GREAT EXPECTATIONS
PART 14
Chapter XXVII
"MY DEAR MR PIP:—
"I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for
to let you know that he is going to London in company with Mr. Wopsle and would
be glad if agreeable to be allowed to see you. He would call at Barnard's Hotel
Tuesday morning at nine o'clock, when if not agreeable please leave word. Your
poor sister is much the same as when you left. We talk of you in the kitchen
every night, and wonder what you are saying and doing. If now considered in the
light of a liberty, excuse it for the love of poor old days. No more, dear Mr.
Pip, from your ever obliged, and affectionate servant,
"BIDDY."
"P.S. He wishes me most particular to write
what larks. He says you will understand. I hope and do not doubt it will be
agreeable to see him, even though a gentleman, for you had ever a good heart,
and he is a worthy, worthy man. I have read him all, excepting only the last
little sentence, and he wishes me most particular to write again what
larks."
I received this letter by the post on Monday
morning, and therefore its appointment was for next day. Let me confess exactly
with what feelings I looked forward to Joe's coming.
Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so
many ties; no; with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen
sense of incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I
certainly would have paid money. My greatest reassurance was that he was coming
to Barnard's Inn, not to Hammersmith, and consequently would not fall in
Bentley Drummle's way. I had little objection to his being seen by Herbert or
his father, for both of whom I had a respect; but I had the sharpest
sensitiveness as to his being seen by Drummle, whom I held in contempt. So,
throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for
the sake of the people whom we most despise.
I had begun to be always decorating the chambers in
some quite unnecessary and inappropriate way or other, and very expensive those
wrestles with Barnard proved to be. By this time, the rooms were vastly
different from what I had found them, and I enjoyed the honor of occupying a
few prominent pages in the books of a neighboring upholsterer. I had got on so
fast of late, that I had even started a boy in boots,—top boots,—in bondage and
slavery to whom I might have been said to pass my days. For, after I had made
the monster (out of the refuse of my washerwoman's family), and had clothed him
with a blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat, creamy breeches, and the
boots already mentioned, I had to find him a little to do and a great deal to
eat; and with both of those horrible requirements he haunted my existence.
This avenging phantom was ordered to be on duty at
eight on Tuesday morning in the hall, (it was two feet square, as charged for
floorcloth,) and Herbert suggested certain things for breakfast that he thought
Joe would like. While I felt sincerely obliged to him for being so interested
and considerate, I had an odd half-provoked sense of suspicion upon me, that if
Joe had been coming to see him, he wouldn't have been quite so brisk about it.
However, I came into town on the Monday night to be
ready for Joe, and I got up early in the morning, and caused the sitting-room
and breakfast-table to assume their most splendid appearance. Unfortunately the
morning was drizzly, and an angel could not have concealed the fact that
Barnard was shedding sooty tears outside the window, like some weak giant of a
Sweep.
As the time approached I should have liked to run
away, but the Avenger pursuant to orders was in the hall, and presently I heard
Joe on the staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy manner of coming up
stairs,—his state boots being always too big for him,—and by the time it took
him to read the names on the other floors in the course of his ascent. When at
last he stopped outside our door, I could hear his finger tracing over the
painted letters of my name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him breathing in
at the keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single rap, and Pepper—such was the
compromising name of the avenging boy—announced "Mr. Gargery!" I
thought he never would have done wiping his feet, and that I must have gone out
to lift him off the mat, but at last he came in.
"Joe, how are you, Joe?"
"Pip, how AIR you, Pip?"
With his good honest face all glowing and shining,
and his hat put down on the floor between us, he caught both my hands and
worked them straight up and down, as if I had been the last-patented Pump.
"I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your
hat."
But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands,
like a bird's-nest with eggs in it, wouldn't hear of parting with that piece of
property, and persisted in standing talking over it in a most uncomfortable
way.
"Which you have that growed," said Joe,
"and that swelled, and that gentle-folked;" Joe considered a little
before he discovered this word; "as to be sure you are a honor to your
king and country."
