Chapter 26


It fell out as Wemmick had told me it would, that I had an early
opportunity of comparing my guardian's establishment with that of
his cashier and clerk.  My guardian was in his room, washing his
hands with his scented soap, when I went into the office from
Walworth; and he called me to him, and gave me the invitation for
myself and friends which Wemmick had prepared me to receive.  "No
ceremony," he stipulated, "and no dinner dress, and say tomorrow."
I asked him where we should come to (for I had no idea where he
lived), and I believe it was in his general objection to make
anything like an admission, that he replied, "Come here, and I'll
take you home with me."  I embrace this opportunity of remarking
that he washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or a
dentist.  He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose,
which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer's shop.  It had an
unusually large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he
would wash his hands, and wipe them and dry them all over this
towel, whenever he came in from a police-court or dismissed a
client from his room.  When I and my friends repaired to him at six
o'clock next day, he seemed to have been engaged on a case of a
darker complexion than usual, for, we found him with his head
butted into this closet, not only washing his hands, but laving his
face and gargling his throat.  And even when he had done all that,
and had gone all round the jack-towel, he took out his penknife and
scraped the case out of his nails before he put his coat on.

There were some people slinking about as usual when we passed out
into the street, who were evidently anxious to speak with him; but
there was something so conclusive in the halo of scented soap which
encircled his presence, that they gave it up for that day.  As we
walked along westward, he was recognized ever and again by some
face in the crowd of the streets, and whenever that happened he
talked louder to me; but he never otherwise recognized anybody, or
took notice that anybody recognized him.

He conducted us to Gerrard-street, Soho, to a house on the south
side of that street.  Rather a stately house of its kind, but
dolefully in want of painting, and with dirty windows.  He took out
his key and opened the door, and we all went into a stone hall,
bare, gloomy, and little used.  So, up a dark brown staircase into a
series of three dark brown rooms on the first floor.  There were
carved garlands on the panelled walls, and as he stood among them
giving us welcome, I know what kind of loops I thought they looked
like.

Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms; the second was his
dressing-room; the third, his bedroom.  He told us that he held the
whole house, but rarely used more of it than we saw.  The table was
comfortably laid - no silver in the service, of course - and at the
side of his chair was a capacious dumb-waiter, with a variety of
bottles and decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert.
I noticed throughout, that he kept everything under his own hand,
and distributed everything himself.

There was a bookcase in the room; I saw, from the backs of the
books, that they were about evidence, criminal law, criminal
biography, trials, acts of parliament, and such things.  The
furniture was all very solid and good, like his watch-chain.  It had
an official look, however, and there was nothing merely ornamental
to be seen.  In a corner, was a little table of papers with a shaded
lamp:  so that he seemed to bring the office home with him in that
respect too, and to wheel it out of an evening and fall to work.

As he had scarcely seen my three companions until now - for, he and
I had walked together - he stood on the hearth-rug, after ringing
the bell, and took a searching look at them.  To my surprise, he
seemed at once to be principally if not solely interested in
Drummle.

"Pip," said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder and moving me
to the window, "I don't know one from the other.  Who's the Spider?"

"The spider?" said I.

"The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow."

"That's Bentley Drummle," I replied; "the one with the delicate
face is Startop."

Not making the least account of "the one with the delicate face,"
he returned, "Bentley Drummle is his name, is it?  I like the look
of that fellow."

He immediately began to talk to Drummle:  not at all deterred by his
replying in his heavy reticent way, but apparently led on by it to
screw discourse out of him.  I was looking at the two, when there
came between me and them, the housekeeper, with the first dish for
the table.

She was a woman of about forty, I supposed - but I may have thought
her younger than she was.  Rather tall, of a lithe nimble figure,
extremely pale, with large faded eyes, and a quantity of streaming
hair.  I cannot say whether any diseased affection of the heart
caused her lips to be parted as if she were panting, and her face
to bear a curious expression of suddenness and flutter; but I know
that I had been to see Macbeth at the theatre, a night or two
before, and that her face looked to me as if it were all disturbed
by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of the Witches'
caldron.

She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm with a
finger to notify that dinner was ready, and vanished.  We took our
seats at the round table, and my guardian kept Drummle on one side
of him, while Startop sat on the other.  It was a noble dish of fish
that the housekeeper had put on table, and we had a joint of
equally choice mutton afterwards, and then an equally choice bird.
Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all of the best,
were given out by our host from his dumb-waiter; and when they had
made the circuit of the table, he always put them back again.
Similarly, he dealt us clean plates and knives and forks, for each
course, and dropped those just disused into two baskets on the
ground by his chair.  No other attendant than the housekeeper
appeared.  She set on every dish; and I always saw in her face, a
face rising out of the caldron.  Years afterwards, I made a dreadful
likeness of that woman, by causing a face that had no other natural
resemblance to it than it derived from flowing hair, to pass behind
a bowl of flaming spirits in a dark room.

Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by her
own striking appearance and by Wemmick's preparation, I observed
that whenever she was in the room, she kept her eyes attentively on
my guardian, and that she would remove her hands from any dish she
put before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded his calling her
back, and wanted him to speak when she was nigh, if he had anything
to say.  I fancied that I could detect in his manner a consciousness
of this, and a purpose of always holding her in suspense.

Dinner went off gaily, and, although my guardian seemed to follow
rather than originate subjects, I knew that he wrenched the weakest
part of our dispositions out of us.  For myself, I found that I was
expressing my tendency to lavish expenditure, and to patronize
Herbert, and to boast of my great prospects, before I quite knew
that I had opened my lips.  It was so with all of us, but with no
one more than Drummle:  the development of whose inclination to gird
in a grudging and suspicious way at the rest, was screwed out of
him before the fish was taken off.

It was not then, but when we had got to the cheese, that our
conversation turned upon our rowing feats, and that Drummle was
rallied for coming up behind of a night in that slow amphibious way
of his.  Drummle upon this, informed our host that he much preferred
our room to our company, and that as to skill he was more than our
master, and that as to strength he could scatter us like chaff.  By
some invisible agency, my guardian wound him up to a pitch little
short of ferocity about this trifle; and he fell to baring and
spanning his arm to show how muscular it was, and we all fell to
baring and spanning our arms in a ridiculous manner.

Now, the housekeeper was at that time clearing the table; my
guardian, taking no heed of her, but with the side of his face
turned from her, was leaning back in his chair biting the side of
his forefinger and showing an interest in Drummle, that, to me, was
quite inexplicable.  Suddenly, he clapped his large hand on the
housekeeper's, like a trap, as she stretched it across the table.
So suddenly and smartly did he do this, that we all stopped in our
foolish contention.

"If you talk of strength," said Mr. Jaggers, "I'll show you a wrist.
Molly, let them see your wrist."

Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put her
other hand behind her waist.  "Master," she said, in a low voice,
with her eyes attentively and entreatingly fixed upon him.  "Don't."

"I'll show you a wrist," repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an immovable
determination to show it.  "Molly, let them see your wrist."

"Master," she again murmured.  "Please!"

"Molly," said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately
looking at the opposite side of the room, "let them see both your
wrists.  Show them.  Come!"

He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up on the table.
She brought her other hand from behind her, and held the two out
side by side.  The last wrist was much disfigured - deeply scarred
and scarred across and across.  When she held her hands out, she
took her eyes from Mr. Jaggers, and turned them watchfully on every
one of the rest of us in succession.

"There's power here," said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the
sinews with his forefinger.  "Very few men have the power of wrist
that this woman has.  It's remarkable what mere force of grip there
is in these hands.  I have had occasion to notice many hands; but I
never saw stronger in that respect, man's or woman's, than these."

While he said these words in a leisurely critical style, she
continued to look at every one of us in regular succession as we
sat.  The moment he ceased, she looked at him again.  "That'll do,
Molly," said Mr. Jaggers, giving her a slight nod; "you have been
admired, and can go."  She withdrew her hands and went out of the
room, and Mr. Jaggers, putting the decanters on from his dumbwaiter,
filled his glass and passed round the wine.

"At half-past nine, gentlemen," said he, "we must break up.  Pray
make the best use of your time.  I am glad to see you all.  Mr.
Drummle, I drink to you."

If his object in singling out Drummle were to bring him out still
more, it perfectly succeeded.  In a sulky triumph, Drummle showed
his morose depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and more
offensive degree until he became downright intolerable.  Through all
his stages, Mr. Jaggers followed him with the same strange interest.
He actually seemed to serve as a zest to Mr. Jaggers's wine.

In our boyish want of discretion I dare say we took too much to
drink, and I know we talked too much.  We became particularly hot
upon some boorish sneer of Drummle's, to the effect that we were
too free with our money.  It led to my remarking, with more zeal
than discretion, that it came with a bad grace from him, to whom
Startop had lent money in my presence but a week or so before.

"Well," retorted Drummle; "he'll be paid."

"I don't mean to imply that he won't," said I, "but it might make
you hold your tongue about us and our money, I should think."

"You should think!" retorted Drummle.  "Oh Lord!"

"I dare say," I went on, meaning to be very severe, "that you
wouldn't lend money to any of us, if we wanted it."

"You are right," said Drummle.  "I wouldn't lend one of you a
sixpence.  I wouldn't lend anybody a sixpence."

"Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I should say."

"You should say," repeated Drummle.  "Oh Lord!"

This was so very aggravating - the more especially as I found
myself making no way against his surly obtuseness - that I said,
disregarding Herbert's efforts to check me:

"Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I'll tell you what
passed between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed that money."

"I don't want to know what passed between Herbert there and you,"
growled Drummle.  And I think he added in a lower growl, that we
might both go to the devil and shake ourselves.

"I'll tell you, however," said I, "whether you want to know or not.
We said that as you put it in your pocket very glad to get it, you
seemed to be immensely amused at his being so weak as to lend it."

Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing in our faces, with his
hands in his pockets and his round shoulders raised:  plainly
signifying that it was quite true, and that he despised us, as
asses all.

Hereupon Startop took him in hand, though with a much better grace
than I had shown, and exhorted him to be a little more agreeable.
Startop, being a lively bright young fellow, and Drummle being the
exact opposite, the latter was always disposed to resent him as a
direct personal affront.  He now retorted in a coarse lumpish way,
and Startop tried to turn the discussion aside with some small
pleasantry that made us all laugh.  Resenting this little success
more than anything, Drummle, without any threat or warning, pulled
his hands out of his pockets, dropped his round shoulders, swore,
took up a large glass, and would have flung it at his adversary's
head, but for our entertainer's dexterously seizing it at the
instant when it was raised for that purpose.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting down the glass,
and hauling out his gold repeater by its massive chain, "I am
exceedingly sorry to announce that it's half-past nine."

On this hint we all rose to depart.  Before we got to the street
door, Startop was cheerily calling Drummle "old boy," as if nothing
had happened.  But the old boy was so far from responding, that he
would not even walk to Hammersmith on the same side of the way; so,
Herbert and I, who remained in town, saw them going down the street
on opposite sides; Startop leading, and Drummle lagging behind in
the shadow of the houses, much as he was wont to follow in his
boat.

As the door was not yet shut, I thought I would leave Herbert there
for a moment, and run up-stairs again to say a word to my guardian.
I found him in his dressing-room surrounded by his stock of boots,
already hard at it, washing his hands of us.

I told him I had come up again to say how sorry I was that anything
disagreeable should have occurred, and that I hoped he would not
blame me much.

"Pooh!" said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through the
water-drops; "it's nothing, Pip.  I like that Spider though."

He had turned towards me now, and was shaking his head, and
blowing, and towelling himself.

"I am glad you like him, sir," said I - "but I don't."

"No, no," my guardian assented; "don't have too much to do with
him.  Keep as clear of him as you can.  But I like the fellow, Pip;
he is one of the true sort.  Why, if I was a fortune-teller--"

Looking out of the towel, he caught my eye.

"But I am not a fortune-teller," he said, letting his head drop
into a festoon of towel, and towelling away at his two ears.  "You
know what I am, don't you?  Good-night, Pip."

"Good-night, sir."

In about a month after that, the Spider's time with Mr. Pocket was
up for good, and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs.
Pocket, he went home to the family hole.

Chapter 27


"MY DEAR MR PIP,

"I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for to let you know that he
is going to London in company with Mr. Wopsle and would be glad if
agreeable to be allowed to see you.  He would call at Barnard's
Hotel Tuesday morning 9 o'clock, when if not agreeable please
leave word.  Your poor sister is much the same as when you left.  We
talk of you in the kitchen every night, and wonder what you are
saying and doing.  If now considered in the light of a liberty,
excuse it for the love of poor old days.  No more, dear Mr. Pip, from

"Your ever obliged, and affectionate servant,

"BIDDY."

"P.S.  He wishes me most particular to write what larks.  He says you
will understand.  I hope and do not doubt it will be agreeable to
see him even though a gentleman, for you had ever a good heart, and
he is a worthy worthy man.  I have read him all excepting only the
last little sentence, and he wishes me most particular to write
again what larks."

I received this letter by the post on Monday morning, and therefore
its appointment was for next day.  Let me confess exactly, with what
feelings I looked forward to Joe's coming.

Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; no;
with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense
of incongruity.  If I could have kept him away by paying money, I
certainly would have paid money.  My greatest reassurance was, that
he was coming to Barnard's Inn, not to Hammersmith, and
consequently would not fall in Bentley Drummle's way.  I had little
objection to his being seen by Herbert or his father, for both of
whom I had a respect; but I had the sharpest sensitiveness as to
his being seen by Drummle, whom I held in contempt.  So, throughout
life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for
the sake of the people whom we most despise.

I had begun to be always decorating the chambers in some quite
unnecessary and inappropriate way or other, and very expensive
those wrestles with Barnard proved to be.  By this time, the rooms
were vastly different from what I had found them, and I enjoyed the
honour of occupying a few prominent pages in the books of a
neighbouring upholsterer.  I had got on so fast of late, that I had
even started a boy in boots - top boots - in bondage and slavery to
whom I might have been said to pass my days.  For, after I had made
the monster (out of the refuse of my washerwoman's family) and had
clothed him with a blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat,
creamy breeches, and the boots already mentioned, I had to find him
a little to do and a great deal to eat; and with both of those
horrible requirements he haunted my existence.

