Great Expectations
window, before I heard footsteps on the stairs. Gradually there arose
before me the hat, head, neckcloth, waistcoat, trousers, boots, of a
member of society of about my own standing. He had a paper-bag under
each arm and a pottle of strawberries in one hand, and was out of
breath.
“Mr. Pip?” said he.
“Mr. Pocket?” said I.
“Dear me!” he exclaimed. “I am extremely sorry; but I knew there was a
coach from your part of the country at midday, and I thought you would
come by that one. The fact is, I have been out on your account,—not
that that is any excuse,—for I thought, coming from the country, you
might like a little fruit after dinner, and I went to Covent Garden
Market to get it good.”
For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would start out of my
head. I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and began to think
this was a dream.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Pocket, Junior. “This door sticks so!”
As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling with the door while
the paper-bags were under his arms, I begged him to allow me to hold
them. He relinquished them with an agreeable smile, and combated with
the door as if it were a wild beast. It yielded so suddenly at last,
that he staggered back upon me, and I staggered back upon the opposite
door, and we both laughed. But still I felt as if my eyes must start
out of my head, and as if this must be a dream.
“Pray come in,” said Mr. Pocket, Junior. “Allow me to lead the way. I
am rather bare here, but I hope you’ll be able to make out tolerably
well till Monday. My father thought you would get on more agreeably
through to-morrow with me than with him, and might like to take a walk
about London. I am sure I shall be very happy to show London to you. As
to our table, you won’t find that bad, I hope, for it will be supplied
from our coffee-house here, and (it is only right I should add) at your
expense, such being Mr. Jaggers’s directions. As to our lodging, it’s
not by any means splendid, because I have my own bread to earn, and my
father hasn’t anything to give me, and I shouldn’t be willing to take
it, if he had. This is our sitting-room,—just such chairs and tables
and carpet and so forth, you see, as they could spare from home. You
mustn’t give me credit for the tablecloth and spoons and castors,
because they come for you from the coffee-house. This is my little
bedroom; rather musty, but Barnard’s _is_ musty. This is your bedroom;
the furniture’s hired for the occasion, but I trust it will answer the
purpose; if you should want anything, I’ll go and fetch it. The
chambers are retired, and we shall be alone together, but we shan’t
fight, I dare say. But dear me, I beg your pardon, you’re holding the
fruit all this time. Pray let me take these bags from you. I am quite
ashamed.”
As I stood opposite to Mr. Pocket, Junior, delivering him the bags,
One, Two, I saw the starting appearance come into his own eyes that I
knew to be in mine, and he said, falling back,—
“Lord bless me, you’re the prowling boy!”
“And you,” said I, “are the pale young gentleman!”
Chapter XXII.
The pale young gentleman and I stood contemplating one another in
Barnard’s Inn, until we both burst out laughing. “The idea of its being
you!” said he. “The idea of its being _you_!” said I. And then we
contemplated one another afresh, and laughed again. “Well!” said the
pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand good-humouredly, “it’s all
over now, I hope, and it will be magnanimous in you if you’ll forgive
me for having knocked you about so.”
I derived from this speech that Mr. Herbert Pocket (for Herbert was the
pale young gentleman’s name) still rather confounded his intention with
his execution. But I made a modest reply, and we shook hands warmly.
“You hadn’t come into your good fortune at that time?” said Herbert
Pocket.
“No,” said I.
“No,” he acquiesced: “I heard it had happened very lately. _I_ was
rather on the lookout for good fortune then.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. Miss Havisham had sent for me, to see if she could take a fancy
to me. But she couldn’t,—at all events, she didn’t.”
I thought it polite to remark that I was surprised to hear that.
“Bad taste,” said Herbert, laughing, “but a fact. Yes, she had sent for
me on a trial visit, and if I had come out of it successfully, I
suppose I should have been provided for; perhaps I should have been
what-you-may-called it to Estella.”
“What’s that?” I asked, with sudden gravity.
He was arranging his fruit in plates while we talked, which divided his
attention, and was the cause of his having made this lapse of a word.
“Affianced,” he explained, still busy with the fruit. “Betrothed.
Engaged. What’s-his-named. Any word of that sort.”
“How did you bear your disappointment?” I asked.
“Pooh!” said he, “I didn’t care much for it. _She’s_ a Tartar.”
“Miss Havisham?”
“I don’t say no to that, but I meant Estella. That girl’s hard and
haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up by
Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the male sex.”
“What relation is she to Miss Havisham?”
“None,” said he. “Only adopted.”
“Why should she wreak revenge on all the male sex? What revenge?”
“Lord, Mr. Pip!” said he. “Don’t you know?”
“No,” said I.
“Dear me! It’s quite a story, and shall be saved till dinner-time. And
now let me take the liberty of asking you a question. How did you come
there, that day?”
