 27 My dear Mr. Pip, I write this by request of Mr. Gargary, or 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 it Barnard's Hotel Tuesday morning at nine 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. You've now considered in the light of a liberty—excuse it, for the love of poor old days. No more, dear Mr. Pip, from you ever obliged, an 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, accepting 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 the 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 Dremel'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 Dremel 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 honor of occupying a few prominent pages in the books of a neighboring 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 washer-woman'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 fandom was ordered to be on duty at eight on Tuesday morning in the hall. It was two feet square as charge 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 in 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 sitting room 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 upstairs, 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 assent. 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 wrap, and pepper—such was the compromising name of the Avenging Boy—announced, Mr. Cargre, and I thought he never would have been 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 are you, Pip? With his good on his 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 last patented 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 a parting with that piece of property, and persisted in standing talking over it in a most uncomfortable way. Which you have got that groan, said Joe, and that swelled and that gentle-foked—Joe considered a little before he discovered this word—as to be sure you are an honour to your king and country. And you, Joe, look wonderfully well. Thank God, said Joe, I am Eckerville de Most, and your sister, she's no worse than she were—ambiti, she's ever right and ready, and all friends is no backerter, if not no forerter, except in Wapsole, 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 play-acting, which the play-acting have likewise 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 I found it to be the crumpled play-bill of a small metropolitan theatre, announcing the first appearance in that very week of the celebrated provincial amateur of Rocian 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, particular when he see the ghost, though I put it to yourself, sir, whether it were calculated to keep a man up to his work with a good heart, to be continually cutting in betwixt him and the ghost with, amen. A man may have had him as fortune 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 mean to say, if the ghost of a man's olden father cannot be allowed to claim his attention, what can, sir? When his mornin' 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 impip, here as I 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 mean to say, you too, gentlemen, which I hope as you get your else in this close spot? So the present may be a very good in, according to London opinions, said Joe confidentially, and I believe its character do stand, 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 flavor 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 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. Gargory? asked Herbert, who always presided of a morning. Thank you, sir, said Joe, stiff from head to foot. I'll take whatever is most agreeable to yourself. What do you say to coffee? Thank you, sir, returned Joe evidently dispirited by the proposal. Since you are so kind as to make choice of coffee, I will not run contrary to your own opinions. But don't you never find it a little eaten? 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. Gargory? 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 Wapsle went off straight to look at the blacking warehouse, but we didn't find that it come up to its likeness in the red hills at the shop doors, which I mean to say, added Joe in an explanatory manner, as it there drawed to architecture laurel. 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 humoring 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 should 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 hardly 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 petishly, "'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, least ways begin, to mention what have led to my having had the present honor. "'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 honor of breaking vitals 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 bargeman the 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 the shake-heart, pumble-chook, 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 compagnation, and were looked upon as a playfellow by yourself.' 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, the same identical, which his manners is given to blusterous, come to me at the bargeman, what a pipe and a pint of beer do give refreshment to the working-man, sir, and do not over-stimulate. When his word were, Joseph, Miss Havisham, she wished to speak to you.' "'Miss Havisham, Joe?' She wished, were pumble-chook'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 see Miss A.' "'Miss A, Joe?' "'Miss Havisham?' "'Which I say, sir,' replied Joe, with an air of legal formality, as if you were making as well. "'Miss A. Or otherwise Havisham.' Her expression air then is following. "'Mr. Gargery, you are 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 holiday time. 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 height.' "'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. Divisions between such must come, and must be met as they come. If there's been any fault at all today, it's mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London, nor yet anywhere else but what is private and been known 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 the mushes. You won't find half so much fall to me if you think of me in my forge-dress, with my hammer to my hand, or even my pipe. You won't find half so much fall to 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, and the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I'm awful dull, but I hope I've beat out something neither right, so 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 on the neighboring streets. But he was gone. CHAPTER XXVIII 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 tomorrow's coach, and had been down to Mr. Pockets 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 in inconvenience at Joe's. I was not expected, and my bed would not be ready. I should be too far off from Miss Havishams, and she was exacting and might not like it. All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretenses did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacturer 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 Taylor's shop, and confounding the disrespectful senses of Trab's boy. On the other hand, Trab's boy might worm himself into his intimacy and tell him things, or, reckless and desperate wretches 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 was never attended on me if he could possibly help it. At that time it was customary to carry convicts down to the dockyards by stagecoach, 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 jailer 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-two 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 pin-cushions 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 saddle 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 as I appraised my watch chain, and that he incidentally spat and said something to the other convict, and they laughed and slewed 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, magy, ungainly outer surface, as if they were lower animals, their ironed legs, apologetically garlanded with pocket-hanger-chiefs, 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 coachmen taken by a family were moving from London, and that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat in front behind the coachmen. 