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.