This avenging phantom was ordered to be on duty at eight on Tuesday
morning in the hall (it was two feet square, as charged for
floorcloth), and Herbert suggested certain things for breakfast
that he thought Joe would like.  While I felt sincerely obliged to
him for being so interested and considerate, I had an odd
half-provoked sense of suspicion upon me, that if Joe had been
coming to see him, he wouldn't have been quite so brisk about it.

However, I came into town on the Monday night to be ready for Joe,
and I got up early in the morning, and caused the sittingroom and
breakfast-table to assume their most splendid appearance.
Unfortunately the morning was drizzly, and an angel could not have
concealed the fact that Barnard was shedding sooty tears outside the
window, like some weak giant of a Sweep.

As the time approached I should have liked to run away, but the
Avenger pursuant to orders was in the hall, and presently I heard
Joe on the staircase.  I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy manner of
coming up-stairs - his state boots being always too big for him -
and by the time it took him to read the names on the other floors
in the course of his ascent.  When at last he stopped outside our
door, I could hear his finger tracing over the painted letters of
my name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him breathing in at the
keyhole.  Finally he gave a faint single rap, and Pepper - such was
the compromising name of the avenging boy - announced "Mr. Gargery!"
I thought he never would have done wiping his feet, and that I must
have gone out to lift him off the mat, but at last he came in.

"Joe, how are you, Joe?"

"Pip, how AIR you, Pip?"

With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and his hat put
down on the floor between us, he caught both my hands and worked
them straight up and down, as if I had been the lastpatented Pump.

"I am glad to see you, Joe.  Give me your hat."

But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird's-nest
with eggs in it, wouldn't hear of parting with that piece of
property, and persisted in standing talking over it in a most
uncomfortable way.

"Which you have that growed," said Joe, "and that swelled, and that
gentle-folked;" Joe considered a little before he discovered this
word; "as to be sure you are a honour to your king and country."

"And you, Joe, look wonderfully well."

"Thank God," said Joe, "I'm ekerval to most.  And your sister, she's
no worse than she were.  And Biddy, she's ever right and ready.  And
all friends is no backerder, if not no forarder.  'Ceptin Wopsle;
he's had a drop."

All this time (still with both hands taking great care of the
bird's-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room,
and round and round the flowered pattern of my dressing-gown.

"Had a drop, Joe?"

"Why yes," said Joe, lowering his voice, "he's left the Church, and
went into the playacting.  Which the playacting have likeways
brought him to London along with me.  And his wish were," said Joe,
getting the bird's-nest under his left arm for the moment and
groping in it for an egg with his right; "if no offence, as I would
'and you that."

I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the crumpled playbill
of a small metropolitan theatre, announcing the first appearance,
in that very week, of "the celebrated Provincial Amateur of Roscian
renown, whose unique performance in the highest tragic walk of our
National Bard has lately occasioned so great a sensation in local
dramatic circles."

"Were you at his performance, Joe?" I inquired.

"I were," said Joe, with emphasis and solemnity.

"Was there a great sensation?"

"Why," said Joe, "yes, there certainly were a peck of orange-peel.
Partickler, when he see the ghost.  Though I put it to yourself,
sir, whether it were calc'lated to keep a man up to his work with a
good hart, to be continiwally cutting in betwixt him and the Ghost
with "Amen!"  A man may have had a misfortun' and been in the
Church," said Joe, lowering his voice to an argumentative and
feeling tone, "but that is no reason why you should put him out at
such a time.  Which I meantersay, if the ghost of a man's own father
cannot be allowed to claim his attention, what can, Sir?  Still
more, when his mourning 'at is unfortunately made so small as that
the weight of the black feathers brings it off, try to keep it on
how you may."

A ghost-seeing effect in Joe's own countenance informed me that
Herbert had entered the room.  So, I presented Joe to Herbert, who
held out his hand; but Joe backed from it, and held on by the
bird's-nest.

"Your servant, Sir," said Joe, "which I hope as you and Pip" - here
his eye fell on the Avenger, who was putting some toast on table,
and so plainly denoted an intention to make that young gentleman
one of the family, that I frowned it down and confused him more -
"I meantersay, you two gentlemen - which I hope as you get your
elths in this close spot?  For the present may be a werry good inn,
according to London opinions," said Joe, confidentially, "and I
believe its character do stand i; but I wouldn't keep a pig in it
myself - not in the case that I wished him to fatten wholesome and
to eat with a meller flavour on him."

Having borne this flattering testimony to the merits of our
dwelling-place, and having incidentally shown this tendency to call
me "sir," Joe, being invited to sit down to table, looked all round
the room for a suitable spot on which to deposit his hat - as if it
were only on some very few rare substances in nature that it could
find a resting place - and ultimately stood it on an extreme corner
of the chimney-piece, from which it ever afterwards fell off at
intervals.

"Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?" asked Herbert, who always
presided of a morning.

"Thankee, Sir," said Joe, stiff from head to foot, "I'll take
whichever is most agreeable to yourself."

"What do you say to coffee?"

"Thankee, Sir," returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the proposal,
"since you are so kind as make chice of coffee, I will not run
contrairy to your own opinions.  But don't you never find it a
little 'eating?"

"Say tea then," said Herbert, pouring it out.

Here Joe's hat tumbled off the mantel-piece, and he started out of
his chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact spot.
As if it were an absolute point of good breeding that it should
tumble off again soon.

"When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery?"

"Were it yesterday afternoon?" said Joe, after coughing behind his
hand, as if he had had time to catch the whooping-cough since he
came.  "No it were not.  Yes it were.  Yes.  It were yesterday
afternoon" (with an appearance of mingled wisdom, relief, and
strict impartiality).

"Have you seen anything of London, yet?"

"Why, yes, Sir," said Joe, "me and Wopsle went off straight to look
at the Blacking Ware'us.  But we didn't find that it come up to its
likeness in the red bills at the shop doors; which I meantersay,"
added Joe, in an explanatory manner, "as it is there drawd too
architectooralooral."

I really believe Joe would have prolonged this word (mightily
expressive to my mind of some architecture that I know) into a
perfect Chorus, but for his attention being providentially
attracted by his hat, which was toppling.  Indeed, it demanded from
him a constant attention, and a quickness of eye and hand, very
like that exacted by wicket-keeping.  He made extraordinary play
with it, and showed the greatest skill; now, rushing at it and
catching it neatly as it dropped; now, merely stopping it midway,
beating it up, and humouring it in various parts of the room and
against a good deal of the pattern of the paper on the wall, before
he felt it safe to close with it; finally, splashing it into the
slop-basin, where I took the liberty of laying hands upon it.

As to his shirt-collar, and his coat-collar, they were perplexing
to reflect upon - insoluble mysteries both.  Why should a man scrape
himself to that extent, before he could consider himself full
dressed?  Why should he suppose it necessary to be purified by
suffering for his holiday clothes?  Then he fell into such
unaccountable fits of meditation, with his fork midway between his
plate and his mouth; had his eyes attracted in such strange
directions; was afflicted with such remarkable coughs; sat so far
from the table, and dropped so much more than he ate, and pretended
that he hadn't dropped it; that I was heartily glad when Herbert
left us for the city.

I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling to know that this
was all my fault, and that if I had been easier with Joe, Joe would
have been easier with me.  I felt impatient of him and out of temper
with him; in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head.

"Us two being now alone, Sir," - began Joe.

"Joe," I interrupted, pettishly, "how can you call me, Sir?"

Joe looked at me for a single instant with something faintly like
reproach.  Utterly preposterous as his cravat was, and as his
collars were, I was conscious of a sort of dignity in the look.

"Us two being now alone," resumed Joe, "and me having the
intentions and abilities to stay not many minutes more, I will now
conclude - leastways begin - to mention what have led to my having
had the present honour.  For was it not," said Joe, with his old air
of lucid exposition, "that my only wish were to be useful to you, I
should not have had the honour of breaking wittles in the company
and abode of gentlemen."

I was so unwilling to see the look again, that I made no
remonstrance against this tone.

"Well, Sir," pursued Joe, "this is how it were.  I were at the
Bargemen t'other night, Pip;" whenever he subsided into affection,
he called me Pip, and whenever he relapsed into politeness he
called me Sir; "when there come up in his shay-cart, Pumblechook.
Which that same identical," said Joe, going down a new track, "do
comb my 'air the wrong way sometimes, awful, by giving out up and
down town as it were him which ever had your infant companionation
and were looked upon as a playfellow by yourself."

"Nonsense.  It was you, Joe."

"Which I fully believed it were, Pip," said Joe, slightly tossing
his head, "though it signify little now, Sir.  Well, Pip; this same
identical, which his manners is given to blusterous, come to me at
the Bargemen (wot a pipe and a pint of beer do give refreshment to
the working-man, Sir, and do not over stimilate), and his word
were, 'Joseph, Miss Havisham she wish to speak to you.'"

"Miss Havisham, Joe?"

"'She wish,' were Pumblechook's word, 'to speak to you.'"  Joe sat
and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

"Yes, Joe?  Go on, please."

"Next day, Sir," said Joe, looking at me as if I were a long way
off, "having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss A."

"Miss A., Joe?  Miss Havisham?"

"Which I say, Sir," replied Joe, with an air of legal formality, as
if he were making his will, "Miss A., or otherways Havisham.  Her
expression air then as follering:  'Mr. Gargery.  You air in
correspondence with Mr. Pip?'  Having had a letter from you, I were
able to say 'I am.'  (When I married your sister, Sir, I said 'I
will;' and when I answered your friend, Pip, I said 'I am.')  'Would
you tell him, then,' said she, 'that which Estella has come home
and would be glad to see him.'"

I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe.  I hope one remote cause
of its firing, may have been my consciousness that if I had known
his errand, I should have given him more encouragement.

"Biddy," pursued Joe, "when I got home and asked her fur to write
the message to you, a little hung back.  Biddy says, 'I know he will
be very glad to have it by word of mouth, it is holidaytime, you
want to see him, go!'  I have now concluded, Sir," said Joe, rising
from his chair, "and, Pip, I wish you ever well and ever prospering
to a greater and a greater heighth."

"But you are not going now, Joe?"

"Yes I am," said Joe.

"But you are coming back to dinner, Joe?"

"No I am not," said Joe.

Our eyes met, and all the "Sir" melted out of that manly heart as
he gave me his hand.

"Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded
together, as I may say, and one man's a blacksmith, and one's a
whitesmith, and one's a goldsmith, and one's a coppersmith.
Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come.  If
there's been any fault at all to-day, it's mine.  You and me is not
two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but
what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends.  It
ain't that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall
never see me no more in these clothes.  I'm wrong in these clothes.
I'm wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th' meshes.  You
won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge
dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe.  You won't find
half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to
see me, you come and put your head in at the forge window and see
Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt
apron, sticking to the old work.  I'm awful dull, but I hope I've
beat out something nigh the rights of this at last.  And so GOD
bless you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!"

I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was a simple dignity
in him.  The fashion of his dress could no more come in its way when
he spoke these words, than it could come in its way in Heaven.  He
touched me gently on the forehead, and went out.  As soon as I could
recover myself sufficiently, I hurried out after him and looked for
him in the neighbouring streets; but he was gone.

Chapter 28


It was clear that I must repair to our town next day, and in the
first flow of my repentance it was equally clear that I must stay
at Joe's.  But, when I had secured my box-place by to-morrow's coach
and had been down to Mr. Pocket's and back, I was not by any means
convinced on the last point, and began to invent reasons and make
excuses for putting up at the Blue Boar.  I should be an
inconvenience at Joe's; I was not expected, and my bed would not be
ready; I should be too far from Miss Havisham's, and she was
exacting and mightn't like it.  All other swindlers upon earth are
nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat
myself.  Surely a curious thing.  That I should innocently take a bad
half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough;
but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own
make, as good money!  An obliging stranger, under pretence of
compactly folding up my bank-notes for security's sake, abstracts
the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand
to mine, when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as
notes!

Having settled that I must go to the Blue Boar, my mind was much
disturbed by indecision whether or not to take the Avenger.  It was
tempting to think of that expensive Mercenary publicly airing his
boots in the archway of the Blue Boar's posting-yard; it was almost
solemn to imagine him casually produced in the tailor's shop and
confounding the disrespectful senses of Trabb's boy.  On the other
hand, Trabb's boy might worm himself into his intimacy and tell him
things; or, reckless and desperate wretch as I knew he could be,
might hoot him in the High-street, My patroness, too, might hear of
him, and not approve.  On the whole, I resolved to leave the Avenger
behind.

It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my place, and, as
winter had now come round, I should not arrive at my destination
until two or three hours after dark.  Our time of starting from the
Cross Keys was two o'clock.  I arrived on the ground with a quarter
of an hour to spare, attended by the Avenger - if I may connect
that expression with one who never attended on me if he could
possibly help it.

At that time it was customary to carry Convicts down to the
dockyards by stage-coach.  As I had often heard of them in the
capacity of outside passengers, and had more than once seen them on
the high road dangling their ironed legs over the coach roof, I had
no cause to be surprised when Herbert, meeting me in the yard, came
up and told me there were two convicts going down with me.  But I
had a reason that was an old reason now, for constitutionally
faltering whenever I heard the word convict.

"You don't mind them, Handel?" said Herbert.

"Oh no!"

"I thought you seemed as if you didn't like them?"

"I can't pretend that I do like them, and I suppose you don't
particularly.  But I don't mind them."

"See!  There they are," said Herbert, "coming out of the Tap.  What a
degraded and vile sight it is!"

