GREAT EXPECTATIONS
PART 15
Chapter XXIX
Betimes in the morning I was up and out. It was too
early yet to go to Miss Havisham's, so I loitered into the country on Miss
Havisham's side of town,—which was not Joe's side; I could go there
to-morrow,—thinking about my patroness, and painting brilliant pictures of her
plans for me.
She had adopted Estella, she had as good as adopted
me, and it could not fail to be her intention to bring us together. She
reserved it for me to restore the desolate house, admit the sunshine into the
dark rooms, set the clocks a-going and the cold hearths a-blazing, tear down
the cobwebs, destroy the vermin,—in short, do all the shining deeds of the young
Knight of romance, and marry the Princess. I had stopped to look at the house
as I passed; and its seared red brick walls, blocked windows, and strong green
ivy clasping even the stacks of chimneys with its twigs and tendons, as if with
sinewy old arms, had made up a rich attractive mystery, of which I was the
hero. Estella was the inspiration of it, and the heart of it, of course. But,
though she had taken such strong possession of me, though my fancy and my hope
were so set upon her, though her influence on my boyish life and character had
been all-powerful, I did not, even that romantic morning, invest her with any
attributes save those she possessed. I mention this in this place, of a fixed
purpose, because it is the clew by which I am to be followed into my poor
labyrinth. According to my experience, the conventional notion of a lover
cannot be always true. The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with
the love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible. Once
for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always, that I loved her
against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against
happiness, against all discouragement that could be. Once for all; I loved her
none the less because I knew it, and it had no more influence in restraining me
than if I had devoutly believed her to be human perfection.
I so shaped out my walk as to arrive at the gate at
my old time. When I had rung at the bell with an unsteady hand, I turned my
back upon the gate, while I tried to get my breath and keep the beating of my
heart moderately quiet. I heard the side-door open, and steps come across the
courtyard; but I pretended not to hear, even when the gate swung on its rusty
hinges.
Being at last touched on the shoulder, I started
and turned. I started much more naturally then, to find myself confronted by a
man in a sober gray dress. The last man I should have expected to see in that
place of porter at Miss Havisham's door.
"Orlick!"
"Ah, young master, there's more changes than
yours. But come in, come in. It's opposed to my orders to hold the gate
open."
I entered and he swung it, and locked it, and took
the key out. "Yes!" said he, facing round, after doggedly preceding
me a few steps towards the house. "Here I am!"
"How did you come here?"
"I come her," he retorted, "on my
legs. I had my box brought alongside me in a barrow."
"Are you here for good?"
"I ain't here for harm, young master, I
suppose?"
I was not so sure of that. I had leisure to
entertain the retort in my mind, while he slowly lifted his heavy glance from
the pavement, up my legs and arms, to my face.
"Then you have left the forge?" I said.
"Do this look like a forge?" replied
Orlick, sending his glance all round him with an air of injury. "Now, do
it look like it?"
I asked him how long he had left Gargery's forge?
"One day is so like another here," he
replied, "that I don't know without casting it up. However, I come here
some time since you left."
"I could have told you that, Orlick."
"Ah!" said he, dryly. "But then
you've got to be a scholar."
By this time we had come to the house, where I
found his room to be one just within the side-door, with a little window in it
looking on the courtyard. In its small proportions, it was not unlike the kind
of place usually assigned to a gate-porter in Paris. Certain keys were hanging
on the wall, to which he now added the gate key; and his patchwork-covered bed
was in a little inner division or recess. The whole had a slovenly, confined,
and sleepy look, like a cage for a human dormouse; while he, looming dark and
heavy in the shadow of a corner by the window, looked like the human dormouse
for whom it was fitted up,—as indeed he was.
"I never saw this room before," I
remarked; "but there used to be no Porter here."
"No," said he; "not till it got
about that there was no protection on the premises, and it come to be
considered dangerous, with convicts and Tag and Rag and Bobtail going up and
down. And then I was recommended to the place as a man who could give another
man as good as he brought, and I took it. It's easier than bellowsing and
hammering.—That's loaded, that is."
My eye had been caught by a gun with a brass-bound
stock over the chimney-piece, and his eye had followed mine.
"Well," said I, not desirous of more
conversation, "shall I go up to Miss Havisham?"
"Burn me, if I know!" he retorted, first
stretching himself and then shaking himself; "my orders ends here, young
master. I give this here bell a rap with this here hammer, and you go on along
the passage till you meet somebody."
"I am expected, I believe?"
"Burn me twice over, if I can say!" said
he.
Upon that, I turned down the long passage which I
had first trodden in my thick boots, and he made his bell sound. At the end of
the passage, while the bell was still reverberating, I found Sarah Pocket, who
appeared to have now become constitutionally green and yellow by reason of me.
