GREAT EXPECTATIONS
PART 16
Chapter XXXI
On our arrival in Denmark, we found the king and
queen of that country elevated in two arm-chairs on a kitchen-table, holding a
Court. The whole of the Danish nobility were in attendance; consisting of a
noble boy in the wash-leather boots of a gigantic ancestor, a venerable Peer
with a dirty face who seemed to have risen from the people late in life, and
the Danish chivalry with a comb in its hair and a pair of white silk legs, and
presenting on the whole a feminine appearance. My gifted townsman stood gloomily
apart, with folded arms, and I could have wished that his curls and forehead
had been more probable.
Several curious little circumstances transpired as
the action proceeded. The late king of the country not only appeared to have
been troubled with a cough at the time of his decease, but to have taken it
with him to the tomb, and to have brought it back. The royal phantom also
carried a ghostly manuscript round its truncheon, to which it had the
appearance of occasionally referring, and that too, with an air of anxiety and
a tendency to lose the place of reference which were suggestive of a state of
mortality. It was this, I conceive, which led to the Shade's being advised by
the gallery to "turn over!"—a recommendation which it took extremely
ill. It was likewise to be noted of this majestic spirit, that whereas it
always appeared with an air of having been out a long time and walked an
immense distance, it perceptibly came from a closely contiguous wall. This
occasioned its terrors to be received derisively. The Queen of Denmark, a very
buxom lady, though no doubt historically brazen, was considered by the public
to have too much brass about her; her chin being attached to her diadem by a
broad band of that metal (as if she had a gorgeous toothache), her waist being
encircled by another, and each of her arms by another, so that she was openly
mentioned as "the kettle-drum." The noble boy in the ancestral boots
was inconsistent, representing himself, as it were in one breath, as an able
seaman, a strolling actor, a grave-digger, a clergyman, and a person of the
utmost importance at a Court fencing-match, on the authority of whose practised
eye and nice discrimination the finest strokes were judged. This gradually led
to a want of toleration for him, and even—on his being detected in holy orders,
and declining to perform the funeral service—to the general indignation taking
the form of nuts. Lastly, Ophelia was a prey to such slow musical madness, that
when, in course of time, she had taken off her white muslin scarf, folded it
up, and buried it, a sulky man who had been long cooling his impatient nose
against an iron bar in the front row of the gallery, growled, "Now the
baby's put to bed let's have supper!" Which, to say the least of it, was
out of keeping.
Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents
accumulated with playful effect. Whenever that undecided Prince had to ask a
question or state a doubt, the public helped him out with it. As for example;
on the question whether 'twas nobler in the mind to suffer, some roared yes,
and some no, and some inclining to both opinions said "Toss up for
it;" and quite a Debating Society arose. When he asked what should such
fellows as he do crawling between earth and heaven, he was encouraged with loud
cries of "Hear, hear!" When he appeared with his stocking disordered
(its disorder expressed, according to usage, by one very neat fold in the top,
which I suppose to be always got up with a flat iron), a conversation took
place in the gallery respecting the paleness of his leg, and whether it was
occasioned by the turn the ghost had given him. On his taking the
recorders,—very like a little black flute that had just been played in the
orchestra and handed out at the door,—he was called upon unanimously for Rule Britannia.
When he recommended the player not to saw the air thus, the sulky man said,
"And don't you do it, neither; you're a deal worse than him!" And I
grieve to add that peals of laughter greeted Mr. Wopsle on every one of these
occasions.
But his greatest trials were in the churchyard,
which had the appearance of a primeval forest, with a kind of small
ecclesiastical wash-house on one side, and a turnpike gate on the other. Mr.
Wopsle in a comprehensive black cloak, being descried entering at the turnpike,
the gravedigger was admonished in a friendly way, "Look out! Here's the
undertaker a coming, to see how you're a getting on with your work!" I
believe it is well known in a constitutional country that Mr. Wopsle could not
possibly have returned the skull, after moralizing over it, without dusting his
fingers on a white napkin taken from his breast; but even that innocent and
indispensable action did not pass without the comment, "Wai-ter!" The
arrival of the body for interment (in an empty black box with the lid tumbling
open), was the signal for a general joy, which was much enhanced by the
discovery, among the bearers, of an individual obnoxious to identification. The
joy attended Mr. Wopsle through his struggle with Laertes on the brink of the
orchestra and the grave, and slackened no more until he had tumbled the king
off the kitchen-table, and had died by inches from the ankles upward.
We had made some pale efforts in the beginning to
applaud Mr. Wopsle; but they were too hopeless to be persisted in. Therefore we
had sat, feeling keenly for him, but laughing, nevertheless, from ear to ear. I
laughed in spite of myself all the time, the whole thing was so droll; and yet
I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly fine in Mr.
Wopsle's elocution,—not for old associations' sake, I am afraid, but because it
was very slow, very dreary, very up-hill and down-hill, and very unlike any way
in which any man in any natural circumstances of life or death ever expressed
himself about anything. When the tragedy was over, and he had been called for
and hooted, I said to Herbert, "Let us go at once, or perhaps we shall
meet him."
We made all the haste we could down stairs, but we
were not quick enough either. Standing at the door was a Jewish man with an
unnatural heavy smear of eyebrow, who caught my eyes as we advanced, and said,
when we came up with him,—
"Mr. Pip and friend?"
Identity of Mr. Pip and friend confessed.
"Mr. Waldengarver," said the man,
"would be glad to have the honor."