"And you, Joe, look wonderfully well."
"Thank God," said Joe, "I'm ekerval
to most. And your sister, she's no worse than she were. And Biddy, she's ever
right and ready. And all friends is no backerder, if not no forarder. 'Ceptin
Wopsle; he's had a drop."
All this time (still with both hands taking great
care of the bird's-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room,
and round and round the flowered pattern of my dressing-gown.
"Had a drop, Joe?"
"Why yes," said Joe, lowering his voice,
"he's left the Church and went into the playacting. Which the playacting
have likeways brought him to London along with me. And his wish were,"
said Joe, getting the bird's-nest under his left arm for the moment, and
groping in it for an egg with his right; "if no offence, as I would 'and
you that."
I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the
crumpled play-bill of a small metropolitan theatre, announcing the first
appearance, in that very week, of "the celebrated Provincial Amateur of
Roscian renown, whose unique performance in the highest tragic walk of our
National Bard has lately occasioned so great a sensation in local dramatic
circles."
"Were you at his performance, Joe?" I
inquired.
"I were," said Joe, with emphasis and
solemnity.
"Was there a great sensation?"
"Why," said Joe, "yes, there
certainly were a peck of orange-peel. Partickler when he see the ghost. Though
I put it to yourself, sir, whether it were calc'lated to keep a man up to his
work with a good hart, to be continiwally cutting in betwixt him and the Ghost
with "Amen!" A man may have had a misfortun' and been in the
Church," said Joe, lowering his voice to an argumentative and feeling
tone, "but that is no reason why you should put him out at such a time.
Which I meantersay, if the ghost of a man's own father cannot be allowed to
claim his attention, what can, Sir? Still more, when his mourning 'at is
unfortunately made so small as that the weight of the black feathers brings it
off, try to keep it on how you may."
A ghost-seeing effect in Joe's own countenance
informed me that Herbert had entered the room. So, I presented Joe to Herbert,
who held out his hand; but Joe backed from it, and held on by the bird's-nest.
"Your servant, Sir," said Joe,
"which I hope as you and Pip"—here his eye fell on the Avenger, who
was putting some toast on table, and so plainly denoted an intention to make
that young gentleman one of the family, that I frowned it down and confused him
more—"I meantersay, you two gentlemen,—which I hope as you get your elths
in this close spot? For the present may be a werry good inn, according to
London opinions," said Joe, confidentially, "and I believe its
character do stand i; but I wouldn't keep a pig in it myself,—not in the case
that I wished him to fatten wholesome and to eat with a meller flavor on
him."
Having borne this flattering testimony to the
merits of our dwelling-place, and having incidentally shown this tendency to
call me "sir," Joe, being invited to sit down to table, looked all
round the room for a suitable spot on which to deposit his hat,—as if it were
only on some very few rare substances in nature that it could find a resting
place,—and ultimately stood it on an extreme corner of the chimney-piece, from
which it ever afterwards fell off at intervals.
"Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr.
Gargery?" asked Herbert, who always presided of a morning.
"Thankee, Sir," said Joe, stiff from head
to foot, "I'll take whichever is most agreeable to yourself."
"What do you say to coffee?"
"Thankee, Sir," returned Joe, evidently
dispirited by the proposal, "since you are so kind as make chice of
coffee, I will not run contrairy to your own opinions. But don't you never find
it a little 'eating?"
"Say tea then," said Herbert, pouring it
out.
Here Joe's hat tumbled off the mantel-piece, and he
started out of his chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact
spot. As if it were an absolute point of good breeding that it should tumble
off again soon.
"When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery?"
"Were it yesterday afternoon?" said Joe,
after coughing behind his hand, as if he had had time to catch the
whooping-cough since he came. "No it were not. Yes it were. Yes. It were
yesterday afternoon" (with an appearance of mingled wisdom, relief, and
strict impartiality).
"Have you seen anything of London yet?"
