Eventually we find out that it is an old voyager who entered Pip’s apartment, substantially dressed but roughly like a voyager by the sea. Another pocket of information has now been disclosed and slowly the mystery behind the stranger diminishes. At the same time Pip’s resentment towards the character increases. He speaks as if he has no fear, like he is simply speaking to any old man who has stumbled across his premises and is of no importance pray what is your business? before recognizing him. However, although he thinks he has asked the question inhospitably enough, I think that Pip treats him nervously and haughtily and this is conveyed by Dickens’ narrating I asked him as civilly as I could. He wishes not to return the stranger’s smiles and gestures he was holding out both his hands to me. The stranger called him Master which suggests an unfamiliarity between the two or at least a difference in class. This is clearly no one that Pip recognises and yet he acts most strangely, as if he knows why Pip would be living in this kind of premises, looking about in an air of wondering pleasure. Now we get a vital clue in this virtual jigsaw which Dickens is making us put together. As if he had some part in the things he admired. I think that this sentence is devised to make us make slightly more educative guesses. Dickens is telling us that this stranger is no stranger. He shows Pip affection, he looks around the house as if he has put some part to it’s being how it is and he is dressed ruggedly. The convict’s affection for Pip increases as he stays on and converses with Pip. Once more holding out his hands to me. The convict clearly expects Pip to make a response to his gesture with his hands but Pip just asks what do you mean suspecting him to be mad. Pip has not picked up the clues yet I did not know him but as the convicts talks he begins to recognise him as the convict who frightened that once so innocent Pip on the moors. Not a single feature helped him in making this recognition but his words. You’re a game one … Don’t catch hold of me. You’d be sorry afterwards to have done it. Horrified, Pip listens to the story that the convict has to tell and learns the truth of his situation. The convict, not Miss Havisham, is Pip’s secret benefactor. Pip is not meant to marry Estella at all. This comes as a shock and as a result of this he grows ever more repugnant towards Magwitch. His use of wretched, repugnance and abhorring later on are clear signs of this.
Pips still letting the convict come into his house and sleep, eat and drink with him are a mark of his inner goodness, just as it was many years ago in the swamp, but he is nevertheless unable to hide his disgust and disappointment. “Look’ee here, Pip. I’m your second father. You’re my son—more to me nor any son. I’ve put away money, only for you to spend.” The convict’s reference to himself as Pip’s “second father” brings us to track Pip’s development through a succession of father figures because it’s not only Joe who was a father figure for Pip.
To illustrate the gloom of Pip’s discovery of his new father figure, Dickens ends this section on an extremely menacing note, as the morning sky is darkened by a violent storm. The wind and rain intensified the thick, black darkness. A setting always connected to dramatic action and atmosphere in the novel. A storm can only mean that trouble lies ahead for Pip and his frightening benefactor.
Pip is done maturing into an adult, marking a new phase in the novel. The reappearance of the convict and the solution of the mystery of Pip’s benefactor mark an important milestone in the book’s storyline progress. This is the second milestone, the first being when Pip realises his expectations which is why we are told at the end of the chapter that This is the end of the second stage of Pip’s expectations.