"Oh!" said she. "You, is it, Mr.
Pip?"
"It is, Miss Pocket. I am glad to tell you
that Mr. Pocket and family are all well."
"Are they any wiser?" said Sarah, with a
dismal shake of the head; "they had better be wiser, than well. Ah,
Matthew, Matthew! You know your way, sir?"
Tolerably, for I had gone up the staircase in the
dark, many a time. I ascended it now, in lighter boots than of yore, and tapped
in my old way at the door of Miss Havisham's room. "Pip's rap," I
heard her say, immediately; "come in, Pip."
She was in her chair near the old table, in the old
dress, with her two hands crossed on her stick, her chin resting on them, and
her eyes on the fire. Sitting near her, with the white shoe, that had never
been worn, in her hand, and her head bent as she looked at it, was an elegant
lady whom I had never seen.
"Come in, Pip," Miss Havisham continued
to mutter, without looking round or up; "come in, Pip, how do you do, Pip?
so you kiss my hand as if I were a queen, eh?—Well?"
She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes,
and repeated in a grimly playful manner,—
"Well?"
"I heard, Miss Havisham," said I, rather
at a loss, "that you were so kind as to wish me to come and see you, and I
came directly."
"Well?"
The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up
her eyes and looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella's
eyes. But she was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so much more
womanly, in all things winning admiration, had made such wonderful advance,
that I seemed to have made none. I fancied, as I looked at her, that I slipped
hopelessly back into the coarse and common boy again. O the sense of distance
and disparity that came upon me, and the inaccessibility that came about her!
She gave me her hand. I stammered something about
the pleasure I felt in seeing her again, and about my having looked forward to
it, for a long, long time.
"Do you find her much changed, Pip?"
asked Miss Havisham, with her greedy look, and striking her stick upon a chair
that stood between them, as a sign to me to sit down there.
"When I came in, Miss Havisham, I thought
there was nothing of Estella in the face or figure; but now it all settles down
so curiously into the old—"
"What? You are not going to say into the old
Estella?" Miss Havisham interrupted. "She was proud and insulting,
and you wanted to go away from her. Don't you remember?"
I said confusedly that that was long ago, and that
I knew no better then, and the like. Estella smiled with perfect composure, and
said she had no doubt of my having been quite right, and of her having been
very disagreeable.
"Is he changed?" Miss Havisham asked her.
"Very much," said Estella, looking at me.
"Less coarse and common?" said Miss
Havisham, playing with Estella's hair.
Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her
hand, and laughed again, and looked at me, and put the shoe down. She treated
me as a boy still, but she lured me on.
We sat in the dreamy room among the old strange
influences which had so wrought upon me, and I learnt that she had but just
come home from France, and that she was going to London. Proud and wilful as of
old, she had brought those qualities into such subjection to her beauty that it
was impossible and out of nature—or I thought so—to separate them from her
beauty. Truly it was impossible to dissociate her presence from all those
wretched hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed my
boyhood,—from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first made me
ashamed of home and Joe,—from all those visions that had raised her face in the
glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the anvil, extracted it from the
darkness of night to look in at the wooden window of the forge, and flit away.
In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the
present, from the innermost life of my life.
It was settled that I should stay there all the
rest of the day, and return to the hotel at night, and to London to-morrow.
When we had conversed for a while, Miss Havisham sent us two out to walk in the
neglected garden: on our coming in by and by, she said, I should wheel her about
a little, as in times of yore.
So, Estella and I went out into the garden by the
gate through which I had strayed to my encounter with the pale young gentleman,
now Herbert; I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the very hem of her dress;
she, quite composed and most decidedly not worshipping the hem of mine. As we
drew near to the place of encounter, she stopped and said,—
"I must have been a singular little creature
to hide and see that fight that day; but I did, and I enjoyed it very
much."
"You rewarded me very much."
"Did I?" she replied, in an incidental
and forgetful way. "I remember I entertained a great objection to your
adversary, because I took it ill that he should be brought here to pester me
with his company."
"He and I are great friends now."
"Are you? I think I recollect though, that you
read with his father?"
"Yes."
I made the admission with reluctance, for it seemed
to have a boyish look, and she already treated me more than enough like a boy.
"Since your change of fortune and prospects,
you have changed your companions," said Estella.
"Naturally," said I.
"And necessarily," she added, in a
haughty tone; "what was fit company for you once, would be quite unfit
company for you now."
In my conscience, I doubt very much whether I had
any lingering intention left of going to see Joe; but if I had, this
observation put it to flight.
