Great Expectations

fter well considering the matter while I was dressing at the Blue Boar
in the morning, I resolved to tell my guardian that I doubted Orlick’s
being the right sort of man to fill a post of trust at Miss Havisham’s.
“Why of course he is not the right sort of man, Pip,” said my guardian,
comfortably satisfied beforehand on the general head, “because the man
who fills the post of trust never is the right sort of man.” It seemed
quite to put him into spirits to find that this particular post was not
exceptionally held by the right sort of man, and he listened in a
satisfied manner while I told him what knowledge I had of Orlick. “Very
good, Pip,” he observed, when I had concluded, “I’ll go round
presently, and pay our friend off.” Rather alarmed by this summary
action, I was for a little delay, and even hinted that our friend
himself might be difficult to deal with. “Oh no he won’t,” said my
guardian, making his pocket-handkerchief-point, with perfect
confidence; “I should like to see him argue the question with me.”

As we were going back together to London by the midday coach, and as I
breakfasted under such terrors of Pumblechook that I could scarcely
hold my cup, this gave me an opportunity of saying that I wanted a
walk, and that I would go on along the London road while Mr. Jaggers
was occupied, if he would let the coachman know that I would get into
my place when overtaken. I was thus enabled to fly from the Blue Boar
immediately after breakfast. By then making a loop of about a couple of
miles into the open country at the back of Pumblechook’s premises, I
got round into the High Street again, a little beyond that pitfall, and
felt myself in comparative security.

It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once more, and it was
not disagreeable to be here and there suddenly recognised and stared
after. One or two of the tradespeople even darted out of their shops
and went a little way down the street before me, that they might turn,
as if they had forgotten something, and pass me face to face,—on which
occasions I don’t know whether they or I made the worse pretence; they
of not doing it, or I of not seeing it. Still my position was a
distinguished one, and I was not at all dissatisfied with it, until
Fate threw me in the way of that unlimited miscreant, Trabb’s boy.

Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my progress, I
beheld Trabb’s boy approaching, lashing himself with an empty blue bag.
Deeming that a serene and unconscious contemplation of him would best
beseem me, and would be most likely to quell his evil mind, I advanced
with that expression of countenance, and was rather congratulating
myself on my success, when suddenly the knees of Trabb’s boy smote
together, his hair uprose, his cap fell off, he trembled violently in
every limb, staggered out into the road, and crying to the populace,
“Hold me! I’m so frightened!” feigned to be in a paroxysm of terror and
contrition, occasioned by the dignity of my appearance. As I passed
him, his teeth loudly chattered in his head, and with every mark of
extreme humiliation, he prostrated himself in the dust.

This was a hard thing to bear, but this was nothing. I had not advanced
another two hundred yards when, to my inexpressible terror, amazement,
and indignation, I again beheld Trabb’s boy approaching. He was coming
round a narrow corner. His blue bag was slung over his shoulder, honest
industry beamed in his eyes, a determination to proceed to Trabb’s with
cheerful briskness was indicated in his gait. With a shock he became
aware of me, and was severely visited as before; but this time his
motion was rotatory, and he staggered round and round me with knees
more afflicted, and with uplifted hands as if beseeching for mercy. His
sufferings were hailed with the greatest joy by a knot of spectators,
and I felt utterly confounded.

I had not got as much further down the street as the post-office, when
I again beheld Trabb’s boy shooting round by a back way. This time, he
was entirely changed. He wore the blue bag in the manner of my
great-coat, and was strutting along the pavement towards me on the
opposite side of the street, attended by a company of delighted young
friends to whom he from time to time exclaimed, with a wave of his
hand, “Don’t know yah!” Words cannot state the amount of aggravation
and injury wreaked upon me by Trabb’s boy, when passing abreast of me,
he pulled up his shirt-collar, twined his side-hair, stuck an arm
akimbo, and smirked extravagantly by, wriggling his elbows and body,
and drawling to his attendants, “Don’t know yah, don’t know yah, ’pon
my soul don’t know yah!” The disgrace attendant on his immediately
afterwards taking to crowing and pursuing me across the bridge with
crows, as from an exceedingly dejected fowl who had known me when I was
a blacksmith, culminated the disgrace with which I left the town, and
was, so to speak, ejected by it into the open country.

[Illustration]

But unless I had taken the life of Trabb’s boy on that occasion, I
really do not even now see what I could have done save endure. To have
struggled with him in the street, or to have exacted any lower
recompense from him than his heart’s best blood, would have been futile
and degrading. Moreover, he was a boy whom no man could hurt; an
invulnerable and dodging serpent who, when chased into a corner, flew
out again between his captor’s legs, scornfully yelping. I wrote,
however, to Mr. Trabb by next day’s post, to say that Mr. Pip must
decline to deal further with one who could so far forget what he owed
to the best interests of society, as to employ a boy who excited
Loathing in every respectable mind.

