Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [top 10 best books of all time txt] 📗
- Author: Charles Dickens
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when you are once in it. Don’t break cover too soon. Lie close.
Wait till things slacken, before you try the open, even for foreign
air.”
I thanked him for his valuable advice, and asked him what Herbert
had done?
“Mr. Herbert,” said Wemmick, “after being all of a heap for half an
hour, struck out a plan. He mentioned to me as a secret, that he is
courting a young lady who has, as no doubt you are aware, a
bedridden Pa. Which Pa, having been in the Purser line of life,
lies a-bed in a bow-window where he can see the ships sail up and
down the river. You are acquainted with the young lady, most
probably?”
“Not personally,” said I.
The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive
companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first
proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with
such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to
confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a
little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to
advance Herbert’s prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear
this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their
part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third
person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that
I had risen in Clara’s esteem, and although the young lady and I
had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by
Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick
with these particulars.
“The house with the bow-window,” said Wemmick, “being by the
river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich,
and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a
furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I
think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard?
Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I’ll give you.
That is to say: Firstly. It’s altogether out of all your beats, and
is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small.
Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of
the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly.
After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to
slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there
he is—ready.”
Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and
again, and begged him to proceed.
“Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will,
and by nine o’clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,—
whichever it may be,—you and I don’t want to know,—quite
successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was
summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and
cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is,
that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning
himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many
miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and
confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you
came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more
confusion, and you want confusion.”
Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch,
and began to get his coat on.
“And now, Mr. Pip,” said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, “I
have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,—
from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and
personal capacity,—I shall be glad to do it. Here’s the address.
There can be no harm in your going here tonight, and seeing for
yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go
home,—which is another reason for your not going home last night.
But, after you have gone home, don’t go back here. You are very
welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip”; his hands were now out of his sleeves,
and I was shaking them; “and let me finally impress one important
point upon you.” He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in
a solemn whisper: “Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of
his portable property. You don’t know what may happen to him. Don’t
let anything happen to the portable property.”
Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point,
I forbore to try.
“Time’s up,” said Wemmick, “and I must be off. If you had nothing
more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that’s what I
should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good
to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,—he’ll be up presently,
—and a little bit of—you remember the pig?”
“Of course,” said I.
“Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his,
and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only
for old acquaintance sake. Good by, Aged Parent!” in a cheery
shout.
“All right, John; all right, my boy!” piped the old man from
within.
I soon fell asleep before Wemmick’s fire, and the Aged and I
enjoyed one another’s society by falling asleep before it more or
less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on
the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever
I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged
preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of
teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the
wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected.
Eight o’clock had struck before I got into the air, that was
scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the
long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that
water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was
unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found
that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and
was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank,
Chinks’s Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks’s Basin than the
Old Green Copper Ropewalk.
It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost
myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to
pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of
ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting
into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country
of accumulated casks and timber, how many ropewalks that were not
the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my
destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly
round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place,
all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had
room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it,
and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old
Green Copper Ropewalk,—whose long and narrow vista I could trace
in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the
ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had
grown old and lost most of their teeth.
Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house
with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not
bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the
door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I
knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance
responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who
silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd
sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home
in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking
at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and
china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored
engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a
ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a
state coachman’s wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the
terrace at Windsor.
“All is well, Handel,” said Herbert, “and he is quite satisfied,
though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if
you’ll wait till she comes down, I’ll make you known to her, and
then we’ll go up stairs. That’s her father.”
I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had
probably expressed the fact in my countenance.
“I am afraid he is a sad old rascal,” said Herbert, smiling, “but I
have never seen him. Don’t you smell rum? He is always at it.”
“At rum?” said I.
“Yes,” returned Herbert, “and you may suppose how mild it makes his
gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions up stairs in
his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his
head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler’s
shop.”
While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar,
and then died away.
“What else can be the consequence,” said Herbert, in explanation,
“if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand—
and everywhere else—can’t expect to get through a Double
Gloucester without hurting himself.”
He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another
furious roar.
“To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs.
Whimple,” said Herbert, “for of course people in general won’t
stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn’t it?”
It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean.
“Mrs. Whimple,” said Herbert, when I told him so, “is the best of
housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without
her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and
no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim.”
“Surely that’s not his name, Herbert?”
“No, no,” said Herbert, “that’s my name for him. His name is Mr.
Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and
mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never
bother herself or anybody else about her family!”
Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that
he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her
education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being
recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their
affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered
and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It
was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be
confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to
the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum,
and Purser’s stores.
As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley’s
sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the
room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty
or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly
relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as “Clara.” She
really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a
captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed
into his service.
“Look here,” said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a
compassionate and
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