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

Chapter XXX

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-ofcourse 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