importance, that he considered the money as a mere trifle, and begged
that she would not make herself uneasy.
"I know very well, madam," said he, "that when persons sit down to a
card-table, they must take their chances of these things, and happily I
am not in such circumstances as to make five shillings any object. There
are undoubtedly many who could not say the same, but thanks to Lady
Catherine de Bourgh, I am removed far beyond the necessity of regarding
little matters."
Mr. Wickham's attention was caught; and after observing Mr. Collins for
a few moments, he asked Elizabeth in a low voice whether her relation
was very intimately acquainted with the family of de Bourgh.
"Lady Catherine de Bourgh," she replied, "has very lately given him
a living. I hardly know how Mr. Collins was first introduced to her
notice, but he certainly has not known her long."
"You know of course that Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Lady Anne Darcy
were sisters; consequently that she is aunt to the present Mr. Darcy."
"No, indeed, I did not. I knew nothing at all of Lady Catherine's
connections. I never heard of her existence till the day before
yesterday."
"Her daughter, Miss de Bourgh, will have a very large fortune, and it is
believed that she and her cousin will unite the two estates."
This information made Elizabeth smile, as she thought of poor Miss
Bingley. Vain indeed must be all her attentions, vain and useless her
affection for his sister and her praise of himself, if he were already
self-destined for another.
"Mr. Collins," said she, "speaks highly both of Lady Catherine and her
daughter; but from some particulars that he has related of her ladyship,
I suspect his gratitude misleads him, and that in spite of her being his
patroness, she is an arrogant, conceited woman."
"I believe her to be both in a great degree," replied Wickham; "I have
not seen her for many years, but I very well remember that I never liked
her, and that her manners were dictatorial and insolent. She has the
reputation of being remarkably sensible and clever; but I rather believe
she derives part of her abilities from her rank and fortune, part from
her authoritative manner, and the rest from the pride for her
nephew, who chooses that everyone connected with him should have an
understanding of the first class."
Elizabeth allowed that he had given a very rational account of it, and
they continued talking together, with mutual satisfaction till supper
put an end to cards, and gave the rest of the ladies their share of Mr.
Wickham's attentions. There could be no conversation in the noise
of Mrs. Phillips's supper party, but his manners recommended him to
everybody. Whatever he said, was said well; and whatever he did, done
gracefully. Elizabeth went away with her head full of him. She could
think of nothing but of Mr. Wickham, and of what he had told her, all
the way home; but there was not time for her even to mention his name
as they went, for neither Lydia nor Mr. Collins were once silent. Lydia
talked incessantly of lottery tickets, of the fish she had lost and the
fish she had won; and Mr. Collins in describing the civility of Mr. and
Mrs. Phillips, protesting that he did not in the least regard his losses
at whist, enumerating all the dishes at supper, and repeatedly fearing
that he crowded his cousins, had more to say than he could well manage
before the carriage stopped at Longbourn House.
Chapter 17
Elizabeth related to Jane the next day what had passed between Mr.
Wickham and herself. Jane listened with astonishment and concern; she
knew not how to believe that Mr. Darcy could be so unworthy of Mr.
Bingley's regard; and yet, it was not in her nature to question the
veracity of a young man of such amiable appearance as Wickham. The
possibility of his having endured such unkindness, was enough to
interest all her tender feelings; and nothing remained therefore to be
done, but to think well of them both, to defend the conduct of each,
and throw into the account of accident or mistake whatever could not be
otherwise explained.
"They have both," said she, "been deceived, I dare say, in some way
or other, of which we can form no idea. Interested people have perhaps
misrepresented each to the other. It is, in short, impossible for us to
conjecture the causes or circumstances which may have alienated them,
without actual blame on either side."
"Very true, indeed; and now, my dear Jane, what have you got to say on
behalf of the interested people who have probably been concerned in the
business? Do clear _them_ too, or we shall be obliged to think ill of
somebody."
"Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my
opinion. My dearest Lizzy, do but consider in what a disgraceful light
it places Mr. Darcy, to be treating his father's favourite in such
a manner, one whom his father had promised to provide for. It is
impossible. No man of common humanity, no man who had any value for his
character, could be capable of it. Can his most intimate friends be so
excessively deceived in him? Oh! no."
"I can much more easily believe Mr. Bingley's being imposed on, than
that Mr. Wickham should invent such a history of himself as he gave me
last night; names, facts, everything mentioned without ceremony. If it
be not so, let Mr. Darcy contradict it. Besides, there was truth in his
looks."
"It is difficult indeed--it is distressing. One does not know what to
think."
"I beg your pardon; one knows exactly what to think."
But Jane could think with certainty on only one point--that Mr. Bingley,
if he _had_ been imposed on, would have much to suffer when the affair
became public.
The two young ladies were summoned from the shrubbery, where this
conversation passed, by the arrival of the very persons of whom they had
been speaking; Mr. Bingley and his sisters came to give their personal
invitation for the long-expected ball at Netherfield, which was fixed
for the following Tuesday. The two ladies were delighted to see their
dear friend again, called it an age since they had met, and repeatedly
asked what she had been doing with herself since their separation. To
the rest of the family they paid little attention; avoiding Mrs. Bennet
as much as possible, saying not much to Elizabeth, and nothing at all to
the others. They were soon gone again, rising from their seats with an
activity which took their brother by surprise, and hurrying off as if
eager to escape from Mrs. Bennet's civilities.
The prospect of the Netherfield ball was extremely agreeable to every
female of the family. Mrs. Bennet chose to consider it as given in
compliment to her eldest daughter, and was particularly flattered
by receiving the invitation from Mr. Bingley himself, instead of a
ceremonious card. Jane pictured to herself a happy evening in the
society of her two friends, and the attentions of their brother; and
Elizabeth thought with pleasure of dancing a great deal with Mr.
Wickham, and of seeing a confirmation of everything in Mr. Darcy's look
and behaviour. The happiness anticipated by Catherine and Lydia depended
less on any single event, or any particular person, for though they
each, like Elizabeth, meant to dance half the evening with Mr. Wickham,
he was by no means the only partner who could satisfy them, and a ball
was, at any rate, a ball. And even Mary could assure her family that she
had no disinclination for it.
"While I can have my mornings to myself," said she, "it is enough--I
think it is no sacrifice to join occasionally in evening engagements.
Society has claims on us all; and I profess myself one of those
who consider intervals of recreation and amusement as desirable for
everybody."
Elizabeth's spirits were so high on this occasion, that though she did
not often speak unnecessarily to Mr. Collins, she could not help asking
him whether he intended to accept Mr. Bingley's invitation, and if
he did, whether he would think it proper to join in the evening's
amusement; and she was rather surprised to find that he entertained no
scruple whatever on that head, and was very far from dreading a rebuke
either from the Archbishop, or Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by venturing to
dance.
"I am by no means of the opinion, I assure you," said he, "that a ball
of this kind, given by a young man of character, to respectable people,
can have any evil tendency; and I am so far from objecting to dancing
myself, that I shall hope to be honoured with the hands of all my fair
cousins in the course of the evening; and I take this opportunity of
soliciting yours, Miss Elizabeth, for the two first dances especially,
a preference which I trust my cousin Jane will attribute to the right
cause, and not to any disrespect for her."
Elizabeth felt herself completely taken in. She had fully proposed being
engaged by Mr. Wickham for those very dances; and to have Mr. Collins
instead! her liveliness had never been worse timed. There was no help
for it, however. Mr. Wickham's happiness and her own were perforce
delayed a little longer, and Mr. Collins's proposal accepted with as
good a grace as she could. She was not the better pleased with his
gallantry from the idea it suggested of something more. It now first
struck her, that _she_ was selected from among her sisters as worthy
of being mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form a
quadrille table at Rosings, in the absence of more eligible visitors.
The idea soon reached to conviction, as she observed his increasing
civilities toward herself, and heard his frequent attempt at a
compliment on her wit and vivacity; and though more astonished than
gratified herself by this effect of her charms, it was not long before
her mother gave her to understand that the probability of their marriage
was extremely agreeable to _her_. Elizabeth, however, did not choose
to take the hint, being well aware that a serious dispute must be the
consequence of any reply. Mr. Collins might never make the offer, and
till he did, it was useless to quarrel about him.
If there had not been a Netherfield ball to prepare for and talk of, the
younger Miss Bennets would have been in a very pitiable state at this
time, for from the day of the invitation, to the day of the ball, there
was such a succession of rain as prevented their walking to Meryton
once. No aunt, no officers, no news could be sought after--the very
shoe-roses for Netherfield were got by proxy. Even Elizabeth might have
found some trial of her patience in weather which totally suspended the
improvement of her acquaintance with Mr. Wickham; and nothing less than
a dance on Tuesday, could have made such a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and
Monday endurable to Kitty and Lydia.
Chapter 18
Till Elizabeth entered the drawing-room at Netherfield, and looked in
vain for Mr. Wickham among the cluster of red coats there assembled, a
doubt of his being present had never occurred to her. The certainty
of meeting him had not been checked by any of those recollections that
might not unreasonably have alarmed her. She had dressed with more than
usual care, and prepared in the highest spirits for the conquest of all
that remained unsubdued of his heart, trusting that it was not more than
might be won in the course of the evening. But in an instant arose
the dreadful suspicion of his being purposely omitted for Mr. Darcy's
pleasure in the Bingleys' invitation to the officers; and though
this was not exactly the case, the absolute fact of his absence was
pronounced by his friend Denny, to whom Lydia eagerly applied, and who
told them that Wickham had been obliged to go to town on business the
day before, and was not yet returned; adding, with a significant smile,
"I do not imagine his business would have called him away just now, if
he had not wanted to avoid a certain gentleman here."
This part of his intelligence, though unheard by Lydia, was caught by
Elizabeth, and, as it assured her that Darcy was not less answerable for
Wickham's absence than if her first surmise had been just, every
feeling of displeasure against the former was so sharpened by immediate
disappointment, that she could hardly reply with tolerable civility to
the polite inquiries which he directly afterwards approached to make.
Attendance, forbearance, patience with Darcy, was injury to Wickham. She
was resolved against any sort of conversation with him, and turned away
with a degree of ill-humour which she could not wholly surmount even in
speaking to Mr. Bingley, whose blind partiality provoked her.
But Elizabeth was not formed for ill-humour; and though every prospect
of her own was destroyed for the evening, it could not dwell long on her
spirits; and having told all her griefs to Charlotte Lucas, whom she had
not seen for a week, she was soon able to make a voluntary transition
to the oddities of her cousin, and to point him out to her particular
notice. The first two dances, however, brought a return of distress;
they were dances of mortification. Mr. Collins, awkward and solemn,
apologising instead of attending, and often moving wrong without being
aware of it, gave her all the shame and misery which a disagreeable
partner for a couple of dances can give. The moment of her release from
him was ecstasy.
She danced next with an officer, and had the refreshment of talking of
Wickham, and of hearing that he was universally liked. When those dances
were over, she returned to Charlotte Lucas, and was in conversation with
her, when she found herself suddenly addressed by Mr. Darcy who took
her so much by surprise in his application for her hand, that,
without knowing what she did, she accepted him. He walked away again
immediately, and she was left to fret over her own want of presence of
mind; Charlotte tried to console her:
"I dare say you will find him very agreeable."
"Heaven forbid! _That_ would be the greatest misfortune of all! To find
a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! Do not wish me such an
evil."
When the dancing recommenced, however, and Darcy approached to claim her
hand, Charlotte could not help cautioning her in a whisper, not to be a
simpleton, and allow her fancy for Wickham to make her appear unpleasant
in the eyes of a man ten times his consequence. Elizabeth made no
answer, and took her place in the set, amazed at the dignity to which
she was arrived in being allowed to stand opposite to Mr. Darcy, and
reading in her neighbours' looks, their equal amazement in beholding
it. They stood for some time without speaking a word; and she began to
imagine that their silence was to last through the two dances, and at
first was resolved not to break it; till suddenly fancying that it would
be the greater punishment to her partner to oblige him to talk, she made
some slight observation on the dance. He replied, and was again
silent. After a pause of some minutes, she addressed him a second time
with:--"It is _your_ turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy. I talked
about the dance, and _you_ ought to make some sort of remark on the size
of the room, or the number of couples."
He smiled, and assured her that whatever she wished him to say should be
said.
"Very well. That reply will do for the present. Perhaps by and by I may
observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public ones. But
_now_ we may be silent."
"Do you talk by rule, then, while you are dancing?"
"Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be
entirely silent for half an hour together; and yet for the advantage of
_some_, conversation ought to be so arranged, as that they may have the
trouble of saying as little as possible."
"Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you
imagine that you are gratifying mine?"
"Both," replied Elizabeth archly; "for I have always seen a great
similarity in the turn of our minds. We are each of an unsocial,
taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say
something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to
posterity with all the eclat of a proverb."
"This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure,"
said he. "How near it may be to _mine_, I cannot pretend to say. _You_
think it a faithful portrait undoubtedly."
"I must not decide on my own performance."
He made no answer, and they were again silent till they had gone down
the dance, when he asked her if she and her sisters did not very often
walk to Meryton. She answered in the affirmative, and, unable to resist
the temptation, added, "When you met us there the other day, we had just
been forming a new acquaintance."
The effect was immediate. A deeper shade of _hauteur_ overspread his
features, but he said not a word, and Elizabeth, though blaming herself
for her own weakness, could not go on. At length Darcy spoke, and in a
constrained manner said, "Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners
as may ensure his _making_ friends--whether he may be equally capable of
_retaining_ them, is less certain."
"He has been so unlucky as to lose _your_ friendship," replied Elizabeth
with emphasis, "and in a manner which he is likely to suffer from all
his life."
Darcy made no answer, and seemed desirous of changing the subject. At
that moment, Sir William Lucas appeared close to them, meaning to pass
through the set to the other side of the room; but on perceiving Mr.
Darcy, he stopped with a bow of superior courtesy to compliment him on
his dancing and his partner.
"I have been most highly gratified indeed, my dear sir. Such very
superior dancing is not often seen. It is evident that you belong to the
first circles. Allow me to say, however, that your fair partner does not
disgrace you, and that I must hope to have this pleasure often repeated,
especially when a certain desirable event, my dear Eliza (glancing at
her sister and Bingley) shall take place. What congratulations will then
flow in! I appeal to Mr. Darcy:--but let me not interrupt you, sir. You
will not thank me for detaining you from the bewitching converse of that
young lady, whose bright eyes are also upbraiding me."
The latter part of this address was scarcely heard by Darcy; but Sir
William's allusion to his friend seemed to strike him forcibly, and his
eyes were directed with a very serious expression towards Bingley and
Jane, who were dancing together. Recovering himself, however, shortly,
he turned to his partner, and said, "Sir William's interruption has made
me forget what we were talking of."
"I do not think we were speaking at all. Sir William could not have
interrupted two people in the room who had less to say for themselves.
We have tried two or three subjects already without success, and what we
are to talk of next I cannot imagine."
"What think you of books?" said he, smiling.
"Books--oh! no. I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same
feelings."
"I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least be
no want of subject. We may compare our different opinions."
"No--I cannot talk of books in a ball-room; my head is always full of
something else."
"The _present_ always occupies you in such scenes--does it?" said he,
with a look of doubt.
"Yes, always," she replied, without knowing what she said, for her
thoughts had wandered far from the subject, as soon afterwards appeared
by her suddenly exclaiming, "I remember hearing you once say, Mr. Darcy,
that you hardly ever forgave, that your resentment once created was
unappeasable. You are very cautious, I suppose, as to its _being
created_."
"I am," said he, with a firm voice.
"And never allow yourself to be blinded by prejudice?"
"I hope not."
"It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion,
to be secure of judging properly at first."
"May I ask to what these questions tend?"
"Merely to the illustration of _your_ character," said she, endeavouring
to shake off her gravity. "I am trying to make it out."
"And what is your success?"
She shook her head. "I do not get on at all. I hear such different
accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly."
"I can readily believe," answered he gravely, "that reports may vary
greatly with respect to me; and I could wish, Miss Bennet, that you were
not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to
fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either."
"But if I do not take your likeness now, I may never have another
opportunity."
"I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours," he coldly replied.
She said no more, and they went down the other dance and parted in
silence; and on each side dissatisfied, though not to an equal degree,
for in Darcy's breast there was a tolerably powerful feeling towards
her, which soon procured her pardon, and directed all his anger against
another.
They had not long separated, when Miss Bingley came towards her, and
with an expression of civil disdain accosted her:
"So, Miss Eliza, I hear you are quite delighted with George Wickham!
Your sister has been talking to me about him, and asking me a thousand
questions; and I find that the young man quite forgot to tell you, among
his other communication, that he was the son of old Wickham, the late
Mr. Darcy's steward. Let me recommend you, however, as a friend, not to
give implicit confidence to all his assertions; for as to Mr. Darcy's
using him ill, it is perfectly false; for, on the contrary, he has
always been remarkably kind to him, though George Wickham has treated
Mr. Darcy in a most infamous manner. I do not know the particulars, but
I know very well that Mr. Darcy is not in the least to blame, that he
cannot bear to hear George Wickham mentioned, and that though my brother
thought that he could not well avoid including him in his invitation to
the officers, he was excessively glad to find that he had taken himself
out of the way. His coming into the country at all is a most insolent
thing, indeed, and I wonder how he could presume to do it. I pity you,
Miss Eliza, for this discovery of your favourite's guilt; but really,
considering his descent, one could not expect much better."
"His guilt and his descent appear by your account to be the same," said
Elizabeth angrily; "for I have heard you accuse him of nothing worse
than of being the son of Mr. Darcy's steward, and of _that_, I can
assure you, he informed me himself."
"I beg your pardon," replied Miss Bingley, turning away with a sneer.
"Excuse my interference--it was kindly meant."
"Insolent girl!" said Elizabeth to herself. "You are much mistaken
if you expect to influence me by such a paltry attack as this. I see
nothing in it but your own wilful ignorance and the malice of Mr.
Darcy." She then sought her eldest sister, who had undertaken to make
inquiries on the same subject of Bingley. Jane met her with a smile of
such sweet complacency, a glow of such happy expression, as sufficiently
marked how well she was satisfied with the occurrences of the evening.
Elizabeth instantly read her feelings, and at that moment solicitude for
Wickham, resentment against his enemies, and everything else, gave way
before the hope of Jane's being in the fairest way for happiness.
"I want to know," said she, with a countenance no less smiling than her
sister's, "what you have learnt about Mr. Wickham. But perhaps you have
been too pleasantly engaged to think of any third person; in which case
you may be sure of my pardon."
"No," replied Jane, "I have not forgotten him; but I have nothing
satisfactory to tell you. Mr. Bingley does not know the whole of
his history, and is quite ignorant of the circumstances which have
principally offended Mr. Darcy; but he will vouch for the good conduct,
the probity, and honour of his friend, and is perfectly convinced that
Mr. Wickham has deserved much less attention from Mr. Darcy than he has
received; and I am sorry to say by his account as well as his sister's,
Mr. Wickham is by no means a respectable young man. I am afraid he has
been very imprudent, and has deserved to lose Mr. Darcy's regard."
"Mr. Bingley does not know Mr. Wickham himself?"
"No; he never saw him till the other morning at Meryton."
"This account then is what he has received from Mr. Darcy. I am
satisfied. But what does he say of the living?"
"He does not exactly recollect the circumstances, though he has heard
them from Mr. Darcy more than once, but he believes that it was left to
him _conditionally_ only."
"I have not a doubt of Mr. Bingley's sincerity," said Elizabeth warmly;
"but you must excuse my not being convinced by assurances only. Mr.
Bingley's defense of his friend was a very able one, I dare say; but
since he is unacquainted with several parts of the story, and has learnt
the rest from that friend himself, I shall venture to still think of
both gentlemen as I did before."
She then changed the discourse to one more gratifying to each, and on
which there could be no difference of sentiment. Elizabeth listened with
delight to the happy, though modest hopes which Jane entertained of Mr.
Bingley's regard, and said all in her power to heighten her confidence
in it. On their being joined by Mr. Bingley himself, Elizabeth withdrew
to Miss Lucas; to whose inquiry after the pleasantness of her last
partner she had scarcely replied, before Mr. Collins came up to them,
and told her with great exultation that he had just been so fortunate as
to make a most important discovery.
"I have found out," said he, "by a singular accident, that there is now
in the room a near relation of my patroness. I happened to overhear the
gentleman himself mentioning to the young lady who does the honours of
the house the names of his cousin Miss de Bourgh, and of her mother Lady
Catherine. How wonderfully these sort of things occur! Who would have
thought of my meeting with, perhaps, a nephew of Lady Catherine de
Bourgh in this assembly! I am most thankful that the discovery is made
in time for me to pay my respects to him, which I am now going to
do, and trust he will excuse my not having done it before. My total
ignorance of the connection must plead my apology."
"You are not going to introduce yourself to Mr. Darcy!"
"Indeed I am. I shall entreat his pardon for not having done it earlier.
I believe him to be Lady Catherine's _nephew_. It will be in my power to
assure him that her ladyship was quite well yesterday se'nnight."
Elizabeth tried hard to dissuade him from such a scheme, assuring him
that Mr. Darcy would consider his addressing him without introduction
as an impertinent freedom, rather than a compliment to his aunt; that
it was not in the least necessary there should be any notice on either
side; and that if it were, it must belong to Mr. Darcy, the superior in
consequence, to begin the acquaintance. Mr. Collins listened to her
with the determined air of following his own inclination, and, when she
ceased speaking, replied thus:
"My dear Miss Elizabeth, I have the highest opinion in the world in
your excellent judgement in all matters within the scope of your
understanding; but permit me to say, that there must be a wide
difference between the established forms of ceremony amongst the laity,
and those which regulate the clergy; for, give me leave to observe that
I consider the clerical office as equal in point of dignity with
the highest rank in the kingdom--provided that a proper humility of
behaviour is at the same time maintained. You must therefore allow me to
follow the dictates of my conscience on this occasion, which leads me to
perform what I look on as a point of duty. Pardon me for neglecting to
profit by your advice, which on every other subject shall be my constant
guide, though in the case before us I consider myself more fitted by
education and habitual study to decide on what is right than a young
lady like yourself." And with a low bow he left her to attack Mr.
Darcy, whose reception of his advances she eagerly watched, and whose
astonishment at being so addressed was very evident. Her cousin prefaced
his speech with a solemn bow and though she could not hear a word of
it, she felt as if hearing it all, and saw in the motion of his lips the
words "apology," "Hunsford," and "Lady Catherine de Bourgh." It vexed
her to see him expose himself to such a man. Mr. Darcy was eyeing him
with unrestrained wonder, and when at last Mr. Collins allowed him time
to speak, replied with an air of distant civility. Mr. Collins, however,
was not discouraged from speaking again, and Mr. Darcy's contempt seemed
abundantly increasing with the length of his second speech, and at the
end of it he only made him a slight bow, and moved another way. Mr.
Collins then returned to Elizabeth.
"I have no reason, I assure you," said he, "to be dissatisfied with my
reception. Mr. Darcy seemed much pleased with the attention. He answered
me with the utmost civility, and even paid me the compliment of saying
that he was so well convinced of Lady Catherine's discernment as to be
certain she could never bestow a favour unworthily. It was really a very
handsome thought. Upon the whole, I am much pleased with him."
As Elizabeth had no longer any interest of her own to pursue, she turned
her attention almost entirely on her sister and Mr. Bingley; and the
train of agreeable reflections which her observations gave birth to,
made her perhaps almost as happy as Jane. She saw her in idea settled in
that very house, in all the felicity which a marriage of true affection
could bestow; and she felt capable, under such circumstances, of
endeavouring even to like Bingley's two sisters. Her mother's thoughts
she plainly saw were bent the same way, and she determined not to
venture near her, lest she might hear too much. When they sat down to
supper, therefore, she considered it a most unlucky perverseness which
placed them within one of each other; and deeply was she vexed to find
that her mother was talking to that one person (Lady Lucas) freely,
openly, and of nothing else but her expectation that Jane would soon
be married to Mr. Bingley. It was an animating subject, and Mrs. Bennet
seemed incapable of fatigue while enumerating the advantages of the
match. His being such a charming young man, and so rich, and living but
three miles from them, were the first points of self-gratulation; and
then it was such a comfort to think how fond the two sisters were of
Jane, and to be certain that they must desire the connection as much as
she could do. It was, moreover, such a promising thing for her younger
daughters, as Jane's marrying so greatly must throw them in the way of
other rich men; and lastly, it was so pleasant at her time of life to be
able to consign her single daughters to the care of their sister, that
she might not be obliged to go into company more than she liked. It was
necessary to make this circumstance a matter of pleasure, because on
such occasions it is the etiquette; but no one was less likely than Mrs.
Bennet to find comfort in staying home at any period of her life. She
concluded with many good wishes that Lady Lucas might soon be equally
fortunate, though evidently and triumphantly believing there was no
chance of it.
In vain did Elizabeth endeavour to check the rapidity of her mother's
words, or persuade her to describe her felicity in a less audible
whisper; for, to her inexpressible vexation, she could perceive that the
chief of it was overheard by Mr. Darcy, who sat opposite to them. Her
mother only scolded her for being nonsensical.
"What is Mr. Darcy to me, pray, that I should be afraid of him? I am
sure we owe him no such particular civility as to be obliged to say
nothing _he_ may not like to hear."
"For heaven's sake, madam, speak lower. What advantage can it be for you
to offend Mr. Darcy? You will never recommend yourself to his friend by
so doing!"
Nothing that she could say, however, had any influence. Her mother would
talk of her views in the same intelligible tone. Elizabeth blushed and
blushed again with shame and vexation. She could not help frequently
glancing her eye at Mr. Darcy, though every glance convinced her of what
she dreaded; for though he was not always looking at her mother, she was
convinced that his attention was invariably fixed by her. The expression
of his face changed gradually from indignant contempt to a composed and
steady gravity.
At length, however, Mrs. Bennet had no more to say; and Lady Lucas, who
had been long yawning at the repetition of delights which she saw no
likelihood of sharing, was left to the comforts of cold ham and
chicken. Elizabeth now began to revive. But not long was the interval of
tranquillity; for, when supper was over, singing was talked of, and
she had the mortification of seeing Mary, after very little entreaty,
preparing to oblige the company. By many significant looks and silent
entreaties, did she endeavour to prevent such a proof of complaisance,
but in vain; Mary would not understand them; such an opportunity of
exhibiting was delightful to her, and she began her song. Elizabeth's
eyes were fixed on her with most painful sensations, and she watched her
progress through the several stanzas with an impatience which was very
ill rewarded at their close; for Mary, on receiving, amongst the thanks
of the table, the hint of a hope that she might be prevailed on to
favour them again, after the pause of half a minute began another.
Mary's powers were by no means fitted for such a display; her voice was
weak, and her manner affected. Elizabeth was in agonies. She looked at
Jane, to see how she bore it; but Jane was very composedly talking to
Bingley. She looked at his two sisters, and saw them making signs
of derision at each other, and at Darcy, who continued, however,
imperturbably grave. She looked at her father to entreat his
interference, lest Mary should be singing all night. He took the hint,
and when Mary had finished her second song, said aloud, "That will do
extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other
young ladies have time to exhibit."
Mary, though pretending not to hear, was somewhat disconcerted; and
Elizabeth, sorry for her, and sorry for her father's speech, was afraid
her anxiety had done no good. Others of the party were now applied to.
"If I," said Mr. Collins, "were so fortunate as to be able to sing, I
should have great pleasure, I am sure, in obliging the company with an
air; for I consider music as a very innocent diversion, and perfectly
compatible with the profession of a clergyman. I do not mean, however,
to assert that we can be justified in devoting too much of our time
to music, for there are certainly other things to be attended to. The
rector of a parish has much to do. In the first place, he must make
such an agreement for tithes as may be beneficial to himself and not
offensive to his patron. He must write his own sermons; and the time
that remains will not be too much for his parish duties, and the care
and improvement of his dwelling, which he cannot be excused from making
as comfortable as possible. And I do not think it of light importance
that he should have attentive and conciliatory manners towards everybody,
especially towards those to whom he owes his preferment. I cannot acquit
him of that duty; nor could I think well of the man who should omit an
occasion of testifying his respect towards anybody connected with the
family." And with a bow to Mr. Darcy, he concluded his speech, which had
been spoken so loud as to be heard by half the room. Many stared--many
smiled; but no one looked more amused than Mr. Bennet himself, while his
wife seriously commended Mr. Collins for having spoken so sensibly,
and observed in a half-whisper to Lady Lucas, that he was a remarkably
clever, good kind of young man.
To Elizabeth it appeared that, had her family made an agreement to
expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would
have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit or
finer success; and happy did she think it for Bingley and her sister
that some of the exhibition had escaped his notice, and that his
feelings were not of a sort to be much distressed by the folly which he
must have witnessed. That his two sisters and Mr. Darcy, however, should
have such an opportunity of ridiculing her relations, was bad enough,
and she could not determine whether the silent contempt of the
gentleman, or the insolent smiles of the ladies, were more intolerable.
The rest of the evening brought her little amusement. She was teased by
Mr. Collins, who continued most perseveringly by her side, and though
he could not prevail on her to dance with him again, put it out of her
power to dance with others. In vain did she entreat him to stand up with
somebody else, and offer to introduce him to any young lady in the room.
He assured her, that as to dancing, he was perfectly indifferent to it;
that his chief object was by delicate attentions to recommend himself to
her and that he should therefore make a point of remaining close to her
the whole evening. There was no arguing upon such a project. She owed
her greatest relief to her friend Miss Lucas, who often joined them, and
good-naturedly engaged Mr. Collins's conversation to herself.
She was at least free from the offense of Mr. Darcy's further notice;
though often standing within a very short distance of her, quite
disengaged, he never came near enough to speak. She felt it to be the
probable consequence of her allusions to Mr. Wickham, and rejoiced in
it.
The Longbourn party were the last of all the company to depart, and, by
a manoeuvre of Mrs. Bennet, had to wait for their carriage a quarter of
an hour after everybody else was gone, which gave them time to see how
heartily they were wished away by some of the family. Mrs. Hurst and her
sister scarcely opened their mouths, except to complain of fatigue, and
were evidently impatient to have the house to themselves. They repulsed
every attempt of Mrs. Bennet at conversation, and by so doing threw a
languor over the whole party, which was very little relieved by the
long speeches of Mr. Collins, who was complimenting Mr. Bingley and his
sisters on the elegance of their entertainment, and the hospitality and
politeness which had marked their behaviour to their guests. Darcy said
nothing at all. Mr. Bennet, in equal silence, was enjoying the scene.
Mr. Bingley and Jane were standing together, a little detached from the
rest, and talked only to each other. Elizabeth preserved as steady a
silence as either Mrs. Hurst or Miss Bingley; and even Lydia was too
much fatigued to utter more than the occasional exclamation of "Lord,
how tired I am!" accompanied by a violent yawn.
When at length they arose to take leave, Mrs. Bennet was most pressingly
civil in her hope of seeing the whole family soon at Longbourn, and
addressed herself especially to Mr. Bingley, to assure him how happy he
would make them by eating a family dinner with them at any time, without
the ceremony of a formal invitation. Bingley was all grateful pleasure,
and he readily engaged for taking the earliest opportunity of waiting on
her, after his return from London, whither he was obliged to go the next
day for a short time.
Mrs. Bennet was perfectly satisfied, and quitted the house under the
delightful persuasion that, allowing for the necessary preparations of
settlements, new carriages, and wedding clothes, she should undoubtedly
see her daughter settled at Netherfield in the course of three or four
months. Of having another daughter married to Mr. Collins, she thought
with equal certainty, and with considerable, though not equal, pleasure.
Elizabeth was the least dear to her of all her children; and though the
man and the match were quite good enough for _her_, the worth of each
was eclipsed by Mr. Bingley and Netherfield.
Chapter 19
The next day opened a new scene at Longbourn. Mr. Collins made his
declaration in form. Having resolved to do it without loss of time, as
his leave of absence extended only to the following Saturday, and having
no feelings of diffidence to make it distressing to himself even at
the moment, he set about it in a very orderly manner, with all the
observances, which he supposed a regular part of the business. On
finding Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth, and one of the younger girls together,
soon after breakfast, he addressed the mother in these words:
"May I hope, madam, for your interest with your fair daughter Elizabeth,
when I solicit for the honour of a private audience with her in the
course of this morning?"
Before Elizabeth had time for anything but a blush of surprise, Mrs.
Bennet answered instantly, "Oh dear!--yes--certainly. I am sure Lizzy
will be very happy--I am sure she can have no objection. Come, Kitty, I
want you up stairs." And, gathering her work together, she was hastening
away, when Elizabeth called out:
"Dear madam, do not go. I beg you will not go. Mr. Collins must excuse
me. He can have nothing to say to me that anybody need not hear. I am
going away myself."
"No, no, nonsense, Lizzy. I desire you to stay where you are." And upon
Elizabeth's seeming really, with vexed and embarrassed looks, about to
escape, she added: "Lizzy, I _insist_ upon your staying and hearing Mr.
Collins."
Elizabeth would not oppose such an injunction--and a moment's
consideration making her also sensible that it would be wisest to get it
over as soon and as quietly as possible, she sat down again and tried to
conceal, by incessant employment the feelings which were divided between
distress and diversion. Mrs. Bennet and Kitty walked off, and as soon as
they were gone, Mr. Collins began.
"Believe me, my dear Miss Elizabeth, that your modesty, so far from
doing you any disservice, rather adds to your other perfections. You
would have been less amiable in my eyes had there _not_ been this little
unwillingness; but allow me to assure you, that I have your respected
mother's permission for this address. You can hardly doubt the
purport of my discourse, however your natural delicacy may lead you to
dissemble; my attentions have been too marked to be mistaken. Almost as
soon as I entered the house, I singled you out as the companion of
my future life. But before I am run away with by my feelings on this
subject, perhaps it would be advisable for me to state my reasons for
marrying--and, moreover, for coming into Hertfordshire with the design
of selecting a wife, as I certainly did."
The idea of Mr. Collins, with all his solemn composure, being run away
with by his feelings, made Elizabeth so near laughing, that she could
not use the short pause he allowed in any attempt to stop him further,
and he continued:
"My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for
every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example
of matrimony in his parish; secondly, that I am convinced that it will
add very greatly to my happiness; and thirdly--which perhaps I ought
to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and
recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling
patroness. Twice has she condescended to give me her opinion (unasked
too!) on this subject; and it was but the very Saturday night before I
left Hunsford--between our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenkinson was
arranging Miss de Bourgh's footstool, that she said, 'Mr. Collins, you
must marry. A clergyman like you must marry. Choose properly, choose
a gentlewoman for _my_ sake; and for your _own_, let her be an active,
useful sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small
income go a good way. This is my advice. Find such a woman as soon as
you can, bring her to Hunsford, and I will visit her.' Allow me, by the
way, to observe, my fair cousin, that I do not reckon the notice
and kindness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh as among the least of the
advantages in my power to offer. You will find her manners beyond
anything I can describe; and your wit and vivacity, I think, must be
acceptable to her, especially when tempered with the silence and
respect which her rank will inevitably excite. Thus much for my general
intention in favour of matrimony; it remains to be told why my views
were directed towards Longbourn instead of my own neighbourhood, where I
can assure you there are many amiable young women. But the fact is, that
being, as I am, to inherit this estate after the death of your honoured
father (who, however, may live many years longer), I could not satisfy
myself without resolving to choose a wife from among his daughters, that
the loss to them might be as little as possible, when the melancholy
event takes place--which, however, as I have already said, may not
be for several years. This has been my motive, my fair cousin, and
I flatter myself it will not sink me in your esteem. And now nothing
remains for me but to assure you in the most animated language of the
violence of my affection. To fortune I am perfectly indifferent, and
shall make no demand of that nature on your father, since I am well
aware that it could not be complied with; and that one thousand pounds
in the four per cents, which will not be yours till after your mother's
decease, is all that you may ever be entitled to. On that head,
therefore, I shall be uniformly silent; and you may assure yourself that
no ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my lips when we are married."
It was absolutely necessary to interrupt him now.
"You are too hasty, sir," she cried. "You forget that I have made no
answer. Let me do it without further loss of time. Accept my thanks for
the compliment you are paying me. I am very sensible of the honour of
your proposals, but it is impossible for me to do otherwise than to
decline them."
"I am not now to learn," replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave of the
hand, "that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the
man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their
favour; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second, or even a
third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just
said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long."
"Upon my word, sir," cried Elizabeth, "your hope is a rather
extraordinary one after my declaration. I do assure you that I am not
one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so
daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second
time. I am perfectly serious in my refusal. You could not make _me_
happy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who
could make you so. Nay, were your friend Lady Catherine to know me, I
am persuaded she would find me in every respect ill qualified for the
situation."
"Were it certain that Lady Catherine would think so," said Mr. Collins
very gravely--"but I cannot imagine that her ladyship would at all
disapprove of you. And you may be certain when I have the honour of
seeing her again, I shall speak in the very highest terms of your
modesty, economy, and other amiable qualification."
"Indeed, Mr. Collins, all praise of me will be unnecessary. You
must give me leave to judge for myself, and pay me the compliment
of believing what I say. I wish you very happy and very rich, and by
refusing your hand, do all in my power to prevent your being otherwise.
In making me the offer, you must have satisfied the delicacy of your
feelings with regard to my family, and may take possession of Longbourn
estate whenever it falls, without any self-reproach. This matter may
be considered, therefore, as finally settled." And rising as she
thus spoke, she would have quitted the room, had Mr. Collins not thus
addressed her:
"When I do myself the honour of speaking to you next on the subject, I
shall hope to receive a more favourable answer than you have now given
me; though I am far from accusing you of cruelty at present, because I
know it to be the established custom of your sex to reject a man on
the first application, and perhaps you have even now said as much to
encourage my suit as would be consistent with the true delicacy of the
female character."
"Really, Mr. Collins," cried Elizabeth with some warmth, "you puzzle me
exceedingly. If what I have hitherto said can appear to you in the form
of encouragement, I know not how to express my refusal in such a way as
to convince you of its being one."
"You must give me leave to flatter myself, my dear cousin, that your
refusal of my addresses is merely words of course. My reasons for
believing it are briefly these: It does not appear to me that my hand is
unworthy of your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would
be any other than highly desirable. My situation in life, my connections
with the family of de Bourgh, and my relationship to your own, are
circumstances highly in my favour; and you should take it into further
consideration, that in spite of your manifold attractions, it is by no
means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be made you. Your
portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo
the effects of your loveliness and amiable qualifications. As I must
therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me,
I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by
suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females."
"I do assure you, sir, that I have no pretensions whatever to that kind
of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would
rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. I thank you
again and again for the honour you have done me in your proposals, but
to accept them is absolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect
forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant
female, intending to plague you, but as a rational creature, speaking
the truth from her heart."
"You are uniformly charming!" cried he, with an air of awkward
gallantry; "and I am persuaded that when sanctioned by the express
authority of both your excellent parents, my proposals will not fail of
being acceptable."
To such perseverance in wilful self-deception Elizabeth would make
no reply, and immediately and in silence withdrew; determined, if
he persisted in considering her repeated refusals as flattering
encouragement, to apply to her father, whose negative might be uttered
in such a manner as to be decisive, and whose behaviour at least could
not be mistaken for the affectation and coquetry of an elegant female.
Chapter 20
Mr. Collins was not left long to the silent contemplation of his
successful love; for Mrs. Bennet, having dawdled about in the vestibule
to watch for the end of the conference, no sooner saw Elizabeth open
the door and with quick step pass her towards the staircase, than she
entered the breakfast-room, and congratulated both him and herself in
warm terms on the happy prospect of their nearer connection. Mr. Collins
received and returned these felicitations with equal pleasure, and then
proceeded to relate the particulars of their interview, with the result
of which he trusted he had every reason to be satisfied, since the
refusal which his cousin had steadfastly given him would naturally flow
from her bashful modesty and the genuine delicacy of her character.
This information, however, startled Mrs. Bennet; she would have been
glad to be equally satisfied that her daughter had meant to encourage
him by protesting against his proposals, but she dared not believe it,
and could not help saying so.
"But, depend upon it, Mr. Collins," she added, "that Lizzy shall be
brought to reason. I will speak to her about it directly. She is a very
headstrong, foolish girl, and does not know her own interest but I will
_make_ her know it."
"Pardon me for interrupting you, madam," cried Mr. Collins; "but if
she is really headstrong and foolish, I know not whether she would
altogether be a very desirable wife to a man in my situation, who
naturally looks for happiness in the marriage state. If therefore she
actually persists in rejecting my suit, perhaps it were better not
to force her into accepting me, because if liable to such defects of
temper, she could not contribute much to my felicity."
"Sir, you quite misunderstand me," said Mrs. Bennet, alarmed. "Lizzy is
only headstrong in such matters as these. In everything else she is as
good-natured a girl as ever lived. I will go directly to Mr. Bennet, and
we shall very soon settle it with her, I am sure."
She would not give him time to reply, but hurrying instantly to her
husband, called out as she entered the library, "Oh! Mr. Bennet, you
are wanted immediately; we are all in an uproar. You must come and make
Lizzy marry Mr. Collins, for she vows she will not have him, and if you
do not make haste he will change his mind and not have _her_."
Mr. Bennet raised his eyes from his book as she entered, and fixed them
on her face with a calm unconcern which was not in the least altered by
her communication.
"I have not the pleasure of understanding you," said he, when she had
finished her speech. "Of what are you talking?"
"Of Mr. Collins and Lizzy. Lizzy declares she will not have Mr. Collins,
and Mr. Collins begins to say that he will not have Lizzy."
"And what am I to do on the occasion? It seems an hopeless business."
"Speak to Lizzy about it yourself. Tell her that you insist upon her
marrying him."
"Let her be called down. She shall hear my opinion."
Mrs. Bennet rang the bell, and Miss Elizabeth was summoned to the
library.
"Come here, child," cried her father as she appeared. "I have sent for
you on an affair of importance. I understand that Mr. Collins has made
you an offer of marriage. Is it true?" Elizabeth replied that it was.
"Very well--and this offer of marriage you have refused?"
"I have, sir."
"Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists upon your
accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennet?"
"Yes, or I will never see her again."
"An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must
be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you
again if you do _not_ marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again
if you _do_."
Elizabeth could not but smile at such a conclusion of such a beginning,
but Mrs. Bennet, who had persuaded herself that her husband regarded the
affair as she wished, was excessively disappointed.
"What do you mean, Mr. Bennet, in talking this way? You promised me to
_insist_ upon her marrying him."
"My dear," replied her husband, "I have two small favours to request.
First, that you will allow me the free use of my understanding on the
present occasion; and secondly, of my room. I shall be glad to have the
library to myself as soon as may be."
Not yet, however, in spite of her disappointment in her husband, did
Mrs. Bennet give up the point. She talked to Elizabeth again and again;
coaxed and threatened her by turns. She endeavoured to secure Jane
in her interest; but Jane, with all possible mildness, declined
interfering; and Elizabeth, sometimes with real earnestness, and
sometimes with playful gaiety, replied to her attacks. Though her manner
varied, however, her determination never did.
Mr. Collins, meanwhile, was meditating in solitude on what had passed.
He thought too well of himself to comprehend on what motives his cousin
could refuse him; and though his pride was hurt, he suffered in no other
way. His regard for her was quite imaginary; and the possibility of her
deserving her mother's reproach prevented his feeling any regret.
While the family were in this confusion, Charlotte Lucas came to spend
the day with them. She was met in the vestibule by Lydia, who, flying to
her, cried in a half whisper, "I am glad you are come, for there is such
fun here! What do you think has happened this morning? Mr. Collins has
made an offer to Lizzy, and she will not have him."
Charlotte hardly had time to answer, before they were joined by Kitty,
who came to tell the same news; and no sooner had they entered the
breakfast-room, where Mrs. Bennet was alone, than she likewise began on
the subject, calling on Miss Lucas for her compassion, and entreating
her to persuade her friend Lizzy to comply with the wishes of all her
family. "Pray do, my dear Miss Lucas," she added in a melancholy tone,
"for nobody is on my side, nobody takes part with me. I am cruelly used,
nobody feels for my poor nerves."
Charlotte's reply was spared by the entrance of Jane and Elizabeth.
"Aye, there she comes," continued Mrs. Bennet, "looking as unconcerned
as may be, and caring no more for us than if we were at York, provided
she can have her own way. But I tell you, Miss Lizzy--if you take it
into your head to go on refusing every offer of marriage in this way,
you will never get a husband at all--and I am sure I do not know who is
to maintain you when your father is dead. I shall not be able to keep
you--and so I warn you. I have done with you from this very day. I told
you in the library, you know, that I should never speak to you again,
and you will find me as good as my word. I have no pleasure in talking
to undutiful children. Not that I have much pleasure, indeed, in talking
to anybody. People who suffer as I do from nervous complaints can have
no great inclination for talking. Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it
is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied."
Her daughters listened in silence to this effusion, sensible that
any attempt to reason with her or soothe her would only increase the
irritation. She talked on, therefore, without interruption from any of
them, till they were joined by Mr. Collins, who entered the room with
an air more stately than usual, and on perceiving whom, she said to
the girls, "Now, I do insist upon it, that you, all of you, hold
your tongues, and let me and Mr. Collins have a little conversation
together."
Elizabeth passed quietly out of the room, Jane and Kitty followed, but
Lydia stood her ground, determined to hear all she could; and Charlotte,
detained first by the civility of Mr. Collins, whose inquiries after
herself and all her family were very minute, and then by a little
curiosity, satisfied herself with walking to the window and pretending
not to hear. In a doleful voice Mrs. Bennet began the projected
conversation: "Oh! Mr. Collins!"
"My dear madam," replied he, "let us be for ever silent on this point.
Far be it from me," he presently continued, in a voice that marked his
displeasure, "to resent the behaviour of your daughter. Resignation
to inevitable evils is the duty of us all; the peculiar duty of a
young man who has been so fortunate as I have been in early preferment;
and I trust I am resigned. Perhaps not the less so from feeling a doubt
of my positive happiness had my fair cousin honoured me with her hand;
for I have often observed that resignation is never so perfect as
when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our
estimation. You will not, I hope, consider me as showing any disrespect
to your family, my dear madam, by thus withdrawing my pretensions to
your daughter's favour, without having paid yourself and Mr. Bennet the
compliment of requesting you to interpose your authority in my
behalf. My conduct may, I fear, be objectionable in having accepted my
dismission from your daughter's lips instead of your own. But we are all
liable to error. I have certainly meant well through the whole affair.
My object has been to secure an amiable companion for myself, with due
consideration for the advantage of all your family, and if my _manner_
has been at all reprehensible, I here beg leave to apologise."
Chapter 21
The discussion of Mr. Collins's offer was now nearly at an end, and
Elizabeth had only to suffer from the uncomfortable feelings necessarily
attending it, and occasionally from some peevish allusions of her
mother. As for the gentleman himself, _his_ feelings were chiefly
expressed, not by embarrassment or dejection, or by trying to avoid her,
but by stiffness of manner and resentful silence. He scarcely ever spoke
to her, and the assiduous attentions which he had been so sensible of
himself were transferred for the rest of the day to Miss Lucas, whose
civility in listening to him was a seasonable relief to them all, and
especially to her friend.
The morrow produced no abatement of Mrs. Bennet's ill-humour or ill
health. Mr. Collins was also in the same state of angry pride. Elizabeth
had hoped that his resentment might shorten his visit, but his plan did
not appear in the least affected by it. He was always to have gone on
Saturday, and to Saturday he meant to stay.
After breakfast, the girls walked to Meryton to inquire if Mr. Wickham
were returned, and to lament over his absence from the Netherfield ball.
He joined them on their entering the town, and attended them to their
aunt's where his regret and vexation, and the concern of everybody, was
well talked over. To Elizabeth, however, he voluntarily acknowledged
that the necessity of his absence _had_ been self-imposed.
"I found," said he, "as the time drew near that I had better not meet
Mr. Darcy; that to be in the same room, the same party with him for so
many hours together, might be more than I could bear, and that scenes
might arise unpleasant to more than myself."
She highly approved his forbearance, and they had leisure for a full
discussion of it, and for all the commendation which they civilly
bestowed on each other, as Wickham and another officer walked back with
them to Longbourn, and during the walk he particularly attended to
her. His accompanying them was a double advantage; she felt all the
compliment it offered to herself, and it was most acceptable as an
occasion of introducing him to her father and mother.
Soon after their return, a letter was delivered to Miss Bennet; it came
from Netherfield. The envelope contained a sheet of elegant, little,
hot-pressed paper, well covered with a lady's fair, flowing hand; and
Elizabeth saw her sister's countenance change as she read it, and saw
her dwelling intently on some particular passages. Jane recollected
herself soon, and putting the letter away, tried to join with her usual
cheerfulness in the general conversation; but Elizabeth felt an anxiety
on the subject which drew off her attention even from Wickham; and no
sooner had he and his companion taken leave, than a glance from Jane
invited her to follow her up stairs. When they had gained their own room,
Jane, taking out the letter, said:
"This is from Caroline Bingley; what it contains has surprised me a good
deal. The whole party have left Netherfield by this time, and are on
their way to town--and without any intention of coming back again. You
shall hear what she says."
She then read the first sentence aloud, which comprised the information
of their having just resolved to follow their brother to town directly,
and of their meaning to dine in Grosvenor Street, where Mr. Hurst had a
house. The next was in these words: "I do not pretend to regret anything
I shall leave in Hertfordshire, except your society, my dearest friend;
but we will hope, at some future period, to enjoy many returns of that
delightful intercourse we have known, and in the meanwhile may
lessen the pain of separation by a very frequent and most unreserved
correspondence. I depend on you for that." To these highflown
expressions Elizabeth listened with all the insensibility of distrust;
and though the suddenness of their removal surprised her, she saw
nothing in it really to lament; it was not to be supposed that their
absence from Netherfield would prevent Mr. Bingley's being there; and as
to the loss of their society, she was persuaded that Jane must cease to
regard it, in the enjoyment of his.
"It is unlucky," said she, after a short pause, "that you should not be
able to see your friends before they leave the country. But may we not
hope that the period of future happiness to which Miss Bingley looks
forward may arrive earlier than she is aware, and that the delightful
intercourse you have known as friends will be renewed with yet greater
satisfaction as sisters? Mr. Bingley will not be detained in London by
them."
"Caroline decidedly says that none of the party will return into
Hertfordshire this winter. I will read it to you:"
"When my brother left us yesterday, he imagined that the business which
took him to London might be concluded in three or four days; but as we
are certain it cannot be so, and at the same time convinced that when
Charles gets to town he will be in no hurry to leave it again, we have
determined on following him thither, that he may not be obliged to spend
his vacant hours in a comfortless hotel. Many of my acquaintances are
already there for the winter; I wish that I could hear that you, my
dearest friend, had any intention of making one of the crowd--but of
that I despair. I sincerely hope your Christmas in Hertfordshire may
abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings, and that your
beaux will be so numerous as to prevent your feeling the loss of the
three of whom we shall deprive you."
"It is evident by this," added Jane, "that he comes back no more this
winter."
"It is only evident that Miss Bingley does not mean that he _should_."
"Why will you think so? It must be his own doing. He is his own
master. But you do not know _all_. I _will_ read you the passage which
particularly hurts me. I will have no reserves from _you_."
"Mr. Darcy is impatient to see his sister; and, to confess the truth,
_we_ are scarcely less eager to meet her again. I really do not think
Georgiana Darcy has her equal for beauty, elegance, and accomplishments;
and the affection she inspires in Louisa and myself is heightened into
something still more interesting, from the hope we dare entertain of
her being hereafter our sister. I do not know whether I ever before
mentioned to you my feelings on this subject; but I will not leave the
country without confiding them, and I trust you will not esteem them
unreasonable. My brother admires her greatly already; he will have
frequent opportunity now of seeing her on the most intimate footing;
her relations all wish the connection as much as his own; and a sister's
partiality is not misleading me, I think, when I call Charles most
capable of engaging any woman's heart. With all these circumstances to
favour an attachment, and nothing to prevent it, am I wrong, my dearest
Jane, in indulging the hope of an event which will secure the happiness
of so many?"
"What do you think of _this_ sentence, my dear Lizzy?" said Jane as she
finished it. "Is it not clear enough? Does it not expressly declare that
Caroline neither expects nor wishes me to be her sister; that she is
perfectly convinced of her brother's indifference; and that if she
suspects the nature of my feelings for him, she means (most kindly!) to
put me on my guard? Can there be any other opinion on the subject?"
"Yes, there can; for mine is totally different. Will you hear it?"
"Most willingly."
"You shall have it in a few words. Miss Bingley sees that her brother is
in love with you, and wants him to marry Miss Darcy. She follows him
to town in hope of keeping him there, and tries to persuade you that he
does not care about you."
Jane shook her head.
"Indeed, Jane, you ought to believe me. No one who has ever seen you
together can doubt his affection. Miss Bingley, I am sure, cannot. She
is not such a simpleton. Could she have seen half as much love in Mr.
Darcy for herself, she would have ordered her wedding clothes. But the
case is this: We are not rich enough or grand enough for them; and she
is the more anxious to get Miss Darcy for her brother, from the notion
that when there has been _one_ intermarriage, she may have less trouble
in achieving a second; in which there is certainly some ingenuity, and
I dare say it would succeed, if Miss de Bourgh were out of the way. But,
my dearest Jane, you cannot seriously imagine that because Miss Bingley
tells you her brother greatly admires Miss Darcy, he is in the smallest
degree less sensible of _your_ merit than when he took leave of you on
Tuesday, or that it will be in her power to persuade him that, instead
of being in love with you, he is very much in love with her friend."
"If we thought alike of Miss Bingley," replied Jane, "your
representation of all this might make me quite easy. But I know the
foundation is unjust. Caroline is incapable of wilfully deceiving
anyone; and all that I can hope in this case is that she is deceiving
herself."
"That is right. You could not have started a more happy idea, since you
will not take comfort in mine. Believe her to be deceived, by all means.
You have now done your duty by her, and must fret no longer."
"But, my dear sister, can I be happy, even supposing the best, in
accepting a man whose sisters and friends are all wishing him to marry
elsewhere?"
"You must decide for yourself," said Elizabeth; "and if, upon mature
deliberation, you find that the misery of disobliging his two sisters is
more than equivalent to the happiness of being his wife, I advise you by
all means to refuse him."
"How can you talk so?" said Jane, faintly smiling. "You must know that
though I should be exceedingly grieved at their disapprobation, I could
not hesitate."
"I did not think you would; and that being the case, I cannot consider
your situation with much compassion."
"But if he returns no more this winter, my choice will never be
required. A thousand things may arise in six months!"
The idea of his returning no more Elizabeth treated with the utmost
contempt. It appeared to her merely the suggestion of Caroline's
interested wishes, and she could not for a moment suppose that those
wishes, however openly or artfully spoken, could influence a young man
so totally independent of everyone.
She represented to her sister as forcibly as possible what she felt
on the subject, and had soon the pleasure of seeing its happy effect.
Jane's temper was not desponding, and she was gradually led to hope,
though the diffidence of affection sometimes overcame the hope, that
Bingley would return to Netherfield and answer every wish of her heart.
They agreed that Mrs. Bennet should only hear of the departure of the
family, without being alarmed on the score of the gentleman's conduct;
but even this partial communication gave her a great deal of concern,
and she bewailed it as exceedingly unlucky that the ladies should happen
to go away just as they were all getting so intimate together. After
lamenting it, however, at some length, she had the consolation that Mr.
Bingley would be soon down again and soon dining at Longbourn, and the
conclusion of all was the comfortable declaration, that though he had
been invited only to a family dinner, she would take care to have two
full courses.
Chapter 22
The Bennets were engaged to dine with the Lucases and again during the
chief of the day was Miss Lucas so kind as to listen to Mr. Collins.
Elizabeth took an opportunity of thanking her. "It keeps him in good
humour," said she, "and I am more obliged to you than I can express."
Charlotte assured her friend of her satisfaction in being useful, and
that it amply repaid her for the little sacrifice of her time. This was
very amiable, but Charlotte's kindness extended farther than Elizabeth
had any conception of; its object was nothing else than to secure her
from any return of Mr. Collins's addresses, by engaging them towards
herself. Such was Miss Lucas's scheme; and appearances were so
favourable, that when they parted at night, she would have felt almost
secure of success if he had not been to leave Hertfordshire so very
soon. But here she did injustice to the fire and independence of his
character, for it led him to escape out of Longbourn House the next
morning with admirable slyness, and hasten to Lucas Lodge to throw
himself at her feet. He was anxious to avoid the notice of his cousins,
from a conviction that if they saw him depart, they could not fail to
conjecture his design, and he was not willing to have the attempt known
till its success might be known likewise; for though feeling almost
secure, and with reason, for Charlotte had been tolerably encouraging,
he was comparatively diffident since the adventure of Wednesday.