"Waldengarver?" I repeated—when Herbert
murmured in my ear, "Probably Wopsle."
"Oh!" said I. "Yes. Shall we follow
you?"
"A few steps, please." When we were in a
side alley, he turned and asked, "How did you think he looked?—I dressed
him."
I don't know what he had looked like, except a
funeral; with the addition of a large Danish sun or star hanging round his neck
by a blue ribbon, that had given him the appearance of being insured in some
extraordinary Fire Office. But I said he had looked very nice.
"When he come to the grave," said our
conductor, "he showed his cloak beautiful. But, judging from the wing, it
looked to me that when he see the ghost in the queen's apartment, he might have
made more of his stockings."
I modestly assented, and we all fell through a
little dirty swing door, into a sort of hot packing-case immediately behind it.
Here Mr. Wopsle was divesting himself of his Danish garments, and here there
was just room for us to look at him over one another's shoulders, by keeping
the packing-case door, or lid, wide open.
"Gentlemen," said Mr. Wopsle, "I am
proud to see you. I hope, Mr. Pip, you will excuse my sending round. I had the
happiness to know you in former times, and the Drama has ever had a claim which
has ever been acknowledged, on the noble and the affluent."
Meanwhile, Mr. Waldengarver, in a frightful
perspiration, was trying to get himself out of his princely sables.
"Skin the stockings off Mr.
Waldengarver," said the owner of that property, "or you'll bust 'em.
Bust 'em, and you'll bust five-and-thirty shillings. Shakspeare never was
complimented with a finer pair. Keep quiet in your chair now, and leave 'em to
me."
With that, he went upon his knees, and began to
flay his victim; who, on the first stocking coming off, would certainly have
fallen over backward with his chair, but for there being no room to fall
anyhow.
I had been afraid until then to say a word about
the play. But then, Mr. Waldengarver looked up at us complacently, and said,—
"Gentlemen, how did it seem to you, to go, in
front?"
Herbert said from behind (at the same time poking
me), "Capitally." So I said "Capitally."
"How did you like my reading of the character,
gentlemen?" said Mr. Waldengarver, almost, if not quite, with patronage.
Herbert said from behind (again poking me),
"Massive and concrete." So I said boldly, as if I had originated it,
and must beg to insist upon it, "Massive and concrete."
"I am glad to have your approbation,
gentlemen," said Mr. Waldengarver, with an air of dignity, in spite of his
being ground against the wall at the time, and holding on by the seat of the
chair.
"But I'll tell you one thing, Mr.
Waldengarver," said the man who was on his knees, "in which you're
out in your reading. Now mind! I don't care who says contrairy; I tell you so.
You're out in your reading of Hamlet when you get your legs in profile. The
last Hamlet as I dressed, made the same mistakes in his reading at rehearsal,
till I got him to put a large red wafer on each of his shins, and then at that
rehearsal (which was the last) I went in front, sir, to the back of the pit,
and whenever his reading brought him into profile, I called out "I don't
see no wafers!" And at night his reading was lovely."
Mr. Waldengarver smiled at me, as much as to say
"a faithful Dependent—I overlook his folly;" and then said aloud,
"My view is a little classic and thoughtful for them here; but they will
improve, they will improve."
Herbert and I said together, O, no doubt they would
improve.
"Did you observe, gentlemen," said Mr.
Waldengarver, "that there was a man in the gallery who endeavored to cast
derision on the service,—I mean, the representation?"
We basely replied that we rather thought we had
noticed such a man. I added, "He was drunk, no doubt."
"O dear no, sir," said Mr. Wopsle,
"not drunk. His employer would see to that, sir. His employer would not
allow him to be drunk."
"You know his employer?" said I.
Mr. Wopsle shut his eyes, and opened them again;
performing both ceremonies very slowly. "You must have observed,
gentlemen," said he, "an ignorant and a blatant ass, with a rasping
throat and a countenance expressive of low malignity, who went through—I will
not say sustained—the rôle (if I may use a French expression) of Claudius, King
of Denmark. That is his employer, gentlemen. Such is the profession!"
Without distinctly knowing whether I should have
been more sorry for Mr. Wopsle if he had been in despair, I was so sorry for
him as it was, that I took the opportunity of his turning round to have his
braces put on,—which jostled us out at the doorway,—to ask Herbert what he
thought of having him home to supper? Herbert said he thought it would be kind
to do so; therefore I invited him, and he went to Barnard's with us, wrapped up
to the eyes, and we did our best for him, and he sat until two o'clock in the
morning, reviewing his success and developing his plans. I forget in detail
what they were, but I have a general recollection that he was to begin with
reviving the Drama, and to end with crushing it; inasmuch as his decease would
leave it utterly bereft and without a chance or hope.
Miserably I went to bed after all, and miserably
thought of Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all
cancelled, and that I had to give my hand in marriage to Herbert's Clara, or
play Hamlet to Miss Havisham's Ghost, before twenty thousand people, without
knowing twenty words of it.
Chapter XXXII
One day when I was busy with my books and Mr.
Pocket, I received a note by the post, the mere outside of which threw me into
a great flutter; for, though I had never seen the handwriting in which it was
addressed, I divined whose hand it was. It had no set beginning, as Dear Mr.
Pip, or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear Anything, but ran thus:—
"I am to come to London the day after
to-morrow by the midday coach. I believe it was settled you should meet me? At
all events Miss Havisham has that impression, and I write in obedience to it.
