Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Chapter 30
After 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 recognized 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.
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 recognized 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 flavor
of sour grapes, upon my soul and honor!
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 endeavor 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 favored 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 realize 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 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 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.
End of chapter 30