They had been treating their guard, I suppose, for they had a
gaoler with them, and all three came out wiping their mouths on
their hands.  The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had
irons on their legs - irons of a pattern that I knew well.  They
wore the dress that I likewise knew well.  Their keeper had a brace
of pistols, and carried a thick-knobbed bludgeon under his arm; but
he was on terms of good understanding with them, and stood, with
them beside him, looking on at the putting-to of the horses, rather
with an air as if the convicts were an interesting Exhibition not
formally open at the moment, and he the Curator.  One was a taller
and stouter man than the other, and appeared as a matter of course,
according to the mysterious ways of the world both convict and
free, to have had allotted to him the smaller suit of clothes.  His
arms and legs were like great pincushions of those shapes, and his
attire disguised him absurdly; but I knew his half-closed eye at
one glance.  There stood the man whom I had seen on the settle at
the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, and who had brought
me down with his invisible gun!

It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no more than if he
had never seen me in his life.  He looked across at me, and his eye
appraised my watch-chain, and then he incidentally spat and said
something to the other convict, and they laughed and slued
themselves round with a clink of their coupling manacle, and looked
at something else.  The great numbers on their backs, as if they
were street doors; their coarse mangy ungainly outer surface, as if
they were lower animals; their ironed legs, apologetically
garlanded with pocket-handkerchiefs; and the way in which all
present looked at them and kept from them; made them (as Herbert
had said) a most disagreeable and degraded spectacle.

But this was not the worst of it.  It came out that the whole of the
back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from London,
and that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat
in front, behind the coachman.  Hereupon, a choleric gentleman, who
had taken the fourth place on that seat, flew into a most violent
passion, and said that it was a breach of contract to mix him up
with such villainous company, and that it was poisonous and
pernicious and infamous and shameful, and I don't know what else.
At this time the coach was ready and the coachman impatient, and we
were all preparing to get up, and the prisoners had come over with
their keeper - bringing with them that curious flavour of
bread-poultice, baize, rope-yarn, and hearthstone, which attends
the convict presence.

"Don't take it so much amiss, sir," pleaded the keeper to the angry
passenger; "I'll sit next you myself.  I'll put 'em on the outside
of the row.  They won't interfere with you, sir.  You needn't know
they're there."

"And don't blame me," growled the convict I had recognized.  "I
don't want to go.  I am quite ready to stay behind.  As fur as I am
concerned any one's welcome to my place."

"Or mine," said the other, gruffly.  "I wouldn't have incommoded
none of you, if I'd had my way."  Then, they both laughed, and began
cracking nuts, and spitting the shells about.  - As I really think I
should have liked to do myself, if I had been in their place and so
despised.

At length, it was voted that there was no help for the angry
gentleman, and that he must either go in his chance company or
remain behind.  So, he got into his place, still making complaints,
and the keeper got into the place next him, and the convicts hauled
themselves up as well as they could, and the convict I had
recognized sat behind me with his breath on the hair of my head.

"Good-bye, Handel!" Herbert called out as we started.  I thought
what a blessed fortune it was, that he had found another name for
me than Pip.

It is impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the
convict's breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along
my spine.  The sensation was like being touched in the marrow with
some pungent and searching acid, it set my very teeth on edge.  He
seemed to have more breathing business to do than another man, and
to make more noise in doing it; and I was conscious of growing
high-shoulderd on one side, in my shrinking endeavours to fend him
off.

The weather was miserably raw, and the two cursed the cold.  It made
us all lethargic before we had gone far, and when we had left the
Half-way House behind, we habitually dozed and shivered and were
silent.  I dozed off, myself, in considering the question whether I
ought to restore a couple of pounds sterling to this creature
before losing sight of him, and how it could best be done.  In the
act of dipping forward as if I were going to bathe among the
horses, I woke in a fright and took the question up again.

But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, although
I could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and
shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind
that blew at us.  Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a
screen against the wind, the convicts were closer to me than
before.  They very first words I heard them interchange as I became
conscious were the words of my own thought, "Two One Pound notes."

"How did he get 'em?" said the convict I had never seen.

"How should I know?" returned the other.  "He had 'em stowed away
somehows.  Giv him by friends, I expect."

"I wish," said the other, with a bitter curse upon the cold, "that
I had 'em here."

"Two one pound notes, or friends?"

"Two one pound notes.  I'd sell all the friends I ever had, for one,
and think it a blessed good bargain.  Well?  So he says - ?"

"So he says," resumed the convict I had recognized - "it was all
said and done in half a minute, behind a pile of timber in the
Dockyard - 'You're a-going to be discharged?'  Yes, I was.  Would I
find out that boy that had fed him and kep his secret, and give him
them two one pound notes?  Yes, I would.  And I did."

"More fool you," growled the other.  "I'd have spent 'em on a Man,
in wittles and drink.  He must have been a green one.  Mean to say he
knowed nothing of you?"

"Not a ha'porth.  Different gangs and different ships.  He was tried
again for prison breaking, and got made a Lifer."

"And was that - Honour! - the only time you worked out, in this
part of the country?"

"The only time."

"What might have been your opinion of the place?"

"A most beastly place.  Mudbank, mist, swamp, and work; work, swamp,
mist, and mudbank."

They both execrated the place in very strong language, and
gradually growled themselves out, and had nothing left to say.

After overhearing this dialogue, I should assuredly have got down
and been left in the solitude and darkness of the highway, but for
feeling certain that the man had no suspicion of my identity.
Indeed, I was not only so changed in the course of nature, but so
differently dressed and so differently circumstanced, that it was
not at all likely he could have known me without accidental help.
Still, the coincidence of our being together on the coach, was
sufficiently strange to fill me with a dread that some other
coincidence might at any moment connect me, in his hearing, with my
name.  For this reason, I resolved to alight as soon as we touched
the town, and put myself out of his hearing.  This device I executed
successfully.  My little portmanteau was in the boot under my feet;
I had but to turn a hinge to get it out:  I threw it down before me,
got down after it, and was left at the first lamp on the first
stones of the town pavement.  As to the convicts, they went their
way with the coach, and I knew at what point they would be spirited
off to the river.  In my fancy, I saw the boat with its convict crew
waiting for them at the slime-washed stairs, - again heard the
gruff "Give way, you!" like and order to dogs - again saw the
wicked Noah's Ark lying out on the black water.

I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my fear was
altogether undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon me.
As I walked on to the hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceeding
the mere apprehension of a painful or disagreeable recognition,
made me tremble.  I am confident that it took no distinctness of
shape, and that it was the revival for a few minutes of the terror
of childhood.

The coffee-room at the Blue Boar was empty, and I had not only
ordered my dinner there, but had sat down to it, before the waiter
knew me.  As soon as he had apologized for the remissness of his
memory, he asked me if he should send Boots for Mr. Pumblechook?

"No," said I, "certainly not."

The waiter (it was he who had brought up the Great Remonstrance
from the Commercials, on the day when I was bound) appeared
surprised, and took the earliest opportunity of putting a dirty old
copy of a local newspaper so directly in my way, that I took it up
and read this paragraph:

Our readers will learn, not altogether without interest, in
reference to the recent romantic rise in fortune of a young
artificer in iron of this neighbourhood (what a theme, by the way,
for the magic pen of our as yet not universally acknowledged
townsman TOOBY, the poet of our columns!) that the youth's earliest
patron, companion, and friend, was a highly-respected individual
not entirely unconnected with the corn and seed trade, and whose
eminently convenient and commodious business premises are situate
within a hundred miles of the High-street.  It is not wholly
irrespective of our personal feelings that we record HIM as the
Mentor of our young Telemachus, for it is good to know that our
town produced the founder of the latter's fortunes.  Does the
thoughtcontracted brow of the local Sage or the lustrous eye of
local Beauty inquire whose fortunes?  We believe that Quintin Matsys
was the BLACKSMITH of Antwerp.  VERB.  SAP.

I entertain a conviction, based upon large experience, that if in
the days of my prosperity I had gone to the North Pole, I should
have met somebody there, wandering Esquimaux or civilized man, who
would have told me that Pumblechook was my earliest patron and the
founder of my fortunes.

Chapter 29


Betimes in the morning I was up and out.  It was too early yet to go
to Miss Havisham's, so I loitered into the country on Miss
Havisham's side of town - which was not Joe's side; I could go

there to-morrow - thinking about my patroness, and painting
brilliant pictures of her plans for me.

She had adopted Estella, she had as good as adopted me, and it
could not fail to be her intention to bring us together.  She
reserved it for me to restore the desolate house, admit the
sunshine into the dark rooms, set the clocks a-going and the cold
hearths a-blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the vermin - in
short, do all the shining deeds of the young Knight of romance, and
marry the Princess.  I had stopped to look at the house as I passed;
and its seared red brick walls, blocked windows, and strong green
ivy clasping even the stacks of chimneys with its twigs and
tendons, as if with sinewy old arms, had made up a rich attractive
mystery, of which I was the hero.  Estella was the inspiration of
it, and the heart of it, of course.  But, though she had taken such
strong possession of me, though my fancy and my hope were so set
upon her, though her influence on my boyish life and character had
been all-powerful, I did not, even that romantic morning, invest
her with any attributes save those she possessed.  I mention this in
this place, of a fixed purpose, because it is the clue by which I
am to be followed into my poor labyrinth.  According to my
experience, the conventional notion of a lover cannot be always
true.  The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the
love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible.
Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always,
that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace,
against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that
could be.  Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew
it, and it had no more influence in restraining me, than if I had
devoutly believed her to be human perfection.

I so shaped out my walk as to arrive at the gate at my old time.
When I had rung at the bell with an unsteady hand, I turned my back
upon the gate, while I tried to get my breath and keep the beating
of my heart moderately quiet.  I heard the side door open, and steps
come across the court-yard; but I pretended not to hear, even when
the gate swung on its rusty hinges.

Being at last touched on the shoulder, I started and turned.  I
started much more naturally then, to find myself confronted by a
man in a sober grey dress.  The last man I should have expected to
see in that place of porter at Miss Havisham's door.

"Orlick!"

"Ah, young master, there's more changes than yours.  But come in,
come in.  It's opposed to my orders to hold the gate open."

I entered and he swung it, and locked it, and took the key out.
"Yes!" said he, facing round, after doggedly preceding me a few
steps towards the house.  "Here I am!"

"How did you come here?"

"I come her," he retorted, "on my legs.  I had my box brought
alongside me in a barrow."

"Are you here for good?"

"I ain't her for harm, young master, I suppose?"

I was not so sure of that.  I had leisure to entertain the retort in
my mind, while he slowly lifted his heavy glance from the pavement,
up my legs and arms, to my face.

"Then you have left the forge?" I said.

"Do this look like a forge?" replied Orlick, sending his glance all
round him with an air of injury.  "Now, do it look like it?"

I asked him how long he had left Gargery's forge?

"One day is so like another here," he replied, "that I don't know
without casting it up.  However, I come her some time since you
left."

"I could have told you that, Orlick."

"Ah!" said he, drily.  "But then you've got to be a scholar."

By this time we had come to the house, where I found his room to be
one just within the side door, with a little window in it looking
on the court-yard.  In its small proportions, it was not unlike the
kind of place usually assigned to a gate-porter in Paris.  Certain
keys were hanging on the wall, to which he now added the gate-key;
and his patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner division or
recess.  The whole had a slovenly confined and sleepy look, like a
cage for a human dormouse:  while he, looming dark and heavy in the
shadow of a corner by the window, looked like the human dormouse
for whom it was fitted up - as indeed he was.

"I never saw this room before," I remarked; "but there used to be
no Porter here."

"No," said he; "not till it got about that there was no protection
on the premises, and it come to be considered dangerous, with
convicts and Tag and Rag and Bobtail going up and down.  And then I
was recommended to the place as a man who could give another man as
good as he brought, and I took it.  It's easier than bellowsing and
hammering. - That's loaded, that is."

My eye had been caught by a gun with a brass bound stock over the
chimney-piece, and his eye had followed mine.

"Well," said I, not desirous of more conversation, "shall I go up
to Miss Havisham?"

"Burn me, if I know!" he retorted, first stretching himself and
then shaking himself; "my orders ends here, young master.  I give
this here bell a rap with this here hammer, and you go on along the
passage till you meet somebody."

"I am expected, I believe?"

"Burn me twice over, if I can say!" said he.

Upon that, I turned down the long passage which I had first trodden
in my thick boots, and he made his bell sound.  At the end of the
passage, while the bell was still reverberating, I found Sarah
Pocket:  who appeared to have now become constitutionally green and
yellow by reason of me.

"Oh!" said she.  "You, is it, Mr. Pip?"

"It is, Miss Pocket.  I am glad to tell you that Mr. Pocket and
family are all well."

"Are they any wiser?" said Sarah, with a dismal shake of the head;
"they had better be wiser, than well.  Ah, Matthew, Matthew!  You know
your way, sir?"

Tolerably, for I had gone up the staircase in the dark, many a
time.  I ascended it now, in lighter boots than of yore, and tapped
in my old way at the door of Miss Havisham's room.  "Pip's rap," I
heard her say, immediately; "come in, Pip."

She was in her chair near the old table, in the old dress, with her
two hands crossed on her stick, her chin resting on them, and her
eyes on the fire.  Sitting near her, with the white shoe that had
never been worn, in her hand, and her head bent as she looked at
it, was an elegant lady whom I had never seen.

"Come in, Pip," Miss Havisham continued to mutter, without looking
round or up; "come in, Pip, how do you do, Pip?  so you kiss my hand
as if I were a queen, eh?  - Well?"

She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes, and repeated in
a grimly playful manner,

"Well?"

"I heard, Miss Havisham," said I, rather at a loss, "that you were
so kind as to wish me to come and see you, and I came directly."

"Well?"

The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and
looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella's
eyes.  But she was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so
much more womanly, in all things winning admiration had made such
wonderful advance, that I seemed to have made none.  I fancied, as I
looked at her, that I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and
common boy again.  O the sense of distance and disparity that came
upon me, and the inaccessibility that came about her!

She gave me her hand.  I stammered something about the pleasure I
felt in seeing her again, and about my having looked forward to it
for a long, long time.