"Why, yes, Sir," said Joe, "me and
Wopsle went off straight to look at the Blacking Ware'us. But we didn't find
that it come up to its likeness in the red bills at the shop doors; which I
meantersay," added Joe, in an explanatory manner, "as it is there
drawd too architectooralooral."
I really believe Joe would have prolonged this word
(mightily expressive to my mind of some architecture that I know) into a
perfect Chorus, but for his attention being providentially attracted by his
hat, which was toppling. Indeed, it demanded from him a constant attention, and
a quickness of eye and hand, very like that exacted by wicket-keeping. He made
extraordinary play with it, and showed the greatest skill; now, rushing at it
and catching it neatly as it dropped; now, merely stopping it midway, beating
it up, and humoring it in various parts of the room and against a good deal of
the pattern of the paper on the wall, before he felt it safe to close with it;
finally splashing it into the slop-basin, where I took the liberty of laying hands
upon it.
As to his shirt-collar, and his coat-collar, they
were perplexing to reflect upon,—insoluble mysteries both. Why should a man
scrape himself to that extent, before he could consider himself full dressed?
Why should he suppose it necessary to be purified by suffering for his holiday
clothes? Then he fell into such unaccountable fits of meditation, with his fork
midway between his plate and his mouth; had his eyes attracted in such strange
directions; was afflicted with such remarkable coughs; sat so far from the
table, and dropped so much more than he ate, and pretended that he hadn't
dropped it; that I was heartily glad when Herbert left us for the City.
I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling
to know that this was all my fault, and that if I had been easier with Joe, Joe
would have been easier with me. I felt impatient of him and out of temper with
him; in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head.
"Us two being now alone, sir,"—began Joe.
"Joe," I interrupted, pettishly,
"how can you call me, sir?"
Joe looked at me for a single instant with
something faintly like reproach. Utterly preposterous as his cravat was, and as
his collars were, I was conscious of a sort of dignity in the look.
"Us two being now alone," resumed Joe,
"and me having the intentions and abilities to stay not many minutes more,
I will now conclude—leastways begin—to mention what have led to my having had
the present honor. For was it not," said Joe, with his old air of lucid
exposition, "that my only wish were to be useful to you, I should not have
had the honor of breaking wittles in the company and abode of gentlemen."
I was so unwilling to see the look again, that I
made no remonstrance against this tone.
"Well, sir," pursued Joe, "this is
how it were. I were at the Bargemen t'other night, Pip;"—whenever he
subsided into affection, he called me Pip, and whenever he relapsed into
politeness he called me sir; "when there come up in his shay-cart,
Pumblechook. Which that same identical," said Joe, going down a new track,
"do comb my 'air the wrong way sometimes, awful, by giving out up and down
town as it were him which ever had your infant companionation and were looked
upon as a playfellow by yourself."
"Nonsense. It was you, Joe."
"Which I fully believed it were, Pip,"
said Joe, slightly tossing his head, "though it signify little now, sir.
Well, Pip; this same identical, which his manners is given to blusterous, come
to me at the Bargemen (wot a pipe and a pint of beer do give refreshment to the
workingman, sir, and do not over stimilate), and his word were, 'Joseph, Miss
Havisham she wish to speak to you.'"
"Miss Havisham, Joe?"
"'She wish,' were Pumblechook's word, 'to
speak to you.'" Joe sat and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.
"Yes, Joe? Go on, please."
"Next day, sir," said Joe, looking at me
as if I were a long way off, "having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss
A."
"Miss A., Joe? Miss Havisham?"
"Which I say, sir," replied Joe, with an
air of legal formality, as if he were making his will, "Miss A., or
otherways Havisham. Her expression air then as follering: 'Mr. Gargery. You air
in correspondence with Mr. Pip?' Having had a letter from you, I were able to
say 'I am.' (When I married your sister, sir, I said 'I will;' and when I
answered your friend, Pip, I said 'I am.') 'Would you tell him, then,' said
she, 'that which Estella has come home and would be glad to see him.'"
