Great Expectations

I read with my watch upon the table, purposing to close my book

at eleven o'clock. As I shut it, Saint 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 past in a moment, and I

listened again, and heard the footstep stumble in coming on.

Remembering then, that the staircase-lights were blown out, I took up

my reading-lamp and went out to the stair-head. Whoever was below had

stopped on seeing my lamp, for all was quiet.

"There is some one 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 is nothing the matter?"

"Nothing the matter," returned the voice. And 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 sixty. 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, because 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.