"Do you find her much changed, Pip?" asked Miss Havisham, with her
greedy look, and striking her stick upon a chair that stood between
them, as a sign to me to sit down there.

"When I came in, Miss Havisham, I thought there was nothing of
Estella in the face or figure; but now it all settles down so
curiously into the old--"

"What?  You are not going to say into the old Estella?" Miss
Havisham interrupted.  "She was proud and insulting, and you wanted
to go away from her.  Don't you remember?"

I said confusedly that that was long ago, and that I knew no better
then, and the like.  Estella smiled with perfect composure, and said
she had no doubt of my having been quite right, and of her having
been very disagreeable.

"Is he changed?" Miss Havisham asked her.

"Very much," said Estella, looking at me.

"Less coarse and common?" said Miss Havisham, playing with
Estella's hair.

Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her hand, and laughed
again, and looked at me, and put the shoe down.  She treated me as a
boy still, but she lured me on.

We sat in the dreamy room among the old strange influences which
had so wrought upon me, and I learnt that she had but just come
home from France, and that she was going to London.  Proud and
wilful as of old, she had brought those qualities into such
subjection to her beauty that it was impossible and out of nature -
or I thought so - to separate them from her beauty.  Truly it was
impossible to dissociate her presence from all those wretched
hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed my boyhood
- from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first made me
ashamed of home and Joe - from all those visions that had raised
her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the
anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the
wooden window of the forge and flit away.  In a word, it was
impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present,
from the innermost life of my life.

It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the day,
and return to the hotel at night, and to London to-morrow.  When we
had conversed for a while, Miss Havisham sent us two out to walk in
the neglected garden:  on our coming in by-and-by, she said, I
should wheel her about a little as in times of yore.

So, Estella and I went out into the garden by the gate through
which I had strayed to my encounter with the pale young gentleman,
now Herbert; I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the very hem of
her dress; she, quite composed and most decidedly not worshipping
the hem of mine.  As we drew near to the place of encounter, she
stopped and said:

"I must have been a singular little creature to hide and see that
fight that day:  but I did, and I enjoyed it very much."

"You rewarded me very much."

"Did I?" she replied, in an incidental and forgetful way.  "I
remember I entertained a great objection to your adversary, because
I took it ill that he should be brought here to pester me with his
company."

"He and I are great friends now."

"Are you?  I think I recollect though, that you read with his
father?"

"Yes."

I made the admission with reluctance, for it seemed to have a
boyish look, and she already treated me more than enough like a
boy.

"Since your change of fortune and prospects, you have changed your
companions," said Estella.

"Naturally," said I.

"And necessarily," she added, in a haughty tone; "what was fit
company for you once, would be quite unfit company for you now."

In my conscience, I doubt very much whether I had any lingering
intention left, of going to see Joe; but if I had, this observation
put it to flight.

"You had no idea of your impending good fortune, in those times?"
said Estella, with a slight wave of her hand, signifying in the
fighting times.

"Not the least."

The air of completeness and superiority with which she walked at my
side, and the air of youthfulness and submission with which I
walked at hers, made a contrast that I strongly felt.  It would have
rankled in me more than it did, if I had not regarded myself as
eliciting it by being so set apart for her and assigned to her.

The garden was too overgrown and rank for walking in with ease, and
after we had made the round of it twice or thrice, we came out
again into the brewery yard.  I showed her to a nicety where I had
seen her walking on the casks, that first old day, and she said,
with a cold and careless look in that direction, "Did I?"  I
reminded her where she had come out of the house and given me my
meat and drink, and she said, "I don't remember."  "Not remember
that you made me cry?" said I.  "No," said she, and shook her head
and looked about her.  I verily believe that her not remembering and
not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly - and that is
the sharpest crying of all.

"You must know," said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant
and beautiful woman might, "that I have no heart - if that has
anything to do with my memory."

I got through some jargon to the effect that I took the liberty of
doubting that.  That I knew better.  That there could be no such
beauty without it.

"Oh!  I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt,"
said Estella, "and, of course, if it ceased to beat I should cease
to be.  But you know what I mean.  I have no softness there, no -
sympathy - sentiment - nonsense."

What was it that was borne in upon my mind when she stood still and
looked attentively at me?  Anything that I had seen in Miss
Havisham?  No.  In some of her looks and gestures there was that
tinge of resemblance to Miss Havisham which may often be noticed to
have been acquired by children, from grown person with whom they
have been much associated and secluded, and which, when childhood
is passed, will produce a remarkable occasional likeness of
expression between faces that are otherwise quite different.  And
yet I could not trace this to Miss Havisham.  I looked again, and
though she was still looking at me, the suggestion was gone.

What was it?

"I am serious," said Estella, not so much with a frown (for her
brow was smooth) as with a darkening of her face; "if we are to be
thrown much together, you had better believe it at once.  No!"
imperiously stopping me as I opened my lips.  "I have not bestowed
my tenderness anywhere.  I have never had any such thing."

In another moment we were in the brewery so long disused, and she
pointed to the high gallery where I had seen her going out on that
same first day, and told me she remembered to have been up there,
and to have seen me standing scared below.  As my eyes followed her
white hand, again the same dim suggestion that I could not possibly
grasp, crossed me.  My involuntary start occasioned her to lay her
hand upon my arm.  Instantly the ghost passed once more, and was
gone.

What was it?

"What is the matter?" asked Estella.  "Are you scared again?"

"I should be, if I believed what you said just now," I replied, to
turn it off.

"Then you don't?  Very well.  It is said, at any rate.  Miss Havisham
will soon be expecting you at your old post, though I think that
might be laid aside now, with other old belongings.  Let us make one
more round of the garden, and then go in.  Come!  You shall not shed
tears for my cruelty to-day; you shall be my Page, and give me your
shoulder."

Her handsome dress had trailed upon the ground.  She held it in one
hand now, and with the other lightly touched my shoulder as we
walked.  We walked round the ruined garden twice or thrice more, and
it was all in bloom for me.  If the green and yellow growth of weed
in the chinks of the old wall had been the most precious flowers
that ever blew, it could not have been more cherished in my
remembrance.

There was no discrepancy of years between us, to remove her far
from me; we were of nearly the same age, though of course the age
told for more in her case than in mine; but the air of
inaccessibility which her beauty and her manner gave her, tormented
me in the midst of my delight, and at the height of the assurance I
felt that our patroness had chosen us for one another.  Wretched
boy!

At last we went back into the house, and there I heard, with
surprise, that my guardian had come down to see Miss Havisham on
business, and would come back to dinner.  The old wintry branches of
chandeliers in the room where the mouldering table was spread, had
been lighted while we were out, and Miss Havisham was in her chair
and waiting for me.

It was like pushing the chair itself back into the past, when we
began the old slow circuit round about the ashes of the bridal
feast.  But, in the funereal room, with that figure of the grave
fallen back in the chair fixing its eyes upon her, Estella looked
more bright and beautiful than before, and I was under stronger
enchantment.

The time so melted away, that our early dinner-hour drew close at
hand, and Estella left us to prepare herself.  We had stopped near
the centre of the long table, and Miss Havisham, with one of her
withered arms stretched out of the chair, rested that clenched hand
upon the yellow cloth.  As Estella looked back over her shoulder
before going out at the door, Miss Havisham kissed that hand to
her, with a ravenous intensity that was of its kind quite dreadful.

Then, Estella being gone and we two left alone, she turned to me,
and said in a whisper:

"Is she beautiful, graceful, well-grown?  Do you admire her?"

"Everybody must who sees her, Miss Havisham."

She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head close down to hers
as she sat in the chair.  "Love her, love her, love her!  How does
she use you?"

Before I could answer (if I could have answered so difficult a
question at all), she repeated, "Love her, love her, love her!  If
she favours you, love her.  If she wounds you, love her.  If she
tears your heart to pieces - and as it gets older and stronger, it
will tear deeper - love her, love her, love her!"

Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was joined to her
utterance of these words.  I could feel the muscles of the thin arm
round my neck, swell with the vehemence that possessed her.

"Hear me, Pip!  I adopted her to be loved.  I bred her and educated
her, to be loved.  I developed her into what she is, that she might
be loved.  Love her!"

She said the word often enough, and there could be no doubt that
she meant to say it; but if the often repeated word had been hate
instead of love - despair - revenge - dire death - it could not
have sounded from her lips more like a curse.

"I'll tell you," said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper,
"what real love is.  It is blind devotion, unquestioning
self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against
yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart
and soul to the smiter - as I did!"

When she came to that, and to a wild cry that followed that, I
caught her round the waist.  For she rose up in the chair, in her
shroud of a dress, and struck at the air as if she would as soon
have struck herself against the wall and fallen dead.

All this passed in a few seconds.  As I drew her down into her
chair, I was conscious of a scent that I knew, and turning, saw my
guardian in the room.

He always carried (I have not yet mentioned it, I think) a
pocket-handkerchief of rich silk and of imposing proportions, which
was of great value to him in his profession.  I have seen him so
terrify a client or a witness by ceremoniously unfolding this
pocket-handkerchief as if he were immediately going to blow his
nose, and then pausing, as if he knew he should not have time to do
it before such client or witness committed himself, that the
self-committal has followed directly, quite as a matter of course.
When I saw him in the room, he had this expressive
pockethandkerchief in both hands, and was looking at us.  On meeting
my eye, he said plainly, by a momentary and silent pause in that
attitude, "Indeed?  Singular!" and then put the handkerchief to its
right use with wonderful effect.

Miss Havisham had seen him as soon as I, and was (like everybody
else) afraid of him.  She made a strong attempt to compose herself,
and stammered that he was as punctual as ever.

"As punctual as ever," he repeated, coming up to us.  "(How do you
do, Pip?  Shall I give you a ride, Miss Havisham?  Once round?)
And so you are here, Pip?"

I told him when I had arrived, and how Miss Havisham had wished me
to come and see Estella.  To which he replied, "Ah!  Very fine young
lady!"  Then he pushed Miss Havisham in her chair before him, with
one of his large hands, and put the other in his trousers-pocket as
if the pocket were full of secrets.

"Well, Pip!  How often have you seen Miss Estella before?" said he,
when he came to a stop.

"How often?"

"Ah!  How many times?  Ten thousand times?"

"Oh!  Certainly not so many."

"Twice?"

"Jaggers," interposed Miss Havisham, much to my relief; "leave my
Pip alone, and go with him to your dinner."

He complied, and we groped our way down the dark stairs together.
While we were still on our way to those detached apartments across
the paved yard at the back, he asked me how often I had seen Miss
Havisham eat and drink; offering me a breadth of choice, as usual,
between a hundred times and once.

I considered, and said, "Never."

"And never will, Pip," he retorted, with a frowning smile.  "She has
never allowed herself to be seen doing either, since she lived this
present life of hers.  She wanders about in the night, and then lays
hands on such food as she takes."

"Pray, sir," said I, "may I ask you a question?"

"You may," said he, "and I may decline to answer it.  Put your
question."

"Estella's name.  Is it Havisham or - ?"  I had nothing to add.

"Or what?" said he.

"Is it Havisham?"

"It is Havisham."

This brought us to the dinner-table, where she and Sarah Pocket
awaited us.  Mr.  Jaggers presided, Estella sat opposite to him, I
faced my green and yellow friend.  We dined very well, and were
waited on by a maid-servant whom I had never seen in all my comings
and goings, but who, for anything I know, had been in that
mysterious house the whole time.  After dinner, a bottle of choice
old port was placed before my guardian (he was evidently well
acquainted with the vintage), and the two ladies left us.

Anything to equal the determined reticence of Mr. Jaggers under that
roof, I never saw elsewhere, even in him.  He kept his very looks to
himself, and scarcely directed his eyes to Estella's face once
during dinner.  When she spoke to him, he listened, and in due
course answered, but never looked at her, that I could see.  On the
other hand, she often looked at him, with interest and curiosity,
if not distrust, but his face never, showed the least
consciousness.  Throughout dinner he took a dry delight in making
Sarah Pocket greener and yellower, by often referring in
conversation with me to my expectations; but here, again, he showed
no consciousness, and even made it appear that he extorted - and
even did extort, though I don't know how - those references out of
my innocent self.

And when he and I were left alone together, he sat with an air upon
him of general lying by in consequence of information he possessed,
that really was too much for me.  He cross-examined his very wine
when he had nothing else in hand.  He held it between himself and
the candle, tasted the port, rolled it in his mouth, swallowed it,
looked at his glass again, smelt the port, tried it, drank it,
filled again, and cross-examined the glass again, until I was as
nervous as if I had known the wine to be telling him something to
my disadvantage.  Three or four times I feebly thought I would start
conversation; but whenever he saw me going to ask him anything, he
looked at me with his glass in his hand, and rolling his wine about
in his mouth, as if requesting me to take notice that it was of no
use, for he couldn't answer.

I think Miss Pocket was conscious that the sight of me involved her
in the danger of being goaded to madness, and perhaps tearing off
her cap - which was a very hideous one, in the nature of a muslin
mop - and strewing the ground with her hair - which assuredly had
never grown on her head.  She did not appear when we afterwards went
up to Miss Havisham's room, and we four played at whist.  In the
interval, Miss Havisham, in a fantastic way, had put some of the
most beautiful jewels from her dressing-table into Estella's hair,
and about her bosom and arms; and I saw even my guardian look at
her from under his thick eyebrows, and raise them a little, when
her loveliness was before him, with those rich flushes of glitter
and colour in it.

Of the manner and extent to which he took our trumps into custody,
and came out with mean little cards at the ends of hands, before
which the glory of our Kings and Queens was utterly abased, I say
nothing; nor, of the feeling that I had, respecting his looking
upon us personally in the light of three very obvious and poor
riddles that he had found out long ago.  What I suffered from, was
the incompatibility between his cold presence and my feelings
towards Estella.  It was not that I knew I could never bear to speak
to him about her, that I knew I could never bear to hear him creak
his boots at her, that I knew I could never bear to see him wash
his hands of her; it was, that my admiration should be within a
foot or two of him - it was, that my feelings should be in the same
place with him - that, was the agonizing circumstance.

