Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [top 10 best books of all time txt] 📗
- Author: Charles Dickens
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which I suppose to be always got up with a flat iron), a
conversation took place in the gallery respecting the paleness of
his leg, and whether it was occasioned by the turn the ghost had
given him. On his taking the recorders,—very like a little black
flute that had just been played in the orchestra and handed out at
the door,—he was called upon unanimously for Rule Britannia. When
he recommended the player not to saw the air thus, the sulky man
said, “And don’t you do it, neither; you’re a deal worse than him!”
And I grieve to add that peals of laughter greeted Mr. Wopsle on
every one of these occasions.
But his greatest trials were in the churchyard, which had the
appearance of a primeval forest, with a kind of small
ecclesiastical wash-house on one side, and a turnpike gate on the
other. Mr. Wopsle in a comprehensive black cloak, being descried
entering at the turnpike, the gravedigger was admonished in a
friendly way, “Look out! Here’s the undertaker a coming, to see how
you’re a getting on with your work!” I believe it is well known in
a constitutional country that Mr. Wopsle could not possibly have
returned the skull, after moralizing over it, without dusting his
fingers on a white napkin taken from his breast; but even that
innocent and indispensable action did not pass without the comment,
“Wai-ter!” The arrival of the body for interment (in an empty black
box with the lid tumbling open), was the signal for a general joy,
which was much enhanced by the discovery, among the bearers, of an
individual obnoxious to identification. The joy attended Mr. Wopsle
through his struggle with Laertes on the brink of the orchestra and
the grave, and slackened no more until he had tumbled the king off
the kitchen-table, and had died by inches from the ankles upward.
We had made some pale efforts in the beginning to applaud Mr.
Wopsle; but they were too hopeless to be persisted in. Therefore we
had sat, feeling keenly for him, but laughing, nevertheless, from
ear to ear. I laughed in spite of myself all the time, the whole
thing was so droll; and yet I had a latent impression that there
was something decidedly fine in Mr. Wopsle’s elocution,—not for old
associations’ sake, I am afraid, but because it was very slow, very
dreary, very up-hill and down-hill, and very unlike any way in
which any man in any natural circumstances of life or death ever
expressed himself about anything. When the tragedy was over, and he
had been called for and hooted, I said to Herbert, “Let us go at
once, or perhaps we shall meet him.”
We made all the haste we could down stairs, but we were not quick
enough either. Standing at the door was a Jewish man with an
unnatural heavy smear of eyebrow, who caught my eyes as we
advanced, and said, when we came up with him,—
“Mr. Pip and friend?”
Identity of Mr. Pip and friend confessed.
“Mr. Waldengarver,” said the man, “would be glad to have the
honor.”
“Waldengarver?” I repeated—when Herbert murmured in my ear,
“Probably Wopsle.”
“Oh!” said I. “Yes. Shall we follow you?”
“A few steps, please.” When we were in a side alley, he turned and
asked, “How did you think he looked?—I dressed him.”
I don’t know what he had looked like, except a funeral; with the
addition of a large Danish sun or star hanging round his neck by a
blue ribbon, that had given him the appearance of being insured in
some extraordinary Fire Office. But I said he had looked very nice.
“When he come to the grave,” said our conductor, “he showed his
cloak beautiful. But, judging from the wing, it looked to me that
when he see the ghost in the queen’s apartment, he might have made
more of his stockings.”
I modestly assented, and we all fell through a little dirty swing
door, into a sort of hot packing-case immediately behind it. Here
Mr. Wopsle was divesting himself of his Danish garments, and here
there was just room for us to look at him over one another’s
shoulders, by keeping the packing-case door, or lid, wide open.
“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Wopsle, “I am proud to see you. I hope, Mr.
Pip, you will excuse my sending round. I had the happiness to know
you in former times, and the Drama has ever had a claim which has
ever been acknowledged, on the noble and the affluent.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Waldengarver, in a frightful perspiration, was trying
to get himself out of his princely sables.
“Skin the stockings off Mr. Waldengarver,” said the owner of that
property, “or you’ll bust ‘em. Bust ‘em, and you’ll bust
five-and-thirty shillings. Shakspeare never was complimented with a
finer pair. Keep quiet in your chair now, and leave ‘em to me.”
With that, he went upon his knees, and began to flay his victim;
who, on the first stocking coming off, would certainly have fallen
over backward with his chair, but for there being no room to fall
anyhow.
I had been afraid until then to say a word about the play. But
then, Mr. Waldengarver looked up at us complacently, and said,—
“Gentlemen, how did it seem to you, to go, in front?”
Herbert said from behind (at the same time poking me), “Capitally.”
So I said “Capitally.”
“How did you like my reading of the character, gentlemen?” said Mr.
Waldengarver, almost, if not quite, with patronage.
Herbert said from behind (again poking me), “Massive and concrete.”
So I said boldly, as if I had originated it, and must beg to insist
upon it, “Massive and concrete.”