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 coachmen impatient, and we were all preparing to get up, and the prisoners had come over with their keeper, bringing with them that curious flavor of bread-poltice, bays, rope-yarn, and hearthstone, which attends the convict presence. Don't take it too much amiss, sir, pleaded the keeper to the angry passenger. I'll sit next to you myself. I'll put him 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'm quite ready to stay behind. As far as I'm concerned, anyone'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 to 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 in 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-shouldered on one side in my shrinking endeavours defending 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 woken at 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. The very first words I heard them enter change as I became conscious were the words of my own thought. Two one-pound notes. How did he get them? Said the convict I had never seen. How should I know? Returned the other. He had them stowed away some house. Give him by friends I expect. I wish, said the other with a bitter curse upon the cold, that I had them here. Two one-pound notes or friends. Two one-pound notes. I'd sell all the friends I ever had for one and think at a blessed good bargain. Well, 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 going to be discharged? Yes, I was. Would I find out that boy that had fed him and kept 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 him on a man in vittles and drink. He must have been a green one. Mean to say he'd known nothing of you? Not a haphazard. Different gangs and different ships. He was tried again for prison-breaking, and he got made a lifer. And was that honor 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 executed 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 circumstances, 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-wash stairs. Again heard the gruff, Give way, you! Like an 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 saw the convicts 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 where an eye 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 neighborhood. 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 comodious 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 thought-contractive brow of the local sage, or the lustrous eye of local beauty inquire whose fortunes? We believe that Quintim Metzis was the blacksmith of Antwerp. I enter 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 Esquimo or civilized man, who would have told me that Pumblechook was my earliest patron and the founder of my fortunes. CHAPTER XXIX Be times in the morning I was up and out. It was too early yet to go to Miss Havishams, so I loitered into the country on Miss Havishams' 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 a look at the house as I passed, and its seared red brick walls, locked windows, and strong green ivy clasping even the stacks of the 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 mentioned this and 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 courtyard, 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 gray dress, the last man I should have expected to see in that place of porter at Miss Havisham's door. ORLIK 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. ORLIK How did you get here? ORLIK I come here, he retorted, on my legs. I had my box brought alongside me in a barrel. ORLIK Are you here for good? ORLIK I ain't here for a harm, young master, I suppose. ORLIK 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. ORLIK Then you have left the forge? I said. ORLIK Do this look like a forge? Replied ORLIK, 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 here some time since you left. ORLIK I could have told you that, Orlik. ORLIK Ah! said he, dryly. But then you've got to be a scholar. ORLIK 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 courtyard. 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 door-mouse, while he, looming dark and heavy in the shadow of a corner by the window, looked like the human door-mouse for whom it was fitted up, as indeed he was. ORLIK I never saw this room before, I remarked. But there used to be no porter here. ORLIK 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-bob-tail 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 bellow-sing 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? Burm me, if I know! He retorted, first stretching himself and then shaking himself. My order's ends here, young master. I give this here bell a wrap with this here hammer, and you go on along the passage till you meet somebody. I am expected, I believe. Burm 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 Pockett, 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 Pockett. I am glad to tell you that Mr. Pockett 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 ways, sir. Tolerably, for I had gone up the staircase in the dark many a time. I ascended it now in lighter boots than of your, and tapped in my old way at the door of Miss Havisham's room. Pip's wrap, 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 Estela's eyes. But she was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so much more womanly, and 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 course and common boy again. Oh, 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 him seeing her again, and about my having looked forward to it for a long, long time. Do you find her much changed, peep? 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 Estela in the face or figure, but now it all settles down so curiously into the old— What? You're not going to say into the old Estela? 