We played until nine o'clock, and then it was arranged that when
Estella came to London I should be forewarned of her coming and
should meet her at the coach; and then I took leave of her, and
touched her and left her.

My guardian lay at the Boar in the next room to mine.  Far into the
night, Miss Havisham's words, "Love her, love her, love her!"
sounded in my ears.  I adapted them for my own repetition, and said
to my pillow, "I love her, I love her, I love her!" hundreds of
times.  Then, a burst of gratitude came upon me, that she should be
destined for me, once the blacksmith's boy.  Then, I thought if she
were, as I feared, by no means rapturously grateful for that
destiny yet, when would she begin to be interested in me?  When
should I awaken the heart within her, that was mute and sleeping
now?

Ah me!  I thought those were high and great emotions.  But I never
thought there was anything low and small in my keeping away from
Joe, because I knew she would be contemptuous of him.  It was but a
day gone, and Joe had brought the tears into my eyes; they had soon
dried, God forgive me! soon dried.

Chapter 30


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 mid-day 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 ante-chamber 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-of-course 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 endowed with expectations only?  And
even if he had not told you so - though that is a very large If, I
grant - could you believe that of all men in London, Mr. Jaggers is
the man to hold his present relations towards you unless he were
sure of his ground?"

I said I could not deny that this was a strong point.  I said it
(people often do so, in such cases) like a rather reluctant
concession to truth and justice; - as if I wanted to deny it!

"I should think it was a strong point," said Herbert, "and I should
think you would be puzzled to imagine a stronger; as to the rest,
you must bide your guardian's time, and he must bide his client's
time.  You'll be one-and-twenty before you know where you are, and
then perhaps you'll get some further enlightenment.  At all events,
you'll be nearer getting it, for it must come at last."

"What a hopeful disposition you have!" said I, gratefully admiring
his cheery ways.

"I ought to have," said Herbert, "for I have not much else.  I must
acknowledge, by-the-bye, that the good sense of what I have just
said is not my own, but my father's.  The only remark I ever heard
him make on your story, was the final one:  "The thing is settled
and done, or Mr. Jaggers would not be in it."  And now before I say
anything more about my father, or my father's son, and repay
confidence with confidence, I want to make myself seriously
disagreeable to you for a moment - positively repulsive."

"You won't succeed," said I.

"Oh yes I shall!" said he.  "One, two, three, and now I am in for
it.  Handel, my good fellow;" though he spoke in this light tone, he
was very much in earnest:  "I have been thinking since we have been
talking with our feet on this fender, that Estella surely cannot be
a condition of your inheritance, if she was never referred to by
your guardian.  Am I right in so understanding what you have told
me, as that he never referred to her, directly or indirectly, in
any way?  Never even hinted, for instance, that your patron might
have views as to your marriage ultimately?"

"Never."

"Now, Handel, I am quite free from the flavour of sour grapes, upon
my soul and honour!  Not being bound to her, can you not detach
yourself from her?  - I told you I should be disagreeable."

I turned my head aside, for, with a rush and a sweep, like the old
marsh winds coming up from the sea, a feeling like that which had
subdued me on the morning when I left the forge, when the mists
were solemnly rising, and when I laid my hand upon the village
finger-post, smote upon my heart again.  There was silence between
us for a little while.

"Yes; but my dear Handel," Herbert went on, as if we had been
talking instead of silent, "its having been so strongly rooted in
the breast of a boy whom nature and circumstances made so romantic,
renders it very serious.  Think of her bringing-up, and think of
Miss Havisham.  Think of what she is herself (now I am repulsive and
you abominate me).  This may lead to miserable things."

"I know it, Herbert," said I, with my head still turned away, "but
I can't help it."

"You can't detach yourself?"

"No.  Impossible!"

"You can't try, Handel?"

"No.  Impossible!"

"Well!" said Herbert, getting up with a lively shake as if he had
been asleep, and stirring the fire; "now I'll endeavour to make
myself agreeable again!"

So he went round the room and shook the curtains out, put the
chairs in their places, tidied the books and so forth that were
lying about, looked into the hall, peeped into the letter-box, shut
the door, and came back to his chair by the fire:  where he sat
down, nursing his left leg in both arms.

"I was going to say a word or two, Handel, concerning my father and
my father's son.  I am afraid it is scarcely necessary for my
father's son to remark that my father's establishment is not
particularly brilliant in its housekeeping."

"There is always plenty, Herbert," said I:  to say something
encouraging.

"Oh yes! and so the dustman says, I believe, with the strongest
approval, and so does the marine-store shop in the back street.
Gravely, Handel, for the subject is grave enough, you know how it
is, as well as I do.  I suppose there was a time once when my father
had not given matters up; but if ever there was, the time is gone.
May I ask you if you have ever had an opportunity of remarking,
down in your part of the country, that the children of not exactly
suitable marriages, are always most particularly anxious to be
married?"

This was such a singular question, that I asked him in return, "Is
it so?"

"I don't know," said Herbert, "that's what I want to know.  Because
it is decidedly the case with us.  My poor sister Charlotte who was
next me and died before she was fourteen, was a striking example.
Little Jane is the same.  In her desire to be matrimonially
established, you might suppose her to have passed her short
existence in the perpetual contemplation of domestic bliss.  Little
Alick in a frock has already made arrangements for his union with a
suitable young person at Kew.  And indeed, I think we are all
engaged, except the baby."

"Then you are?" said I.

"I am," said Herbert; "but it's a secret."

I assured him of my keeping the secret, and begged to be favoured
with further particulars.  He had spoken so sensibly and feelingly
of my weakness that I wanted to know something about his strength.

"May I ask the name?" I said.

"Name of Clara," said Herbert.

"Live in London?"

"Yes.  Perhaps I ought to mention," said Herbert, who had become
curiously crestfallen and meek, since we entered on the interesting
theme, "that she is rather below my mother's nonsensical family
notions.  Her father had to do with the victualling of
passenger-ships.  I think he was a species of purser."

"What is he now?" said I.

"He's an invalid now," replied Herbert.

"Living on - ?"

"On the first floor," said Herbert.  Which was not at all what I
meant, for I had intended my question to apply to his means.  "I
have never seen him, for he has always kept his room overhead,
since I have known Clara.  But I have heard him constantly.  He makes
tremendous rows - roars, and pegs at the floor with some frightful
instrument."  In looking at me and then laughing heartily, Herbert
for the time recovered his usual lively manner.

"Don't you expect to see him?" said I.

"Oh yes, I constantly expect to see him," returned Herbert,
"because I never hear him, without expecting him to come tumbling
through the ceiling.  But I don't know how long the rafters may
hold."

When he had once more laughed heartily, he became meek again, and
told me that the moment he began to realize Capital, it was his
intention to marry this young lady.  He added as a self-evident
proposition, engendering low spirits, "But you can't marry, you
know, while you're looking about you."

As we contemplated the fire, and as I thought what a difficult
vision to realize this same Capital sometimes was, I put my hands
in my pockets.  A folded piece of paper in one of them attracting my
attention, I opened it and found it to be the playbill I had
received from Joe, relative to the celebrated provincial amateur of
Roscian renown.  "And bless my heart," I involuntarily added aloud,
"it's to-night!"

This changed the subject in an instant, and made us hurriedly
resolve to go to the play.  So, when I had pledged myself to comfort
and abet Herbert in the affair of his heart by all practicable and
impracticable means, and when Herbert had told me that his
affianced already knew me by reputation and that I should be
presented to her, and when we had warmly shaken hands upon our
mutual confidence, we blew out our candles, made up our fire,
locked our door, and issued forth in quest of Mr. Wopsle and
Denmark.

Chapter 31


On our arrival in Denmark, we found the king and queen of that
country elevated in two arm-chairs on a kitchen-table, holding a
Court.  The whole of the Danish nobility were in attendance;
consisting of a noble boy in the wash-leather boots of a gigantic
ancestor, a venerable Peer with a dirty face who seemed to have
risen from the people late in life, and the Danish chivalry with a
comb in its hair and a pair of white silk legs, and presenting on
the whole a feminine appearance.  My gifted townsman stood gloomily
apart, with folded arms, and I could have wished that his curls and
forehead had been more probable.

Several curious little circumstances transpired as the action
proceeded.  The late king of the country not only appeared to have
been troubled with a cough at the time of his decease, but to have
taken it with him to the tomb, and to have brought it back.  The
royal phantom also carried a ghostly manuscript round its
truncheon, to which it had the appearance of occasionally
referring, and that, too, with an air of anxiety and a tendency to
lose the place of reference which were suggestive of a state of
mortality.  It was this, I conceive, which led to the Shade's being
advised by the gallery to "turn over!" - a recommendation which it
took extremely ill.  It was likewise to be noted of this majestic
spirit that whereas it always appeared with an air of having been
out a long time and walked an immense distance, it perceptibly came
from a closely contiguous wall.  This occasioned its terrors to be
received derisively.  The Queen of Denmark, a very buxom lady,
though no doubt historically brazen, was considered by the public
to have too much brass about her; her chin being attached to her
diadem by a broad band of that metal (as if she had a gorgeous
toothache), her waist being encircled by another, and each of her
arms by another, so that she was openly mentioned as "the
kettledrum."  The noble boy in the ancestral boots, was
inconsistent; representing himself, as it were in one breath, as an
able seaman, a strolling actor, a grave-digger, a clergyman, and a
person of the utmost importance at a Court fencing-match, on the
authority of whose practised eye and nice discrimination the finest
strokes were judged.  This gradually led to a want of toleration for
him, and even - on his being detected in holy orders, and declining
to perform the funeral service - to the general indignation taking
the form of nuts.  Lastly, Ophelia was a prey to such slow musical
madness, that when, in course of time, she had taken off her white
muslin scarf, folded it up, and buried it, a sulky man who had been
long cooling his impatient nose against an iron bar in the front
row of the gallery, growled, "Now the baby's put to bed let's have
supper!"  Which, to say the least of it, was out of keeping.

Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents accumulated with
playful effect.  Whenever that undecided Prince had to ask a
question or state a doubt, the public helped him out with it.  As
for example; on the question whether 'twas nobler in the mind to
suffer, some roared yes, and some no, and some inclining to both
opinions said "toss up for it;" and quite a Debating Society arose.
When he asked what should such fellows as he do crawling between
earth and heaven, he was encouraged with loud cries of "Hear,
hear!"  When he appeared with his stocking disordered (its disorder
expressed, according to usage, by one very neat fold in the top,
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
honour."

"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, Oh, no doubt they would improve.

"Did you observe, gentlemen," said Mr. Waldengarver, "that there was
a man in the gallery who endeavoured 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."

"Oh 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 role (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.

Chapter 32


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 to-morrow by the mid-day
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 neighbourhood
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 as 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 a deep one, Mr. Pip!  Would you like to have a look at
Newgate?  Have you time to spare?"

I had so much time to spare, that the proposal came as a relief,
notwithstanding its irreconcilability with my latent desire to keep
my eye on the coach-office.  Muttering that I would make the inquiry
whether I had time to walk with him, I went into the office, and
ascertained from the clerk with the nicest precision and much to
the trying of his temper, the earliest moment at which the coach
could be expected - which I knew beforehand, quite as well as he.  I
then rejoined Mr. Wemmick, and affecting to consult my watch and to
be surprised by the information I had received, accepted his offer.

We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed through the
lodge where some fetters were hanging up on the bare walls among
the prison rules, into the interior of the jail.  At that time,
jails were much neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction
consequent on all public wrong-doing - and which is always its
heaviest and longest punishment - was still far off.  So, felons
were not lodged and fed better than soldiers (to say nothing of
paupers), and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable
object of improving the flavour of their soup.  It was visiting time
when Wemmick took me in; and a potman was going his rounds with
beer; and the prisoners, behind bars in yards, were buying beer,
and talking to friends; and a frouzy, ugly, disorderly, depressing
scene it was.

It struck me that Wemmick walked among the prisoners, much as a
gardener might walk among his plants.  This was first put into my
head by his seeing a shoot that had come up in the night, and
saying, "What, Captain Tom?  Are you there?  Ah, indeed!" and also,
"Is that Black Bill behind the cistern?  Why I didn't look for you
these two months; how do you find yourself?"  Equally in his
stopping at the bars and attending to anxious whisperers - always
singly - Wemmick with his post-office in an immovable state, looked
at them while in conference, as if he were taking particular notice
of the advance they had made, since last observed, towards coming
out in full blow at their trial.

He was highly popular, and I found that he took the familiar
department of Mr. Jaggers's business:  though something of the state
of Mr. Jaggers hung about him too, forbidding approach beyond
certain limits.  His personal recognition of each successive client
was comprised in a nod, and in his settling his hat a little easier
on his head with both hands, and then tightening the postoffice,
and putting his hands in his pockets.  In one or two instances,
there was a difficulty respecting the raising of fees, and then Mr.
Wemmick, backing as far as possible from the insufficient money
produced, said, "it's no use, my boy.  I'm only a subordinate.  I
can't take it.  Don't go on in that way with a subordinate.  If you
are unable to make up your quantum, my boy, you had better address
yourself to a principal; there are plenty of principals in the
profession, you know, and what is not worth the while of one, may
be worth the while of another; that's my recommendation to you,
speaking as a subordinate.  Don't try on useless measures.  Why
should you?  Now, who's next?"

Thus, we walked through Wemmick's greenhouse, until he turned to me
and said, "Notice the man I shall shake hands with."  I should have
done so, without the preparation, as he had shaken hands with no
one yet.

Almost as soon as he had spoken, a portly upright man (whom I can
see now, as I write) in a well-worn olive-coloured frock-coat, with
a peculiar pallor over-spreading the red in his complexion, and
eyes that went wandering about when he tried to fix them, came up
to a corner of the bars, and put his hand to his hat - which had a
greasy and fatty surface like cold broth - with a half-serious and
half-jocose military salute.