I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe. I hope
one remote cause of its firing may have been my consciousness that if I had
known his errand, I should have given him more encouragement.
"Biddy," pursued Joe, "when I got
home and asked her fur to write the message to you, a little hung back. Biddy
says, 'I know he will be very glad to have it by word of mouth, it is holiday
time, you want to see him, go!' I have now concluded, sir," said Joe,
rising from his chair, "and, Pip, I wish you ever well and ever prospering
to a greater and a greater height."
"But you are not going now, Joe?"
"Yes I am," said Joe.
"But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?"
"No I am not," said Joe.
Our eyes met, and all the "Sir" melted
out of that manly heart as he gave me his hand.
"Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so
many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man's a blacksmith, and
one's a whitesmith, and one's a goldsmith, and one's a coppersmith. Diwisions
among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there's been any fault
at all to-day, it's mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in
London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood
among friends. It ain't that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you
shall never see me no more in these clothes. I'm wrong in these clothes. I'm
wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th' meshes. You won't find half so
much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my
hand, or even my pipe. You won't find half so much fault in me if, supposing as
you should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge
window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt
apron, sticking to the old work. I'm awful dull, but I hope I've beat out
something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD bless you, dear old Pip,
old chap, GOD bless you!"
I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was
a simple dignity in him. The fashion of his dress could no more come in its way
when he spoke these words than it could come in its way in Heaven. He touched
me gently on the forehead, and went out. As soon as I could recover myself
sufficiently, I hurried out after him and looked for him in the neighboring
streets; but he was gone.
It was clear that I must repair to our town next
day, and in the first flow of my repentance, it was equally clear that I must
stay at Joe's. But, when I had secured my box-place by to-morrow's coach, and
had been down to Mr. Pocket's and back, I was not by any means convinced on the
last point, and began to invent reasons and make excuses for putting up at the
Blue Boar. I should be an inconvenience at Joe's; I was not expected, and my
bed would not be ready; I should be too far from Miss Havisham's, and she was
exacting and mightn't like it. All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to
the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a
curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody
else's manufacture is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the
spurious coin of my own make as good money! An obliging stranger, under
pretence of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security's sake, abstracts
the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when
I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as notes!
Having settled that I must go to the Blue Boar, my
mind was much disturbed by indecision whether or not to take the Avenger. It
was tempting to think of that expensive Mercenary publicly airing his boots in
the archway of the Blue Boar's posting-yard; it was almost solemn to imagine
him casually produced in the tailor's shop, and confounding the disrespectful
senses of Trabb's boy. On the other hand, Trabb's boy might worm himself into
his intimacy and tell him things; or, reckless and desperate wretch as I knew
he could be, might hoot him in the High Street. My patroness, too, might hear
of him, and not approve. On the whole, I resolved to leave the Avenger behind.
It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my
place, and, as winter had now come round, I should not arrive at my destination
until two or three hours after dark. Our time of starting from the Cross Keys
was two o'clock. I arrived on the ground with a quarter of an hour to spare,
attended by the Avenger,—if I may connect that expression with one who never
attended on me if he could possibly help it.
At that time it was customary to carry Convicts
down to the dock-yards by stage-coach. As I had often heard of them in the
capacity of outside passengers, and had more than once seen them on the high
road dangling their ironed legs over the coach roof, I had no cause to be
surprised when Herbert, meeting me in the yard, came up and told me there were
two convicts going down with me. But I had a reason that was an old reason now
for constitutionally faltering whenever I heard the word "convict."
"You don't mind them, Handel?" said
Herbert.
"O no!"
"I thought you seemed as if you didn't like
them?"
"I can't pretend that I do like them, and I
suppose you don't particularly. But I don't mind them."
"See! There they are," said Herbert,
"coming out of the Tap. What a degraded and vile sight it is!"