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 than, and the like. Estela 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 Estela, looking at me. Less coarse and common, said Miss Havisham, playing with Estela's hair. Estela 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 among me, and I learned that she had but just come home from France, and that she was going to London. Proud and willful 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 irregular 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 set us to 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 a pale young gentleman, now Herbert. I, trembling in spirit and worshiping the very hem of her dress, G. quite composed and most decidedly not worshiping 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 would have 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 a sign 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 believed 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 sees 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 born 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 persons with whom they have been much associated and secluded, and which, when childhood is past, 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 the 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 sad 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 and 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 fire from me. We were at 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 funeral 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 of the room, 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? Really must who sees her, Miss Havisham? She drew an arm around 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 won't 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, and 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. And 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 address and struck at the air as if she would as soon as 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-hankerchief 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-hankerchief 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 a 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 pocket-hankerchief in both hands and was looking at us. While 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 at 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 departments across the paved yard at the back, he asked me how often I had seen Miss Havisham eat and drink, offering me a breath of choice, as usual, between a hundred times and once. I considered and said, Never! I'd never will, Pip, he retorted, with a frowning smile. She has never allowed herself to be seen doing either, since she lived his 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. Estelle'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 Pockett awaited us. Mr. Jaggers presided, Estelle 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 Estelle'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 Pockett 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 screwing the ground with her hair, which insuredly 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 wist. In the interval Miss Havisham, in a fantastic way, have 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 raised them a little, when her loveliness was before him, with those rich flushes of glitter and color 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 toward 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. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Chapter 30 After well considering the matter while I was dressing at the blue bore in the morning, I resolved to tell my guardian that I doubted Orlex 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 Orlex. 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 little delay, and even hinted that our friend himself might be difficult to deal with. Oh, no, he won't. Said my guardian, making his pocket handkerchief point with perfect confidence. I should like to see him argue the question with me. As we were going back together to London by the midday coach, and as I breakfasted under such terrors of pumble-chook 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 by then making a loop of about a couple of miles into the open country at the back of pumble-chook's premises. I got rounded to 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 passed me face to face, on which occasions I don't know whether they or I made the worst pretense, 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, Trab's boy. Casting my eyes along the street had a certain point of my progress. I beheld Trab'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 Trab's boy smote together, his hair up-rose, 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 an aproxism of terror and contrition, occasioned by the dignity of my appearance. As I passed him, his teeth loudly chatterd in his head, and 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 Trab's boy approaching. He was coming round a narrow corner, his blue bag was slung over his shoulders, honest industry beamed in his eyes, a determination to proceed to Trab's with cheerful bristness was indicated in his gate. 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 Trab's boy shooting round by a back way. This time he was entirely changed. He wore the blue bag in the manner of my greatcoat, 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 ya! Words cannot state the amount of aggravation and injury wreaked upon me by Trab's boy. When passing a breast of me, he pulled up his shirt collar, twined his side hair, stuck an arm of Kimbo, and smirked extravagantly by wriggling his elbows and body, and drawing to his attendants, Don't know ya! Don't know ya! Palm my soul! Don't know ya! The disgrace attended 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 Trab's boy on that occasion, I really did 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. Trab 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 dispatched 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 in Chum. His confidence was out of the question with the Avenger in the hall, which could be merely be regarded in the light of an antechamber to the keyhole. I sent him to the play. A better proof of the severity of my bondage to that taskmaster could scarcely be afforded than the degrading shifts to which I was constantly driven to find him employment. So mean is extremity that I sometimes sent him to hide part corner to see what a 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've 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 today? 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 asked 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 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 in 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 by 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 one, 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. Handle 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 were 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 handle. I am quite free from the flavor of sour grapes, upon my soul and honor, 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 handle, Herbert went on, as if we had been talking instead of silent, it's having been so strongly rooted in the breast of a boy, whose nature in 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, handle? 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. There 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, not 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, but that's what I want to know, because it is decidedly the case with us. My poor sister Charlotte, who was next to 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 Alec, in a frock, has already made arrangements for his union with a suitable young person at Q. 