"Colonel, to you!" said Wemmick; "how are you, Colonel?"

"All right, Mr. Wemmick."

"Everything was done that could be done, but the evidence was too
strong for us, Colonel."

"Yes, it was too strong, sir - but I don't care."

"No, no," said Wemmick, coolly, "you don't care."  Then, turning to
me, "Served His Majesty this man.  Was a soldier in the line and
bought his discharge."

I said, "Indeed?" and the man's eyes looked at me, and then looked
over my head, and then looked all round me, and then he drew his
hand across his lips and laughed.

"I think I shall be out of this on Monday, sir," he said to
Wemmick.

"Perhaps," returned my friend, "but there's no knowing."

"I am glad to have the chance of bidding you good-bye, Mr. Wemmick,"
said the man, stretching out his hand between two bars.

"Thankye," said Wemmick, shaking hands with him.  "Same to you,
Colonel."

"If what I had upon me when taken, had been real, Mr. Wemmick," said
the man, unwilling to let his hand go, "I should have asked the
favour of your wearing another ring - in acknowledgment of your
attentions."

"I'll accept the will for the deed," said Wemmick.  "By-the-bye; you
were quite a pigeon-fancier."  The man looked up at the sky.  "I am
told you had a remarkable breed of tumblers.  could you commission
any friend of yours to bring me a pair, of you've no further use
for 'em?"

"It shall be done, sir?"

"All right," said Wemmick, "they shall be taken care of.  Good
afternoon, Colonel.  Good-bye!"  They shook hands again, and as we
walked away Wemmick said to me, "A Coiner, a very good workman.  The
Recorder's report is made to-day, and he is sure to be executed on
Monday.  Still you see, as far as it goes, a pair of pigeons are
portable property, all the same."  With that, he looked back, and
nodded at this dead plant, and then cast his eyes about him in
walking out of the yard, as if he were considering what other pot
would go best in its place.

As we came out of the prison through the lodge, I found that the
great importance of my guardian was appreciated by the turnkeys, no
less than by those whom they held in charge.  "Well, Mr. Wemmick,"
said the turnkey, who kept us between the two studded and spiked
lodge gates, and who carefully locked one before he unlocked the
other, "what's Mr. Jaggers going to do with that waterside murder?
Is he going to make it manslaughter, or what's he going to make of
it?"

"Why don't you ask him?" returned Wemmick.

"Oh yes, I dare say!" said the turnkey.

"Now, that's the way with them here.  Mr. Pip," remarked Wemmick,
turning to me with his post-office elongated.  "They don't mind what
they ask of me, the subordinate; but you'll never catch 'em asking
any questions of my principal."

"Is this young gentleman one of the 'prentices or articled ones of
your office?" asked the turnkey, with a grin at Mr. Wemmick's
humour.

"There he goes again, you see!" cried Wemmick, "I told you so!  Asks
another question of the subordinate before his first is dry!  Well,
supposing Mr. Pip is one of them?"

"Why then," said the turnkey, grinning again, "he knows what Mr.
Jaggers is."

"Yah!" cried Wemmick, suddenly hitting out at the turnkey in a
facetious way, "you're dumb as one of your own keys when you have
to do with my principal, you know you are.  Let us out, you old fox,
or I'll get him to bring an action against you for false
imprisonment."

The turnkey laughed, and gave us good day, and stood laughing at us
over the spikes of the wicket when we descended the steps into the
street.

"Mind you, Mr. Pip," said Wemmick, gravely in my ear, as he took my
arm to be more confidential; "I don't know that Mr. Jaggers does a
better thing than the way in which he keeps himself so high.  He's
always so high.  His constant height is of a piece with his immense
abilities.  That Colonel durst no more take leave of him, than that
turnkey durst ask him his intentions respecting a case.  Then,
between his height and them, he slips in his subordinate - don't
you see? - and so he has 'em, soul and body."

I was very much impressed, and not for the first time, by my
guardian's subtlety.  To confess the truth, I very heartily wished,
and not for the first time, that I had had some other guardian of
minor abilities.

Mr. Wemmick and I parted at the office in Little Britain, where
suppliants for Mr. Jaggers's notice were lingering about as usual,
and I returned to my watch in the street of the coach-office, with
some three hours on hand.  I consumed the whole time in thinking how
strange it was that I should be encompassed by all this taint of
prison and crime; that, in my childhood out on our lonely marshes
on a winter evening I should have first encountered it; that, it
should have reappeared on two occasions, starting out like a stain
that was faded but not gone; that, it should in this new way
pervade my fortune and advancement.  While my mind was thus engaged,
I thought of the beautiful young Estella, proud and refined, coming
towards me, and I thought with absolute abhorrence of the contrast
between the jail and her.  I wished that Wemmick had not met me, or
that I had not yielded to him and gone with him, so that, of all
days in the year on this day, I might not have had Newgate in my
breath and on my clothes.  I beat the prison dust off my feet as I
sauntered to and fro, and I shook it out of my dress, and I exhaled
its air from my lungs.  So contaminated did I feel, remembering who
was coming, that the coach came quickly after all, and I was not
yet free from the soiling consciousness of Mr. Wemmick's
conservatory, when I saw her face at the coach window and her hand
waving to me.

What was the nameless shadow which again in that one instant had
passed?

Chapter 33


In her furred travelling-dress, Estella seemed more delicately
beautiful than she had ever seemed yet, even in my eyes.  Her manner
was more winning than she had cared to let it be to me before, and
I thought I saw Miss Havisham's influence in the change.

We stood in the Inn Yard while she pointed out her luggage to me,
and when it was all collected I remembered - having forgotten
everything but herself in the meanwhile - that I knew nothing of
her destination.

"I am going to Richmond," she told me.  "Our lesson is, that there
are two Richmonds, one in Surrey and one in Yorkshire, and that mine
is the Surrey Richmond.  The distance is ten miles.  I am to have a
carriage, and you are to take me.  This is my purse, and you are to
pay my charges out of it.  Oh, you must take the purse!  We have no
choice, you and I, but to obey our instructions.  We are not free to
follow our own devices, you and I."

As she looked at me in giving me the purse, I hoped there was an
inner meaning in her words.  She said them slightingly, but not with
displeasure.

"A carriage will have to be sent for, Estella.  Will you rest here a
little?"

"Yes, I am to rest here a little, and I am to drink some tea, and
you are to take care of me the while."

She drew her arm through mine, as if it must be done, and I
requested a waiter who had been staring at the coach like a man who
had never seen such a thing in his life, to show us a private
sitting-room.  Upon that, he pulled out a napkin, as if it were a
magic clue without which he couldn't find the way up-stairs, and
led us to the black hole of the establishment:  fitted up with a
diminishing mirror (quite a superfluous article considering the
hole's proportions), an anchovy sauce-cruet, and somebody's
pattens.  On my objecting to this retreat, he took us into another
room with a dinner-table for thirty, and in the grate a scorched
leaf of a copy-book under a bushel of coal-dust.  Having looked at
this extinct conflagration and shaken his head, he took my order:
which, proving to be merely "Some tea for the lady," sent him out
of the room in a very low state of mind.

I was, and I am, sensible that the air of this chamber, in its
strong combination of stable with soup-stock, might have led one to
infer that the coaching department was not doing well, and that the
enterprising proprietor was boiling down the horses for the
refreshment department.  Yet the room was all in all to me, Estella
being in it.  I thought that with her I could have been happy there
for life.  (I was not at all happy there at the time, observe, and I
knew it well.)

"Where are you going to, at Richmond?" I asked Estella.

"I am going to live," said she, "at a great expense, with a lady
there, who has the power - or says she has - of taking me about,
and introducing me, and showing people to me and showing me to
people."

"I suppose you will be glad of variety and admiration?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

She answered so carelessly, that I said, "You speak of yourself as
if you were some one else."

"Where did you learn how I speak of others?  Come, come," said
Estella, smiling delightfully, "you must not expect me to go to
school to you; I must talk in my own way.  How do you thrive with
Mr. Pocket?"

"I live quite pleasantly there; at least--" It appeared to me that
I was losing a chance.

"At least?" repeated Estella.

"As pleasantly as I could anywhere, away from you."

"You silly boy," said Estella, quite composedly, "how can you talk
such nonsense?  Your friend Mr. Matthew, I believe, is superior to
the rest of his family?"

"Very superior indeed.  He is nobody's enemy--"

"Don't add but his own," interposed Estella, "for I hate that class
of man.  But he really is disinterested, and above small jealousy
and spite, I have heard?"

"I am sure I have every reason to say so."

"You have not every reason to say so of the rest of his people,"
said Estella, nodding at me with an expression of face that was at
once grave and rallying, "for they beset Miss Havisham with reports
and insinuations to your disadvantage.  They watch you, misrepresent
you, write letters about you (anonymous sometimes), and you are the
torment and the occupation of their lives.  You can scarcely realize
to yourself the hatred those people feel for you."

"They do me no harm, I hope?"

Instead of answering, Estella burst out laughing.  This was very
singular to me, and I looked at her in considerable perplexity.
When she left off - and she had not laughed languidly, but with
real enjoyment - I said, in my diffident way with her:

"I hope I may suppose that you would not be amused if they did me
any harm."

"No, no you may be sure of that," said Estella.  "You may be certain
that I laugh because they fail.  Oh, those people with Miss
Havisham, and the tortures they undergo!"  She laughed again, and
even now when she had told me why, her laughter was very singular
to me, for I could not doubt its being genuine, and yet it seemed
too much for the occasion.  I thought there must really be something
more here than I knew; she saw the thought in my mind, and answered
it.

"It is not easy for even you."  said Estella, "to know what
satisfaction it gives me to see those people thwarted, or what an
enjoyable sense of the ridiculous I have when they are made
ridiculous.  For you were not brought up in that strange house from
a mere baby. - I was.  You had not your little wits sharpened by
their intriguing against you, suppressed and defenceless, under the
mask of sympathy and pity and what not that is soft and soothing. -
I had.  You did not gradually open your round childish eyes wider
and wider to the discovery of that impostor of a woman who
calculates her stores of peace of mind for when she wakes up in the
night. - I did."

It was no laughing matter with Estella now, nor was she summoning
these remembrances from any shallow place.  I would not have been
the cause of that look of hers, for all my expectations in a heap.

"Two things I can tell you," said Estella.  "First, notwithstanding
the proverb that constant dropping will wear away a stone, you may
set your mind at rest that these people never will - never would,
in hundred years - impair your ground with Miss Havisham, in any
particular, great or small.  Second, I am beholden to you as the
cause of their being so busy and so mean in vain, and there is my
hand upon it."

As she gave it me playfully - for her darker mood had been but
momentary - I held it and put it to my lips.  "You ridiculous boy,"
said Estella, "will you never take warning?  Or do you kiss my hand
in the same spirit in which I once let you kiss my cheek?"

"What spirit was that?" said I.

"I must think a moment A spirit of contempt for the fawners and
plotters."

"If I say yes, may I kiss the cheek again?"

"You should have asked before you touched the hand.  But, yes, if
you like."

I leaned down, and her calm face was like a statue's.  "Now," said
Estella, gliding away the instant I touched her cheek, "you are to
take care that I have some tea, and you are to take me to
Richmond."

Her reverting to this tone as if our association were forced upon
us and we were mere puppets, gave me pain; but everything in our
intercourse did give me pain.  Whatever her tone with me happened to
be, I could put no trust in it, and build no hope on it; and yet I
went on against trust and against hope.  Why repeat it a thousand
times?  So it always was.

I rang for the tea, and the waiter, reappearing with his magic
clue, brought in by degrees some fifty adjuncts to that refreshment
but of tea not a glimpse.  A teaboard, cups and saucers, plates,
knives and forks (including carvers), spoons (various),
saltcellars, a meek little muffin confined with the utmost
precaution under a strong iron cover, Moses in the bullrushes
typified by a soft bit of butter in a quantity of parsley, a pale
loaf with a powdered head, two proof impressions of the bars of the
kitchen fire-place on triangular bits of bread, and ultimately a
fat family urn:  which the waiter staggered in with, expressing in
his countenance burden and suffering.  After a prolonged absence at
this stage of the entertainment, he at length came back with a
casket of precious appearance containing twigs.  These I steeped in
hot water, and so from the whole of these appliances extracted one
cup of I don't know what, for Estella.

The bill paid, and the waiter remembered, and the ostler not
forgotten, and the chambermaid taken into consideration - in a
word, the whole house bribed into a state of contempt and
animosity, and Estella's purse much lightened - we got into our
post-coach and drove away.  Turning into Cheapside and rattling up
Newgate-street, we were soon under the walls of which I was so
ashamed.

"What place is that?" Estella asked me.

I made a foolish pretence of not at first recognizing it, and then
told her.  As she looked at it, and drew in her head again,
murmuring "Wretches!"  I would not have confessed to my visit for
any consideration.

"Mr. Jaggers," said I, by way of putting it neatly on somebody else,
"has the reputation of being more in the secrets of that dismal
place than any man in London."

"He is more in the secrets of every place, I think," said Estella,
in a low voice.

"You have been accustomed to see him often, I suppose?"

"I have been accustomed to see him at uncertain intervals, ever
since I can remember.  But I know him no better now, than I did
before I could speak plainly.  What is your own experience of him?
Do you advance with him?"

"Once habituated to his distrustful manner," said I, "I have done
very well."

"Are you intimate?"

"I have dined with him at his private house."

"I fancy," said Estella, shrinking "that must be a curious place."

"It is a curious place."

I should have been chary of discussing my guardian too freely even
with her; but I should have gone on with the subject so far as to
describe the dinner in Gerrard-street, if we had not then come into
a sudden glare of gas.  It seemed, while it lasted, to be all alight
and alive with that inexplicable feeling I had had before; and when
we were out of it, I was as much dazed for a few moments as if I
had been in Lightning.

