Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [top 10 best books of all time txt] 📗

I.

“Dear me! It’s quite a story, and shall be saved till dinner-time.

And now let me take the liberty of asking you a question. How did

you come there, that day?”

I told him, and he was attentive until I had finished, and then

burst out laughing again, and asked me if I was sore afterwards? I

didn’t ask him if he was, for my conviction on that point was

perfectly established.

“Mr. Jaggers is your guardian, I understand?” he went on.

“Yes.”

“You know he is Miss Havisham’s man of business and solicitor, and

has her confidence when nobody else has?”

This was bringing me (I felt) towards dangerous ground. I answered

with a constraint I made no attempt to disguise, that I had seen Mr.

Jaggers in Miss Havisham’s house on the very day of our combat, but

never at any other time, and that I believed he had no recollection

of having ever seen me there.

“He was so obliging as to suggest my father for your tutor, and he

called on my father to propose it. Of course he knew about my

father from his connection with Miss Havisham. My father is Miss

Havisham’s cousin; not that that implies familiar intercourse

between them, for he is a bad courtier and will not propitiate

her.”

Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very

taking. I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen any

one since, who more strongly expressed to me, in every look and

tone, a natural incapacity to do anything secret and mean. There

was something wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and

something that at the same time whispered to me he would never be

very successful or rich. I don’t know how this was. I became imbued

with the notion on that first occasion before we sat down to

dinner, but I cannot define by what means.

He was still a pale young gentleman, and had a certain conquered

languor about him in the midst of his spirits and briskness, that

did not seem indicative of natural strength. He had not a handsome

face, but it was better than handsome: being extremely amiable and

cheerful. His figure was a little ungainly, as in the days when my

knuckles had taken such liberties with it, but it looked as if it

would always be light and young. Whether Mr. Trabb’s local work

would have sat more gracefully on him than on me, may be a

question; but I am conscious that he carried off his rather old

clothes much better than I carried off my new suit.

As he was so communicative, I felt that reserve on my part would be

a bad return unsuited to our years. I therefore told him my small

story, and laid stress on my being forbidden to inquire who my

benefactor was. I further mentioned that as I had been brought up a

blacksmith in a country place, and knew very little of the ways of

politeness, I would take it as a great kindness in him if he would

give me a hint whenever he saw me at a loss or going wrong.

“With pleasure,” said he, “though I venture to prophesy that you’ll

want very few hints. I dare say we shall be often together, and I

should like to banish any needless restraint between us. Will you

do me the favour to begin at once to call me by my Christian name,

Herbert?”

I thanked him and said I would. I informed him in exchange that my

Christian name was Philip.

“I don’t take to Philip,” said he, smiling, “for it sounds like a

moral boy out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy that he fell

into a pond, or so fat that he couldn’t see out of his eyes, or so

avaricious that he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so

determined to go a bird’s-nesting that he got himself eaten by

bears who lived handy in the neighborhood. I tell you what I

should like. We are so harmonious, and you have been a blacksmith,–

would you mind it?”

“I shouldn’t mind anything that you propose,” I answered, “but I

don’t understand you.”

“Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There’s a charming

piece of music by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith.”

“I should like it very much.”

“Then, my dear Handel,” said he, turning round as the door opened,

“here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to take the top of the

table, because the dinner is of your providing.”

This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I faced him. It

was a nice little dinner,—seemed to me then a very Lord Mayor’s

Feast,—and it acquired additional relish from being eaten under

those independent circumstances, with no old people by, and with

London all around us. This again was heightened by a certain gypsy

character that set the banquet off; for while the table was, as Mr.

Pumblechook might have said, the lap of luxury,—being entirely

furnished forth from the coffee-house,—the circumjacent region of

sitting-room was of a comparatively pastureless and shifty

character; imposing on the waiter the wandering habits of putting

the covers on the floor (where he fell over them), the melted

butter in the arm-chair, the bread on the bookshelves, the cheese in

the coal-scuttle, and the boiled fowl into my bed in the next room,—

where I found much of its parsley and butter in a state of

congelation when I retired for the night. All this made the feast

delightful, and when the waiter was not there to watch me, my

pleasure was without alloy.

We had made some progress in the dinner, when I reminded Herbert of

his promise to tell me about Miss Havisham.