She sends you her regard.
"Yours, ESTELLA."
If there had been time, I should probably have
ordered several suits of clothes for this occasion; but as there was not, I was
fain to be content with those I had. My appetite vanished instantly, and I knew
no peace or rest until the day arrived. Not that its arrival brought me either;
for, then I was worse than ever, and began haunting the coach-office in Wood
Street, Cheapside, before the coach had left the Blue Boar in our town. For all
that I knew this perfectly well, I still felt as if it were not safe to let the
coach-office be out of my sight longer than five minutes at a time; and in this
condition of unreason I had performed the first half-hour of a watch of four or
five hours, when Wemmick ran against me.
"Halloa, Mr. Pip," said he; "how do
you do? I should hardly have thought this was your beat."
I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who
was coming up by coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged.
"Both flourishing thankye," said Wemmick,
"and particularly the Aged. He's in wonderful feather. He'll be eighty-two
next birthday. I have a notion of firing eighty-two times, if the neighborhood
shouldn't complain, and that cannon of mine should prove equal to the pressure.
However, this is not London talk. Where do you think I am going to?"
"To the office?" said I, for he was
tending in that direction.
"Next thing to it," returned Wemmick,
"I am going to Newgate. We are in a banker's-parcel case just at present,
and I have been down the road taking a squint at the scene of action, and
thereupon must have a word or two with our client."
"Did your client commit the robbery?" I
asked.
"Bless your soul and body, no," answered
Wemmick, very drily. "But he is accused of it. So might you or I be.
Either of us might be accused of it, you know."
"Only neither of us is," I remarked.
"Yah!" said Wemmick, touching me on the
breast with his forefinger; "you're a deep one, Mr. Pip! Would you like to
have a look at Newgate? Have you time to spare?"
I had so much time to spare, that the proposal came
as a relief, notwithstanding its irreconcilability with my latent desire to
keep my eye on the coach-office. Muttering that I would make the inquiry
whether I had time to walk with him, I went into the office, and ascertained
from the clerk with the nicest precision and much to the trying of his temper,
the earliest moment at which the coach could be expected,—which I knew
beforehand, quite as well as he. I then rejoined Mr. Wemmick, and affecting to
consult my watch, and to be surprised by the information I had received,
accepted his offer.
We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed
through the lodge where some fetters were hanging up on the bare walls among
the prison rules, into the interior of the jail. At that time jails were much
neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction consequent on all public
wrongdoing—and which is always its heaviest and longest punishment—was still
far off. So felons were not lodged and fed better than soldiers, (to say
nothing of paupers,) and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable
object of improving the flavor of their soup. It was visiting time when Wemmick
took me in, and a potman was going his rounds with beer; and the prisoners,
behind bars in yards, were buying beer, and talking to friends; and a frowzy,
ugly, disorderly, depressing scene it was.
It struck me that Wemmick walked among the
prisoners much as a gardener might walk among his plants. This was first put into
my head by his seeing a shoot that had come up in the night, and saying,
"What, Captain Tom? Are you there? Ah, indeed!" and also, "Is
that Black Bill behind the cistern? Why I didn't look for you these two months;
how do you find yourself?" Equally in his stopping at the bars and
attending to anxious whisperers,—always singly,—Wemmick with his post-office in
an immovable state, looked at them while in conference, as if he were taking
particular notice of the advance they had made, since last observed, towards
coming out in full blow at their trial.
He was highly popular, and I found that he took the
familiar department of Mr. Jaggers's business; though something of the state of
Mr. Jaggers hung about him too, forbidding approach beyond certain limits. His
personal recognition of each successive client was comprised in a nod, and in
his settling his hat a little easier on his head with both hands, and then
tightening the post-office, and putting his hands in his pockets. In one or two
instances there was a difficulty respecting the raising of fees, and then Mr.
Wemmick, backing as far as possible from the insufficient money produced, said,
"it's no use, my boy. I'm only a subordinate. I can't take it. Don't go on
in that way with a subordinate. If you are unable to make up your quantum, my
boy, you had better address yourself to a principal; there are plenty of
principals in the profession, you know, and what is not worth the while of one,
may be worth the while of another; that's my recommendation to you, speaking as
a subordinate. Don't try on useless measures. Why should you? Now, who's
next?"
Thus, we walked through Wemmick's greenhouse, until
he turned to me and said, "Notice the man I shall shake hands with."
I should have done so, without the preparation, as he had shaken hands with no
one yet.
Almost as soon as he had spoken, a portly upright
man (whom I can see now, as I write) in a well-worn olive-colored frock-coat,
with a peculiar pallor overspreading the red in his complexion, and eyes that went
wandering about when he tried to fix them, came up to a corner of the bars, and
put his hand to his hat—which had a greasy and fatty surface like cold
broth—with a half-serious and half-jocose military salute.
"Colonel, to you!" said Wemmick;
"how are you, Colonel?"
"All right, Mr. Wemmick."
"Everything was done that could be done, but
the evidence was too strong for us, Colonel."
"Yes, it was too strong, sir,—but I don't
care."
"No, no," said Wemmick, coolly, "you
don't care." Then, turning to me, "Served His Majesty this man. Was a
soldier in the line and bought his discharge."
I said, "Indeed?" and the man's eyes
looked at me, and then looked over my head, and then looked all round me, and
then he drew his hand across his lips and laughed.
"I think I shall be out of this on Monday,
sir," he said to Wemmick.