They had been treating their guard, I suppose, for
they had a gaoler with them, and all three came out wiping their mouths on
their hands. The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had irons on their
legs,—irons of a pattern that I knew well. They wore the dress that I likewise
knew well. Their keeper had a brace of pistols, and carried a thick-knobbed
bludgeon under his arm; but he was on terms of good understanding with them,
and stood with them beside him, looking on at the putting-to of the horses,
rather with an air as if the convicts were an interesting Exhibition not
formally open at the moment, and he the Curator. One was a taller and stouter
man than the other, and appeared as a matter of course, according to the
mysterious ways of the world, both convict and free, to have had allotted to
him the smaller suit of clothes. His arms and legs were like great pincushions
of those shapes, and his attire disguised him absurdly; but I knew his
half-closed eye at one glance. There stood the man whom I had seen on the
settle at the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, and who had brought me
down with his invisible gun!
It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no
more than if he had never seen me in his life. He looked across at me, and his
eye appraised my watch-chain, and then he incidentally spat and said something
to the other convict, and they laughed and slued themselves round with a clink
of their coupling manacle, and looked at something else. The great numbers on
their backs, as if they were street doors; their coarse mangy ungainly outer
surface, as if they were lower animals; their ironed legs, apologetically
garlanded with pocket-handkerchiefs; and the way in which all present looked at
them and kept from them; made them (as Herbert had said) a most disagreeable
and degraded spectacle.
But this was not the worst of it. It came out that
the whole of the back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from
London, and that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat in
front behind the coachman. Hereupon, a choleric gentleman, who had taken the
fourth place on that seat, flew into a most violent passion, and said that it
was a breach of contract to mix him up with such villainous company, and that
it was poisonous, and pernicious, and infamous, and shameful, and I don't know what
else. At this time the coach was ready and the coachman impatient, and we were
all preparing to get up, and the prisoners had come over with their
keeper,—bringing with them that curious flavor of bread-poultice, baize,
rope-yarn, and hearthstone, which attends the convict presence.
"Don't take it so much amiss, sir,"
pleaded the keeper to the angry passenger; "I'll sit next you myself. I'll
put 'em on the outside of the row. They won't interfere with you, sir. You
needn't know they're there."
"And don't blame me," growled the convict
I had recognized. "I don't want to go. I am quite ready to stay behind. As
fur as I am concerned any one's welcome to my place."
"Or mine," said the other, gruffly.
"I wouldn't have incommoded none of you, if I'd had my way." Then
they both laughed, and began cracking nuts, and spitting the shells about.—As I
really think I should have liked to do myself, if I had been in their place and
so despised.
At length, it was voted that there was no help for
the angry gentleman, and that he must either go in his chance company or remain
behind. So he got into his place, still making complaints, and the keeper got
into the place next him, and the convicts hauled themselves up as well as they
could, and the convict I had recognized sat behind me with his breath on the
hair of my head.
"Good by, Handel!" Herbert called out as
we started. I thought what a blessed fortune it was, that he had found another
name for me than Pip.
It is impossible to express with what acuteness I
felt the convict's breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along my
spine. The sensation was like being touched in the marrow with some pungent and
searching acid, it set my very teeth on edge. He seemed to have more breathing
business to do than another man, and to make more noise in doing it; and I was
conscious of growing high-shouldered on one side, in my shrinking endeavors to
fend him off.
The weather was miserably raw, and the two cursed
the cold. It made us all lethargic before we had gone far, and when we had left
the Half-way House behind, we habitually dozed and shivered and were silent. I
dozed off, myself, in considering the question whether I ought to restore a
couple of pounds sterling to this creature before losing sight of him, and how it
could best be done. In the act of dipping forward as if I were going to bathe
among the horses, I woke in a fright and took the question up again.
But I must have lost it longer than I had thought,
since, although I could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights
and shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind that
blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a screen against the
wind, the convicts were closer to me than before. The very first words I heard
them interchange as I became conscious, were the words of my own thought,
"Two One Pound notes."
"How did he get 'em?" said the convict I
had never seen.
"How should I know?" returned the other.
"He had 'em stowed away somehows. Giv him by friends, I expect."