"You had no idea of your impending good
fortune, in those times?" said Estella, with a slight wave of her hand,
signifying in the fighting times.
"Not the least."
The air of completeness and superiority with which
she walked at my side, and the air of youthfulness and submission with which I
walked at hers, made a contrast that I strongly felt. It would have rankled in
me more than it did, if I had not regarded myself as eliciting it by being so
set apart for her and assigned to her.
The garden was too overgrown and rank for walking
in with ease, and after we had made the round of it twice or thrice, we came
out again into the brewery yard. I showed her to a nicety where I had seen her
walking on the casks, that first old day, and she said, with a cold and
careless look in that direction, "Did I?" I reminded her where she
had come out of the house and given me my meat and drink, and she said, "I
don't remember." "Not remember that you made me cry?" said I.
"No," said she, and shook her head and looked about her. I verily
believe that her not remembering and not minding in the least, made me cry
again, inwardly,—and that is the sharpest crying of all.
"You must know," said Estella,
condescending to me as a brilliant and beautiful woman might, "that I have
no heart,—if that has anything to do with my memory."
I got through some jargon to the effect that I took
the liberty of doubting that. That I knew better. That there could be no such
beauty without it.
"Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot
in, I have no doubt," said Estella, "and of course if it ceased to
beat I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there,
no—sympathy—sentiment—nonsense."
What was it that was borne in upon my mind when she
stood still and looked attentively at me? Anything that I had seen in Miss
Havisham? No. In some of her looks and gestures there was that tinge of
resemblance to Miss Havisham which may often be noticed to have been acquired
by children, from grown person with whom they have been much associated and
secluded, and which, when childhood is passed, will produce a remarkable
occasional likeness of expression between faces that are otherwise quite
different. And yet I could not trace this to Miss Havisham. I looked again, and
though she was still looking at me, the suggestion was gone.
What was it?
"I am serious," said Estella, not so much
with a frown (for her brow was smooth) as with a darkening of her face;
"if we are to be thrown much together, you had better believe it at once.
No!" imperiously stopping me as I opened my lips. "I have not
bestowed my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such thing."
In another moment we were in the brewery, so long
disused, and she pointed to the high gallery where I had seen her going out on
that same first day, and told me she remembered to have been up there, and to
have seen me standing scared below. As my eyes followed her white hand, again
the same dim suggestion that I could not possibly grasp crossed me. My
involuntary start occasioned her to lay her hand upon my arm. Instantly the
ghost passed once more and was gone.
What was it?
"What is the matter?" asked Estella.
"Are you scared again?"
"I should be, if I believed what you said just
now," I replied, to turn it off.
"Then you don't? Very well. It is said, at any
rate. Miss Havisham will soon be expecting you at your old post, though I think
that might be laid aside now, with other old belongings. Let us make one more
round of the garden, and then go in. Come! You shall not shed tears for my
cruelty to-day; you shall be my Page, and give me your shoulder."
Her handsome dress had trailed upon the ground. She
held it in one hand now, and with the other lightly touched my shoulder as we
walked. We walked round the ruined garden twice or thrice more, and it was all
in bloom for me. If the green and yellow growth of weed in the chinks of the
old wall had been the most precious flowers that ever blew, it could not have
been more cherished in my remembrance.
There was no discrepancy of years between us to
remove her far from me; we were of nearly the same age, though of course the
age told for more in her case than in mine; but the air of inaccessibility
which her beauty and her manner gave her, tormented me in the midst of my
delight, and at the height of the assurance I felt that our patroness had
chosen us for one another. Wretched boy!
At last we went back into the house, and there I
heard, with surprise, that my guardian had come down to see Miss Havisham on
business, and would come back to dinner. The old wintry branches of chandeliers
in the room where the mouldering table was spread had been lighted while we
were out, and Miss Havisham was in her chair and waiting for me.
It was like pushing the chair itself back into the
past, when we began the old slow circuit round about the ashes of the bridal
feast. But, in the funereal room, with that figure of the grave fallen back in
the chair fixing its eyes upon her, Estella looked more bright and beautiful
than before, and I was under stronger enchantment.
The time so melted away, that our early dinner-hour
drew close at hand, and Estella left us to prepare herself. We had stopped near
the centre of the long table, and Miss Havisham, with one of her withered arms
stretched out of the chair, rested that clenched hand upon the yellow cloth. As
Estella looked back over her shoulder before going out at the door, Miss
Havisham kissed that hand to her, with a ravenous intensity that was of its
kind quite dreadful.
Then, Estella being gone and we two left alone, she
turned to me, and said in a whisper,—
"Is she beautiful, graceful, well-grown? Do
you admire her?"