"Perhaps," returned my friend, "but
there's no knowing."
"I am glad to have the chance of bidding you
good by, Mr. Wemmick," said the man, stretching out his hand between two
bars.
"Thankye," said Wemmick, shaking hands
with him. "Same to you, Colonel."
"If what I had upon me when taken had been
real, Mr. Wemmick," said the man, unwilling to let his hand go, "I
should have asked the favor of your wearing another ring—in acknowledgment of your
attentions."
"I'll accept the will for the deed," said
Wemmick. "By the by; you were quite a pigeon-fancier." The man looked
up at the sky. "I am told you had a remarkable breed of tumblers. Could
you commission any friend of yours to bring me a pair, of you've no further use
for 'em?"
"It shall be done, sir?"
"All right," said Wemmick, "they
shall be taken care of. Good afternoon, Colonel. Good by!" They shook
hands again, and as we walked away Wemmick said to me, "A Coiner, a very
good workman. The Recorder's report is made to-day, and he is sure to be
executed on Monday. Still you see, as far as it goes, a pair of pigeons are
portable property all the same." With that, he looked back, and nodded at
this dead plant, and then cast his eyes about him in walking out of the yard,
as if he were considering what other pot would go best in its place.
As we came out of the prison through the lodge, I
found that the great importance of my guardian was appreciated by the turnkeys,
no less than by those whom they held in charge. "Well, Mr. Wemmick,"
said the turnkey, who kept us between the two studded and spiked lodge gates,
and who carefully locked one before he unlocked the other, "what's Mr.
Jaggers going to do with that water-side murder? Is he going to make it
manslaughter, or what's he going to make of it?"
"Why don't you ask him?" returned
Wemmick.
"O yes, I dare say!" said the turnkey.
"Now, that's the way with them here, Mr.
Pip," remarked Wemmick, turning to me with his post-office elongated.
"They don't mind what they ask of me, the subordinate; but you'll never
catch 'em asking any questions of my principal."
"Is this young gentleman one of the 'prentices
or articled ones of your office?" asked the turnkey, with a grin at Mr.
Wemmick's humor.
"There he goes again, you see!" cried
Wemmick, "I told you so! Asks another question of the subordinate before
his first is dry! Well, supposing Mr. Pip is one of them?"
"Why then," said the turnkey, grinning
again, "he knows what Mr. Jaggers is."
"Yah!" cried Wemmick, suddenly hitting
out at the turnkey in a facetious way, "you're dumb as one of your own
keys when you have to do with my principal, you know you are. Let us out, you
old fox, or I'll get him to bring an action against you for false
imprisonment."
The turnkey laughed, and gave us good day, and
stood laughing at us over the spikes of the wicket when we descended the steps
into the street.
"Mind you, Mr. Pip," said Wemmick,
gravely in my ear, as he took my arm to be more confidential; "I don't
know that Mr. Jaggers does a better thing than the way in which he keeps
himself so high. He's always so high. His constant height is of a piece with
his immense abilities. That Colonel durst no more take leave of him, than that
turnkey durst ask him his intentions respecting a case. Then, between his
height and them, he slips in his subordinate,—don't you see?—and so he has 'em,
soul and body."
I was very much impressed, and not for the first
time, by my guardian's subtlety. To confess the truth, I very heartily wished,
and not for the first time, that I had had some other guardian of minor
abilities.
Mr. Wemmick and I parted at the office in Little
Britain, where suppliants for Mr. Jaggers's notice were lingering about as
usual, and I returned to my watch in the street of the coach-office, with some
three hours on hand. I consumed the whole time in thinking how strange it was
that I should be encompassed by all this taint of prison and crime; that, in my
childhood out on our lonely marshes on a winter evening, I should have first
encountered it; that, it should have reappeared on two occasions, starting out
like a stain that was faded but not gone; that, it should in this new way
pervade my fortune and advancement. While my mind was thus engaged, I thought
of the beautiful young Estella, proud and refined, coming towards me, and I
thought with absolute abhorrence of the contrast between the jail and her. I
wished that Wemmick had not met me, or that I had not yielded to him and gone
with him, so that, of all days in the year on this day, I might not have had
Newgate in my breath and on my clothes. I beat the prison dust off my feet as I
sauntered to and fro, and I shook it out of my dress, and I exhaled its air
from my lungs. So contaminated did I feel, remembering who was coming, that the
coach came quickly after all, and I was not yet free from the soiling
consciousness of Mr. Wemmick's conservatory, when I saw her face at the coach
window and her hand waving to me.
What was the nameless shadow which again in that
one instant had passed?
Chapter XXXIII
In her furred travelling-dress, Estella seemed more
delicately beautiful than she had ever seemed yet, even in my eyes. Her manner
was more winning than she had cared to let it be to me before, and I thought I
saw Miss Havisham's influence in the change.
We stood in the Inn Yard while she pointed out her
luggage to me, and when it was all collected I remembered—having forgotten
everything but herself in the meanwhile—that I knew nothing of her destination.
"I am going to Richmond," she told me.
"Our lesson is, that there are two Richmonds, one in Surrey and one in
Yorkshire, and that mine is the Surrey Richmond. The distance is ten miles. I
am to have a carriage, and you are to take me. This is my purse, and you are to
pay my charges out of it. O, you must take the purse! We have no choice, you
and I, but to obey our instructions. We are not free to follow our own devices,
you and I."