The coach, with Mr. Jaggers inside, came up in due time, and I took my
box-seat again, and arrived in London safe,—but not sound, for my heart
was gone. As soon as I arrived, I sent a penitential codfish and barrel
of oysters to Joe (as reparation for not having gone myself), and then
went on to Barnard’s Inn.

I found Herbert dining on cold meat, and delighted to welcome me back.
Having despatched The Avenger to the coffee-house for an addition to
the dinner, I felt that I must open my breast that very evening to my
friend and chum. As confidence was out of the question with The Avenger
in the hall, which could merely be regarded in the light of an
antechamber to the keyhole, I sent him to the Play. A better proof of
the severity of my bondage to that taskmaster could scarcely be
afforded, than the degrading shifts to which I was constantly driven to
find him employment. So mean is extremity, that I sometimes sent him to
Hyde Park corner to see what o’clock it was.

Dinner done and we sitting with our feet upon the fender, I said to
Herbert, “My dear Herbert, I have something very particular to tell
you.”

“My dear Handel,” he returned, “I shall esteem and respect your
confidence.”

“It concerns myself, Herbert,” said I, “and one other person.”

Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with his head on one side,
and having looked at it in vain for some time, looked at me because I
didn’t go on.

“Herbert,” said I, laying my hand upon his knee, “I love—I
adore—Estella.”

Instead of being transfixed, Herbert replied in an easy
matter-of-course way, “Exactly. Well?”

“Well, Herbert? Is that all you say? Well?”

“What next, I mean?” said Herbert. “Of course I know that.”

“How do you know it?” said I.

“How do I know it, Handel? Why, from you.”

“I never told you.”

“Told me! You have never told me when you have got your hair cut, but I
have had senses to perceive it. You have always adored her, ever since
I have known you. You brought your adoration and your portmanteau here
together. Told me! Why, you have always told me all day long. When you
told me your own story, you told me plainly that you began adoring her
the first time you saw her, when you were very young indeed.”

“Very well, then,” said I, to whom this was a new and not unwelcome
light, “I have never left off adoring her. And she has come back, a
most beautiful and most elegant creature. And I saw her yesterday. And
if I adored her before, I now doubly adore her.”

“Lucky for you then, Handel,” said Herbert, “that you are picked out
for her and allotted to her. Without encroaching on forbidden ground,
we may venture to say that there can be no doubt between ourselves of
that fact. Have you any idea yet, of Estella’s views on the adoration
question?”

I shook my head gloomily. “Oh! She is thousands of miles away, from
me,” said I.

“Patience, my dear Handel: time enough, time enough. But you have
something more to say?”

“I am ashamed to say it,” I returned, “and yet it’s no worse to say it
than to think it. You call me a lucky fellow. Of course, I am. I was a
blacksmith’s boy but yesterday; I am—what shall I say I am—to-day?”

“Say a good fellow, if you want a phrase,” returned Herbert, smiling,
and clapping his hand on the back of mine—“a good fellow, with
impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence, action and
dreaming, curiously mixed in him.”

I stopped for a moment to consider whether there really was this
mixture in my character. On the whole, I by no means recognised the
analysis, but thought it not worth disputing.

“When I ask what I am to call myself to-day, Herbert,” I went on, “I
suggest what I have in my thoughts. You say I am lucky. I know I have
done nothing to raise myself in life, and that Fortune alone has raised
me; that is being very lucky. And yet, when I think of Estella—”

(“And when don’t you, you know?” Herbert threw in, with his eyes on the
fire; which I thought kind and sympathetic of him.)

“—Then, my dear Herbert, I cannot tell you how dependent and uncertain
I feel, and how exposed to hundreds of chances. Avoiding forbidden
ground, as you did just now, I may still say that on the constancy of
one person (naming no person) all my expectations depend. And at the
best, how indefinite and unsatisfactory, only to know so vaguely what
they are!” In saying this, I relieved my mind of what had always been
there, more or less, though no doubt most since yesterday.

“Now, Handel,” Herbert replied, in his gay, hopeful way, “it seems to
me that in the despondency of the tender passion, we are looking into
our gift-horse’s mouth with a magnifying-glass. Likewise, it seems to
me that, concentrating our attention on the examination, we altogether
overlook one of the best points of the animal. Didn’t you tell me that
your guardian, Mr. Jaggers, told you in the beginning, that you were
not endowed with expectations only? And even if he had not told you
so,—though that is a very large If, I grant,—could you believe that of
all men in London, Mr. Jaggers is the man to hold his present relations
towards you unless he were sure of his ground?”

I said I could not deny that this was a strong point. I said it (people
often do so, in such cases) like a rather reluctant concession to truth
and justice;—as if I wanted to deny it!

“I should think it was a strong point,” said Herbert, “and I should
think you would be puzzled to imagine a stronger; as to the rest, you
must bide your guardian’s time, and he must bide his client’s time.
You’ll be one-and-twenty before you know where you are, and then
perhaps you’ll get some further enlightenment. At all events, you’ll be
nearer getting it, for it must come at last.”

