Charles Dickens 21 page

guardian, Mr. Jaggers, told you in the beginning, that you

were not endowed with expectations only? And even if he

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

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 get-

ting 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-bye, that the good sense of what

I have just said is not my own, but my father’s. The only re-

mark 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 confi-

dence, I want to make myself seriously disagreeable to you

for a moment - positively repulsive.’

‘You won’t succeed,’ said I.

‘Oh 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

Great Expectations

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 re-

ferred 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 flavour of sour

grapes, upon my soul and honour! 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 circum-

stances 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!’

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

‘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 endeavour 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.

‘Oh 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 mar-

ried?’

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.

Great Expectations

Because it is decidedly the case with us. My poor sister

Charlotte who was next me and died before she was four-

teen, 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 con-

templation 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 en-

gaged, 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

favoured with further particulars. He had spoken so sen-

sibly 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

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

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.

‘Oh 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 real-

ize Capital, it was his intention to marry this young lady. He

added as a self-evident proposition, engendering low spir-

its, ‘But you can’t marry, you know, while you’re looking

about you.’

As we contemplated the fire, and as I thought what a dif-

ficult 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 playbill I had received from Joe, relative to the cel-

ebrated 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 Her-

bert had told me that his affianced already knew me by

Great Expectations

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.

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

Chapter 31

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 ap-

peared 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 refer-

ence 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

Great Expectations

been out a long time and walked an immense distance, it

perceptibly came from a closely contiguous wall. This oc-

casioned its terrors to be received derisively. The Queen of

Denmark, a very buxom lady, though no doubt historical-

ly 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 tooth-

ache), her waist being encircled by another, and each of her

arms by another, so that she was openly mentioned as ‘the

kettledrum.’ The noble boy in the ancestral boots, was in-

consistent; representing himself, as it were in one breath,

as an able seaman, a strolling actor, a grave-digger, a cler-

gyman, 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 musi-

cal 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 ac-

cumulated 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

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

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 be-

tween earth and heaven, he was encouraged with loud cries

of ‘Hear, hear!’ When he appeared with his stocking dis-

ordered (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 occa-

sioned 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 rec-

ommended 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 ec-

clesiastical wash-house on one side, and a turnpike gate on

the other. Mr. Wopsle in a comprehensive black cloak, be-

ing descried entering at the turnpike, the gravedigger was

admonished in a friendly way, ‘Look out! Here’s the under-

taker a-coming, to see how you’re a-getting on with your

work!’ I believe it is well known in a constitutional coun-

try 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 in-

Great Expectations

nocent 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 obnox-

ious 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 ap-

plaud Mr. Wopsle; but they were too hopeless to be persisted

in. Therefore we had sat, feeling keenly for him, but laugh-

ing, 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 la-

tent 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 ex-

pressed 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 Jew-

ish 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?’

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

Identity of Mr. Pip and friend confessed.

‘Mr. Waldengarver,’ said the man, ‘would be glad to have

the honour.’

‘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 funer-

al; 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 Of-

fice. 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.’

Great Expectations

Meanwhile, Mr. Waldengarver, in a frightful perspira-

tion, was trying to get himself out of his princely sables.

‘Skin the stockings off, Mr. Waldengarver,’ said the own-

er of that property, ‘or you’ll bust ‘em. Bust ‘em, and you’ll

bust five-and-thirty shillings. Shakspeare never was com-

plimented 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 cer-

tainly 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, gentle-

men?’ 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

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

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, Oh, no doubt they would

improve.

‘Did you observe, gentlemen,’ said Mr. Waldengarver,

‘that there was a man in the gallery who endeavoured 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.’

‘Oh dear no, sir,’ said Mr. Wopsle, ‘not drunk. His em-

ployer 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; per-

forming 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

Great Expectations

- the role (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 hav-

ing 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 mar-

riage to Herbert’s Clara, or play Hamlet to Miss Havisham’s

Ghost, before twenty thousand people, without knowing

twenty words of it.

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

Chapter 32

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

mid-day 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-of-

fice 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.

Great Expectations

‘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 particu-

larly 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 neighbourhood 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 direc-

tion.

‘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 as 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 la-

tent desire to keep my eye on the coach-office. Muttering

Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com

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

wrong-doing - 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 flavour 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 frouzy, 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

Great Expectations

and attending to anxious whisperers - always singly - Wem-

mick 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 postoffice, 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 insuffi-

cient 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

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 472