His reception, however, was of the most flattering kind. Miss Lucas
perceived him from an upper window as he walked towards the house, and
instantly set out to meet him accidentally in the lane. But little had
she dared to hope that so much love and eloquence awaited her there.
In as short a time as Mr. Collins's long speeches would allow,
everything was settled between them to the satisfaction of both; and as
they entered the house he earnestly entreated her to name the day that
was to make him the happiest of men; and though such a solicitation must
be waived for the present, the lady felt no inclination to trifle with
his happiness. The stupidity with which he was favoured by nature must
guard his courtship from any charm that could make a woman wish for its
continuance; and Miss Lucas, who accepted him solely from the pure
and disinterested desire of an establishment, cared not how soon that
establishment were gained.
Sir William and Lady Lucas were speedily applied to for their consent;
and it was bestowed with a most joyful alacrity. Mr. Collins's present
circumstances made it a most eligible match for their daughter, to whom
they could give little fortune; and his prospects of future wealth were
exceedingly fair. Lady Lucas began directly to calculate, with more
interest than the matter had ever excited before, how many years longer
Mr. Bennet was likely to live; and Sir William gave it as his decided
opinion, that whenever Mr. Collins should be in possession of the
Longbourn estate, it would be highly expedient that both he and his wife
should make their appearance at St. James's. The whole family, in short,
were properly overjoyed on the occasion. The younger girls formed hopes
of _coming out_ a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have
done; and the boys were relieved from their apprehension of Charlotte's
dying an old maid. Charlotte herself was tolerably composed. She had
gained her point, and had time to consider of it. Her reflections were
in general satisfactory. Mr. Collins, to be sure, was neither sensible
nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must
be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly
either of men or matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was
the only provision for well-educated young women of small fortune,
and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest
preservative from want. This preservative she had now obtained; and at
the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been handsome, she felt all
the good luck of it. The least agreeable circumstance in the business
was the surprise it must occasion to Elizabeth Bennet, whose friendship
she valued beyond that of any other person. Elizabeth would wonder,
and probably would blame her; and though her resolution was not to be
shaken, her feelings must be hurt by such a disapprobation. She resolved
to give her the information herself, and therefore charged Mr. Collins,
when he returned to Longbourn to dinner, to drop no hint of what had
passed before any of the family. A promise of secrecy was of course very
dutifully given, but it could not be kept without difficulty; for the
curiosity excited by his long absence burst forth in such very direct
questions on his return as required some ingenuity to evade, and he was
at the same time exercising great self-denial, for he was longing to
publish his prosperous love.
As he was to begin his journey too early on the morrow to see any of the
family, the ceremony of leave-taking was performed when the ladies moved
for the night; and Mrs. Bennet, with great politeness and cordiality,
said how happy they should be to see him at Longbourn again, whenever
his engagements might allow him to visit them.
"My dear madam," he replied, "this invitation is particularly
gratifying, because it is what I have been hoping to receive; and
you may be very certain that I shall avail myself of it as soon as
possible."
They were all astonished; and Mr. Bennet, who could by no means wish for
so speedy a return, immediately said:
"But is there not danger of Lady Catherine's disapprobation here, my
good sir? You had better neglect your relations than run the risk of
offending your patroness."
"My dear sir," replied Mr. Collins, "I am particularly obliged to you
for this friendly caution, and you may depend upon my not taking so
material a step without her ladyship's concurrence."
"You cannot be too much upon your guard. Risk anything rather than her
displeasure; and if you find it likely to be raised by your coming to us
again, which I should think exceedingly probable, stay quietly at home,
and be satisfied that _we_ shall take no offence."
"Believe me, my dear sir, my gratitude is warmly excited by such
affectionate attention; and depend upon it, you will speedily receive
from me a letter of thanks for this, and for every other mark of your
regard during my stay in Hertfordshire. As for my fair cousins, though
my absence may not be long enough to render it necessary, I shall now
take the liberty of wishing them health and happiness, not excepting my
cousin Elizabeth."
With proper civilities the ladies then withdrew; all of them equally
surprised that he meditated a quick return. Mrs. Bennet wished to
understand by it that he thought of paying his addresses to one of her
younger girls, and Mary might have been prevailed on to accept him.
She rated his abilities much higher than any of the others; there was
a solidity in his reflections which often struck her, and though by no
means so clever as herself, she thought that if encouraged to read
and improve himself by such an example as hers, he might become a very
agreeable companion. But on the following morning, every hope of this
kind was done away. Miss Lucas called soon after breakfast, and in a
private conference with Elizabeth related the event of the day before.
The possibility of Mr. Collins's fancying himself in love with her
friend had once occurred to Elizabeth within the last day or two; but
that Charlotte could encourage him seemed almost as far from
possibility as she could encourage him herself, and her astonishment was
consequently so great as to overcome at first the bounds of decorum, and
she could not help crying out:
"Engaged to Mr. Collins! My dear Charlotte--impossible!"
The steady countenance which Miss Lucas had commanded in telling her
story, gave way to a momentary confusion here on receiving so direct a
reproach; though, as it was no more than she expected, she soon regained
her composure, and calmly replied:
"Why should you be surprised, my dear Eliza? Do you think it incredible
that Mr. Collins should be able to procure any woman's good opinion,
because he was not so happy as to succeed with you?"
But Elizabeth had now recollected herself, and making a strong effort
for it, was able to assure with tolerable firmness that the prospect of
their relationship was highly grateful to her, and that she wished her
all imaginable happiness.
"I see what you are feeling," replied Charlotte. "You must be surprised,
very much surprised--so lately as Mr. Collins was wishing to marry
you. But when you have had time to think it over, I hope you will be
satisfied with what I have done. I am not romantic, you know; I never
was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr. Collins's
character, connection, and situation in life, I am convinced that my
chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on
entering the marriage state."
Elizabeth quietly answered "Undoubtedly;" and after an awkward pause,
they returned to the rest of the family. Charlotte did not stay much
longer, and Elizabeth was then left to reflect on what she had heard.
It was a long time before she became at all reconciled to the idea of so
unsuitable a match. The strangeness of Mr. Collins's making two offers
of marriage within three days was nothing in comparison of his being now
accepted. She had always felt that Charlotte's opinion of matrimony was
not exactly like her own, but she had not supposed it to be possible
that, when called into action, she would have sacrificed every better
feeling to worldly advantage. Charlotte the wife of Mr. Collins was a
most humiliating picture! And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself
and sunk in her esteem, was added the distressing conviction that it
was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot she had
chosen.
Chapter 23
Elizabeth was sitting with her mother and sisters, reflecting on what
she had heard, and doubting whether she was authorised to mention
it, when Sir William Lucas himself appeared, sent by his daughter, to
announce her engagement to the family. With many compliments to them,
and much self-gratulation on the prospect of a connection between the
houses, he unfolded the matter--to an audience not merely wondering, but
incredulous; for Mrs. Bennet, with more perseverance than politeness,
protested he must be entirely mistaken; and Lydia, always unguarded and
often uncivil, boisterously exclaimed:
"Good Lord! Sir William, how can you tell such a story? Do not you know
that Mr. Collins wants to marry Lizzy?"
Nothing less than the complaisance of a courtier could have borne
without anger such treatment; but Sir William's good breeding carried
him through it all; and though he begged leave to be positive as to the
truth of his information, he listened to all their impertinence with the
most forbearing courtesy.
Elizabeth, feeling it incumbent on her to relieve him from so unpleasant
a situation, now put herself forward to confirm his account, by
mentioning her prior knowledge of it from Charlotte herself; and
endeavoured to put a stop to the exclamations of her mother and sisters
by the earnestness of her congratulations to Sir William, in which she
was readily joined by Jane, and by making a variety of remarks on the
happiness that might be expected from the match, the excellent character
of Mr. Collins, and the convenient distance of Hunsford from London.
Mrs. Bennet was in fact too much overpowered to say a great deal while
Sir William remained; but no sooner had he left them than her feelings
found a rapid vent. In the first place, she persisted in disbelieving
the whole of the matter; secondly, she was very sure that Mr. Collins
had been taken in; thirdly, she trusted that they would never be
happy together; and fourthly, that the match might be broken off. Two
inferences, however, were plainly deduced from the whole: one, that
Elizabeth was the real cause of the mischief; and the other that she
herself had been barbarously misused by them all; and on these two
points she principally dwelt during the rest of the day. Nothing could
console and nothing could appease her. Nor did that day wear out her
resentment. A week elapsed before she could see Elizabeth without
scolding her, a month passed away before she could speak to Sir William
or Lady Lucas without being rude, and many months were gone before she
could at all forgive their daughter.
Mr. Bennet's emotions were much more tranquil on the occasion, and such
as he did experience he pronounced to be of a most agreeable sort; for
it gratified him, he said, to discover that Charlotte Lucas, whom he had
been used to think tolerably sensible, was as foolish as his wife, and
more foolish than his daughter!
Jane confessed herself a little surprised at the match; but she said
less of her astonishment than of her earnest desire for their happiness;
nor could Elizabeth persuade her to consider it as improbable. Kitty
and Lydia were far from envying Miss Lucas, for Mr. Collins was only a
clergyman; and it affected them in no other way than as a piece of news
to spread at Meryton.
Lady Lucas could not be insensible of triumph on being able to retort
on Mrs. Bennet the comfort of having a daughter well married; and she
called at Longbourn rather oftener than usual to say how happy she was,
though Mrs. Bennet's sour looks and ill-natured remarks might have been
enough to drive happiness away.
Between Elizabeth and Charlotte there was a restraint which kept them
mutually silent on the subject; and Elizabeth felt persuaded that
no real confidence could ever subsist between them again. Her
disappointment in Charlotte made her turn with fonder regard to her
sister, of whose rectitude and delicacy she was sure her opinion could
never be shaken, and for whose happiness she grew daily more anxious,
as Bingley had now been gone a week and nothing more was heard of his
return.
Jane had sent Caroline an early answer to her letter, and was counting
the days till she might reasonably hope to hear again. The promised
letter of thanks from Mr. Collins arrived on Tuesday, addressed to
their father, and written with all the solemnity of gratitude which a
twelvemonth's abode in the family might have prompted. After discharging
his conscience on that head, he proceeded to inform them, with many
rapturous expressions, of his happiness in having obtained the affection
of their amiable neighbour, Miss Lucas, and then explained that it was
merely with the view of enjoying her society that he had been so ready
to close with their kind wish of seeing him again at Longbourn, whither
he hoped to be able to return on Monday fortnight; for Lady Catherine,
he added, so heartily approved his marriage, that she wished it to take
place as soon as possible, which he trusted would be an unanswerable
argument with his amiable Charlotte to name an early day for making him
the happiest of men.
Mr. Collins's return into Hertfordshire was no longer a matter of
pleasure to Mrs. Bennet. On the contrary, she was as much disposed to
complain of it as her husband. It was very strange that he should come
to Longbourn instead of to Lucas Lodge; it was also very inconvenient
and exceedingly troublesome. She hated having visitors in the house
while her health was so indifferent, and lovers were of all people the
most disagreeable. Such were the gentle murmurs of Mrs. Bennet, and
they gave way only to the greater distress of Mr. Bingley's continued
absence.
Neither Jane nor Elizabeth were comfortable on this subject. Day after
day passed away without bringing any other tidings of him than the
report which shortly prevailed in Meryton of his coming no more to
Netherfield the whole winter; a report which highly incensed Mrs.
Bennet, and which she never failed to contradict as a most scandalous
falsehood.
Even Elizabeth began to fear--not that Bingley was indifferent--but that
his sisters would be successful in keeping him away. Unwilling as
she was to admit an idea so destructive of Jane's happiness, and so
dishonorable to the stability of her lover, she could not prevent its
frequently occurring. The united efforts of his two unfeeling sisters
and of his overpowering friend, assisted by the attractions of Miss
Darcy and the amusements of London might be too much, she feared, for
the strength of his attachment.
As for Jane, _her_ anxiety under this suspense was, of course, more
painful than Elizabeth's, but whatever she felt she was desirous of
concealing, and between herself and Elizabeth, therefore, the subject
was never alluded to. But as no such delicacy restrained her mother,
an hour seldom passed in which she did not talk of Bingley, express her
impatience for his arrival, or even require Jane to confess that if he
did not come back she would think herself very ill used. It needed
all Jane's steady mildness to bear these attacks with tolerable
tranquillity.
Mr. Collins returned most punctually on Monday fortnight, but his
reception at Longbourn was not quite so gracious as it had been on his
first introduction. He was too happy, however, to need much attention;
and luckily for the others, the business of love-making relieved them
from a great deal of his company. The chief of every day was spent by
him at Lucas Lodge, and he sometimes returned to Longbourn only in time
to make an apology for his absence before the family went to bed.
Mrs. Bennet was really in a most pitiable state. The very mention of
anything concerning the match threw her into an agony of ill-humour,
and wherever she went she was sure of hearing it talked of. The sight
of Miss Lucas was odious to her. As her successor in that house, she
regarded her with jealous abhorrence. Whenever Charlotte came to see
them, she concluded her to be anticipating the hour of possession; and
whenever she spoke in a low voice to Mr. Collins, was convinced that
they were talking of the Longbourn estate, and resolving to turn herself
and her daughters out of the house, as soon as Mr. Bennet were dead. She
complained bitterly of all this to her husband.
"Indeed, Mr. Bennet," said she, "it is very hard to think that Charlotte
Lucas should ever be mistress of this house, that I should be forced to
make way for _her_, and live to see her take her place in it!"
"My dear, do not give way to such gloomy thoughts. Let us hope for
better things. Let us flatter ourselves that I may be the survivor."
This was not very consoling to Mrs. Bennet, and therefore, instead of
making any answer, she went on as before.
"I cannot bear to think that they should have all this estate. If it was
not for the entail, I should not mind it."
"What should not you mind?"
"I should not mind anything at all."
"Let us be thankful that you are preserved from a state of such
insensibility."
"I never can be thankful, Mr. Bennet, for anything about the entail. How
anyone could have the conscience to entail away an estate from one's own
daughters, I cannot understand; and all for the sake of Mr. Collins too!
Why should _he_ have it more than anybody else?"
"I leave it to yourself to determine," said Mr. Bennet.
Chapter 24
Miss Bingley's letter arrived, and put an end to doubt. The very first
sentence conveyed the assurance of their being all settled in London for
the winter, and concluded with her brother's regret at not having had
time to pay his respects to his friends in Hertfordshire before he left
the country.
Hope was over, entirely over; and when Jane could attend to the rest
of the letter, she found little, except the professed affection of the
writer, that could give her any comfort. Miss Darcy's praise occupied
the chief of it. Her many attractions were again dwelt on, and Caroline
boasted joyfully of their increasing intimacy, and ventured to predict
the accomplishment of the wishes which had been unfolded in her former
letter. She wrote also with great pleasure of her brother's being an
inmate of Mr. Darcy's house, and mentioned with raptures some plans of
the latter with regard to new furniture.
Elizabeth, to whom Jane very soon communicated the chief of all this,
heard it in silent indignation. Her heart was divided between concern
for her sister, and resentment against all others. To Caroline's
assertion of her brother's being partial to Miss Darcy she paid no
credit. That he was really fond of Jane, she doubted no more than she
had ever done; and much as she had always been disposed to like him, she
could not think without anger, hardly without contempt, on that easiness
of temper, that want of proper resolution, which now made him the slave
of his designing friends, and led him to sacrifice of his own happiness
to the caprice of their inclination. Had his own happiness, however,
been the only sacrifice, he might have been allowed to sport with it in
whatever manner he thought best, but her sister's was involved in it, as
she thought he must be sensible himself. It was a subject, in short,
on which reflection would be long indulged, and must be unavailing. She
could think of nothing else; and yet whether Bingley's regard had really
died away, or were suppressed by his friends' interference; whether
he had been aware of Jane's attachment, or whether it had escaped his
observation; whatever were the case, though her opinion of him must be
materially affected by the difference, her sister's situation remained
the same, her peace equally wounded.
A day or two passed before Jane had courage to speak of her feelings to
Elizabeth; but at last, on Mrs. Bennet's leaving them together, after a
longer irritation than usual about Netherfield and its master, she could
not help saying:
"Oh, that my dear mother had more command over herself! She can have no
idea of the pain she gives me by her continual reflections on him. But
I will not repine. It cannot last long. He will be forgot, and we shall
all be as we were before."
Elizabeth looked at her sister with incredulous solicitude, but said
nothing.
"You doubt me," cried Jane, slightly colouring; "indeed, you have
no reason. He may live in my memory as the most amiable man of my
acquaintance, but that is all. I have nothing either to hope or fear,
and nothing to reproach him with. Thank God! I have not _that_ pain. A
little time, therefore--I shall certainly try to get the better."
With a stronger voice she soon added, "I have this comfort immediately,
that it has not been more than an error of fancy on my side, and that it
has done no harm to anyone but myself."
"My dear Jane!" exclaimed Elizabeth, "you are too good. Your sweetness
and disinterestedness are really angelic; I do not know what to say
to you. I feel as if I had never done you justice, or loved you as you
deserve."
Miss Bennet eagerly disclaimed all extraordinary merit, and threw back
the praise on her sister's warm affection.
"Nay," said Elizabeth, "this is not fair. _You_ wish to think all the
world respectable, and are hurt if I speak ill of anybody. I only want
to think _you_ perfect, and you set yourself against it. Do not
be afraid of my running into any excess, of my encroaching on your
privilege of universal good-will. You need not. There are few people
whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see
of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms
my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the
little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or
sense. I have met with two instances lately, one I will not mention; the
other is Charlotte's marriage. It is unaccountable! In every view it is
unaccountable!"
"My dear Lizzy, do not give way to such feelings as these. They will
ruin your happiness. You do not make allowance enough for difference
of situation and temper. Consider Mr. Collins's respectability, and
Charlotte's steady, prudent character. Remember that she is one of a
large family; that as to fortune, it is a most eligible match; and be
ready to believe, for everybody's sake, that she may feel something like
regard and esteem for our cousin."
"To oblige you, I would try to believe almost anything, but no one else
could be benefited by such a belief as this; for were I persuaded that
Charlotte had any regard for him, I should only think worse of her
understanding than I now do of her heart. My dear Jane, Mr. Collins is a
conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as
I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who married him
cannot have a proper way of thinking. You shall not defend her, though
it is Charlotte Lucas. You shall not, for the sake of one individual,
change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade
yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of
danger security for happiness."
"I must think your language too strong in speaking of both," replied
Jane; "and I hope you will be convinced of it by seeing them happy
together. But enough of this. You alluded to something else. You
mentioned _two_ instances. I cannot misunderstand you, but I entreat
you, dear Lizzy, not to pain me by thinking _that person_ to blame, and
saying your opinion of him is sunk. We must not be so ready to fancy
ourselves intentionally injured. We must not expect a lively young man
to be always so guarded and circumspect. It is very often nothing but
our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than
it does."
"And men take care that they should."
"If it is designedly done, they cannot be justified; but I have no idea
of there being so much design in the world as some persons imagine."
"I am far from attributing any part of Mr. Bingley's conduct to design,"
said Elizabeth; "but without scheming to do wrong, or to make others
unhappy, there may be error, and there may be misery. Thoughtlessness,
want of attention to other people's feelings, and want of resolution,
will do the business."
"And do you impute it to either of those?"
"Yes; to the last. But if I go on, I shall displease you by saying what
I think of persons you esteem. Stop me whilst you can."
"You persist, then, in supposing his sisters influence him?"
"Yes, in conjunction with his friend."
"I cannot believe it. Why should they try to influence him? They can
only wish his happiness; and if he is attached to me, no other woman can
secure it."
"Your first position is false. They may wish many things besides his
happiness; they may wish his increase of wealth and consequence; they
may wish him to marry a girl who has all the importance of money, great
connections, and pride."
"Beyond a doubt, they _do_ wish him to choose Miss Darcy," replied Jane;
"but this may be from better feelings than you are supposing. They have
known her much longer than they have known me; no wonder if they love
her better. But, whatever may be their own wishes, it is very unlikely
they should have opposed their brother's. What sister would think
herself at liberty to do it, unless there were something very
objectionable? If they believed him attached to me, they would not try
to part us; if he were so, they could not succeed. By supposing such an
affection, you make everybody acting unnaturally and wrong, and me most
unhappy. Do not distress me by the idea. I am not ashamed of having been
mistaken--or, at least, it is light, it is nothing in comparison of what
I should feel in thinking ill of him or his sisters. Let me take it in
the best light, in the light in which it may be understood."
Elizabeth could not oppose such a wish; and from this time Mr. Bingley's
name was scarcely ever mentioned between them.
Mrs. Bennet still continued to wonder and repine at his returning no
more, and though a day seldom passed in which Elizabeth did not account
for it clearly, there was little chance of her ever considering it with
less perplexity. Her daughter endeavoured to convince her of what she
did not believe herself, that his attentions to Jane had been merely the
effect of a common and transient liking, which ceased when he saw her
no more; but though the probability of the statement was admitted at
the time, she had the same story to repeat every day. Mrs. Bennet's best
comfort was that Mr. Bingley must be down again in the summer.
Mr. Bennet treated the matter differently. "So, Lizzy," said he one day,
"your sister is crossed in love, I find. I congratulate her. Next to
being married, a girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then.
It is something to think of, and it gives her a sort of distinction
among her companions. When is your turn to come? You will hardly bear to
be long outdone by Jane. Now is your time. Here are officers enough in
Meryton to disappoint all the young ladies in the country. Let Wickham
be _your_ man. He is a pleasant fellow, and would jilt you creditably."
"Thank you, sir, but a less agreeable man would satisfy me. We must not
all expect Jane's good fortune."
"True," said Mr. Bennet, "but it is a comfort to think that whatever of
that kind may befall you, you have an affectionate mother who will make
the most of it."
Mr. Wickham's society was of material service in dispelling the gloom
which the late perverse occurrences had thrown on many of the Longbourn
family. They saw him often, and to his other recommendations was now
added that of general unreserve. The whole of what Elizabeth had already
heard, his claims on Mr. Darcy, and all that he had suffered from him,
was now openly acknowledged and publicly canvassed; and everybody was
pleased to know how much they had always disliked Mr. Darcy before they
had known anything of the matter.
Miss Bennet was the only creature who could suppose there might be
any extenuating circumstances in the case, unknown to the society
of Hertfordshire; her mild and steady candour always pleaded for
allowances, and urged the possibility of mistakes--but by everybody else
Mr. Darcy was condemned as the worst of men.
Chapter 25
After a week spent in professions of love and schemes of felicity,
Mr. Collins was called from his amiable Charlotte by the arrival of
Saturday. The pain of separation, however, might be alleviated on his
side, by preparations for the reception of his bride; as he had reason
to hope, that shortly after his return into Hertfordshire, the day would
be fixed that was to make him the happiest of men. He took leave of his
relations at Longbourn with as much solemnity as before; wished his fair
cousins health and happiness again, and promised their father another
letter of thanks.
On the following Monday, Mrs. Bennet had the pleasure of receiving
her brother and his wife, who came as usual to spend the Christmas
at Longbourn. Mr. Gardiner was a sensible, gentlemanlike man, greatly
superior to his sister, as well by nature as education. The Netherfield
ladies would have had difficulty in believing that a man who lived
by trade, and within view of his own warehouses, could have been so
well-bred and agreeable. Mrs. Gardiner, who was several years younger
than Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Phillips, was an amiable, intelligent, elegant
woman, and a great favourite with all her Longbourn nieces. Between the
two eldest and herself especially, there subsisted a particular regard.
They had frequently been staying with her in town.
The first part of Mrs. Gardiner's business on her arrival was to
distribute her presents and describe the newest fashions. When this was
done she had a less active part to play. It became her turn to listen.
Mrs. Bennet had many grievances to relate, and much to complain of. They
had all been very ill-used since she last saw her sister. Two of her
girls had been upon the point of marriage, and after all there was
nothing in it.
"I do not blame Jane," she continued, "for Jane would have got Mr.
Bingley if she could. But Lizzy! Oh, sister! It is very hard to think
that she might have been Mr. Collins's wife by this time, had it not
been for her own perverseness. He made her an offer in this very room,
and she refused him. The consequence of it is, that Lady Lucas will have
a daughter married before I have, and that the Longbourn estate is just
as much entailed as ever. The Lucases are very artful people indeed,
sister. They are all for what they can get. I am sorry to say it of
them, but so it is. It makes me very nervous and poorly, to be thwarted
so in my own family, and to have neighbours who think of themselves
before anybody else. However, your coming just at this time is the
greatest of comforts, and I am very glad to hear what you tell us, of
long sleeves."
Mrs. Gardiner, to whom the chief of this news had been given before,
in the course of Jane and Elizabeth's correspondence with her, made her
sister a slight answer, and, in compassion to her nieces, turned the
conversation.
When alone with Elizabeth afterwards, she spoke more on the subject. "It
seems likely to have been a desirable match for Jane," said she. "I am
sorry it went off. But these things happen so often! A young man, such
as you describe Mr. Bingley, so easily falls in love with a pretty girl
for a few weeks, and when accident separates them, so easily forgets
her, that these sort of inconsistencies are very frequent."
"An excellent consolation in its way," said Elizabeth, "but it will not
do for _us_. We do not suffer by _accident_. It does not often
happen that the interference of friends will persuade a young man of
independent fortune to think no more of a girl whom he was violently in
love with only a few days before."
"But that expression of 'violently in love' is so hackneyed, so
doubtful, so indefinite, that it gives me very little idea. It is as
often applied to feelings which arise from a half-hour's acquaintance,
as to a real, strong attachment. Pray, how _violent was_ Mr. Bingley's
love?"
"I never saw a more promising inclination; he was growing quite
inattentive to other people, and wholly engrossed by her. Every time
they met, it was more decided and remarkable. At his own ball he
offended two or three young ladies, by not asking them to dance; and I
spoke to him twice myself, without receiving an answer. Could there be
finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?"
"Oh, yes!--of that kind of love which I suppose him to have felt. Poor
Jane! I am sorry for her, because, with her disposition, she may not get
over it immediately. It had better have happened to _you_, Lizzy; you
would have laughed yourself out of it sooner. But do you think she
would be prevailed upon to go back with us? Change of scene might be
of service--and perhaps a little relief from home may be as useful as
anything."
Elizabeth was exceedingly pleased with this proposal, and felt persuaded
of her sister's ready acquiescence.
"I hope," added Mrs. Gardiner, "that no consideration with regard to
this young man will influence her. We live in so different a part of
town, all our connections are so different, and, as you well know, we go
out so little, that it is very improbable that they should meet at all,
unless he really comes to see her."
"And _that_ is quite impossible; for he is now in the custody of his
friend, and Mr. Darcy would no more suffer him to call on Jane in such
a part of London! My dear aunt, how could you think of it? Mr. Darcy may
perhaps have _heard_ of such a place as Gracechurch Street, but he
would hardly think a month's ablution enough to cleanse him from its
impurities, were he once to enter it; and depend upon it, Mr. Bingley
never stirs without him."
"So much the better. I hope they will not meet at all. But does not Jane
correspond with his sister? _She_ will not be able to help calling."
"She will drop the acquaintance entirely."
But in spite of the certainty in which Elizabeth affected to place this
point, as well as the still more interesting one of Bingley's being
withheld from seeing Jane, she felt a solicitude on the subject which
convinced her, on examination, that she did not consider it entirely
hopeless. It was possible, and sometimes she thought it probable, that
his affection might be reanimated, and the influence of his friends
successfully combated by the more natural influence of Jane's
attractions.
Miss Bennet accepted her aunt's invitation with pleasure; and the
Bingleys were no otherwise in her thoughts at the same time, than as she
hoped by Caroline's not living in the same house with her brother,
she might occasionally spend a morning with her, without any danger of
seeing him.
The Gardiners stayed a week at Longbourn; and what with the Phillipses,
the Lucases, and the officers, there was not a day without its
engagement. Mrs. Bennet had so carefully provided for the entertainment
of her brother and sister, that they did not once sit down to a family
dinner. When the engagement was for home, some of the officers always
made part of it--of which officers Mr. Wickham was sure to be one; and
on these occasions, Mrs. Gardiner, rendered suspicious by Elizabeth's
warm commendation, narrowly observed them both. Without supposing them,
from what she saw, to be very seriously in love, their preference
of each other was plain enough to make her a little uneasy; and
she resolved to speak to Elizabeth on the subject before she left
Hertfordshire, and represent to her the imprudence of encouraging such
an attachment.
To Mrs. Gardiner, Wickham had one means of affording pleasure,
unconnected with his general powers. About ten or a dozen years ago,
before her marriage, she had spent a considerable time in that very
part of Derbyshire to which he belonged. They had, therefore, many
acquaintances in common; and though Wickham had been little there since
the death of Darcy's father, it was yet in his power to give her fresher
intelligence of her former friends than she had been in the way of
procuring.
Mrs. Gardiner had seen Pemberley, and known the late Mr. Darcy by
character perfectly well. Here consequently was an inexhaustible subject
of discourse. In comparing her recollection of Pemberley with the minute
description which Wickham could give, and in bestowing her tribute of
praise on the character of its late possessor, she was delighting both
him and herself. On being made acquainted with the present Mr. Darcy's
treatment of him, she tried to remember some of that gentleman's
reputed disposition when quite a lad which might agree with it, and
was confident at last that she recollected having heard Mr. Fitzwilliam
Darcy formerly spoken of as a very proud, ill-natured boy.
Chapter 26
Mrs. Gardiner's caution to Elizabeth was punctually and kindly given
on the first favourable opportunity of speaking to her alone; after
honestly telling her what she thought, she thus went on:
"You are too sensible a girl, Lizzy, to fall in love merely because
you are warned against it; and, therefore, I am not afraid of speaking
openly. Seriously, I would have you be on your guard. Do not involve
yourself or endeavour to involve him in an affection which the want
of fortune would make so very imprudent. I have nothing to say against
_him_; he is a most interesting young man; and if he had the fortune he
ought to have, I should think you could not do better. But as it is, you
must not let your fancy run away with you. You have sense, and we all
expect you to use it. Your father would depend on _your_ resolution and
good conduct, I am sure. You must not disappoint your father."
"My dear aunt, this is being serious indeed."
"Yes, and I hope to engage you to be serious likewise."
"Well, then, you need not be under any alarm. I will take care of
myself, and of Mr. Wickham too. He shall not be in love with me, if I
can prevent it."
"Elizabeth, you are not serious now."
"I beg your pardon, I will try again. At present I am not in love with
Mr. Wickham; no, I certainly am not. But he is, beyond all comparison,
the most agreeable man I ever saw--and if he becomes really attached to
me--I believe it will be better that he should not. I see the imprudence
of it. Oh! _that_ abominable Mr. Darcy! My father's opinion of me does
me the greatest honour, and I should be miserable to forfeit it. My
father, however, is partial to Mr. Wickham. In short, my dear aunt, I
should be very sorry to be the means of making any of you unhappy; but
since we see every day that where there is affection, young people
are seldom withheld by immediate want of fortune from entering into
engagements with each other, how can I promise to be wiser than so many
of my fellow-creatures if I am tempted, or how am I even to know that it
would be wisdom to resist? All that I can promise you, therefore, is not
to be in a hurry. I will not be in a hurry to believe myself his first
object. When I am in company with him, I will not be wishing. In short,
I will do my best."
"Perhaps it will be as well if you discourage his coming here so very
often. At least, you should not _remind_ your mother of inviting him."
"As I did the other day," said Elizabeth with a conscious smile: "very
true, it will be wise in me to refrain from _that_. But do not imagine
that he is always here so often. It is on your account that he has been
so frequently invited this week. You know my mother's ideas as to the
necessity of constant company for her friends. But really, and upon my
honour, I will try to do what I think to be the wisest; and now I hope
you are satisfied."
Her aunt assured her that she was, and Elizabeth having thanked her for
the kindness of her hints, they parted; a wonderful instance of advice
being given on such a point, without being resented.
Mr. Collins returned into Hertfordshire soon after it had been quitted
by the Gardiners and Jane; but as he took up his abode with the Lucases,
his arrival was no great inconvenience to Mrs. Bennet. His marriage was
now fast approaching, and she was at length so far resigned as to think
it inevitable, and even repeatedly to say, in an ill-natured tone, that
she "_wished_ they might be happy." Thursday was to be the wedding day,
and on Wednesday Miss Lucas paid her farewell visit; and when she
rose to take leave, Elizabeth, ashamed of her mother's ungracious and
reluctant good wishes, and sincerely affected herself, accompanied her
out of the room. As they went downstairs together, Charlotte said:
"I shall depend on hearing from you very often, Eliza."
"_That_ you certainly shall."
"And I have another favour to ask you. Will you come and see me?"
"We shall often meet, I hope, in Hertfordshire."
"I am not likely to leave Kent for some time. Promise me, therefore, to
come to Hunsford."
Elizabeth could not refuse, though she foresaw little pleasure in the
visit.
"My father and Maria are coming to me in March," added Charlotte, "and I
hope you will consent to be of the party. Indeed, Eliza, you will be as
welcome as either of them."
The wedding took place; the bride and bridegroom set off for Kent from
the church door, and everybody had as much to say, or to hear, on
the subject as usual. Elizabeth soon heard from her friend; and their
correspondence was as regular and frequent as it had ever been; that
it should be equally unreserved was impossible. Elizabeth could never
address her without feeling that all the comfort of intimacy was over,
and though determined not to slacken as a correspondent, it was for the
sake of what had been, rather than what was. Charlotte's first letters
were received with a good deal of eagerness; there could not but be
curiosity to know how she would speak of her new home, how she would
like Lady Catherine, and how happy she would dare pronounce herself to
be; though, when the letters were read, Elizabeth felt that Charlotte
expressed herself on every point exactly as she might have foreseen. She
wrote cheerfully, seemed surrounded with comforts, and mentioned nothing
which she could not praise. The house, furniture, neighbourhood, and
roads, were all to her taste, and Lady Catherine's behaviour was most
friendly and obliging. It was Mr. Collins's picture of Hunsford and
Rosings rationally softened; and Elizabeth perceived that she must wait
for her own visit there to know the rest.
Jane had already written a few lines to her sister to announce their
safe arrival in London; and when she wrote again, Elizabeth hoped it
would be in her power to say something of the Bingleys.
Her impatience for this second letter was as well rewarded as impatience
generally is. Jane had been a week in town without either seeing or
hearing from Caroline. She accounted for it, however, by supposing that
her last letter to her friend from Longbourn had by some accident been
lost.
"My aunt," she continued, "is going to-morrow into that part of the
town, and I shall take the opportunity of calling in Grosvenor Street."
She wrote again when the visit was paid, and she had seen Miss Bingley.
"I did not think Caroline in spirits," were her words, "but she was very
glad to see me, and reproached me for giving her no notice of my coming
to London. I was right, therefore, my last letter had never reached
her. I inquired after their brother, of course. He was well, but so much
engaged with Mr. Darcy that they scarcely ever saw him. I found that
Miss Darcy was expected to dinner. I wish I could see her. My visit was
not long, as Caroline and Mrs. Hurst were going out. I dare say I shall
see them soon here."
Elizabeth shook her head over this letter. It convinced her that
accident only could discover to Mr. Bingley her sister's being in town.
Four weeks passed away, and Jane saw nothing of him. She endeavoured to
persuade herself that she did not regret it; but she could no longer be
blind to Miss Bingley's inattention. After waiting at home every morning
for a fortnight, and inventing every evening a fresh excuse for her, the
visitor did at last appear; but the shortness of her stay, and yet more,
the alteration of her manner would allow Jane to deceive herself no
longer. The letter which she wrote on this occasion to her sister will
prove what she felt.
"My dearest Lizzy will, I am sure, be incapable of triumphing in her
better judgement, at my expense, when I confess myself to have been
entirely deceived in Miss Bingley's regard for me. But, my dear sister,
though the event has proved you right, do not think me obstinate if I
still assert that, considering what her behaviour was, my confidence was
as natural as your suspicion. I do not at all comprehend her reason for
wishing to be intimate with me; but if the same circumstances were to
happen again, I am sure I should be deceived again. Caroline did not
return my visit till yesterday; and not a note, not a line, did I
receive in the meantime. When she did come, it was very evident that
she had no pleasure in it; she made a slight, formal apology, for not
calling before, said not a word of wishing to see me again, and was
in every respect so altered a creature, that when she went away I was
perfectly resolved to continue the acquaintance no longer. I pity,
though I cannot help blaming her. She was very wrong in singling me out
as she did; I can safely say that every advance to intimacy began on
her side. But I pity her, because she must feel that she has been acting
wrong, and because I am very sure that anxiety for her brother is the
cause of it. I need not explain myself farther; and though _we_ know
this anxiety to be quite needless, yet if she feels it, it will easily
account for her behaviour to me; and so deservedly dear as he is to
his sister, whatever anxiety she must feel on his behalf is natural and
amiable. I cannot but wonder, however, at her having any such fears now,
because, if he had at all cared about me, we must have met, long ago.
He knows of my being in town, I am certain, from something she said
herself; and yet it would seem, by her manner of talking, as if she
wanted to persuade herself that he is really partial to Miss Darcy. I
cannot understand it. If I were not afraid of judging harshly, I should
be almost tempted to say that there is a strong appearance of duplicity
in all this. But I will endeavour to banish every painful thought,
and think only of what will make me happy--your affection, and the
invariable kindness of my dear uncle and aunt. Let me hear from you very
soon. Miss Bingley said something of his never returning to Netherfield
again, of giving up the house, but not with any certainty. We had better
not mention it. I am extremely glad that you have such pleasant accounts
from our friends at Hunsford. Pray go to see them, with Sir William and
Maria. I am sure you will be very comfortable there.--Yours, etc."
This letter gave Elizabeth some pain; but her spirits returned as she
considered that Jane would no longer be duped, by the sister at least.
All expectation from the brother was now absolutely over. She would not
even wish for a renewal of his attentions. His character sunk on
every review of it; and as a punishment for him, as well as a possible
advantage to Jane, she seriously hoped he might really soon marry Mr.
Darcy's sister, as by Wickham's account, she would make him abundantly
regret what he had thrown away.
Mrs. Gardiner about this time reminded Elizabeth of her promise
concerning that gentleman, and required information; and Elizabeth
had such to send as might rather give contentment to her aunt than to
herself. His apparent partiality had subsided, his attentions were over,
he was the admirer of some one else. Elizabeth was watchful enough to
see it all, but she could see it and write of it without material pain.
Her heart had been but slightly touched, and her vanity was satisfied
with believing that _she_ would have been his only choice, had fortune
permitted it. The sudden acquisition of ten thousand pounds was the most
remarkable charm of the young lady to whom he was now rendering himself
agreeable; but Elizabeth, less clear-sighted perhaps in this case than
in Charlotte's, did not quarrel with him for his wish of independence.
Nothing, on the contrary, could be more natural; and while able to
suppose that it cost him a few struggles to relinquish her, she was
ready to allow it a wise and desirable measure for both, and could very
sincerely wish him happy.
All this was acknowledged to Mrs. Gardiner; and after relating the
circumstances, she thus went on: "I am now convinced, my dear aunt, that
I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure
and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and
wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial
towards _him_; they are even impartial towards Miss King. I cannot find
out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to
think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this. My
watchfulness has been effectual; and though I certainly should be a more
interesting object to all my acquaintances were I distractedly in love
with him, I cannot say that I regret my comparative insignificance.
Importance may sometimes be purchased too dearly. Kitty and Lydia take
his defection much more to heart than I do. They are young in the
ways of the world, and not yet open to the mortifying conviction that
handsome young men must have something to live on as well as the plain."
Chapter 27
With no greater events than these in the Longbourn family, and otherwise
diversified by little beyond the walks to Meryton, sometimes dirty and
sometimes cold, did January and February pass away. March was to take
Elizabeth to Hunsford. She had not at first thought very seriously of
going thither; but Charlotte, she soon found, was depending on the plan
and she gradually learned to consider it herself with greater pleasure
as well as greater certainty. Absence had increased her desire of seeing
Charlotte again, and weakened her disgust of Mr. Collins. There
was novelty in the scheme, and as, with such a mother and such
uncompanionable sisters, home could not be faultless, a little change
was not unwelcome for its own sake. The journey would moreover give her
a peep at Jane; and, in short, as the time drew near, she would have
been very sorry for any delay. Everything, however, went on smoothly,
and was finally settled according to Charlotte's first sketch. She was
to accompany Sir William and his second daughter. The improvement
of spending a night in London was added in time, and the plan became
perfect as plan could be.
The only pain was in leaving her father, who would certainly miss her,
and who, when it came to the point, so little liked her going, that he
told her to write to him, and almost promised to answer her letter.
The farewell between herself and Mr. Wickham was perfectly friendly; on
his side even more. His present pursuit could not make him forget that
Elizabeth had been the first to excite and to deserve his attention, the
first to listen and to pity, the first to be admired; and in his manner
of bidding her adieu, wishing her every enjoyment, reminding her of
what she was to expect in Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and trusting their
opinion of her--their opinion of everybody--would always coincide, there
was a solicitude, an interest which she felt must ever attach her to
him with a most sincere regard; and she parted from him convinced that,
whether married or single, he must always be her model of the amiable
and pleasing.
Her fellow-travellers the next day were not of a kind to make her
think him less agreeable. Sir William Lucas, and his daughter Maria, a
good-humoured girl, but as empty-headed as himself, had nothing to say
that could be worth hearing, and were listened to with about as much
delight as the rattle of the chaise. Elizabeth loved absurdities, but
she had known Sir William's too long. He could tell her nothing new of
the wonders of his presentation and knighthood; and his civilities were
worn out, like his information.
It was a journey of only twenty-four miles, and they began it so early
as to be in Gracechurch Street by noon. As they drove to Mr. Gardiner's
door, Jane was at a drawing-room window watching their arrival; when
they entered the passage she was there to welcome them, and Elizabeth,
looking earnestly in her face, was pleased to see it healthful and
lovely as ever. On the stairs were a troop of little boys and girls,
whose eagerness for their cousin's appearance would not allow them to
wait in the drawing-room, and whose shyness, as they had not seen
her for a twelvemonth, prevented their coming lower. All was joy and
kindness. The day passed most pleasantly away; the morning in bustle and
shopping, and the evening at one of the theatres.
Elizabeth then contrived to sit by her aunt. Their first object was her
sister; and she was more grieved than astonished to hear, in reply to
her minute inquiries, that though Jane always struggled to support her
spirits, there were periods of dejection. It was reasonable, however,
to hope that they would not continue long. Mrs. Gardiner gave her the
particulars also of Miss Bingley's visit in Gracechurch Street, and
repeated conversations occurring at different times between Jane and
herself, which proved that the former had, from her heart, given up the
acquaintance.
Mrs. Gardiner then rallied her niece on Wickham's desertion, and
complimented her on bearing it so well.
"But my dear Elizabeth," she added, "what sort of girl is Miss King? I
should be sorry to think our friend mercenary."
"Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial affairs,
between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end,
and avarice begin? Last Christmas you were afraid of his marrying me,
because it would be imprudent; and now, because he is trying to get
a girl with only ten thousand pounds, you want to find out that he is
mercenary."
"If you will only tell me what sort of girl Miss King is, I shall know
what to think."
"She is a very good kind of girl, I believe. I know no harm of her."
"But he paid her not the smallest attention till her grandfather's death
made her mistress of this fortune."
"No--why should he? If it were not allowable for him to gain _my_
affections because I had no money, what occasion could there be for
making love to a girl whom he did not care about, and who was equally
poor?"
"But there seems an indelicacy in directing his attentions towards her
so soon after this event."
"A man in distressed circumstances has not time for all those elegant
decorums which other people may observe. If _she_ does not object to it,
why should _we_?"
"_Her_ not objecting does not justify _him_. It only shows her being
deficient in something herself--sense or feeling."
"Well," cried Elizabeth, "have it as you choose. _He_ shall be
mercenary, and _she_ shall be foolish."
"No, Lizzy, that is what I do _not_ choose. I should be sorry, you know,
to think ill of a young man who has lived so long in Derbyshire."
"Oh! if that is all, I have a very poor opinion of young men who live in
Derbyshire; and their intimate friends who live in Hertfordshire are not
much better. I am sick of them all. Thank Heaven! I am going to-morrow
where I shall find a man who has not one agreeable quality, who has
neither manner nor sense to recommend him. Stupid men are the only ones
worth knowing, after all."
"Take care, Lizzy; that speech savours strongly of disappointment."
Before they were separated by the conclusion of the play, she had the
unexpected happiness of an invitation to accompany her uncle and aunt in
a tour of pleasure which they proposed taking in the summer.
"We have not determined how far it shall carry us," said Mrs. Gardiner,
"but, perhaps, to the Lakes."
No scheme could have been more agreeable to Elizabeth, and her
acceptance of the invitation was most ready and grateful. "Oh, my dear,
dear aunt," she rapturously cried, "what delight! what felicity! You
give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What
are young men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport
we shall spend! And when we _do_ return, it shall not be like other
travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of anything. We
_will_ know where we have gone--we _will_ recollect what we have seen.
Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our
imaginations; nor when we attempt to describe any particular scene,
will we begin quarreling about its relative situation. Let _our_
first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of
travellers."
Chapter 28
Every object in the next day's journey was new and interesting to
Elizabeth; and her spirits were in a state of enjoyment; for she had
seen her sister looking so well as to banish all fear for her health,
and the prospect of her northern tour was a constant source of delight.
When they left the high road for the lane to Hunsford, every eye was in
search of the Parsonage, and every turning expected to bring it in view.
The palings of Rosings Park was their boundary on one side. Elizabeth
smiled at the recollection of all that she had heard of its inhabitants.
At length the Parsonage was discernible. The garden sloping to the
road, the house standing in it, the green pales, and the laurel hedge,
everything declared they were arriving. Mr. Collins and Charlotte
appeared at the door, and the carriage stopped at the small gate which
led by a short gravel walk to the house, amidst the nods and smiles of
the whole party. In a moment they were all out of the chaise, rejoicing
at the sight of each other. Mrs. Collins welcomed her friend with the
liveliest pleasure, and Elizabeth was more and more satisfied with
coming when she found herself so affectionately received. She saw
instantly that her cousin's manners were not altered by his marriage;
his formal civility was just what it had been, and he detained her some
minutes at the gate to hear and satisfy his inquiries after all her
family. They were then, with no other delay than his pointing out the
neatness of the entrance, taken into the house; and as soon as they
were in the parlour, he welcomed them a second time, with ostentatious
formality to his humble abode, and punctually repeated all his wife's
offers of refreshment.
Elizabeth was prepared to see him in his glory; and she could not help
in fancying that in displaying the good proportion of the room, its
aspect and its furniture, he addressed himself particularly to her,
as if wishing to make her feel what she had lost in refusing him. But
though everything seemed neat and comfortable, she was not able to
gratify him by any sigh of repentance, and rather looked with wonder at
her friend that she could have so cheerful an air with such a companion.
When Mr. Collins said anything of which his wife might reasonably be
ashamed, which certainly was not unseldom, she involuntarily turned her
eye on Charlotte. Once or twice she could discern a faint blush; but
in general Charlotte wisely did not hear. After sitting long enough to
admire every article of furniture in the room, from the sideboard to
the fender, to give an account of their journey, and of all that had
happened in London, Mr. Collins invited them to take a stroll in the
garden, which was large and well laid out, and to the cultivation of
which he attended himself. To work in this garden was one of his most
respectable pleasures; and Elizabeth admired the command of countenance
with which Charlotte talked of the healthfulness of the exercise, and
owned she encouraged it as much as possible. Here, leading the way
through every walk and cross walk, and scarcely allowing them an
interval to utter the praises he asked for, every view was pointed out
with a minuteness which left beauty entirely behind. He could number the
fields in every direction, and could tell how many trees there were in
the most distant clump. But of all the views which his garden, or which
the country or kingdom could boast, none were to be compared with the
prospect of Rosings, afforded by an opening in the trees that bordered
the park nearly opposite the front of his house. It was a handsome
modern building, well situated on rising ground.
From his garden, Mr. Collins would have led them round his two meadows;
but the ladies, not having shoes to encounter the remains of a white
frost, turned back; and while Sir William accompanied him, Charlotte
took her sister and friend over the house, extremely well pleased,
probably, to have the opportunity of showing it without her husband's
help. It was rather small, but well built and convenient; and everything
was fitted up and arranged with a neatness and consistency of which
Elizabeth gave Charlotte all the credit. When Mr. Collins could be
forgotten, there was really an air of great comfort throughout, and by
Charlotte's evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed he must be often
forgotten.
She had already learnt that Lady Catherine was still in the country. It
was spoken of again while they were at dinner, when Mr. Collins joining
in, observed:
"Yes, Miss Elizabeth, you will have the honour of seeing Lady Catherine
de Bourgh on the ensuing Sunday at church, and I need not say you will
be delighted with her. She is all affability and condescension, and I
doubt not but you will be honoured with some portion of her notice
when service is over. I have scarcely any hesitation in saying she
will include you and my sister Maria in every invitation with which she
honours us during your stay here. Her behaviour to my dear Charlotte is
charming. We dine at Rosings twice every week, and are never allowed
to walk home. Her ladyship's carriage is regularly ordered for us. I
_should_ say, one of her ladyship's carriages, for she has several."
"Lady Catherine is a very respectable, sensible woman indeed," added
Charlotte, "and a most attentive neighbour."
"Very true, my dear, that is exactly what I say. She is the sort of
woman whom one cannot regard with too much deference."
The evening was spent chiefly in talking over Hertfordshire news,
and telling again what had already been written; and when it closed,
Elizabeth, in the solitude of her chamber, had to meditate upon
Charlotte's degree of contentment, to understand her address in guiding,
and composure in bearing with, her husband, and to acknowledge that it
was all done very well. She had also to anticipate how her visit
would pass, the quiet tenor of their usual employments, the vexatious
interruptions of Mr. Collins, and the gaieties of their intercourse with
Rosings. A lively imagination soon settled it all.
About the middle of the next day, as she was in her room getting ready
for a walk, a sudden noise below seemed to speak the whole house in
confusion; and, after listening a moment, she heard somebody running
up stairs in a violent hurry, and calling loudly after her. She opened
the door and met Maria in the landing place, who, breathless with
agitation, cried out--
"Oh, my dear Eliza! pray make haste and come into the dining-room, for
there is such a sight to be seen! I will not tell you what it is. Make
haste, and come down this moment."
Elizabeth asked questions in vain; Maria would tell her nothing more,
and down they ran into the dining-room, which fronted the lane, in
quest of this wonder; It was two ladies stopping in a low phaeton at the
garden gate.
"And is this all?" cried Elizabeth. "I expected at least that the pigs
were got into the garden, and here is nothing but Lady Catherine and her
daughter."
"La! my dear," said Maria, quite shocked at the mistake, "it is not
Lady Catherine. The old lady is Mrs. Jenkinson, who lives with them;
the other is Miss de Bourgh. Only look at her. She is quite a little
creature. Who would have thought that she could be so thin and small?"
"She is abominably rude to keep Charlotte out of doors in all this wind.
Why does she not come in?"
"Oh, Charlotte says she hardly ever does. It is the greatest of favours
when Miss de Bourgh comes in."
"I like her appearance," said Elizabeth, struck with other ideas. "She
looks sickly and cross. Yes, she will do for him very well. She will
make him a very proper wife."
Mr. Collins and Charlotte were both standing at the gate in conversation
with the ladies; and Sir William, to Elizabeth's high diversion, was
stationed in the doorway, in earnest contemplation of the greatness
before him, and constantly bowing whenever Miss de Bourgh looked that
way.
At length there was nothing more to be said; the ladies drove on, and
the others returned into the house. Mr. Collins no sooner saw the two
girls than he began to congratulate them on their good fortune, which
Charlotte explained by letting them know that the whole party was asked
to dine at Rosings the next day.
Chapter 29
Mr. Collins's triumph, in consequence of this invitation, was complete.
The power of displaying the grandeur of his patroness to his wondering
visitors, and of letting them see her civility towards himself and his
wife, was exactly what he had wished for; and that an opportunity
of doing it should be given so soon, was such an instance of Lady
Catherine's condescension, as he knew not how to admire enough.
"I confess," said he, "that I should not have been at all surprised by
her ladyship's asking us on Sunday to drink tea and spend the evening at
Rosings. I rather expected, from my knowledge of her affability, that it
would happen. But who could have foreseen such an attention as this? Who
could have imagined that we should receive an invitation to dine there
(an invitation, moreover, including the whole party) so immediately
after your arrival!"
"I am the less surprised at what has happened," replied Sir William,
"from that knowledge of what the manners of the great really are, which
my situation in life has allowed me to acquire. About the court, such
instances of elegant breeding are not uncommon."
Scarcely anything was talked of the whole day or next morning but their
visit to Rosings. Mr. Collins was carefully instructing them in what
they were to expect, that the sight of such rooms, so many servants, and
so splendid a dinner, might not wholly overpower them.
When the ladies were separating for the toilette, he said to Elizabeth--
"Do not make yourself uneasy, my dear cousin, about your apparel. Lady
Catherine is far from requiring that elegance of dress in us which
becomes herself and her daughter. I would advise you merely to put on
whatever of your clothes is superior to the rest--there is no occasion
for anything more. Lady Catherine will not think the worse of you
for being simply dressed. She likes to have the distinction of rank
preserved."
While they were dressing, he came two or three times to their different
doors, to recommend their being quick, as Lady Catherine very much
objected to be kept waiting for her dinner. Such formidable accounts of
her ladyship, and her manner of living, quite frightened Maria Lucas
who had been little used to company, and she looked forward to her
introduction at Rosings with as much apprehension as her father had done
to his presentation at St. James's.
As the weather was fine, they had a pleasant walk of about half a
mile across the park. Every park has its beauty and its prospects; and
Elizabeth saw much to be pleased with, though she could not be in such
raptures as Mr. Collins expected the scene to inspire, and was but
slightly affected by his enumeration of the windows in front of the
house, and his relation of what the glazing altogether had originally
cost Sir Lewis de Bourgh.
When they ascended the steps to the hall, Maria's alarm was every
moment increasing, and even Sir William did not look perfectly calm.
Elizabeth's courage did not fail her. She had heard nothing of Lady
Catherine that spoke her awful from any extraordinary talents or
miraculous virtue, and the mere stateliness of money or rank she thought
she could witness without trepidation.
From the entrance-hall, of which Mr. Collins pointed out, with a
rapturous air, the fine proportion and the finished ornaments, they
followed the servants through an ante-chamber, to the room where Lady
Catherine, her daughter, and Mrs. Jenkinson were sitting. Her ladyship,
with great condescension, arose to receive them; and as Mrs. Collins had
settled it with her husband that the office of introduction should
be hers, it was performed in a proper manner, without any of those
apologies and thanks which he would have thought necessary.
In spite of having been at St. James's, Sir William was so completely
awed by the grandeur surrounding him, that he had but just courage
enough to make a very low bow, and take his seat without saying a word;
and his daughter, frightened almost out of her senses, sat on the edge
of her chair, not knowing which way to look. Elizabeth found herself
quite equal to the scene, and could observe the three ladies before her
composedly. Lady Catherine was a tall, large woman, with strongly-marked
features, which might once have been handsome. Her air was not
conciliating, nor was her manner of receiving them such as to make her
visitors forget their inferior rank. She was not rendered formidable by
silence; but whatever she said was spoken in so authoritative a tone,
as marked her self-importance, and brought Mr. Wickham immediately to
Elizabeth's mind; and from the observation of the day altogether, she
believed Lady Catherine to be exactly what he represented.
When, after examining the mother, in whose countenance and deportment
she soon found some resemblance of Mr. Darcy, she turned her eyes on the
daughter, she could almost have joined in Maria's astonishment at her
being so thin and so small. There was neither in figure nor face any
likeness between the ladies. Miss de Bourgh was pale and sickly; her
features, though not plain, were insignificant; and she spoke very
little, except in a low voice, to Mrs. Jenkinson, in whose appearance
there was nothing remarkable, and who was entirely engaged in listening
to what she said, and placing a screen in the proper direction before
her eyes.
After sitting a few minutes, they were all sent to one of the windows to
admire the view, Mr. Collins attending them to point out its beauties,
and Lady Catherine kindly informing them that it was much better worth
looking at in the summer.
The dinner was exceedingly handsome, and there were all the servants and
all the articles of plate which Mr. Collins had promised; and, as he had
likewise foretold, he took his seat at the bottom of the table, by her
ladyship's desire, and looked as if he felt that life could furnish
nothing greater. He carved, and ate, and praised with delighted
alacrity; and every dish was commended, first by him and then by Sir
William, who was now enough recovered to echo whatever his son-in-law
said, in a manner which Elizabeth wondered Lady Catherine could bear.