So, we fell into other talk, and it was principally about the way
by which we were travelling, and about what parts of London lay on
this side of it, and what on that.  The great city was almost new to
her, she told me, for she had never left Miss Havisham's
neighbourhood until she had gone to France, and she had merely
passed through London then in going and returning.  I asked her if
my guardian had any charge of her while she remained here?  To that
she emphatically said "God forbid!" and no more.

It was impossible for me to avoid seeing that she cared to attract
me; that she made herself winning; and would have won me even if
the task had needed pains.  Yet this made me none the happier, for,
even if she had not taken that tone of our being disposed of by
others, I should have felt that she held my heart in her hand
because she wilfully chose to do it, and not because it would have
wrung any tenderness in her, to crush it and throw it away.

When we passed through Hammersmith, I showed her where Mr. Matthew
Pocket lived, and said it was no great way from Richmond, and that
I hoped I should see her sometimes.

"Oh yes, you are to see me; you are to come when you think proper;
you are to be mentioned to the family; indeed you are already
mentioned."

I inquired was it a large household she was going to be a member
of?

"No; there are only two; mother and daughter.  The mother is a lady
of some station, though not averse to increasing her income."

"I wonder Miss Havisham could part with you again so soon."

"It is a part of Miss Havisham's plans for me, Pip," said Estella,
with a sigh, as if she were tired; "I am to write to her constantly
and see her regularly and report how I go on - I and the jewels -
for they are nearly all mine now."

It was the first time she had ever called me by my name.  Of course
she did so, purposely, and knew that I should treasure it up.

We came to Richmond all too soon, and our destination there, was a
house by the Green; a staid old house, where hoops and powder and
patches, embroidered coats rolled stockings ruffles and swords, had
had their court days many a time.  Some ancient trees before the
house were still cut into fashions as formal and unnatural as the
hoops and wigs and stiff skirts; but their own allotted places in
the great procession of the dead were not far off, and they would
soon drop into them and go the silent way of the rest.

A bell with an old voice - which I dare say in its time had often
said to the house, Here is the green farthingale, Here is the
diamondhilted sword, Here are the shoes with red heels and the blue
solitaire, - sounded gravely in the moonlight, and two
cherrycoloured maids came fluttering out to receive Estella.  The
doorway soon absorbed her boxes, and she gave me her hand and a
smile, and said good night, and was absorbed likewise.  And still I
stood looking at the house, thinking how happy I should be if I
lived there with her, and knowing that I never was happy with her,
but always miserable.

I got into the carriage to be taken back to Hammersmith, and I got
in with a bad heart-ache, and I got out with a worse heart-ache.  At
our own door, I found little Jane Pocket coming home from a little
party escorted by her little lover; and I envied her little lover,
in spite of his being subject to Flopson.

Mr. Pocket was out lecturing; for, he was a most delightful lecturer
on domestic economy, and his treatises on the management of
children and servants were considered the very best text-books on
those themes.  But, Mrs. Pocket was at home, and was in a little
difficulty, on account of the baby's having been accommodated with
a needle-case to keep him quiet during the unaccountable absence
(with a relative in the Foot Guards) of Millers.  And more needles
were missing, than it could be regarded as quite wholesome for a
patient of such tender years either to apply externally or to take
as a tonic.

Mr. Pocket being justly celebrated for giving most excellent
practical advice, and for having a clear and sound perception of
things and a highly judicious mind, I had some notion in my
heartache of begging him to accept my confidence.  But, happening to
look up at Mrs. Pocket as she sat reading her book of dignities
after prescribing Bed as a sovereign remedy for baby, I thought -
Well - No, I wouldn't.

Chapter 34


As I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insensibly
begun to notice their effect upon myself and those around me.  Their
influence on my own character, I disguised from my recognition as
much as possible, but I knew very well that it was not all good.  I
lived in a state of chronic uneasiness respecting my behaviour to
Joe.  My conscience was not by any means comfortable about Biddy.
When I woke up in the night - like Camilla - I used to think, with
a weariness on my spirits, that I should have been happier and
better if I had never seen Miss Havisham's face, and had risen to
manhood content to be partners with Joe in the honest old forge.
Many a time of an evening, when I sat alone looking at the fire, I
thought, after all, there was no fire like the forge fire and the
kitchen fire at home.

Yet Estella was so inseparable from all my restlessness and
disquiet of mind, that I really fell into confusion as to the
limits of my own part in its production.  That is to say, supposing
I had had no expectations, and yet had had Estella to think of, I
could not make out to my satisfaction that I should have done much
better.  Now, concerning the influence of my position on others, I
was in no such difficulty, and so I perceived - though dimly enough
perhaps - that it was not beneficial to anybody, and, above all,
that it was not beneficial to Herbert.  My lavish habits led his
easy nature into expenses that he could not afford, corrupted the
simplicity of his life, and disturbed his peace with anxieties and
regrets.  I was not at all remorseful for having unwittingly set
those other branches of the Pocket family to the poor arts they
practised:  because such littlenesses were their natural bent, and
would have been evoked by anybody else, if I had left them
slumbering.  But Herbert's was a very different case, and it often
caused me a twinge to think that I had done him evil service in
crowding his sparely-furnished chambers with incongruous upholstery
work, and placing the canary-breasted Avenger at his disposal.

So now, as an infallible way of making little ease great ease, I
began to contract a quantity of debt.  I could hardly begin but
Herbert must begin too, so he soon followed.  At Startop's
suggestion, we put ourselves down for election into a club called
The Finches of the Grove:  the object of which institution I have
never divined, if it were not that the members should dine
expensively once a fortnight, to quarrel among themselves as much
as possible after dinner, and to cause six waiters to get drunk on
the stairs.  I Know that these gratifying social ends were so
invariably accomplished, that Herbert and I understood nothing else
to be referred to in the first standing toast of the society:  which
ran "Gentlemen, may the present promotion of good feeling ever
reign predominant among the Finches of the Grove."

The Finches spent their money foolishly (the Hotel we dined at was
in Covent-garden), and the first Finch I saw, when I had the honour
of joining the Grove, was Bentley Drummle:  at that time floundering
about town in a cab of his own, and doing a great deal of damage to
the posts at the street corners.  Occasionally, he shot himself out
of his equipage head-foremost over the apron; and I saw him on one
occasion deliver himself at the door of the Grove in this
unintentional way - like coals.  But here I anticipate a little for
I was not a Finch, and could not be, according to the sacred laws
of the society, until I came of age.

In my confidence in my own resources, I would willingly have taken
Herbert's expenses on myself; but Herbert was proud, and I could
make no such proposal to him.  So, he got into difficulties in every
direction, and continued to look about him.  When we gradually fell
into keeping late hours and late company, I noticed that he looked
about him with a desponding eye at breakfast-time; that he began to
look about him more hopefully about mid-day; that he drooped when
he came into dinner; that he seemed to descry Capital in the
distance rather clearly, after dinner; that he all but realized
Capital towards midnight; and that at about two o'clock in the
morning, he became so deeply despondent again as to talk of buying
a rifle and going to America, with a general purpose of compelling
buffaloes to make his fortune.

I was usually at Hammersmith about half the week, and when I was at
Hammersmith I haunted Richmond:  whereof separately by-and-by.
Herbert would often come to Hammersmith when I was there, and I
think at those seasons his father would occasionally have some
passing perception that the opening he was looking for, had not
appeared yet.  But in the general tumbling up of the family, his
tumbling out in life somewhere, was a thing to transact itself
somehow.  In the meantime Mr. Pocket grew greyer, and tried oftener
to lift himself out of his perplexities by the hair.  While Mrs.
Pocket tripped up the family with her footstool, read her book of
dignities, lost her pocket-handkerchief, told us about her
grandpapa, and taught the young idea how to shoot, by shooting it
into bed whenever it attracted her notice.

As I am now generalizing a period of my life with the object of
clearing my way before me, I can scarcely do so better than by at
once completing the description of our usual manners and customs at
Barnard's Inn.

We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as
people could make up their minds to give us.  We were always more or
less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same
condition.  There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly
enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did.  To the
best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common
one.

Every morning, with an air ever new, Herbert went into the City to
look about him.  I often paid him a visit in the dark back-room in
which he consorted with an ink-jar, a hat-peg, a coal-box, a
string-box, an almanack, a desk and stool, and a ruler; and I do
not remember that I ever saw him do anything else but look about
him.  If we all did what we undertake to do, as faithfully as
Herbert did, we might live in a Republic of the Virtues.  He had
nothing else to do, poor fellow, except at a certain hour of every
afternoon to "go to Lloyd's" - in observance of a ceremony of
seeing his principal, I think.  He never did anything else in
connexion with Lloyd's that I could find out, except come back
again.  When he felt his case unusually serious, and that he
positively must find an opening, he would go on 'Change at a busy
time, and walk in and out, in a kind of gloomy country dance
figure, among the assembled magnates.  "For," says Herbert to me,
coming home to dinner on one of those special occasions, "I find
the truth to be, Handel, that an opening won't come to one, but one
must go to it - so I have been."

If we had been less attached to one another, I think we must have
hated one another regularly every morning.  I detested the chambers
beyond expression at that period of repentance, and could not
endure the sight of the Avenger's livery:  which had a more
expensive and a less remunerative appearance then, than at any
other time in the four-and-twenty hours.  As we got more and more
into debt breakfast became a hollower and hollower form, and, being
on one occasion at breakfast-time threatened (by letter) with legal
proceedings, "not unwholly unconnected," as my local paper might
put it, "with jewellery," I went so far as to seize the Avenger by
his blue collar and shake him off his feet - so that he was
actually in the air, like a booted Cupid - for presuming to suppose
that we wanted a roll.

At certain times - meaning at uncertain times, for they depended on
our humour - I would say to Herbert, as if it were a remarkable
discovery:

"My dear Herbert, we are getting on badly."

"My dear Handel," Herbert would say to me, in all sincerity, if you
will believe me, those very words were on my lips, by a strange
coincidence."

"Then, Herbert," I would respond, "let us look into out affairs."

We always derived profound satisfaction from making an appointment
for this purpose.  I always thought this was business, this was the
way to confront the thing, this was the way to take the foe by the
throat.  And I know Herbert thought so too.

We ordered something rather special for dinner, with a bottle of
something similarly out of the common way, in order that our minds
might be fortified for the occasion, and we might come well up to
the mark.  Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a copious
supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper.
For, there was something very comfortable in having plenty of
stationery.

I would then take a sheet of paper, and write across the top of it,
in a neat hand, the heading, "Memorandum of Pip's debts;" with
Barnard's Inn and the date very carefully added.  Herbert would also
take a sheet of paper, and write across it with similar
formalities, "Memorandum of Herbert's debts."

Each of us would then refer to a confused heap of papers at his
side, which had been thrown into drawers, worn into holes in
Pockets, half-burnt in lighting candles, stuck for weeks into the
looking-glass, and otherwise damaged.  The sound of our pens going,
refreshed us exceedingly, insomuch that I sometimes found it
difficult to distinguish between this edifying business proceeding
and actually paying the money.  In point of meritorious character,
the two things seemed about equal.

When we had written a little while, I would ask Herbert how he got
on?  Herbert probably would have been scratching his head in a most
rueful manner at the sight of his accumulating figures.

"They are mounting up, Handel," Herbert would say; "upon my life,
they are mounting up."

"Be firm, Herbert," I would retort, plying my own pen with great
assiduity.  "Look the thing in the face.  Look into your affairs.
Stare them out of countenance."

"So I would, Handel, only they are staring me out of countenance."

However, my determined manner would have its effect, and Herbert
would fall to work again.  After a time he would give up once more,
on the plea that he had not got Cobbs's bill, or Lobbs's, or
Nobbs's, as the case might be.

"Then, Herbert, estimate; estimate it in round numbers, and put it
down."

"What a fellow of resource you are!" my friend would reply, with
admiration.  "Really your business powers are very remarkable."

I thought so too.  I established with myself on these occasions, the
reputation of a first-rate man of business - prompt, decisive,
energetic, clear, cool-headed.  When I had got all my
responsibilities down upon my list, I compared each with the bill,
and ticked it off.  My self-approval when I ticked an entry was
quite a luxurious sensation.  When I had no more ticks to make, I
folded all my bills up uniformly, docketed each on the back, and
tied the whole into a symmetrical bundle.  Then I did the same for
Herbert (who modestly said he had not my administrative genius),
and felt that I had brought his affairs into a focus for him.

My business habits had one other bright feature, which i called
"leaving a Margin."  For example; supposing Herbert's debts to be
one hundred and sixty-four pounds four-and-twopence, I would say,
"Leave a margin, and put them down at two hundred."  Or, supposing
my own to be four times as much, I would leave a margin, and put
them down at seven hundred.  I had the highest opinion of the wisdom
of this same Margin, but I am bound to acknowledge that on looking
back, I deem it to have been an expensive device.  For, we always
ran into new debt immediately, to the full extent of the margin,
and sometimes, in the sense of freedom and solvency it imparted,
got pretty far on into another margin.

But there was a calm, a rest, a virtuous hush, consequent on these
examinations of our affairs that gave me, for the time, an
admirable opinion of myself.  Soothed by my exertions, my method,
and Herbert's compliments, I would sit with his symmetrical bundle
and my own on the table before me among the stationary, and feel
like a Bank of some sort, rather than a private individual.

We shut our outer door on these solemn occasions, in order that we
might not be interrupted.  I had fallen into my serene state one
evening, when we heard a letter dropped through the slit in the
said door, and fall on the ground.  "It's for you, Handel," said
Herbert, going out and coming back with it, "and I hope there is
nothing the matter."  This was in allusion to its heavy black seal
and border.

The letter was signed TRABB & CO., and its contents were simply,
that I was an honoured sir, and that they begged to inform me that
Mrs. J. Gargery had departed this life on Monday last, at twenty
minutes past six in the evening, and that my attendance was
requested at the interment on Monday next at three o'clock in the
afternoon.