"Everybody must who sees her, Miss
Havisham."
She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head
close down to hers as she sat in the chair. "Love her, love her, love her!
How does she use you?"
Before I could answer (if I could have answered so
difficult a question at all) she repeated, "Love her, love her, love her!
If she favors you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your
heart to pieces,—and as it gets older and stronger it will tear deeper,—love
her, love her, love her!"
Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was
joined to her utterance of these words. I could feel the muscles of the thin
arm round my neck swell with the vehemence that possessed her.
"Hear me, Pip! I adopted her, to be loved. I
bred her and educated her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that
she might be loved. Love her!"
She said the word often enough, and there could be
no doubt that she meant to say it; but if the often repeated word had been hate
instead of love—despair—revenge—dire death—it could not have sounded from her
lips more like a curse.
"I'll tell you," said she, in the same
hurried passionate whisper, "what real love is. It is blind devotion,
unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against
yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to
the smiter—as I did!"
When she came to that, and to a wild cry that
followed that, I caught her round the waist. For she rose up in the chair, in
her shroud of a dress, and struck at the air as if she would as soon have
struck herself against the wall and fallen dead.
All this passed in a few seconds. As I drew her
down into her chair, I was conscious of a scent that I knew, and turning, saw
my guardian in the room.
He always carried (I have not yet mentioned it, I
think) a pocket-handkerchief of rich silk and of imposing proportions, which
was of great value to him in his profession. I have seen him so terrify a
client or a witness by ceremoniously unfolding this pocket-handkerchief as if
he were immediately going to blow his nose, and then pausing, as if he knew he
should not have time to do it before such client or witness committed himself,
that the self-committal has followed directly, quite as a matter of course.
When I saw him in the room he had this expressive pocket-handkerchief in both
hands, and was looking at us. On meeting my eye, he said plainly, by a
momentary and silent pause in that attitude, "Indeed? Singular!" and
then put the handkerchief to its right use with wonderful effect.
Miss Havisham had seen him as soon as I, and was
(like everybody else) afraid of him. She made a strong attempt to compose
herself, and stammered that he was as punctual as ever.
"As punctual as ever," he repeated,
coming up to us. "(How do you do, Pip? Shall I give you a ride, Miss
Havisham? Once round?) And so you are here, Pip?"
I told him when I had arrived, and how Miss
Havisham had wished me to come and see Estella. To which he replied, "Ah!
Very fine young lady!" Then he pushed Miss Havisham in her chair before
him, with one of his large hands, and put the other in his trousers-pocket as
if the pocket were full of secrets.
"Well, Pip! How often have you seen Miss
Estella before?" said he, when he came to a stop.
"How often?"
"Ah! How many times? Ten thousand times?"
"Oh! Certainly not so many."
"Twice?"
"Jaggers," interposed Miss Havisham, much
to my relief, "leave my Pip alone, and go with him to your dinner."
He complied, and we groped our way down the dark
stairs together. While we were still on our way to those detached apartments
across the paved yard at the back, he asked me how often I had seen Miss
Havisham eat and drink; offering me a breadth of choice, as usual, between a
hundred times and once.
I considered, and said, "Never."
"And never will, Pip," he retorted, with
a frowning smile. "She has never allowed herself to be seen doing either,
since she lived this present life of hers. She wanders about in the night, and
then lays hands on such food as she takes."
"Pray, sir," said I, "may I ask you
a question?"
"You may," said he, "and I may
decline to answer it. Put your question."
"Estella's name. Is it Havisham or—?" I
had nothing to add.
"Or what?" said he.
"Is it Havisham?"
"It is Havisham."
This brought us to the dinner-table, where she and
Sarah Pocket awaited us. Mr. Jaggers presided, Estella sat opposite to him, I
faced my green and yellow friend. We dined very well, and were waited on by a
maid-servant whom I had never seen in all my comings and goings, but who, for
anything I know, had been in that mysterious house the whole time. After dinner
a bottle of choice old port was placed before my guardian (he was evidently
well acquainted with the vintage), and the two ladies left us.
Anything to equal the determined reticence of Mr.
Jaggers under that roof I never saw elsewhere, even in him. He kept his very
looks to himself, and scarcely directed his eyes to Estella's face once during
dinner. When she spoke to him, he listened, and in due course answered, but
never looked at her, that I could see. On the other hand, she often looked at
him, with interest and curiosity, if not distrust, but his face never showed
the least consciousness. Throughout dinner he took a dry delight in making
Sarah Pocket greener and yellower, by often referring in conversation with me
to my expectations; but here, again, he showed no consciousness, and even made
it appear that he extorted—and even did extort, though I don't know how—those
references out of my innocent self.
