surveying this sturdy youth before him, who knew every cricketer's average and had never heard of Cinderella.
As Pip was changing into flannels a few minutes later he encountered Mumford. ”

“ Pip and Elsie, on the other hand, did not "combine" well. Elsie, who (strictly between ourselves) fancied her golf not a little, insisted on dictating the line of action to be followed on each occasion, and more than once told Pip what club to use. Pip, though relatively her inferior, declined at first to be trampled upon by a female, even a high-spirited goddess with fair hair and a swing like an archangel. But few men in Pip's condition argue the point long: after a brief struggle [Pg 315] to assert the predominance of man he subsided completely, and, as he thought, rather diplomatically. ”

“ And the men? Maybe they were youthful and conventional,—each would probably have cut his own father dead in the street if he had met him wearing a made-up tie,—but Pip knew that they were for the most part clean-run, straight-going people like himself, good fellows, "white" men all. With one exception. And suddenly Pip realised that the exception was sitting on the other side of Elsie.
Cullyngham was smiling and talking. He [Pg 194] always was smiling. He smiled when he made a century. He smiled when he made a blob. He smiled when a rising ball hit him on the knuckles. ”

“ Pip was not that sort. Still, she was young and independent. Pip was young and tactless. An older and more experienced girl would have seen that Pip's warning was well worth listening to. An older and more experienced man would have delivered it in a different way. Neither of them being possessed of these advantages, the net result of Pip's impromptu effort was to invest Cullyngham with a halo of romantic mystery in the eyes of Elsie, who, after [Pg 208] all, was only nineteen, and a daughter of Eve at that. ”

“ The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. ”

“ It would be a grand chance, Pip. Most men are so unenterprising. Those at the top never want to see what things are like below, and those below are so afraid of staying there forever that their eyes are constantly turned upwards and they miss a lot. I'd give something to be a vagabond for a year or two."
"What fearful sentiments for a respectable house-master!" said Pipette severely; but Pip's eyes glowed.
"However," continued Hanbury more soberly, [Pg 240] "Pip can't afford to waste time observing life in a purely academic way down in the basement. He must start getting upstairs at once." ”

“ What a deal of spoiling nevertheless, a nature that is really good at the bottom of it will stand without permanent damage, is nicely shown in Pip; and the way he reconciles his determination to act very shabbily to his early friends, with a conceited notion that he is setting them a moral example, is part of the shading of a character drawn with extraordinary skill. ”

“ Now, Pip was only a member of the Fifth, and occupied but a sedimentary position in that. Consequently the Committee heaved a resigned if dissatisfied sigh when Uncle Bill, after taking the chair, announced with real regret that Wilmot—this, you may possibly remember, was Pip's name—was not eligible for the post of Captain.
"Lucky thing Link got his remove this term," whispered Fagg to Jarvis, "or he'd have been barred too."
"Dry up," said Jarvis, with a warning nudge; "Uncle Bill has got something on his chest." ”

“ "Why didn't you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?"
"Well, Pip," said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling himself to his usual occupation when he was thoughtful, of slowly raking the fire between the lower bars: "I'll tell you. My father, Pip, he were given to drink, and when he were overtook with drink, he hammered away at my mother most onmerciful. It were a'most the only hammering he did, indeed, 'xcepting at myself. ”

“ Pip saw before him a girl of about sixteen. She had extremely fair hair, a clear skin, not unbecomingly freckled, and eyes which had a habit of changing from blue to grey in different lights. Girls of sixteen are not always graceful,—like their male prototypes they frequently run to knees and elbows,—but this girl appeared to be free from such defects. ”

“ Should he? Could he? Yes—no—yes! He raised his bat uncertainly, and made a half-hearted pull at the ball. It struck his bat somewhere on the splice,—the curl in the air had deceived one more victim,—flew up into the air, and, when it descended, found Pip waiting for it with a pair of hands that would at that moment have gripped a red-hot cannonball.
So the innings ended for forty-nine, and the Hivites won by seventy-one runs. In two overs Pip had taken eight wickets (doing the hat-trick incidentally) for no runs. Verily, in a house-match all things are possible. ”

“ Very carefully Pip poured the soup into the cup-shaped receiver of the telephone, which Pipette held as steadily as her excitement would permit.
From the first it became obvious that soup-delivery by telephone was going to be a slow business, for the cup transmitted the generous fluid most reluctantly.
"It's such a very thin pipe," they explained to each other hopefully. ”

“ Pip understood his mixed English enough to know he was making fun of him, and told him wrathfully to "shut up for a Dutch idiot."
Then he shouldered the gun he was so immeasurably proud of and went off the other side of the barbed-wire fence, where was the happy hunting-ground of the little rodent that would not allow Mr. Hassal to grow rich. ”