As she looked at me in giving me the purse, I hoped
there was an inner meaning in her words. She said them slightingly, but not
with displeasure.
"A carriage will have to be sent for, Estella.
Will you rest here a little?"
"Yes, I am to rest here a little, and I am to
drink some tea, and you are to take care of me the while."
She drew her arm through mine, as if it must be
done, and I requested a waiter who had been staring at the coach like a man who
had never seen such a thing in his life, to show us a private sitting-room.
Upon that, he pulled out a napkin, as if it were a magic clew without which he
couldn't find the way up stairs, and led us to the black hole of the
establishment, fitted up with a diminishing mirror (quite a superfluous
article, considering the hole's proportions), an anchovy sauce-cruet, and
somebody's pattens. On my objecting to this retreat, he took us into another
room with a dinner-table for thirty, and in the grate a scorched leaf of a
copy-book under a bushel of coal-dust. Having looked at this extinct
conflagration and shaken his head, he took my order; which, proving to be
merely, "Some tea for the lady," sent him out of the room in a very
low state of mind.
I was, and I am, sensible that the air of this
chamber, in its strong combination of stable with soup-stock, might have led
one to infer that the coaching department was not doing well, and that the
enterprising proprietor was boiling down the horses for the refreshment
department. Yet the room was all in all to me, Estella being in it. I thought
that with her I could have been happy there for life. (I was not at all happy
there at the time, observe, and I knew it well.)
"Where are you going to, at Richmond?" I
asked Estella.
"I am going to live," said she, "at
a great expense, with a lady there, who has the power—or says she has—of taking
me about, and introducing me, and showing people to me and showing me to
people."
"I suppose you will be glad of variety and
admiration?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
She answered so carelessly, that I said, "You
speak of yourself as if you were some one else."
"Where did you learn how I speak of others?
Come, come," said Estella, smiling delightfully, "you must not expect
me to go to school to you; I must talk in my own way. How do you thrive with
Mr. Pocket?"
"I live quite pleasantly there; at
least—" It appeared to me that I was losing a chance.
"At least?" repeated Estella.
"As pleasantly as I could anywhere, away from
you."
"You silly boy," said Estella, quite
composedly, "how can you talk such nonsense? Your friend Mr. Matthew, I
believe, is superior to the rest of his family?"
"Very superior indeed. He is nobody's
enemy—" —"Don't add but his own," interposed Estella, "for
I hate that class of man. But he really is disinterested, and above small
jealousy and spite, I have heard?"
"I am sure I have every reason to say
so."
"You have not every reason to say so of the
rest of his people," said Estella, nodding at me with an expression of
face that was at once grave and rallying, "for they beset Miss Havisham
with reports and insinuations to your disadvantage. They watch you, misrepresent
you, write letters about you (anonymous sometimes), and you are the torment and
the occupation of their lives. You can scarcely realize to yourself the hatred
those people feel for you."
"They do me no harm, I hope?"
Instead of answering, Estella burst out laughing.
This was very singular to me, and I looked at her in considerable perplexity.
When she left off—and she had not laughed languidly, but with real enjoyment—I
said, in my diffident way with her,—
"I hope I may suppose that you would not be
amused if they did me any harm."
"No, no you may be sure of that," said
Estella. "You may be certain that I laugh because they fail. O, those
people with Miss Havisham, and the tortures they undergo!" She laughed
again, and even now when she had told me why, her laughter was very singular to
me, for I could not doubt its being genuine, and yet it seemed too much for the
occasion. I thought there must really be something more here than I knew; she
saw the thought in my mind, and answered it.
"It is not easy for even you." said
Estella, "to know what satisfaction it gives me to see those people
thwarted, or what an enjoyable sense of the ridiculous I have when they are
made ridiculous. For you were not brought up in that strange house from a mere
baby. I was. You had not your little wits sharpened by their intriguing against
you, suppressed and defenceless, under the mask of sympathy and pity and what
not that is soft and soothing. I had. You did not gradually open your round childish
eyes wider and wider to the discovery of that impostor of a woman who
calculates her stores of peace of mind for when she wakes up in the night. I
did."
It was no laughing matter with Estella now, nor was
she summoning these remembrances from any shallow place. I would not have been
the cause of that look of hers for all my expectations in a heap.
"Two things I can tell you," said
Estella. "First, notwithstanding the proverb that constant dropping will
wear away a stone, you may set your mind at rest that these people never
will—never would, in hundred years—impair your ground with Miss Havisham, in
any particular, great or small. Second, I am beholden to you as the cause of
their being so busy and so mean in vain, and there is my hand upon it."
As she gave it to me playfully,—for her darker mood
had been but Momentary,—I held it and put it to my lips. "You ridiculous
boy," said Estella, "will you never take warning? Or do you kiss my
hand in the same spirit in which I once let you kiss my cheek?"
"What spirit was that?" said I.
"I must think a moment. A spirit of contempt
for the fawners and plotters."
"If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek
again?"
"You should have asked before you touched the
hand. But, yes, if you like."
I leaned down, and her calm face was like a
statue's. "Now," said Estella, gliding away the instant I touched her
cheek, "you are to take care that I have some tea, and you are to take me
to Richmond."
Her reverting to this tone as if our association
were forced upon us, and we were mere puppets, gave me pain; but everything in
our intercourse did give me pain. Whatever her tone with me happened to be, I
could put no trust in it, and build no hope on it; and yet I went on against
trust and against hope. Why repeat it a thousand times? So it always was.