“What a hopeful disposition you have!” said I, gratefully admiring his
cheery ways.

“I ought to have,” said Herbert, “for I have not much else. I must
acknowledge, by the by, that the good sense of what I have just said is
not my own, but my father’s. The only remark I ever heard him make on
your story, was the final one, “The thing is settled and done, or Mr.
Jaggers would not be in it.” And now before I say anything more about
my father, or my father’s son, and repay confidence with confidence, I
want to make myself seriously disagreeable to you for a
moment,—positively repulsive.”

“You won’t succeed,” said I.

“O yes I shall!” said he. “One, two, three, and now I am in for it.
Handel, my good fellow;”—though he spoke in this light tone, he was
very much in earnest,—“I have been thinking since we have been talking
with our feet on this fender, that Estella surely cannot be a condition
of your inheritance, if she was never referred to by your guardian. Am
I right in so understanding what you have told me, as that he never
referred to her, directly or indirectly, in any way? Never even hinted,
for instance, that your patron might have views as to your marriage
ultimately?”

“Never.”

“Now, Handel, I am quite free from the 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 circumstances made so romantic, renders it very
serious. Think of her bringing-up, and think of Miss Havisham. Think of
what she is herself (now I am repulsive and you abominate me). This may
lead to miserable things.”

“I know it, Herbert,” said I, with my head still turned away, “but I
can’t help it.”

“You can’t detach yourself?”

“No. Impossible!”

“You can’t try, Handel?”

“No. Impossible!”

“Well!” said Herbert, getting up with a lively shake as if he had been
asleep, and stirring the fire, “now I’ll 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.

“O yes! and so the dustman says, I believe, with the strongest
approval, and so does the marine-store shop in the back street.
Gravely, Handel, for the subject is grave enough, you know how it is as
well as I do. I suppose there was a time once when my father had not
given matters up; but if ever there was, the time is gone. May I ask
you if you have ever had an opportunity of remarking, down in your part
of the country, that the children of not exactly suitable marriages are
always most particularly anxious to be married?”

This was such a singular question, that I asked him in return, “Is it
so?”

“I don’t know,” said Herbert, “that’s what I want to know. Because it
is decidedly the case with us. My poor sister Charlotte, who was next
me and died before she was fourteen, was a striking example. Little
Jane is the same. In her desire to be matrimonially established, you
might suppose her to have passed her short existence in the perpetual
contemplation of domestic bliss. Little Alick in a frock has already
made arrangements for his union with a suitable young person at Kew.
And indeed, I think we are all engaged, except the baby.”

“Then you are?” said I.

“I am,” said Herbert; “but it’s a secret.”

I assured him of my keeping the secret, and begged to be favoured with
further particulars. He had spoken so sensibly and feelingly of my
weakness that I wanted to know something about his strength.

“May I ask the name?” I said.

“Name of Clara,” said Herbert.

“Live in London?”

“Yes, perhaps I ought to mention,” said Herbert, who had become
curiously crestfallen and meek, since we entered on the interesting
theme, “that she is rather below my mother’s nonsensical family
notions. Her father had to do with the victualling of passenger-ships.
I think he was a species of purser.”

“What is he now?” said I.

“He’s an invalid now,” replied Herbert.

“Living on—?”

“On the first floor,” said Herbert. Which was not at all what I meant,
for I had intended my question to apply to his means. “I have never
seen him, for he has always kept his room overhead, since I have known
Clara. But I have heard him constantly. He makes tremendous
rows,—roars, and pegs at the floor with some frightful instrument.” In
looking at me and then laughing heartily, Herbert for the time
recovered his usual lively manner.

“Don’t you expect to see him?” said I.

“O yes, I constantly expect to see him,” returned Herbert, “because I
never hear him, without expecting him to come tumbling through the
ceiling. But I don’t know how long the rafters may hold.”

When he had once more laughed heartily, he became meek again, and told
me that the moment he began to realise Capital, it was his intention to
marry this young lady. He added as a self-evident proposition,
engendering low spirits, “But you can’t marry, you know, while you’re
looking about you.”

As we contemplated the fire, and as I thought what a difficult vision
to realise this same Capital sometimes was, I put my hands in my
pockets. A folded piece of paper in one of them attracting my
attention, I opened it and found it to be the play-bill I had received
from Joe, relative to the celebrated provincial amateur of Roscian
renown. “And bless my heart,” I involuntarily added aloud, “it’s
to-night!”

This changed the subject in an instant, and made us hurriedly resolve
to go to the play. So, when I had pledged myself to comfort and abet
Herbert in the affair of his heart by all practicable and impracticable
means, and when Herbert had told me that his affianced already knew me
by reputation and that I should be presented to her, and when we had
warmly shaken hands upon our mutual confidence, we blew out our
candles, made up our fire, locked our door, and issued forth in quest
of Mr. Wopsle and Denmark.