“I am glad to have your approbation, gentlemen,” said Mr.
Waldengarver, with an air of dignity, in spite of his being ground
against the wall at the time, and holding on by the seat of the
chair.
“But I’ll tell you one thing, Mr. Waldengarver,” said the man who
was on his knees, “in which you’re out in your reading. Now mind! I
don’t care who says contrairy; I tell you so. You’re out in your
reading of Hamlet when you get your legs in profile. The last
Hamlet as I dressed, made the same mistakes in his reading at
rehearsal, till I got him to put a large red wafer on each of his
shins, and then at that rehearsal (which was the last) I went in
front, sir, to the back of the pit, and whenever his reading
brought him into profile, I called out “I don’t see no wafers!” And
at night his reading was lovely.”
Mr. Waldengarver smiled at me, as much as to say “a faithful
Dependent—I overlook his folly;” and then said aloud, “My view is
a little classic and thoughtful for them here; but they will
improve, they will improve.”
Herbert and I said together, O, no doubt they would improve.
“Did you observe, gentlemen,” said Mr. Waldengarver, “that there was
a man in the gallery who endeavored to cast derision on the
service,—I mean, the representation?”
We basely replied that we rather thought we had noticed such a man.
I added, “He was drunk, no doubt.”
“O dear no, sir,” said Mr. Wopsle, “not drunk. His employer would
see to that, sir. His employer would not allow him to be drunk.”
“You know his employer?” said I.
Mr. Wopsle shut his eyes, and opened them again; performing both
ceremonies very slowly. “You must have observed, gentlemen,” said
he, “an ignorant and a blatant ass, with a rasping throat and a
countenance expressive of low malignity, who went through—I will
not say sustained—the r�le (if I may use a French expression) of
Claudius, King of Denmark. That is his employer, gentlemen. Such is
the profession!”
Without distinctly knowing whether I should have been more sorry
for Mr. Wopsle if he had been in despair, I was so sorry for him as
it was, that I took the opportunity of his turning round to have
his braces put on,—which jostled us out at the doorway,—to ask
Herbert what he thought of having him home to supper? Herbert said
he thought it would be kind to do so; therefore I invited him, and
he went to Barnard’s with us, wrapped up to the eyes, and we did
our best for him, and he sat until two o’clock in the morning,
reviewing his success and developing his plans. I forget in detail
what they were, but I have a general recollection that he was to
begin with reviving the Drama, and to end with crushing it;
inasmuch as his decease would leave it utterly bereft and without a
chance or hope.
Miserably I went to bed after all, and miserably thought of
Estella, and miserably dreamed that my expectations were all
cancelled, and that I had to give my hand in marriage to Herbert’s
Clara, or play Hamlet to Miss Havisham’s Ghost, before twenty
thousand people, without knowing twenty words of it.
One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I received a
note by the post, the mere outside of which threw me into a great
flutter; for, though I had never seen the handwriting in which it
was addressed, I divined whose hand it was. It had no set
beginning, as Dear Mr. Pip, or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear
Anything, but ran thus:—
“I am to come to London the day after tomorrow by the midday
coach. I believe it was settled you should meet me? At all events
Miss Havisham has that impression, and I write in obedience to it.
She sends you her regard.
Yours, ESTELLA.”
If there had been time, I should probably have ordered several
suits of clothes for this occasion; but as there was not, I was
fain to be content with those I had. My appetite vanished
instantly, and I knew no peace or rest until the day arrived. Not
that its arrival brought me either; for, then I was worse than ever,
and began haunting the coach-office in Wood Street, Cheapside,
before the coach had left the Blue Boar in our town. For all that I
knew this perfectly well, I still felt as if it were not safe to
let the coach-office be out of my sight longer than five minutes at
a time; and in this condition of unreason I had performed the first
half-hour of a watch of four or five hours, when Wemmick ran
against me.
“Halloa, Mr. Pip,” said he; “how do you do? I should hardly have
thought this was your beat.”
I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was coming up
by coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged.
“Both flourishing thankye,” said Wemmick, “and particularly the
Aged. He’s in wonderful feather. He’ll be eighty-two next birthday.
I have a notion of firing eighty-two times, if the neighborhood
shouldn’t complain, and that cannon of mine should prove equal to
the pressure. However, this is not London talk. Where do you think
I am going to?”
“To the office?” said I, for he was tending in that direction.
“Next thing to it,” returned Wemmick, “I am going to Newgate. We
are in a banker’s-parcel case just at present, and I have been down
the road taking a squint at the scene of action, and thereupon
must have a word or two with our client.”
“Did your client commit the robbery?” I asked.
“Bless your soul and body, no,” answered Wemmick, very drily. “But
he is accused of it. So might you or I be. Either of us might be
accused of it, you know.”
“Only neither of us is,” I remarked.
“Yah!” said Wemmick, touching me on the breast with his forefinger;
“you’re
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