“True,” he replied. “I’ll redeem it at once. Let me introduce the

topic, Handel, by mentioning that in London it is not the custom to

put the knife in the mouth,—for fear of accidents,—and that while

the fork is reserved for that use, it is not put further in than

necessary. It is scarcely worth mentioning, only it’s as well to do

as other people do. Also, the spoon is not generally used

over-hand, but under. This has two advantages. You get at your

mouth better (which after all is the object), and you save a good

deal of the attitude of opening oysters, on the part of the right

elbow.”

He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively way, that we

both laughed and I scarcely blushed.

“Now,” he pursued, “concerning Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham, you

must know, was a spoilt child. Her mother died when she was a baby,

and her father denied her nothing. Her father was a country

gentleman down in your part of the world, and was a brewer. I don’t

know why it should be a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is

indisputable that while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake,

you may be as genteel as never was and brew. You see it every day.”

“Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?” said I.

“Not on any account,” returned Herbert; “but a public-house may

keep a gentleman. Well! Mr. Havisham was very rich and very proud.

So was his daughter.”

“Miss Havisham was an only child?” I hazarded.

“Stop a moment, I am coming to that. No, she was not an only child;

she had a half-brother. Her father privately married again—his

cook, I rather think.”

“I thought he was proud,” said I.

“My good Handel, so he was. He married his second wife privately,

because he was proud, and in course of time she died. When she was

dead, I apprehend he first told his daughter what he had done, and

then the son became a part of the family, residing in the house you

are acquainted with. As the son grew a young man, he turned out

riotous, extravagant, undutiful,—altogether bad. At last his

father disinherited him; but he softened when he was dying, and

left him well off, though not nearly so well off as Miss Havisham.

—Take another glass of wine, and excuse my mentioning that society

as a body does not expect one to be so strictly conscientious in

emptying one’s glass, as to turn it bottom upwards with the rim on

one’s nose.”

I had been doing this, in an excess of attention to his recital. I

thanked him, and apologized. He said, “Not at all,” and resumed.

“Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may suppose was looked

after as a great match. Her half-brother had now ample means again,

but what with debts and what with new madness wasted them most

fearfully again. There were stronger differences between him and

her than there had been between him and his father, and it is

suspected that he cherished a deep and mortal grudge against her

as having influenced the father’s anger. Now, I come to the cruel

part of the story,—merely breaking off, my dear Handel, to remark

that a dinner-napkin will not go into a tumbler.”

Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler, I am wholly unable

to say. I only know that I found myself, with a perseverance worthy

of a much better cause, making the most strenuous exertions to

compress it within those limits. Again I thanked him and

apologized, and again he said in the cheerfullest manner, “Not at

all, I am sure!” and resumed.

“There appeared upon the scene—say at the races, or the public

balls, or anywhere else you like—a certain man, who made love to

Miss Havisham. I never saw him (for this happened five-and-twenty

years ago, before you and I were, Handel), but I have heard my

father mention that he was a showy man, and the kind of man for the

purpose. But that he was not to be, without ignorance or prejudice,

mistaken for a gentleman, my father most strongly asseverates;

because it is a principle of his that no man who was not a true

gentleman at heart ever was, since the world began, a true

gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the

wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will

express itself. Well! This man pursued Miss Havisham closely, and

professed to be devoted to her. I believe she had not shown much

susceptibility up to that time; but all the susceptibility she

possessed certainly came out then, and she passionately loved him.

There is no doubt that she perfectly idolized him. He practised on

her affection in that systematic way, that he got great sums of

money from her, and he induced her to buy her brother out of a

share in the brewery (which had been weakly left him by his father)

at an immense price, on the plea that when he was her husband he

must hold and manage it all. Your guardian was not at that time in

Miss Havisham’s counsels, and she was too haughty and too much in

love to be advised by any one. Her relations were poor and

scheming, with the exception of my father; he was poor enough, but

not time-serving or jealous. The only independent one among them,

he warned her that she was doing too much for this man, and was

placing herself too unreservedly in his power. She took the first

opportunity of angrily ordering my father out of the house, in his

presence, and my father has never seen her since.”

I thought of her having said, “Matthew will come and see me at last

when I am laid dead upon that table;” and I asked Herbert whether

his father was so inveterate against her?

“It’s not that,” said he, “but she charged him,