And when he and I were left alone together, he sat
with an air upon him of general lying by in consequence of information he
possessed, that really was too much for me. He cross-examined his very wine
when he had nothing else in hand. He held it between himself and the candle,
tasted the port, rolled it in his mouth, swallowed it, looked at his glass
again, smelt the port, tried it, drank it, filled again, and cross-examined the
glass again, until I was as nervous as if I had known the wine to be telling
him something to my disadvantage. Three or four times I feebly thought I would
start conversation; but whenever he saw me going to ask him anything, he looked
at me with his glass in his hand, and rolling his wine about in his mouth, as
if requesting me to take notice that it was of no use, for he couldn't answer.
I think Miss Pocket was conscious that the sight of
me involved her in the danger of being goaded to madness, and perhaps tearing
off her cap,—which was a very hideous one, in the nature of a muslin mop,—and
strewing the ground with her hair,—which assuredly had never grown on her head.
She did not appear when we afterwards went up to Miss Havisham's room, and we
four played at whist. In the interval, Miss Havisham, in a fantastic way, had put
some of the most beautiful jewels from her dressing-table into Estella's hair,
and about her bosom and arms; and I saw even my guardian look at her from under
his thick eyebrows, and raise them a little, when her loveliness was before
him, with those rich flushes of glitter and color in it.
Of the manner and extent to which he took our
trumps into custody, and came out with mean little cards at the ends of hands,
before which the glory of our Kings and Queens was utterly abased, I say
nothing; nor, of the feeling that I had, respecting his looking upon us
personally in the light of three very obvious and poor riddles that he had
found out long ago. What I suffered from, was the incompatibility between his
cold presence and my feelings towards Estella. It was not that I knew I could
never bear to speak to him about her, that I knew I could never bear to hear
him creak his boots at her, that I knew I could never bear to see him wash his
hands of her; it was, that my admiration should be within a foot or two of
him,—it was, that my feelings should be in the same place with him,—that, was
the agonizing circumstance.
We played until nine o'clock, and then it was
arranged that when Estella came to London I should be forewarned of her coming
and should meet her at the coach; and then I took leave of her, and touched her
and left her.
My guardian lay at the Boar in the next room to
mine. Far into the night, Miss Havisham's words, "Love her, love her, love
her!" sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, and said
to my pillow, "I love her, I love her, I love her!" hundreds of
times. Then, a burst of gratitude came upon me, that she should be destined for
me, once the blacksmith's boy. Then I thought if she were, as I feared, by no
means rapturously grateful for that destiny yet, when would she begin to be
interested in me? When should I awaken the heart within her that was mute and
sleeping now?
Ah me! I thought those were high and great
emotions. But I never thought there was anything low and small in my keeping
away from Joe, because I knew she would be contemptuous of him. It was but a
day gone, and Joe had brought the tears into my eyes; they had soon dried, God
forgive me! soon dried.
After well considering the matter while I was
dressing at the Blue Boar in the morning, I resolved to tell my guardian that I
doubted Orlick's being the right sort of man to fill a post of trust at Miss
Havisham's. "Why of course he is not the right sort of man, Pip,"
said my guardian, comfortably satisfied beforehand on the general head,
"because the man who fills the post of trust never is the right sort of
man." It seemed quite to put him into spirits to find that this particular
post was not exceptionally held by the right sort of man, and he listened in a
satisfied manner while I told him what knowledge I had of Orlick. "Very
good, Pip," he observed, when I had concluded, "I'll go round
presently, and pay our friend off." Rather alarmed by this summary action,
I was for a little delay, and even hinted that our friend himself might be
difficult to deal with. "Oh no he won't," said my guardian, making
his pocket-handkerchief-point, with perfect confidence; "I should like to
see him argue the question with me."
As we were going back together to London by the
midday coach, and as I breakfasted under such terrors of Pumblechook that I
could scarcely hold my cup, this gave me an opportunity of saying that I wanted
a walk, and that I would go on along the London road while Mr. Jaggers was
occupied, if he would let the coachman know that I would get into my place when
overtaken. I was thus enabled to fly from the Blue Boar immediately after
breakfast. By then making a loop of about a couple of miles into the open
country at the back of Pumblechook's premises, I got round into the High Street
again, a little beyond that pitfall, and felt myself in comparative security.
It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once
more, and it was not disagreeable to be here and there suddenly recognized and
stared after. One or two of the tradespeople even darted out of their shops and
went a little way down the street before me, that they might turn, as if they
had forgotten something, and pass me face to face,—on which occasions I don't
know whether they or I made the worse pretence; they of not doing it, or I of
not seeing it. Still my position was a distinguished one, and I was not at all
dissatisfied with it, until Fate threw me in the way of that unlimited
miscreant, Trabb's boy.
Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point
of my progress, I beheld Trabb's boy approaching, lashing himself with an empty
blue bag. Deeming that a serene and unconscious contemplation of him would best
beseem me, and would be most likely to quell his evil mind, I advanced with
that expression of countenance, and was rather congratulating myself on my
success, when suddenly the knees of Trabb's boy smote together, his hair
uprose, his cap fell off, he trembled violently in every limb, staggered out
into the road, and crying to the populace, "Hold me! I'm so
frightened!" feigned to be in a paroxysm of terror and contrition,
occasioned by the dignity of my appearance. As I passed him, his teeth loudly
chattered in his head, and with every mark of extreme humiliation, he
prostrated himself in the dust.
This was a hard thing to bear, but this was
nothing. I had not advanced another two hundred yards when, to my inexpressible
terror, amazement, and indignation, I again beheld Trabb's boy approaching. He
was coming round a narrow corner. His blue bag was slung over his shoulder,
honest industry beamed in his eyes, a determination to proceed to Trabb's with
cheerful briskness was indicated in his gait. With a shock he became aware of
me, and was severely visited as before; but this time his motion was rotatory,
and he staggered round and round me with knees more afflicted, and with
uplifted hands as if beseeching for mercy. His sufferings were hailed with the
greatest joy by a knot of spectators, and I felt utterly confounded.
I had not got as much further down the street as
the post-office, when I again beheld Trabb's boy shooting round by a back way.
This time, he was entirely changed. He wore the blue bag in the manner of my
great-coat, and was strutting along the pavement towards me on the opposite
side of the street, attended by a company of delighted young friends to whom he
from time to time exclaimed, with a wave of his hand, "Don't know
yah!" Words cannot state the amount of aggravation and injury wreaked upon
me by Trabb's boy, when passing abreast of me, he pulled up his shirt-collar,
twined his side-hair, stuck an arm akimbo, and smirked extravagantly by,
wriggling his elbows and body, and drawling to his attendants, "Don't know
yah, don't know yah, 'pon my soul don't know yah!" The disgrace attendant
on his immediately afterwards taking to crowing and pursuing me across the
bridge with crows, as from an exceedingly dejected fowl who had known me when I
was a blacksmith, culminated the disgrace with which I left the town, and was,
so to speak, ejected by it into the open country.
But unless I had taken the life of Trabb's boy on
that occasion, I really do not even now see what I could have done save endure.
To have struggled with him in the street, or to have exacted any lower
recompense from him than his heart's best blood, would have been futile and
degrading. Moreover, he was a boy whom no man could hurt; an invulnerable and
dodging serpent who, when chased into a corner, flew out again between his
captor's legs, scornfully yelping. I wrote, however, to Mr. Trabb by next day's
post, to say that Mr. Pip must decline to deal further with one who could so
far forget what he owed to the best interests of society, as to employ a boy
who excited Loathing in every respectable mind.
The coach, with Mr. Jaggers inside, came up in due
time, and I took my box-seat again, and arrived in London safe,—but not sound,
for my heart was gone. As soon as I arrived, I sent a penitential codfish and
barrel of oysters to Joe (as reparation for not having gone myself), and then
went on to Barnard's Inn.
I found Herbert dining on cold meat, and delighted
to welcome me back. Having despatched The Avenger to the coffee-house for an
addition to the dinner, I felt that I must open my breast that very evening to
my friend and chum. As confidence was out of the question with The Avenger in
the hall, which could merely be regarded in the light of an antechamber to the
keyhole, I sent him to the Play. A better proof of the severity of my bondage
to that taskmaster could scarcely be afforded, than the degrading shifts to
which I was constantly driven to find him employment. So mean is extremity,
that I sometimes sent him to Hyde Park corner to see what o'clock it was.
Dinner done and we sitting with our feet upon the
fender, I said to Herbert, "My dear Herbert, I have something very
particular to tell you."
"My dear Handel," he returned, "I
shall esteem and respect your confidence."
"It concerns myself, Herbert," said I,
"and one other person."
Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with
his head on one side, and having looked at it in vain for some time, looked at
me because I didn't go on.
"Herbert," said I, laying my hand upon
his knee, "I love—I adore—Estella."
Instead of being transfixed, Herbert replied in an
easy matter-of-course way, "Exactly. Well?"
"Well, Herbert? Is that all you say?
Well?"
"What next, I mean?" said Herbert.
"Of course I know that."
"How do you know it?" said I.
"How do I know it, Handel? Why, from
you."
