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

in the presence of

her intended husband, with being disappointed in the hope of

fawning upon her for his own advancement, and, if he were to go to

her now, it would look true—even to him—and even to her. To

return to the man and make an end of him. The marriage day was

fixed, the wedding dresses were bought, the wedding tour was

planned out, the wedding guests were invited. The day came, but not

the bridegroom. He wrote her a letter—”

“Which she received,” I struck in, “when she was dressing for her

marriage? At twenty minutes to nine?”

“At the hour and minute,” said Herbert, nodding, “at which she

afterwards stopped all the clocks. What was in it, further than

that it most heartlessly broke the marriage off, I can’t tell you,

because I don’t know. When she recovered from a bad illness that

she had, she laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, and

she has never since looked upon the light of day.”

“Is that all the story?” I asked, after considering it.

“All I know of it; and indeed I only know so much, through piecing

it out for myself; for my father always avoids it, and, even when

Miss Havisham invited me to go there, told me no more of it than it

was absolutely requisite I should understand. But I have forgotten

one thing. It has been supposed that the man to whom she gave her

misplaced confidence acted throughout in concert with her

half-brother; that it was a conspiracy between them; and that they

shared the profits.”

“I wonder he didn’t marry her and get all the property,” said I.

“He may have been married already, and her cruel mortification may

have been a part of her half-brother’s scheme,” said Herbert. “Mind!

I don’t know that.”

“What became of the two men?” I asked, after again considering the

subject.

“They fell into deeper shame and degradation—if there can be

deeper—and ruin.”

“Are they alive now?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said just now that Estella was not related to Miss Havisham,

but adopted. When adopted?”

Herbert shrugged his shoulders. “There has always been an Estella,

since I have heard of a Miss Havisham. I know no more. And now,

Handel,” said he, finally throwing off the story as it were, “there

is a perfectly open understanding between us. All that I know about

Miss Havisham, you know.”

“And all that I know,” I retorted, “you know.”

“I fully believe it. So there can be no competition or perplexity

between you and me. And as to the condition on which you hold your

advancement in life,—namely, that you are not to inquire or

discuss to whom you owe it,—you may be very sure that it will

never be encroached upon, or even approached, by me, or by any one

belonging to me.”

In truth, he said this with so much delicacy, that I felt the

subject done with, even though I should be under his father’s roof

for years and years to come. Yet he said it with so much meaning,

too, that I felt he as perfectly understood Miss Havisham to be my

benefactress, as I understood the fact myself.

It had not occurred to me before, that he had led up to the theme

for the purpose of clearing it out of our way; but we were so much

the lighter and easier for having broached it, that I now perceived

this to be the case. We were very gay and sociable, and I asked

him, in the course of conversation, what he was? He replied, “A

capitalist,—an Insurer of Ships.” I suppose he saw me glancing

about the room in search of some tokens of Shipping, or capital,

for he added, “In the City.”

I had grand ideas of the wealth and importance of Insurers of Ships

in the City, and I began to think with awe of having laid a young

Insurer on his back, blackened his enterprising eye, and cut his

responsible head open. But again there came upon me, for my

relief, that odd impression that Herbert Pocket would never be very

successful or rich.

“I shall not rest satisfied with merely employing my capital in

insuring ships. I shall buy up some good Life Assurance shares, and

cut into the Direction. I shall also do a little in the mining way.

None of these things will interfere with my chartering a few

thousand tons on my own account. I think I shall trade,” said he,

leaning back in his chair, “to the East Indies, for silks, shawls,

spices, dyes, drugs, and precious woods. It’s an interesting

trade.”

“And the profits are large?” said I.

“Tremendous!” said he.

I wavered again, and began to think here were greater expectations

than my own.

“I think I shall trade, also,” said he, putting his thumbs in his

waistcoat pockets, “to the West Indies, for sugar, tobacco, and

rum. Also to Ceylon, specially for elephants’ tusks.”

“You will want a good many ships,” said I.

“A perfect fleet,” said he.

Quite overpowered by the magnificence of these transactions, I

asked him where the ships he insured mostly traded to at present?

“I haven’t begun insuring yet,” he replied. “I am looking about

me.”

Somehow, that pursuit seemed more in keeping with Barnard’s Inn. I

said (in a tone of conviction), “Ah-h!”

“Yes. I am in a counting-house, and looking about me.”

“Is a counting-house profitable?” I asked.

“To—do you mean to the young fellow who’s in it?” he asked, in

reply.

“Yes; to you.”

“Why, n-no; not to me.” He said this with the air of one carefully

reckoning up and striking a balance. “Not directly profitable. That

is, it doesn’t pay me anything, and I have to—keep myself.”

