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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