"I never told you."
"Told me! You have never told me when you have
got your hair cut, but I have had senses to perceive it. You have always adored
her, ever since I have known you. You brought your adoration and your
portmanteau here together. Told me! Why, you have always told me all day long.
When you told me your own story, you told me plainly that you began adoring her
the first time you saw her, when you were very young indeed."
"Very well, then," said I, to whom this
was a new and not unwelcome light, "I have never left off adoring her. And
she has come back, a most beautiful and most elegant creature. And I saw her
yesterday. And if I adored her before, I now doubly adore her."
"Lucky for you then, Handel," said
Herbert, "that you are picked out for her and allotted to her. Without
encroaching on forbidden ground, we may venture to say that there can be no
doubt between ourselves of that fact. Have you any idea yet, of Estella's views
on the adoration question?"
I shook my head gloomily. "Oh! She is
thousands of miles away, from me," said I.
"Patience, my dear Handel: time enough, time
enough. But you have something more to say?"
"I am ashamed to say it," I returned,
"and yet it's no worse to say it than to think it. You call me a lucky
fellow. Of course, I am. I was a blacksmith's boy but yesterday; I am—what
shall I say I am—to-day?"
"Say a good fellow, if you want a
phrase," returned Herbert, smiling, and clapping his hand on the back of
mine—"a good fellow, with impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and
diffidence, action and dreaming, curiously mixed in him."
I stopped for a moment to consider whether there
really was this mixture in my character. On the whole, I by no means recognized
the analysis, but thought it not worth disputing.
"When I ask what I am to call myself to-day,
Herbert," I went on, "I suggest what I have in my thoughts. You say I
am lucky. I know I have done nothing to raise myself in life, and that Fortune
alone has raised me; that is being very lucky. And yet, when I think of
Estella—"
("And when don't you, you know?" Herbert
threw in, with his eyes on the fire; which I thought kind and sympathetic of
him.)
"—Then, my dear Herbert, I cannot tell you how
dependent and uncertain I feel, and how exposed to hundreds of chances.
Avoiding forbidden ground, as you did just now, I may still say that on the
constancy of one person (naming no person) all my expectations depend. And at
the best, how indefinite and unsatisfactory, only to know so vaguely what they
are!" In saying this, I relieved my mind of what had always been there,
more or less, though no doubt most since yesterday.
"Now, Handel," Herbert replied, in his
gay, hopeful way, "it seems to me that in the despondency of the tender
passion, we are looking into our gift-horse's mouth with a magnifying-glass.
Likewise, it seems to me that, concentrating our attention on the examination,
we altogether overlook one of the best points of the animal. Didn't you tell me
that your guardian, Mr. Jaggers, told you in the beginning, that you were not
endowed with expectations only? And even if he had not told you so,—though that
is a very large If, I grant,—could you believe that of all men in London, Mr.
Jaggers is the man to hold his present relations towards you unless he were
sure of his ground?"
I said I could not deny that this was a strong
point. I said it (people often do so, in such cases) like a rather reluctant
concession to truth and justice;—as if I wanted to deny it!
"I should think it was a strong point,"
said Herbert, "and I should think you would be puzzled to imagine a
stronger; as to the rest, you must bide your guardian's time, and he must bide
his client's time. You'll be one-and-twenty before you know where you are, and
then perhaps you'll get some further enlightenment. At all events, you'll be
nearer getting it, for it must come at last."
"What a hopeful disposition you have!"
said I, gratefully admiring his cheery ways.
"I ought to have," said Herbert,
"for I have not much else. I must acknowledge, by the by, that the good
sense of what I have just said is not my own, but my father's. The only remark
I ever heard him make on your story, was the final one, "The thing is
settled and done, or Mr. Jaggers would not be in it." And now before I say
anything more about my father, or my father's son, and repay confidence with
confidence, I want to make myself seriously disagreeable to you for a
moment,—positively repulsive."
"You won't succeed," said I.
"O yes I shall!" said he. "One, two,
three, and now I am in for it. Handel, my good fellow;"—though he spoke in
this light tone, he was very much in earnest,—"I have been thinking since
we have been talking with our feet on this fender, that Estella surely cannot
be a condition of your inheritance, if she was never referred to by your
guardian. Am I right in so understanding what you have told me, as that he
never referred to her, directly or indirectly, in any way? Never even hinted,
for instance, that your patron might have views as to your marriage
ultimately?"
"Never."
"Now, Handel, I am quite free from the flavor
of sour grapes, upon my soul and honor! Not being bound to her, can you not
detach yourself from her?—I told you I should be disagreeable."