But Lady Catherine seemed gratified by their excessive admiration, and
gave most gracious smiles, especially when any dish on the table proved
a novelty to them. The party did not supply much conversation. Elizabeth
was ready to speak whenever there was an opening, but she was seated
between Charlotte and Miss de Bourgh--the former of whom was engaged in
listening to Lady Catherine, and the latter said not a word to her all
dinner-time. Mrs. Jenkinson was chiefly employed in watching how little
Miss de Bourgh ate, pressing her to try some other dish, and fearing
she was indisposed. Maria thought speaking out of the question, and the
gentlemen did nothing but eat and admire.
When the ladies returned to the drawing-room, there was little to
be done but to hear Lady Catherine talk, which she did without any
intermission till coffee came in, delivering her opinion on every
subject in so decisive a manner, as proved that she was not used to
have her judgement controverted. She inquired into Charlotte's domestic
concerns familiarly and minutely, gave her a great deal of advice as
to the management of them all; told her how everything ought to be
regulated in so small a family as hers, and instructed her as to the
care of her cows and her poultry. Elizabeth found that nothing was
beneath this great lady's attention, which could furnish her with an
occasion of dictating to others. In the intervals of her discourse
with Mrs. Collins, she addressed a variety of questions to Maria and
Elizabeth, but especially to the latter, of whose connections she knew
the least, and who she observed to Mrs. Collins was a very genteel,
pretty kind of girl. She asked her, at different times, how many sisters
she had, whether they were older or younger than herself, whether any of
them were likely to be married, whether they were handsome, where they
had been educated, what carriage her father kept, and what had been
her mother's maiden name? Elizabeth felt all the impertinence of
her questions but answered them very composedly. Lady Catherine then
observed,
"Your father's estate is entailed on Mr. Collins, I think. For your
sake," turning to Charlotte, "I am glad of it; but otherwise I see no
occasion for entailing estates from the female line. It was not thought
necessary in Sir Lewis de Bourgh's family. Do you play and sing, Miss
Bennet?"
"A little."
"Oh! then--some time or other we shall be happy to hear you. Our
instrument is a capital one, probably superior to----You shall try it
some day. Do your sisters play and sing?"
"One of them does."
"Why did not you all learn? You ought all to have learned. The Miss
Webbs all play, and their father has not so good an income as yours. Do
you draw?"
"No, not at all."
"What, none of you?"
"Not one."
"That is very strange. But I suppose you had no opportunity. Your mother
should have taken you to town every spring for the benefit of masters."
"My mother would have had no objection, but my father hates London."
"Has your governess left you?"
"We never had any governess."
"No governess! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home
without a governess! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must
have been quite a slave to your education."
Elizabeth could hardly help smiling as she assured her that had not been
the case.
"Then, who taught you? who attended to you? Without a governess, you
must have been neglected."
"Compared with some families, I believe we were; but such of us as
wished to learn never wanted the means. We were always encouraged to
read, and had all the masters that were necessary. Those who chose to be
idle, certainly might."
"Aye, no doubt; but that is what a governess will prevent, and if I had
known your mother, I should have advised her most strenuously to engage
one. I always say that nothing is to be done in education without steady
and regular instruction, and nobody but a governess can give it. It is
wonderful how many families I have been the means of supplying in that
way. I am always glad to get a young person well placed out. Four nieces
of Mrs. Jenkinson are most delightfully situated through my means; and
it was but the other day that I recommended another young person,
who was merely accidentally mentioned to me, and the family are quite
delighted with her. Mrs. Collins, did I tell you of Lady Metcalf's
calling yesterday to thank me? She finds Miss Pope a treasure. 'Lady
Catherine,' said she, 'you have given me a treasure.' Are any of your
younger sisters out, Miss Bennet?"
"Yes, ma'am, all."
"All! What, all five out at once? Very odd! And you only the second. The
younger ones out before the elder ones are married! Your younger sisters
must be very young?"
"Yes, my youngest is not sixteen. Perhaps _she_ is full young to be
much in company. But really, ma'am, I think it would be very hard upon
younger sisters, that they should not have their share of society and
amusement, because the elder may not have the means or inclination to
marry early. The last-born has as good a right to the pleasures of youth
as the first. And to be kept back on _such_ a motive! I think it would
not be very likely to promote sisterly affection or delicacy of mind."
"Upon my word," said her ladyship, "you give your opinion very decidedly
for so young a person. Pray, what is your age?"
"With three younger sisters grown up," replied Elizabeth, smiling, "your
ladyship can hardly expect me to own it."
Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer;
and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever
dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence.
"You cannot be more than twenty, I am sure, therefore you need not
conceal your age."
"I am not one-and-twenty."
When the gentlemen had joined them, and tea was over, the card-tables
were placed. Lady Catherine, Sir William, and Mr. and Mrs. Collins sat
down to quadrille; and as Miss de Bourgh chose to play at cassino, the
two girls had the honour of assisting Mrs. Jenkinson to make up her
party. Their table was superlatively stupid. Scarcely a syllable was
uttered that did not relate to the game, except when Mrs. Jenkinson
expressed her fears of Miss de Bourgh's being too hot or too cold, or
having too much or too little light. A great deal more passed at the
other table. Lady Catherine was generally speaking--stating the mistakes
of the three others, or relating some anecdote of herself. Mr. Collins
was employed in agreeing to everything her ladyship said, thanking her
for every fish he won, and apologising if he thought he won too many.
Sir William did not say much. He was storing his memory with anecdotes
and noble names.
When Lady Catherine and her daughter had played as long as they chose,
the tables were broken up, the carriage was offered to Mrs. Collins,
gratefully accepted and immediately ordered. The party then gathered
round the fire to hear Lady Catherine determine what weather they were
to have on the morrow. From these instructions they were summoned by
the arrival of the coach; and with many speeches of thankfulness on Mr.
Collins's side and as many bows on Sir William's they departed. As soon
as they had driven from the door, Elizabeth was called on by her cousin
to give her opinion of all that she had seen at Rosings, which, for
Charlotte's sake, she made more favourable than it really was. But her
commendation, though costing her some trouble, could by no means satisfy
Mr. Collins, and he was very soon obliged to take her ladyship's praise
into his own hands.
Chapter 30
Sir William stayed only a week at Hunsford, but his visit was long
enough to convince him of his daughter's being most comfortably settled,
and of her possessing such a husband and such a neighbour as were not
often met with. While Sir William was with them, Mr. Collins devoted his
morning to driving him out in his gig, and showing him the country; but
when he went away, the whole family returned to their usual employments,
and Elizabeth was thankful to find that they did not see more of her
cousin by the alteration, for the chief of the time between breakfast
and dinner was now passed by him either at work in the garden or in
reading and writing, and looking out of the window in his own book-room,
which fronted the road. The room in which the ladies sat was backwards.
Elizabeth had at first rather wondered that Charlotte should not prefer
the dining-parlour for common use; it was a better sized room, and had a
more pleasant aspect; but she soon saw that her friend had an excellent
reason for what she did, for Mr. Collins would undoubtedly have been
much less in his own apartment, had they sat in one equally lively; and
she gave Charlotte credit for the arrangement.
From the drawing-room they could distinguish nothing in the lane, and
were indebted to Mr. Collins for the knowledge of what carriages went
along, and how often especially Miss de Bourgh drove by in her phaeton,
which he never failed coming to inform them of, though it happened
almost every day. She not unfrequently stopped at the Parsonage, and
had a few minutes' conversation with Charlotte, but was scarcely ever
prevailed upon to get out.
Very few days passed in which Mr. Collins did not walk to Rosings, and
not many in which his wife did not think it necessary to go likewise;
and till Elizabeth recollected that there might be other family livings
to be disposed of, she could not understand the sacrifice of so many
hours. Now and then they were honoured with a call from her ladyship,
and nothing escaped her observation that was passing in the room during
these visits. She examined into their employments, looked at their work,
and advised them to do it differently; found fault with the arrangement
of the furniture; or detected the housemaid in negligence; and if she
accepted any refreshment, seemed to do it only for the sake of finding
out that Mrs. Collins's joints of meat were too large for her family.
Elizabeth soon perceived, that though this great lady was not in
commission of the peace of the county, she was a most active magistrate
in her own parish, the minutest concerns of which were carried to her
by Mr. Collins; and whenever any of the cottagers were disposed to
be quarrelsome, discontented, or too poor, she sallied forth into the
village to settle their differences, silence their complaints, and scold
them into harmony and plenty.
The entertainment of dining at Rosings was repeated about twice a week;
and, allowing for the loss of Sir William, and there being only one
card-table in the evening, every such entertainment was the counterpart
of the first. Their other engagements were few, as the style of living
in the neighbourhood in general was beyond Mr. Collins's reach. This,
however, was no evil to Elizabeth, and upon the whole she spent her time
comfortably enough; there were half-hours of pleasant conversation with
Charlotte, and the weather was so fine for the time of year that she had
often great enjoyment out of doors. Her favourite walk, and where she
frequently went while the others were calling on Lady Catherine, was
along the open grove which edged that side of the park, where there was
a nice sheltered path, which no one seemed to value but herself, and
where she felt beyond the reach of Lady Catherine's curiosity.
In this quiet way, the first fortnight of her visit soon passed away.
Easter was approaching, and the week preceding it was to bring an
addition to the family at Rosings, which in so small a circle must be
important. Elizabeth had heard soon after her arrival that Mr. Darcy was
expected there in the course of a few weeks, and though there were not
many of her acquaintances whom she did not prefer, his coming would
furnish one comparatively new to look at in their Rosings parties, and
she might be amused in seeing how hopeless Miss Bingley's designs on him
were, by his behaviour to his cousin, for whom he was evidently
destined by Lady Catherine, who talked of his coming with the greatest
satisfaction, spoke of him in terms of the highest admiration, and
seemed almost angry to find that he had already been frequently seen by
Miss Lucas and herself.
His arrival was soon known at the Parsonage; for Mr. Collins was walking
the whole morning within view of the lodges opening into Hunsford Lane,
in order to have the earliest assurance of it, and after making his
bow as the carriage turned into the Park, hurried home with the great
intelligence. On the following morning he hastened to Rosings to pay his
respects. There were two nephews of Lady Catherine to require them, for
Mr. Darcy had brought with him a Colonel Fitzwilliam, the younger son of
his uncle Lord ----, and, to the great surprise of all the party, when
Mr. Collins returned, the gentlemen accompanied him. Charlotte had seen
them from her husband's room, crossing the road, and immediately running
into the other, told the girls what an honour they might expect, adding:
"I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility. Mr. Darcy would
never have come so soon to wait upon me."
Elizabeth had scarcely time to disclaim all right to the compliment,
before their approach was announced by the door-bell, and shortly
afterwards the three gentlemen entered the room. Colonel Fitzwilliam,
who led the way, was about thirty, not handsome, but in person and
address most truly the gentleman. Mr. Darcy looked just as he had been
used to look in Hertfordshire--paid his compliments, with his usual
reserve, to Mrs. Collins, and whatever might be his feelings toward her
friend, met her with every appearance of composure. Elizabeth merely
curtseyed to him without saying a word.
Colonel Fitzwilliam entered into conversation directly with the
readiness and ease of a well-bred man, and talked very pleasantly; but
his cousin, after having addressed a slight observation on the house and
garden to Mrs. Collins, sat for some time without speaking to anybody.
At length, however, his civility was so far awakened as to inquire of
Elizabeth after the health of her family. She answered him in the usual
way, and after a moment's pause, added:
"My eldest sister has been in town these three months. Have you never
happened to see her there?"
She was perfectly sensible that he never had; but she wished to see
whether he would betray any consciousness of what had passed between
the Bingleys and Jane, and she thought he looked a little confused as he
answered that he had never been so fortunate as to meet Miss Bennet. The
subject was pursued no farther, and the gentlemen soon afterwards went
away.
Chapter 31
Colonel Fitzwilliam's manners were very much admired at the Parsonage,
and the ladies all felt that he must add considerably to the pleasures
of their engagements at Rosings. It was some days, however, before they
received any invitation thither--for while there were visitors in the
house, they could not be necessary; and it was not till Easter-day,
almost a week after the gentlemen's arrival, that they were honoured by
such an attention, and then they were merely asked on leaving church to
come there in the evening. For the last week they had seen very little
of Lady Catherine or her daughter. Colonel Fitzwilliam had called at the
Parsonage more than once during the time, but Mr. Darcy they had seen
only at church.
The invitation was accepted of course, and at a proper hour they joined
the party in Lady Catherine's drawing-room. Her ladyship received
them civilly, but it was plain that their company was by no means so
acceptable as when she could get nobody else; and she was, in fact,
almost engrossed by her nephews, speaking to them, especially to Darcy,
much more than to any other person in the room.
Colonel Fitzwilliam seemed really glad to see them; anything was a
welcome relief to him at Rosings; and Mrs. Collins's pretty friend had
moreover caught his fancy very much. He now seated himself by her, and
talked so agreeably of Kent and Hertfordshire, of travelling and staying
at home, of new books and music, that Elizabeth had never been half so
well entertained in that room before; and they conversed with so much
spirit and flow, as to draw the attention of Lady Catherine herself,
as well as of Mr. Darcy. _His_ eyes had been soon and repeatedly turned
towards them with a look of curiosity; and that her ladyship, after a
while, shared the feeling, was more openly acknowledged, for she did not
scruple to call out:
"What is that you are saying, Fitzwilliam? What is it you are talking
of? What are you telling Miss Bennet? Let me hear what it is."
"We are speaking of music, madam," said he, when no longer able to avoid
a reply.
"Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I
must have my share in the conversation if you are speaking of music.
There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment
of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt,
I should have been a great proficient. And so would Anne, if her health
had allowed her to apply. I am confident that she would have performed
delightfully. How does Georgiana get on, Darcy?"
Mr. Darcy spoke with affectionate praise of his sister's proficiency.
"I am very glad to hear such a good account of her," said Lady
Catherine; "and pray tell her from me, that she cannot expect to excel
if she does not practice a good deal."
"I assure you, madam," he replied, "that she does not need such advice.
She practises very constantly."
"So much the better. It cannot be done too much; and when I next write
to her, I shall charge her not to neglect it on any account. I often
tell young ladies that no excellence in music is to be acquired without
constant practice. I have told Miss Bennet several times, that she
will never play really well unless she practises more; and though Mrs.
Collins has no instrument, she is very welcome, as I have often told
her, to come to Rosings every day, and play on the pianoforte in Mrs.
Jenkinson's room. She would be in nobody's way, you know, in that part
of the house."
Mr. Darcy looked a little ashamed of his aunt's ill-breeding, and made
no answer.
When coffee was over, Colonel Fitzwilliam reminded Elizabeth of having
promised to play to him; and she sat down directly to the instrument. He
drew a chair near her. Lady Catherine listened to half a song, and then
talked, as before, to her other nephew; till the latter walked away
from her, and making with his usual deliberation towards the pianoforte
stationed himself so as to command a full view of the fair performer's
countenance. Elizabeth saw what he was doing, and at the first
convenient pause, turned to him with an arch smile, and said:
"You mean to frighten me, Mr. Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear
me? I will not be alarmed though your sister _does_ play so well. There
is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the
will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate
me."
"I shall not say you are mistaken," he replied, "because you could not
really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have
had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know that you find
great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are
not your own."
Elizabeth laughed heartily at this picture of herself, and said to
Colonel Fitzwilliam, "Your cousin will give you a very pretty notion of
me, and teach you not to believe a word I say. I am particularly unlucky
in meeting with a person so able to expose my real character, in a part
of the world where I had hoped to pass myself off with some degree of
credit. Indeed, Mr. Darcy, it is very ungenerous in you to mention all
that you knew to my disadvantage in Hertfordshire--and, give me leave to
say, very impolitic too--for it is provoking me to retaliate, and such
things may come out as will shock your relations to hear."
"I am not afraid of you," said he, smilingly.
"Pray let me hear what you have to accuse him of," cried Colonel
Fitzwilliam. "I should like to know how he behaves among strangers."
"You shall hear then--but prepare yourself for something very dreadful.
The first time of my ever seeing him in Hertfordshire, you must know,
was at a ball--and at this ball, what do you think he did? He danced
only four dances, though gentlemen were scarce; and, to my certain
knowledge, more than one young lady was sitting down in want of a
partner. Mr. Darcy, you cannot deny the fact."
"I had not at that time the honour of knowing any lady in the assembly
beyond my own party."
"True; and nobody can ever be introduced in a ball-room. Well, Colonel
Fitzwilliam, what do I play next? My fingers wait your orders."
"Perhaps," said Darcy, "I should have judged better, had I sought an
introduction; but I am ill-qualified to recommend myself to strangers."
"Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?" said Elizabeth, still
addressing Colonel Fitzwilliam. "Shall we ask him why a man of sense and
education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend
himself to strangers?"
"I can answer your question," said Fitzwilliam, "without applying to
him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble."
"I certainly have not the talent which some people possess," said Darcy,
"of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot
catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their
concerns, as I often see done."
"My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the
masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same
force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I
have always supposed it to be my own fault--because I will not take the
trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe _my_ fingers as
capable as any other woman's of superior execution."
Darcy smiled and said, "You are perfectly right. You have employed your
time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can
think anything wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers."
Here they were interrupted by Lady Catherine, who called out to know
what they were talking of. Elizabeth immediately began playing again.
Lady Catherine approached, and, after listening for a few minutes, said
to Darcy:
"Miss Bennet would not play at all amiss if she practised more, and
could have the advantage of a London master. She has a very good notion
of fingering, though her taste is not equal to Anne's. Anne would have
been a delightful performer, had her health allowed her to learn."
Elizabeth looked at Darcy to see how cordially he assented to his
cousin's praise; but neither at that moment nor at any other could she
discern any symptom of love; and from the whole of his behaviour to Miss
de Bourgh she derived this comfort for Miss Bingley, that he might have
been just as likely to marry _her_, had she been his relation.
Lady Catherine continued her remarks on Elizabeth's performance, mixing
with them many instructions on execution and taste. Elizabeth received
them with all the forbearance of civility, and, at the request of the
gentlemen, remained at the instrument till her ladyship's carriage was
ready to take them all home.
Chapter 32
Elizabeth was sitting by herself the next morning, and writing to Jane
while Mrs. Collins and Maria were gone on business into the village,
when she was startled by a ring at the door, the certain signal of a
visitor. As she had heard no carriage, she thought it not unlikely to
be Lady Catherine, and under that apprehension was putting away her
half-finished letter that she might escape all impertinent questions,
when the door opened, and, to her very great surprise, Mr. Darcy, and
Mr. Darcy only, entered the room.
He seemed astonished too on finding her alone, and apologised for his
intrusion by letting her know that he had understood all the ladies were
to be within.
They then sat down, and when her inquiries after Rosings were made,
seemed in danger of sinking into total silence. It was absolutely
necessary, therefore, to think of something, and in this emergence
recollecting _when_ she had seen him last in Hertfordshire, and
feeling curious to know what he would say on the subject of their hasty
departure, she observed:
"How very suddenly you all quitted Netherfield last November, Mr. Darcy!
It must have been a most agreeable surprise to Mr. Bingley to see you
all after him so soon; for, if I recollect right, he went but the day
before. He and his sisters were well, I hope, when you left London?"
"Perfectly so, I thank you."
She found that she was to receive no other answer, and, after a short
pause added:
"I think I have understood that Mr. Bingley has not much idea of ever
returning to Netherfield again?"
"I have never heard him say so; but it is probable that he may spend
very little of his time there in the future. He has many friends, and
is at a time of life when friends and engagements are continually
increasing."
"If he means to be but little at Netherfield, it would be better for
the neighbourhood that he should give up the place entirely, for then we
might possibly get a settled family there. But, perhaps, Mr. Bingley did
not take the house so much for the convenience of the neighbourhood as
for his own, and we must expect him to keep it or quit it on the same
principle."
"I should not be surprised," said Darcy, "if he were to give it up as
soon as any eligible purchase offers."
Elizabeth made no answer. She was afraid of talking longer of his
friend; and, having nothing else to say, was now determined to leave the
trouble of finding a subject to him.
He took the hint, and soon began with, "This seems a very comfortable
house. Lady Catherine, I believe, did a great deal to it when Mr.
Collins first came to Hunsford."
"I believe she did--and I am sure she could not have bestowed her
kindness on a more grateful object."
"Mr. Collins appears to be very fortunate in his choice of a wife."
"Yes, indeed, his friends may well rejoice in his having met with one
of the very few sensible women who would have accepted him, or have made
him happy if they had. My friend has an excellent understanding--though
I am not certain that I consider her marrying Mr. Collins as the
wisest thing she ever did. She seems perfectly happy, however, and in a
prudential light it is certainly a very good match for her."
"It must be very agreeable for her to be settled within so easy a
distance of her own family and friends."
"An easy distance, do you call it? It is nearly fifty miles."
"And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day's
journey. Yes, I call it a _very_ easy distance."
"I should never have considered the distance as one of the _advantages_
of the match," cried Elizabeth. "I should never have said Mrs. Collins
was settled _near_ her family."
"It is a proof of your own attachment to Hertfordshire. Anything beyond
the very neighbourhood of Longbourn, I suppose, would appear far."
As he spoke there was a sort of smile which Elizabeth fancied she
understood; he must be supposing her to be thinking of Jane and
Netherfield, and she blushed as she answered:
"I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near her
family. The far and the near must be relative, and depend on many
varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the expenses of
travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil. But that is not the
case _here_. Mr. and Mrs. Collins have a comfortable income, but not
such a one as will allow of frequent journeys--and I am persuaded my
friend would not call herself _near_ her family under less than _half_
the present distance."
Mr. Darcy drew his chair a little towards her, and said, "_You_ cannot
have a right to such very strong local attachment. _You_ cannot have
been always at Longbourn."
Elizabeth looked surprised. The gentleman experienced some change of
feeling; he drew back his chair, took a newspaper from the table, and
glancing over it, said, in a colder voice:
"Are you pleased with Kent?"
A short dialogue on the subject of the country ensued, on either side
calm and concise--and soon put an end to by the entrance of Charlotte
and her sister, just returned from her walk. The tete-a-tete surprised
them. Mr. Darcy related the mistake which had occasioned his intruding
on Miss Bennet, and after sitting a few minutes longer without saying
much to anybody, went away.
"What can be the meaning of this?" said Charlotte, as soon as he was
gone. "My dear, Eliza, he must be in love with you, or he would never
have called us in this familiar way."
But when Elizabeth told of his silence, it did not seem very likely,
even to Charlotte's wishes, to be the case; and after various
conjectures, they could at last only suppose his visit to proceed from
the difficulty of finding anything to do, which was the more probable
from the time of year. All field sports were over. Within doors there
was Lady Catherine, books, and a billiard-table, but gentlemen cannot
always be within doors; and in the nearness of the Parsonage, or the
pleasantness of the walk to it, or of the people who lived in it, the
two cousins found a temptation from this period of walking thither
almost every day. They called at various times of the morning, sometimes
separately, sometimes together, and now and then accompanied by their
aunt. It was plain to them all that Colonel Fitzwilliam came because he
had pleasure in their society, a persuasion which of course recommended
him still more; and Elizabeth was reminded by her own satisfaction in
being with him, as well as by his evident admiration of her, of her
former favourite George Wickham; and though, in comparing them, she saw
there was less captivating softness in Colonel Fitzwilliam's manners,
she believed he might have the best informed mind.
But why Mr. Darcy came so often to the Parsonage, it was more difficult
to understand. It could not be for society, as he frequently sat there
ten minutes together without opening his lips; and when he did speak,
it seemed the effect of necessity rather than of choice--a sacrifice
to propriety, not a pleasure to himself. He seldom appeared really
animated. Mrs. Collins knew not what to make of him. Colonel
Fitzwilliam's occasionally laughing at his stupidity, proved that he was
generally different, which her own knowledge of him could not have told
her; and as she would liked to have believed this change the effect
of love, and the object of that love her friend Eliza, she set herself
seriously to work to find it out. She watched him whenever they were at
Rosings, and whenever he came to Hunsford; but without much success. He
certainly looked at her friend a great deal, but the expression of that
look was disputable. It was an earnest, steadfast gaze, but she often
doubted whether there were much admiration in it, and sometimes it
seemed nothing but absence of mind.
She had once or twice suggested to Elizabeth the possibility of his
being partial to her, but Elizabeth always laughed at the idea; and Mrs.
Collins did not think it right to press the subject, from the danger of
raising expectations which might only end in disappointment; for in her
opinion it admitted not of a doubt, that all her friend's dislike would
vanish, if she could suppose him to be in her power.
In her kind schemes for Elizabeth, she sometimes planned her marrying
Colonel Fitzwilliam. He was beyond comparison the most pleasant man; he
certainly admired her, and his situation in life was most eligible; but,
to counterbalance these advantages, Mr. Darcy had considerable patronage
in the church, and his cousin could have none at all.
Chapter 33
More than once did Elizabeth, in her ramble within the park,
unexpectedly meet Mr. Darcy. She felt all the perverseness of the
mischance that should bring him where no one else was brought, and, to
prevent its ever happening again, took care to inform him at first that
it was a favourite haunt of hers. How it could occur a second time,
therefore, was very odd! Yet it did, and even a third. It seemed like
wilful ill-nature, or a voluntary penance, for on these occasions it was
not merely a few formal inquiries and an awkward pause and then away,
but he actually thought it necessary to turn back and walk with her. He
never said a great deal, nor did she give herself the trouble of talking
or of listening much; but it struck her in the course of their third
rencontre that he was asking some odd unconnected questions--about
her pleasure in being at Hunsford, her love of solitary walks, and her
opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Collins's happiness; and that in speaking of
Rosings and her not perfectly understanding the house, he seemed to
expect that whenever she came into Kent again she would be staying
_there_ too. His words seemed to imply it. Could he have Colonel
Fitzwilliam in his thoughts? She supposed, if he meant anything, he must
mean an allusion to what might arise in that quarter. It distressed
her a little, and she was quite glad to find herself at the gate in the
pales opposite the Parsonage.
She was engaged one day as she walked, in perusing Jane's last letter,
and dwelling on some passages which proved that Jane had not written in
spirits, when, instead of being again surprised by Mr. Darcy, she saw
on looking up that Colonel Fitzwilliam was meeting her. Putting away the
letter immediately and forcing a smile, she said:
"I did not know before that you ever walked this way."
"I have been making the tour of the park," he replied, "as I generally
do every year, and intend to close it with a call at the Parsonage. Are
you going much farther?"
"No, I should have turned in a moment."
And accordingly she did turn, and they walked towards the Parsonage
together.
"Do you certainly leave Kent on Saturday?" said she.
"Yes--if Darcy does not put it off again. But I am at his disposal. He
arranges the business just as he pleases."
"And if not able to please himself in the arrangement, he has at least
pleasure in the great power of choice. I do not know anybody who seems
more to enjoy the power of doing what he likes than Mr. Darcy."
"He likes to have his own way very well," replied Colonel Fitzwilliam.
"But so we all do. It is only that he has better means of having it
than many others, because he is rich, and many others are poor. I speak
feelingly. A younger son, you know, must be inured to self-denial and
dependence."
"In my opinion, the younger son of an earl can know very little of
either. Now seriously, what have you ever known of self-denial and
dependence? When have you been prevented by want of money from going
wherever you chose, or procuring anything you had a fancy for?"
"These are home questions--and perhaps I cannot say that I have
experienced many hardships of that nature. But in matters of greater
weight, I may suffer from want of money. Younger sons cannot marry where
they like."
"Unless where they like women of fortune, which I think they very often
do."
"Our habits of expense make us too dependent, and there are not many
in my rank of life who can afford to marry without some attention to
money."
"Is this," thought Elizabeth, "meant for me?" and she coloured at the
idea; but, recovering herself, said in a lively tone, "And pray, what
is the usual price of an earl's younger son? Unless the elder brother is
very sickly, I suppose you would not ask above fifty thousand pounds."
He answered her in the same style, and the subject dropped. To interrupt
a silence which might make him fancy her affected with what had passed,
she soon afterwards said:
"I imagine your cousin brought you down with him chiefly for the sake of
having someone at his disposal. I wonder he does not marry, to secure a
lasting convenience of that kind. But, perhaps, his sister does as well
for the present, and, as she is under his sole care, he may do what he
likes with her."
"No," said Colonel Fitzwilliam, "that is an advantage which he must
divide with me. I am joined with him in the guardianship of Miss Darcy."
"Are you indeed? And pray what sort of guardians do you make? Does your
charge give you much trouble? Young ladies of her age are sometimes a
little difficult to manage, and if she has the true Darcy spirit, she
may like to have her own way."
As she spoke she observed him looking at her earnestly; and the manner
in which he immediately asked her why she supposed Miss Darcy likely to
give them any uneasiness, convinced her that she had somehow or other
got pretty near the truth. She directly replied:
"You need not be frightened. I never heard any harm of her; and I dare
say she is one of the most tractable creatures in the world. She is a
very great favourite with some ladies of my acquaintance, Mrs. Hurst and
Miss Bingley. I think I have heard you say that you know them."
"I know them a little. Their brother is a pleasant gentlemanlike man--he
is a great friend of Darcy's."
"Oh! yes," said Elizabeth drily; "Mr. Darcy is uncommonly kind to Mr.
Bingley, and takes a prodigious deal of care of him."
"Care of him! Yes, I really believe Darcy _does_ take care of him in
those points where he most wants care. From something that he told me in
our journey hither, I have reason to think Bingley very much indebted to
him. But I ought to beg his pardon, for I have no right to suppose that
Bingley was the person meant. It was all conjecture."
"What is it you mean?"
"It is a circumstance which Darcy could not wish to be generally known,
because if it were to get round to the lady's family, it would be an
unpleasant thing."
"You may depend upon my not mentioning it."
"And remember that I have not much reason for supposing it to be
Bingley. What he told me was merely this: that he congratulated himself
on having lately saved a friend from the inconveniences of a most
imprudent marriage, but without mentioning names or any other
particulars, and I only suspected it to be Bingley from believing
him the kind of young man to get into a scrape of that sort, and from
knowing them to have been together the whole of last summer."
"Did Mr. Darcy give you reasons for this interference?"
"I understood that there were some very strong objections against the
lady."
"And what arts did he use to separate them?"
"He did not talk to me of his own arts," said Fitzwilliam, smiling. "He
only told me what I have now told you."
Elizabeth made no answer, and walked on, her heart swelling with
indignation. After watching her a little, Fitzwilliam asked her why she
was so thoughtful.
"I am thinking of what you have been telling me," said she. "Your
cousin's conduct does not suit my feelings. Why was he to be the judge?"
"You are rather disposed to call his interference officious?"
"I do not see what right Mr. Darcy had to decide on the propriety of his
friend's inclination, or why, upon his own judgement alone, he was to
determine and direct in what manner his friend was to be happy.
But," she continued, recollecting herself, "as we know none of the
particulars, it is not fair to condemn him. It is not to be supposed
that there was much affection in the case."
"That is not an unnatural surmise," said Fitzwilliam, "but it is a
lessening of the honour of my cousin's triumph very sadly."
This was spoken jestingly; but it appeared to her so just a picture
of Mr. Darcy, that she would not trust herself with an answer, and
therefore, abruptly changing the conversation talked on indifferent
matters until they reached the Parsonage. There, shut into her own room,
as soon as their visitor left them, she could think without interruption
of all that she had heard. It was not to be supposed that any other
people could be meant than those with whom she was connected. There
could not exist in the world _two_ men over whom Mr. Darcy could have
such boundless influence. That he had been concerned in the measures
taken to separate Bingley and Jane she had never doubted; but she had
always attributed to Miss Bingley the principal design and arrangement
of them. If his own vanity, however, did not mislead him, _he_ was
the cause, his pride and caprice were the cause, of all that Jane had
suffered, and still continued to suffer. He had ruined for a while
every hope of happiness for the most affectionate, generous heart in the
world; and no one could say how lasting an evil he might have inflicted.
"There were some very strong objections against the lady," were Colonel
Fitzwilliam's words; and those strong objections probably were, her
having one uncle who was a country attorney, and another who was in
business in London.
"To Jane herself," she exclaimed, "there could be no possibility of
objection; all loveliness and goodness as she is!--her understanding
excellent, her mind improved, and her manners captivating. Neither
could anything be urged against my father, who, though with some
peculiarities, has abilities Mr. Darcy himself need not disdain, and
respectability which he will probably never reach." When she thought of
her mother, her confidence gave way a little; but she would not allow
that any objections _there_ had material weight with Mr. Darcy, whose
pride, she was convinced, would receive a deeper wound from the want of
importance in his friend's connections, than from their want of sense;
and she was quite decided, at last, that he had been partly governed
by this worst kind of pride, and partly by the wish of retaining Mr.
Bingley for his sister.
The agitation and tears which the subject occasioned, brought on a
headache; and it grew so much worse towards the evening, that, added to
her unwillingness to see Mr. Darcy, it determined her not to attend her
cousins to Rosings, where they were engaged to drink tea. Mrs. Collins,
seeing that she was really unwell, did not press her to go and as much
as possible prevented her husband from pressing her; but Mr. Collins
could not conceal his apprehension of Lady Catherine's being rather
displeased by her staying at home.
Chapter 34
When they were gone, Elizabeth, as if intending to exasperate herself
as much as possible against Mr. Darcy, chose for her employment the
examination of all the letters which Jane had written to her since her
being in Kent. They contained no actual complaint, nor was there any
revival of past occurrences, or any communication of present suffering.
But in all, and in almost every line of each, there was a want of that
cheerfulness which had been used to characterise her style, and which,
proceeding from the serenity of a mind at ease with itself and kindly
disposed towards everyone, had been scarcely ever clouded. Elizabeth
noticed every sentence conveying the idea of uneasiness, with an
attention which it had hardly received on the first perusal. Mr. Darcy's
shameful boast of what misery he had been able to inflict, gave her
a keener sense of her sister's sufferings. It was some consolation
to think that his visit to Rosings was to end on the day after the
next--and, a still greater, that in less than a fortnight she should
herself be with Jane again, and enabled to contribute to the recovery of
her spirits, by all that affection could do.
She could not think of Darcy's leaving Kent without remembering that
his cousin was to go with him; but Colonel Fitzwilliam had made it clear
that he had no intentions at all, and agreeable as he was, she did not
mean to be unhappy about him.
While settling this point, she was suddenly roused by the sound of the
door-bell, and her spirits were a little fluttered by the idea of its
being Colonel Fitzwilliam himself, who had once before called late in
the evening, and might now come to inquire particularly after her.
But this idea was soon banished, and her spirits were very differently
affected, when, to her utter amazement, she saw Mr. Darcy walk into the
room. In an hurried manner he immediately began an inquiry after her
health, imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better.
She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments, and
then getting up, walked about the room. Elizabeth was surprised, but
said not a word. After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her
in an agitated manner, and thus began:
"In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be
repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love
you."
Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured,
doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement;
and the avowal of all that he felt, and had long felt for her,
immediately followed. He spoke well; but there were feelings besides
those of the heart to be detailed; and he was not more eloquent on the
subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority--of
its being a degradation--of the family obstacles which had always
opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to
the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his
suit.
In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to
the compliment of such a man's affection, and though her intentions did
not vary for an instant, she was at first sorry for the pain he was to
receive; till, roused to resentment by his subsequent language, she
lost all compassion in anger. She tried, however, to compose herself to
answer him with patience, when he should have done. He concluded with
representing to her the strength of that attachment which, in spite
of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer; and with
expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by her acceptance of
his hand. As he said this, she could easily see that he had no doubt
of a favourable answer. He _spoke_ of apprehension and anxiety, but
his countenance expressed real security. Such a circumstance could
only exasperate farther, and, when he ceased, the colour rose into her
cheeks, and she said:
"In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to
express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however
unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should
be felt, and if I could _feel_ gratitude, I would now thank you. But I
cannot--I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly
bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to
anyone. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be
of short duration. The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented
the acknowledgment of your regard, can have little difficulty in
overcoming it after this explanation."
Mr. Darcy, who was leaning against the mantelpiece with his eyes fixed
on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less resentment than
surprise. His complexion became pale with anger, and the disturbance
of his mind was visible in every feature. He was struggling for the
appearance of composure, and would not open his lips till he believed
himself to have attained it. The pause was to Elizabeth's feelings
dreadful. At length, with a voice of forced calmness, he said:
"And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting!
I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little _endeavour_ at
civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance."
"I might as well inquire," replied she, "why with so evident a desire
of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me
against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?
Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I _was_ uncivil? But I have
other provocations. You know I have. Had not my feelings decided against
you--had they been indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you
think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has
been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most
beloved sister?"
As she pronounced these words, Mr. Darcy changed colour; but the emotion
was short, and he listened without attempting to interrupt her while she
continued:
"I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. No motive can
excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted _there_. You dare not,
you cannot deny, that you have been the principal, if not the only means
of dividing them from each other--of exposing one to the censure of the
world for caprice and instability, and the other to its derision for
disappointed hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest
kind."
She paused, and saw with no slight indignation that he was listening
with an air which proved him wholly unmoved by any feeling of remorse.
He even looked at her with a smile of affected incredulity.
"Can you deny that you have done it?" she repeated.
With assumed tranquillity he then replied: "I have no wish of denying
that I did everything in my power to separate my friend from your
sister, or that I rejoice in my success. Towards _him_ I have been
kinder than towards myself."
Elizabeth disdained the appearance of noticing this civil reflection,
but its meaning did not escape, nor was it likely to conciliate her.
"But it is not merely this affair," she continued, "on which my dislike
is founded. Long before it had taken place my opinion of you was
decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received
many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to
say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself?
or under what misrepresentation can you here impose upon others?"
"You take an eager interest in that gentleman's concerns," said Darcy,
in a less tranquil tone, and with a heightened colour.
"Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an
interest in him?"
"His misfortunes!" repeated Darcy contemptuously; "yes, his misfortunes
have been great indeed."
"And of your infliction," cried Elizabeth with energy. "You have reduced
him to his present state of poverty--comparative poverty. You have
withheld the advantages which you must know to have been designed for
him. You have deprived the best years of his life of that independence
which was no less his due than his desert. You have done all this!
and yet you can treat the mention of his misfortune with contempt and
ridicule."
"And this," cried Darcy, as he walked with quick steps across the room,
"is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me!
I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this
calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps," added he, stopping in
his walk, and turning towards her, "these offenses might have been
overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the
scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These
bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I, with greater
policy, concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of
my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by
reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence.
Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and
just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your
connections?--to congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose
condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?"
Elizabeth felt herself growing more angry every moment; yet she tried to
the utmost to speak with composure when she said:
"You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your
declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern
which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more
gentlemanlike manner."
She saw him start at this, but he said nothing, and she continued:
"You could not have made the offer of your hand in any possible way that
would have tempted me to accept it."
Again his astonishment was obvious; and he looked at her with an
expression of mingled incredulity and mortification. She went on:
"From the very beginning--from the first moment, I may almost say--of
my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest
belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of
the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of
disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a
dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the
last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."
"You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your
feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been.
Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time, and accept my best
wishes for your health and happiness."
And with these words he hastily left the room, and Elizabeth heard him
the next moment open the front door and quit the house.
The tumult of her mind, was now painfully great. She knew not how
to support herself, and from actual weakness sat down and cried for
half-an-hour. Her astonishment, as she reflected on what had passed,
was increased by every review of it. That she should receive an offer of
marriage from Mr. Darcy! That he should have been in love with her for
so many months! So much in love as to wish to marry her in spite of
all the objections which had made him prevent his friend's marrying
her sister, and which must appear at least with equal force in his
own case--was almost incredible! It was gratifying to have inspired
unconsciously so strong an affection. But his pride, his abominable
pride--his shameless avowal of what he had done with respect to
Jane--his unpardonable assurance in acknowledging, though he could
not justify it, and the unfeeling manner in which he had mentioned Mr.
Wickham, his cruelty towards whom he had not attempted to deny, soon
overcame the pity which the consideration of his attachment had for
a moment excited. She continued in very agitated reflections till the
sound of Lady Catherine's carriage made her feel how unequal she was to
encounter Charlotte's observation, and hurried her away to her room.
Chapter 35
Elizabeth awoke the next morning to the same thoughts and meditations
which had at length closed her eyes. She could not yet recover from the
surprise of what had happened; it was impossible to think of anything
else; and, totally indisposed for employment, she resolved, soon after
breakfast, to indulge herself in air and exercise. She was proceeding
directly to her favourite walk, when the recollection of Mr. Darcy's
sometimes coming there stopped her, and instead of entering the park,
she turned up the lane, which led farther from the turnpike-road. The
park paling was still the boundary on one side, and she soon passed one
of the gates into the ground.
After walking two or three times along that part of the lane, she was
tempted, by the pleasantness of the morning, to stop at the gates and
look into the park. The five weeks which she had now passed in Kent had
made a great difference in the country, and every day was adding to the
verdure of the early trees. She was on the point of continuing her walk,
when she caught a glimpse of a gentleman within the sort of grove which
edged the park; he was moving that way; and, fearful of its being Mr.
Darcy, she was directly retreating. But the person who advanced was now
near enough to see her, and stepping forward with eagerness, pronounced
her name. She had turned away; but on hearing herself called, though
in a voice which proved it to be Mr. Darcy, she moved again towards the
gate. He had by that time reached it also, and, holding out a letter,
which she instinctively took, said, with a look of haughty composure,
"I have been walking in the grove some time in the hope of meeting you.
Will you do me the honour of reading that letter?" And then, with a
slight bow, turned again into the plantation, and was soon out of sight.
With no expectation of pleasure, but with the strongest curiosity,
Elizabeth opened the letter, and, to her still increasing wonder,
perceived an envelope containing two sheets of letter-paper, written
quite through, in a very close hand. The envelope itself was likewise
full. Pursuing her way along the lane, she then began it. It was dated
from Rosings, at eight o'clock in the morning, and was as follows:--
"Be not alarmed, madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension
of its containing any repetition of those sentiments or renewal of those
offers which were last night so disgusting to you. I write without any
intention of paining you, or humbling myself, by dwelling on wishes
which, for the happiness of both, cannot be too soon forgotten; and the
effort which the formation and the perusal of this letter must occasion,
should have been spared, had not my character required it to be written
and read. You must, therefore, pardon the freedom with which I demand
your attention; your feelings, I know, will bestow it unwillingly, but I
demand it of your justice.
"Two offenses of a very different nature, and by no means of equal
magnitude, you last night laid to my charge. The first mentioned was,
that, regardless of the sentiments of either, I had detached Mr. Bingley
from your sister, and the other, that I had, in defiance of various
claims, in defiance of honour and humanity, ruined the immediate
prosperity and blasted the prospects of Mr. Wickham. Wilfully and
wantonly to have thrown off the companion of my youth, the acknowledged
favourite of my father, a young man who had scarcely any other
dependence than on our patronage, and who had been brought up to expect
its exertion, would be a depravity, to which the separation of two young
persons, whose affection could be the growth of only a few weeks, could
bear no comparison. But from the severity of that blame which was last
night so liberally bestowed, respecting each circumstance, I shall hope
to be in the future secured, when the following account of my actions
and their motives has been read. If, in the explanation of them, which
is due to myself, I am under the necessity of relating feelings which
may be offensive to yours, I can only say that I am sorry. The necessity
must be obeyed, and further apology would be absurd.
"I had not been long in Hertfordshire, before I saw, in common with
others, that Bingley preferred your elder sister to any other young
woman in the country. But it was not till the evening of the dance
at Netherfield that I had any apprehension of his feeling a serious
attachment. I had often seen him in love before. At that ball, while I
had the honour of dancing with you, I was first made acquainted, by Sir
William Lucas's accidental information, that Bingley's attentions to
your sister had given rise to a general expectation of their marriage.
He spoke of it as a certain event, of which the time alone could
be undecided. From that moment I observed my friend's behaviour
attentively; and I could then perceive that his partiality for Miss
Bennet was beyond what I had ever witnessed in him. Your sister I also
watched. Her look and manners were open, cheerful, and engaging as ever,
but without any symptom of peculiar regard, and I remained convinced
from the evening's scrutiny, that though she received his attentions
with pleasure, she did not invite them by any participation of
sentiment. If _you_ have not been mistaken here, _I_ must have been
in error. Your superior knowledge of your sister must make the latter
probable. If it be so, if I have been misled by such error to inflict
pain on her, your resentment has not been unreasonable. But I shall not
scruple to assert, that the serenity of your sister's countenance and
air was such as might have given the most acute observer a conviction
that, however amiable her temper, her heart was not likely to be
easily touched. That I was desirous of believing her indifferent is
certain--but I will venture to say that my investigation and decisions
are not usually influenced by my hopes or fears. I did not believe
her to be indifferent because I wished it; I believed it on impartial
conviction, as truly as I wished it in reason. My objections to the
marriage were not merely those which I last night acknowledged to have
the utmost force of passion to put aside, in my own case; the want of
connection could not be so great an evil to my friend as to me. But
there were other causes of repugnance; causes which, though still
existing, and existing to an equal degree in both instances, I had
myself endeavoured to forget, because they were not immediately before
me. These causes must be stated, though briefly. The situation of your
mother's family, though objectionable, was nothing in comparison to that
total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly betrayed by
herself, by your three younger sisters, and occasionally even by your
father. Pardon me. It pains me to offend you. But amidst your concern
for the defects of your nearest relations, and your displeasure at this
representation of them, let it give you consolation to consider that, to
have conducted yourselves so as to avoid any share of the like censure,
is praise no less generally bestowed on you and your elder sister, than
it is honourable to the sense and disposition of both. I will only say
farther that from what passed that evening, my opinion of all parties
was confirmed, and every inducement heightened which could have led
me before, to preserve my friend from what I esteemed a most unhappy
connection. He left Netherfield for London, on the day following, as
you, I am certain, remember, with the design of soon returning.
"The part which I acted is now to be explained. His sisters' uneasiness
had been equally excited with my own; our coincidence of feeling was
soon discovered, and, alike sensible that no time was to be lost in
detaching their brother, we shortly resolved on joining him directly in
London. We accordingly went--and there I readily engaged in the office
of pointing out to my friend the certain evils of such a choice. I
described, and enforced them earnestly. But, however this remonstrance
might have staggered or delayed his determination, I do not suppose
that it would ultimately have prevented the marriage, had it not been
seconded by the assurance that I hesitated not in giving, of your
sister's indifference. He had before believed her to return his
affection with sincere, if not with equal regard. But Bingley has great
natural modesty, with a stronger dependence on my judgement than on his
own. To convince him, therefore, that he had deceived himself, was
no very difficult point. To persuade him against returning into
Hertfordshire, when that conviction had been given, was scarcely the
work of a moment. I cannot blame myself for having done thus much. There
is but one part of my conduct in the whole affair on which I do not
reflect with satisfaction; it is that I condescended to adopt the
measures of art so far as to conceal from him your sister's being in
town. I knew it myself, as it was known to Miss Bingley; but her
brother is even yet ignorant of it. That they might have met without
ill consequence is perhaps probable; but his regard did not appear to me
enough extinguished for him to see her without some danger. Perhaps this
concealment, this disguise was beneath me; it is done, however, and it
was done for the best. On this subject I have nothing more to say, no
other apology to offer. If I have wounded your sister's feelings, it
was unknowingly done and though the motives which governed me may to
you very naturally appear insufficient, I have not yet learnt to condemn
them.
"With respect to that other, more weighty accusation, of having injured
Mr. Wickham, I can only refute it by laying before you the whole of his
connection with my family. Of what he has _particularly_ accused me I
am ignorant; but of the truth of what I shall relate, I can summon more
than one witness of undoubted veracity.
"Mr. Wickham is the son of a very respectable man, who had for many
years the management of all the Pemberley estates, and whose good
conduct in the discharge of his trust naturally inclined my father to
be of service to him; and on George Wickham, who was his godson, his
kindness was therefore liberally bestowed. My father supported him at
school, and afterwards at Cambridge--most important assistance, as his
own father, always poor from the extravagance of his wife, would have
been unable to give him a gentleman's education. My father was not only
fond of this young man's society, whose manners were always engaging; he
had also the highest opinion of him, and hoping the church would be
his profession, intended to provide for him in it. As for myself, it is
many, many years since I first began to think of him in a very different
manner. The vicious propensities--the want of principle, which he was
careful to guard from the knowledge of his best friend, could not escape
the observation of a young man of nearly the same age with himself,
and who had opportunities of seeing him in unguarded moments, which Mr.
Darcy could not have. Here again I shall give you pain--to what degree
you only can tell. But whatever may be the sentiments which Mr. Wickham
has created, a suspicion of their nature shall not prevent me from
unfolding his real character--it adds even another motive.
"My excellent father died about five years ago; and his attachment to
Mr. Wickham was to the last so steady, that in his will he particularly
recommended it to me, to promote his advancement in the best manner
that his profession might allow--and if he took orders, desired that a
valuable family living might be his as soon as it became vacant. There
was also a legacy of one thousand pounds. His own father did not long
survive mine, and within half a year from these events, Mr. Wickham
wrote to inform me that, having finally resolved against taking orders,
he hoped I should not think it unreasonable for him to expect some more
immediate pecuniary advantage, in lieu of the preferment, by which he
could not be benefited. He had some intention, he added, of studying
law, and I must be aware that the interest of one thousand pounds would
be a very insufficient support therein. I rather wished, than believed
him to be sincere; but, at any rate, was perfectly ready to accede to
his proposal. I knew that Mr. Wickham ought not to be a clergyman; the
business was therefore soon settled--he resigned all claim to assistance
in the church, were it possible that he could ever be in a situation to
receive it, and accepted in return three thousand pounds. All connection
between us seemed now dissolved. I thought too ill of him to invite him
to Pemberley, or admit his society in town. In town I believe he chiefly
lived, but his studying the law was a mere pretence, and being now free
from all restraint, his life was a life of idleness and dissipation.
For about three years I heard little of him; but on the decease of the
incumbent of the living which had been designed for him, he applied to
me again by letter for the presentation. His circumstances, he assured
me, and I had no difficulty in believing it, were exceedingly bad. He
had found the law a most unprofitable study, and was now absolutely
resolved on being ordained, if I would present him to the living in
question--of which he trusted there could be little doubt, as he was
well assured that I had no other person to provide for, and I could not
have forgotten my revered father's intentions. You will hardly blame
me for refusing to comply with this entreaty, or for resisting every
repetition to it. His resentment was in proportion to the distress of
his circumstances--and he was doubtless as violent in his abuse of me
to others as in his reproaches to myself. After this period every
appearance of acquaintance was dropped. How he lived I know not. But
last summer he was again most painfully obtruded on my notice.
"I must now mention a circumstance which I would wish to forget myself,
and which no obligation less than the present should induce me to unfold
to any human being. Having said thus much, I feel no doubt of your
secrecy. My sister, who is more than ten years my junior, was left to
the guardianship of my mother's nephew, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and myself.
About a year ago, she was taken from school, and an establishment formed
for her in London; and last summer she went with the lady who presided
over it, to Ramsgate; and thither also went Mr. Wickham, undoubtedly by
design; for there proved to have been a prior acquaintance between him
and Mrs. Younge, in whose character we were most unhappily deceived; and
by her connivance and aid, he so far recommended himself to Georgiana,
whose affectionate heart retained a strong impression of his kindness to
her as a child, that she was persuaded to believe herself in love, and
to consent to an elopement. She was then but fifteen, which must be her
excuse; and after stating her imprudence, I am happy to add, that I owed
the knowledge of it to herself. I joined them unexpectedly a day or two
before the intended elopement, and then Georgiana, unable to support the
idea of grieving and offending a brother whom she almost looked up to as
a father, acknowledged the whole to me. You may imagine what I felt and
how I acted. Regard for my sister's credit and feelings prevented
any public exposure; but I wrote to Mr. Wickham, who left the place
immediately, and Mrs. Younge was of course removed from her charge. Mr.
Wickham's chief object was unquestionably my sister's fortune, which
is thirty thousand pounds; but I cannot help supposing that the hope of
revenging himself on me was a strong inducement. His revenge would have
been complete indeed.
"This, madam, is a faithful narrative of every event in which we have
been concerned together; and if you do not absolutely reject it as
false, you will, I hope, acquit me henceforth of cruelty towards Mr.
Wickham. I know not in what manner, under what form of falsehood he
had imposed on you; but his success is not perhaps to be wondered
at. Ignorant as you previously were of everything concerning either,
detection could not be in your power, and suspicion certainly not in
your inclination.
"You may possibly wonder why all this was not told you last night; but
I was not then master enough of myself to know what could or ought to
be revealed. For the truth of everything here related, I can appeal more
particularly to the testimony of Colonel Fitzwilliam, who, from our
near relationship and constant intimacy, and, still more, as one of
the executors of my father's will, has been unavoidably acquainted
with every particular of these transactions. If your abhorrence of _me_
should make _my_ assertions valueless, you cannot be prevented by
the same cause from confiding in my cousin; and that there may be
the possibility of consulting him, I shall endeavour to find some
opportunity of putting this letter in your hands in the course of the
morning. I will only add, God bless you.
"FITZWILLIAM DARCY"
Chapter 36
If Elizabeth, when Mr. Darcy gave her the letter, did not expect it to
contain a renewal of his offers, she had formed no expectation at all of
its contents. But such as they were, it may well be supposed how eagerly
she went through them, and what a contrariety of emotion they excited.
Her feelings as she read were scarcely to be defined. With amazement did
she first understand that he believed any apology to be in his power;
and steadfastly was she persuaded, that he could have no explanation
to give, which a just sense of shame would not conceal. With a strong
prejudice against everything he might say, she began his account of what
had happened at Netherfield. She read with an eagerness which hardly
left her power of comprehension, and from impatience of knowing what the
next sentence might bring, was incapable of attending to the sense of
the one before her eyes. His belief of her sister's insensibility she
instantly resolved to be false; and his account of the real, the worst
objections to the match, made her too angry to have any wish of doing
him justice. He expressed no regret for what he had done which satisfied
her; his style was not penitent, but haughty. It was all pride and
insolence.
But when this subject was succeeded by his account of Mr. Wickham--when
she read with somewhat clearer attention a relation of events which,
if true, must overthrow every cherished opinion of his worth, and which
bore so alarming an affinity to his own history of himself--her
feelings were yet more acutely painful and more difficult of definition.
Astonishment, apprehension, and even horror, oppressed her. She wished
to discredit it entirely, repeatedly exclaiming, "This must be false!
This cannot be! This must be the grossest falsehood!"--and when she had
gone through the whole letter, though scarcely knowing anything of the
last page or two, put it hastily away, protesting that she would not
regard it, that she would never look in it again.
In this perturbed state of mind, with thoughts that could rest on
nothing, she walked on; but it would not do; in half a minute the letter
was unfolded again, and collecting herself as well as she could, she
again began the mortifying perusal of all that related to Wickham, and
commanded herself so far as to examine the meaning of every sentence.
The account of his connection with the Pemberley family was exactly what
he had related himself; and the kindness of the late Mr. Darcy, though
she had not before known its extent, agreed equally well with his own
words. So far each recital confirmed the other; but when she came to the
will, the difference was great. What Wickham had said of the living
was fresh in her memory, and as she recalled his very words, it was
impossible not to feel that there was gross duplicity on one side or the
other; and, for a few moments, she flattered herself that her wishes did
not err. But when she read and re-read with the closest attention, the
particulars immediately following of Wickham's resigning all pretensions
to the living, of his receiving in lieu so considerable a sum as three
thousand pounds, again was she forced to hesitate. She put down
the letter, weighed every circumstance with what she meant to be
impartiality--deliberated on the probability of each statement--but with
little success. On both sides it was only assertion. Again she read
on; but every line proved more clearly that the affair, which she had
believed it impossible that any contrivance could so represent as to
render Mr. Darcy's conduct in it less than infamous, was capable of a
turn which must make him entirely blameless throughout the whole.
The extravagance and general profligacy which he scrupled not to lay at
Mr. Wickham's charge, exceedingly shocked her; the more so, as she could
bring no proof of its injustice. She had never heard of him before his
entrance into the ----shire Militia, in which he had engaged at the
persuasion of the young man who, on meeting him accidentally in town,
had there renewed a slight acquaintance. Of his former way of life
nothing had been known in Hertfordshire but what he told himself. As
to his real character, had information been in her power, she had
never felt a wish of inquiring. His countenance, voice, and manner had
established him at once in the possession of every virtue. She tried
to recollect some instance of goodness, some distinguished trait of
integrity or benevolence, that might rescue him from the attacks of
Mr. Darcy; or at least, by the predominance of virtue, atone for those
casual errors under which she would endeavour to class what Mr. Darcy
had described as the idleness and vice of many years' continuance. But
no such recollection befriended her. She could see him instantly before
her, in every charm of air and address; but she could remember no more
substantial good than the general approbation of the neighbourhood, and
the regard which his social powers had gained him in the mess. After
pausing on this point a considerable while, she once more continued to
read. But, alas! the story which followed, of his designs on Miss
Darcy, received some confirmation from what had passed between Colonel
Fitzwilliam and herself only the morning before; and at last she was
referred for the truth of every particular to Colonel Fitzwilliam
himself--from whom she had previously received the information of his
near concern in all his cousin's affairs, and whose character she had no
reason to question. At one time she had almost resolved on applying to
him, but the idea was checked by the awkwardness of the application, and
at length wholly banished by the conviction that Mr. Darcy would never
have hazarded such a proposal, if he had not been well assured of his
cousin's corroboration.