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 favored 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 victualing of passengerships. I think he was a species of purser. What is he now? Said I. He's an invalid now. Replyed 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 rouse, 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, when 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 Russian renown. And bless my heart, I involuntarily added aloud, it's to-night. This changed the subject in an instant and made us hurriedly resolved 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. End of chapter This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Chapter 31 On our arrival in Denmark, we found the king and queen of that country elevated in two armchairs 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 townsmen stood gloomily apart, with folded arms, and I could have wished that his curls in 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 shades 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 kettle-drum. 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 gravedigger, a clergyman, and a person of the utmost importance at a court-fencing match, on the authority of whose practice 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 townsmen, 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 it was 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 supposed 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. Wapsall 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. Wapsall in a comprehensive black cloak, being described 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. Wapsall 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 comet. Waiter! The arrival at the body for interment, in an empty black box with a 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. Wapsall through his struggles 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. Wapsall, 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 left 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. Wapsall's allocution. Not for old associations' sake, I am afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, very uphill and downhill, 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 hooded, I said to Herbert, Let us go at once, or perhaps we shall meet him. We made all the haste we could downstairs, 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. Walden Garver, said the man, would be glad to have the honor. Walden Garver, I repeated when Herbert murmured in my ear, probably Wapsall. 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 son 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. Wapsall was divesting himself of his Danish garments, and here there was just room for us to look at him over one another shoulders by keeping the packing case door or lid wide open. Gentlemen, said Mr. Wapsall, 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 them, bust them, and you'll bust five and thirty shillings. Shakespeare never was complimented with a finer pair. Keep quiet on your chair now, and leave him 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 made it 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 contrary, 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 endeavored to cast derision on the service? I mean the representation. We basely replied that we rather thought we had noticed such a man. I added, he was drunk, no doubt. 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 as 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 Barnards 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, in as much 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 XXXII One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I received a note by the post, the mere outside of which threw me into a great flutter, for, though I had never seen the handwriting in which it was addressed, I divined whose hand it was. It had no set beginning as Dear Mr. Pip, or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear Anything, but ran thus. I am to come to London the day after tomorrow by the midday coach. I believe it was settled you should meet me. At all events Miss Havisham has that impression, and I write an 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 feigned 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. Hello, 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 thanky, said Wemmick, and particularly the aged. He's in wonderful feather. He'll be 82 next birthday. I have a notion of firing 82 times if the neighbourhood shouldn't complain, and that Canada mine should prove equal to the pressure. However, this is not London talk. Where do you think I am going to? To the office, said I, for he was tending in that direction. Next thing to it, returned Wemmick. I am going to Newgate. We are in a banker's parcel case just at present, and I have been down the road taking a squint at the scene of action, and therefore 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 dryly, 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. Yeah, 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 effecting 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 wrongdoing, 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 flavor 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 and yards, were buying beer and talking to friends in a frowsy, 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? Indeed! And also, is that black build 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 whispers, 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 post office 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-colored frock coat with a peculiar pallor overspreading 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-Jakos 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 Cooley. 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 around 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, what 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. Think ye, 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 acknowledgement of your attentions. I'll accept the will for the deed, said Wemmick. By the bye, you're quite a pigeon fancier. The man looked up at the sky. I am told you had a remarkable breed of tublars. Could you commission any friend of yours to bring me a pair? Of you've no further use for him? It shall be done, sir. All right, said Wemmick, they shall be taken care of. Good afternoon, Colonel. Goodbye. 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 today, 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 and 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. Jagger's 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 daresay, said the turnkey. Now that's the way with them up here, Mr. Pip. remarked Wemmick, turning to me with his post-office elongated. They don't mind what they asked of me, the subordinate, but you'll never catch them asking any questions of my principal. Is this young gentleman one of the apprentices or artichaled ones of your office? Asked the turnkey with a grin at Mr. Wemmick's humor. There he goes again, you see, said Wemmick. I told you so. Asked 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. Yeah! cried Wemmick, suddenly hitting out at the turnkey in a facetious way. Your dumb is 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 peace with his immense abilities. That Colonel Durst no more take leave of him than that turnkey Durst asked 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 them 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 mighter abilities. Mr. Wemmick and I parted at the office in Little Britain, where suppliants for Mr. Jaggers' 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.