This certainly had not a profitable appearance, and I shook my head

as if I would imply that it would be difficult to lay by much

accumulative capital from such a source of income.

“But the thing is,” said Herbert Pocket, “that you look about you.

That’s the grand thing. You are in a counting-house, you know, and

you look about you.”

It struck me as a singular implication that you couldn’t be out of

a counting-house, you know, and look about you; but I silently

deferred to his experience.

“Then the time comes,” said Herbert, “when you see your opening.

And you go in, and you swoop upon it and you make your capital, and

then there you are! When you have once made your capital, you have

nothing to do but employ it.”

This was very like his way of conducting that encounter in the

garden; very like. His manner of bearing his poverty, too, exactly

corresponded to his manner of bearing that defeat. It seemed to me

that he took all blows and buffets now with just the same air as

he had taken mine then. It was evident that he had nothing around

him but the simplest necessaries, for everything that I remarked

upon turned out to have been sent in on my account from the

coffee-house or somewhere else.

Yet, having already made his fortune in his own mind, he was so

unassuming with it that I felt quite grateful to him for not being

puffed up. It was a pleasant addition to his naturally pleasant

ways, and we got on famously. In the evening we went out for a walk

in the streets, and went half-price to the Theatre; and next day we

went to church at Westminster Abbey, and in the afternoon we walked

in the Parks; and I wondered who shod all the horses there, and

wished Joe did.

On a moderate computation, it was many months, that Sunday, since I

had left Joe and Biddy. The space interposed between myself and

them partook of that expansion, and our marshes were any distance

off. That I could have been at our old church in my old

church-going clothes, on the very last Sunday that ever was, seemed

a combination of impossibilities, geographical and social, solar

and lunar. Yet in the London streets so crowded with people and so

brilliantly lighted in the dusk of evening, there were depressing

hints of reproaches for that I had put the poor old kitchen at home

so far away; and in the dead of night, the footsteps of some

incapable impostor of a porter mooning about Barnard’s Inn, under

pretence of watching it, fell hollow on my heart.

On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine, Herbert went to the

counting-house to report himself,—to look about him, too, I

suppose,—and I bore him company. He was to come away in an hour or

two to attend me to Hammersmith, and I was to wait about for him.

It appeared to me that the eggs from which young Insurers were

hatched were incubated in dust and heat, like the eggs of

ostriches, judging from the places to which those incipient giants

repaired on a Monday morning. Nor did the counting-house where

Herbert assisted, show in my eyes as at all a good Observatory;

being a back second floor up a yard, of a grimy presence in all

particulars, and with a look into another back second floor, rather

than a look out.

I waited about until it was noon, and I went upon ‘Change, and I

saw fluey men sitting there under the bills about shipping, whom I

took to be great merchants, though I couldn’t understand why they

should all be out of spirits. When Herbert came, we went and had

lunch at a celebrated house which I then quite venerated, but now

believe to have been the most abject superstition in Europe, and

where I could not help noticing, even then, that there was much

more gravy on the tablecloths and knives and waiters’ clothes, than

in the steaks. This collation disposed of at a moderate price

(considering the grease, which was not charged for), we went back

to Barnard’s Inn and got my little portmanteau, and then took coach

for Hammersmith. We arrived there at two or three o’clock in the

afternoon, and had very little way to walk to Mr. Pocket’s house.

Lifting the latch of a gate, we passed direct into a little garden

overlooking the river, where Mr. Pocket’s children were playing

about. And unless I deceive myself on a point where my interests or

prepossessions are certainly not concerned, I saw that Mr. and Mrs.

Pocket’s children were not growing up or being brought up, but were

tumbling up.

Mrs. Pocket was sitting on a garden chair under a tree, reading,

with her legs upon another garden chair; and Mrs. Pocket’s two

nurse-maids were looking about them while the children played.

“Mamma,” said Herbert, “this is young Mr. Pip.” Upon which Mrs.

Pocket received me with an appearance of amiable dignity.

“Master Alick and Miss Jane,” cried one of the nurses to two of the

children, “if you go a bouncing up against them bushes you’ll fall

over into the river and be drownded, and what’ll your pa say then?”

At the same time this nurse picked up Mrs. Pocket’s handkerchief,

and said, “If that don’t make six times you’ve dropped it, Mum!”

Upon which Mrs. Pocket laughed and said, “Thank you, Flopson,” and

settling herself in one chair only, resumed her book. Her

countenance immediately assumed a knitted and intent expression as

if she had been reading for a week, but before she could have read

half a dozen lines, she fixed her eyes upon me, and said, “I hope

your mamma is quite well?” This unexpected inquiry put me into such

a difficulty that I began saying in the absurdest way that if there

had been any such person I had no doubt she would have been quite

well and would have been very much obliged and would have sent her

compliments, when the nurse