She perfectly remembered everything that had passed in conversation
between Wickham and herself, in their first evening at Mr. Phillips's.
Many of his expressions were still fresh in her memory. She was _now_
struck with the impropriety of such communications to a stranger, and
wondered it had escaped her before. She saw the indelicacy of putting
himself forward as he had done, and the inconsistency of his professions
with his conduct. She remembered that he had boasted of having no fear
of seeing Mr. Darcy--that Mr. Darcy might leave the country, but that
_he_ should stand his ground; yet he had avoided the Netherfield ball
the very next week. She remembered also that, till the Netherfield
family had quitted the country, he had told his story to no one but
herself; but that after their removal it had been everywhere discussed;
that he had then no reserves, no scruples in sinking Mr. Darcy's
character, though he had assured her that respect for the father would
always prevent his exposing the son.
How differently did everything now appear in which he was concerned!
His attentions to Miss King were now the consequence of views solely and
hatefully mercenary; and the mediocrity of her fortune proved no longer
the moderation of his wishes, but his eagerness to grasp at anything.
His behaviour to herself could now have had no tolerable motive; he had
either been deceived with regard to her fortune, or had been gratifying
his vanity by encouraging the preference which she believed she had most
incautiously shown. Every lingering struggle in his favour grew fainter
and fainter; and in farther justification of Mr. Darcy, she could not
but allow that Mr. Bingley, when questioned by Jane, had long ago
asserted his blamelessness in the affair; that proud and repulsive as
were his manners, she had never, in the whole course of their
acquaintance--an acquaintance which had latterly brought them much
together, and given her a sort of intimacy with his ways--seen anything
that betrayed him to be unprincipled or unjust--anything that spoke him
of irreligious or immoral habits; that among his own connections he was
esteemed and valued--that even Wickham had allowed him merit as a
brother, and that she had often heard him speak so affectionately of his
sister as to prove him capable of _some_ amiable feeling; that had his
actions been what Mr. Wickham represented them, so gross a violation of
everything right could hardly have been concealed from the world; and
that friendship between a person capable of it, and such an amiable man
as Mr. Bingley, was incomprehensible.
She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor Wickham
could she think without feeling she had been blind, partial, prejudiced,
absurd.
"How despicably I have acted!" she cried; "I, who have prided myself
on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have
often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified
my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust! How humiliating is this
discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could
not have been more wretchedly blind! But vanity, not love, has been my
folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect
of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted
prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were
concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself."
From herself to Jane--from Jane to Bingley, her thoughts were in a line
which soon brought to her recollection that Mr. Darcy's explanation
_there_ had appeared very insufficient, and she read it again. Widely
different was the effect of a second perusal. How could she deny that
credit to his assertions in one instance, which she had been obliged to
give in the other? He declared himself to be totally unsuspicious of her
sister's attachment; and she could not help remembering what Charlotte's
opinion had always been. Neither could she deny the justice of his
description of Jane. She felt that Jane's feelings, though fervent, were
little displayed, and that there was a constant complacency in her air
and manner not often united with great sensibility.
When she came to that part of the letter in which her family were
mentioned in terms of such mortifying, yet merited reproach, her sense
of shame was severe. The justice of the charge struck her too forcibly
for denial, and the circumstances to which he particularly alluded as
having passed at the Netherfield ball, and as confirming all his first
disapprobation, could not have made a stronger impression on his mind
than on hers.
The compliment to herself and her sister was not unfelt. It soothed,
but it could not console her for the contempt which had thus been
self-attracted by the rest of her family; and as she considered
that Jane's disappointment had in fact been the work of her nearest
relations, and reflected how materially the credit of both must be hurt
by such impropriety of conduct, she felt depressed beyond anything she
had ever known before.
After wandering along the lane for two hours, giving way to every
variety of thought--re-considering events, determining probabilities,
and reconciling herself, as well as she could, to a change so sudden and
so important, fatigue, and a recollection of her long absence, made
her at length return home; and she entered the house with the wish
of appearing cheerful as usual, and the resolution of repressing such
reflections as must make her unfit for conversation.
She was immediately told that the two gentlemen from Rosings had each
called during her absence; Mr. Darcy, only for a few minutes, to take
leave--but that Colonel Fitzwilliam had been sitting with them at least
an hour, hoping for her return, and almost resolving to walk after her
till she could be found. Elizabeth could but just _affect_ concern
in missing him; she really rejoiced at it. Colonel Fitzwilliam was no
longer an object; she could think only of her letter.
Chapter 37
The two gentlemen left Rosings the next morning, and Mr. Collins having
been in waiting near the lodges, to make them his parting obeisance, was
able to bring home the pleasing intelligence, of their appearing in very
good health, and in as tolerable spirits as could be expected, after the
melancholy scene so lately gone through at Rosings. To Rosings he then
hastened, to console Lady Catherine and her daughter; and on his return
brought back, with great satisfaction, a message from her ladyship,
importing that she felt herself so dull as to make her very desirous of
having them all to dine with her.
Elizabeth could not see Lady Catherine without recollecting that, had
she chosen it, she might by this time have been presented to her as
her future niece; nor could she think, without a smile, of what her
ladyship's indignation would have been. "What would she have said? how
would she have behaved?" were questions with which she amused herself.
Their first subject was the diminution of the Rosings party. "I assure
you, I feel it exceedingly," said Lady Catherine; "I believe no one
feels the loss of friends so much as I do. But I am particularly
attached to these young men, and know them to be so much attached to
me! They were excessively sorry to go! But so they always are. The
dear Colonel rallied his spirits tolerably till just at last; but Darcy
seemed to feel it most acutely, more, I think, than last year. His
attachment to Rosings certainly increases."
Mr. Collins had a compliment, and an allusion to throw in here, which
were kindly smiled on by the mother and daughter.
Lady Catherine observed, after dinner, that Miss Bennet seemed out of
spirits, and immediately accounting for it by herself, by supposing that
she did not like to go home again so soon, she added:
"But if that is the case, you must write to your mother and beg that
you may stay a little longer. Mrs. Collins will be very glad of your
company, I am sure."
"I am much obliged to your ladyship for your kind invitation," replied
Elizabeth, "but it is not in my power to accept it. I must be in town
next Saturday."
"Why, at that rate, you will have been here only six weeks. I expected
you to stay two months. I told Mrs. Collins so before you came. There
can be no occasion for your going so soon. Mrs. Bennet could certainly
spare you for another fortnight."
"But my father cannot. He wrote last week to hurry my return."
"Oh! your father of course may spare you, if your mother can. Daughters
are never of so much consequence to a father. And if you will stay
another _month_ complete, it will be in my power to take one of you as
far as London, for I am going there early in June, for a week; and as
Dawson does not object to the barouche-box, there will be very good room
for one of you--and indeed, if the weather should happen to be cool, I
should not object to taking you both, as you are neither of you large."
"You are all kindness, madam; but I believe we must abide by our
original plan."
Lady Catherine seemed resigned. "Mrs. Collins, you must send a servant
with them. You know I always speak my mind, and I cannot bear the idea
of two young women travelling post by themselves. It is highly improper.
You must contrive to send somebody. I have the greatest dislike in
the world to that sort of thing. Young women should always be properly
guarded and attended, according to their situation in life. When my
niece Georgiana went to Ramsgate last summer, I made a point of her
having two men-servants go with her. Miss Darcy, the daughter of
Mr. Darcy, of Pemberley, and Lady Anne, could not have appeared with
propriety in a different manner. I am excessively attentive to all those
things. You must send John with the young ladies, Mrs. Collins. I
am glad it occurred to me to mention it; for it would really be
discreditable to _you_ to let them go alone."
"My uncle is to send a servant for us."
"Oh! Your uncle! He keeps a man-servant, does he? I am very glad you
have somebody who thinks of these things. Where shall you change horses?
Oh! Bromley, of course. If you mention my name at the Bell, you will be
attended to."
Lady Catherine had many other questions to ask respecting their journey,
and as she did not answer them all herself, attention was necessary,
which Elizabeth believed to be lucky for her; or, with a mind so
occupied, she might have forgotten where she was. Reflection must be
reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it
as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary
walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant
recollections.
Mr. Darcy's letter she was in a fair way of soon knowing by heart. She
studied every sentence; and her feelings towards its writer were at
times widely different. When she remembered the style of his address,
she was still full of indignation; but when she considered how unjustly
she had condemned and upbraided him, her anger was turned against
herself; and his disappointed feelings became the object of compassion.
His attachment excited gratitude, his general character respect; but she
could not approve him; nor could she for a moment repent her refusal,
or feel the slightest inclination ever to see him again. In her own past
behaviour, there was a constant source of vexation and regret; and in
the unhappy defects of her family, a subject of yet heavier chagrin.
They were hopeless of remedy. Her father, contented with laughing at
them, would never exert himself to restrain the wild giddiness of his
youngest daughters; and her mother, with manners so far from right
herself, was entirely insensible of the evil. Elizabeth had frequently
united with Jane in an endeavour to check the imprudence of Catherine
and Lydia; but while they were supported by their mother's indulgence,
what chance could there be of improvement? Catherine, weak-spirited,
irritable, and completely under Lydia's guidance, had been always
affronted by their advice; and Lydia, self-willed and careless, would
scarcely give them a hearing. They were ignorant, idle, and vain. While
there was an officer in Meryton, they would flirt with him; and while
Meryton was within a walk of Longbourn, they would be going there
forever.
Anxiety on Jane's behalf was another prevailing concern; and Mr. Darcy's
explanation, by restoring Bingley to all her former good opinion,
heightened the sense of what Jane had lost. His affection was proved
to have been sincere, and his conduct cleared of all blame, unless any
could attach to the implicitness of his confidence in his friend. How
grievous then was the thought that, of a situation so desirable in every
respect, so replete with advantage, so promising for happiness, Jane had
been deprived, by the folly and indecorum of her own family!
When to these recollections was added the development of Wickham's
character, it may be easily believed that the happy spirits which had
seldom been depressed before, were now so much affected as to make it
almost impossible for her to appear tolerably cheerful.
Their engagements at Rosings were as frequent during the last week of
her stay as they had been at first. The very last evening was spent
there; and her ladyship again inquired minutely into the particulars of
their journey, gave them directions as to the best method of packing,
and was so urgent on the necessity of placing gowns in the only right
way, that Maria thought herself obliged, on her return, to undo all the
work of the morning, and pack her trunk afresh.
When they parted, Lady Catherine, with great condescension, wished them
a good journey, and invited them to come to Hunsford again next year;
and Miss de Bourgh exerted herself so far as to curtsey and hold out her
hand to both.
Chapter 38
On Saturday morning Elizabeth and Mr. Collins met for breakfast a few
minutes before the others appeared; and he took the opportunity of
paying the parting civilities which he deemed indispensably necessary.
"I know not, Miss Elizabeth," said he, "whether Mrs. Collins has yet
expressed her sense of your kindness in coming to us; but I am very
certain you will not leave the house without receiving her thanks for
it. The favour of your company has been much felt, I assure you. We
know how little there is to tempt anyone to our humble abode. Our plain
manner of living, our small rooms and few domestics, and the little we
see of the world, must make Hunsford extremely dull to a young lady like
yourself; but I hope you will believe us grateful for the condescension,
and that we have done everything in our power to prevent your spending
your time unpleasantly."
Elizabeth was eager with her thanks and assurances of happiness. She
had spent six weeks with great enjoyment; and the pleasure of being with
Charlotte, and the kind attentions she had received, must make _her_
feel the obliged. Mr. Collins was gratified, and with a more smiling
solemnity replied:
"It gives me great pleasure to hear that you have passed your time not
disagreeably. We have certainly done our best; and most fortunately
having it in our power to introduce you to very superior society, and,
from our connection with Rosings, the frequent means of varying the
humble home scene, I think we may flatter ourselves that your Hunsford
visit cannot have been entirely irksome. Our situation with regard to
Lady Catherine's family is indeed the sort of extraordinary advantage
and blessing which few can boast. You see on what a footing we are. You
see how continually we are engaged there. In truth I must acknowledge
that, with all the disadvantages of this humble parsonage, I should
not think anyone abiding in it an object of compassion, while they are
sharers of our intimacy at Rosings."
Words were insufficient for the elevation of his feelings; and he was
obliged to walk about the room, while Elizabeth tried to unite civility
and truth in a few short sentences.
"You may, in fact, carry a very favourable report of us into
Hertfordshire, my dear cousin. I flatter myself at least that you will
be able to do so. Lady Catherine's great attentions to Mrs. Collins you
have been a daily witness of; and altogether I trust it does not appear
that your friend has drawn an unfortunate--but on this point it will be
as well to be silent. Only let me assure you, my dear Miss Elizabeth,
that I can from my heart most cordially wish you equal felicity in
marriage. My dear Charlotte and I have but one mind and one way of
thinking. There is in everything a most remarkable resemblance of
character and ideas between us. We seem to have been designed for each
other."
Elizabeth could safely say that it was a great happiness where that was
the case, and with equal sincerity could add, that she firmly believed
and rejoiced in his domestic comforts. She was not sorry, however, to
have the recital of them interrupted by the lady from whom they sprang.
Poor Charlotte! it was melancholy to leave her to such society! But she
had chosen it with her eyes open; and though evidently regretting that
her visitors were to go, she did not seem to ask for compassion. Her
home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their
dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms.
At length the chaise arrived, the trunks were fastened on, the parcels
placed within, and it was pronounced to be ready. After an affectionate
parting between the friends, Elizabeth was attended to the carriage by
Mr. Collins, and as they walked down the garden he was commissioning her
with his best respects to all her family, not forgetting his thanks
for the kindness he had received at Longbourn in the winter, and his
compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, though unknown. He then handed her
in, Maria followed, and the door was on the point of being closed,
when he suddenly reminded them, with some consternation, that they had
hitherto forgotten to leave any message for the ladies at Rosings.
"But," he added, "you will of course wish to have your humble respects
delivered to them, with your grateful thanks for their kindness to you
while you have been here."
Elizabeth made no objection; the door was then allowed to be shut, and
the carriage drove off.
"Good gracious!" cried Maria, after a few minutes' silence, "it seems
but a day or two since we first came! and yet how many things have
happened!"
"A great many indeed," said her companion with a sigh.
"We have dined nine times at Rosings, besides drinking tea there twice!
How much I shall have to tell!"
Elizabeth added privately, "And how much I shall have to conceal!"
Their journey was performed without much conversation, or any alarm; and
within four hours of their leaving Hunsford they reached Mr. Gardiner's
house, where they were to remain a few days.
Jane looked well, and Elizabeth had little opportunity of studying her
spirits, amidst the various engagements which the kindness of her
aunt had reserved for them. But Jane was to go home with her, and at
Longbourn there would be leisure enough for observation.
It was not without an effort, meanwhile, that she could wait even for
Longbourn, before she told her sister of Mr. Darcy's proposals. To know
that she had the power of revealing what would so exceedingly astonish
Jane, and must, at the same time, so highly gratify whatever of her own
vanity she had not yet been able to reason away, was such a temptation
to openness as nothing could have conquered but the state of indecision
in which she remained as to the extent of what she should communicate;
and her fear, if she once entered on the subject, of being hurried
into repeating something of Bingley which might only grieve her sister
further.
Chapter 39
It was the second week in May, in which the three young ladies set out
together from Gracechurch Street for the town of ----, in Hertfordshire;
and, as they drew near the appointed inn where Mr. Bennet's carriage
was to meet them, they quickly perceived, in token of the coachman's
punctuality, both Kitty and Lydia looking out of a dining-room up stairs.
These two girls had been above an hour in the place, happily employed
in visiting an opposite milliner, watching the sentinel on guard, and
dressing a salad and cucumber.
After welcoming their sisters, they triumphantly displayed a table set
out with such cold meat as an inn larder usually affords, exclaiming,
"Is not this nice? Is not this an agreeable surprise?"
"And we mean to treat you all," added Lydia, "but you must lend us the
money, for we have just spent ours at the shop out there." Then, showing
her purchases--"Look here, I have bought this bonnet. I do not think
it is very pretty; but I thought I might as well buy it as not. I shall
pull it to pieces as soon as I get home, and see if I can make it up any
better."
And when her sisters abused it as ugly, she added, with perfect
unconcern, "Oh! but there were two or three much uglier in the shop; and
when I have bought some prettier-coloured satin to trim it with fresh, I
think it will be very tolerable. Besides, it will not much signify what
one wears this summer, after the ----shire have left Meryton, and they
are going in a fortnight."
"Are they indeed!" cried Elizabeth, with the greatest satisfaction.
"They are going to be encamped near Brighton; and I do so want papa to
take us all there for the summer! It would be such a delicious scheme;
and I dare say would hardly cost anything at all. Mamma would like to
go too of all things! Only think what a miserable summer else we shall
have!"
"Yes," thought Elizabeth, "_that_ would be a delightful scheme indeed,
and completely do for us at once. Good Heaven! Brighton, and a whole
campful of soldiers, to us, who have been overset already by one poor
regiment of militia, and the monthly balls of Meryton!"
"Now I have got some news for you," said Lydia, as they sat down at
table. "What do you think? It is excellent news--capital news--and about
a certain person we all like!"
Jane and Elizabeth looked at each other, and the waiter was told he need
not stay. Lydia laughed, and said:
"Aye, that is just like your formality and discretion. You thought the
waiter must not hear, as if he cared! I dare say he often hears worse
things said than I am going to say. But he is an ugly fellow! I am glad
he is gone. I never saw such a long chin in my life. Well, but now for
my news; it is about dear Wickham; too good for the waiter, is it not?
There is no danger of Wickham's marrying Mary King. There's for you! She
is gone down to her uncle at Liverpool: gone to stay. Wickham is safe."
"And Mary King is safe!" added Elizabeth; "safe from a connection
imprudent as to fortune."
"She is a great fool for going away, if she liked him."
"But I hope there is no strong attachment on either side," said Jane.
"I am sure there is not on _his_. I will answer for it, he never cared
three straws about her--who could about such a nasty little freckled
thing?"
Elizabeth was shocked to think that, however incapable of such
coarseness of _expression_ herself, the coarseness of the _sentiment_
was little other than her own breast had harboured and fancied liberal!
As soon as all had ate, and the elder ones paid, the carriage was
ordered; and after some contrivance, the whole party, with all their
boxes, work-bags, and parcels, and the unwelcome addition of Kitty's and
Lydia's purchases, were seated in it.
"How nicely we are all crammed in," cried Lydia. "I am glad I bought my
bonnet, if it is only for the fun of having another bandbox! Well, now
let us be quite comfortable and snug, and talk and laugh all the way
home. And in the first place, let us hear what has happened to you all
since you went away. Have you seen any pleasant men? Have you had any
flirting? I was in great hopes that one of you would have got a husband
before you came back. Jane will be quite an old maid soon, I declare.
She is almost three-and-twenty! Lord, how ashamed I should be of not
being married before three-and-twenty! My aunt Phillips wants you so to
get husbands, you can't think. She says Lizzy had better have taken Mr.
Collins; but _I_ do not think there would have been any fun in it. Lord!
how I should like to be married before any of you; and then I would
chaperon you about to all the balls. Dear me! we had such a good piece
of fun the other day at Colonel Forster's. Kitty and me were to spend
the day there, and Mrs. Forster promised to have a little dance in the
evening; (by the bye, Mrs. Forster and me are _such_ friends!) and so
she asked the two Harringtons to come, but Harriet was ill, and so Pen
was forced to come by herself; and then, what do you think we did? We
dressed up Chamberlayne in woman's clothes on purpose to pass for a
lady, only think what fun! Not a soul knew of it, but Colonel and Mrs.
Forster, and Kitty and me, except my aunt, for we were forced to borrow
one of her gowns; and you cannot imagine how well he looked! When Denny,
and Wickham, and Pratt, and two or three more of the men came in, they
did not know him in the least. Lord! how I laughed! and so did Mrs.
Forster. I thought I should have died. And _that_ made the men suspect
something, and then they soon found out what was the matter."
With such kinds of histories of their parties and good jokes, did
Lydia, assisted by Kitty's hints and additions, endeavour to amuse her
companions all the way to Longbourn. Elizabeth listened as little as she
could, but there was no escaping the frequent mention of Wickham's name.
Their reception at home was most kind. Mrs. Bennet rejoiced to see Jane
in undiminished beauty; and more than once during dinner did Mr. Bennet
say voluntarily to Elizabeth:
"I am glad you are come back, Lizzy."
Their party in the dining-room was large, for almost all the Lucases
came to meet Maria and hear the news; and various were the subjects that
occupied them: Lady Lucas was inquiring of Maria, after the welfare and
poultry of her eldest daughter; Mrs. Bennet was doubly engaged, on one
hand collecting an account of the present fashions from Jane, who sat
some way below her, and, on the other, retailing them all to the younger
Lucases; and Lydia, in a voice rather louder than any other person's,
was enumerating the various pleasures of the morning to anybody who
would hear her.
"Oh! Mary," said she, "I wish you had gone with us, for we had such fun!
As we went along, Kitty and I drew up the blinds, and pretended there
was nobody in the coach; and I should have gone so all the way, if Kitty
had not been sick; and when we got to the George, I do think we behaved
very handsomely, for we treated the other three with the nicest cold
luncheon in the world, and if you would have gone, we would have treated
you too. And then when we came away it was such fun! I thought we never
should have got into the coach. I was ready to die of laughter. And then
we were so merry all the way home! we talked and laughed so loud, that
anybody might have heard us ten miles off!"
To this Mary very gravely replied, "Far be it from me, my dear sister,
to depreciate such pleasures! They would doubtless be congenial with the
generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for
_me_--I should infinitely prefer a book."
But of this answer Lydia heard not a word. She seldom listened to
anybody for more than half a minute, and never attended to Mary at all.
In the afternoon Lydia was urgent with the rest of the girls to walk
to Meryton, and to see how everybody went on; but Elizabeth steadily
opposed the scheme. It should not be said that the Miss Bennets could
not be at home half a day before they were in pursuit of the officers.
There was another reason too for her opposition. She dreaded seeing Mr.
Wickham again, and was resolved to avoid it as long as possible. The
comfort to _her_ of the regiment's approaching removal was indeed beyond
expression. In a fortnight they were to go--and once gone, she hoped
there could be nothing more to plague her on his account.
She had not been many hours at home before she found that the Brighton
scheme, of which Lydia had given them a hint at the inn, was under
frequent discussion between her parents. Elizabeth saw directly that her
father had not the smallest intention of yielding; but his answers were
at the same time so vague and equivocal, that her mother, though often
disheartened, had never yet despaired of succeeding at last.
Chapter 40
Elizabeth's impatience to acquaint Jane with what had happened could
no longer be overcome; and at length, resolving to suppress every
particular in which her sister was concerned, and preparing her to be
surprised, she related to her the next morning the chief of the scene
between Mr. Darcy and herself.
Miss Bennet's astonishment was soon lessened by the strong sisterly
partiality which made any admiration of Elizabeth appear perfectly
natural; and all surprise was shortly lost in other feelings. She was
sorry that Mr. Darcy should have delivered his sentiments in a manner so
little suited to recommend them; but still more was she grieved for the
unhappiness which her sister's refusal must have given him.
"His being so sure of succeeding was wrong," said she, "and certainly
ought not to have appeared; but consider how much it must increase his
disappointment!"
"Indeed," replied Elizabeth, "I am heartily sorry for him; but he has
other feelings, which will probably soon drive away his regard for me.
You do not blame me, however, for refusing him?"
"Blame you! Oh, no."
"But you blame me for having spoken so warmly of Wickham?"
"No--I do not know that you were wrong in saying what you did."
"But you _will_ know it, when I tell you what happened the very next
day."
She then spoke of the letter, repeating the whole of its contents as far
as they concerned George Wickham. What a stroke was this for poor Jane!
who would willingly have gone through the world without believing that
so much wickedness existed in the whole race of mankind, as was here
collected in one individual. Nor was Darcy's vindication, though
grateful to her feelings, capable of consoling her for such discovery.
Most earnestly did she labour to prove the probability of error, and
seek to clear the one without involving the other.
"This will not do," said Elizabeth; "you never will be able to make both
of them good for anything. Take your choice, but you must be satisfied
with only one. There is but such a quantity of merit between them; just
enough to make one good sort of man; and of late it has been shifting
about pretty much. For my part, I am inclined to believe it all Darcy's;
but you shall do as you choose."
It was some time, however, before a smile could be extorted from Jane.
"I do not know when I have been more shocked," said she. "Wickham so
very bad! It is almost past belief. And poor Mr. Darcy! Dear Lizzy, only
consider what he must have suffered. Such a disappointment! and with the
knowledge of your ill opinion, too! and having to relate such a thing
of his sister! It is really too distressing. I am sure you must feel it
so."
"Oh! no, my regret and compassion are all done away by seeing you so
full of both. I know you will do him such ample justice, that I am
growing every moment more unconcerned and indifferent. Your profusion
makes me saving; and if you lament over him much longer, my heart will
be as light as a feather."
"Poor Wickham! there is such an expression of goodness in his
countenance! such an openness and gentleness in his manner!"
"There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those
two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the
appearance of it."
"I never thought Mr. Darcy so deficient in the _appearance_ of it as you
used to do."
"And yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike
to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one's genius, such an
opening for wit, to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually
abusive without saying anything just; but one cannot always be laughing
at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty."
"Lizzy, when you first read that letter, I am sure you could not treat
the matter as you do now."
"Indeed, I could not. I was uncomfortable enough, I may say unhappy. And
with no one to speak to about what I felt, no Jane to comfort me and say
that I had not been so very weak and vain and nonsensical as I knew I
had! Oh! how I wanted you!"
"How unfortunate that you should have used such very strong expressions
in speaking of Wickham to Mr. Darcy, for now they _do_ appear wholly
undeserved."
"Certainly. But the misfortune of speaking with bitterness is a most
natural consequence of the prejudices I had been encouraging. There
is one point on which I want your advice. I want to be told whether I
ought, or ought not, to make our acquaintances in general understand
Wickham's character."
Miss Bennet paused a little, and then replied, "Surely there can be no
occasion for exposing him so dreadfully. What is your opinion?"
"That it ought not to be attempted. Mr. Darcy has not authorised me
to make his communication public. On the contrary, every particular
relative to his sister was meant to be kept as much as possible to
myself; and if I endeavour to undeceive people as to the rest of his
conduct, who will believe me? The general prejudice against Mr. Darcy
is so violent, that it would be the death of half the good people in
Meryton to attempt to place him in an amiable light. I am not equal
to it. Wickham will soon be gone; and therefore it will not signify to
anyone here what he really is. Some time hence it will be all found out,
and then we may laugh at their stupidity in not knowing it before. At
present I will say nothing about it."
"You are quite right. To have his errors made public might ruin him for
ever. He is now, perhaps, sorry for what he has done, and anxious to
re-establish a character. We must not make him desperate."
The tumult of Elizabeth's mind was allayed by this conversation. She had
got rid of two of the secrets which had weighed on her for a fortnight,
and was certain of a willing listener in Jane, whenever she might wish
to talk again of either. But there was still something lurking behind,
of which prudence forbade the disclosure. She dared not relate the other
half of Mr. Darcy's letter, nor explain to her sister how sincerely she
had been valued by her friend. Here was knowledge in which no one
could partake; and she was sensible that nothing less than a perfect
understanding between the parties could justify her in throwing off
this last encumbrance of mystery. "And then," said she, "if that very
improbable event should ever take place, I shall merely be able to
tell what Bingley may tell in a much more agreeable manner himself. The
liberty of communication cannot be mine till it has lost all its value!"
She was now, on being settled at home, at leisure to observe the real
state of her sister's spirits. Jane was not happy. She still cherished a
very tender affection for Bingley. Having never even fancied herself
in love before, her regard had all the warmth of first attachment,
and, from her age and disposition, greater steadiness than most first
attachments often boast; and so fervently did she value his remembrance,
and prefer him to every other man, that all her good sense, and all her
attention to the feelings of her friends, were requisite to check the
indulgence of those regrets which must have been injurious to her own
health and their tranquillity.
"Well, Lizzy," said Mrs. Bennet one day, "what is your opinion _now_ of
this sad business of Jane's? For my part, I am determined never to speak
of it again to anybody. I told my sister Phillips so the other day. But
I cannot find out that Jane saw anything of him in London. Well, he is
a very undeserving young man--and I do not suppose there's the least
chance in the world of her ever getting him now. There is no talk of
his coming to Netherfield again in the summer; and I have inquired of
everybody, too, who is likely to know."
"I do not believe he will ever live at Netherfield any more."
"Oh well! it is just as he chooses. Nobody wants him to come. Though I
shall always say he used my daughter extremely ill; and if I was her, I
would not have put up with it. Well, my comfort is, I am sure Jane will
die of a broken heart; and then he will be sorry for what he has done."
But as Elizabeth could not receive comfort from any such expectation,
she made no answer.
"Well, Lizzy," continued her mother, soon afterwards, "and so the
Collinses live very comfortable, do they? Well, well, I only hope
it will last. And what sort of table do they keep? Charlotte is an
excellent manager, I dare say. If she is half as sharp as her
mother, she is saving enough. There is nothing extravagant in _their_
housekeeping, I dare say."
"No, nothing at all."
"A great deal of good management, depend upon it. Yes, yes, _they_ will
take care not to outrun their income. _They_ will never be distressed
for money. Well, much good may it do them! And so, I suppose, they often
talk of having Longbourn when your father is dead. They look upon it as
quite their own, I dare say, whenever that happens."
"It was a subject which they could not mention before me."
"No; it would have been strange if they had; but I make no doubt they
often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they can be easy with an
estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better. I should be
ashamed of having one that was only entailed on me."
Chapter 41
The first week of their return was soon gone. The second began. It was
the last of the regiment's stay in Meryton, and all the young ladies
in the neighbourhood were drooping apace. The dejection was almost
universal. The elder Miss Bennets alone were still able to eat, drink,
and sleep, and pursue the usual course of their employments. Very
frequently were they reproached for this insensibility by Kitty and
Lydia, whose own misery was extreme, and who could not comprehend such
hard-heartedness in any of the family.
"Good Heaven! what is to become of us? What are we to do?" would they
often exclaim in the bitterness of woe. "How can you be smiling so,
Lizzy?"
Their affectionate mother shared all their grief; she remembered what
she had herself endured on a similar occasion, five-and-twenty years
ago.
"I am sure," said she, "I cried for two days together when Colonel
Miller's regiment went away. I thought I should have broken my heart."
"I am sure I shall break _mine_," said Lydia.
"If one could but go to Brighton!" observed Mrs. Bennet.
"Oh, yes!--if one could but go to Brighton! But papa is so
disagreeable."
"A little sea-bathing would set me up forever."
"And my aunt Phillips is sure it would do _me_ a great deal of good,"
added Kitty.
Such were the kind of lamentations resounding perpetually through
Longbourn House. Elizabeth tried to be diverted by them; but all sense
of pleasure was lost in shame. She felt anew the justice of Mr. Darcy's
objections; and never had she been so much disposed to pardon his
interference in the views of his friend.
But the gloom of Lydia's prospect was shortly cleared away; for she
received an invitation from Mrs. Forster, the wife of the colonel of
the regiment, to accompany her to Brighton. This invaluable friend was a
very young woman, and very lately married. A resemblance in good humour
and good spirits had recommended her and Lydia to each other, and out of
their _three_ months' acquaintance they had been intimate _two_.
The rapture of Lydia on this occasion, her adoration of Mrs. Forster,
the delight of Mrs. Bennet, and the mortification of Kitty, are scarcely
to be described. Wholly inattentive to her sister's feelings, Lydia
flew about the house in restless ecstasy, calling for everyone's
congratulations, and laughing and talking with more violence than ever;
whilst the luckless Kitty continued in the parlour repined at her fate
in terms as unreasonable as her accent was peevish.
"I cannot see why Mrs. Forster should not ask _me_ as well as Lydia,"
said she, "Though I am _not_ her particular friend. I have just as much
right to be asked as she has, and more too, for I am two years older."
In vain did Elizabeth attempt to make her reasonable, and Jane to make
her resigned. As for Elizabeth herself, this invitation was so far from
exciting in her the same feelings as in her mother and Lydia, that she
considered it as the death warrant of all possibility of common sense
for the latter; and detestable as such a step must make her were it
known, she could not help secretly advising her father not to let her
go. She represented to him all the improprieties of Lydia's general
behaviour, the little advantage she could derive from the friendship of
such a woman as Mrs. Forster, and the probability of her being yet more
imprudent with such a companion at Brighton, where the temptations must
be greater than at home. He heard her attentively, and then said:
"Lydia will never be easy until she has exposed herself in some public
place or other, and we can never expect her to do it with so
little expense or inconvenience to her family as under the present
circumstances."
"If you were aware," said Elizabeth, "of the very great disadvantage to
us all which must arise from the public notice of Lydia's unguarded and
imprudent manner--nay, which has already arisen from it, I am sure you
would judge differently in the affair."
"Already arisen?" repeated Mr. Bennet. "What, has she frightened away
some of your lovers? Poor little Lizzy! But do not be cast down. Such
squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity
are not worth a regret. Come, let me see the list of pitiful fellows who
have been kept aloof by Lydia's folly."
"Indeed you are mistaken. I have no such injuries to resent. It is not
of particular, but of general evils, which I am now complaining. Our
importance, our respectability in the world must be affected by the
wild volatility, the assurance and disdain of all restraint which mark
Lydia's character. Excuse me, for I must speak plainly. If you, my dear
father, will not take the trouble of checking her exuberant spirits, and
of teaching her that her present pursuits are not to be the business of
her life, she will soon be beyond the reach of amendment. Her character
will be fixed, and she will, at sixteen, be the most determined flirt
that ever made herself or her family ridiculous; a flirt, too, in the
worst and meanest degree of flirtation; without any attraction beyond
youth and a tolerable person; and, from the ignorance and emptiness
of her mind, wholly unable to ward off any portion of that universal
contempt which her rage for admiration will excite. In this danger
Kitty also is comprehended. She will follow wherever Lydia leads. Vain,
ignorant, idle, and absolutely uncontrolled! Oh! my dear father, can you
suppose it possible that they will not be censured and despised wherever
they are known, and that their sisters will not be often involved in the
disgrace?"
Mr. Bennet saw that her whole heart was in the subject, and
affectionately taking her hand said in reply:
"Do not make yourself uneasy, my love. Wherever you and Jane are known
you must be respected and valued; and you will not appear to less
advantage for having a couple of--or I may say, three--very silly
sisters. We shall have no peace at Longbourn if Lydia does not go to
Brighton. Let her go, then. Colonel Forster is a sensible man, and will
keep her out of any real mischief; and she is luckily too poor to be an
object of prey to anybody. At Brighton she will be of less importance
even as a common flirt than she has been here. The officers will find
women better worth their notice. Let us hope, therefore, that her being
there may teach her her own insignificance. At any rate, she cannot grow
many degrees worse, without authorising us to lock her up for the rest
of her life."
With this answer Elizabeth was forced to be content; but her own opinion
continued the same, and she left him disappointed and sorry. It was not
in her nature, however, to increase her vexations by dwelling on
them. She was confident of having performed her duty, and to fret
over unavoidable evils, or augment them by anxiety, was no part of her
disposition.
Had Lydia and her mother known the substance of her conference with her
father, their indignation would hardly have found expression in their
united volubility. In Lydia's imagination, a visit to Brighton comprised
every possibility of earthly happiness. She saw, with the creative eye
of fancy, the streets of that gay bathing-place covered with officers.
She saw herself the object of attention, to tens and to scores of them
at present unknown. She saw all the glories of the camp--its tents
stretched forth in beauteous uniformity of lines, crowded with the young
and the gay, and dazzling with scarlet; and, to complete the view, she
saw herself seated beneath a tent, tenderly flirting with at least six
officers at once.
Had she known her sister sought to tear her from such prospects and such
realities as these, what would have been her sensations? They could have
been understood only by her mother, who might have felt nearly the same.
Lydia's going to Brighton was all that consoled her for her melancholy
conviction of her husband's never intending to go there himself.
But they were entirely ignorant of what had passed; and their raptures
continued, with little intermission, to the very day of Lydia's leaving
home.
Elizabeth was now to see Mr. Wickham for the last time. Having been
frequently in company with him since her return, agitation was pretty
well over; the agitations of former partiality entirely so. She had even
learnt to detect, in the very gentleness which had first delighted
her, an affectation and a sameness to disgust and weary. In his present
behaviour to herself, moreover, she had a fresh source of displeasure,
for the inclination he soon testified of renewing those intentions which
had marked the early part of their acquaintance could only serve, after
what had since passed, to provoke her. She lost all concern for him in
finding herself thus selected as the object of such idle and frivolous
gallantry; and while she steadily repressed it, could not but feel the
reproof contained in his believing, that however long, and for whatever
cause, his attentions had been withdrawn, her vanity would be gratified,
and her preference secured at any time by their renewal.
On the very last day of the regiment's remaining at Meryton, he dined,
with other of the officers, at Longbourn; and so little was Elizabeth
disposed to part from him in good humour, that on his making some
inquiry as to the manner in which her time had passed at Hunsford, she
mentioned Colonel Fitzwilliam's and Mr. Darcy's having both spent three
weeks at Rosings, and asked him, if he was acquainted with the former.
He looked surprised, displeased, alarmed; but with a moment's
recollection and a returning smile, replied, that he had formerly seen
him often; and, after observing that he was a very gentlemanlike man,
asked her how she had liked him. Her answer was warmly in his favour.
With an air of indifference he soon afterwards added:
"How long did you say he was at Rosings?"
"Nearly three weeks."
"And you saw him frequently?"
"Yes, almost every day."
"His manners are very different from his cousin's."
"Yes, very different. But I think Mr. Darcy improves upon acquaintance."
"Indeed!" cried Mr. Wickham with a look which did not escape her. "And
pray, may I ask?--" But checking himself, he added, in a gayer tone, "Is
it in address that he improves? Has he deigned to add aught of civility
to his ordinary style?--for I dare not hope," he continued in a lower
and more serious tone, "that he is improved in essentials."
"Oh, no!" said Elizabeth. "In essentials, I believe, he is very much
what he ever was."
While she spoke, Wickham looked as if scarcely knowing whether to
rejoice over her words, or to distrust their meaning. There was a
something in her countenance which made him listen with an apprehensive
and anxious attention, while she added:
"When I said that he improved on acquaintance, I did not mean that
his mind or his manners were in a state of improvement, but that, from
knowing him better, his disposition was better understood."
Wickham's alarm now appeared in a heightened complexion and agitated
look; for a few minutes he was silent, till, shaking off his
embarrassment, he turned to her again, and said in the gentlest of
accents:
"You, who so well know my feeling towards Mr. Darcy, will readily
comprehend how sincerely I must rejoice that he is wise enough to assume
even the _appearance_ of what is right. His pride, in that direction,
may be of service, if not to himself, to many others, for it must only
deter him from such foul misconduct as I have suffered by. I only
fear that the sort of cautiousness to which you, I imagine, have been
alluding, is merely adopted on his visits to his aunt, of whose good
opinion and judgement he stands much in awe. His fear of her has always
operated, I know, when they were together; and a good deal is to be
imputed to his wish of forwarding the match with Miss de Bourgh, which I
am certain he has very much at heart."
Elizabeth could not repress a smile at this, but she answered only by a
slight inclination of the head. She saw that he wanted to engage her on
the old subject of his grievances, and she was in no humour to indulge
him. The rest of the evening passed with the _appearance_, on his
side, of usual cheerfulness, but with no further attempt to distinguish
Elizabeth; and they parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a
mutual desire of never meeting again.
When the party broke up, Lydia returned with Mrs. Forster to Meryton,
from whence they were to set out early the next morning. The separation
between her and her family was rather noisy than pathetic. Kitty was the
only one who shed tears; but she did weep from vexation and envy. Mrs.
Bennet was diffuse in her good wishes for the felicity of her daughter,
and impressive in her injunctions that she should not miss the
opportunity of enjoying herself as much as possible--advice which
there was every reason to believe would be well attended to; and in
the clamorous happiness of Lydia herself in bidding farewell, the more
gentle adieus of her sisters were uttered without being heard.
Chapter 42
Had Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could
not have formed a very pleasing opinion of conjugal felicity or domestic
comfort. Her father, captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance
of good humour which youth and beauty generally give, had married a
woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind had very early in
their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect,
esteem, and confidence had vanished for ever; and all his views
of domestic happiness were overthrown. But Mr. Bennet was not of
a disposition to seek comfort for the disappointment which his own
imprudence had brought on, in any of those pleasures which too often
console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice. He was fond of
the country and of books; and from these tastes had arisen his principal
enjoyments. To his wife he was very little otherwise indebted, than as
her ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement. This is not
the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to owe to his
wife; but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true
philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given.
Elizabeth, however, had never been blind to the impropriety of her
father's behaviour as a husband. She had always seen it with pain; but
respecting his abilities, and grateful for his affectionate treatment of
herself, she endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and to
banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation
and decorum which, in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own
children, was so highly reprehensible. But she had never felt so
strongly as now the disadvantages which must attend the children of so
unsuitable a marriage, nor ever been so fully aware of the evils arising
from so ill-judged a direction of talents; talents, which, rightly used,
might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters, even
if incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife.
When Elizabeth had rejoiced over Wickham's departure she found little
other cause for satisfaction in the loss of the regiment. Their parties
abroad were less varied than before, and at home she had a mother and
sister whose constant repinings at the dullness of everything around
them threw a real gloom over their domestic circle; and, though Kitty
might in time regain her natural degree of sense, since the disturbers
of her brain were removed, her other sister, from whose disposition
greater evil might be apprehended, was likely to be hardened in all
her folly and assurance by a situation of such double danger as a
watering-place and a camp. Upon the whole, therefore, she found, what
has been sometimes found before, that an event to which she had been
looking with impatient desire did not, in taking place, bring all the
satisfaction she had promised herself. It was consequently necessary to
name some other period for the commencement of actual felicity--to have
some other point on which her wishes and hopes might be fixed, and by
again enjoying the pleasure of anticipation, console herself for the
present, and prepare for another disappointment. Her tour to the Lakes
was now the object of her happiest thoughts; it was her best consolation
for all the uncomfortable hours which the discontentedness of her mother
and Kitty made inevitable; and could she have included Jane in the
scheme, every part of it would have been perfect.
"But it is fortunate," thought she, "that I have something to wish for.
Were the whole arrangement complete, my disappointment would be certain.
But here, by carrying with me one ceaseless source of regret in my
sister's absence, I may reasonably hope to have all my expectations of
pleasure realised. A scheme of which every part promises delight can
never be successful; and general disappointment is only warded off by
the defence of some little peculiar vexation."
When Lydia went away she promised to write very often and very minutely
to her mother and Kitty; but her letters were always long expected, and
always very short. Those to her mother contained little else than that
they were just returned from the library, where such and such officers
had attended them, and where she had seen such beautiful ornaments as
made her quite wild; that she had a new gown, or a new parasol, which
she would have described more fully, but was obliged to leave off in a
violent hurry, as Mrs. Forster called her, and they were going off to
the camp; and from her correspondence with her sister, there was still
less to be learnt--for her letters to Kitty, though rather longer, were
much too full of lines under the words to be made public.
After the first fortnight or three weeks of her absence, health, good
humour, and cheerfulness began to reappear at Longbourn. Everything wore
a happier aspect. The families who had been in town for the winter came
back again, and summer finery and summer engagements arose. Mrs. Bennet
was restored to her usual querulous serenity; and, by the middle of
June, Kitty was so much recovered as to be able to enter Meryton without
tears; an event of such happy promise as to make Elizabeth hope that by
the following Christmas she might be so tolerably reasonable as not to
mention an officer above once a day, unless, by some cruel and malicious
arrangement at the War Office, another regiment should be quartered in
Meryton.
The time fixed for the beginning of their northern tour was now fast
approaching, and a fortnight only was wanting of it, when a letter
arrived from Mrs. Gardiner, which at once delayed its commencement and
curtailed its extent. Mr. Gardiner would be prevented by business from
setting out till a fortnight later in July, and must be in London again
within a month, and as that left too short a period for them to go so
far, and see so much as they had proposed, or at least to see it with
the leisure and comfort they had built on, they were obliged to give up
the Lakes, and substitute a more contracted tour, and, according to the
present plan, were to go no farther northwards than Derbyshire. In that
county there was enough to be seen to occupy the chief of their three
weeks; and to Mrs. Gardiner it had a peculiarly strong attraction. The
town where she had formerly passed some years of her life, and where
they were now to spend a few days, was probably as great an object of
her curiosity as all the celebrated beauties of Matlock, Chatsworth,
Dovedale, or the Peak.
Elizabeth was excessively disappointed; she had set her heart on seeing
the Lakes, and still thought there might have been time enough. But it
was her business to be satisfied--and certainly her temper to be happy;
and all was soon right again.
With the mention of Derbyshire there were many ideas connected. It was
impossible for her to see the word without thinking of Pemberley and its
owner. "But surely," said she, "I may enter his county with impunity,
and rob it of a few petrified spars without his perceiving me."
The period of expectation was now doubled. Four weeks were to pass away
before her uncle and aunt's arrival. But they did pass away, and Mr.
and Mrs. Gardiner, with their four children, did at length appear at
Longbourn. The children, two girls of six and eight years old, and two
younger boys, were to be left under the particular care of their
cousin Jane, who was the general favourite, and whose steady sense and
sweetness of temper exactly adapted her for attending to them in every
way--teaching them, playing with them, and loving them.
The Gardiners stayed only one night at Longbourn, and set off the
next morning with Elizabeth in pursuit of novelty and amusement.
One enjoyment was certain--that of suitableness of companions;
a suitableness which comprehended health and temper to bear
inconveniences--cheerfulness to enhance every pleasure--and affection
and intelligence, which might supply it among themselves if there were
disappointments abroad.
It is not the object of this work to give a description of Derbyshire,
nor of any of the remarkable places through which their route thither
lay; Oxford, Blenheim, Warwick, Kenilworth, Birmingham, etc. are
sufficiently known. A small part of Derbyshire is all the present
concern. To the little town of Lambton, the scene of Mrs. Gardiner's
former residence, and where she had lately learned some acquaintance
still remained, they bent their steps, after having seen all the
principal wonders of the country; and within five miles of Lambton,
Elizabeth found from her aunt that Pemberley was situated. It was not
in their direct road, nor more than a mile or two out of it. In
talking over their route the evening before, Mrs. Gardiner expressed
an inclination to see the place again. Mr. Gardiner declared his
willingness, and Elizabeth was applied to for her approbation.
"My love, should not you like to see a place of which you have heard
so much?" said her aunt; "a place, too, with which so many of your
acquaintances are connected. Wickham passed all his youth there, you
know."
Elizabeth was distressed. She felt that she had no business at
Pemberley, and was obliged to assume a disinclination for seeing it. She
must own that she was tired of seeing great houses; after going over so
many, she really had no pleasure in fine carpets or satin curtains.
Mrs. Gardiner abused her stupidity. "If it were merely a fine house
richly furnished," said she, "I should not care about it myself; but
the grounds are delightful. They have some of the finest woods in the
country."
Elizabeth said no more--but her mind could not acquiesce. The
possibility of meeting Mr. Darcy, while viewing the place, instantly
occurred. It would be dreadful! She blushed at the very idea, and
thought it would be better to speak openly to her aunt than to run such
a risk. But against this there were objections; and she finally resolved
that it could be the last resource, if her private inquiries to the
absence of the family were unfavourably answered.
Accordingly, when she retired at night, she asked the chambermaid
whether Pemberley were not a very fine place? what was the name of its
proprietor? and, with no little alarm, whether the family were down for
the summer? A most welcome negative followed the last question--and her
alarms now being removed, she was at leisure to feel a great deal of
curiosity to see the house herself; and when the subject was revived the
next morning, and she was again applied to, could readily answer, and
with a proper air of indifference, that she had not really any dislike
to the scheme. To Pemberley, therefore, they were to go.
Chapter 43
Elizabeth, as they drove along, watched for the first appearance of
Pemberley Woods with some perturbation; and when at length they turned
in at the lodge, her spirits were in a high flutter.
The park was very large, and contained great variety of ground. They
entered it in one of its lowest points, and drove for some time through
a beautiful wood stretching over a wide extent.
Elizabeth's mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and admired
every remarkable spot and point of view. They gradually ascended for
half-a-mile, and then found themselves at the top of a considerable
eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye was instantly caught by
Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of a valley, into which
the road with some abruptness wound. It was a large, handsome stone
building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of
high woody hills; and in front, a stream of some natural importance was
swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks
were neither formal nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She
had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural
beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They were
all of them warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt that
to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!
They descended the hill, crossed the bridge, and drove to the door; and,
while examining the nearer aspect of the house, all her apprehension of
meeting its owner returned. She dreaded lest the chambermaid had been
mistaken. On applying to see the place, they were admitted into the
hall; and Elizabeth, as they waited for the housekeeper, had leisure to
wonder at her being where she was.
The housekeeper came; a respectable-looking elderly woman, much less
fine, and more civil, than she had any notion of finding her. They
followed her into the dining-parlour. It was a large, well proportioned
room, handsomely fitted up. Elizabeth, after slightly surveying it, went
to a window to enjoy its prospect. The hill, crowned with wood, which
they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance,
was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good; and
she looked on the whole scene, the river, the trees scattered on its
banks and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it,
with delight. As they passed into other rooms these objects were taking
different positions; but from every window there were beauties to be
seen. The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to
the fortune of its proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of
his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of
splendour, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.
"And of this place," thought she, "I might have been mistress! With
these rooms I might now have been familiarly acquainted! Instead of
viewing them as a stranger, I might have rejoiced in them as my own, and
welcomed to them as visitors my uncle and aunt. But no,"--recollecting
herself--"that could never be; my uncle and aunt would have been lost to
me; I should not have been allowed to invite them."
This was a lucky recollection--it saved her from something very like
regret.
She longed to inquire of the housekeeper whether her master was really
absent, but had not the courage for it. At length however, the question
was asked by her uncle; and she turned away with alarm, while Mrs.
Reynolds replied that he was, adding, "But we expect him to-morrow, with
a large party of friends." How rejoiced was Elizabeth that their own
journey had not by any circumstance been delayed a day!
Her aunt now called her to look at a picture. She approached and saw the
likeness of Mr. Wickham, suspended, amongst several other miniatures,
over the mantelpiece. Her aunt asked her, smilingly, how she liked it.
The housekeeper came forward, and told them it was a picture of a young
gentleman, the son of her late master's steward, who had been brought
up by him at his own expense. "He is now gone into the army," she added;
"but I am afraid he has turned out very wild."
Mrs. Gardiner looked at her niece with a smile, but Elizabeth could not
return it.
"And that," said Mrs. Reynolds, pointing to another of the miniatures,
"is my master--and very like him. It was drawn at the same time as the
other--about eight years ago."
"I have heard much of your master's fine person," said Mrs. Gardiner,
looking at the picture; "it is a handsome face. But, Lizzy, you can tell
us whether it is like or not."
Mrs. Reynolds respect for Elizabeth seemed to increase on this
intimation of her knowing her master.
"Does that young lady know Mr. Darcy?"
Elizabeth coloured, and said: "A little."
"And do not you think him a very handsome gentleman, ma'am?"
"Yes, very handsome."
"I am sure I know none so handsome; but in the gallery up stairs you
will see a finer, larger picture of him than this. This room was my late
master's favourite room, and these miniatures are just as they used to
be then. He was very fond of them."
This accounted to Elizabeth for Mr. Wickham's being among them.
Mrs. Reynolds then directed their attention to one of Miss Darcy, drawn
when she was only eight years old.
"And is Miss Darcy as handsome as her brother?" said Mrs. Gardiner.
"Oh! yes--the handsomest young lady that ever was seen; and so
accomplished!--She plays and sings all day long. In the next room is
a new instrument just come down for her--a present from my master; she
comes here to-morrow with him."
Mr. Gardiner, whose manners were very easy and pleasant, encouraged her
communicativeness by his questions and remarks; Mrs. Reynolds, either
by pride or attachment, had evidently great pleasure in talking of her
master and his sister.
"Is your master much at Pemberley in the course of the year?"
"Not so much as I could wish, sir; but I dare say he may spend half his
time here; and Miss Darcy is always down for the summer months."
"Except," thought Elizabeth, "when she goes to Ramsgate."
"If your master would marry, you might see more of him."
"Yes, sir; but I do not know when _that_ will be. I do not know who is
good enough for him."
Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner smiled. Elizabeth could not help saying, "It is
very much to his credit, I am sure, that you should think so."
"I say no more than the truth, and everybody will say that knows him,"
replied the other. Elizabeth thought this was going pretty far; and she
listened with increasing astonishment as the housekeeper added, "I have
never known a cross word from him in my life, and I have known him ever
since he was four years old."
This was praise, of all others most extraordinary, most opposite to her
ideas. That he was not a good-tempered man had been her firmest opinion.
Her keenest attention was awakened; she longed to hear more, and was
grateful to her uncle for saying:
"There are very few people of whom so much can be said. You are lucky in
having such a master."
"Yes, sir, I know I am. If I were to go through the world, I could
not meet with a better. But I have always observed, that they who are
good-natured when children, are good-natured when they grow up; and
he was always the sweetest-tempered, most generous-hearted boy in the
world."
Elizabeth almost stared at her. "Can this be Mr. Darcy?" thought she.
"His father was an excellent man," said Mrs. Gardiner.
"Yes, ma'am, that he was indeed; and his son will be just like him--just
as affable to the poor."
Elizabeth listened, wondered, doubted, and was impatient for more. Mrs.
Reynolds could interest her on no other point. She related the subjects
of the pictures, the dimensions of the rooms, and the price of the
furniture, in vain. Mr. Gardiner, highly amused by the kind of family
prejudice to which he attributed her excessive commendation of her
master, soon led again to the subject; and she dwelt with energy on his
many merits as they proceeded together up the great staircase.
"He is the best landlord, and the best master," said she, "that ever
lived; not like the wild young men nowadays, who think of nothing but
themselves. There is not one of his tenants or servants but will give
him a good name. Some people call him proud; but I am sure I never saw
anything of it. To my fancy, it is only because he does not rattle away
like other young men."
"In what an amiable light does this place him!" thought Elizabeth.
"This fine account of him," whispered her aunt as they walked, "is not
quite consistent with his behaviour to our poor friend."
"Perhaps we might be deceived."
"That is not very likely; our authority was too good."
On reaching the spacious lobby above they were shown into a very pretty
sitting-room, lately fitted up with greater elegance and lightness than
the apartments below; and were informed that it was but just done to
give pleasure to Miss Darcy, who had taken a liking to the room when
last at Pemberley.
"He is certainly a good brother," said Elizabeth, as she walked towards
one of the windows.
Mrs. Reynolds anticipated Miss Darcy's delight, when she should enter
the room. "And this is always the way with him," she added. "Whatever
can give his sister any pleasure is sure to be done in a moment. There
is nothing he would not do for her."
The picture-gallery, and two or three of the principal bedrooms, were
all that remained to be shown. In the former were many good paintings;
but Elizabeth knew nothing of the art; and from such as had been already
visible below, she had willingly turned to look at some drawings of Miss
Darcy's, in crayons, whose subjects were usually more interesting, and
also more intelligible.
In the gallery there were many family portraits, but they could have
little to fix the attention of a stranger. Elizabeth walked in quest of
the only face whose features would be known to her. At last it arrested
her--and she beheld a striking resemblance to Mr. Darcy, with such a
smile over the face as she remembered to have sometimes seen when he
looked at her. She stood several minutes before the picture, in earnest
contemplation, and returned to it again before they quitted the gallery.
Mrs. Reynolds informed them that it had been taken in his father's
lifetime.
There was certainly at this moment, in Elizabeth's mind, a more gentle
sensation towards the original than she had ever felt at the height of
their acquaintance. The commendation bestowed on him by Mrs. Reynolds
was of no trifling nature. What praise is more valuable than the praise
of an intelligent servant? As a brother, a landlord, a master, she
considered how many people's happiness were in his guardianship!--how
much of pleasure or pain was it in his power to bestow!--how much of
good or evil must be done by him! Every idea that had been brought
forward by the housekeeper was favourable to his character, and as she
stood before the canvas on which he was represented, and fixed his
eyes upon herself, she thought of his regard with a deeper sentiment of
gratitude than it had ever raised before; she remembered its warmth, and
softened its impropriety of expression.
When all of the house that was open to general inspection had been seen,
they returned downstairs, and, taking leave of the housekeeper, were
consigned over to the gardener, who met them at the hall-door.