Chapter 35


It was the first time that a grave had opened in my road of life,
and the gap it made in the smooth ground was wonderful.  The figure
of my sister in her chair by the kitchen fire, haunted me night and
day.  That the place could possibly be, without her, was something
my mind seemed unable to compass; and whereas she had seldom or
never been in my thoughts of late, I had now the strangest ideas
that she was coming towards me in the street, or that she would
presently knock at the door.  In my rooms too, with which she had
never been at all associated, there was at once the blankness of
death and a perpetual suggestion of the sound of her voice or the
turn of her face or figure, as if she were still alive and had been
often there.

Whatever my fortunes might have been, I could scarcely have
recalled my sister with much tenderness.  But I suppose there is a
shock of regret which may exist without much tenderness.  Under its
influence (and perhaps to make up for the want of the softer
feeling) I was seized with a violent indignation against the
assailant from whom she had suffered so much; and I felt that on
sufficient proof I could have revengefully pursued Orlick, or any
one else, to the last extremity.

Having written to Joe, to offer consolation, and to assure him that
I should come to the funeral, I passed the intermediate days in the
curious state of mind I have glanced at.  I went down early in the
morning, and alighted at the Blue Boar in good time to walk over to
the forge.

It was fine summer weather again, and, as I walked along, the times
when I was a little helpless creature, and my sister did not spare
me, vividly returned.  But they returned with a gentle tone upon
them that softened even the edge of Tickler.  For now, the very
breath of the beans and clover whispered to my heart that the day
must come when it would be well for my memory that others walking
in the sunshine should be softened as they thought of me.

At last I came within sight of the house, and saw that Trabb and
Co. had put in a funereal execution and taken possession.  Two
dismally absurd persons, each ostentatiously exhibiting a crutch
done up in a black bandage - as if that instrument could possibly
communicate any comfort to anybody - were posted at the front door;
and in one of them I recognized a postboy discharged from the Boar
for turning a young couple into a sawpit on their bridal morning,
in consequence of intoxication rendering it necessary for him to
ride his horse clasped round the neck with both arms.  All the
children of the village, and most of the women, were admiring these
sable warders and the closed windows of the house and forge; and as
I came up, one of the two warders (the postboy) knocked at the door
- implying that I was far too much exhausted by grief, to have
strength remaining to knock for myself.

Another sable warder (a carpenter, who had once eaten two geese for
a wager) opened the door, and showed me into the best parlour.
Here, Mr. Trabb had taken unto himself the best table, and had got
all the leaves up, and was holding a kind of black Bazaar, with the
aid of a quantity of black pins.  At the moment of my arrival, he
had just finished putting somebody's hat into black long-clothes,
like an African baby; so he held out his hand for mine.  But I,
misled by the action, and confused by the occasion, shook hands
with him with every testimony of warm affection.

Poor dear Joe, entangled in a little black cloak tied in a large
bow under his chin, was seated apart at the upper end of the room;
where, as chief mourner, he had evidently been stationed by Trabb.
When I bent down and said to him, "Dear Joe, how are you?" he said,
"Pip, old chap, you knowed her when she were a fine figure of a--"
and clasped my hand and said no more.

Biddy, looking very neat and modest in her black dress, went
quietly here and there, and was very helpful.  When I had spoken to
Biddy, as I thought it not a time for talking I went and sat down
near Joe, and there began to wonder in what part of the house it -
she - my sister - was.  The air of the parlour being faint with the
smell of sweet cake, I looked about for the table of refreshments;
it was scarcely visible until one had got accustomed to the gloom,
but there was a cut-up plum-cake upon it, and there were cut-up
oranges, and sandwiches, and biscuits, and two decanters that I
knew very well as ornaments, but had never seen used in all my
life; one full of port, and one of sherry.  Standing at this table,
I became conscious of the servile Pumblechook in a black cloak and
several yards of hatband, who was alternately stuffing himself, and
making obsequious movements to catch my attention.  The moment he
succeeded, he came over to me (breathing sherry and crumbs), and
said in a subdued voice, "May I, dear sir?" and did.  I then
descried Mr. and Mrs. Hubble; the last-named in a decent speechless
paroxysm in a corner.  We were all going to "follow," and were all
in course of being tied up separately (by Trabb) into ridiculous
bundles.

"Which I meantersay, Pip," Joe whispered me, as we were being what
Mr. Trabb called "formed" in the parlour, two and two - and it was
dreadfully like a preparation for some grim kind of dance; "which I
meantersay, sir, as I would in preference have carried her to the
church myself, along with three or four friendly ones wot come to
it with willing harts and arms, but it were considered wot the
neighbours would look down on such and would be of opinions as it
were wanting in respect."

"Pocket-handkerchiefs out, all!" cried Mr. Trabb at this point, in a
depressed business-like voice.  "Pocket-handkerchiefs out!  We are
ready!"

So, we all put our pocket-handkerchiefs to our faces, as if our
noses were bleeding, and filed out two and two; Joe and I; Biddy
and Pumblechook; Mr. and Mrs. Hubble.  The remains of my poor sister
had been brought round by the kitchen door, and, it being a point
of Undertaking ceremony that the six bearers must be stifled and
blinded under a horrible black velvet housing with a white border,
the whole looked like a blind monster with twelve human legs,
shuffling and blundering along, under the guidance of two keepers -
the postboy and his comrade.

The neighbourhood, however, highly approved of these arrangements,
and we were much admired as we went through the village; the more
youthful and vigorous part of the community making dashes now and
then to cut us off, and lying in wait to intercept us at points of
vantage.  At such times the more exuberant among them called out in
an excited manner on our emergence round some corner of expectancy,
"Here they come!" "Here they are!" and we were all but cheered.  In
this progress I was much annoyed by the abject Pumblechook, who,
being behind me, persisted all the way as a delicate attention in
arranging my streaming hatband, and smoothing my cloak.  My thoughts
were further distracted by the excessive pride of Mr. and Mrs.
Hubble, who were surpassingly conceited and vainglorious in being
members of so distinguished a procession.

And now, the range of marshes lay clear before us, with the sails
of the ships on the river growing out of it; and we went into the
churchyard, close to the graves of my unknown parents, Philip
Pirrip, late of this parish, and Also Georgiana, Wife of the Above.
And there, my sister was laid quietly in the earth while the larks
sang high above it, and the light wind strewed it with beautiful
shadows of clouds and trees.

Of the conduct of the worldly-minded Pumblechook while this was
doing, I desire to say no more than it was all addressed to me; and
that even when those noble passages were read which remind humanity
how it brought nothing into the world and can take nothing out, and
how it fleeth like a shadow and never continueth long in one stay,
I heard him cough a reservation of the case of a young gentleman
who came unexpectedly into large property.  When we got back, he had
the hardihood to tell me that he wished my sister could have known
I had done her so much honour, and to hint that she would have
considered it reasonably purchased at the price of her death.  After
that, he drank all the rest of the sherry, and Mr. Hubble drank the
port, and the two talked (which I have since observed to be
customary in such cases) as if they were of quite another race from
the deceased, and were notoriously immortal.  Finally, he went away
with Mr. and Mrs. Hubble - to make an evening of it, I felt sure, and
to tell the Jolly Bargemen that he was the founder of my fortunes
and my earliest benefactor.

When they were all gone, and when Trabb and his men - but not his
boy:  I looked for him - had crammed their mummery into bags, and
were gone too, the house felt wholesomer.  Soon afterwards, Biddy,
Joe, and I, had a cold dinner together; but we dined in the best
parlour, not in the old kitchen, and Joe was so exceedingly
particular what he did with his knife and fork and the saltcellar
and what not, that there was great restraint upon us.  But after
dinner, when I made him take his pipe, and when I had loitered with
him about the forge, and when we sat down together on the great
block of stone outside it, we got on better.  I noticed that after
the funeral Joe changed his clothes so far, as to make a compromise
between his Sunday dress and working dress:  in which the dear
fellow looked natural, and like the Man he was.

He was very much pleased by my asking if I might sleep in my own
little room, and I was pleased too; for, I felt that I had done
rather a great thing in making the request.  When the shadows of
evening were closing in, I took an opportunity of getting into the
garden with Biddy for a little talk.

"Biddy," said I, "I think you might have written to me about these
sad matters."

"Do you, Mr. Pip?" said Biddy.  "I should have written if I had
thought that."

"Don't suppose that I mean to be unkind, Biddy, when I say I
consider that you ought to have thought that."

"Do you, Mr. Pip?"

She was so quiet, and had such an orderly, good, and pretty way
with her, that I did not like the thought of making her cry again.
After looking a little at her downcast eyes as she walked beside
me, I gave up that point.

"I suppose it will be difficult for you to remain here now, Biddy
dear?"

"Oh!  I can't do so, Mr. Pip," said Biddy, in a tone of regret, but
still of quiet conviction.  "I have been speaking to Mrs. Hubble, and
I am going to her to-morrow.  I hope we shall be able to take some
care of Mr. Gargery, together, until he settles down."

"How are you going to live, Biddy?  If you want any mo--"

"How am I going to live?" repeated Biddy, striking in, with a
momentary flush upon her face.  "I'll tell you, Mr. Pip.  I am going
to try to get the place of mistress in the new school nearly
finished here.  I can be well recommended by all the neighbours, and
I hope I can be industrious and patient, and teach myself while I
teach others.  You know, Mr. Pip," pursued Biddy, with a smile, as
she raised her eyes to my face, "the new schools are not like the
old, but I learnt a good deal from you after that time, and have
had time since then to improve."

"I think you would always improve, Biddy, under any circumstances."

"Ah!  Except in my bad side of human nature," murmured Biddy.

It was not so much a reproach, as an irresistible thinking aloud.
Well!  I thought I would give up that point too.  So, I walked a
little further with Biddy, looking silently at her downcast eyes.

"I have not heard the particulars of my sister's death, Biddy."

"They are very slight, poor thing.  She had been in one of her bad
states - though they had got better of late, rather than worse -
for four days, when she came out of it in the evening, just at
teatime, and said quite plainly, 'Joe.'  As she had never said any
word for a long while, I ran and fetched in Mr. Gargery from the
forge.  She made signs to me that she wanted him to sit down close
to her, and wanted me to put her arms round his neck.  So I put them
round his neck, and she laid her head down on his shoulder quite
content and satisfied.  And so she presently said 'Joe' again, and
once 'Pardon,' and once 'Pip.'  And so she never lifted her head up
any more, and it was just an hour later when we laid it down on her
own bed, because we found she was gone."

Biddy cried; the darkening garden, and the lane, and the stars that
were coming out, were blurred in my own sight.

"Nothing was ever discovered, Biddy?"

"Nothing."

"Do you know what is become of Orlick?"

"I should think from the colour of his clothes that he is working
in the quarries."

"Of course you have seen him then? - Why are you looking at that
dark tree in the lane?"

"I saw him there, on the night she died."

"That was not the last time either, Biddy?"

"No; I have seen him there, since we have been walking here. - It
is of no use," said Biddy, laying her hand upon my arm, as I was
for running out, "you know I would not deceive you; he was not
there a minute, and he is gone."

It revived my utmost indignation to find that she was still pursued
by this fellow, and I felt inveterate against him.  I told her so,
and told her that I would spend any money or take any pains to
drive him out of that country.  By degrees she led me into more
temperate talk, and she told me how Joe loved me, and how Joe never
complained of anything - she didn't say, of me; she had no need; I
knew what she meant - but ever did his duty in his way of life,
with a strong hand, a quiet tongue, and a gentle heart.

"Indeed, it would be hard to say too much for him," said I; "and
Biddy, we must often speak of these things, for of course I shall
be often down here now.  I am not going to leave poor Joe alone."

Biddy said never a single word.

"Biddy, don't you hear me?"

"Yes, Mr. Pip."

"Not to mention your calling me Mr. Pip - which appears to me to be
in bad taste, Biddy - what do you mean?"

"What do I mean?" asked Biddy, timidly.

"Biddy," said I, in a virtuously self-asserting manner, "I must
request to know what you mean by this?"

"By this?" said Biddy.

"Now, don't echo," I retorted.  "You used not to echo, Biddy."

"Used not!" said Biddy.  "O Mr. Pip!  Used!"

Well!  I rather thought I would give up that point too.  After
another silent turn in the garden, I fell back on the main
position.

"Biddy," said I, "I made a remark respecting my coming down here
often, to see Joe, which you received with a marked silence.  Have
the goodness, Biddy, to tell me why."

"Are you quite sure, then, that you WILL come to see him often?"
asked Biddy, stopping in the narrow garden walk, and looking at me
under the stars with a clear and honest eye.

"Oh dear me!" said I, as if I found myself compelled to give up
Biddy in despair.  "This really is a very bad side of human
nature!  Don't say any more, if you please, Biddy.  This shocks me
very much."

For which cogent reason I kept Biddy at a distance during supper,
and, when I went up to my own old little room, took as stately a
leave of her as I could, in my murmuring soul, deem reconcilable
with the churchyard and the event of the day.  As often as I was
restless in the night, and that was every quarter of an hour, I
reflected what an unkindness, what an injury, what an injustice,
Biddy had done me.

Early in the morning, I was to go.  Early in the morning, I was out,
and looking in, unseen, at one of the wooden windows of the forge.
There I stood, for minutes, looking at Joe, already at work with a
glow of health and strength upon his face that made it show as if
the bright sun of the life in store for him were shining on it.

"Good-bye, dear Joe! - No, don't wipe it off - for God's sake, give
me your blackened hand! - I shall be down soon, and often."

"Never too soon, sir," said Joe, "and never too often, Pip!"

Biddy was waiting for me at the kitchen door, with a mug of new
milk and a crust of bread.  "Biddy," said I, when I gave her my hand
at parting, "I am not angry, but I am hurt."

"No, don't be hurt," she pleaded quite pathetically; "let only me
be hurt, if I have been ungenerous."

Once more, the mists were rising as I walked away.  If they
disclosed to me, as I suspect they did, that I should not come
back, and that Biddy was quite right, all I can say is - they were
quite right too.