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.