As they walked across the hall towards the river, Elizabeth turned back
to look again; her uncle and aunt stopped also, and while the former
was conjecturing as to the date of the building, the owner of it himself
suddenly came forward from the road, which led behind it to the stables.
They were within twenty yards of each other, and so abrupt was his
appearance, that it was impossible to avoid his sight. Their eyes
instantly met, and the cheeks of both were overspread with the deepest
blush. He absolutely started, and for a moment seemed immovable from
surprise; but shortly recovering himself, advanced towards the party,
and spoke to Elizabeth, if not in terms of perfect composure, at least
of perfect civility.
She had instinctively turned away; but stopping on his approach,
received his compliments with an embarrassment impossible to be
overcome. Had his first appearance, or his resemblance to the picture
they had just been examining, been insufficient to assure the other two
that they now saw Mr. Darcy, the gardener's expression of surprise, on
beholding his master, must immediately have told it. They stood a little
aloof while he was talking to their niece, who, astonished and confused,
scarcely dared lift her eyes to his face, and knew not what answer
she returned to his civil inquiries after her family. Amazed at the
alteration of his manner since they last parted, every sentence that
he uttered was increasing her embarrassment; and every idea of the
impropriety of her being found there recurring to her mind, the few
minutes in which they continued were some of the most uncomfortable in
her life. Nor did he seem much more at ease; when he spoke, his accent
had none of its usual sedateness; and he repeated his inquiries as
to the time of her having left Longbourn, and of her having stayed in
Derbyshire, so often, and in so hurried a way, as plainly spoke the
distraction of his thoughts.
At length every idea seemed to fail him; and, after standing a few
moments without saying a word, he suddenly recollected himself, and took
leave.
The others then joined her, and expressed admiration of his figure; but
Elizabeth heard not a word, and wholly engrossed by her own feelings,
followed them in silence. She was overpowered by shame and vexation. Her
coming there was the most unfortunate, the most ill-judged thing in the
world! How strange it must appear to him! In what a disgraceful light
might it not strike so vain a man! It might seem as if she had purposely
thrown herself in his way again! Oh! why did she come? Or, why did he
thus come a day before he was expected? Had they been only ten minutes
sooner, they should have been beyond the reach of his discrimination;
for it was plain that he was that moment arrived--that moment alighted
from his horse or his carriage. She blushed again and again over
the perverseness of the meeting. And his behaviour, so strikingly
altered--what could it mean? That he should even speak to her was
amazing!--but to speak with such civility, to inquire after her family!
Never in her life had she seen his manners so little dignified, never
had he spoken with such gentleness as on this unexpected meeting. What
a contrast did it offer to his last address in Rosings Park, when he put
his letter into her hand! She knew not what to think, or how to account
for it.
They had now entered a beautiful walk by the side of the water, and
every step was bringing forward a nobler fall of ground, or a finer
reach of the woods to which they were approaching; but it was some time
before Elizabeth was sensible of any of it; and, though she answered
mechanically to the repeated appeals of her uncle and aunt, and
seemed to direct her eyes to such objects as they pointed out, she
distinguished no part of the scene. Her thoughts were all fixed on that
one spot of Pemberley House, whichever it might be, where Mr. Darcy then
was. She longed to know what at the moment was passing in his mind--in
what manner he thought of her, and whether, in defiance of everything,
she was still dear to him. Perhaps he had been civil only because he
felt himself at ease; yet there had been _that_ in his voice which was
not like ease. Whether he had felt more of pain or of pleasure in
seeing her she could not tell, but he certainly had not seen her with
composure.
At length, however, the remarks of her companions on her absence of mind
aroused her, and she felt the necessity of appearing more like herself.
They entered the woods, and bidding adieu to the river for a while,
ascended some of the higher grounds; when, in spots where the opening of
the trees gave the eye power to wander, were many charming views of the
valley, the opposite hills, with the long range of woods overspreading
many, and occasionally part of the stream. Mr. Gardiner expressed a wish
of going round the whole park, but feared it might be beyond a walk.
With a triumphant smile they were told that it was ten miles round.
It settled the matter; and they pursued the accustomed circuit; which
brought them again, after some time, in a descent among hanging woods,
to the edge of the water, and one of its narrowest parts. They crossed
it by a simple bridge, in character with the general air of the scene;
it was a spot less adorned than any they had yet visited; and the
valley, here contracted into a glen, allowed room only for the stream,
and a narrow walk amidst the rough coppice-wood which bordered it.
Elizabeth longed to explore its windings; but when they had crossed the
bridge, and perceived their distance from the house, Mrs. Gardiner,
who was not a great walker, could go no farther, and thought only
of returning to the carriage as quickly as possible. Her niece was,
therefore, obliged to submit, and they took their way towards the house
on the opposite side of the river, in the nearest direction; but their
progress was slow, for Mr. Gardiner, though seldom able to indulge the
taste, was very fond of fishing, and was so much engaged in watching the
occasional appearance of some trout in the water, and talking to the
man about them, that he advanced but little. Whilst wandering on in this
slow manner, they were again surprised, and Elizabeth's astonishment
was quite equal to what it had been at first, by the sight of Mr. Darcy
approaching them, and at no great distance. The walk being here
less sheltered than on the other side, allowed them to see him before
they met. Elizabeth, however astonished, was at least more prepared
for an interview than before, and resolved to appear and to speak with
calmness, if he really intended to meet them. For a few moments, indeed,
she felt that he would probably strike into some other path. The idea
lasted while a turning in the walk concealed him from their view; the
turning past, he was immediately before them. With a glance, she saw
that he had lost none of his recent civility; and, to imitate his
politeness, she began, as they met, to admire the beauty of the place;
but she had not got beyond the words "delightful," and "charming," when
some unlucky recollections obtruded, and she fancied that praise of
Pemberley from her might be mischievously construed. Her colour changed,
and she said no more.
Mrs. Gardiner was standing a little behind; and on her pausing, he asked
her if she would do him the honour of introducing him to her friends.
This was a stroke of civility for which she was quite unprepared;
and she could hardly suppress a smile at his being now seeking the
acquaintance of some of those very people against whom his pride had
revolted in his offer to herself. "What will be his surprise," thought
she, "when he knows who they are? He takes them now for people of
fashion."
The introduction, however, was immediately made; and as she named their
relationship to herself, she stole a sly look at him, to see how he bore
it, and was not without the expectation of his decamping as fast as he
could from such disgraceful companions. That he was _surprised_ by the
connection was evident; he sustained it, however, with fortitude, and
so far from going away, turned back with them, and entered into
conversation with Mr. Gardiner. Elizabeth could not but be pleased,
could not but triumph. It was consoling that he should know she had
some relations for whom there was no need to blush. She listened most
attentively to all that passed between them, and gloried in every
expression, every sentence of her uncle, which marked his intelligence,
his taste, or his good manners.
The conversation soon turned upon fishing; and she heard Mr. Darcy
invite him, with the greatest civility, to fish there as often as he
chose while he continued in the neighbourhood, offering at the same time
to supply him with fishing tackle, and pointing out those parts of
the stream where there was usually most sport. Mrs. Gardiner, who was
walking arm-in-arm with Elizabeth, gave her a look expressive of wonder.
Elizabeth said nothing, but it gratified her exceedingly; the compliment
must be all for herself. Her astonishment, however, was extreme, and
continually was she repeating, "Why is he so altered? From what can
it proceed? It cannot be for _me_--it cannot be for _my_ sake that his
manners are thus softened. My reproofs at Hunsford could not work such a
change as this. It is impossible that he should still love me."
After walking some time in this way, the two ladies in front, the two
gentlemen behind, on resuming their places, after descending to
the brink of the river for the better inspection of some curious
water-plant, there chanced to be a little alteration. It originated
in Mrs. Gardiner, who, fatigued by the exercise of the morning, found
Elizabeth's arm inadequate to her support, and consequently preferred
her husband's. Mr. Darcy took her place by her niece, and they walked on
together. After a short silence, the lady first spoke. She wished him
to know that she had been assured of his absence before she came to the
place, and accordingly began by observing, that his arrival had been
very unexpected--"for your housekeeper," she added, "informed us that
you would certainly not be here till to-morrow; and indeed, before we
left Bakewell, we understood that you were not immediately expected
in the country." He acknowledged the truth of it all, and said that
business with his steward had occasioned his coming forward a few hours
before the rest of the party with whom he had been travelling. "They
will join me early to-morrow," he continued, "and among them are some
who will claim an acquaintance with you--Mr. Bingley and his sisters."
Elizabeth answered only by a slight bow. Her thoughts were instantly
driven back to the time when Mr. Bingley's name had been the last
mentioned between them; and, if she might judge by his complexion, _his_
mind was not very differently engaged.
"There is also one other person in the party," he continued after a
pause, "who more particularly wishes to be known to you. Will you allow
me, or do I ask too much, to introduce my sister to your acquaintance
during your stay at Lambton?"
The surprise of such an application was great indeed; it was too great
for her to know in what manner she acceded to it. She immediately felt
that whatever desire Miss Darcy might have of being acquainted with her
must be the work of her brother, and, without looking farther, it was
satisfactory; it was gratifying to know that his resentment had not made
him think really ill of her.
They now walked on in silence, each of them deep in thought. Elizabeth
was not comfortable; that was impossible; but she was flattered and
pleased. His wish of introducing his sister to her was a compliment of
the highest kind. They soon outstripped the others, and when they had
reached the carriage, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner were half a quarter of a
mile behind.
He then asked her to walk into the house--but she declared herself not
tired, and they stood together on the lawn. At such a time much might
have been said, and silence was very awkward. She wanted to talk, but
there seemed to be an embargo on every subject. At last she recollected
that she had been travelling, and they talked of Matlock and Dove Dale
with great perseverance. Yet time and her aunt moved slowly--and her
patience and her ideas were nearly worn out before the tete-a-tete was
over. On Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner's coming up they were all pressed to go
into the house and take some refreshment; but this was declined, and
they parted on each side with utmost politeness. Mr. Darcy handed the
ladies into the carriage; and when it drove off, Elizabeth saw him
walking slowly towards the house.
The observations of her uncle and aunt now began; and each of them
pronounced him to be infinitely superior to anything they had expected.
"He is perfectly well behaved, polite, and unassuming," said her uncle.
"There _is_ something a little stately in him, to be sure," replied her
aunt, "but it is confined to his air, and is not unbecoming. I can now
say with the housekeeper, that though some people may call him proud, I
have seen nothing of it."
"I was never more surprised than by his behaviour to us. It was more
than civil; it was really attentive; and there was no necessity for such
attention. His acquaintance with Elizabeth was very trifling."
"To be sure, Lizzy," said her aunt, "he is not so handsome as Wickham;
or, rather, he has not Wickham's countenance, for his features
are perfectly good. But how came you to tell me that he was so
disagreeable?"
Elizabeth excused herself as well as she could; said that she had liked
him better when they had met in Kent than before, and that she had never
seen him so pleasant as this morning.
"But perhaps he may be a little whimsical in his civilities," replied
her uncle. "Your great men often are; and therefore I shall not take him
at his word, as he might change his mind another day, and warn me off
his grounds."
Elizabeth felt that they had entirely misunderstood his character, but
said nothing.
"From what we have seen of him," continued Mrs. Gardiner, "I really
should not have thought that he could have behaved in so cruel a way by
anybody as he has done by poor Wickham. He has not an ill-natured look.
On the contrary, there is something pleasing about his mouth when he
speaks. And there is something of dignity in his countenance that would
not give one an unfavourable idea of his heart. But, to be sure, the
good lady who showed us his house did give him a most flaming character!
I could hardly help laughing aloud sometimes. But he is a liberal
master, I suppose, and _that_ in the eye of a servant comprehends every
virtue."
Elizabeth here felt herself called on to say something in vindication of
his behaviour to Wickham; and therefore gave them to understand, in
as guarded a manner as she could, that by what she had heard from
his relations in Kent, his actions were capable of a very different
construction; and that his character was by no means so faulty, nor
Wickham's so amiable, as they had been considered in Hertfordshire. In
confirmation of this, she related the particulars of all the pecuniary
transactions in which they had been connected, without actually naming
her authority, but stating it to be such as might be relied on.
Mrs. Gardiner was surprised and concerned; but as they were now
approaching the scene of her former pleasures, every idea gave way to
the charm of recollection; and she was too much engaged in pointing out
to her husband all the interesting spots in its environs to think of
anything else. Fatigued as she had been by the morning's walk they
had no sooner dined than she set off again in quest of her former
acquaintance, and the evening was spent in the satisfactions of a
intercourse renewed after many years' discontinuance.
The occurrences of the day were too full of interest to leave Elizabeth
much attention for any of these new friends; and she could do nothing
but think, and think with wonder, of Mr. Darcy's civility, and, above
all, of his wishing her to be acquainted with his sister.
Chapter 44
Elizabeth had settled it that Mr. Darcy would bring his sister to visit
her the very day after her reaching Pemberley; and was consequently
resolved not to be out of sight of the inn the whole of that morning.
But her conclusion was false; for on the very morning after their
arrival at Lambton, these visitors came. They had been walking about the
place with some of their new friends, and were just returning to the inn
to dress themselves for dining with the same family, when the sound of a
carriage drew them to a window, and they saw a gentleman and a lady in
a curricle driving up the street. Elizabeth immediately recognizing
the livery, guessed what it meant, and imparted no small degree of her
surprise to her relations by acquainting them with the honour which she
expected. Her uncle and aunt were all amazement; and the embarrassment
of her manner as she spoke, joined to the circumstance itself, and many
of the circumstances of the preceding day, opened to them a new idea on
the business. Nothing had ever suggested it before, but they felt that
there was no other way of accounting for such attentions from such a
quarter than by supposing a partiality for their niece. While these
newly-born notions were passing in their heads, the perturbation of
Elizabeth's feelings was at every moment increasing. She was quite
amazed at her own discomposure; but amongst other causes of disquiet,
she dreaded lest the partiality of the brother should have said too much
in her favour; and, more than commonly anxious to please, she naturally
suspected that every power of pleasing would fail her.
She retreated from the window, fearful of being seen; and as she walked
up and down the room, endeavouring to compose herself, saw such looks of
inquiring surprise in her uncle and aunt as made everything worse.
Miss Darcy and her brother appeared, and this formidable introduction
took place. With astonishment did Elizabeth see that her new
acquaintance was at least as much embarrassed as herself. Since her
being at Lambton, she had heard that Miss Darcy was exceedingly proud;
but the observation of a very few minutes convinced her that she was
only exceedingly shy. She found it difficult to obtain even a word from
her beyond a monosyllable.
Miss Darcy was tall, and on a larger scale than Elizabeth; and, though
little more than sixteen, her figure was formed, and her appearance
womanly and graceful. She was less handsome than her brother; but there
was sense and good humour in her face, and her manners were perfectly
unassuming and gentle. Elizabeth, who had expected to find in her as
acute and unembarrassed an observer as ever Mr. Darcy had been, was much
relieved by discerning such different feelings.
They had not long been together before Mr. Darcy told her that Bingley
was also coming to wait on her; and she had barely time to express her
satisfaction, and prepare for such a visitor, when Bingley's quick
step was heard on the stairs, and in a moment he entered the room. All
Elizabeth's anger against him had been long done away; but had she still
felt any, it could hardly have stood its ground against the unaffected
cordiality with which he expressed himself on seeing her again. He
inquired in a friendly, though general way, after her family, and looked
and spoke with the same good-humoured ease that he had ever done.
To Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner he was scarcely a less interesting personage
than to herself. They had long wished to see him. The whole party before
them, indeed, excited a lively attention. The suspicions which had just
arisen of Mr. Darcy and their niece directed their observation towards
each with an earnest though guarded inquiry; and they soon drew from
those inquiries the full conviction that one of them at least knew
what it was to love. Of the lady's sensations they remained a little
in doubt; but that the gentleman was overflowing with admiration was
evident enough.
Elizabeth, on her side, had much to do. She wanted to ascertain the
feelings of each of her visitors; she wanted to compose her own, and
to make herself agreeable to all; and in the latter object, where she
feared most to fail, she was most sure of success, for those to whom she
endeavoured to give pleasure were prepossessed in her favour. Bingley
was ready, Georgiana was eager, and Darcy determined, to be pleased.
In seeing Bingley, her thoughts naturally flew to her sister; and, oh!
how ardently did she long to know whether any of his were directed in
a like manner. Sometimes she could fancy that he talked less than on
former occasions, and once or twice pleased herself with the notion
that, as he looked at her, he was trying to trace a resemblance. But,
though this might be imaginary, she could not be deceived as to his
behaviour to Miss Darcy, who had been set up as a rival to Jane. No look
appeared on either side that spoke particular regard. Nothing occurred
between them that could justify the hopes of his sister. On this point
she was soon satisfied; and two or three little circumstances occurred
ere they parted, which, in her anxious interpretation, denoted a
recollection of Jane not untinctured by tenderness, and a wish of saying
more that might lead to the mention of her, had he dared. He observed
to her, at a moment when the others were talking together, and in a tone
which had something of real regret, that it "was a very long time since
he had had the pleasure of seeing her;" and, before she could reply,
he added, "It is above eight months. We have not met since the 26th of
November, when we were all dancing together at Netherfield."
Elizabeth was pleased to find his memory so exact; and he afterwards
took occasion to ask her, when unattended to by any of the rest, whether
_all_ her sisters were at Longbourn. There was not much in the question,
nor in the preceding remark; but there was a look and a manner which
gave them meaning.
It was not often that she could turn her eyes on Mr. Darcy himself;
but, whenever she did catch a glimpse, she saw an expression of general
complaisance, and in all that he said she heard an accent so removed
from _hauteur_ or disdain of his companions, as convinced her that
the improvement of manners which she had yesterday witnessed however
temporary its existence might prove, had at least outlived one day. When
she saw him thus seeking the acquaintance and courting the good opinion
of people with whom any intercourse a few months ago would have been a
disgrace--when she saw him thus civil, not only to herself, but to the
very relations whom he had openly disdained, and recollected their last
lively scene in Hunsford Parsonage--the difference, the change was
so great, and struck so forcibly on her mind, that she could hardly
restrain her astonishment from being visible. Never, even in the company
of his dear friends at Netherfield, or his dignified relations
at Rosings, had she seen him so desirous to please, so free from
self-consequence or unbending reserve, as now, when no importance
could result from the success of his endeavours, and when even the
acquaintance of those to whom his attentions were addressed would draw
down the ridicule and censure of the ladies both of Netherfield and
Rosings.
Their visitors stayed with them above half-an-hour; and when they arose
to depart, Mr. Darcy called on his sister to join him in expressing
their wish of seeing Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, and Miss Bennet, to dinner
at Pemberley, before they left the country. Miss Darcy, though with a
diffidence which marked her little in the habit of giving invitations,
readily obeyed. Mrs. Gardiner looked at her niece, desirous of knowing
how _she_, whom the invitation most concerned, felt disposed as to its
acceptance, but Elizabeth had turned away her head. Presuming however,
that this studied avoidance spoke rather a momentary embarrassment than
any dislike of the proposal, and seeing in her husband, who was fond of
society, a perfect willingness to accept it, she ventured to engage for
her attendance, and the day after the next was fixed on.
Bingley expressed great pleasure in the certainty of seeing Elizabeth
again, having still a great deal to say to her, and many inquiries to
make after all their Hertfordshire friends. Elizabeth, construing all
this into a wish of hearing her speak of her sister, was pleased, and on
this account, as well as some others, found herself, when their
visitors left them, capable of considering the last half-hour with some
satisfaction, though while it was passing, the enjoyment of it had been
little. Eager to be alone, and fearful of inquiries or hints from her
uncle and aunt, she stayed with them only long enough to hear their
favourable opinion of Bingley, and then hurried away to dress.
But she had no reason to fear Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner's curiosity; it was
not their wish to force her communication. It was evident that she was
much better acquainted with Mr. Darcy than they had before any idea of;
it was evident that he was very much in love with her. They saw much to
interest, but nothing to justify inquiry.
Of Mr. Darcy it was now a matter of anxiety to think well; and, as far
as their acquaintance reached, there was no fault to find. They could
not be untouched by his politeness; and had they drawn his character
from their own feelings and his servant's report, without any reference
to any other account, the circle in Hertfordshire to which he was known
would not have recognized it for Mr. Darcy. There was now an interest,
however, in believing the housekeeper; and they soon became sensible
that the authority of a servant who had known him since he was four
years old, and whose own manners indicated respectability, was not to be
hastily rejected. Neither had anything occurred in the intelligence of
their Lambton friends that could materially lessen its weight. They had
nothing to accuse him of but pride; pride he probably had, and if not,
it would certainly be imputed by the inhabitants of a small market-town
where the family did not visit. It was acknowledged, however, that he
was a liberal man, and did much good among the poor.
With respect to Wickham, the travellers soon found that he was not held
there in much estimation; for though the chief of his concerns with the
son of his patron were imperfectly understood, it was yet a well-known
fact that, on his quitting Derbyshire, he had left many debts behind
him, which Mr. Darcy afterwards discharged.
As for Elizabeth, her thoughts were at Pemberley this evening more than
the last; and the evening, though as it passed it seemed long, was not
long enough to determine her feelings towards _one_ in that mansion;
and she lay awake two whole hours endeavouring to make them out. She
certainly did not hate him. No; hatred had vanished long ago, and she
had almost as long been ashamed of ever feeling a dislike against him,
that could be so called. The respect created by the conviction of his
valuable qualities, though at first unwillingly admitted, had for some
time ceased to be repugnant to her feeling; and it was now heightened
into somewhat of a friendlier nature, by the testimony so highly in
his favour, and bringing forward his disposition in so amiable a light,
which yesterday had produced. But above all, above respect and esteem,
there was a motive within her of goodwill which could not be overlooked.
It was gratitude; gratitude, not merely for having once loved her,
but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and
acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations
accompanying her rejection. He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid
her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most
eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display
of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only
were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent
on making her known to his sister. Such a change in a man of so much
pride exciting not only astonishment but gratitude--for to love, ardent
love, it must be attributed; and as such its impression on her was of a
sort to be encouraged, as by no means unpleasing, though it could not be
exactly defined. She respected, she esteemed, she was grateful to him,
she felt a real interest in his welfare; and she only wanted to know how
far she wished that welfare to depend upon herself, and how far it would
be for the happiness of both that she should employ the power, which her
fancy told her she still possessed, of bringing on her the renewal of
his addresses.
It had been settled in the evening between the aunt and the niece, that
such a striking civility as Miss Darcy's in coming to see them on the
very day of her arrival at Pemberley, for she had reached it only to a
late breakfast, ought to be imitated, though it could not be equalled,
by some exertion of politeness on their side; and, consequently, that
it would be highly expedient to wait on her at Pemberley the following
morning. They were, therefore, to go. Elizabeth was pleased; though when
she asked herself the reason, she had very little to say in reply.
Mr. Gardiner left them soon after breakfast. The fishing scheme had been
renewed the day before, and a positive engagement made of his meeting
some of the gentlemen at Pemberley before noon.
Chapter 45
Convinced as Elizabeth now was that Miss Bingley's dislike of her had
originated in jealousy, she could not help feeling how unwelcome her
appearance at Pemberley must be to her, and was curious to know with how
much civility on that lady's side the acquaintance would now be renewed.
On reaching the house, they were shown through the hall into the saloon,
whose northern aspect rendered it delightful for summer. Its windows
opening to the ground, admitted a most refreshing view of the high woody
hills behind the house, and of the beautiful oaks and Spanish chestnuts
which were scattered over the intermediate lawn.
In this house they were received by Miss Darcy, who was sitting there
with Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley, and the lady with whom she lived in
London. Georgiana's reception of them was very civil, but attended with
all the embarrassment which, though proceeding from shyness and the fear
of doing wrong, would easily give to those who felt themselves inferior
the belief of her being proud and reserved. Mrs. Gardiner and her niece,
however, did her justice, and pitied her.
By Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley they were noticed only by a curtsey; and,
on their being seated, a pause, awkward as such pauses must always be,
succeeded for a few moments. It was first broken by Mrs. Annesley, a
genteel, agreeable-looking woman, whose endeavour to introduce some kind
of discourse proved her to be more truly well-bred than either of the
others; and between her and Mrs. Gardiner, with occasional help from
Elizabeth, the conversation was carried on. Miss Darcy looked as if she
wished for courage enough to join in it; and sometimes did venture a
short sentence when there was least danger of its being heard.
Elizabeth soon saw that she was herself closely watched by Miss Bingley,
and that she could not speak a word, especially to Miss Darcy, without
calling her attention. This observation would not have prevented her
from trying to talk to the latter, had they not been seated at an
inconvenient distance; but she was not sorry to be spared the necessity
of saying much. Her own thoughts were employing her. She expected every
moment that some of the gentlemen would enter the room. She wished, she
feared that the master of the house might be amongst them; and whether
she wished or feared it most, she could scarcely determine. After
sitting in this manner a quarter of an hour without hearing Miss
Bingley's voice, Elizabeth was roused by receiving from her a cold
inquiry after the health of her family. She answered with equal
indifference and brevity, and the other said no more.
The next variation which their visit afforded was produced by the
entrance of servants with cold meat, cake, and a variety of all the
finest fruits in season; but this did not take place till after many
a significant look and smile from Mrs. Annesley to Miss Darcy had been
given, to remind her of her post. There was now employment for the whole
party--for though they could not all talk, they could all eat; and the
beautiful pyramids of grapes, nectarines, and peaches soon collected
them round the table.
While thus engaged, Elizabeth had a fair opportunity of deciding whether
she most feared or wished for the appearance of Mr. Darcy, by the
feelings which prevailed on his entering the room; and then, though but
a moment before she had believed her wishes to predominate, she began to
regret that he came.
He had been some time with Mr. Gardiner, who, with two or three other
gentlemen from the house, was engaged by the river, and had left him
only on learning that the ladies of the family intended a visit to
Georgiana that morning. No sooner did he appear than Elizabeth wisely
resolved to be perfectly easy and unembarrassed; a resolution the more
necessary to be made, but perhaps not the more easily kept, because she
saw that the suspicions of the whole party were awakened against them,
and that there was scarcely an eye which did not watch his behaviour
when he first came into the room. In no countenance was attentive
curiosity so strongly marked as in Miss Bingley's, in spite of the
smiles which overspread her face whenever she spoke to one of its
objects; for jealousy had not yet made her desperate, and her attentions
to Mr. Darcy were by no means over. Miss Darcy, on her brother's
entrance, exerted herself much more to talk, and Elizabeth saw that he
was anxious for his sister and herself to get acquainted, and forwarded
as much as possible, every attempt at conversation on either side. Miss
Bingley saw all this likewise; and, in the imprudence of anger, took the
first opportunity of saying, with sneering civility:
"Pray, Miss Eliza, are not the ----shire Militia removed from Meryton?
They must be a great loss to _your_ family."
In Darcy's presence she dared not mention Wickham's name; but Elizabeth
instantly comprehended that he was uppermost in her thoughts; and the
various recollections connected with him gave her a moment's distress;
but exerting herself vigorously to repel the ill-natured attack, she
presently answered the question in a tolerably detached tone. While
she spoke, an involuntary glance showed her Darcy, with a heightened
complexion, earnestly looking at her, and his sister overcome with
confusion, and unable to lift up her eyes. Had Miss Bingley known what
pain she was then giving her beloved friend, she undoubtedly would
have refrained from the hint; but she had merely intended to discompose
Elizabeth by bringing forward the idea of a man to whom she believed
her partial, to make her betray a sensibility which might injure her in
Darcy's opinion, and, perhaps, to remind the latter of all the follies
and absurdities by which some part of her family were connected
with that corps. Not a syllable had ever reached her of Miss Darcy's
meditated elopement. To no creature had it been revealed, where secrecy
was possible, except to Elizabeth; and from all Bingley's connections
her brother was particularly anxious to conceal it, from the very
wish which Elizabeth had long ago attributed to him, of their becoming
hereafter her own. He had certainly formed such a plan, and without
meaning that it should affect his endeavour to separate him from Miss
Bennet, it is probable that it might add something to his lively concern
for the welfare of his friend.
Elizabeth's collected behaviour, however, soon quieted his emotion; and
as Miss Bingley, vexed and disappointed, dared not approach nearer to
Wickham, Georgiana also recovered in time, though not enough to be able
to speak any more. Her brother, whose eye she feared to meet, scarcely
recollected her interest in the affair, and the very circumstance which
had been designed to turn his thoughts from Elizabeth seemed to have
fixed them on her more and more cheerfully.
Their visit did not continue long after the question and answer above
mentioned; and while Mr. Darcy was attending them to their carriage Miss
Bingley was venting her feelings in criticisms on Elizabeth's person,
behaviour, and dress. But Georgiana would not join her. Her brother's
recommendation was enough to ensure her favour; his judgement could not
err. And he had spoken in such terms of Elizabeth as to leave Georgiana
without the power of finding her otherwise than lovely and amiable. When
Darcy returned to the saloon, Miss Bingley could not help repeating to
him some part of what she had been saying to his sister.
"How very ill Miss Eliza Bennet looks this morning, Mr. Darcy," she
cried; "I never in my life saw anyone so much altered as she is since
the winter. She is grown so brown and coarse! Louisa and I were agreeing
that we should not have known her again."
However little Mr. Darcy might have liked such an address, he contented
himself with coolly replying that he perceived no other alteration than
her being rather tanned, no miraculous consequence of travelling in the
summer.
"For my own part," she rejoined, "I must confess that I never could
see any beauty in her. Her face is too thin; her complexion has no
brilliancy; and her features are not at all handsome. Her nose
wants character--there is nothing marked in its lines. Her teeth are
tolerable, but not out of the common way; and as for her eyes,
which have sometimes been called so fine, I could never see anything
extraordinary in them. They have a sharp, shrewish look, which I do
not like at all; and in her air altogether there is a self-sufficiency
without fashion, which is intolerable."
Persuaded as Miss Bingley was that Darcy admired Elizabeth, this was not
the best method of recommending herself; but angry people are not always
wise; and in seeing him at last look somewhat nettled, she had all the
success she expected. He was resolutely silent, however, and, from a
determination of making him speak, she continued:
"I remember, when we first knew her in Hertfordshire, how amazed we all
were to find that she was a reputed beauty; and I particularly recollect
your saying one night, after they had been dining at Netherfield, '_She_
a beauty!--I should as soon call her mother a wit.' But afterwards she
seemed to improve on you, and I believe you thought her rather pretty at
one time."
"Yes," replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, "but _that_
was only when I first saw her, for it is many months since I have
considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance."
He then went away, and Miss Bingley was left to all the satisfaction of
having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but herself.
Mrs. Gardiner and Elizabeth talked of all that had occurred during their
visit, as they returned, except what had particularly interested them
both. The look and behaviour of everybody they had seen were discussed,
except of the person who had mostly engaged their attention. They talked
of his sister, his friends, his house, his fruit--of everything but
himself; yet Elizabeth was longing to know what Mrs. Gardiner thought of
him, and Mrs. Gardiner would have been highly gratified by her niece's
beginning the subject.
Chapter 46
Elizabeth had been a good deal disappointed in not finding a letter from
Jane on their first arrival at Lambton; and this disappointment had been
renewed on each of the mornings that had now been spent there; but
on the third her repining was over, and her sister justified, by the
receipt of two letters from her at once, on one of which was marked that
it had been missent elsewhere. Elizabeth was not surprised at it, as
Jane had written the direction remarkably ill.
They had just been preparing to walk as the letters came in; and
her uncle and aunt, leaving her to enjoy them in quiet, set off by
themselves. The one missent must first be attended to; it had been
written five days ago. The beginning contained an account of all their
little parties and engagements, with such news as the country afforded;
but the latter half, which was dated a day later, and written in evident
agitation, gave more important intelligence. It was to this effect:
"Since writing the above, dearest Lizzy, something has occurred of a
most unexpected and serious nature; but I am afraid of alarming you--be
assured that we are all well. What I have to say relates to poor Lydia.
An express came at twelve last night, just as we were all gone to bed,
from Colonel Forster, to inform us that she was gone off to Scotland
with one of his officers; to own the truth, with Wickham! Imagine our
surprise. To Kitty, however, it does not seem so wholly unexpected. I am
very, very sorry. So imprudent a match on both sides! But I am willing
to hope the best, and that his character has been misunderstood.
Thoughtless and indiscreet I can easily believe him, but this step
(and let us rejoice over it) marks nothing bad at heart. His choice is
disinterested at least, for he must know my father can give her nothing.
Our poor mother is sadly grieved. My father bears it better. How
thankful am I that we never let them know what has been said against
him; we must forget it ourselves. They were off Saturday night about
twelve, as is conjectured, but were not missed till yesterday morning at
eight. The express was sent off directly. My dear Lizzy, they must have
passed within ten miles of us. Colonel Forster gives us reason to expect
him here soon. Lydia left a few lines for his wife, informing her of
their intention. I must conclude, for I cannot be long from my poor
mother. I am afraid you will not be able to make it out, but I hardly
know what I have written."
Without allowing herself time for consideration, and scarcely knowing
what she felt, Elizabeth on finishing this letter instantly seized the
other, and opening it with the utmost impatience, read as follows: it
had been written a day later than the conclusion of the first.
"By this time, my dearest sister, you have received my hurried letter; I
wish this may be more intelligible, but though not confined for time, my
head is so bewildered that I cannot answer for being coherent. Dearest
Lizzy, I hardly know what I would write, but I have bad news for you,
and it cannot be delayed. Imprudent as the marriage between Mr. Wickham
and our poor Lydia would be, we are now anxious to be assured it has
taken place, for there is but too much reason to fear they are not gone
to Scotland. Colonel Forster came yesterday, having left Brighton the
day before, not many hours after the express. Though Lydia's short
letter to Mrs. F. gave them to understand that they were going to Gretna
Green, something was dropped by Denny expressing his belief that W.
never intended to go there, or to marry Lydia at all, which was
repeated to Colonel F., who, instantly taking the alarm, set off from B.
intending to trace their route. He did trace them easily to Clapham,
but no further; for on entering that place, they removed into a hackney
coach, and dismissed the chaise that brought them from Epsom. All that
is known after this is, that they were seen to continue the London road.
I know not what to think. After making every possible inquiry on that
side London, Colonel F. came on into Hertfordshire, anxiously renewing
them at all the turnpikes, and at the inns in Barnet and Hatfield, but
without any success--no such people had been seen to pass through. With
the kindest concern he came on to Longbourn, and broke his apprehensions
to us in a manner most creditable to his heart. I am sincerely grieved
for him and Mrs. F., but no one can throw any blame on them. Our
distress, my dear Lizzy, is very great. My father and mother believe the
worst, but I cannot think so ill of him. Many circumstances might make
it more eligible for them to be married privately in town than to pursue
their first plan; and even if _he_ could form such a design against a
young woman of Lydia's connections, which is not likely, can I suppose
her so lost to everything? Impossible! I grieve to find, however, that
Colonel F. is not disposed to depend upon their marriage; he shook his
head when I expressed my hopes, and said he feared W. was not a man to
be trusted. My poor mother is really ill, and keeps her room. Could she
exert herself, it would be better; but this is not to be expected. And
as to my father, I never in my life saw him so affected. Poor Kitty has
anger for having concealed their attachment; but as it was a matter of
confidence, one cannot wonder. I am truly glad, dearest Lizzy, that you
have been spared something of these distressing scenes; but now, as the
first shock is over, shall I own that I long for your return? I am not
so selfish, however, as to press for it, if inconvenient. Adieu! I
take up my pen again to do what I have just told you I would not; but
circumstances are such that I cannot help earnestly begging you all to
come here as soon as possible. I know my dear uncle and aunt so well,
that I am not afraid of requesting it, though I have still something
more to ask of the former. My father is going to London with Colonel
Forster instantly, to try to discover her. What he means to do I am sure
I know not; but his excessive distress will not allow him to pursue any
measure in the best and safest way, and Colonel Forster is obliged to
be at Brighton again to-morrow evening. In such an exigence, my
uncle's advice and assistance would be everything in the world; he will
immediately comprehend what I must feel, and I rely upon his goodness."
"Oh! where, where is my uncle?" cried Elizabeth, darting from her seat
as she finished the letter, in eagerness to follow him, without losing
a moment of the time so precious; but as she reached the door it was
opened by a servant, and Mr. Darcy appeared. Her pale face and impetuous
manner made him start, and before he could recover himself to speak,
she, in whose mind every idea was superseded by Lydia's situation,
hastily exclaimed, "I beg your pardon, but I must leave you. I must find
Mr. Gardiner this moment, on business that cannot be delayed; I have not
an instant to lose."
"Good God! what is the matter?" cried he, with more feeling than
politeness; then recollecting himself, "I will not detain you a minute;
but let me, or let the servant go after Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner. You are
not well enough; you cannot go yourself."
Elizabeth hesitated, but her knees trembled under her and she felt how
little would be gained by her attempting to pursue them. Calling back
the servant, therefore, she commissioned him, though in so breathless
an accent as made her almost unintelligible, to fetch his master and
mistress home instantly.
On his quitting the room she sat down, unable to support herself, and
looking so miserably ill, that it was impossible for Darcy to leave her,
or to refrain from saying, in a tone of gentleness and commiseration,
"Let me call your maid. Is there nothing you could take to give you
present relief? A glass of wine; shall I get you one? You are very ill."
"No, I thank you," she replied, endeavouring to recover herself. "There
is nothing the matter with me. I am quite well; I am only distressed by
some dreadful news which I have just received from Longbourn."
She burst into tears as she alluded to it, and for a few minutes could
not speak another word. Darcy, in wretched suspense, could only say
something indistinctly of his concern, and observe her in compassionate
silence. At length she spoke again. "I have just had a letter from Jane,
with such dreadful news. It cannot be concealed from anyone. My younger
sister has left all her friends--has eloped; has thrown herself into
the power of--of Mr. Wickham. They are gone off together from Brighton.
_You_ know him too well to doubt the rest. She has no money, no
connections, nothing that can tempt him to--she is lost for ever."
Darcy was fixed in astonishment. "When I consider," she added in a yet
more agitated voice, "that I might have prevented it! I, who knew what
he was. Had I but explained some part of it only--some part of what I
learnt, to my own family! Had his character been known, this could not
have happened. But it is all--all too late now."
"I am grieved indeed," cried Darcy; "grieved--shocked. But is it
certain--absolutely certain?"
"Oh, yes! They left Brighton together on Sunday night, and were traced
almost to London, but not beyond; they are certainly not gone to
Scotland."
"And what has been done, what has been attempted, to recover her?"
"My father is gone to London, and Jane has written to beg my uncle's
immediate assistance; and we shall be off, I hope, in half-an-hour. But
nothing can be done--I know very well that nothing can be done. How is
such a man to be worked on? How are they even to be discovered? I have
not the smallest hope. It is every way horrible!"
Darcy shook his head in silent acquiescence.
"When _my_ eyes were opened to his real character--Oh! had I known what
I ought, what I dared to do! But I knew not--I was afraid of doing too
much. Wretched, wretched mistake!"
Darcy made no answer. He seemed scarcely to hear her, and was walking
up and down the room in earnest meditation, his brow contracted, his air
gloomy. Elizabeth soon observed, and instantly understood it. Her
power was sinking; everything _must_ sink under such a proof of family
weakness, such an assurance of the deepest disgrace. She could neither
wonder nor condemn, but the belief of his self-conquest brought nothing
consolatory to her bosom, afforded no palliation of her distress. It
was, on the contrary, exactly calculated to make her understand her own
wishes; and never had she so honestly felt that she could have loved
him, as now, when all love must be vain.
But self, though it would intrude, could not engross her. Lydia--the
humiliation, the misery she was bringing on them all, soon swallowed
up every private care; and covering her face with her handkerchief,
Elizabeth was soon lost to everything else; and, after a pause of
several minutes, was only recalled to a sense of her situation by
the voice of her companion, who, in a manner which, though it spoke
compassion, spoke likewise restraint, said, "I am afraid you have been
long desiring my absence, nor have I anything to plead in excuse of my
stay, but real, though unavailing concern. Would to Heaven that anything
could be either said or done on my part that might offer consolation to
such distress! But I will not torment you with vain wishes, which may
seem purposely to ask for your thanks. This unfortunate affair will, I
fear, prevent my sister's having the pleasure of seeing you at Pemberley
to-day."
"Oh, yes. Be so kind as to apologise for us to Miss Darcy. Say that
urgent business calls us home immediately. Conceal the unhappy truth as
long as it is possible, I know it cannot be long."
He readily assured her of his secrecy; again expressed his sorrow for
her distress, wished it a happier conclusion than there was at present
reason to hope, and leaving his compliments for her relations, with only
one serious, parting look, went away.
As he quitted the room, Elizabeth felt how improbable it was that they
should ever see each other again on such terms of cordiality as
had marked their several meetings in Derbyshire; and as she threw a
retrospective glance over the whole of their acquaintance, so full
of contradictions and varieties, sighed at the perverseness of those
feelings which would now have promoted its continuance, and would
formerly have rejoiced in its termination.
If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's
change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if
otherwise--if regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or
unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on
a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been
exchanged, nothing can be said in her defence, except that she had given
somewhat of a trial to the latter method in her partiality for Wickham,
and that its ill success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other
less interesting mode of attachment. Be that as it may, she saw him
go with regret; and in this early example of what Lydia's infamy must
produce, found additional anguish as she reflected on that wretched
business. Never, since reading Jane's second letter, had she entertained
a hope of Wickham's meaning to marry her. No one but Jane, she thought,
could flatter herself with such an expectation. Surprise was the least
of her feelings on this development. While the contents of the first
letter remained in her mind, she was all surprise--all astonishment that
Wickham should marry a girl whom it was impossible he could marry
for money; and how Lydia could ever have attached him had appeared
incomprehensible. But now it was all too natural. For such an attachment
as this she might have sufficient charms; and though she did not suppose
Lydia to be deliberately engaging in an elopement without the intention
of marriage, she had no difficulty in believing that neither her virtue
nor her understanding would preserve her from falling an easy prey.
She had never perceived, while the regiment was in Hertfordshire, that
Lydia had any partiality for him; but she was convinced that Lydia
wanted only encouragement to attach herself to anybody. Sometimes one
officer, sometimes another, had been her favourite, as their attentions
raised them in her opinion. Her affections had continually been
fluctuating but never without an object. The mischief of neglect and
mistaken indulgence towards such a girl--oh! how acutely did she now
feel it!
She was wild to be at home--to hear, to see, to be upon the spot to
share with Jane in the cares that must now fall wholly upon her, in a
family so deranged, a father absent, a mother incapable of exertion, and
requiring constant attendance; and though almost persuaded that nothing
could be done for Lydia, her uncle's interference seemed of the utmost
importance, and till he entered the room her impatience was severe. Mr.
and Mrs. Gardiner had hurried back in alarm, supposing by the servant's
account that their niece was taken suddenly ill; but satisfying them
instantly on that head, she eagerly communicated the cause of their
summons, reading the two letters aloud, and dwelling on the postscript
of the last with trembling energy.--Though Lydia had never been a
favourite with them, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner could not but be deeply
afflicted. Not Lydia only, but all were concerned in it; and after the
first exclamations of surprise and horror, Mr. Gardiner promised every
assistance in his power. Elizabeth, though expecting no less, thanked
him with tears of gratitude; and all three being actuated by one spirit,
everything relating to their journey was speedily settled. They were to
be off as soon as possible. "But what is to be done about Pemberley?"
cried Mrs. Gardiner. "John told us Mr. Darcy was here when you sent for
us; was it so?"
"Yes; and I told him we should not be able to keep our engagement.
_That_ is all settled."
"What is all settled?" repeated the other, as she ran into her room to
prepare. "And are they upon such terms as for her to disclose the real
truth? Oh, that I knew how it was!"
But wishes were vain, or at least could only serve to amuse her in the
hurry and confusion of the following hour. Had Elizabeth been at leisure
to be idle, she would have remained certain that all employment was
impossible to one so wretched as herself; but she had her share of
business as well as her aunt, and amongst the rest there were notes to
be written to all their friends at Lambton, with false excuses for their
sudden departure. An hour, however, saw the whole completed; and Mr.
Gardiner meanwhile having settled his account at the inn, nothing
remained to be done but to go; and Elizabeth, after all the misery of
the morning, found herself, in a shorter space of time than she could
have supposed, seated in the carriage, and on the road to Longbourn.
Chapter 47
"I have been thinking it over again, Elizabeth," said her uncle, as they
drove from the town; "and really, upon serious consideration, I am much
more inclined than I was to judge as your eldest sister does on the
matter. It appears to me so very unlikely that any young man should
form such a design against a girl who is by no means unprotected or
friendless, and who was actually staying in his colonel's family, that I
am strongly inclined to hope the best. Could he expect that her friends
would not step forward? Could he expect to be noticed again by the
regiment, after such an affront to Colonel Forster? His temptation is
not adequate to the risk!"
"Do you really think so?" cried Elizabeth, brightening up for a moment.
"Upon my word," said Mrs. Gardiner, "I begin to be of your uncle's
opinion. It is really too great a violation of decency, honour, and
interest, for him to be guilty of. I cannot think so very ill of
Wickham. Can you yourself, Lizzy, so wholly give him up, as to believe
him capable of it?"
"Not, perhaps, of neglecting his own interest; but of every other
neglect I can believe him capable. If, indeed, it should be so! But I
dare not hope it. Why should they not go on to Scotland if that had been
the case?"
"In the first place," replied Mr. Gardiner, "there is no absolute proof
that they are not gone to Scotland."
"Oh! but their removing from the chaise into a hackney coach is such
a presumption! And, besides, no traces of them were to be found on the
Barnet road."
"Well, then--supposing them to be in London. They may be there, though
for the purpose of concealment, for no more exceptional purpose. It is
not likely that money should be very abundant on either side; and it
might strike them that they could be more economically, though less
expeditiously, married in London than in Scotland."
"But why all this secrecy? Why any fear of detection? Why must their
marriage be private? Oh, no, no--this is not likely. His most particular
friend, you see by Jane's account, was persuaded of his never intending
to marry her. Wickham will never marry a woman without some money. He
cannot afford it. And what claims has Lydia--what attraction has she
beyond youth, health, and good humour that could make him, for her sake,
forego every chance of benefiting himself by marrying well? As to what
restraint the apprehensions of disgrace in the corps might throw on a
dishonourable elopement with her, I am not able to judge; for I know
nothing of the effects that such a step might produce. But as to your
other objection, I am afraid it will hardly hold good. Lydia has
no brothers to step forward; and he might imagine, from my father's
behaviour, from his indolence and the little attention he has ever
seemed to give to what was going forward in his family, that _he_ would
do as little, and think as little about it, as any father could do, in
such a matter."
"But can you think that Lydia is so lost to everything but love of him
as to consent to live with him on any terms other than marriage?"
"It does seem, and it is most shocking indeed," replied Elizabeth, with
tears in her eyes, "that a sister's sense of decency and virtue in such
a point should admit of doubt. But, really, I know not what to say.
Perhaps I am not doing her justice. But she is very young; she has never
been taught to think on serious subjects; and for the last half-year,
nay, for a twelvemonth--she has been given up to nothing but amusement
and vanity. She has been allowed to dispose of her time in the most idle
and frivolous manner, and to adopt any opinions that came in her way.
Since the ----shire were first quartered in Meryton, nothing but love,
flirtation, and officers have been in her head. She has been doing
everything in her power by thinking and talking on the subject, to give
greater--what shall I call it? susceptibility to her feelings; which are
naturally lively enough. And we all know that Wickham has every charm of
person and address that can captivate a woman."
"But you see that Jane," said her aunt, "does not think so very ill of
Wickham as to believe him capable of the attempt."
"Of whom does Jane ever think ill? And who is there, whatever might be
their former conduct, that she would think capable of such an attempt,
till it were proved against them? But Jane knows, as well as I do, what
Wickham really is. We both know that he has been profligate in every
sense of the word; that he has neither integrity nor honour; that he is
as false and deceitful as he is insinuating."
"And do you really know all this?" cried Mrs. Gardiner, whose curiosity
as to the mode of her intelligence was all alive.
"I do indeed," replied Elizabeth, colouring. "I told you, the other day,
of his infamous behaviour to Mr. Darcy; and you yourself, when last at
Longbourn, heard in what manner he spoke of the man who had behaved
with such forbearance and liberality towards him. And there are other
circumstances which I am not at liberty--which it is not worth while to
relate; but his lies about the whole Pemberley family are endless. From
what he said of Miss Darcy I was thoroughly prepared to see a proud,
reserved, disagreeable girl. Yet he knew to the contrary himself. He
must know that she was as amiable and unpretending as we have found
her."
"But does Lydia know nothing of this? can she be ignorant of what you
and Jane seem so well to understand?"
"Oh, yes!--that, that is the worst of all. Till I was in Kent, and saw
so much both of Mr. Darcy and his relation Colonel Fitzwilliam, I was
ignorant of the truth myself. And when I returned home, the ----shire
was to leave Meryton in a week or fortnight's time. As that was the
case, neither Jane, to whom I related the whole, nor I, thought it
necessary to make our knowledge public; for of what use could
it apparently be to any one, that the good opinion which all the
neighbourhood had of him should then be overthrown? And even when it was
settled that Lydia should go with Mrs. Forster, the necessity of opening
her eyes to his character never occurred to me. That _she_ could be
in any danger from the deception never entered my head. That such a
consequence as _this_ could ensue, you may easily believe, was far
enough from my thoughts."
"When they all removed to Brighton, therefore, you had no reason, I
suppose, to believe them fond of each other?"
"Not the slightest. I can remember no symptom of affection on either
side; and had anything of the kind been perceptible, you must be aware
that ours is not a family on which it could be thrown away. When first
he entered the corps, she was ready enough to admire him; but so we all
were. Every girl in or near Meryton was out of her senses about him for
the first two months; but he never distinguished _her_ by any particular
attention; and, consequently, after a moderate period of extravagant and
wild admiration, her fancy for him gave way, and others of the regiment,
who treated her with more distinction, again became her favourites."
* * * * *
It may be easily believed, that however little of novelty could be added
to their fears, hopes, and conjectures, on this interesting subject, by
its repeated discussion, no other could detain them from it long, during
the whole of the journey. From Elizabeth's thoughts it was never absent.
Fixed there by the keenest of all anguish, self-reproach, she could find
no interval of ease or forgetfulness.
They travelled as expeditiously as possible, and, sleeping one night
on the road, reached Longbourn by dinner time the next day. It was a
comfort to Elizabeth to consider that Jane could not have been wearied
by long expectations.
The little Gardiners, attracted by the sight of a chaise, were standing
on the steps of the house as they entered the paddock; and, when the
carriage drove up to the door, the joyful surprise that lighted up their
faces, and displayed itself over their whole bodies, in a variety of
capers and frisks, was the first pleasing earnest of their welcome.
Elizabeth jumped out; and, after giving each of them a hasty kiss,
hurried into the vestibule, where Jane, who came running down from her
mother's apartment, immediately met her.
Elizabeth, as she affectionately embraced her, whilst tears filled the
eyes of both, lost not a moment in asking whether anything had been
heard of the fugitives.
"Not yet," replied Jane. "But now that my dear uncle is come, I hope
everything will be well."
"Is my father in town?"
"Yes, he went on Tuesday, as I wrote you word."
"And have you heard from him often?"
"We have heard only twice. He wrote me a few lines on Wednesday to say
that he had arrived in safety, and to give me his directions, which I
particularly begged him to do. He merely added that he should not write
again till he had something of importance to mention."
"And my mother--how is she? How are you all?"
"My mother is tolerably well, I trust; though her spirits are greatly
shaken. She is up stairs and will have great satisfaction in seeing you
all. She does not yet leave her dressing-room. Mary and Kitty, thank
Heaven, are quite well."
"But you--how are you?" cried Elizabeth. "You look pale. How much you
must have gone through!"
Her sister, however, assured her of her being perfectly well; and their
conversation, which had been passing while Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner were
engaged with their children, was now put an end to by the approach
of the whole party. Jane ran to her uncle and aunt, and welcomed and
thanked them both, with alternate smiles and tears.
When they were all in the drawing-room, the questions which Elizabeth
had already asked were of course repeated by the others, and they soon
found that Jane had no intelligence to give. The sanguine hope of
good, however, which the benevolence of her heart suggested had not yet
deserted her; she still expected that it would all end well, and that
every morning would bring some letter, either from Lydia or her father,
to explain their proceedings, and, perhaps, announce their marriage.
Mrs. Bennet, to whose apartment they all repaired, after a few minutes'
conversation together, received them exactly as might be expected; with
tears and lamentations of regret, invectives against the villainous
conduct of Wickham, and complaints of her own sufferings and ill-usage;
blaming everybody but the person to whose ill-judging indulgence the
errors of her daughter must principally be owing.
"If I had been able," said she, "to carry my point in going to Brighton,
with all my family, _this_ would not have happened; but poor dear Lydia
had nobody to take care of her. Why did the Forsters ever let her go out
of their sight? I am sure there was some great neglect or other on their
side, for she is not the kind of girl to do such a thing if she had been
well looked after. I always thought they were very unfit to have the
charge of her; but I was overruled, as I always am. Poor dear child!
And now here's Mr. Bennet gone away, and I know he will fight Wickham,
wherever he meets him and then he will be killed, and what is to become
of us all? The Collinses will turn us out before he is cold in his
grave, and if you are not kind to us, brother, I do not know what we
shall do."
They all exclaimed against such terrific ideas; and Mr. Gardiner, after
general assurances of his affection for her and all her family, told her
that he meant to be in London the very next day, and would assist Mr.
Bennet in every endeavour for recovering Lydia.
"Do not give way to useless alarm," added he; "though it is right to be
prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.
It is not quite a week since they left Brighton. In a few days more we
may gain some news of them; and till we know that they are not married,
and have no design of marrying, do not let us give the matter over as
lost. As soon as I get to town I shall go to my brother, and make
him come home with me to Gracechurch Street; and then we may consult
together as to what is to be done."
"Oh! my dear brother," replied Mrs. Bennet, "that is exactly what I
could most wish for. And now do, when you get to town, find them out,
wherever they may be; and if they are not married already, _make_ them
marry. And as for wedding clothes, do not let them wait for that, but
tell Lydia she shall have as much money as she chooses to buy them,
after they are married. And, above all, keep Mr. Bennet from fighting.
Tell him what a dreadful state I am in, that I am frighted out of my
wits--and have such tremblings, such flutterings, all over me--such
spasms in my side and pains in my head, and such beatings at heart, that
I can get no rest by night nor by day. And tell my dear Lydia not to
give any directions about her clothes till she has seen me, for she does
not know which are the best warehouses. Oh, brother, how kind you are! I
know you will contrive it all."
But Mr. Gardiner, though he assured her again of his earnest endeavours
in the cause, could not avoid recommending moderation to her, as well
in her hopes as her fear; and after talking with her in this manner till
dinner was on the table, they all left her to vent all her feelings on
the housekeeper, who attended in the absence of her daughters.
Though her brother and sister were persuaded that there was no real
occasion for such a seclusion from the family, they did not attempt to
oppose it, for they knew that she had not prudence enough to hold her
tongue before the servants, while they waited at table, and judged it
better that _one_ only of the household, and the one whom they could
most trust should comprehend all her fears and solicitude on the
subject.
In the dining-room they were soon joined by Mary and Kitty, who had been
too busily engaged in their separate apartments to make their appearance
before. One came from her books, and the other from her toilette. The
faces of both, however, were tolerably calm; and no change was visible
in either, except that the loss of her favourite sister, or the anger
which she had herself incurred in this business, had given more of
fretfulness than usual to the accents of Kitty. As for Mary, she was
mistress enough of herself to whisper to Elizabeth, with a countenance
of grave reflection, soon after they were seated at table:
"This is a most unfortunate affair, and will probably be much talked of.
But we must stem the tide of malice, and pour into the wounded bosoms of
each other the balm of sisterly consolation."
Then, perceiving in Elizabeth no inclination of replying, she added,
"Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw from it this useful
lesson: that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one
false step involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less
brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in
her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex."
Elizabeth lifted up her eyes in amazement, but was too much oppressed
to make any reply. Mary, however, continued to console herself with such
kind of moral extractions from the evil before them.
In the afternoon, the two elder Miss Bennets were able to be for
half-an-hour by themselves; and Elizabeth instantly availed herself of
the opportunity of making any inquiries, which Jane was equally eager to
satisfy. After joining in general lamentations over the dreadful sequel
of this event, which Elizabeth considered as all but certain, and Miss
Bennet could not assert to be wholly impossible, the former continued
the subject, by saying, "But tell me all and everything about it which
I have not already heard. Give me further particulars. What did Colonel
Forster say? Had they no apprehension of anything before the elopement
took place? They must have seen them together for ever."