I told him, and he was attentive until I had finished, and then burst
out laughing again, and asked me if I was sore afterwards? I didn’t ask
him if _he_ was, for my conviction on that point was perfectly
established.
“Mr. Jaggers is your guardian, I understand?” he went on.
“Yes.”
“You know he is Miss Havisham’s man of business and solicitor, and has
her confidence when nobody else has?”
This was bringing me (I felt) towards dangerous ground. I answered with
a constraint I made no attempt to disguise, that I had seen Mr. Jaggers
in Miss Havisham’s house on the very day of our combat, but never at
any other time, and that I believed he had no recollection of having
ever seen me there.
“He was so obliging as to suggest my father for your tutor, and he
called on my father to propose it. Of course he knew about my father
from his connection with Miss Havisham. My father is Miss Havisham’s
cousin; not that that implies familiar intercourse between them, for he
is a bad courtier and will not propitiate her.”
Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very taking.
I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen any one since, who
more strongly expressed to me, in every look and tone, a natural
incapacity to do anything secret and mean. There was something
wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and something that at the
same time whispered to me he would never be very successful or rich. I
don’t know how this was. I became imbued with the notion on that first
occasion before we sat down to dinner, but I cannot define by what
means.
He was still a pale young gentleman, and had a certain conquered
languor about him in the midst of his spirits and briskness, that did
not seem indicative of natural strength. He had not a handsome face,
but it was better than handsome: being extremely amiable and cheerful.
His figure was a little ungainly, as in the days when my knuckles had
taken such liberties with it, but it looked as if it would always be
light and young. Whether Mr. Trabb’s local work would have sat more
gracefully on him than on me, may be a question; but I am conscious
that he carried off his rather old clothes much better than I carried
off my new suit.
As he was so communicative, I felt that reserve on my part would be a
bad return unsuited to our years. I therefore told him my small story,
and laid stress on my being forbidden to inquire who my benefactor was.
I further mentioned that as I had been brought up a blacksmith in a
country place, and knew very little of the ways of politeness, I would
take it as a great kindness in him if he would give me a hint whenever
he saw me at a loss or going wrong.
“With pleasure,” said he, “though I venture to prophesy that you’ll
want very few hints. I dare say we shall be often together, and I
should like to banish any needless restraint between us. Will you do me
the favour to begin at once to call me by my Christian name, Herbert?”
I thanked him and said I would. I informed him in exchange that my
Christian name was Philip.
“I don’t take to Philip,” said he, smiling, “for it sounds like a moral
boy out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy that he fell into a pond,
or so fat that he couldn’t see out of his eyes, or so avaricious that
he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so determined to go a
bird’s-nesting that he got himself eaten by bears who lived handy in
the neighbourhood. I tell you what I should like. We are so harmonious,
and you have been a blacksmith,—would you mind it?”
“I shouldn’t mind anything that you propose,” I answered, “but I don’t
understand you.”
“Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There’s a charming piece of
music by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith.”
“I should like it very much.”
“Then, my dear Handel,” said he, turning round as the door opened,
“here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to take the top of the
table, because the dinner is of your providing.”
This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I faced him. It was a
nice little dinner,—seemed to me then a very Lord Mayor’s Feast,—and it
acquired additional relish from being eaten under those independent
circumstances, with no old people by, and with London all around us.
This again was heightened by a certain gypsy character that set the
banquet off; for while the table was, as Mr. Pumblechook might have
said, the lap of luxury,—being entirely furnished forth from the
coffee-house,—the circumjacent region of sitting-room was of a
comparatively pastureless and shifty character; imposing on the waiter
the wandering habits of putting the covers on the floor (where he fell
over them), the melted butter in the arm-chair, the bread on the
bookshelves, the cheese in the coal-scuttle, and the boiled fowl into
my bed in the next room,—where I found much of its parsley and butter
in a state of congelation when I retired for the night. All this made
the feast delightful, and when the waiter was not there to watch me, my
pleasure was without alloy.
We had made some progress in the dinner, when I reminded Herbert of his
promise to tell me about Miss Havisham.
“True,” he replied. “I’ll redeem it at once. Let me introduce the
topic, Handel, by mentioning that in London it is not the custom to put
the knife in the mouth,—for fear of accidents,—and that while the fork
is reserved for that use, it is not put further in than necessary. It
is scarcely worth mentioning, only it’s as well to do as other people
do. Also, the spoon is not generally used over-hand, but under. This
has two advantages. You get at your mouth better (which after all is
the object), and you save a good deal of the attitude of opening
oysters, on the part of the right elbow.”
He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively way, that we
both laughed and I scarcely blushed.
“Now,” he pursued, “concerning Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham, you must
know, was a spoilt child. Her mother died when she was a baby, and her
father denied her nothing. Her father was a country gentleman down in
your part of the world, and was a brewer. I don’t know why it should be
a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is indisputable that while you
cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was
and brew. You see it every day.”
“Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?” said I.