"I wish," said the other, with a bitter
curse upon the cold, "that I had 'em here."
"Two one pound notes, or friends?"
"Two one pound notes. I'd sell all the friends
I ever had for one, and think it a blessed good bargain. Well? So he
says—?"
"So he says," resumed the convict I had
recognized,—"it was all said and done in half a minute, behind a pile of
timber in the Dock-yard,—'You're a going to be discharged?' Yes, I was. Would I
find out that boy that had fed him and kep his secret, and give him them two
one pound notes? Yes, I would. And I did."
"More fool you," growled the other.
"I'd have spent 'em on a Man, in wittles and drink. He must have been a
green one. Mean to say he knowed nothing of you?"
"Not a ha'porth. Different gangs and different
ships. He was tried again for prison breaking, and got made a Lifer."
"And was that—Honor!—the only time you worked
out, in this part of the country?"
"The only time."
"What might have been your opinion of the
place?"
"A most beastly place. Mudbank, mist, swamp,
and work; work, swamp, mist, and mudbank."
They both execrated the place in very strong
language, and gradually growled themselves out, and had nothing left to say.
After overhearing this dialogue, I should assuredly
have got down and been left in the solitude and darkness of the highway, but
for feeling certain that the man had no suspicion of my identity. Indeed, I was
not only so changed in the course of nature, but so differently dressed and so
differently circumstanced, that it was not at all likely he could have known me
without accidental help. Still, the coincidence of our being together on the
coach, was sufficiently strange to fill me with a dread that some other
coincidence might at any moment connect me, in his hearing, with my name. For
this reason, I resolved to alight as soon as we touched the town, and put
myself out of his hearing. This device I executed successfully. My little
portmanteau was in the boot under my feet; I had but to turn a hinge to get it
out; I threw it down before me, got down after it, and was left at the first
lamp on the first stones of the town pavement. As to the convicts, they went
their way with the coach, and I knew at what point they would be spirited off
to the river. In my fancy, I saw the boat with its convict crew waiting for
them at the slime-washed stairs,—again heard the gruff "Give way,
you!" like and order to dogs,—again saw the wicked Noah's Ark lying out on
the black water.
I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my
fear was altogether undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon me. As I
walked on to the hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceeding the mere
apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition, made me tremble. I am
confident that it took no distinctness of shape, and that it was the revival
for a few minutes of the terror of childhood.
The coffee-room at the Blue Boar was empty, and I
had not only ordered my dinner there, but had sat down to it, before the waiter
knew me. As soon as he had apologized for the remissness of his memory, he
asked me if he should send Boots for Mr. Pumblechook?
"No," said I, "certainly not."
The waiter (it was he who had brought up the Great
Remonstrance from the Commercials, on the day when I was bound) appeared
surprised, and took the earliest opportunity of putting a dirty old copy of a
local newspaper so directly in my way, that I took it up and read this
paragraph:—
Our readers will learn, not altogether without
interest, in reference to the recent romantic rise in fortune of a young
artificer in iron of this neighborhood (what a theme, by the way, for the magic
pen of our as yet not universally acknowledged townsman TOOBY, the poet of our
columns!) that the youth's earliest patron, companion, and friend, was a highly
respected individual not entirely unconnected with the corn and seed trade, and
whose eminently convenient and commodious business premises are situate within
a hundred miles of the High Street. It is not wholly irrespective of our
personal feelings that we record HIM as the Mentor of our young Telemachus, for
it is good to know that our town produced the founder of the latter's fortunes.
Does the thought-contracted brow of the local Sage or the lustrous eye of local
Beauty inquire whose fortunes? We believe that Quintin Matsys was the
BLACKSMITH of Antwerp. VERB. SAP.
I entertain a conviction, based upon large
experience, that if in the days of my prosperity I had gone to the North Pole,
I should have met somebody there, wandering Esquimaux or civilized man, who
would have told me that Pumblechook was my earliest patron and the founder of
my fortunes.