"Colonel Forster did own that he had often suspected some partiality,
especially on Lydia's side, but nothing to give him any alarm. I am so
grieved for him! His behaviour was attentive and kind to the utmost. He
_was_ coming to us, in order to assure us of his concern, before he had
any idea of their not being gone to Scotland: when that apprehension
first got abroad, it hastened his journey."
"And was Denny convinced that Wickham would not marry? Did he know of
their intending to go off? Had Colonel Forster seen Denny himself?"
"Yes; but, when questioned by _him_, Denny denied knowing anything of
their plans, and would not give his real opinion about it. He did not
repeat his persuasion of their not marrying--and from _that_, I am
inclined to hope, he might have been misunderstood before."
"And till Colonel Forster came himself, not one of you entertained a
doubt, I suppose, of their being really married?"
"How was it possible that such an idea should enter our brains? I felt
a little uneasy--a little fearful of my sister's happiness with him
in marriage, because I knew that his conduct had not been always quite
right. My father and mother knew nothing of that; they only felt how
imprudent a match it must be. Kitty then owned, with a very natural
triumph on knowing more than the rest of us, that in Lydia's last letter
she had prepared her for such a step. She had known, it seems, of their
being in love with each other, many weeks."
"But not before they went to Brighton?"
"No, I believe not."
"And did Colonel Forster appear to think well of Wickham himself? Does
he know his real character?"
"I must confess that he did not speak so well of Wickham as he formerly
did. He believed him to be imprudent and extravagant. And since this sad
affair has taken place, it is said that he left Meryton greatly in debt;
but I hope this may be false."
"Oh, Jane, had we been less secret, had we told what we knew of him,
this could not have happened!"
"Perhaps it would have been better," replied her sister. "But to expose
the former faults of any person without knowing what their present
feelings were, seemed unjustifiable. We acted with the best intentions."
"Could Colonel Forster repeat the particulars of Lydia's note to his
wife?"
"He brought it with him for us to see."
Jane then took it from her pocket-book, and gave it to Elizabeth. These
were the contents:
"MY DEAR HARRIET,
"You will laugh when you know where I am gone, and I cannot help
laughing myself at your surprise to-morrow morning, as soon as I am
missed. I am going to Gretna Green, and if you cannot guess with who,
I shall think you a simpleton, for there is but one man in the world I
love, and he is an angel. I should never be happy without him, so think
it no harm to be off. You need not send them word at Longbourn of my
going, if you do not like it, for it will make the surprise the greater,
when I write to them and sign my name 'Lydia Wickham.' What a good joke
it will be! I can hardly write for laughing. Pray make my excuses to
Pratt for not keeping my engagement, and dancing with him to-night.
Tell him I hope he will excuse me when he knows all; and tell him I will
dance with him at the next ball we meet, with great pleasure. I shall
send for my clothes when I get to Longbourn; but I wish you would tell
Sally to mend a great slit in my worked muslin gown before they are
packed up. Good-bye. Give my love to Colonel Forster. I hope you will
drink to our good journey.
"Your affectionate friend,
"LYDIA BENNET."
"Oh! thoughtless, thoughtless Lydia!" cried Elizabeth when she had
finished it. "What a letter is this, to be written at such a moment!
But at least it shows that _she_ was serious on the subject of their
journey. Whatever he might afterwards persuade her to, it was not on her
side a _scheme_ of infamy. My poor father! how he must have felt it!"
"I never saw anyone so shocked. He could not speak a word for full ten
minutes. My mother was taken ill immediately, and the whole house in
such confusion!"
"Oh! Jane," cried Elizabeth, "was there a servant belonging to it who
did not know the whole story before the end of the day?"
"I do not know. I hope there was. But to be guarded at such a time is
very difficult. My mother was in hysterics, and though I endeavoured to
give her every assistance in my power, I am afraid I did not do so
much as I might have done! But the horror of what might possibly happen
almost took from me my faculties."
"Your attendance upon her has been too much for you. You do not look
well. Oh that I had been with you! you have had every care and anxiety
upon yourself alone."
"Mary and Kitty have been very kind, and would have shared in every
fatigue, I am sure; but I did not think it right for either of them.
Kitty is slight and delicate; and Mary studies so much, that her hours
of repose should not be broken in on. My aunt Phillips came to Longbourn
on Tuesday, after my father went away; and was so good as to stay till
Thursday with me. She was of great use and comfort to us all. And
Lady Lucas has been very kind; she walked here on Wednesday morning to
condole with us, and offered her services, or any of her daughters', if
they should be of use to us."
"She had better have stayed at home," cried Elizabeth; "perhaps she
_meant_ well, but, under such a misfortune as this, one cannot see
too little of one's neighbours. Assistance is impossible; condolence
insufferable. Let them triumph over us at a distance, and be satisfied."
She then proceeded to inquire into the measures which her father had
intended to pursue, while in town, for the recovery of his daughter.
"He meant I believe," replied Jane, "to go to Epsom, the place where
they last changed horses, see the postilions and try if anything could
be made out from them. His principal object must be to discover the
number of the hackney coach which took them from Clapham. It had come
with a fare from London; and as he thought that the circumstance of a
gentleman and lady's removing from one carriage into another might
be remarked he meant to make inquiries at Clapham. If he could anyhow
discover at what house the coachman had before set down his fare, he
determined to make inquiries there, and hoped it might not be impossible
to find out the stand and number of the coach. I do not know of any
other designs that he had formed; but he was in such a hurry to be gone,
and his spirits so greatly discomposed, that I had difficulty in finding
out even so much as this."
Chapter 48
The whole party were in hopes of a letter from Mr. Bennet the next
morning, but the post came in without bringing a single line from him.
His family knew him to be, on all common occasions, a most negligent and
dilatory correspondent; but at such a time they had hoped for exertion.
They were forced to conclude that he had no pleasing intelligence to
send; but even of _that_ they would have been glad to be certain. Mr.
Gardiner had waited only for the letters before he set off.
When he was gone, they were certain at least of receiving constant
information of what was going on, and their uncle promised, at parting,
to prevail on Mr. Bennet to return to Longbourn, as soon as he could,
to the great consolation of his sister, who considered it as the only
security for her husband's not being killed in a duel.
Mrs. Gardiner and the children were to remain in Hertfordshire a few
days longer, as the former thought her presence might be serviceable
to her nieces. She shared in their attendance on Mrs. Bennet, and was a
great comfort to them in their hours of freedom. Their other aunt also
visited them frequently, and always, as she said, with the design of
cheering and heartening them up--though, as she never came without
reporting some fresh instance of Wickham's extravagance or irregularity,
she seldom went away without leaving them more dispirited than she found
them.
All Meryton seemed striving to blacken the man who, but three months
before, had been almost an angel of light. He was declared to be in debt
to every tradesman in the place, and his intrigues, all honoured with
the title of seduction, had been extended into every tradesman's family.
Everybody declared that he was the wickedest young man in the world;
and everybody began to find out that they had always distrusted the
appearance of his goodness. Elizabeth, though she did not credit above
half of what was said, believed enough to make her former assurance of
her sister's ruin more certain; and even Jane, who believed still less
of it, became almost hopeless, more especially as the time was now come
when, if they had gone to Scotland, which she had never before entirely
despaired of, they must in all probability have gained some news of
them.
Mr. Gardiner left Longbourn on Sunday; on Tuesday his wife received a
letter from him; it told them that, on his arrival, he had immediately
found out his brother, and persuaded him to come to Gracechurch Street;
that Mr. Bennet had been to Epsom and Clapham, before his arrival,
but without gaining any satisfactory information; and that he was now
determined to inquire at all the principal hotels in town, as Mr. Bennet
thought it possible they might have gone to one of them, on their first
coming to London, before they procured lodgings. Mr. Gardiner himself
did not expect any success from this measure, but as his brother was
eager in it, he meant to assist him in pursuing it. He added that Mr.
Bennet seemed wholly disinclined at present to leave London and promised
to write again very soon. There was also a postscript to this effect:
"I have written to Colonel Forster to desire him to find out, if
possible, from some of the young man's intimates in the regiment,
whether Wickham has any relations or connections who would be likely to
know in what part of town he has now concealed himself. If there were
anyone that one could apply to with a probability of gaining such a
clue as that, it might be of essential consequence. At present we have
nothing to guide us. Colonel Forster will, I dare say, do everything in
his power to satisfy us on this head. But, on second thoughts, perhaps,
Lizzy could tell us what relations he has now living, better than any
other person."
Elizabeth was at no loss to understand from whence this deference to her
authority proceeded; but it was not in her power to give any information
of so satisfactory a nature as the compliment deserved. She had never
heard of his having had any relations, except a father and mother, both
of whom had been dead many years. It was possible, however, that some of
his companions in the ----shire might be able to give more information;
and though she was not very sanguine in expecting it, the application
was a something to look forward to.
Every day at Longbourn was now a day of anxiety; but the most anxious
part of each was when the post was expected. The arrival of letters
was the grand object of every morning's impatience. Through letters,
whatever of good or bad was to be told would be communicated, and every
succeeding day was expected to bring some news of importance.
But before they heard again from Mr. Gardiner, a letter arrived for
their father, from a different quarter, from Mr. Collins; which, as Jane
had received directions to open all that came for him in his absence,
she accordingly read; and Elizabeth, who knew what curiosities his
letters always were, looked over her, and read it likewise. It was as
follows:
"MY DEAR SIR,
"I feel myself called upon, by our relationship, and my situation
in life, to condole with you on the grievous affliction you are now
suffering under, of which we were yesterday informed by a letter from
Hertfordshire. Be assured, my dear sir, that Mrs. Collins and myself
sincerely sympathise with you and all your respectable family, in
your present distress, which must be of the bitterest kind, because
proceeding from a cause which no time can remove. No arguments shall be
wanting on my part that can alleviate so severe a misfortune--or that
may comfort you, under a circumstance that must be of all others the
most afflicting to a parent's mind. The death of your daughter would
have been a blessing in comparison of this. And it is the more to
be lamented, because there is reason to suppose as my dear Charlotte
informs me, that this licentiousness of behaviour in your daughter has
proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence; though, at the same time,
for the consolation of yourself and Mrs. Bennet, I am inclined to think
that her own disposition must be naturally bad, or she could not be
guilty of such an enormity, at so early an age. Howsoever that may be,
you are grievously to be pitied; in which opinion I am not only joined
by Mrs. Collins, but likewise by Lady Catherine and her daughter, to
whom I have related the affair. They agree with me in apprehending that
this false step in one daughter will be injurious to the fortunes of
all the others; for who, as Lady Catherine herself condescendingly says,
will connect themselves with such a family? And this consideration leads
me moreover to reflect, with augmented satisfaction, on a certain event
of last November; for had it been otherwise, I must have been involved
in all your sorrow and disgrace. Let me then advise you, dear sir, to
console yourself as much as possible, to throw off your unworthy child
from your affection for ever, and leave her to reap the fruits of her
own heinous offense.
"I am, dear sir, etc., etc."
Mr. Gardiner did not write again till he had received an answer from
Colonel Forster; and then he had nothing of a pleasant nature to send.
It was not known that Wickham had a single relationship with whom he
kept up any connection, and it was certain that he had no near one
living. His former acquaintances had been numerous; but since he
had been in the militia, it did not appear that he was on terms of
particular friendship with any of them. There was no one, therefore,
who could be pointed out as likely to give any news of him. And in the
wretched state of his own finances, there was a very powerful motive for
secrecy, in addition to his fear of discovery by Lydia's relations, for
it had just transpired that he had left gaming debts behind him to a
very considerable amount. Colonel Forster believed that more than a
thousand pounds would be necessary to clear his expenses at Brighton.
He owed a good deal in town, but his debts of honour were still more
formidable. Mr. Gardiner did not attempt to conceal these particulars
from the Longbourn family. Jane heard them with horror. "A gamester!"
she cried. "This is wholly unexpected. I had not an idea of it."
Mr. Gardiner added in his letter, that they might expect to see their
father at home on the following day, which was Saturday. Rendered
spiritless by the ill-success of all their endeavours, he had yielded
to his brother-in-law's entreaty that he would return to his family, and
leave it to him to do whatever occasion might suggest to be advisable
for continuing their pursuit. When Mrs. Bennet was told of this, she did
not express so much satisfaction as her children expected, considering
what her anxiety for his life had been before.
"What, is he coming home, and without poor Lydia?" she cried. "Sure he
will not leave London before he has found them. Who is to fight Wickham,
and make him marry her, if he comes away?"
As Mrs. Gardiner began to wish to be at home, it was settled that she
and the children should go to London, at the same time that Mr. Bennet
came from it. The coach, therefore, took them the first stage of their
journey, and brought its master back to Longbourn.
Mrs. Gardiner went away in all the perplexity about Elizabeth and her
Derbyshire friend that had attended her from that part of the world. His
name had never been voluntarily mentioned before them by her niece; and
the kind of half-expectation which Mrs. Gardiner had formed, of their
being followed by a letter from him, had ended in nothing. Elizabeth had
received none since her return that could come from Pemberley.
The present unhappy state of the family rendered any other excuse for
the lowness of her spirits unnecessary; nothing, therefore, could be
fairly conjectured from _that_, though Elizabeth, who was by this time
tolerably well acquainted with her own feelings, was perfectly aware
that, had she known nothing of Darcy, she could have borne the dread of
Lydia's infamy somewhat better. It would have spared her, she thought,
one sleepless night out of two.
When Mr. Bennet arrived, he had all the appearance of his usual
philosophic composure. He said as little as he had ever been in the
habit of saying; made no mention of the business that had taken him
away, and it was some time before his daughters had courage to speak of
it.
It was not till the afternoon, when he had joined them at tea, that
Elizabeth ventured to introduce the subject; and then, on her briefly
expressing her sorrow for what he must have endured, he replied, "Say
nothing of that. Who should suffer but myself? It has been my own doing,
and I ought to feel it."
"You must not be too severe upon yourself," replied Elizabeth.
"You may well warn me against such an evil. Human nature is so prone
to fall into it! No, Lizzy, let me once in my life feel how much I have
been to blame. I am not afraid of being overpowered by the impression.
It will pass away soon enough."
"Do you suppose them to be in London?"
"Yes; where else can they be so well concealed?"
"And Lydia used to want to go to London," added Kitty.
"She is happy then," said her father drily; "and her residence there
will probably be of some duration."
Then after a short silence he continued:
"Lizzy, I bear you no ill-will for being justified in your advice to me
last May, which, considering the event, shows some greatness of mind."
They were interrupted by Miss Bennet, who came to fetch her mother's
tea.
"This is a parade," he cried, "which does one good; it gives such an
elegance to misfortune! Another day I will do the same; I will sit in my
library, in my nightcap and powdering gown, and give as much trouble as
I can; or, perhaps, I may defer it till Kitty runs away."
"I am not going to run away, papa," said Kitty fretfully. "If I should
ever go to Brighton, I would behave better than Lydia."
"_You_ go to Brighton. I would not trust you so near it as Eastbourne
for fifty pounds! No, Kitty, I have at last learnt to be cautious, and
you will feel the effects of it. No officer is ever to enter into
my house again, nor even to pass through the village. Balls will be
absolutely prohibited, unless you stand up with one of your sisters.
And you are never to stir out of doors till you can prove that you have
spent ten minutes of every day in a rational manner."
Kitty, who took all these threats in a serious light, began to cry.
"Well, well," said he, "do not make yourself unhappy. If you are a good
girl for the next ten years, I will take you to a review at the end of
them."
Chapter 49
Two days after Mr. Bennet's return, as Jane and Elizabeth were walking
together in the shrubbery behind the house, they saw the housekeeper
coming towards them, and, concluding that she came to call them to their
mother, went forward to meet her; but, instead of the expected summons,
when they approached her, she said to Miss Bennet, "I beg your pardon,
madam, for interrupting you, but I was in hopes you might have got some
good news from town, so I took the liberty of coming to ask."
"What do you mean, Hill? We have heard nothing from town."
"Dear madam," cried Mrs. Hill, in great astonishment, "don't you know
there is an express come for master from Mr. Gardiner? He has been here
this half-hour, and master has had a letter."
Away ran the girls, too eager to get in to have time for speech. They
ran through the vestibule into the breakfast-room; from thence to the
library; their father was in neither; and they were on the point of
seeking him up stairs with their mother, when they were met by the
butler, who said:
"If you are looking for my master, ma'am, he is walking towards the
little copse."
Upon this information, they instantly passed through the hall once
more, and ran across the lawn after their father, who was deliberately
pursuing his way towards a small wood on one side of the paddock.
Jane, who was not so light nor so much in the habit of running as
Elizabeth, soon lagged behind, while her sister, panting for breath,
came up with him, and eagerly cried out:
"Oh, papa, what news--what news? Have you heard from my uncle?"
"Yes I have had a letter from him by express."
"Well, and what news does it bring--good or bad?"
"What is there of good to be expected?" said he, taking the letter from
his pocket. "But perhaps you would like to read it."
Elizabeth impatiently caught it from his hand. Jane now came up.
"Read it aloud," said their father, "for I hardly know myself what it is
about."
"Gracechurch Street, Monday, August 2.
"MY DEAR BROTHER,
"At last I am able to send you some tidings of my niece, and such as,
upon the whole, I hope it will give you satisfaction. Soon after you
left me on Saturday, I was fortunate enough to find out in what part of
London they were. The particulars I reserve till we meet; it is enough
to know they are discovered. I have seen them both--"
"Then it is as I always hoped," cried Jane; "they are married!"
Elizabeth read on:
"I have seen them both. They are not married, nor can I find there
was any intention of being so; but if you are willing to perform the
engagements which I have ventured to make on your side, I hope it will
not be long before they are. All that is required of you is, to assure
to your daughter, by settlement, her equal share of the five thousand
pounds secured among your children after the decease of yourself and
my sister; and, moreover, to enter into an engagement of allowing her,
during your life, one hundred pounds per annum. These are conditions
which, considering everything, I had no hesitation in complying with,
as far as I thought myself privileged, for you. I shall send this by
express, that no time may be lost in bringing me your answer. You
will easily comprehend, from these particulars, that Mr. Wickham's
circumstances are not so hopeless as they are generally believed to be.
The world has been deceived in that respect; and I am happy to say there
will be some little money, even when all his debts are discharged, to
settle on my niece, in addition to her own fortune. If, as I conclude
will be the case, you send me full powers to act in your name throughout
the whole of this business, I will immediately give directions to
Haggerston for preparing a proper settlement. There will not be the
smallest occasion for your coming to town again; therefore stay quiet at
Longbourn, and depend on my diligence and care. Send back your answer as
fast as you can, and be careful to write explicitly. We have judged it
best that my niece should be married from this house, of which I hope
you will approve. She comes to us to-day. I shall write again as soon as
anything more is determined on. Yours, etc.,
"EDW. GARDINER."
"Is it possible?" cried Elizabeth, when she had finished. "Can it be
possible that he will marry her?"
"Wickham is not so undeserving, then, as we thought him," said her
sister. "My dear father, I congratulate you."
"And have you answered the letter?" cried Elizabeth.
"No; but it must be done soon."
Most earnestly did she then entreat him to lose no more time before he
wrote.
"Oh! my dear father," she cried, "come back and write immediately.
Consider how important every moment is in such a case."
"Let me write for you," said Jane, "if you dislike the trouble
yourself."
"I dislike it very much," he replied; "but it must be done."
And so saying, he turned back with them, and walked towards the house.
"And may I ask--" said Elizabeth; "but the terms, I suppose, must be
complied with."
"Complied with! I am only ashamed of his asking so little."
"And they _must_ marry! Yet he is _such_ a man!"
"Yes, yes, they must marry. There is nothing else to be done. But there
are two things that I want very much to know; one is, how much money
your uncle has laid down to bring it about; and the other, how am I ever
to pay him."
"Money! My uncle!" cried Jane, "what do you mean, sir?"
"I mean, that no man in his senses would marry Lydia on so slight a
temptation as one hundred a year during my life, and fifty after I am
gone."
"That is very true," said Elizabeth; "though it had not occurred to me
before. His debts to be discharged, and something still to remain! Oh!
it must be my uncle's doings! Generous, good man, I am afraid he has
distressed himself. A small sum could not do all this."
"No," said her father; "Wickham's a fool if he takes her with a farthing
less than ten thousand pounds. I should be sorry to think so ill of him,
in the very beginning of our relationship."
"Ten thousand pounds! Heaven forbid! How is half such a sum to be
repaid?"
Mr. Bennet made no answer, and each of them, deep in thought, continued
silent till they reached the house. Their father then went on to the
library to write, and the girls walked into the breakfast-room.
"And they are really to be married!" cried Elizabeth, as soon as they
were by themselves. "How strange this is! And for _this_ we are to be
thankful. That they should marry, small as is their chance of happiness,
and wretched as is his character, we are forced to rejoice. Oh, Lydia!"
"I comfort myself with thinking," replied Jane, "that he certainly would
not marry Lydia if he had not a real regard for her. Though our kind
uncle has done something towards clearing him, I cannot believe that ten
thousand pounds, or anything like it, has been advanced. He has children
of his own, and may have more. How could he spare half ten thousand
pounds?"
"If he were ever able to learn what Wickham's debts have been," said
Elizabeth, "and how much is settled on his side on our sister, we shall
exactly know what Mr. Gardiner has done for them, because Wickham has
not sixpence of his own. The kindness of my uncle and aunt can never
be requited. Their taking her home, and affording her their personal
protection and countenance, is such a sacrifice to her advantage as
years of gratitude cannot enough acknowledge. By this time she is
actually with them! If such goodness does not make her miserable now,
she will never deserve to be happy! What a meeting for her, when she
first sees my aunt!"
"We must endeavour to forget all that has passed on either side," said
Jane: "I hope and trust they will yet be happy. His consenting to
marry her is a proof, I will believe, that he is come to a right way of
thinking. Their mutual affection will steady them; and I flatter myself
they will settle so quietly, and live in so rational a manner, as may in
time make their past imprudence forgotten."
"Their conduct has been such," replied Elizabeth, "as neither you, nor
I, nor anybody can ever forget. It is useless to talk of it."
It now occurred to the girls that their mother was in all likelihood
perfectly ignorant of what had happened. They went to the library,
therefore, and asked their father whether he would not wish them to make
it known to her. He was writing and, without raising his head, coolly
replied:
"Just as you please."
"May we take my uncle's letter to read to her?"
"Take whatever you like, and get away."
Elizabeth took the letter from his writing-table, and they went up stairs
together. Mary and Kitty were both with Mrs. Bennet: one communication
would, therefore, do for all. After a slight preparation for good news,
the letter was read aloud. Mrs. Bennet could hardly contain herself. As
soon as Jane had read Mr. Gardiner's hope of Lydia's being soon
married, her joy burst forth, and every following sentence added to its
exuberance. She was now in an irritation as violent from delight, as she
had ever been fidgety from alarm and vexation. To know that her daughter
would be married was enough. She was disturbed by no fear for her
felicity, nor humbled by any remembrance of her misconduct.
"My dear, dear Lydia!" she cried. "This is delightful indeed! She will
be married! I shall see her again! She will be married at sixteen!
My good, kind brother! I knew how it would be. I knew he would manage
everything! How I long to see her! and to see dear Wickham too! But the
clothes, the wedding clothes! I will write to my sister Gardiner about
them directly. Lizzy, my dear, run down to your father, and ask him
how much he will give her. Stay, stay, I will go myself. Ring the bell,
Kitty, for Hill. I will put on my things in a moment. My dear, dear
Lydia! How merry we shall be together when we meet!"
Her eldest daughter endeavoured to give some relief to the violence of
these transports, by leading her thoughts to the obligations which Mr.
Gardiner's behaviour laid them all under.
"For we must attribute this happy conclusion," she added, "in a great
measure to his kindness. We are persuaded that he has pledged himself to
assist Mr. Wickham with money."
"Well," cried her mother, "it is all very right; who should do it but
her own uncle? If he had not had a family of his own, I and my children
must have had all his money, you know; and it is the first time we have
ever had anything from him, except a few presents. Well! I am so happy!
In a short time I shall have a daughter married. Mrs. Wickham! How well
it sounds! And she was only sixteen last June. My dear Jane, I am in
such a flutter, that I am sure I can't write; so I will dictate, and
you write for me. We will settle with your father about the money
afterwards; but the things should be ordered immediately."
She was then proceeding to all the particulars of calico, muslin, and
cambric, and would shortly have dictated some very plentiful orders, had
not Jane, though with some difficulty, persuaded her to wait till her
father was at leisure to be consulted. One day's delay, she observed,
would be of small importance; and her mother was too happy to be quite
so obstinate as usual. Other schemes, too, came into her head.
"I will go to Meryton," said she, "as soon as I am dressed, and tell the
good, good news to my sister Philips. And as I come back, I can call
on Lady Lucas and Mrs. Long. Kitty, run down and order the carriage.
An airing would do me a great deal of good, I am sure. Girls, can I do
anything for you in Meryton? Oh! Here comes Hill! My dear Hill, have you
heard the good news? Miss Lydia is going to be married; and you shall
all have a bowl of punch to make merry at her wedding."
Mrs. Hill began instantly to express her joy. Elizabeth received her
congratulations amongst the rest, and then, sick of this folly, took
refuge in her own room, that she might think with freedom.
Poor Lydia's situation must, at best, be bad enough; but that it was
no worse, she had need to be thankful. She felt it so; and though, in
looking forward, neither rational happiness nor worldly prosperity could
be justly expected for her sister, in looking back to what they had
feared, only two hours ago, she felt all the advantages of what they had
gained.
Chapter 50
Mr. Bennet had very often wished before this period of his life that,
instead of spending his whole income, he had laid by an annual sum for
the better provision of his children, and of his wife, if she survived
him. He now wished it more than ever. Had he done his duty in that
respect, Lydia need not have been indebted to her uncle for whatever
of honour or credit could now be purchased for her. The satisfaction of
prevailing on one of the most worthless young men in Great Britain to be
her husband might then have rested in its proper place.
He was seriously concerned that a cause of so little advantage to anyone
should be forwarded at the sole expense of his brother-in-law, and he
was determined, if possible, to find out the extent of his assistance,
and to discharge the obligation as soon as he could.
When first Mr. Bennet had married, economy was held to be perfectly
useless, for, of course, they were to have a son. The son was to join
in cutting off the entail, as soon as he should be of age, and the widow
and younger children would by that means be provided for. Five daughters
successively entered the world, but yet the son was to come; and Mrs.
Bennet, for many years after Lydia's birth, had been certain that he
would. This event had at last been despaired of, but it was then
too late to be saving. Mrs. Bennet had no turn for economy, and her
husband's love of independence had alone prevented their exceeding their
income.
Five thousand pounds was settled by marriage articles on Mrs. Bennet and
the children. But in what proportions it should be divided amongst the
latter depended on the will of the parents. This was one point, with
regard to Lydia, at least, which was now to be settled, and Mr. Bennet
could have no hesitation in acceding to the proposal before him. In
terms of grateful acknowledgment for the kindness of his brother,
though expressed most concisely, he then delivered on paper his perfect
approbation of all that was done, and his willingness to fulfil the
engagements that had been made for him. He had never before supposed
that, could Wickham be prevailed on to marry his daughter, it would
be done with so little inconvenience to himself as by the present
arrangement. He would scarcely be ten pounds a year the loser by the
hundred that was to be paid them; for, what with her board and pocket
allowance, and the continual presents in money which passed to her
through her mother's hands, Lydia's expenses had been very little within
that sum.
That it would be done with such trifling exertion on his side, too, was
another very welcome surprise; for his wish at present was to have as
little trouble in the business as possible. When the first transports
of rage which had produced his activity in seeking her were over, he
naturally returned to all his former indolence. His letter was soon
dispatched; for, though dilatory in undertaking business, he was quick
in its execution. He begged to know further particulars of what he
was indebted to his brother, but was too angry with Lydia to send any
message to her.
The good news spread quickly through the house, and with proportionate
speed through the neighbourhood. It was borne in the latter with decent
philosophy. To be sure, it would have been more for the advantage
of conversation had Miss Lydia Bennet come upon the town; or, as the
happiest alternative, been secluded from the world, in some distant
farmhouse. But there was much to be talked of in marrying her; and the
good-natured wishes for her well-doing which had proceeded before from
all the spiteful old ladies in Meryton lost but a little of their spirit
in this change of circumstances, because with such an husband her misery
was considered certain.
It was a fortnight since Mrs. Bennet had been downstairs; but on this
happy day she again took her seat at the head of her table, and in
spirits oppressively high. No sentiment of shame gave a damp to her
triumph. The marriage of a daughter, which had been the first object
of her wishes since Jane was sixteen, was now on the point of
accomplishment, and her thoughts and her words ran wholly on those
attendants of elegant nuptials, fine muslins, new carriages, and
servants. She was busily searching through the neighbourhood for a
proper situation for her daughter, and, without knowing or considering
what their income might be, rejected many as deficient in size and
importance.
"Haye Park might do," said she, "if the Gouldings could quit it--or the
great house at Stoke, if the drawing-room were larger; but Ashworth is
too far off! I could not bear to have her ten miles from me; and as for
Pulvis Lodge, the attics are dreadful."
Her husband allowed her to talk on without interruption while the
servants remained. But when they had withdrawn, he said to her: "Mrs.
Bennet, before you take any or all of these houses for your son and
daughter, let us come to a right understanding. Into _one_ house in this
neighbourhood they shall never have admittance. I will not encourage the
impudence of either, by receiving them at Longbourn."
A long dispute followed this declaration; but Mr. Bennet was firm. It
soon led to another; and Mrs. Bennet found, with amazement and horror,
that her husband would not advance a guinea to buy clothes for his
daughter. He protested that she should receive from him no mark of
affection whatever on the occasion. Mrs. Bennet could hardly comprehend
it. That his anger could be carried to such a point of inconceivable
resentment as to refuse his daughter a privilege without which her
marriage would scarcely seem valid, exceeded all she could believe
possible. She was more alive to the disgrace which her want of new
clothes must reflect on her daughter's nuptials, than to any sense of
shame at her eloping and living with Wickham a fortnight before they
took place.
Elizabeth was now most heartily sorry that she had, from the distress of
the moment, been led to make Mr. Darcy acquainted with their fears for
her sister; for since her marriage would so shortly give the
proper termination to the elopement, they might hope to conceal its
unfavourable beginning from all those who were not immediately on the
spot.
She had no fear of its spreading farther through his means. There were
few people on whose secrecy she would have more confidently depended;
but, at the same time, there was no one whose knowledge of a sister's
frailty would have mortified her so much--not, however, from any fear
of disadvantage from it individually to herself, for, at any rate,
there seemed a gulf impassable between them. Had Lydia's marriage been
concluded on the most honourable terms, it was not to be supposed that
Mr. Darcy would connect himself with a family where, to every other
objection, would now be added an alliance and relationship of the
nearest kind with a man whom he so justly scorned.
From such a connection she could not wonder that he would shrink. The
wish of procuring her regard, which she had assured herself of his
feeling in Derbyshire, could not in rational expectation survive such a
blow as this. She was humbled, she was grieved; she repented, though she
hardly knew of what. She became jealous of his esteem, when she could no
longer hope to be benefited by it. She wanted to hear of him, when there
seemed the least chance of gaining intelligence. She was convinced that
she could have been happy with him, when it was no longer likely they
should meet.
What a triumph for him, as she often thought, could he know that the
proposals which she had proudly spurned only four months ago, would now
have been most gladly and gratefully received! He was as generous, she
doubted not, as the most generous of his sex; but while he was mortal,
there must be a triumph.
She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in
disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and
temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It
was an union that must have been to the advantage of both; by her ease
and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved;
and from his judgement, information, and knowledge of the world, she
must have received benefit of greater importance.
But no such happy marriage could now teach the admiring multitude what
connubial felicity really was. An union of a different tendency, and
precluding the possibility of the other, was soon to be formed in their
family.
How Wickham and Lydia were to be supported in tolerable independence,
she could not imagine. But how little of permanent happiness could
belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions
were stronger than their virtue, she could easily conjecture.
* * * * *
Mr. Gardiner soon wrote again to his brother. To Mr. Bennet's
acknowledgments he briefly replied, with assurance of his eagerness to
promote the welfare of any of his family; and concluded with entreaties
that the subject might never be mentioned to him again. The principal
purport of his letter was to inform them that Mr. Wickham had resolved
on quitting the militia.
"It was greatly my wish that he should do so," he added, "as soon as
his marriage was fixed on. And I think you will agree with me, in
considering the removal from that corps as highly advisable, both on
his account and my niece's. It is Mr. Wickham's intention to go into
the regulars; and among his former friends, there are still some who
are able and willing to assist him in the army. He has the promise of an
ensigncy in General ----'s regiment, now quartered in the North. It
is an advantage to have it so far from this part of the kingdom. He
promises fairly; and I hope among different people, where they may each
have a character to preserve, they will both be more prudent. I have
written to Colonel Forster, to inform him of our present arrangements,
and to request that he will satisfy the various creditors of Mr. Wickham
in and near Brighton, with assurances of speedy payment, for which I
have pledged myself. And will you give yourself the trouble of carrying
similar assurances to his creditors in Meryton, of whom I shall subjoin
a list according to his information? He has given in all his debts; I
hope at least he has not deceived us. Haggerston has our directions,
and all will be completed in a week. They will then join his regiment,
unless they are first invited to Longbourn; and I understand from Mrs.
Gardiner, that my niece is very desirous of seeing you all before she
leaves the South. She is well, and begs to be dutifully remembered to
you and her mother.--Yours, etc.,
"E. GARDINER."
Mr. Bennet and his daughters saw all the advantages of Wickham's removal
from the ----shire as clearly as Mr. Gardiner could do. But Mrs. Bennet
was not so well pleased with it. Lydia's being settled in the North,
just when she had expected most pleasure and pride in her company,
for she had by no means given up her plan of their residing in
Hertfordshire, was a severe disappointment; and, besides, it was such a
pity that Lydia should be taken from a regiment where she was acquainted
with everybody, and had so many favourites.
"She is so fond of Mrs. Forster," said she, "it will be quite shocking
to send her away! And there are several of the young men, too, that she
likes very much. The officers may not be so pleasant in General ----'s
regiment."
His daughter's request, for such it might be considered, of being
admitted into her family again before she set off for the North,
received at first an absolute negative. But Jane and Elizabeth,
who agreed in wishing, for the sake of their sister's feelings and
consequence, that she should be noticed on her marriage by her parents,
urged him so earnestly yet so rationally and so mildly, to receive her
and her husband at Longbourn, as soon as they were married, that he was
prevailed on to think as they thought, and act as they wished. And their
mother had the satisfaction of knowing that she would be able to show
her married daughter in the neighbourhood before she was banished to the
North. When Mr. Bennet wrote again to his brother, therefore, he sent
his permission for them to come; and it was settled, that as soon as
the ceremony was over, they should proceed to Longbourn. Elizabeth was
surprised, however, that Wickham should consent to such a scheme, and
had she consulted only her own inclination, any meeting with him would
have been the last object of her wishes.
Chapter 51
Their sister's wedding day arrived; and Jane and Elizabeth felt for her
probably more than she felt for herself. The carriage was sent to
meet them at ----, and they were to return in it by dinner-time. Their
arrival was dreaded by the elder Miss Bennets, and Jane more especially,
who gave Lydia the feelings which would have attended herself, had she
been the culprit, and was wretched in the thought of what her sister
must endure.
They came. The family were assembled in the breakfast room to receive
them. Smiles decked the face of Mrs. Bennet as the carriage drove up to
the door; her husband looked impenetrably grave; her daughters, alarmed,
anxious, uneasy.
Lydia's voice was heard in the vestibule; the door was thrown open, and
she ran into the room. Her mother stepped forwards, embraced her, and
welcomed her with rapture; gave her hand, with an affectionate smile,
to Wickham, who followed his lady; and wished them both joy with an
alacrity which shewed no doubt of their happiness.
Their reception from Mr. Bennet, to whom they then turned, was not quite
so cordial. His countenance rather gained in austerity; and he scarcely
opened his lips. The easy assurance of the young couple, indeed, was
enough to provoke him. Elizabeth was disgusted, and even Miss Bennet
was shocked. Lydia was Lydia still; untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy,
and fearless. She turned from sister to sister, demanding their
congratulations; and when at length they all sat down, looked eagerly
round the room, took notice of some little alteration in it, and
observed, with a laugh, that it was a great while since she had been
there.
Wickham was not at all more distressed than herself, but his manners
were always so pleasing, that had his character and his marriage been
exactly what they ought, his smiles and his easy address, while he
claimed their relationship, would have delighted them all. Elizabeth had
not before believed him quite equal to such assurance; but she sat down,
resolving within herself to draw no limits in future to the impudence
of an impudent man. She blushed, and Jane blushed; but the cheeks of the
two who caused their confusion suffered no variation of colour.
There was no want of discourse. The bride and her mother could neither
of them talk fast enough; and Wickham, who happened to sit near
Elizabeth, began inquiring after his acquaintance in that neighbourhood,
with a good humoured ease which she felt very unable to equal in her
replies. They seemed each of them to have the happiest memories in the
world. Nothing of the past was recollected with pain; and Lydia led
voluntarily to subjects which her sisters would not have alluded to for
the world.
"Only think of its being three months," she cried, "since I went away;
it seems but a fortnight I declare; and yet there have been things
enough happened in the time. Good gracious! when I went away, I am sure
I had no more idea of being married till I came back again! though I
thought it would be very good fun if I was."
Her father lifted up his eyes. Jane was distressed. Elizabeth looked
expressively at Lydia; but she, who never heard nor saw anything of
which she chose to be insensible, gaily continued, "Oh! mamma, do the
people hereabouts know I am married to-day? I was afraid they might not;
and we overtook William Goulding in his curricle, so I was determined he
should know it, and so I let down the side-glass next to him, and took
off my glove, and let my hand just rest upon the window frame, so that
he might see the ring, and then I bowed and smiled like anything."
Elizabeth could bear it no longer. She got up, and ran out of the room;
and returned no more, till she heard them passing through the hall to
the dining parlour. She then joined them soon enough to see Lydia, with
anxious parade, walk up to her mother's right hand, and hear her say
to her eldest sister, "Ah! Jane, I take your place now, and you must go
lower, because I am a married woman."
It was not to be supposed that time would give Lydia that embarrassment
from which she had been so wholly free at first. Her ease and good
spirits increased. She longed to see Mrs. Phillips, the Lucases, and
all their other neighbours, and to hear herself called "Mrs. Wickham"
by each of them; and in the mean time, she went after dinner to show her
ring, and boast of being married, to Mrs. Hill and the two housemaids.
"Well, mamma," said she, when they were all returned to the breakfast
room, "and what do you think of my husband? Is not he a charming man? I
am sure my sisters must all envy me. I only hope they may have half
my good luck. They must all go to Brighton. That is the place to get
husbands. What a pity it is, mamma, we did not all go."
"Very true; and if I had my will, we should. But my dear Lydia, I don't
at all like your going such a way off. Must it be so?"
"Oh, lord! yes;--there is nothing in that. I shall like it of all
things. You and papa, and my sisters, must come down and see us. We
shall be at Newcastle all the winter, and I dare say there will be some
balls, and I will take care to get good partners for them all."
"I should like it beyond anything!" said her mother.
"And then when you go away, you may leave one or two of my sisters
behind you; and I dare say I shall get husbands for them before the
winter is over."
"I thank you for my share of the favour," said Elizabeth; "but I do not
particularly like your way of getting husbands."
Their visitors were not to remain above ten days with them. Mr. Wickham
had received his commission before he left London, and he was to join
his regiment at the end of a fortnight.
No one but Mrs. Bennet regretted that their stay would be so short; and
she made the most of the time by visiting about with her daughter, and
having very frequent parties at home. These parties were acceptable to
all; to avoid a family circle was even more desirable to such as did
think, than such as did not.
Wickham's affection for Lydia was just what Elizabeth had expected
to find it; not equal to Lydia's for him. She had scarcely needed her
present observation to be satisfied, from the reason of things, that
their elopement had been brought on by the strength of her love, rather
than by his; and she would have wondered why, without violently caring
for her, he chose to elope with her at all, had she not felt certain
that his flight was rendered necessary by distress of circumstances; and
if that were the case, he was not the young man to resist an opportunity
of having a companion.
Lydia was exceedingly fond of him. He was her dear Wickham on every
occasion; no one was to be put in competition with him. He did every
thing best in the world; and she was sure he would kill more birds on
the first of September, than any body else in the country.
One morning, soon after their arrival, as she was sitting with her two
elder sisters, she said to Elizabeth:
"Lizzy, I never gave _you_ an account of my wedding, I believe. You
were not by, when I told mamma and the others all about it. Are not you
curious to hear how it was managed?"
"No really," replied Elizabeth; "I think there cannot be too little said
on the subject."
"La! You are so strange! But I must tell you how it went off. We were
married, you know, at St. Clement's, because Wickham's lodgings were in
that parish. And it was settled that we should all be there by eleven
o'clock. My uncle and aunt and I were to go together; and the others
were to meet us at the church. Well, Monday morning came, and I was in
such a fuss! I was so afraid, you know, that something would happen to
put it off, and then I should have gone quite distracted. And there was
my aunt, all the time I was dressing, preaching and talking away just as
if she was reading a sermon. However, I did not hear above one word in
ten, for I was thinking, you may suppose, of my dear Wickham. I longed
to know whether he would be married in his blue coat."
"Well, and so we breakfasted at ten as usual; I thought it would never
be over; for, by the bye, you are to understand, that my uncle and aunt
were horrid unpleasant all the time I was with them. If you'll believe
me, I did not once put my foot out of doors, though I was there a
fortnight. Not one party, or scheme, or anything. To be sure London was
rather thin, but, however, the Little Theatre was open. Well, and so
just as the carriage came to the door, my uncle was called away upon
business to that horrid man Mr. Stone. And then, you know, when once
they get together, there is no end of it. Well, I was so frightened I
did not know what to do, for my uncle was to give me away; and if we
were beyond the hour, we could not be married all day. But, luckily, he
came back again in ten minutes' time, and then we all set out. However,
I recollected afterwards that if he had been prevented going, the
wedding need not be put off, for Mr. Darcy might have done as well."
"Mr. Darcy!" repeated Elizabeth, in utter amazement.
"Oh, yes!--he was to come there with Wickham, you know. But gracious
me! I quite forgot! I ought not to have said a word about it. I promised
them so faithfully! What will Wickham say? It was to be such a secret!"
"If it was to be secret," said Jane, "say not another word on the
subject. You may depend upon my seeking no further."
"Oh! certainly," said Elizabeth, though burning with curiosity; "we will
ask you no questions."
"Thank you," said Lydia, "for if you did, I should certainly tell you
all, and then Wickham would be angry."
On such encouragement to ask, Elizabeth was forced to put it out of her
power, by running away.
But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible; or at least
it was impossible not to try for information. Mr. Darcy had been at
her sister's wedding. It was exactly a scene, and exactly among people,
where he had apparently least to do, and least temptation to go.
Conjectures as to the meaning of it, rapid and wild, hurried into her
brain; but she was satisfied with none. Those that best pleased her, as
placing his conduct in the noblest light, seemed most improbable. She
could not bear such suspense; and hastily seizing a sheet of paper,
wrote a short letter to her aunt, to request an explanation of what
Lydia had dropt, if it were compatible with the secrecy which had been
intended.
"You may readily comprehend," she added, "what my curiosity must be
to know how a person unconnected with any of us, and (comparatively
speaking) a stranger to our family, should have been amongst you at such
a time. Pray write instantly, and let me understand it--unless it is,
for very cogent reasons, to remain in the secrecy which Lydia seems
to think necessary; and then I must endeavour to be satisfied with
ignorance."
"Not that I _shall_, though," she added to herself, as she finished
the letter; "and my dear aunt, if you do not tell me in an honourable
manner, I shall certainly be reduced to tricks and stratagems to find it
out."
Jane's delicate sense of honour would not allow her to speak to
Elizabeth privately of what Lydia had let fall; Elizabeth was glad
of it;--till it appeared whether her inquiries would receive any
satisfaction, she had rather be without a confidante.
Chapter 52
Elizabeth had the satisfaction of receiving an answer to her letter as
soon as she possibly could. She was no sooner in possession of it
than, hurrying into the little copse, where she was least likely to
be interrupted, she sat down on one of the benches and prepared to
be happy; for the length of the letter convinced her that it did not
contain a denial.
"Gracechurch street, Sept. 6.
"MY DEAR NIECE,
"I have just received your letter, and shall devote this whole morning
to answering it, as I foresee that a _little_ writing will not comprise
what I have to tell you. I must confess myself surprised by your
application; I did not expect it from _you_. Don't think me angry,
however, for I only mean to let you know that I had not imagined such
inquiries to be necessary on _your_ side. If you do not choose to
understand me, forgive my impertinence. Your uncle is as much surprised
as I am--and nothing but the belief of your being a party concerned
would have allowed him to act as he has done. But if you are really
innocent and ignorant, I must be more explicit.
"On the very day of my coming home from Longbourn, your uncle had a most
unexpected visitor. Mr. Darcy called, and was shut up with him several
hours. It was all over before I arrived; so my curiosity was not so
dreadfully racked as _yours_ seems to have been. He came to tell Mr.
Gardiner that he had found out where your sister and Mr. Wickham were,
and that he had seen and talked with them both; Wickham repeatedly,
Lydia once. From what I can collect, he left Derbyshire only one day
after ourselves, and came to town with the resolution of hunting for
them. The motive professed was his conviction of its being owing to
himself that Wickham's worthlessness had not been so well known as to
make it impossible for any young woman of character to love or confide
in him. He generously imputed the whole to his mistaken pride, and
confessed that he had before thought it beneath him to lay his private
actions open to the world. His character was to speak for itself. He
called it, therefore, his duty to step forward, and endeavour to remedy
an evil which had been brought on by himself. If he _had another_
motive, I am sure it would never disgrace him. He had been some days
in town, before he was able to discover them; but he had something to
direct his search, which was more than _we_ had; and the consciousness
of this was another reason for his resolving to follow us.
"There is a lady, it seems, a Mrs. Younge, who was some time ago
governess to Miss Darcy, and was dismissed from her charge on some cause
of disapprobation, though he did not say what. She then took a large
house in Edward-street, and has since maintained herself by letting
lodgings. This Mrs. Younge was, he knew, intimately acquainted with
Wickham; and he went to her for intelligence of him as soon as he got to
town. But it was two or three days before he could get from her what he
wanted. She would not betray her trust, I suppose, without bribery and
corruption, for she really did know where her friend was to be found.
Wickham indeed had gone to her on their first arrival in London, and had
she been able to receive them into her house, they would have taken up
their abode with her. At length, however, our kind friend procured the
wished-for direction. They were in ---- street. He saw Wickham, and
afterwards insisted on seeing Lydia. His first object with her, he
acknowledged, had been to persuade her to quit her present disgraceful
situation, and return to her friends as soon as they could be prevailed
on to receive her, offering his assistance, as far as it would go. But
he found Lydia absolutely resolved on remaining where she was. She cared
for none of her friends; she wanted no help of his; she would not hear
of leaving Wickham. She was sure they should be married some time or
other, and it did not much signify when. Since such were her feelings,
it only remained, he thought, to secure and expedite a marriage, which,
in his very first conversation with Wickham, he easily learnt had never
been _his_ design. He confessed himself obliged to leave the regiment,
on account of some debts of honour, which were very pressing; and
scrupled not to lay all the ill-consequences of Lydia's flight on her
own folly alone. He meant to resign his commission immediately; and as
to his future situation, he could conjecture very little about it. He
must go somewhere, but he did not know where, and he knew he should have
nothing to live on.
"Mr. Darcy asked him why he had not married your sister at once. Though
Mr. Bennet was not imagined to be very rich, he would have been able
to do something for him, and his situation must have been benefited by
marriage. But he found, in reply to this question, that Wickham still
cherished the hope of more effectually making his fortune by marriage in
some other country. Under such circumstances, however, he was not likely
to be proof against the temptation of immediate relief.
"They met several times, for there was much to be discussed. Wickham of
course wanted more than he could get; but at length was reduced to be
reasonable.
"Every thing being settled between _them_, Mr. Darcy's next step was to
make your uncle acquainted with it, and he first called in Gracechurch
street the evening before I came home. But Mr. Gardiner could not be
seen, and Mr. Darcy found, on further inquiry, that your father was
still with him, but would quit town the next morning. He did not judge
your father to be a person whom he could so properly consult as your
uncle, and therefore readily postponed seeing him till after the
departure of the former. He did not leave his name, and till the next
day it was only known that a gentleman had called on business.
"On Saturday he came again. Your father was gone, your uncle at home,
and, as I said before, they had a great deal of talk together.
"They met again on Sunday, and then _I_ saw him too. It was not all
settled before Monday: as soon as it was, the express was sent off to
Longbourn. But our visitor was very obstinate. I fancy, Lizzy, that
obstinacy is the real defect of his character, after all. He has been
accused of many faults at different times, but _this_ is the true one.
Nothing was to be done that he did not do himself; though I am sure (and
I do not speak it to be thanked, therefore say nothing about it), your
uncle would most readily have settled the whole.
"They battled it together for a long time, which was more than either
the gentleman or lady concerned in it deserved. But at last your uncle
was forced to yield, and instead of being allowed to be of use to his
niece, was forced to put up with only having the probable credit of it,
which went sorely against the grain; and I really believe your letter
this morning gave him great pleasure, because it required an explanation
that would rob him of his borrowed feathers, and give the praise where
it was due. But, Lizzy, this must go no farther than yourself, or Jane
at most.
"You know pretty well, I suppose, what has been done for the young
people. His debts are to be paid, amounting, I believe, to considerably
more than a thousand pounds, another thousand in addition to her own
settled upon _her_, and his commission purchased. The reason why all
this was to be done by him alone, was such as I have given above. It
was owing to him, to his reserve and want of proper consideration, that
Wickham's character had been so misunderstood, and consequently that he
had been received and noticed as he was. Perhaps there was some truth
in _this_; though I doubt whether _his_ reserve, or _anybody's_ reserve,
can be answerable for the event. But in spite of all this fine talking,
my dear Lizzy, you may rest perfectly assured that your uncle would
never have yielded, if we had not given him credit for _another
interest_ in the affair.
"When all this was resolved on, he returned again to his friends, who
were still staying at Pemberley; but it was agreed that he should be in
London once more when the wedding took place, and all money matters were
then to receive the last finish.
"I believe I have now told you every thing. It is a relation which
you tell me is to give you great surprise; I hope at least it will not
afford you any displeasure. Lydia came to us; and Wickham had constant
admission to the house. _He_ was exactly what he had been, when I
knew him in Hertfordshire; but I would not tell you how little I was
satisfied with her behaviour while she staid with us, if I had not
perceived, by Jane's letter last Wednesday, that her conduct on coming
home was exactly of a piece with it, and therefore what I now tell
you can give you no fresh pain. I talked to her repeatedly in the most
serious manner, representing to her all the wickedness of what she had
done, and all the unhappiness she had brought on her family. If she
heard me, it was by good luck, for I am sure she did not listen. I was
sometimes quite provoked, but then I recollected my dear Elizabeth and
Jane, and for their sakes had patience with her.
"Mr. Darcy was punctual in his return, and as Lydia informed you,
attended the wedding. He dined with us the next day, and was to leave
town again on Wednesday or Thursday. Will you be very angry with me, my
dear Lizzy, if I take this opportunity of saying (what I was never bold
enough to say before) how much I like him. His behaviour to us has,
in every respect, been as pleasing as when we were in Derbyshire. His
understanding and opinions all please me; he wants nothing but a little
more liveliness, and _that_, if he marry _prudently_, his wife may teach
him. I thought him very sly;--he hardly ever mentioned your name. But
slyness seems the fashion.
"Pray forgive me if I have been very presuming, or at least do not
punish me so far as to exclude me from P. I shall never be quite happy
till I have been all round the park. A low phaeton, with a nice little
pair of ponies, would be the very thing.
"But I must write no more. The children have been wanting me this half
hour.
"Yours, very sincerely,
"M. GARDINER."
The contents of this letter threw Elizabeth into a flutter of spirits,
in which it was difficult to determine whether pleasure or pain bore the
greatest share. The vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had
produced of what Mr. Darcy might have been doing to forward her sister's
match, which she had feared to encourage as an exertion of goodness too
great to be probable, and at the same time dreaded to be just, from the
pain of obligation, were proved beyond their greatest extent to be true!
He had followed them purposely to town, he had taken on himself all
the trouble and mortification attendant on such a research; in which
supplication had been necessary to a woman whom he must abominate and
despise, and where he was reduced to meet, frequently meet, reason
with, persuade, and finally bribe, the man whom he always most wished to
avoid, and whose very name it was punishment to him to pronounce. He had
done all this for a girl whom he could neither regard nor esteem. Her
heart did whisper that he had done it for her. But it was a hope shortly
checked by other considerations, and she soon felt that even her vanity
was insufficient, when required to depend on his affection for her--for
a woman who had already refused him--as able to overcome a sentiment so
natural as abhorrence against relationship with Wickham. Brother-in-law
of Wickham! Every kind of pride must revolt from the connection. He had,
to be sure, done much. She was ashamed to think how much. But he had
given a reason for his interference, which asked no extraordinary
stretch of belief. It was reasonable that he should feel he had been
wrong; he had liberality, and he had the means of exercising it; and
though she would not place herself as his principal inducement, she
could, perhaps, believe that remaining partiality for her might assist
his endeavours in a cause where her peace of mind must be materially
concerned. It was painful, exceedingly painful, to know that they were
under obligations to a person who could never receive a return. They
owed the restoration of Lydia, her character, every thing, to him. Oh!
how heartily did she grieve over every ungracious sensation she had ever
encouraged, every saucy speech she had ever directed towards him. For
herself she was humbled; but she was proud of him. Proud that in a cause
of compassion and honour, he had been able to get the better of himself.
She read over her aunt's commendation of him again and again. It
was hardly enough; but it pleased her. She was even sensible of some
pleasure, though mixed with regret, on finding how steadfastly both she
and her uncle had been persuaded that affection and confidence subsisted
between Mr. Darcy and herself.
She was roused from her seat, and her reflections, by some one's
approach; and before she could strike into another path, she was
overtaken by Wickham.
"I am afraid I interrupt your solitary ramble, my dear sister?" said he,
as he joined her.
"You certainly do," she replied with a smile; "but it does not follow
that the interruption must be unwelcome."
"I should be sorry indeed, if it were. We were always good friends; and
now we are better."
"True. Are the others coming out?"
"I do not know. Mrs. Bennet and Lydia are going in the carriage to
Meryton. And so, my dear sister, I find, from our uncle and aunt, that
you have actually seen Pemberley."
She replied in the affirmative.
"I almost envy you the pleasure, and yet I believe it would be too much
for me, or else I could take it in my way to Newcastle. And you saw the
old housekeeper, I suppose? Poor Reynolds, she was always very fond of
me. But of course she did not mention my name to you."
"Yes, she did."
"And what did she say?"
"That you were gone into the army, and she was afraid had--not turned
out well. At such a distance as _that_, you know, things are strangely
misrepresented."
"Certainly," he replied, biting his lips. Elizabeth hoped she had
silenced him; but he soon afterwards said:
"I was surprised to see Darcy in town last month. We passed each other
several times. I wonder what he can be doing there."
"Perhaps preparing for his marriage with Miss de Bourgh," said
Elizabeth. "It must be something particular, to take him there at this
time of year."
"Undoubtedly. Did you see him while you were at Lambton? I thought I
understood from the Gardiners that you had."
"Yes; he introduced us to his sister."
"And do you like her?"
"Very much."
"I have heard, indeed, that she is uncommonly improved within this year
or two. When I last saw her, she was not very promising. I am very glad
you liked her. I hope she will turn out well."
"I dare say she will; she has got over the most trying age."
"Did you go by the village of Kympton?"
"I do not recollect that we did."
"I mention it, because it is the living which I ought to have had. A
most delightful place!--Excellent Parsonage House! It would have suited
me in every respect."
"How should you have liked making sermons?"
"Exceedingly well. I should have considered it as part of my duty,
and the exertion would soon have been nothing. One ought not to
repine;--but, to be sure, it would have been such a thing for me! The
quiet, the retirement of such a life would have answered all my ideas
of happiness! But it was not to be. Did you ever hear Darcy mention the
circumstance, when you were in Kent?"
"I have heard from authority, which I thought _as good_, that it was
left you conditionally only, and at the will of the present patron."
"You have. Yes, there was something in _that_; I told you so from the
first, you may remember."
"I _did_ hear, too, that there was a time, when sermon-making was not
so palatable to you as it seems to be at present; that you actually
declared your resolution of never taking orders, and that the business
had been compromised accordingly."
"You did! and it was not wholly without foundation. You may remember
what I told you on that point, when first we talked of it."
They were now almost at the door of the house, for she had walked fast
to get rid of him; and unwilling, for her sister's sake, to provoke him,
she only said in reply, with a good-humoured smile:
"Come, Mr. Wickham, we are brother and sister, you know. Do not let
us quarrel about the past. In future, I hope we shall be always of one
mind."
