Charles Dickens 22 page a subordinate. Don’t try on useless measures. Why should
you? Now, who’s next?’
Thus, we walked through Wemmick’s greenhouse, un-
til 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
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(whom I can see now, as I write) in a well-worn olive-co-
loured frock-coat, with a peculiar pallor over-spreading 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, Colo-
nel?’
‘All right, Mr. Wemmick.’
‘Everything was done that could be done, but the evi-
dence 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-bye,
Mr. Wemmick,’ said the man, stretching out his hand be-
tween 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
Great Expectations
should have asked the favour of your wearing another ring
- in acknowledgment of your attentions.’
‘I’ll accept the will for the deed,’ said Wemmick. ‘By-the-
bye; 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-bye!’ 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 prop-
erty, all the same.’ With that, he looked back, and nodded at
this dead plant, and then cast his eyes about him in walk-
ing 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 waterside 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.
‘Oh yes, I dare say!’ said the turnkey.
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‘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 princi-
pal.’
‘Is this young gentleman one of the ‘prentices or articled
ones of your office?’ asked the turnkey, with a grin at Mr.
Wemmick’s humour.
‘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 turn-
key 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 de-
scended 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?
Great Expectations
- 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 Brit-
ain, 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 con-
sumed 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 win-
ter 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 con-
sciousness of Mr. Wemmick’s conservatory, when I saw her
face at the coach window and her hand waving to me.
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What was the nameless shadow which again in that one
instant had passed?
Great Expectations
Chapter 33
In her furred travelling-dress, Estella seemed more deli-
cately 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 lug-
gage 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 York-
shire, 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. Oh,
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 slight-
ingly, 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.’
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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 clue 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 ob-
jecting 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?’
Great Expectations
‘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 disadvan-
tage. 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
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was very singular to me, and I looked at her in consider-
able 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. Oh, 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, sup-
pressed 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 cal-
culates 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
Great Expectations
expectations in a heap.
‘Two things I can tell you,’ said Estella. ‘First, notwith-
standing 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 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 fawn-
ers 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. What-
ever 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
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and against hope. Why repeat it a thousand times? So it al-
ways was.
I rang for the tea, and the waiter, reappearing with his
magic clue, 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
bullrushes typified by a soft bit of butter in a quantity of
parsley, a pale loaf with a powdered head, two proof impres-
sions of the bars of the kitchen fire-place 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 pre-
cious 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 consider-
ation - in a word, the whole house bribed into a state of
contempt and animosity, and Estella’s purse much light-
ened - 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
Great Expectations
to my visit for any consideration.
‘Mr. Jaggers,’ said I, by way of putting it neatly on some-
body 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 Es-
tella, in a low voice.
‘You have been accustomed to see him often, I suppose?’
‘I have been accustomed to see him at uncertain inter-
vals, 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 inexpli-
cable 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
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city was almost new to her, she told me, for she had never
left Miss Havisham’s neighbourhood 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 emphati-
cally 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.
‘Oh 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 moth-
er 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
Great Expectations
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 diamondhilted sword, Here are the shoes with
red heels and the blue solitaire, - sounded gravely in the
moonlight, and two cherrycoloured maids came fluttering
out to receive Estella. The doorway soon absorbed her box-
es, 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 com-
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ing home from a little party escorted by her little lover; and
I envied her little lover, in spite of his being subject to Flop-
son.Mr. Pocket was out lecturing; for, he was a most delight-
ful 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 ba-
by’s having been accommodated with a needle-case to keep
him quiet during the unaccountable absence (with a rela-
tive 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 ex-
cellent practical advice, and for having a clear and sound
perception of things and a highly judicious mind, I had
some notion in my heartache 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.
Great Expectations
Chapter 34
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 behaviour 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 hap-
pier 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 Es-
tella to think of, I could not make out to my satisfaction that
I should have done much better. Now, concerning the influ-
ence 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
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into expenses that he could not afford, corrupted the sim-
plicity 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 nat-
ural bent, and would have been evoked by anybody else, if
I had left them slumbering. But Herbert’s was a very differ-
ent 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 hard-
ly 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 accom-
plished, 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 honour of joining the Grove, was Bentley
Drummle: at that time floundering about town in a cab of
Great Expectations
his own, and doing a great deal of damage to the posts at
the street corners. Occasionally, he shot himself out of his
equipage head-foremost 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 sa-
cred 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 Capi-
tal 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 despon-
dent 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
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