I rang for the tea, and the waiter, reappearing
with his magic clew, brought in by degrees some fifty adjuncts to that
refreshment, but of tea not a glimpse. A teaboard, cups and saucers, plates,
knives and forks (including carvers), spoons (various), saltcellars, a meek
little muffin confined with the utmost precaution under a strong iron cover,
Moses in the bulrushes typified by a soft bit of butter in a quantity of
parsley, a pale loaf with a powdered head, two proof impressions of the bars of
the kitchen fireplace on triangular bits of bread, and ultimately a fat family
urn; which the waiter staggered in with, expressing in his countenance burden
and suffering. After a prolonged absence at this stage of the entertainment, he
at length came back with a casket of precious appearance containing twigs.
These I steeped in hot water, and so from the whole of these appliances
extracted one cup of I don't know what for Estella.
The bill paid, and the waiter remembered, and the
ostler not forgotten, and the chambermaid taken into consideration,—in a word,
the whole house bribed into a state of contempt and animosity, and Estella's
purse much lightened,—we got into our post-coach and drove away. Turning into
Cheapside and rattling up Newgate Street, we were soon under the walls of which
I was so ashamed.
"What place is that?" Estella asked me.
I made a foolish pretence of not at first
recognizing it, and then told her. As she looked at it, and drew in her head
again, murmuring, "Wretches!" I would not have confessed to my visit
for any consideration.
"Mr. Jaggers," said I, by way of putting
it neatly on somebody else, "has the reputation of being more in the
secrets of that dismal place than any man in London."
"He is more in the secrets of every place, I
think," said Estella, in a low voice.
"You have been accustomed to see him often, I
suppose?"
"I have been accustomed to see him at
uncertain intervals, ever since I can remember. But I know him no better now,
than I did before I could speak plainly. What is your own experience of him? Do
you advance with him?"
"Once habituated to his distrustful
manner," said I, "I have done very well."
"Are you intimate?"
"I have dined with him at his private
house."
"I fancy," said Estella, shrinking
"that must be a curious place."
"It is a curious place."
I should have been chary of discussing my guardian
too freely even with her; but I should have gone on with the subject so far as
to describe the dinner in Gerrard Street, if we had not then come into a sudden
glare of gas. It seemed, while it lasted, to be all alight and alive with that
inexplicable feeling I had had before; and when we were out of it, I was as
much dazed for a few moments as if I had been in lightning.
So we fell into other talk, and it was principally
about the way by which we were travelling, and about what parts of London lay
on this side of it, and what on that. The great city was almost new to her, she
told me, for she had never left Miss Havisham's neighborhood until she had gone
to France, and she had merely passed through London then in going and
returning. I asked her if my guardian had any charge of her while she remained
here? To that she emphatically said "God forbid!" and no more.
It was impossible for me to avoid seeing that she
cared to attract me; that she made herself winning, and would have won me even
if the task had needed pains. Yet this made me none the happier, for even if
she had not taken that tone of our being disposed of by others, I should have
felt that she held my heart in her hand because she wilfully chose to do it,
and not because it would have wrung any tenderness in her to crush it and throw
it away.
When we passed through Hammersmith, I showed her
where Mr. Matthew Pocket lived, and said it was no great way from Richmond, and
that I hoped I should see her sometimes.
"O yes, you are to see me; you are to come
when you think proper; you are to be mentioned to the family; indeed you are
already mentioned."
I inquired was it a large household she was going
to be a member of?
"No; there are only two; mother and daughter.
The mother is a lady of some station, though not averse to increasing her
income."
"I wonder Miss Havisham could part with you
again so soon."
"It is a part of Miss Havisham's plans for me,
Pip," said Estella, with a sigh, as if she were tired; "I am to write
to her constantly and see her regularly and report how I go on,—I and the
jewels,—for they are nearly all mine now."
It was the first time she had ever called me by my
name. Of course she did so purposely, and knew that I should treasure it up.
We came to Richmond all too soon, and our
destination there was a house by the green,—a staid old house, where hoops and
powder and patches, embroidered coats, rolled stockings, ruffles and swords,
had had their court days many a time. Some ancient trees before the house were
still cut into fashions as formal and unnatural as the hoops and wigs and stiff
skirts; but their own allotted places in the great procession of the dead were
not far off, and they would soon drop into them and go the silent way of the
rest.
A bell with an old voice—which I dare say in its
time had often said to the house, Here is the green farthingale, Here is the
diamond-hilted sword, Here are the shoes with red heels and the blue
solitaire—sounded gravely in the moonlight, and two cherry-colored maids came
fluttering out to receive Estella. The doorway soon absorbed her boxes, and she
gave me her hand and a smile, and said good night, and was absorbed likewise.
And still I stood looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I
lived there with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her, but always
miserable.
I got into the carriage to be taken back to
Hammersmith, and I got in with a bad heart-ache, and I got out with a worse
heart-ache. At our own door, I found little Jane Pocket coming home from a
little party escorted by her little lover; and I envied her little lover, in
spite of his being subject to Flopson.
Mr. Pocket was out lecturing; for, he was a most
delightful lecturer on domestic economy, and his treatises on the management of
children and servants were considered the very best text-books on those themes.
But Mrs. Pocket was at home, and was in a little difficulty, on account of the
baby's having been accommodated with a needle-case to keep him quiet during the
unaccountable absence (with a relative in the Foot Guards) of Millers. And more
needles were missing than it could be regarded as quite wholesome for a patient
of such tender years either to apply externally or to take as a tonic.