She held out her hand; he kissed it with affectionate gallantry, though
he hardly knew how to look, and they entered the house.
Chapter 53
Mr. Wickham was so perfectly satisfied with this conversation that he
never again distressed himself, or provoked his dear sister Elizabeth,
by introducing the subject of it; and she was pleased to find that she
had said enough to keep him quiet.
The day of his and Lydia's departure soon came, and Mrs. Bennet was
forced to submit to a separation, which, as her husband by no means
entered into her scheme of their all going to Newcastle, was likely to
continue at least a twelvemonth.
"Oh! my dear Lydia," she cried, "when shall we meet again?"
"Oh, lord! I don't know. Not these two or three years, perhaps."
"Write to me very often, my dear."
"As often as I can. But you know married women have never much time for
writing. My sisters may write to _me_. They will have nothing else to
do."
Mr. Wickham's adieus were much more affectionate than his wife's. He
smiled, looked handsome, and said many pretty things.
"He is as fine a fellow," said Mr. Bennet, as soon as they were out of
the house, "as ever I saw. He simpers, and smirks, and makes love to
us all. I am prodigiously proud of him. I defy even Sir William Lucas
himself to produce a more valuable son-in-law."
The loss of her daughter made Mrs. Bennet very dull for several days.
"I often think," said she, "that there is nothing so bad as parting with
one's friends. One seems so forlorn without them."
"This is the consequence, you see, Madam, of marrying a daughter," said
Elizabeth. "It must make you better satisfied that your other four are
single."
"It is no such thing. Lydia does not leave me because she is married,
but only because her husband's regiment happens to be so far off. If
that had been nearer, she would not have gone so soon."
But the spiritless condition which this event threw her into was shortly
relieved, and her mind opened again to the agitation of hope, by an
article of news which then began to be in circulation. The housekeeper
at Netherfield had received orders to prepare for the arrival of her
master, who was coming down in a day or two, to shoot there for several
weeks. Mrs. Bennet was quite in the fidgets. She looked at Jane, and
smiled and shook her head by turns.
"Well, well, and so Mr. Bingley is coming down, sister," (for Mrs.
Phillips first brought her the news). "Well, so much the better. Not
that I care about it, though. He is nothing to us, you know, and I am
sure _I_ never want to see him again. But, however, he is very welcome
to come to Netherfield, if he likes it. And who knows what _may_ happen?
But that is nothing to us. You know, sister, we agreed long ago never to
mention a word about it. And so, is it quite certain he is coming?"
"You may depend on it," replied the other, "for Mrs. Nicholls was in
Meryton last night; I saw her passing by, and went out myself on purpose
to know the truth of it; and she told me that it was certain true. He
comes down on Thursday at the latest, very likely on Wednesday. She was
going to the butcher's, she told me, on purpose to order in some meat on
Wednesday, and she has got three couple of ducks just fit to be killed."
Miss Bennet had not been able to hear of his coming without changing
colour. It was many months since she had mentioned his name to
Elizabeth; but now, as soon as they were alone together, she said:
"I saw you look at me to-day, Lizzy, when my aunt told us of the present
report; and I know I appeared distressed. But don't imagine it was from
any silly cause. I was only confused for the moment, because I felt that
I _should_ be looked at. I do assure you that the news does not affect
me either with pleasure or pain. I am glad of one thing, that he comes
alone; because we shall see the less of him. Not that I am afraid of
_myself_, but I dread other people's remarks."
Elizabeth did not know what to make of it. Had she not seen him in
Derbyshire, she might have supposed him capable of coming there with no
other view than what was acknowledged; but she still thought him partial
to Jane, and she wavered as to the greater probability of his coming
there _with_ his friend's permission, or being bold enough to come
without it.
"Yet it is hard," she sometimes thought, "that this poor man cannot
come to a house which he has legally hired, without raising all this
speculation! I _will_ leave him to himself."
In spite of what her sister declared, and really believed to be her
feelings in the expectation of his arrival, Elizabeth could easily
perceive that her spirits were affected by it. They were more disturbed,
more unequal, than she had often seen them.
The subject which had been so warmly canvassed between their parents,
about a twelvemonth ago, was now brought forward again.
"As soon as ever Mr. Bingley comes, my dear," said Mrs. Bennet, "you
will wait on him of course."
"No, no. You forced me into visiting him last year, and promised, if I
went to see him, he should marry one of my daughters. But it ended in
nothing, and I will not be sent on a fool's errand again."
His wife represented to him how absolutely necessary such an attention
would be from all the neighbouring gentlemen, on his returning to
Netherfield.
"'Tis an etiquette I despise," said he. "If he wants our society,
let him seek it. He knows where we live. I will not spend my hours
in running after my neighbours every time they go away and come back
again."
"Well, all I know is, that it will be abominably rude if you do not wait
on him. But, however, that shan't prevent my asking him to dine here, I
am determined. We must have Mrs. Long and the Gouldings soon. That will
make thirteen with ourselves, so there will be just room at table for
him."
Consoled by this resolution, she was the better able to bear her
husband's incivility; though it was very mortifying to know that her
neighbours might all see Mr. Bingley, in consequence of it, before
_they_ did. As the day of his arrival drew near,--
"I begin to be sorry that he comes at all," said Jane to her sister. "It
would be nothing; I could see him with perfect indifference, but I can
hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually talked of. My mother means well;
but she does not know, no one can know, how much I suffer from what she
says. Happy shall I be, when his stay at Netherfield is over!"
"I wish I could say anything to comfort you," replied Elizabeth; "but it
is wholly out of my power. You must feel it; and the usual satisfaction
of preaching patience to a sufferer is denied me, because you have
always so much."
Mr. Bingley arrived. Mrs. Bennet, through the assistance of servants,
contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the period of anxiety
and fretfulness on her side might be as long as it could. She counted
the days that must intervene before their invitation could be sent;
hopeless of seeing him before. But on the third morning after his
arrival in Hertfordshire, she saw him, from her dressing-room window,
enter the paddock and ride towards the house.
Her daughters were eagerly called to partake of her joy. Jane resolutely
kept her place at the table; but Elizabeth, to satisfy her mother, went
to the window--she looked,--she saw Mr. Darcy with him, and sat down
again by her sister.
"There is a gentleman with him, mamma," said Kitty; "who can it be?"
"Some acquaintance or other, my dear, I suppose; I am sure I do not
know."
"La!" replied Kitty, "it looks just like that man that used to be with
him before. Mr. what's-his-name. That tall, proud man."
"Good gracious! Mr. Darcy!--and so it does, I vow. Well, any friend of
Mr. Bingley's will always be welcome here, to be sure; but else I must
say that I hate the very sight of him."
Jane looked at Elizabeth with surprise and concern. She knew but little
of their meeting in Derbyshire, and therefore felt for the awkwardness
which must attend her sister, in seeing him almost for the first time
after receiving his explanatory letter. Both sisters were uncomfortable
enough. Each felt for the other, and of course for themselves; and their
mother talked on, of her dislike of Mr. Darcy, and her resolution to be
civil to him only as Mr. Bingley's friend, without being heard by either
of them. But Elizabeth had sources of uneasiness which could not be
suspected by Jane, to whom she had never yet had courage to shew Mrs.
Gardiner's letter, or to relate her own change of sentiment towards him.
To Jane, he could be only a man whose proposals she had refused,
and whose merit she had undervalued; but to her own more extensive
information, he was the person to whom the whole family were indebted
for the first of benefits, and whom she regarded herself with an
interest, if not quite so tender, at least as reasonable and just as
what Jane felt for Bingley. Her astonishment at his coming--at his
coming to Netherfield, to Longbourn, and voluntarily seeking her again,
was almost equal to what she had known on first witnessing his altered
behaviour in Derbyshire.
The colour which had been driven from her face, returned for half a
minute with an additional glow, and a smile of delight added lustre to
her eyes, as she thought for that space of time that his affection and
wishes must still be unshaken. But she would not be secure.
"Let me first see how he behaves," said she; "it will then be early
enough for expectation."
She sat intently at work, striving to be composed, and without daring to
lift up her eyes, till anxious curiosity carried them to the face of
her sister as the servant was approaching the door. Jane looked a little
paler than usual, but more sedate than Elizabeth had expected. On the
gentlemen's appearing, her colour increased; yet she received them with
tolerable ease, and with a propriety of behaviour equally free from any
symptom of resentment or any unnecessary complaisance.
Elizabeth said as little to either as civility would allow, and sat down
again to her work, with an eagerness which it did not often command. She
had ventured only one glance at Darcy. He looked serious, as usual; and,
she thought, more as he had been used to look in Hertfordshire, than as
she had seen him at Pemberley. But, perhaps he could not in her mother's
presence be what he was before her uncle and aunt. It was a painful, but
not an improbable, conjecture.
Bingley, she had likewise seen for an instant, and in that short period
saw him looking both pleased and embarrassed. He was received by Mrs.
Bennet with a degree of civility which made her two daughters ashamed,
especially when contrasted with the cold and ceremonious politeness of
her curtsey and address to his friend.
Elizabeth, particularly, who knew that her mother owed to the latter
the preservation of her favourite daughter from irremediable infamy,
was hurt and distressed to a most painful degree by a distinction so ill
applied.
Darcy, after inquiring of her how Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner did, a question
which she could not answer without confusion, said scarcely anything. He
was not seated by her; perhaps that was the reason of his silence; but
it had not been so in Derbyshire. There he had talked to her friends,
when he could not to herself. But now several minutes elapsed without
bringing the sound of his voice; and when occasionally, unable to resist
the impulse of curiosity, she raised her eyes to his face, she as often
found him looking at Jane as at herself, and frequently on no object but
the ground. More thoughtfulness and less anxiety to please, than when
they last met, were plainly expressed. She was disappointed, and angry
with herself for being so.
"Could I expect it to be otherwise!" said she. "Yet why did he come?"
She was in no humour for conversation with anyone but himself; and to
him she had hardly courage to speak.
She inquired after his sister, but could do no more.
"It is a long time, Mr. Bingley, since you went away," said Mrs. Bennet.
He readily agreed to it.
"I began to be afraid you would never come back again. People _did_ say
you meant to quit the place entirely at Michaelmas; but, however, I hope
it is not true. A great many changes have happened in the neighbourhood,
since you went away. Miss Lucas is married and settled. And one of my
own daughters. I suppose you have heard of it; indeed, you must have
seen it in the papers. It was in The Times and The Courier, I know;
though it was not put in as it ought to be. It was only said, 'Lately,
George Wickham, Esq. to Miss Lydia Bennet,' without there being a
syllable said of her father, or the place where she lived, or anything.
It was my brother Gardiner's drawing up too, and I wonder how he came to
make such an awkward business of it. Did you see it?"
Bingley replied that he did, and made his congratulations. Elizabeth
dared not lift up her eyes. How Mr. Darcy looked, therefore, she could
not tell.
"It is a delightful thing, to be sure, to have a daughter well married,"
continued her mother, "but at the same time, Mr. Bingley, it is very
hard to have her taken such a way from me. They are gone down to
Newcastle, a place quite northward, it seems, and there they are to stay
I do not know how long. His regiment is there; for I suppose you have
heard of his leaving the ----shire, and of his being gone into the
regulars. Thank Heaven! he has _some_ friends, though perhaps not so
many as he deserves."
Elizabeth, who knew this to be levelled at Mr. Darcy, was in such
misery of shame, that she could hardly keep her seat. It drew from her,
however, the exertion of speaking, which nothing else had so effectually
done before; and she asked Bingley whether he meant to make any stay in
the country at present. A few weeks, he believed.
"When you have killed all your own birds, Mr. Bingley," said her mother,
"I beg you will come here, and shoot as many as you please on Mr.
Bennet's manor. I am sure he will be vastly happy to oblige you, and
will save all the best of the covies for you."
Elizabeth's misery increased, at such unnecessary, such officious
attention! Were the same fair prospect to arise at present as had
flattered them a year ago, every thing, she was persuaded, would be
hastening to the same vexatious conclusion. At that instant, she felt
that years of happiness could not make Jane or herself amends for
moments of such painful confusion.
"The first wish of my heart," said she to herself, "is never more to
be in company with either of them. Their society can afford no pleasure
that will atone for such wretchedness as this! Let me never see either
one or the other again!"
Yet the misery, for which years of happiness were to offer no
compensation, received soon afterwards material relief, from observing
how much the beauty of her sister re-kindled the admiration of her
former lover. When first he came in, he had spoken to her but little;
but every five minutes seemed to be giving her more of his attention. He
found her as handsome as she had been last year; as good natured, and
as unaffected, though not quite so chatty. Jane was anxious that no
difference should be perceived in her at all, and was really persuaded
that she talked as much as ever. But her mind was so busily engaged,
that she did not always know when she was silent.
When the gentlemen rose to go away, Mrs. Bennet was mindful of her
intended civility, and they were invited and engaged to dine at
Longbourn in a few days time.
"You are quite a visit in my debt, Mr. Bingley," she added, "for when
you went to town last winter, you promised to take a family dinner with
us, as soon as you returned. I have not forgot, you see; and I assure
you, I was very much disappointed that you did not come back and keep
your engagement."
Bingley looked a little silly at this reflection, and said something of
his concern at having been prevented by business. They then went away.
Mrs. Bennet had been strongly inclined to ask them to stay and dine
there that day; but, though she always kept a very good table, she did
not think anything less than two courses could be good enough for a man
on whom she had such anxious designs, or satisfy the appetite and pride
of one who had ten thousand a year.
Chapter 54
As soon as they were gone, Elizabeth walked out to recover her spirits;
or in other words, to dwell without interruption on those subjects that
must deaden them more. Mr. Darcy's behaviour astonished and vexed her.
"Why, if he came only to be silent, grave, and indifferent," said she,
"did he come at all?"
She could settle it in no way that gave her pleasure.
"He could be still amiable, still pleasing, to my uncle and aunt, when
he was in town; and why not to me? If he fears me, why come hither? If
he no longer cares for me, why silent? Teasing, teasing, man! I will
think no more about him."
Her resolution was for a short time involuntarily kept by the approach
of her sister, who joined her with a cheerful look, which showed her
better satisfied with their visitors, than Elizabeth.
"Now," said she, "that this first meeting is over, I feel perfectly
easy. I know my own strength, and I shall never be embarrassed again by
his coming. I am glad he dines here on Tuesday. It will then be publicly
seen that, on both sides, we meet only as common and indifferent
acquaintance."
"Yes, very indifferent indeed," said Elizabeth, laughingly. "Oh, Jane,
take care."
"My dear Lizzy, you cannot think me so weak, as to be in danger now?"
"I think you are in very great danger of making him as much in love with
you as ever."
* * * * *
They did not see the gentlemen again till Tuesday; and Mrs. Bennet, in
the meanwhile, was giving way to all the happy schemes, which the good
humour and common politeness of Bingley, in half an hour's visit, had
revived.
On Tuesday there was a large party assembled at Longbourn; and the two
who were most anxiously expected, to the credit of their punctuality
as sportsmen, were in very good time. When they repaired to the
dining-room, Elizabeth eagerly watched to see whether Bingley would take
the place, which, in all their former parties, had belonged to him, by
her sister. Her prudent mother, occupied by the same ideas, forbore
to invite him to sit by herself. On entering the room, he seemed to
hesitate; but Jane happened to look round, and happened to smile: it was
decided. He placed himself by her.
Elizabeth, with a triumphant sensation, looked towards his friend.
He bore it with noble indifference, and she would have imagined that
Bingley had received his sanction to be happy, had she not seen his eyes
likewise turned towards Mr. Darcy, with an expression of half-laughing
alarm.
His behaviour to her sister was such, during dinner time, as showed an
admiration of her, which, though more guarded than formerly, persuaded
Elizabeth, that if left wholly to himself, Jane's happiness, and his
own, would be speedily secured. Though she dared not depend upon the
consequence, she yet received pleasure from observing his behaviour. It
gave her all the animation that her spirits could boast; for she was in
no cheerful humour. Mr. Darcy was almost as far from her as the table
could divide them. He was on one side of her mother. She knew how little
such a situation would give pleasure to either, or make either appear to
advantage. She was not near enough to hear any of their discourse, but
she could see how seldom they spoke to each other, and how formal and
cold was their manner whenever they did. Her mother's ungraciousness,
made the sense of what they owed him more painful to Elizabeth's mind;
and she would, at times, have given anything to be privileged to tell
him that his kindness was neither unknown nor unfelt by the whole of the
family.
She was in hopes that the evening would afford some opportunity of
bringing them together; that the whole of the visit would not pass away
without enabling them to enter into something more of conversation than
the mere ceremonious salutation attending his entrance. Anxious
and uneasy, the period which passed in the drawing-room, before the
gentlemen came, was wearisome and dull to a degree that almost made her
uncivil. She looked forward to their entrance as the point on which all
her chance of pleasure for the evening must depend.
"If he does not come to me, _then_," said she, "I shall give him up for
ever."
The gentlemen came; and she thought he looked as if he would have
answered her hopes; but, alas! the ladies had crowded round the table,
where Miss Bennet was making tea, and Elizabeth pouring out the coffee,
in so close a confederacy that there was not a single vacancy near her
which would admit of a chair. And on the gentlemen's approaching, one of
the girls moved closer to her than ever, and said, in a whisper:
"The men shan't come and part us, I am determined. We want none of them;
do we?"
Darcy had walked away to another part of the room. She followed him with
her eyes, envied everyone to whom he spoke, had scarcely patience enough
to help anybody to coffee; and then was enraged against herself for
being so silly!
"A man who has once been refused! How could I ever be foolish enough to
expect a renewal of his love? Is there one among the sex, who would not
protest against such a weakness as a second proposal to the same woman?
There is no indignity so abhorrent to their feelings!"
She was a little revived, however, by his bringing back his coffee cup
himself; and she seized the opportunity of saying:
"Is your sister at Pemberley still?"
"Yes, she will remain there till Christmas."
"And quite alone? Have all her friends left her?"
"Mrs. Annesley is with her. The others have been gone on to Scarborough,
these three weeks."
She could think of nothing more to say; but if he wished to converse
with her, he might have better success. He stood by her, however, for
some minutes, in silence; and, at last, on the young lady's whispering
to Elizabeth again, he walked away.
When the tea-things were removed, and the card-tables placed, the ladies
all rose, and Elizabeth was then hoping to be soon joined by him,
when all her views were overthrown by seeing him fall a victim to her
mother's rapacity for whist players, and in a few moments after seated
with the rest of the party. She now lost every expectation of pleasure.
They were confined for the evening at different tables, and she had
nothing to hope, but that his eyes were so often turned towards her side
of the room, as to make him play as unsuccessfully as herself.
Mrs. Bennet had designed to keep the two Netherfield gentlemen to
supper; but their carriage was unluckily ordered before any of the
others, and she had no opportunity of detaining them.
"Well girls," said she, as soon as they were left to themselves, "What
say you to the day? I think every thing has passed off uncommonly well,
I assure you. The dinner was as well dressed as any I ever saw. The
venison was roasted to a turn--and everybody said they never saw so
fat a haunch. The soup was fifty times better than what we had at the
Lucases' last week; and even Mr. Darcy acknowledged, that the partridges
were remarkably well done; and I suppose he has two or three French
cooks at least. And, my dear Jane, I never saw you look in greater
beauty. Mrs. Long said so too, for I asked her whether you did not. And
what do you think she said besides? 'Ah! Mrs. Bennet, we shall have her
at Netherfield at last.' She did indeed. I do think Mrs. Long is as good
a creature as ever lived--and her nieces are very pretty behaved girls,
and not at all handsome: I like them prodigiously."
Mrs. Bennet, in short, was in very great spirits; she had seen enough of
Bingley's behaviour to Jane, to be convinced that she would get him at
last; and her expectations of advantage to her family, when in a happy
humour, were so far beyond reason, that she was quite disappointed at
not seeing him there again the next day, to make his proposals.
"It has been a very agreeable day," said Miss Bennet to Elizabeth. "The
party seemed so well selected, so suitable one with the other. I hope we
may often meet again."
Elizabeth smiled.
"Lizzy, you must not do so. You must not suspect me. It mortifies me.
I assure you that I have now learnt to enjoy his conversation as an
agreeable and sensible young man, without having a wish beyond it. I am
perfectly satisfied, from what his manners now are, that he never had
any design of engaging my affection. It is only that he is blessed
with greater sweetness of address, and a stronger desire of generally
pleasing, than any other man."
"You are very cruel," said her sister, "you will not let me smile, and
are provoking me to it every moment."
"How hard it is in some cases to be believed!"
"And how impossible in others!"
"But why should you wish to persuade me that I feel more than I
acknowledge?"
"That is a question which I hardly know how to answer. We all love to
instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing. Forgive
me; and if you persist in indifference, do not make me your confidante."
Chapter 55
A few days after this visit, Mr. Bingley called again, and alone. His
friend had left him that morning for London, but was to return home in
ten days time. He sat with them above an hour, and was in remarkably
good spirits. Mrs. Bennet invited him to dine with them; but, with many
expressions of concern, he confessed himself engaged elsewhere.
"Next time you call," said she, "I hope we shall be more lucky."
He should be particularly happy at any time, etc. etc.; and if she would
give him leave, would take an early opportunity of waiting on them.
"Can you come to-morrow?"
Yes, he had no engagement at all for to-morrow; and her invitation was
accepted with alacrity.
He came, and in such very good time that the ladies were none of them
dressed. In ran Mrs. Bennet to her daughter's room, in her dressing
gown, and with her hair half finished, crying out:
"My dear Jane, make haste and hurry down. He is come--Mr. Bingley is
come. He is, indeed. Make haste, make haste. Here, Sarah, come to Miss
Bennet this moment, and help her on with her gown. Never mind Miss
Lizzy's hair."
"We will be down as soon as we can," said Jane; "but I dare say Kitty is
forwarder than either of us, for she went up stairs half an hour ago."
"Oh! hang Kitty! what has she to do with it? Come be quick, be quick!
Where is your sash, my dear?"
But when her mother was gone, Jane would not be prevailed on to go down
without one of her sisters.
The same anxiety to get them by themselves was visible again in the
evening. After tea, Mr. Bennet retired to the library, as was his
custom, and Mary went up stairs to her instrument. Two obstacles of
the five being thus removed, Mrs. Bennet sat looking and winking at
Elizabeth and Catherine for a considerable time, without making any
impression on them. Elizabeth would not observe her; and when at last
Kitty did, she very innocently said, "What is the matter mamma? What do
you keep winking at me for? What am I to do?"
"Nothing child, nothing. I did not wink at you." She then sat still
five minutes longer; but unable to waste such a precious occasion, she
suddenly got up, and saying to Kitty, "Come here, my love, I want to
speak to you," took her out of the room. Jane instantly gave a look
at Elizabeth which spoke her distress at such premeditation, and her
entreaty that _she_ would not give in to it. In a few minutes, Mrs.
Bennet half-opened the door and called out:
"Lizzy, my dear, I want to speak with you."
Elizabeth was forced to go.
"We may as well leave them by themselves you know;" said her mother, as
soon as she was in the hall. "Kitty and I are going up stairs to sit in
my dressing-room."
Elizabeth made no attempt to reason with her mother, but remained
quietly in the hall, till she and Kitty were out of sight, then returned
into the drawing-room.
Mrs. Bennet's schemes for this day were ineffectual. Bingley was every
thing that was charming, except the professed lover of her daughter. His
ease and cheerfulness rendered him a most agreeable addition to their
evening party; and he bore with the ill-judged officiousness of the
mother, and heard all her silly remarks with a forbearance and command
of countenance particularly grateful to the daughter.
He scarcely needed an invitation to stay supper; and before he went
away, an engagement was formed, chiefly through his own and Mrs.
Bennet's means, for his coming next morning to shoot with her husband.
After this day, Jane said no more of her indifference. Not a word passed
between the sisters concerning Bingley; but Elizabeth went to bed in
the happy belief that all must speedily be concluded, unless Mr. Darcy
returned within the stated time. Seriously, however, she felt tolerably
persuaded that all this must have taken place with that gentleman's
concurrence.
Bingley was punctual to his appointment; and he and Mr. Bennet spent
the morning together, as had been agreed on. The latter was much more
agreeable than his companion expected. There was nothing of presumption
or folly in Bingley that could provoke his ridicule, or disgust him into
silence; and he was more communicative, and less eccentric, than the
other had ever seen him. Bingley of course returned with him to dinner;
and in the evening Mrs. Bennet's invention was again at work to get
every body away from him and her daughter. Elizabeth, who had a letter
to write, went into the breakfast room for that purpose soon after tea;
for as the others were all going to sit down to cards, she could not be
wanted to counteract her mother's schemes.
But on returning to the drawing-room, when her letter was finished, she
saw, to her infinite surprise, there was reason to fear that her mother
had been too ingenious for her. On opening the door, she perceived her
sister and Bingley standing together over the hearth, as if engaged in
earnest conversation; and had this led to no suspicion, the faces of
both, as they hastily turned round and moved away from each other, would
have told it all. Their situation was awkward enough; but _hers_ she
thought was still worse. Not a syllable was uttered by either; and
Elizabeth was on the point of going away again, when Bingley, who as
well as the other had sat down, suddenly rose, and whispering a few
words to her sister, ran out of the room.
Jane could have no reserves from Elizabeth, where confidence would give
pleasure; and instantly embracing her, acknowledged, with the liveliest
emotion, that she was the happiest creature in the world.
"'Tis too much!" she added, "by far too much. I do not deserve it. Oh!
why is not everybody as happy?"
Elizabeth's congratulations were given with a sincerity, a warmth,
a delight, which words could but poorly express. Every sentence of
kindness was a fresh source of happiness to Jane. But she would not
allow herself to stay with her sister, or say half that remained to be
said for the present.
"I must go instantly to my mother;" she cried. "I would not on any
account trifle with her affectionate solicitude; or allow her to hear it
from anyone but myself. He is gone to my father already. Oh! Lizzy, to
know that what I have to relate will give such pleasure to all my dear
family! how shall I bear so much happiness!"
She then hastened away to her mother, who had purposely broken up the
card party, and was sitting up stairs with Kitty.
Elizabeth, who was left by herself, now smiled at the rapidity and ease
with which an affair was finally settled, that had given them so many
previous months of suspense and vexation.
"And this," said she, "is the end of all his friend's anxious
circumspection! of all his sister's falsehood and contrivance! the
happiest, wisest, most reasonable end!"
In a few minutes she was joined by Bingley, whose conference with her
father had been short and to the purpose.
"Where is your sister?" said he hastily, as he opened the door.
"With my mother up stairs. She will be down in a moment, I dare say."
He then shut the door, and, coming up to her, claimed the good wishes
and affection of a sister. Elizabeth honestly and heartily expressed
her delight in the prospect of their relationship. They shook hands with
great cordiality; and then, till her sister came down, she had to listen
to all he had to say of his own happiness, and of Jane's perfections;
and in spite of his being a lover, Elizabeth really believed all his
expectations of felicity to be rationally founded, because they had for
basis the excellent understanding, and super-excellent disposition of
Jane, and a general similarity of feeling and taste between her and
himself.
It was an evening of no common delight to them all; the satisfaction of
Miss Bennet's mind gave a glow of such sweet animation to her face, as
made her look handsomer than ever. Kitty simpered and smiled, and hoped
her turn was coming soon. Mrs. Bennet could not give her consent or
speak her approbation in terms warm enough to satisfy her feelings,
though she talked to Bingley of nothing else for half an hour; and when
Mr. Bennet joined them at supper, his voice and manner plainly showed
how really happy he was.
Not a word, however, passed his lips in allusion to it, till their
visitor took his leave for the night; but as soon as he was gone, he
turned to his daughter, and said:
"Jane, I congratulate you. You will be a very happy woman."
Jane went to him instantly, kissed him, and thanked him for his
goodness.
"You are a good girl;" he replied, "and I have great pleasure in
thinking you will be so happily settled. I have not a doubt of your
doing very well together. Your tempers are by no means unlike. You are
each of you so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on; so
easy, that every servant will cheat you; and so generous, that you will
always exceed your income."
"I hope not so. Imprudence or thoughtlessness in money matters would be
unpardonable in me."
"Exceed their income! My dear Mr. Bennet," cried his wife, "what are you
talking of? Why, he has four or five thousand a year, and very likely
more." Then addressing her daughter, "Oh! my dear, dear Jane, I am so
happy! I am sure I shan't get a wink of sleep all night. I knew how it
would be. I always said it must be so, at last. I was sure you could not
be so beautiful for nothing! I remember, as soon as ever I saw him, when
he first came into Hertfordshire last year, I thought how likely it was
that you should come together. Oh! he is the handsomest young man that
ever was seen!"
Wickham, Lydia, were all forgotten. Jane was beyond competition her
favourite child. At that moment, she cared for no other. Her younger
sisters soon began to make interest with her for objects of happiness
which she might in future be able to dispense.
Mary petitioned for the use of the library at Netherfield; and Kitty
begged very hard for a few balls there every winter.
Bingley, from this time, was of course a daily visitor at Longbourn;
coming frequently before breakfast, and always remaining till after
supper; unless when some barbarous neighbour, who could not be enough
detested, had given him an invitation to dinner which he thought himself
obliged to accept.
Elizabeth had now but little time for conversation with her sister; for
while he was present, Jane had no attention to bestow on anyone else;
but she found herself considerably useful to both of them in those hours
of separation that must sometimes occur. In the absence of Jane, he
always attached himself to Elizabeth, for the pleasure of talking of
her; and when Bingley was gone, Jane constantly sought the same means of
relief.
"He has made me so happy," said she, one evening, "by telling me that he
was totally ignorant of my being in town last spring! I had not believed
it possible."
"I suspected as much," replied Elizabeth. "But how did he account for
it?"
"It must have been his sister's doing. They were certainly no friends to
his acquaintance with me, which I cannot wonder at, since he might have
chosen so much more advantageously in many respects. But when they see,
as I trust they will, that their brother is happy with me, they will
learn to be contented, and we shall be on good terms again; though we
can never be what we once were to each other."
"That is the most unforgiving speech," said Elizabeth, "that I ever
heard you utter. Good girl! It would vex me, indeed, to see you again
the dupe of Miss Bingley's pretended regard."
"Would you believe it, Lizzy, that when he went to town last November,
he really loved me, and nothing but a persuasion of _my_ being
indifferent would have prevented his coming down again!"
"He made a little mistake to be sure; but it is to the credit of his
modesty."
This naturally introduced a panegyric from Jane on his diffidence, and
the little value he put on his own good qualities. Elizabeth was pleased
to find that he had not betrayed the interference of his friend; for,
though Jane had the most generous and forgiving heart in the world, she
knew it was a circumstance which must prejudice her against him.
"I am certainly the most fortunate creature that ever existed!" cried
Jane. "Oh! Lizzy, why am I thus singled from my family, and blessed
above them all! If I could but see _you_ as happy! If there _were_ but
such another man for you!"
"If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be so happy as
you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your
happiness. No, no, let me shift for myself; and, perhaps, if I have very
good luck, I may meet with another Mr. Collins in time."
The situation of affairs in the Longbourn family could not be long a
secret. Mrs. Bennet was privileged to whisper it to Mrs. Phillips,
and she ventured, without any permission, to do the same by all her
neighbours in Meryton.
The Bennets were speedily pronounced to be the luckiest family in the
world, though only a few weeks before, when Lydia had first run away,
they had been generally proved to be marked out for misfortune.
Chapter 56
One morning, about a week after Bingley's engagement with Jane had been
formed, as he and the females of the family were sitting together in the
dining-room, their attention was suddenly drawn to the window, by the
sound of a carriage; and they perceived a chaise and four driving up
the lawn. It was too early in the morning for visitors, and besides, the
equipage did not answer to that of any of their neighbours. The horses
were post; and neither the carriage, nor the livery of the servant who
preceded it, were familiar to them. As it was certain, however, that
somebody was coming, Bingley instantly prevailed on Miss Bennet to avoid
the confinement of such an intrusion, and walk away with him into the
shrubbery. They both set off, and the conjectures of the remaining three
continued, though with little satisfaction, till the door was thrown
open and their visitor entered. It was Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
They were of course all intending to be surprised; but their
astonishment was beyond their expectation; and on the part of Mrs.
Bennet and Kitty, though she was perfectly unknown to them, even
inferior to what Elizabeth felt.
She entered the room with an air more than usually ungracious, made no
other reply to Elizabeth's salutation than a slight inclination of the
head, and sat down without saying a word. Elizabeth had mentioned her
name to her mother on her ladyship's entrance, though no request of
introduction had been made.
Mrs. Bennet, all amazement, though flattered by having a guest of such
high importance, received her with the utmost politeness. After sitting
for a moment in silence, she said very stiffly to Elizabeth,
"I hope you are well, Miss Bennet. That lady, I suppose, is your
mother."
Elizabeth replied very concisely that she was.
"And _that_ I suppose is one of your sisters."
"Yes, madam," said Mrs. Bennet, delighted to speak to Lady Catherine.
"She is my youngest girl but one. My youngest of all is lately married,
and my eldest is somewhere about the grounds, walking with a young man
who, I believe, will soon become a part of the family."
"You have a very small park here," returned Lady Catherine after a short
silence.
"It is nothing in comparison of Rosings, my lady, I dare say; but I
assure you it is much larger than Sir William Lucas's."
"This must be a most inconvenient sitting room for the evening, in
summer; the windows are full west."
Mrs. Bennet assured her that they never sat there after dinner, and then
added:
"May I take the liberty of asking your ladyship whether you left Mr. and
Mrs. Collins well."
"Yes, very well. I saw them the night before last."
Elizabeth now expected that she would produce a letter for her from
Charlotte, as it seemed the only probable motive for her calling. But no
letter appeared, and she was completely puzzled.
Mrs. Bennet, with great civility, begged her ladyship to take some
refreshment; but Lady Catherine very resolutely, and not very politely,
declined eating anything; and then, rising up, said to Elizabeth,
"Miss Bennet, there seemed to be a prettyish kind of a little wilderness
on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take a turn in it, if you
will favour me with your company."
"Go, my dear," cried her mother, "and show her ladyship about the
different walks. I think she will be pleased with the hermitage."
Elizabeth obeyed, and running into her own room for her parasol,
attended her noble guest downstairs. As they passed through the
hall, Lady Catherine opened the doors into the dining-parlour and
drawing-room, and pronouncing them, after a short survey, to be decent
looking rooms, walked on.
Her carriage remained at the door, and Elizabeth saw that her
waiting-woman was in it. They proceeded in silence along the gravel walk
that led to the copse; Elizabeth was determined to make no effort for
conversation with a woman who was now more than usually insolent and
disagreeable.
"How could I ever think her like her nephew?" said she, as she looked in
her face.
As soon as they entered the copse, Lady Catherine began in the following
manner:--
"You can be at no loss, Miss Bennet, to understand the reason of my
journey hither. Your own heart, your own conscience, must tell you why I
come."
Elizabeth looked with unaffected astonishment.
"Indeed, you are mistaken, Madam. I have not been at all able to account
for the honour of seeing you here."
"Miss Bennet," replied her ladyship, in an angry tone, "you ought to
know, that I am not to be trifled with. But however insincere _you_ may
choose to be, you shall not find _me_ so. My character has ever been
celebrated for its sincerity and frankness, and in a cause of such
moment as this, I shall certainly not depart from it. A report of a most
alarming nature reached me two days ago. I was told that not only your
sister was on the point of being most advantageously married, but that
you, that Miss Elizabeth Bennet, would, in all likelihood, be soon
afterwards united to my nephew, my own nephew, Mr. Darcy. Though I
_know_ it must be a scandalous falsehood, though I would not injure him
so much as to suppose the truth of it possible, I instantly resolved
on setting off for this place, that I might make my sentiments known to
you."
"If you believed it impossible to be true," said Elizabeth, colouring
with astonishment and disdain, "I wonder you took the trouble of coming
so far. What could your ladyship propose by it?"
"At once to insist upon having such a report universally contradicted."
"Your coming to Longbourn, to see me and my family," said Elizabeth
coolly, "will be rather a confirmation of it; if, indeed, such a report
is in existence."
"If! Do you then pretend to be ignorant of it? Has it not been
industriously circulated by yourselves? Do you not know that such a
report is spread abroad?"
"I never heard that it was."
"And can you likewise declare, that there is no foundation for it?"
"I do not pretend to possess equal frankness with your ladyship. You may
ask questions which I shall not choose to answer."
"This is not to be borne. Miss Bennet, I insist on being satisfied. Has
he, has my nephew, made you an offer of marriage?"
"Your ladyship has declared it to be impossible."
"It ought to be so; it must be so, while he retains the use of his
reason. But your arts and allurements may, in a moment of infatuation,
have made him forget what he owes to himself and to all his family. You
may have drawn him in."
"If I have, I shall be the last person to confess it."
"Miss Bennet, do you know who I am? I have not been accustomed to such
language as this. I am almost the nearest relation he has in the world,
and am entitled to know all his dearest concerns."
"But you are not entitled to know mine; nor will such behaviour as this,
ever induce me to be explicit."
"Let me be rightly understood. This match, to which you have the
presumption to aspire, can never take place. No, never. Mr. Darcy is
engaged to my daughter. Now what have you to say?"
"Only this; that if he is so, you can have no reason to suppose he will
make an offer to me."
Lady Catherine hesitated for a moment, and then replied:
"The engagement between them is of a peculiar kind. From their infancy,
they have been intended for each other. It was the favourite wish of
_his_ mother, as well as of hers. While in their cradles, we planned
the union: and now, at the moment when the wishes of both sisters would
be accomplished in their marriage, to be prevented by a young woman of
inferior birth, of no importance in the world, and wholly unallied to
the family! Do you pay no regard to the wishes of his friends? To his
tacit engagement with Miss de Bourgh? Are you lost to every feeling of
propriety and delicacy? Have you not heard me say that from his earliest
hours he was destined for his cousin?"
"Yes, and I had heard it before. But what is that to me? If there is
no other objection to my marrying your nephew, I shall certainly not
be kept from it by knowing that his mother and aunt wished him to
marry Miss de Bourgh. You both did as much as you could in planning the
marriage. Its completion depended on others. If Mr. Darcy is neither
by honour nor inclination confined to his cousin, why is not he to make
another choice? And if I am that choice, why may not I accept him?"
"Because honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest, forbid it. Yes,
Miss Bennet, interest; for do not expect to be noticed by his family or
friends, if you wilfully act against the inclinations of all. You will
be censured, slighted, and despised, by everyone connected with him.
Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned
by any of us."
"These are heavy misfortunes," replied Elizabeth. "But the wife of Mr.
Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness necessarily
attached to her situation, that she could, upon the whole, have no cause
to repine."
"Obstinate, headstrong girl! I am ashamed of you! Is this your gratitude
for my attentions to you last spring? Is nothing due to me on that
score? Let us sit down. You are to understand, Miss Bennet, that I came
here with the determined resolution of carrying my purpose; nor will
I be dissuaded from it. I have not been used to submit to any person's
whims. I have not been in the habit of brooking disappointment."
"_That_ will make your ladyship's situation at present more pitiable;
but it will have no effect on me."
"I will not be interrupted. Hear me in silence. My daughter and my
nephew are formed for each other. They are descended, on the maternal
side, from the same noble line; and, on the father's, from respectable,
honourable, and ancient--though untitled--families. Their fortune on
both sides is splendid. They are destined for each other by the voice of
every member of their respective houses; and what is to divide them?
The upstart pretensions of a young woman without family, connections,
or fortune. Is this to be endured! But it must not, shall not be. If you
were sensible of your own good, you would not wish to quit the sphere in
which you have been brought up."
"In marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as quitting that
sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are
equal."
"True. You _are_ a gentleman's daughter. But who was your mother?
Who are your uncles and aunts? Do not imagine me ignorant of their
condition."
"Whatever my connections may be," said Elizabeth, "if your nephew does
not object to them, they can be nothing to _you_."
"Tell me once for all, are you engaged to him?"
Though Elizabeth would not, for the mere purpose of obliging Lady
Catherine, have answered this question, she could not but say, after a
moment's deliberation:
"I am not."
Lady Catherine seemed pleased.
"And will you promise me, never to enter into such an engagement?"
"I will make no promise of the kind."
"Miss Bennet I am shocked and astonished. I expected to find a more
reasonable young woman. But do not deceive yourself into a belief that
I will ever recede. I shall not go away till you have given me the
assurance I require."
"And I certainly _never_ shall give it. I am not to be intimidated into
anything so wholly unreasonable. Your ladyship wants Mr. Darcy to marry
your daughter; but would my giving you the wished-for promise make their
marriage at all more probable? Supposing him to be attached to me, would
my refusing to accept his hand make him wish to bestow it on his cousin?
Allow me to say, Lady Catherine, that the arguments with which you have
supported this extraordinary application have been as frivolous as the
application was ill-judged. You have widely mistaken my character, if
you think I can be worked on by such persuasions as these. How far your
nephew might approve of your interference in his affairs, I cannot tell;
but you have certainly no right to concern yourself in mine. I must beg,
therefore, to be importuned no farther on the subject."
"Not so hasty, if you please. I have by no means done. To all the
objections I have already urged, I have still another to add. I am
no stranger to the particulars of your youngest sister's infamous
elopement. I know it all; that the young man's marrying her was a
patched-up business, at the expence of your father and uncles. And is
such a girl to be my nephew's sister? Is her husband, is the son of his
late father's steward, to be his brother? Heaven and earth!--of what are
you thinking? Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?"
"You can now have nothing further to say," she resentfully answered.
"You have insulted me in every possible method. I must beg to return to
the house."
And she rose as she spoke. Lady Catherine rose also, and they turned
back. Her ladyship was highly incensed.
"You have no regard, then, for the honour and credit of my nephew!
Unfeeling, selfish girl! Do you not consider that a connection with you
must disgrace him in the eyes of everybody?"
"Lady Catherine, I have nothing further to say. You know my sentiments."
"You are then resolved to have him?"
"I have said no such thing. I am only resolved to act in that manner,
which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without
reference to _you_, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me."
"It is well. You refuse, then, to oblige me. You refuse to obey the
claims of duty, honour, and gratitude. You are determined to ruin him in
the opinion of all his friends, and make him the contempt of the world."
"Neither duty, nor honour, nor gratitude," replied Elizabeth, "have any
possible claim on me, in the present instance. No principle of either
would be violated by my marriage with Mr. Darcy. And with regard to the
resentment of his family, or the indignation of the world, if the former
_were_ excited by his marrying me, it would not give me one moment's
concern--and the world in general would have too much sense to join in
the scorn."
"And this is your real opinion! This is your final resolve! Very well.
I shall now know how to act. Do not imagine, Miss Bennet, that your
ambition will ever be gratified. I came to try you. I hoped to find you
reasonable; but, depend upon it, I will carry my point."
In this manner Lady Catherine talked on, till they were at the door of
the carriage, when, turning hastily round, she added, "I take no leave
of you, Miss Bennet. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve
no such attention. I am most seriously displeased."
Elizabeth made no answer; and without attempting to persuade her
ladyship to return into the house, walked quietly into it herself. She
heard the carriage drive away as she proceeded up stairs. Her mother
impatiently met her at the door of the dressing-room, to ask why Lady
Catherine would not come in again and rest herself.
"She did not choose it," said her daughter, "she would go."
"She is a very fine-looking woman! and her calling here was prodigiously
civil! for she only came, I suppose, to tell us the Collinses were
well. She is on her road somewhere, I dare say, and so, passing through
Meryton, thought she might as well call on you. I suppose she had
nothing particular to say to you, Lizzy?"
Elizabeth was forced to give into a little falsehood here; for to
acknowledge the substance of their conversation was impossible.
Chapter 57
The discomposure of spirits which this extraordinary visit threw
Elizabeth into, could not be easily overcome; nor could she, for many
hours, learn to think of it less than incessantly. Lady Catherine, it
appeared, had actually taken the trouble of this journey from Rosings,
for the sole purpose of breaking off her supposed engagement with Mr.
Darcy. It was a rational scheme, to be sure! but from what the report
of their engagement could originate, Elizabeth was at a loss to imagine;
till she recollected that _his_ being the intimate friend of Bingley,
and _her_ being the sister of Jane, was enough, at a time when the
expectation of one wedding made everybody eager for another, to supply
the idea. She had not herself forgotten to feel that the marriage of her
sister must bring them more frequently together. And her neighbours
at Lucas Lodge, therefore (for through their communication with the
Collinses, the report, she concluded, had reached Lady Catherine), had
only set that down as almost certain and immediate, which she had looked
forward to as possible at some future time.
In revolving Lady Catherine's expressions, however, she could not help
feeling some uneasiness as to the possible consequence of her persisting
in this interference. From what she had said of her resolution to
prevent their marriage, it occurred to Elizabeth that she must meditate
an application to her nephew; and how _he_ might take a similar
representation of the evils attached to a connection with her, she dared
not pronounce. She knew not the exact degree of his affection for his
aunt, or his dependence on her judgment, but it was natural to suppose
that he thought much higher of her ladyship than _she_ could do; and it
was certain that, in enumerating the miseries of a marriage with _one_,
whose immediate connections were so unequal to his own, his aunt would
address him on his weakest side. With his notions of dignity, he would
probably feel that the arguments, which to Elizabeth had appeared weak
and ridiculous, contained much good sense and solid reasoning.
If he had been wavering before as to what he should do, which had often
seemed likely, the advice and entreaty of so near a relation might
settle every doubt, and determine him at once to be as happy as dignity
unblemished could make him. In that case he would return no more. Lady
Catherine might see him in her way through town; and his engagement to
Bingley of coming again to Netherfield must give way.
"If, therefore, an excuse for not keeping his promise should come to his
friend within a few days," she added, "I shall know how to understand
it. I shall then give over every expectation, every wish of his
constancy. If he is satisfied with only regretting me, when he might
have obtained my affections and hand, I shall soon cease to regret him
at all."
* * * * *
The surprise of the rest of the family, on hearing who their visitor had
been, was very great; but they obligingly satisfied it, with the same
kind of supposition which had appeased Mrs. Bennet's curiosity; and
Elizabeth was spared from much teasing on the subject.
The next morning, as she was going downstairs, she was met by her
father, who came out of his library with a letter in his hand.
"Lizzy," said he, "I was going to look for you; come into my room."
She followed him thither; and her curiosity to know what he had to
tell her was heightened by the supposition of its being in some manner
connected with the letter he held. It suddenly struck her that it
might be from Lady Catherine; and she anticipated with dismay all the
consequent explanations.
She followed her father to the fire place, and they both sat down. He
then said,
"I have received a letter this morning that has astonished me
exceedingly. As it principally concerns yourself, you ought to know its
contents. I did not know before, that I had two daughters on the brink
of matrimony. Let me congratulate you on a very important conquest."
The colour now rushed into Elizabeth's cheeks in the instantaneous
conviction of its being a letter from the nephew, instead of the aunt;
and she was undetermined whether most to be pleased that he explained
himself at all, or offended that his letter was not rather addressed to
herself; when her father continued:
"You look conscious. Young ladies have great penetration in such matters
as these; but I think I may defy even _your_ sagacity, to discover the
name of your admirer. This letter is from Mr. Collins."
"From Mr. Collins! and what can _he_ have to say?"
"Something very much to the purpose of course. He begins with
congratulations on the approaching nuptials of my eldest daughter, of
which, it seems, he has been told by some of the good-natured, gossiping
Lucases. I shall not sport with your impatience, by reading what he says
on that point. What relates to yourself, is as follows: 'Having thus
offered you the sincere congratulations of Mrs. Collins and myself on
this happy event, let me now add a short hint on the subject of another;
of which we have been advertised by the same authority. Your daughter
Elizabeth, it is presumed, will not long bear the name of Bennet, after
her elder sister has resigned it, and the chosen partner of her fate may
be reasonably looked up to as one of the most illustrious personages in
this land.'
"Can you possibly guess, Lizzy, who is meant by this? 'This young
gentleman is blessed, in a peculiar way, with every thing the heart of
mortal can most desire,--splendid property, noble kindred, and extensive
patronage. Yet in spite of all these temptations, let me warn my cousin
Elizabeth, and yourself, of what evils you may incur by a precipitate
closure with this gentleman's proposals, which, of course, you will be
inclined to take immediate advantage of.'
"Have you any idea, Lizzy, who this gentleman is? But now it comes out:
"'My motive for cautioning you is as follows. We have reason to imagine
that his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, does not look on the match with
a friendly eye.'
"_Mr. Darcy_, you see, is the man! Now, Lizzy, I think I _have_
surprised you. Could he, or the Lucases, have pitched on any man within
the circle of our acquaintance, whose name would have given the lie
more effectually to what they related? Mr. Darcy, who never looks at any
woman but to see a blemish, and who probably never looked at you in his
life! It is admirable!"
Elizabeth tried to join in her father's pleasantry, but could only force
one most reluctant smile. Never had his wit been directed in a manner so
little agreeable to her.
"Are you not diverted?"
"Oh! yes. Pray read on."
"'After mentioning the likelihood of this marriage to her ladyship last
night, she immediately, with her usual condescension, expressed what she
felt on the occasion; when it became apparent, that on the score of some
family objections on the part of my cousin, she would never give her
consent to what she termed so disgraceful a match. I thought it my duty
to give the speediest intelligence of this to my cousin, that she and
her noble admirer may be aware of what they are about, and not run
hastily into a marriage which has not been properly sanctioned.' Mr.
Collins moreover adds, 'I am truly rejoiced that my cousin Lydia's sad
business has been so well hushed up, and am only concerned that their
living together before the marriage took place should be so generally
known. I must not, however, neglect the duties of my station, or refrain
from declaring my amazement at hearing that you received the young
couple into your house as soon as they were married. It was an
encouragement of vice; and had I been the rector of Longbourn, I should
very strenuously have opposed it. You ought certainly to forgive them,
as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their
names to be mentioned in your hearing.' That is his notion of Christian
forgiveness! The rest of his letter is only about his dear Charlotte's
situation, and his expectation of a young olive-branch. But, Lizzy, you
look as if you did not enjoy it. You are not going to be _missish_,
I hope, and pretend to be affronted at an idle report. For what do we
live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our
turn?"
"Oh!" cried Elizabeth, "I am excessively diverted. But it is so
strange!"
"Yes--_that_ is what makes it amusing. Had they fixed on any other man
it would have been nothing; but _his_ perfect indifference, and _your_
pointed dislike, make it so delightfully absurd! Much as I abominate
writing, I would not give up Mr. Collins's correspondence for any
consideration. Nay, when I read a letter of his, I cannot help giving
him the preference even over Wickham, much as I value the impudence and
hypocrisy of my son-in-law. And pray, Lizzy, what said Lady Catherine
about this report? Did she call to refuse her consent?"
To this question his daughter replied only with a laugh; and as it had
been asked without the least suspicion, she was not distressed by
his repeating it. Elizabeth had never been more at a loss to make her
feelings appear what they were not. It was necessary to laugh, when she
would rather have cried. Her father had most cruelly mortified her, by
what he said of Mr. Darcy's indifference, and she could do nothing but
wonder at such a want of penetration, or fear that perhaps, instead of
his seeing too little, she might have fancied too much.
Chapter 58
Instead of receiving any such letter of excuse from his friend, as
Elizabeth half expected Mr. Bingley to do, he was able to bring Darcy
with him to Longbourn before many days had passed after Lady Catherine's
visit. The gentlemen arrived early; and, before Mrs. Bennet had time
to tell him of their having seen his aunt, of which her daughter sat
in momentary dread, Bingley, who wanted to be alone with Jane, proposed
their all walking out. It was agreed to. Mrs. Bennet was not in the
habit of walking; Mary could never spare time; but the remaining five
set off together. Bingley and Jane, however, soon allowed the others
to outstrip them. They lagged behind, while Elizabeth, Kitty, and Darcy
were to entertain each other. Very little was said by either; Kitty
was too much afraid of him to talk; Elizabeth was secretly forming a
desperate resolution; and perhaps he might be doing the same.
They walked towards the Lucases, because Kitty wished to call upon
Maria; and as Elizabeth saw no occasion for making it a general concern,
when Kitty left them she went boldly on with him alone. Now was the
moment for her resolution to be executed, and, while her courage was
high, she immediately said:
"Mr. Darcy, I am a very selfish creature; and, for the sake of giving
relief to my own feelings, care not how much I may be wounding yours. I
can no longer help thanking you for your unexampled kindness to my
poor sister. Ever since I have known it, I have been most anxious to
acknowledge to you how gratefully I feel it. Were it known to the rest
of my family, I should not have merely my own gratitude to express."
"I am sorry, exceedingly sorry," replied Darcy, in a tone of surprise
and emotion, "that you have ever been informed of what may, in a
mistaken light, have given you uneasiness. I did not think Mrs. Gardiner
was so little to be trusted."
"You must not blame my aunt. Lydia's thoughtlessness first betrayed to
me that you had been concerned in the matter; and, of course, I could
not rest till I knew the particulars. Let me thank you again and again,
in the name of all my family, for that generous compassion which induced
you to take so much trouble, and bear so many mortifications, for the
sake of discovering them."
"If you _will_ thank me," he replied, "let it be for yourself alone.
That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other
inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your
_family_ owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought
only of _you_."
Elizabeth was too much embarrassed to say a word. After a short pause,
her companion added, "You are too generous to trifle with me. If your
feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. _My_
affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence
me on this subject for ever."
Elizabeth, feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of
his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not
very fluently, gave him to understand that her sentiments had undergone
so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make
her receive with gratitude and pleasure his present assurances. The
happiness which this reply produced, was such as he had probably never
felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as
warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. Had Elizabeth
been able to encounter his eye, she might have seen how well the
expression of heartfelt delight, diffused over his face, became him;
but, though she could not look, she could listen, and he told her of
feelings, which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his
affection every moment more valuable.
They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to
be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects. She
soon learnt that they were indebted for their present good understanding
to the efforts of his aunt, who did call on him in her return through
London, and there relate her journey to Longbourn, its motive, and the
substance of her conversation with Elizabeth; dwelling emphatically on
every expression of the latter which, in her ladyship's apprehension,
peculiarly denoted her perverseness and assurance; in the belief that
such a relation must assist her endeavours to obtain that promise
from her nephew which she had refused to give. But, unluckily for her
ladyship, its effect had been exactly contrariwise.
"It taught me to hope," said he, "as I had scarcely ever allowed myself
to hope before. I knew enough of your disposition to be certain that,
had you been absolutely, irrevocably decided against me, you would have
acknowledged it to Lady Catherine, frankly and openly."
Elizabeth coloured and laughed as she replied, "Yes, you know enough
of my frankness to believe me capable of _that_. After abusing you so
abominably to your face, I could have no scruple in abusing you to all
your relations."
"What did you say of me, that I did not deserve? For, though your
accusations were ill-founded, formed on mistaken premises, my
behaviour to you at the time had merited the severest reproof. It was
unpardonable. I cannot think of it without abhorrence."
"We will not quarrel for the greater share of blame annexed to that
evening," said Elizabeth. "The conduct of neither, if strictly examined,
will be irreproachable; but since then, we have both, I hope, improved
in civility."
"I cannot be so easily reconciled to myself. The recollection of what I
then said, of my conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of
it, is now, and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me. Your
reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: 'had you behaved in a
more gentlemanlike manner.' Those were your words. You know not, you can
scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me;--though it was some time,
I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice."
"I was certainly very far from expecting them to make so strong an
impression. I had not the smallest idea of their being ever felt in such
a way."
"I can easily believe it. You thought me then devoid of every proper
feeling, I am sure you did. The turn of your countenance I shall never
forget, as you said that I could not have addressed you in any possible
way that would induce you to accept me."
"Oh! do not repeat what I then said. These recollections will not do at
all. I assure you that I have long been most heartily ashamed of it."
Darcy mentioned his letter. "Did it," said he, "did it soon make you
think better of me? Did you, on reading it, give any credit to its
contents?"
She explained what its effect on her had been, and how gradually all her
former prejudices had been removed.
"I knew," said he, "that what I wrote must give you pain, but it was
necessary. I hope you have destroyed the letter. There was one part
especially, the opening of it, which I should dread your having the
power of reading again. I can remember some expressions which might
justly make you hate me."
"The letter shall certainly be burnt, if you believe it essential to the
preservation of my regard; but, though we have both reason to think my
opinions not entirely unalterable, they are not, I hope, quite so easily
changed as that implies."
"When I wrote that letter," replied Darcy, "I believed myself perfectly
calm and cool, but I am since convinced that it was written in a
dreadful bitterness of spirit."
"The letter, perhaps, began in bitterness, but it did not end so. The
adieu is charity itself. But think no more of the letter. The feelings
of the person who wrote, and the person who received it, are now
so widely different from what they were then, that every unpleasant
circumstance attending it ought to be forgotten. You must learn some
of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you
pleasure."