I turned my head aside, for, with a rush and a
sweep, like the old marsh winds coming up from the sea, a feeling like that
which had subdued me on the morning when I left the forge, when the mists were
solemnly rising, and when I laid my hand upon the village finger-post, smote
upon my heart again. There was silence between us for a little while.
"Yes; but my dear Handel," Herbert went
on, as if we had been talking, instead of silent, "its having been so
strongly rooted in the breast of a boy whom nature and circumstances made so
romantic, renders it very serious. Think of her bringing-up, and think of Miss
Havisham. Think of what she is herself (now I am repulsive and you abominate
me). This may lead to miserable things."
"I know it, Herbert," said I, with my
head still turned away, "but I can't help it."
"You can't detach yourself?"
"No. Impossible!"
"You can't try, Handel?"
"No. Impossible!"
"Well!" said Herbert, getting up with a
lively shake as if he had been asleep, and stirring the fire, "now I'll
endeavor to make myself agreeable again!"
So he went round the room and shook the curtains
out, put the chairs in their places, tidied the books and so forth that were
lying about, looked into the hall, peeped into the letter-box, shut the door,
and came back to his chair by the fire: where he sat down, nursing his left leg
in both arms.
"I was going to say a word or two, Handel,
concerning my father and my father's son. I am afraid it is scarcely necessary
for my father's son to remark that my father's establishment is not
particularly brilliant in its housekeeping."
"There is always plenty, Herbert," said
I, to say something encouraging.
"O yes! and so the dustman says, I believe,
with the strongest approval, and so does the marine-store shop in the back street.
Gravely, Handel, for the subject is grave enough, you know how it is as well as
I do. I suppose there was a time once when my father had not given matters up;
but if ever there was, the time is gone. May I ask you if you have ever had an
opportunity of remarking, down in your part of the country, that the children
of not exactly suitable marriages are always most particularly anxious to be
married?"
This was such a singular question, that I asked him
in return, "Is it so?"
"I don't know," said Herbert,
"that's what I want to know. Because it is decidedly the case with us. My
poor sister Charlotte, who was next me and died before she was fourteen, was a
striking example. Little Jane is the same. In her desire to be matrimonially
established, you might suppose her to have passed her short existence in the
perpetual contemplation of domestic bliss. Little Alick in a frock has already
made arrangements for his union with a suitable young person at Kew. And
indeed, I think we are all engaged, except the baby."
"Then you are?" said I.
"I am," said Herbert; "but it's a
secret."
I assured him of my keeping the secret, and begged
to be favored with further particulars. He had spoken so sensibly and feelingly
of my weakness that I wanted to know something about his strength.
"May I ask the name?" I said.
"Name of Clara," said Herbert.
"Live in London?"
"Yes, perhaps I ought to mention," said
Herbert, who had become curiously crestfallen and meek, since we entered on the
interesting theme, "that she is rather below my mother's nonsensical
family notions. Her father had to do with the victualling of passenger-ships. I
think he was a species of purser."
"What is he now?" said I.
"He's an invalid now," replied Herbert.
"Living on—?"
"On the first floor," said Herbert. Which
was not at all what I meant, for I had intended my question to apply to his
means. "I have never seen him, for he has always kept his room overhead,
since I have known Clara. But I have heard him constantly. He makes tremendous
rows,—roars, and pegs at the floor with some frightful instrument." In
looking at me and then laughing heartily, Herbert for the time recovered his
usual lively manner.
"Don't you expect to see him?" said I.
"O yes, I constantly expect to see him,"
returned Herbert, "because I never hear him, without expecting him to come
tumbling through the ceiling. But I don't know how long the rafters may
hold."
When he had once more laughed heartily, he became
meek again, and told me that the moment he began to realize Capital, it was his
intention to marry this young lady. He added as a self-evident proposition,
engendering low spirits, "But you can't marry, you know, while you're
looking about you."
As we contemplated the fire, and as I thought what
a difficult vision to realize this same Capital sometimes was, I put my hands
in my pockets. A folded piece of paper in one of them attracting my attention,
I opened it and found it to be the play-bill I had received from Joe, relative
to the celebrated provincial amateur of Roscian renown. "And bless my
heart," I involuntarily added aloud, "it's to-night!"
This changed the subject in an instant, and made us
hurriedly resolve to go to the play. So, when I had pledged myself to comfort
and abet Herbert in the affair of his heart by all practicable and
impracticable means, and when Herbert had told me that his affianced already
knew me by reputation and that I should be presented to her, and when we had
warmly shaken hands upon our mutual confidence, we blew out our candles, made
up our fire, locked our door, and issued forth in quest of Mr. Wopsle and
Denmark.