Mr. Pocket being justly celebrated for giving most
excellent practical advice, and for having a clear and sound perception of
things and a highly judicious mind, I had some notion in my heart-ache of
begging him to accept my confidence. But happening to look up at Mrs. Pocket as
she sat reading her book of dignities after prescribing Bed as a sovereign
remedy for baby, I thought—Well—No, I wouldn't.
Chapter XXXIV
As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had
insensibly begun to notice their effect upon myself and those around me. Their
influence on my own character I disguised from my recognition as much as
possible, but I knew very well that it was not all good. I lived in a state of
chronic uneasiness respecting my behavior to Joe. My conscience was not by any
means comfortable about Biddy. When I woke up in the night,—like Camilla,—I
used to think, with a weariness on my spirits, that I should have been happier
and better if I had never seen Miss Havisham's face, and had risen to manhood
content to be partners with Joe in the honest old forge. Many a time of an
evening, when I sat alone looking at the fire, I thought, after all there was
no fire like the forge fire and the kitchen fire at home.
Yet Estella was so inseparable from all my
restlessness and disquiet of mind, that I really fell into confusion as to the
limits of my own part in its production. That is to say, supposing I had had no
expectations, and yet had had Estella to think of, I could not make out to my
satisfaction that I should have done much better. Now, concerning the influence
of my position on others, I was in no such difficulty, and so I
perceived—though dimly enough perhaps—that it was not beneficial to anybody,
and, above all, that it was not beneficial to Herbert. My lavish habits led his
easy nature into expenses that he could not afford, corrupted the simplicity of
his life, and disturbed his peace with anxieties and regrets. I was not at all
remorseful for having unwittingly set those other branches of the Pocket family
to the poor arts they practised; because such littlenesses were their natural
bent, and would have been evoked by anybody else, if I had left them
slumbering. But Herbert's was a very different case, and it often caused me a
twinge to think that I had done him evil service in crowding his sparely
furnished chambers with incongruous upholstery work, and placing the
Canary-breasted Avenger at his disposal.
So now, as an infallible way of making little ease
great ease, I began to contract a quantity of debt. I could hardly begin but
Herbert must begin too, so he soon followed. At Startop's suggestion, we put
ourselves down for election into a club called The Finches of the Grove: the
object of which institution I have never divined, if it were not that the
members should dine expensively once a fortnight, to quarrel among themselves
as much as possible after dinner, and to cause six waiters to get drunk on the
stairs. I know that these gratifying social ends were so invariably
accomplished, that Herbert and I understood nothing else to be referred to in
the first standing toast of the society: which ran "Gentlemen, may the
present promotion of good feeling ever reign predominant among the Finches of
the Grove."
The Finches spent their money foolishly (the Hotel
we dined at was in Covent Garden), and the first Finch I saw when I had the
honor of joining the Grove was Bentley Drummle, at that time floundering about
town in a cab of his own, and doing a great deal of damage to the posts at the
street corners. Occasionally, he shot himself out of his equipage headforemost
over the apron; and I saw him on one occasion deliver himself at the door of
the Grove in this unintentional way—like coals. But here I anticipate a little,
for I was not a Finch, and could not be, according to the sacred laws of the
society, until I came of age.
In my confidence in my own resources, I would
willingly have taken Herbert's expenses on myself; but Herbert was proud, and I
could make no such proposal to him. So he got into difficulties in every
direction, and continued to look about him. When we gradually fell into keeping
late hours and late company, I noticed that he looked about him with a desponding
eye at breakfast-time; that he began to look about him more hopefully about
mid-day; that he drooped when he came into dinner; that he seemed to descry
Capital in the distance, rather clearly, after dinner; that he all but realized
Capital towards midnight; and that at about two o'clock in the morning, he
became so deeply despondent again as to talk of buying a rifle and going to
America, with a general purpose of compelling buffaloes to make his fortune.
I was usually at Hammersmith about half the week,
and when I was at Hammersmith I haunted Richmond, whereof separately by and by.
Herbert would often come to Hammersmith when I was there, and I think at those
seasons his father would occasionally have some passing perception that the
opening he was looking for, had not appeared yet. But in the general tumbling
up of the family, his tumbling out in life somewhere, was a thing to transact
itself somehow. In the meantime Mr. Pocket grew grayer, and tried oftener to
lift himself out of his perplexities by the hair. While Mrs. Pocket tripped up
the family with her footstool, read her book of dignities, lost her
pocket-handkerchief, told us about her grandpapa, and taught the young idea how
to shoot, by shooting it into bed whenever it attracted her notice.
As I am now generalizing a period of my life with
the object of clearing my way before me, I can scarcely do so better than by at
once completing the description of our usual manners and customs at Barnard's
Inn.
We spent as much money as we could, and got as
little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always
more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same
condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying
ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief,
our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.
Every morning, with an air ever new, Herbert went
into the City to look about him. I often paid him a visit in the dark back-room
in which he consorted with an ink-jar, a hat-peg, a coal-box, a string-box, an
almanac, a desk and stool, and a ruler; and I do not remember that I ever saw
him do anything else but look about him. If we all did what we undertake to do,
as faithfully as Herbert did, we might live in a Republic of the Virtues. He
had nothing else to do, poor fellow, except at a certain hour of every
afternoon to "go to Lloyd's"—in observance of a ceremony of seeing
his principal, I think. He never did anything else in connection with Lloyd's
that I could find out, except come back again. When he felt his case unusually
serious, and that he positively must find an opening, he would go on 'Change at
a busy time, and walk in and out, in a kind of gloomy country dance figure,
among the assembled magnates. "For," says Herbert to me, coming home
to dinner on one of those special occasions, "I find the truth to be,
Handel, that an opening won't come to one, but one must go to it,—so I have
been."
If we had been less attached to one another, I
think we must have hated one another regularly every morning. I detested the
chambers beyond expression at that period of repentance, and could not endure
the sight of the Avenger's livery; which had a more expensive and a less
remunerative appearance then than at any other time in the four-and-twenty
hours. As we got more and more into debt, breakfast became a hollower and
hollower form, and, being on one occasion at breakfast-time threatened (by
letter) with legal proceedings, "not unwholly unconnected," as my local
paper might put it, "with jewelery," I went so far as to seize the
Avenger by his blue collar and shake him off his feet,—so that he was actually
in the air, like a booted Cupid,—for presuming to suppose that we wanted a
roll.
At certain times—meaning at uncertain times, for
they depended on our humor—I would say to Herbert, as if it were a remarkable
discovery,—
"My dear Herbert, we are getting on
badly."
"My dear Handel," Herbert would say to
me, in all sincerity, "if you will believe me, those very words were on my
lips, by a strange coincidence."
"Then, Herbert," I would respond,
"let us look into our affairs."
We always derived profound satisfaction from making
an appointment for this purpose. I always thought this was business, this was
the way to confront the thing, this was the way to take the foe by the throat.
And I know Herbert thought so too.
We ordered something rather special for dinner,
with a bottle of something similarly out of the common way, in order that our
minds might be fortified for the occasion, and we might come well up to the
mark. Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a
goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For there was something very
comfortable in having plenty of stationery.
I would then take a sheet of paper, and write
across the top of it, in a neat hand, the heading, "Memorandum of Pip's
debts"; with Barnard's Inn and the date very carefully added. Herbert
would also take a sheet of paper, and write across it with similar formalities,
"Memorandum of Herbert's debts."
Each of us would then refer to a confused heap of
papers at his side, which had been thrown into drawers, worn into holes in
pockets, half burnt in lighting candles, stuck for weeks into the
looking-glass, and otherwise damaged. The sound of our pens going refreshed us
exceedingly, insomuch that I sometimes found it difficult to distinguish
between this edifying business proceeding and actually paying the money. In
point of meritorious character, the two things seemed about equal.
When we had written a little while, I would ask
Herbert how he got on? Herbert probably would have been scratching his head in
a most rueful manner at the sight of his accumulating figures.
"They are mounting up, Handel," Herbert
would say; "upon my life, they are mounting up."
"Be firm, Herbert," I would retort,
plying my own pen with great assiduity. "Look the thing in the face. Look
into your affairs. Stare them out of countenance."
"So I would, Handel, only they are staring me
out of countenance."
However, my determined manner would have its
effect, and Herbert would fall to work again. After a time he would give up
once more, on the plea that he had not got Cobbs's bill, or Lobbs's, or
Nobbs's, as the case might be.
"Then, Herbert, estimate; estimate it in round
numbers, and put it down."
"What a fellow of resource you are!" my
friend would reply, with admiration. "Really your business powers are very
remarkable."
I thought so too. I established with myself, on
these occasions, the reputation of a first-rate man of business,—prompt,
decisive, energetic, clear, cool-headed. When I had got all my responsibilities
down upon my list, I compared each with the bill, and ticked it off. My
self-approval when I ticked an entry was quite a luxurious sensation. When I
had no more ticks to make, I folded all my bills up uniformly, docketed each on
the back, and tied the whole into a symmetrical bundle. Then I did the same for
Herbert (who modestly said he had not my administrative genius), and felt that
I had brought his affairs into a focus for him.
My business habits had one other bright feature,
which I called "leaving a Margin." For example; supposing Herbert's
debts to be one hundred and sixty-four pounds four-and-twopence, I would say,
"Leave a margin, and put them down at two hundred." Or, supposing my
own to be four times as much, I would leave a margin, and put them down at
seven hundred. I had the highest opinion of the wisdom of this same Margin, but
I am bound to acknowledge that on looking back, I deem it to have been an
expensive device. For, we always ran into new debt immediately, to the full
extent of the margin, and sometimes, in the sense of freedom and solvency it
imparted, got pretty far on into another margin.
But there was a calm, a rest, a virtuous hush,
consequent on these examinations of our affairs that gave me, for the time, an
admirable opinion of myself. Soothed by my exertions, my method, and Herbert's
compliments, I would sit with his symmetrical bundle and my own on the table
before me among the stationary, and feel like a Bank of some sort, rather than
a private individual.
We shut our outer door on these solemn occasions,
in order that we might not be interrupted. I had fallen into my serene state
one evening, when we heard a letter dropped through the slit in the said door,
and fall on the ground. "It's for you, Handel," said Herbert, going
out and coming back with it, "and I hope there is nothing the
matter." This was in allusion to its heavy black seal and border.
The letter was signed Trabb & Co., and its
contents were simply, that I was an honored sir, and that they begged to inform
me that Mrs. J. Gargery had departed this life on Monday last at twenty minutes
past six in the evening, and that my attendance was requested at the interment
on Monday next at three o'clock in the afternoon.