"I cannot give you credit for any philosophy of the kind. Your
retrospections must be so totally void of reproach, that the contentment
arising from them is not of philosophy, but, what is much better, of
innocence. But with me, it is not so. Painful recollections will intrude
which cannot, which ought not, to be repelled. I have been a selfish
being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I
was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I
was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.
Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt
by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all
that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught
me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family
circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least
to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I
was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been
but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You
taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you,
I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception.
You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman
worthy of being pleased."
"Had you then persuaded yourself that I should?"
"Indeed I had. What will you think of my vanity? I believed you to be
wishing, expecting my addresses."
"My manners must have been in fault, but not intentionally, I assure
you. I never meant to deceive you, but my spirits might often lead me
wrong. How you must have hated me after _that_ evening?"
"Hate you! I was angry perhaps at first, but my anger soon began to take
a proper direction."
"I am almost afraid of asking what you thought of me, when we met at
Pemberley. You blamed me for coming?"
"No indeed; I felt nothing but surprise."
"Your surprise could not be greater than _mine_ in being noticed by you.
My conscience told me that I deserved no extraordinary politeness, and I
confess that I did not expect to receive _more_ than my due."
"My object then," replied Darcy, "was to show you, by every civility in
my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the past; and I hoped to
obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your ill opinion, by letting you
see that your reproofs had been attended to. How soon any other wishes
introduced themselves I can hardly tell, but I believe in about half an
hour after I had seen you."
He then told her of Georgiana's delight in her acquaintance, and of her
disappointment at its sudden interruption; which naturally leading to
the cause of that interruption, she soon learnt that his resolution of
following her from Derbyshire in quest of her sister had been formed
before he quitted the inn, and that his gravity and thoughtfulness
there had arisen from no other struggles than what such a purpose must
comprehend.
She expressed her gratitude again, but it was too painful a subject to
each, to be dwelt on farther.
After walking several miles in a leisurely manner, and too busy to know
anything about it, they found at last, on examining their watches, that
it was time to be at home.
"What could become of Mr. Bingley and Jane!" was a wonder which
introduced the discussion of their affairs. Darcy was delighted with
their engagement; his friend had given him the earliest information of
it.
"I must ask whether you were surprised?" said Elizabeth.
"Not at all. When I went away, I felt that it would soon happen."
"That is to say, you had given your permission. I guessed as much." And
though he exclaimed at the term, she found that it had been pretty much
the case.
"On the evening before my going to London," said he, "I made a
confession to him, which I believe I ought to have made long ago. I
told him of all that had occurred to make my former interference in his
affairs absurd and impertinent. His surprise was great. He had never had
the slightest suspicion. I told him, moreover, that I believed myself
mistaken in supposing, as I had done, that your sister was indifferent
to him; and as I could easily perceive that his attachment to her was
unabated, I felt no doubt of their happiness together."
Elizabeth could not help smiling at his easy manner of directing his
friend.
"Did you speak from your own observation," said she, "when you told him
that my sister loved him, or merely from my information last spring?"
"From the former. I had narrowly observed her during the two visits
which I had lately made here; and I was convinced of her affection."
"And your assurance of it, I suppose, carried immediate conviction to
him."
"It did. Bingley is most unaffectedly modest. His diffidence had
prevented his depending on his own judgment in so anxious a case, but
his reliance on mine made every thing easy. I was obliged to confess
one thing, which for a time, and not unjustly, offended him. I could not
allow myself to conceal that your sister had been in town three months
last winter, that I had known it, and purposely kept it from him. He was
angry. But his anger, I am persuaded, lasted no longer than he remained
in any doubt of your sister's sentiments. He has heartily forgiven me
now."
Elizabeth longed to observe that Mr. Bingley had been a most delightful
friend; so easily guided that his worth was invaluable; but she checked
herself. She remembered that he had yet to learn to be laughed at,
and it was rather too early to begin. In anticipating the happiness
of Bingley, which of course was to be inferior only to his own, he
continued the conversation till they reached the house. In the hall they
parted.
Chapter 59
"My dear Lizzy, where can you have been walking to?" was a question
which Elizabeth received from Jane as soon as she entered their room,
and from all the others when they sat down to table. She had only to
say in reply, that they had wandered about, till she was beyond her own
knowledge. She coloured as she spoke; but neither that, nor anything
else, awakened a suspicion of the truth.
The evening passed quietly, unmarked by anything extraordinary. The
acknowledged lovers talked and laughed, the unacknowledged were silent.
Darcy was not of a disposition in which happiness overflows in mirth;
and Elizabeth, agitated and confused, rather _knew_ that she was happy
than _felt_ herself to be so; for, besides the immediate embarrassment,
there were other evils before her. She anticipated what would be felt
in the family when her situation became known; she was aware that no
one liked him but Jane; and even feared that with the others it was a
dislike which not all his fortune and consequence might do away.
At night she opened her heart to Jane. Though suspicion was very far
from Miss Bennet's general habits, she was absolutely incredulous here.
"You are joking, Lizzy. This cannot be!--engaged to Mr. Darcy! No, no,
you shall not deceive me. I know it to be impossible."
"This is a wretched beginning indeed! My sole dependence was on you; and
I am sure nobody else will believe me, if you do not. Yet, indeed, I am
in earnest. I speak nothing but the truth. He still loves me, and we are
engaged."
Jane looked at her doubtingly. "Oh, Lizzy! it cannot be. I know how much
you dislike him."
"You know nothing of the matter. _That_ is all to be forgot. Perhaps I
did not always love him so well as I do now. But in such cases as
these, a good memory is unpardonable. This is the last time I shall ever
remember it myself."
Miss Bennet still looked all amazement. Elizabeth again, and more
seriously assured her of its truth.
"Good Heaven! can it be really so! Yet now I must believe you," cried
Jane. "My dear, dear Lizzy, I would--I do congratulate you--but are you
certain? forgive the question--are you quite certain that you can be
happy with him?"
"There can be no doubt of that. It is settled between us already, that
we are to be the happiest couple in the world. But are you pleased,
Jane? Shall you like to have such a brother?"
"Very, very much. Nothing could give either Bingley or myself more
delight. But we considered it, we talked of it as impossible. And do you
really love him quite well enough? Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than
marry without affection. Are you quite sure that you feel what you ought
to do?"
"Oh, yes! You will only think I feel _more_ than I ought to do, when I
tell you all."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, I must confess that I love him better than I do Bingley. I am
afraid you will be angry."
"My dearest sister, now _be_ serious. I want to talk very seriously. Let
me know every thing that I am to know, without delay. Will you tell me
how long you have loved him?"
"It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began.
But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds
at Pemberley."
Another entreaty that she would be serious, however, produced the
desired effect; and she soon satisfied Jane by her solemn assurances
of attachment. When convinced on that article, Miss Bennet had nothing
further to wish.
"Now I am quite happy," said she, "for you will be as happy as myself.
I always had a value for him. Were it for nothing but his love of you,
I must always have esteemed him; but now, as Bingley's friend and your
husband, there can be only Bingley and yourself more dear to me. But
Lizzy, you have been very sly, very reserved with me. How little did you
tell me of what passed at Pemberley and Lambton! I owe all that I know
of it to another, not to you."
Elizabeth told her the motives of her secrecy. She had been unwilling
to mention Bingley; and the unsettled state of her own feelings had made
her equally avoid the name of his friend. But now she would no longer
conceal from her his share in Lydia's marriage. All was acknowledged,
and half the night spent in conversation.
* * * * *
"Good gracious!" cried Mrs. Bennet, as she stood at a window the next
morning, "if that disagreeable Mr. Darcy is not coming here again with
our dear Bingley! What can he mean by being so tiresome as to be always
coming here? I had no notion but he would go a-shooting, or something or
other, and not disturb us with his company. What shall we do with him?
Lizzy, you must walk out with him again, that he may not be in Bingley's
way."
Elizabeth could hardly help laughing at so convenient a proposal; yet
was really vexed that her mother should be always giving him such an
epithet.
As soon as they entered, Bingley looked at her so expressively, and
shook hands with such warmth, as left no doubt of his good information;
and he soon afterwards said aloud, "Mrs. Bennet, have you no more lanes
hereabouts in which Lizzy may lose her way again to-day?"
"I advise Mr. Darcy, and Lizzy, and Kitty," said Mrs. Bennet, "to walk
to Oakham Mount this morning. It is a nice long walk, and Mr. Darcy has
never seen the view."
"It may do very well for the others," replied Mr. Bingley; "but I am
sure it will be too much for Kitty. Won't it, Kitty?" Kitty owned that
she had rather stay at home. Darcy professed a great curiosity to see
the view from the Mount, and Elizabeth silently consented. As she went
up stairs to get ready, Mrs. Bennet followed her, saying:
"I am quite sorry, Lizzy, that you should be forced to have that
disagreeable man all to yourself. But I hope you will not mind it: it is
all for Jane's sake, you know; and there is no occasion for talking
to him, except just now and then. So, do not put yourself to
inconvenience."
During their walk, it was resolved that Mr. Bennet's consent should be
asked in the course of the evening. Elizabeth reserved to herself the
application for her mother's. She could not determine how her mother
would take it; sometimes doubting whether all his wealth and grandeur
would be enough to overcome her abhorrence of the man. But whether she
were violently set against the match, or violently delighted with it, it
was certain that her manner would be equally ill adapted to do credit
to her sense; and she could no more bear that Mr. Darcy should hear
the first raptures of her joy, than the first vehemence of her
disapprobation.
* * * * *
In the evening, soon after Mr. Bennet withdrew to the library, she saw
Mr. Darcy rise also and follow him, and her agitation on seeing it was
extreme. She did not fear her father's opposition, but he was going to
be made unhappy; and that it should be through her means--that _she_,
his favourite child, should be distressing him by her choice, should be
filling him with fears and regrets in disposing of her--was a wretched
reflection, and she sat in misery till Mr. Darcy appeared again, when,
looking at him, she was a little relieved by his smile. In a few minutes
he approached the table where she was sitting with Kitty; and, while
pretending to admire her work said in a whisper, "Go to your father, he
wants you in the library." She was gone directly.
Her father was walking about the room, looking grave and anxious.
"Lizzy," said he, "what are you doing? Are you out of your senses, to be
accepting this man? Have not you always hated him?"
How earnestly did she then wish that her former opinions had been more
reasonable, her expressions more moderate! It would have spared her from
explanations and professions which it was exceedingly awkward to give;
but they were now necessary, and she assured him, with some confusion,
of her attachment to Mr. Darcy.
"Or, in other words, you are determined to have him. He is rich, to be
sure, and you may have more fine clothes and fine carriages than Jane.
But will they make you happy?"
"Have you any other objection," said Elizabeth, "than your belief of my
indifference?"
"None at all. We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but
this would be nothing if you really liked him."
"I do, I do like him," she replied, with tears in her eyes, "I love him.
Indeed he has no improper pride. He is perfectly amiable. You do not
know what he really is; then pray do not pain me by speaking of him in
such terms."
"Lizzy," said her father, "I have given him my consent. He is the kind
of man, indeed, to whom I should never dare refuse anything, which he
condescended to ask. I now give it to _you_, if you are resolved on
having him. But let me advise you to think better of it. I know
your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could be neither happy nor
respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband; unless you looked
up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the
greatest danger in an unequal marriage. You could scarcely escape
discredit and misery. My child, let me not have the grief of seeing
_you_ unable to respect your partner in life. You know not what you are
about."
Elizabeth, still more affected, was earnest and solemn in her reply; and
at length, by repeated assurances that Mr. Darcy was really the object
of her choice, by explaining the gradual change which her estimation of
him had undergone, relating her absolute certainty that his affection
was not the work of a day, but had stood the test of many months'
suspense, and enumerating with energy all his good qualities, she did
conquer her father's incredulity, and reconcile him to the match.
"Well, my dear," said he, when she ceased speaking, "I have no more to
say. If this be the case, he deserves you. I could not have parted with
you, my Lizzy, to anyone less worthy."
To complete the favourable impression, she then told him what Mr. Darcy
had voluntarily done for Lydia. He heard her with astonishment.
"This is an evening of wonders, indeed! And so, Darcy did every thing;
made up the match, gave the money, paid the fellow's debts, and got him
his commission! So much the better. It will save me a world of trouble
and economy. Had it been your uncle's doing, I must and _would_ have
paid him; but these violent young lovers carry every thing their own
way. I shall offer to pay him to-morrow; he will rant and storm about
his love for you, and there will be an end of the matter."
He then recollected her embarrassment a few days before, on his reading
Mr. Collins's letter; and after laughing at her some time, allowed her
at last to go--saying, as she quitted the room, "If any young men come
for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite at leisure."
Elizabeth's mind was now relieved from a very heavy weight; and, after
half an hour's quiet reflection in her own room, she was able to join
the others with tolerable composure. Every thing was too recent for
gaiety, but the evening passed tranquilly away; there was no longer
anything material to be dreaded, and the comfort of ease and familiarity
would come in time.
When her mother went up to her dressing-room at night, she followed her,
and made the important communication. Its effect was most extraordinary;
for on first hearing it, Mrs. Bennet sat quite still, and unable to
utter a syllable. Nor was it under many, many minutes that she could
comprehend what she heard; though not in general backward to credit
what was for the advantage of her family, or that came in the shape of a
lover to any of them. She began at length to recover, to fidget about in
her chair, get up, sit down again, wonder, and bless herself.
"Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr. Darcy! Who would
have thought it! And is it really true? Oh! my sweetest Lizzy! how rich
and how great you will be! What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages
you will have! Jane's is nothing to it--nothing at all. I am so
pleased--so happy. Such a charming man!--so handsome! so tall!--Oh, my
dear Lizzy! pray apologise for my having disliked him so much before. I
hope he will overlook it. Dear, dear Lizzy. A house in town! Every thing
that is charming! Three daughters married! Ten thousand a year! Oh,
Lord! What will become of me. I shall go distracted."
This was enough to prove that her approbation need not be doubted: and
Elizabeth, rejoicing that such an effusion was heard only by herself,
soon went away. But before she had been three minutes in her own room,
her mother followed her.
"My dearest child," she cried, "I can think of nothing else! Ten
thousand a year, and very likely more! 'Tis as good as a Lord! And a
special licence. You must and shall be married by a special licence. But
my dearest love, tell me what dish Mr. Darcy is particularly fond of,
that I may have it to-morrow."
This was a sad omen of what her mother's behaviour to the gentleman
himself might be; and Elizabeth found that, though in the certain
possession of his warmest affection, and secure of her relations'
consent, there was still something to be wished for. But the morrow
passed off much better than she expected; for Mrs. Bennet luckily stood
in such awe of her intended son-in-law that she ventured not to speak to
him, unless it was in her power to offer him any attention, or mark her
deference for his opinion.
Elizabeth had the satisfaction of seeing her father taking pains to get
acquainted with him; and Mr. Bennet soon assured her that he was rising
every hour in his esteem.
"I admire all my three sons-in-law highly," said he. "Wickham, perhaps,
is my favourite; but I think I shall like _your_ husband quite as well
as Jane's."
Chapter 60
Elizabeth's spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted Mr.
Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her. "How could
you begin?" said she. "I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when
you had once made a beginning; but what could set you off in the first
place?"
"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which
laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I
knew that I _had_ begun."
"My beauty you had early withstood, and as for my manners--my behaviour
to _you_ was at least always bordering on the uncivil, and I never spoke
to you without rather wishing to give you pain than not. Now be sincere;
did you admire me for my impertinence?"
"For the liveliness of your mind, I did."
"You may as well call it impertinence at once. It was very little less.
The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious
attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking,
and looking, and thinking for _your_ approbation alone. I roused, and
interested you, because I was so unlike _them_. Had you not been really
amiable, you would have hated me for it; but in spite of the pains you
took to disguise yourself, your feelings were always noble and just; and
in your heart, you thoroughly despised the persons who so assiduously
courted you. There--I have saved you the trouble of accounting for
it; and really, all things considered, I begin to think it perfectly
reasonable. To be sure, you knew no actual good of me--but nobody thinks
of _that_ when they fall in love."
"Was there no good in your affectionate behaviour to Jane while she was
ill at Netherfield?"
"Dearest Jane! who could have done less for her? But make a virtue of it
by all means. My good qualities are under your protection, and you are
to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me
to find occasions for teasing and quarrelling with you as often as may
be; and I shall begin directly by asking you what made you so unwilling
to come to the point at last. What made you so shy of me, when you first
called, and afterwards dined here? Why, especially, when you called, did
you look as if you did not care about me?"
"Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no encouragement."
"But I was embarrassed."
"And so was I."
"You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner."
"A man who had felt less, might."
"How unlucky that you should have a reasonable answer to give, and that
I should be so reasonable as to admit it! But I wonder how long you
_would_ have gone on, if you had been left to yourself. I wonder when
you _would_ have spoken, if I had not asked you! My resolution of
thanking you for your kindness to Lydia had certainly great effect.
_Too much_, I am afraid; for what becomes of the moral, if our comfort
springs from a breach of promise? for I ought not to have mentioned the
subject. This will never do."
"You need not distress yourself. The moral will be perfectly fair. Lady
Catherine's unjustifiable endeavours to separate us were the means of
removing all my doubts. I am not indebted for my present happiness to
your eager desire of expressing your gratitude. I was not in a humour
to wait for any opening of yours. My aunt's intelligence had given me
hope, and I was determined at once to know every thing."
"Lady Catherine has been of infinite use, which ought to make her happy,
for she loves to be of use. But tell me, what did you come down to
Netherfield for? Was it merely to ride to Longbourn and be embarrassed?
or had you intended any more serious consequence?"
"My real purpose was to see _you_, and to judge, if I could, whether I
might ever hope to make you love me. My avowed one, or what I avowed to
myself, was to see whether your sister were still partial to Bingley,
and if she were, to make the confession to him which I have since made."
"Shall you ever have courage to announce to Lady Catherine what is to
befall her?"
"I am more likely to want more time than courage, Elizabeth. But it
ought to be done, and if you will give me a sheet of paper, it shall be
done directly."
"And if I had not a letter to write myself, I might sit by you and
admire the evenness of your writing, as another young lady once did. But
I have an aunt, too, who must not be longer neglected."
From an unwillingness to confess how much her intimacy with Mr. Darcy
had been over-rated, Elizabeth had never yet answered Mrs. Gardiner's
long letter; but now, having _that_ to communicate which she knew would
be most welcome, she was almost ashamed to find that her uncle and
aunt had already lost three days of happiness, and immediately wrote as
follows:
"I would have thanked you before, my dear aunt, as I ought to have done,
for your long, kind, satisfactory, detail of particulars; but to say the
truth, I was too cross to write. You supposed more than really existed.
But _now_ suppose as much as you choose; give a loose rein to your
fancy, indulge your imagination in every possible flight which the
subject will afford, and unless you believe me actually married, you
cannot greatly err. You must write again very soon, and praise him a
great deal more than you did in your last. I thank you, again and again,
for not going to the Lakes. How could I be so silly as to wish it! Your
idea of the ponies is delightful. We will go round the Park every day. I
am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so
before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she
only smiles, I laugh. Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world that
he can spare from me. You are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas.
Yours, etc."
Mr. Darcy's letter to Lady Catherine was in a different style; and still
different from either was what Mr. Bennet sent to Mr. Collins, in reply
to his last.
"DEAR SIR,
"I must trouble you once more for congratulations. Elizabeth will soon
be the wife of Mr. Darcy. Console Lady Catherine as well as you can.
But, if I were you, I would stand by the nephew. He has more to give.
"Yours sincerely, etc."
Miss Bingley's congratulations to her brother, on his approaching
marriage, were all that was affectionate and insincere. She wrote even
to Jane on the occasion, to express her delight, and repeat all her
former professions of regard. Jane was not deceived, but she was
affected; and though feeling no reliance on her, could not help writing
her a much kinder answer than she knew was deserved.
The joy which Miss Darcy expressed on receiving similar information,
was as sincere as her brother's in sending it. Four sides of paper were
insufficient to contain all her delight, and all her earnest desire of
being loved by her sister.
Before any answer could arrive from Mr. Collins, or any congratulations
to Elizabeth from his wife, the Longbourn family heard that the
Collinses were come themselves to Lucas Lodge. The reason of this
sudden removal was soon evident. Lady Catherine had been rendered
so exceedingly angry by the contents of her nephew's letter, that
Charlotte, really rejoicing in the match, was anxious to get away till
the storm was blown over. At such a moment, the arrival of her friend
was a sincere pleasure to Elizabeth, though in the course of their
meetings she must sometimes think the pleasure dearly bought, when she
saw Mr. Darcy exposed to all the parading and obsequious civility of
her husband. He bore it, however, with admirable calmness. He could even
listen to Sir William Lucas, when he complimented him on carrying away
the brightest jewel of the country, and expressed his hopes of their all
meeting frequently at St. James's, with very decent composure. If he did
shrug his shoulders, it was not till Sir William was out of sight.
Mrs. Phillips's vulgarity was another, and perhaps a greater, tax on his
forbearance; and though Mrs. Phillips, as well as her sister, stood in
too much awe of him to speak with the familiarity which Bingley's good
humour encouraged, yet, whenever she _did_ speak, she must be vulgar.
Nor was her respect for him, though it made her more quiet, at all
likely to make her more elegant. Elizabeth did all she could to shield
him from the frequent notice of either, and was ever anxious to keep
him to herself, and to those of her family with whom he might converse
without mortification; and though the uncomfortable feelings arising
from all this took from the season of courtship much of its pleasure, it
added to the hope of the future; and she looked forward with delight to
the time when they should be removed from society so little pleasing
to either, to all the comfort and elegance of their family party at
Pemberley.
Chapter 61
Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Mrs. Bennet got
rid of her two most deserving daughters. With what delighted pride
she afterwards visited Mrs. Bingley, and talked of Mrs. Darcy, may
be guessed. I wish I could say, for the sake of her family, that the
accomplishment of her earnest desire in the establishment of so many
of her children produced so happy an effect as to make her a sensible,
amiable, well-informed woman for the rest of her life; though perhaps it
was lucky for her husband, who might not have relished domestic felicity
in so unusual a form, that she still was occasionally nervous and
invariably silly.
Mr. Bennet missed his second daughter exceedingly; his affection for her
drew him oftener from home than anything else could do. He delighted in
going to Pemberley, especially when he was least expected.
Mr. Bingley and Jane remained at Netherfield only a twelvemonth. So near
a vicinity to her mother and Meryton relations was not desirable even to
_his_ easy temper, or _her_ affectionate heart. The darling wish of his
sisters was then gratified; he bought an estate in a neighbouring county
to Derbyshire, and Jane and Elizabeth, in addition to every other source
of happiness, were within thirty miles of each other.
Kitty, to her very material advantage, spent the chief of her time with
her two elder sisters. In society so superior to what she had generally
known, her improvement was great. She was not of so ungovernable a
temper as Lydia; and, removed from the influence of Lydia's example,
she became, by proper attention and management, less irritable, less
ignorant, and less insipid. From the further disadvantage of Lydia's
society she was of course carefully kept, and though Mrs. Wickham
frequently invited her to come and stay with her, with the promise of
balls and young men, her father would never consent to her going.
Mary was the only daughter who remained at home; and she was necessarily
drawn from the pursuit of accomplishments by Mrs. Bennet's being quite
unable to sit alone. Mary was obliged to mix more with the world, but
she could still moralize over every morning visit; and as she was no
longer mortified by comparisons between her sisters' beauty and her own,
it was suspected by her father that she submitted to the change without
much reluctance.
As for Wickham and Lydia, their characters suffered no revolution from
the marriage of her sisters. He bore with philosophy the conviction that
Elizabeth must now become acquainted with whatever of his ingratitude
and falsehood had before been unknown to her; and in spite of every
thing, was not wholly without hope that Darcy might yet be prevailed on
to make his fortune. The congratulatory letter which Elizabeth received
from Lydia on her marriage, explained to her that, by his wife at least,
if not by himself, such a hope was cherished. The letter was to this
effect:
"MY DEAR LIZZY,
"I wish you joy. If you love Mr. Darcy half as well as I do my dear
Wickham, you must be very happy. It is a great comfort to have you so
rich, and when you have nothing else to do, I hope you will think of us.
I am sure Wickham would like a place at court very much, and I do not
think we shall have quite money enough to live upon without some help.
Any place would do, of about three or four hundred a year; but however,
do not speak to Mr. Darcy about it, if you had rather not.
"Yours, etc."
As it happened that Elizabeth had _much_ rather not, she endeavoured in
her answer to put an end to every entreaty and expectation of the kind.
Such relief, however, as it was in her power to afford, by the practice
of what might be called economy in her own private expences, she
frequently sent them. It had always been evident to her that such an
income as theirs, under the direction of two persons so extravagant in
their wants, and heedless of the future, must be very insufficient to
their support; and whenever they changed their quarters, either Jane or
herself were sure of being applied to for some little assistance
towards discharging their bills. Their manner of living, even when the
restoration of peace dismissed them to a home, was unsettled in the
extreme. They were always moving from place to place in quest of a cheap
situation, and always spending more than they ought. His affection for
her soon sunk into indifference; hers lasted a little longer; and
in spite of her youth and her manners, she retained all the claims to
reputation which her marriage had given her.
Though Darcy could never receive _him_ at Pemberley, yet, for
Elizabeth's sake, he assisted him further in his profession. Lydia was
occasionally a visitor there, when her husband was gone to enjoy himself
in London or Bath; and with the Bingleys they both of them frequently
staid so long, that even Bingley's good humour was overcome, and he
proceeded so far as to talk of giving them a hint to be gone.
Miss Bingley was very deeply mortified by Darcy's marriage; but as she
thought it advisable to retain the right of visiting at Pemberley, she
dropt all her resentment; was fonder than ever of Georgiana, almost as
attentive to Darcy as heretofore, and paid off every arrear of civility
to Elizabeth.
Pemberley was now Georgiana's home; and the attachment of the sisters
was exactly what Darcy had hoped to see. They were able to love each
other even as well as they intended. Georgiana had the highest opinion
in the world of Elizabeth; though at first she often listened with
an astonishment bordering on alarm at her lively, sportive, manner of
talking to her brother. He, who had always inspired in herself a respect
which almost overcame her affection, she now saw the object of open
pleasantry. Her mind received knowledge which had never before fallen
in her way. By Elizabeth's instructions, she began to comprehend that
a woman may take liberties with her husband which a brother will not
always allow in a sister more than ten years younger than himself.
Lady Catherine was extremely indignant on the marriage of her nephew;
and as she gave way to all the genuine frankness of her character in
her reply to the letter which announced its arrangement, she sent him
language so very abusive, especially of Elizabeth, that for some time
all intercourse was at an end. But at length, by Elizabeth's persuasion,
he was prevailed on to overlook the offence, and seek a reconciliation;
and, after a little further resistance on the part of his aunt, her
resentment gave way, either to her affection for him, or her curiosity
to see how his wife conducted herself; and she condescended to wait
on them at Pemberley, in spite of that pollution which its woods had
received, not merely from the presence of such a mistress, but the
visits of her uncle and aunt from the city.
With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms.
Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever
sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing
her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
[1867 Edition]
by Charles Dickens
[Project Gutenberg Editor's Note: There is also another version of
this work etext98/grexp10.txt scanned from a different edition]
Chapter I
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my
infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit
than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his
tombstone and my sister,--Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith.
As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness
of either of them (for their days were long before the days of
photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were
unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on
my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man,
with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription,
"Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that
my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each
about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside
their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of
mine,--who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in
that universal struggle,--I am indebted for a belief I religiously
entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands
in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of
existence.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river
wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression
of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable
raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain
that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and
that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the
above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham,
Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead
and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard,
intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle
feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond
was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was
rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid
of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.
"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from
among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you
little devil, or I'll cut your throat!"
A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man
with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his
head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and
lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by
briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared, and growled; and whose
teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.
"Oh! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray don't do it,
sir."
"Tell us your name!" said the man. "Quick!"
"Pip, sir."
"Once more," said the man, staring at me. "Give it mouth!"
"Pip. Pip, sir."
"Show us where you live," said the man. "Pint out the place!"
I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the
alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.
The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and
emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When
the church came to itself,--for he was so sudden and strong that he
made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my
feet,--when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high
tombstone, trembling while he ate the bread ravenously.
"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks you
ha' got."
I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my
years, and not strong.
"Darn me if I couldn't eat em," said the man, with a threatening shake
of his head, "and if I han't half a mind to't!"
I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to
the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it;
partly, to keep myself from crying.
"Now lookee here!" said the man. "Where's your mother?"
"There, sir!" said I.
He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder.
"There, sir!" I timidly explained. "Also Georgiana. That's my mother."
"Oh!" said he, coming back. "And is that your father alonger your
mother?"
"Yes, sir," said I; "him too; late of this parish."
"Ha!" he muttered then, considering. "Who d'ye live with,--supposin'
you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?"
"My sister, sir,--Mrs. Joe Gargery,--wife of Joe Gargery, the
blacksmith, sir."
"Blacksmith, eh?" said he. And looked down at his leg.
After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer
to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he
could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine,
and mine looked most helplessly up into his.
"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you're to be let
to live. You know what a file is?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you know what wittles is?"
"Yes, sir."
After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a
greater sense of helplessness and danger.
"You get me a file." He tilted me again. "And you get me wittles." He
tilted me again. "You bring 'em both to me." He tilted me again. "Or
I'll have your heart and liver out." He tilted me again.
I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both
hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me keep upright,
sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend more."
He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped
over its own weathercock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright
position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms:--
"You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles. You
bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do it, and you
never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having
seen such a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let to
live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no matter how
small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted,
and ate. Now, I ain't alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man
hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young
man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar
to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver. It
is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man. A
boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw
the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but
that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him
open. I am a keeping that young man from harming of you at the present
moment, with great difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold that young
man off of your inside. Now, what do you say?"
I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken
bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in
the morning.
"Say Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man.
I said so, and he took me down.
"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you remember
that young man, and you get home!"
"Goo-good night, sir," I faltered.
"Much of that!" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. "I
wish I was a frog. Or a eel!"
At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his
arms,--clasping himself, as if to hold himself together,--and limped
towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the
nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked
in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people,
stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his
ankle and pull him in.
When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose
legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When I
saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of
my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on
again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms, and picking
his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into the
marshes here and there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy or
the tide was in.
The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped
to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not
nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long
angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the
river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the
prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon
by which the sailors steered,--like an unhooped cask upon a pole,--an
ugly thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet, with some chains
hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on
towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come
down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible
turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to
gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all
round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But now
I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.
Chapter II
My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I,
and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbors
because she had brought me up "by hand." Having at that time to find out
for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and
heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as
well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up
by hand.
She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general
impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand. Joe
was a fair man, with curls of flaxen hair on each side of his smooth
face, and with eyes of such a very undecided blue that they seemed
to have somehow got mixed with their own whites. He was a mild,
good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow,--a sort
of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness.
My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing
redness of skin that I sometimes used to wonder whether it was possible
she washed herself with a nutmeg-grater instead of soap. She was tall
and bony, and almost always wore a coarse apron, fastened over her
figure behind with two loops, and having a square impregnable bib in
front, that was stuck full of pins and needles. She made it a powerful
merit in herself, and a strong reproach against Joe, that she wore this
apron so much. Though I really see no reason why she should have worn it
at all; or why, if she did wear it at all, she should not have taken it
off, every day of her life.
Joe's forge adjoined our house, which was a wooden house, as many of the
dwellings in our country were,--most of them, at that time. When I ran
home from the churchyard, the forge was shut up, and Joe was sitting
alone in the kitchen. Joe and I being fellow-sufferers, and having
confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me, the moment I
raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him opposite to it,
sitting in the chimney corner.
"Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And she's
out now, making it a baker's dozen."
"Is she?"
"Yes, Pip," said Joe; "and what's worse, she's got Tickler with her."
At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat
round and round, and looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler
was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled
frame.
"She sot down," said Joe, "and she got up, and she made a grab at
Tickler, and she Ram-paged out. That's what she did," said Joe, slowly
clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and looking at
it; "she Ram-paged out, Pip."
"Has she been gone long, Joe?" I always treated him as a larger species
of child, and as no more than my equal.
"Well," said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, "she's been on the
Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's a coming! Get
behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel betwixt you."
I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open,
and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause, and
applied Tickler to its further investigation. She concluded by throwing
me--I often served as a connubial missile--at Joe, who, glad to get hold
of me on any terms, passed me on into the chimney and quietly fenced me
up there with his great leg.
"Where have you been, you young monkey?" said Mrs. Joe, stamping her
foot. "Tell me directly what you've been doing to wear me away with fret
and fright and worrit, or I'd have you out of that corner if you was
fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys."
"I have only been to the churchyard," said I, from my stool, crying and
rubbing myself.
"Churchyard!" repeated my sister. "If it warn't for me you'd have been
to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who brought you up by
hand?"
"You did," said I.
"And why did I do it, I should like to know?" exclaimed my sister.
I whimpered, "I don't know."
"I don't!" said my sister. "I'd never do it again! I know that. I may
truly say I've never had this apron of mine off since born you were.
It's bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife (and him a Gargery) without
being your mother."
My thoughts strayed from that question as I looked disconsolately at
the fire. For the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the
mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was
under to commit a larceny on those sheltering premises, rose before me
in the avenging coals.
"Hah!" said Mrs. Joe, restoring Tickler to his station. "Churchyard,
indeed! You may well say churchyard, you two." One of us, by the by, had
not said it at all. "You'll drive me to the churchyard betwixt you, one
of these days, and O, a pr-r-recious pair you'd be without me!"
As she applied herself to set the tea-things, Joe peeped down at me
over his leg, as if he were mentally casting me and himself up, and
calculating what kind of pair we practically should make, under the
grievous circumstances foreshadowed. After that, he sat feeling his
right-side flaxen curls and whisker, and following Mrs. Joe about with
his blue eyes, as his manner always was at squally times.
My sister had a trenchant way of cutting our bread and butter for us,
that never varied. First, with her left hand she jammed the loaf hard
and fast against her bib,--where it sometimes got a pin into it, and
sometimes a needle, which we afterwards got into our mouths. Then she
took some butter (not too much) on a knife and spread it on the loaf, in
an apothecary kind of way, as if she were making a plaster,--using both
sides of the knife with a slapping dexterity, and trimming and moulding
the butter off round the crust. Then, she gave the knife a final smart
wipe on the edge of the plaster, and then sawed a very thick round off
the loaf: which she finally, before separating from the loaf, hewed into
two halves, of which Joe got one, and I the other.
On the present occasion, though I was hungry, I dared not eat my
slice. I felt that I must have something in reserve for my dreadful
acquaintance, and his ally the still more dreadful young man. I knew
Mrs. Joe's housekeeping to be of the strictest kind, and that my
larcenous researches might find nothing available in the safe. Therefore
I resolved to put my hunk of bread and butter down the leg of my
trousers.
The effort of resolution necessary to the achievement of this purpose I
found to be quite awful. It was as if I had to make up my mind to leap
from the top of a high house, or plunge into a great depth of water.
And it was made the more difficult by the unconscious Joe. In
our already-mentioned freemasonry as fellow-sufferers, and in his
good-natured companionship with me, it was our evening habit to compare
the way we bit through our slices, by silently holding them up to each
other's admiration now and then,--which stimulated us to new exertions.
To-night, Joe several times invited me, by the display of his fast
diminishing slice, to enter upon our usual friendly competition; but
he found me, each time, with my yellow mug of tea on one knee, and
my untouched bread and butter on the other. At last, I desperately
considered that the thing I contemplated must be done, and that it
had best be done in the least improbable manner consistent with the
circumstances. I took advantage of a moment when Joe had just looked at
me, and got my bread and butter down my leg.
Joe was evidently made uncomfortable by what he supposed to be my loss
of appetite, and took a thoughtful bite out of his slice, which he
didn't seem to enjoy. He turned it about in his mouth much longer than
usual, pondering over it a good deal, and after all gulped it down like
a pill. He was about to take another bite, and had just got his head on
one side for a good purchase on it, when his eye fell on me, and he saw
that my bread and butter was gone.
The wonder and consternation with which Joe stopped on the threshold
of his bite and stared at me, were too evident to escape my sister's
observation.
"What's the matter now?" said she, smartly, as she put down her cup.
"I say, you know!" muttered Joe, shaking his head at me in very serious
remonstrance. "Pip, old chap! You'll do yourself a mischief. It'll stick
somewhere. You can't have chawed it, Pip."
"What's the matter now?" repeated my sister, more sharply than before.
"If you can cough any trifle on it up, Pip, I'd recommend you to do it,"
said Joe, all aghast. "Manners is manners, but still your elth's your
elth."
By this time, my sister was quite desperate, so she pounced on Joe,
and, taking him by the two whiskers, knocked his head for a little while
against the wall behind him, while I sat in the corner, looking guiltily
on.
"Now, perhaps you'll mention what's the matter," said my sister, out of
breath, "you staring great stuck pig."
Joe looked at her in a helpless way, then took a helpless bite, and
looked at me again.
"You know, Pip," said Joe, solemnly, with his last bite in his cheek,
and speaking in a confidential voice, as if we two were quite alone,
"you and me is always friends, and I'd be the last to tell upon you,
any time. But such a--" he moved his chair and looked about the floor
between us, and then again at me--"such a most oncommon Bolt as that!"
"Been bolting his food, has he?" cried my sister.
"You know, old chap," said Joe, looking at me, and not at Mrs. Joe,
with his bite still in his cheek, "I Bolted, myself, when I was your
age--frequent--and as a boy I've been among a many Bolters; but I never
see your Bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you ain't Bolted
dead."
My sister made a dive at me, and fished me up by the hair, saying
nothing more than the awful words, "You come along and be dosed."
Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a fine
medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard;
having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At the
best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a choice
restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling like a new
fence. On this particular evening the urgency of my case demanded a
pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat, for my greater
comfort, while Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm, as a boot would
be held in a bootjack. Joe got off with half a pint; but was made to
swallow that (much to his disturbance, as he sat slowly munching and
meditating before the fire), "because he had had a turn." Judging from
myself, I should say he certainly had a turn afterwards, if he had had
none before.
Conscience is a dreadful thing when it accuses man or boy; but when, in
the case of a boy, that secret burden co-operates with another secret
burden down the leg of his trousers, it is (as I can testify) a great
punishment. The guilty knowledge that I was going to rob Mrs. Joe--I
never thought I was going to rob Joe, for I never thought of any of the
housekeeping property as his--united to the necessity of always keeping
one hand on my bread and butter as I sat, or when I was ordered about
the kitchen on any small errand, almost drove me out of my mind. Then,
as the marsh winds made the fire glow and flare, I thought I heard the
voice outside, of the man with the iron on his leg who had sworn me to
secrecy, declaring that he couldn't and wouldn't starve until to-morrow,
but must be fed now. At other times, I thought, What if the young man
who was with so much difficulty restrained from imbruing his hands in me
should yield to a constitutional impatience, or should mistake the time,
and should think himself accredited to my heart and liver to-night,
instead of to-morrow! If ever anybody's hair stood on end with terror,
mine must have done so then. But, perhaps, nobody's ever did?
It was Christmas Eve, and I had to stir the pudding for next day, with
a copper-stick, from seven to eight by the Dutch clock. I tried it with
the load upon my leg (and that made me think afresh of the man with the
load on HIS leg), and found the tendency of exercise to bring the bread
and butter out at my ankle, quite unmanageable. Happily I slipped away,
and deposited that part of my conscience in my garret bedroom.
"Hark!" said I, when I had done my stirring, and was taking a final warm
in the chimney corner before being sent up to bed; "was that great guns,
Joe?"
"Ah!" said Joe. "There's another conwict off."
"What does that mean, Joe?" said I.
Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said, snappishly,
"Escaped. Escaped." Administering the definition like Tar-water.
While Mrs. Joe sat with her head bending over her needlework, I put my
mouth into the forms of saying to Joe, "What's a convict?" Joe put his
mouth into the forms of returning such a highly elaborate answer, that I
could make out nothing of it but the single word "Pip."
"There was a conwict off last night," said Joe, aloud, "after
sunset-gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears they're
firing warning of another."
"Who's firing?" said I.
"Drat that boy," interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work,
"what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies."
It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should be
told lies by her even if I did ask questions. But she never was polite
unless there was company.
At this point Joe greatly augmented my curiosity by taking the utmost
pains to open his mouth very wide, and to put it into the form of a word
that looked to me like "sulks." Therefore, I naturally pointed to Mrs.
Joe, and put my mouth into the form of saying, "her?" But Joe wouldn't
hear of that, at all, and again opened his mouth very wide, and shook
the form of a most emphatic word out of it. But I could make nothing of
the word.
"Mrs. Joe," said I, as a last resort, "I should like to know--if you
wouldn't much mind--where the firing comes from?"
"Lord bless the boy!" exclaimed my sister, as if she didn't quite mean
that but rather the contrary. "From the Hulks!"
"Oh-h!" said I, looking at Joe. "Hulks!"
Joe gave a reproachful cough, as much as to say, "Well, I told you so."
"And please, what's Hulks?" said I.
"That's the way with this boy!" exclaimed my sister, pointing me out
with her needle and thread, and shaking her head at me. "Answer him one
question, and he'll ask you a dozen directly. Hulks are prison-ships,
right 'cross th' meshes." We always used that name for marshes, in our
country.
"I wonder who's put into prison-ships, and why they're put there?" said
I, in a general way, and with quiet desperation.
It was too much for Mrs. Joe, who immediately rose. "I tell you what,
young fellow," said she, "I didn't bring you up by hand to badger
people's lives out. It would be blame to me and not praise, if I had.
People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and because they rob,
and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always begin by asking
questions. Now, you get along to bed!"
I was never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went upstairs
in the dark, with my head tingling,--from Mrs. Joe's thimble
having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last words,--I
felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the hulks were
handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking
questions, and I was going to rob Mrs. Joe.
Since that time, which is far enough away now, I have often thought
that few people know what secrecy there is in the young under terror.
No matter how unreasonable the terror, so that it be terror. I was in
mortal terror of the young man who wanted my heart and liver; I was
in mortal terror of my interlocutor with the iron leg; I was in mortal
terror of myself, from whom an awful promise had been extracted; I had
no hope of deliverance through my all-powerful sister, who repulsed
me at every turn; I am afraid to think of what I might have done on
requirement, in the secrecy of my terror.
If I slept at all that night, it was only to imagine myself drifting
down the river on a strong spring-tide, to the Hulks; a ghostly
pirate calling out to me through a speaking-trumpet, as I passed the
gibbet-station, that I had better come ashore and be hanged there at
once, and not put it off. I was afraid to sleep, even if I had been
inclined, for I knew that at the first faint dawn of morning I must rob
the pantry. There was no doing it in the night, for there was no getting
a light by easy friction then; to have got one I must have struck it out
of flint and steel, and have made a noise like the very pirate himself
rattling his chains.
As soon as the great black velvet pall outside my little window was shot
with gray, I got up and went downstairs; every board upon the way, and
every crack in every board calling after me, "Stop thief!" and "Get up,
Mrs. Joe!" In the pantry, which was far more abundantly supplied than
usual, owing to the season, I was very much alarmed by a hare hanging
up by the heels, whom I rather thought I caught, when my back was half
turned, winking. I had no time for verification, no time for selection,
no time for anything, for I had no time to spare. I stole some bread,
some rind of cheese, about half a jar of mincemeat (which I tied up in
my pocket-handkerchief with my last night's slice), some brandy from a
stone bottle (which I decanted into a glass bottle I had secretly used
for making that intoxicating fluid, Spanish-liquorice-water, up in my
room: diluting the stone bottle from a jug in the kitchen cupboard),
a meat bone with very little on it, and a beautiful round compact pork
pie. I was nearly going away without the pie, but I was tempted to mount
upon a shelf, to look what it was that was put away so carefully in a
covered earthenware dish in a corner, and I found it was the pie, and
I took it in the hope that it was not intended for early use, and would
not be missed for some time.
There was a door in the kitchen, communicating with the forge; I
unlocked and unbolted that door, and got a file from among Joe's tools.
Then I put the fastenings as I had found them, opened the door at which
I had entered when I ran home last night, shut it, and ran for the misty
marshes.
Chapter III
It was a rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the
outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all
night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief. Now, I saw the
damp lying on the bare hedges and spare grass, like a coarser sort of
spiders' webs; hanging itself from twig to twig and blade to blade. On
every rail and gate, wet lay clammy, and the marsh mist was so thick,
that the wooden finger on the post directing people to our village--a
direction which they never accepted, for they never came there--was
invisible to me until I was quite close under it. Then, as I looked up
at it, while it dripped, it seemed to my oppressed conscience like a
phantom devoting me to the Hulks.
The mist was heavier yet when I got out upon the marshes, so that
instead of my running at everything, everything seemed to run at me.
This was very disagreeable to a guilty mind. The gates and dikes and
banks came bursting at me through the mist, as if they cried as plainly
as could be, "A boy with somebody else's pork pie! Stop him!" The
cattle came upon me with like suddenness, staring out of their eyes,
and steaming out of their nostrils, "Halloa, young thief!" One black
ox, with a white cravat on,--who even had to my awakened conscience
something of a clerical air,--fixed me so obstinately with his eyes,
and moved his blunt head round in such an accusatory manner as I moved
round, that I blubbered out to him, "I couldn't help it, sir! It wasn't
for myself I took it!" Upon which he put down his head, blew a cloud of
smoke out of his nose, and vanished with a kick-up of his hind-legs and
a flourish of his tail.
All this time, I was getting on towards the river; but however fast I
went, I couldn't warm my feet, to which the damp cold seemed riveted, as
the iron was riveted to the leg of the man I was running to meet. I knew
my way to the Battery, pretty straight, for I had been down there on a
Sunday with Joe, and Joe, sitting on an old gun, had told me that when
I was 'prentice to him, regularly bound, we would have such Larks there!
However, in the confusion of the mist, I found myself at last too far to
the right, and consequently had to try back along the river-side, on the
bank of loose stones above the mud and the stakes that staked the tide
out. Making my way along here with all despatch, I had just crossed a
ditch which I knew to be very near the Battery, and had just scrambled
up the mound beyond the ditch, when I saw the man sitting before me.
His back was towards me, and he had his arms folded, and was nodding
forward, heavy with sleep.
I thought he would be more glad if I came upon him with his breakfast,
in that unexpected manner, so I went forward softly and touched him on
the shoulder. He instantly jumped up, and it was not the same man, but
another man!
And yet this man was dressed in coarse gray, too, and had a great iron
on his leg, and was lame, and hoarse, and cold, and was everything that
the other man was; except that he had not the same face, and had a flat
broad-brimmed low-crowned felt hat on. All this I saw in a moment, for
I had only a moment to see it in: he swore an oath at me, made a hit at
me,--it was a round weak blow that missed me and almost knocked himself
down, for it made him stumble,--and then he ran into the mist, stumbling
twice as he went, and I lost him.
"It's the young man!" I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I identified
him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver, too, if I had
known where it was.
I was soon at the Battery after that, and there was the right
man,--hugging himself and limping to and fro, as if he had never all
night left off hugging and limping,--waiting for me. He was awfully
cold, to be sure. I half expected to see him drop down before my face
and die of deadly cold. His eyes looked so awfully hungry too, that when
I handed him the file and he laid it down on the grass, it occurred to
me he would have tried to eat it, if he had not seen my bundle. He did
not turn me upside down this time to get at what I had, but left me
right side upwards while I opened the bundle and emptied my pockets.
"What's in the bottle, boy?" said he.
"Brandy," said I.
He was already handing mincemeat down his throat in the most curious
manner,--more like a man who was putting it away somewhere in a violent
hurry, than a man who was eating it,--but he left off to take some of
the liquor. He shivered all the while so violently, that it was quite
as much as he could do to keep the neck of the bottle between his teeth,
without biting it off.
"I think you have got the ague," said I.
"I'm much of your opinion, boy," said he.
"It's bad about here," I told him. "You've been lying out on the meshes,
and they're dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too."
"I'll eat my breakfast afore they're the death of me," said he. "I'd do
that, if I was going to be strung up to that there gallows as there is
over there, directly afterwards. I'll beat the shivers so far, I'll bet
you."
He was gobbling mincemeat, meatbone, bread, cheese, and pork pie, all
at once: staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all round
us, and often stopping--even stopping his jaws--to listen. Some real or
fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing of beast upon the
marsh, now gave him a start, and he said, suddenly,--
"You're not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with you?"
"No, sir! No!"
"Nor giv' no one the office to follow you?"
"No!"
"Well," said he, "I believe you. You'd be but a fierce young hound
indeed, if at your time of life you could help to hunt a wretched
warmint hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched warmint
is!"
Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a clock,
and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged rough sleeve over his
eyes.
Pitying his desolation, and watching him as he gradually settled down
upon the pie, I made bold to say, "I am glad you enjoy it."
"Did you speak?"
"I said I was glad you enjoyed it."
"Thankee, my boy. I do."
I had often watched a large dog of ours eating his food; and I now
noticed a decided similarity between the dog's way of eating, and the
man's. The man took strong sharp sudden bites, just like the dog. He
swallowed, or rather snapped up, every mouthful, too soon and too fast;
and he looked sideways here and there while he ate, as if he thought
there was danger in every direction of somebody's coming to take the pie
away. He was altogether too unsettled in his mind over it, to appreciate
it comfortably I thought, or to have anybody to dine with him, without
making a chop with his jaws at the visitor. In all of which particulars
he was very like the dog.
"I am afraid you won't leave any of it for him," said I, timidly; after
a silence during which I had hesitated as to the politeness of making
the remark. "There's no more to be got where that came from." It was the
certainty of this fact that impelled me to offer the hint.
"Leave any for him? Who's him?" said my friend, stopping in his
crunching of pie-crust.
"The young man. That you spoke of. That was hid with you."
"Oh ah!" he returned, with something like a gruff laugh. "Him? Yes, yes!
He don't want no wittles."
"I thought he looked as if he did," said I.
The man stopped eating, and regarded me with the keenest scrutiny and
the greatest surprise.
"Looked? When?"
"Just now."
"Where?"
"Yonder," said I, pointing; "over there, where I found him nodding
asleep, and thought it was you."
He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that I began to think his
first idea about cutting my throat had revived.
"Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat," I explained, trembling;
"and--and"--I was very anxious to put this delicately--"and with--the
same reason for wanting to borrow a file. Didn't you hear the cannon
last night?"
"Then there was firing!" he said to himself.
"I wonder you shouldn't have been sure of that," I returned, "for
we heard it up at home, and that's farther away, and we were shut in
besides."
"Why, see now!" said he. "When a man's alone on these flats, with a
light head and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he hears
nothin' all night, but guns firing, and voices calling. Hears? He sees
the soldiers, with their red coats lighted up by the torches carried
afore, closing in round him. Hears his number called, hears himself
challenged, hears the rattle of the muskets, hears the orders 'Make
ready! Present! Cover him steady, men!' and is laid hands on--and
there's nothin'! Why, if I see one pursuing party last night--coming up
in order, Damn 'em, with their tramp, tramp--I see a hundred. And as to
firing! Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter it was broad
day,--But this man"; he had said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my
being there; "did you notice anything in him?"
"He had a badly bruised face," said I, recalling what I hardly knew I
knew.
"Not here?" exclaimed the man, striking his left cheek mercilessly, with
the flat of his hand.
"Yes, there!"
"Where is he?" He crammed what little food was left, into the breast of
his gray jacket. "Show me the way he went. I'll pull him down, like a
bloodhound. Curse this iron on my sore leg! Give us hold of the file,
boy."
I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded the other man,
and he looked up at it for an instant. But he was down on the rank wet
grass, filing at his iron like a madman, and not minding me or minding
his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was bloody, but which he
handled as roughly as if it had no more feeling in it than the file. I
was very much afraid of him again, now that he had worked himself into
this fierce hurry, and I was likewise very much afraid of keeping away
from home any longer. I told him I must go, but he took no notice, so
I thought the best thing I could do was to slip off. The last I saw
of him, his head was bent over his knee and he was working hard at his
fetter, muttering impatient imprecations at it and at his leg. The last
I heard of him, I stopped in the mist to listen, and the file was still
going.
Chapter IV
I fully expected to find a Constable in the kitchen, waiting to take me
up. But not only was there no Constable there, but no discovery had yet
been made of the robbery. Mrs. Joe was prodigiously busy in getting the
house ready for the festivities of the day, and Joe had been put upon
the kitchen doorstep to keep him out of the dust-pan,--an article into
which his destiny always led him, sooner or later, when my sister was
vigorously reaping the floors of her establishment.
"And where the deuce ha' you been?" was Mrs. Joe's Christmas salutation,
when I and my conscience showed ourselves.
I said I had been down to hear the Carols. "Ah! well!" observed Mrs.
Joe. "You might ha' done worse." Not a doubt of that I thought.
"Perhaps if I warn't a blacksmith's wife, and (what's the same thing) a
slave with her apron never off, I should have been to hear the Carols,"
said Mrs. Joe. "I'm rather partial to Carols, myself, and that's the
best of reasons for my never hearing any."
Joe, who had ventured into the kitchen after me as the dustpan had
retired before us, drew the back of his hand across his nose with a
conciliatory air, when Mrs. Joe darted a look at him, and, when her eyes
were withdrawn, secretly crossed his two forefingers, and exhibited them
to me, as our token that Mrs. Joe was in a cross temper. This was so
much her normal state, that Joe and I would often, for weeks together,
be, as to our fingers, like monumental Crusaders as to their legs.
We were to have a superb dinner, consisting of a leg of pickled pork and
greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome mince-pie had
been made yesterday morning (which accounted for the mincemeat not
being missed), and the pudding was already on the boil. These extensive
arrangements occasioned us to be cut off unceremoniously in respect of
breakfast; "for I ain't," said Mrs. Joe,--"I ain't a going to have
no formal cramming and busting and washing up now, with what I've got
before me, I promise you!"
So, we had our slices served out, as if we were two thousand troops on a
forced march instead of a man and boy at home; and we took gulps of milk
and water, with apologetic countenances, from a jug on the dresser. In
the meantime, Mrs. Joe put clean white curtains up, and tacked a new
flowered flounce across the wide chimney to replace the old one, and
uncovered the little state parlor across the passage, which was never
uncovered at any other time, but passed the rest of the year in a cool
haze of silver paper, which even extended to the four little white
crockery poodles on the mantel-shelf, each with a black nose and a
basket of flowers in his mouth, and each the counterpart of the other.
Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of
making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt
itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by
their religion.
My sister, having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that
is to say, Joe and I were going. In his working-
well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday clothes,
he was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances, than anything else.
Nothing that he wore then fitted him or seemed to belong to him; and
everything that he wore then grazed him. On the present festive occasion
he emerged from his room, when the blithe bells were going, the picture
of misery, in a full suit of Sunday penitentials. As to me, I think my
sister must have had some general idea that I was a young offender whom
an Accoucheur Policeman had taken up (on my birthday) and delivered over
to her, to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law.
I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born in opposition
to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the
dissuading arguments of my best friends. Even when I was taken to have
a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to make them like a kind of
Reformatory, and on no account to let me have the free use of my limbs.
Joe and I going to church, therefore, must have been a moving spectacle
for compassionate minds. Yet, what I suffered outside was nothing to
what I underwent within. The terrors that had assailed me whenever
Mrs. Joe had gone near the pantry, or out of the room, were only to be
equalled by the remorse with which my mind dwelt on what my hands had
done. Under the weight of my wicked secret, I pondered whether the
Church would be powerful enough to shield me from the vengeance of the
terrible young man, if I divulged to that establishment. I conceived the
idea that the time when the banns were read and when the clergyman said,
"Ye are now to declare it!" would be the time for me to rise and propose
a private conference in the vestry. I am far from being sure that I
might not have astonished our small congregation by resorting to this
extreme measure, but for its being Christmas Day and no Sunday.
Mr. Wopsle, the clerk at church, was to dine with us; and Mr. Hubble
the wheelwright and Mrs. Hubble; and Uncle Pumblechook (Joe's uncle,
but Mrs. Joe appropriated him), who was a well-to-do cornchandler in
the nearest town, and drove his own chaise-cart. The dinner hour was
half-past one. When Joe and I got home, we found the table laid, and
Mrs. Joe dressed, and the dinner dressing, and the front door unlocked
(it never was at any other time) for the company to enter by, and
everything most splendid. And still, not a word of the robbery.
The time came, without bringing with it any relief to my feelings, and
the company came. Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large shining
bald forehead, had a deep voice which he was uncommonly proud of; indeed
it was understood among his acquaintance that if you could only give him
his head, he would read the clergyman into fits; he himself confessed
that if the Church was "thrown open," meaning to competition, he would
not despair of making his mark in it. The Church not being "thrown
open," he was, as I have said, our clerk. But he punished the Amens
tremendously; and when he gave out the psalm,--always giving the whole
verse,--he looked all round the congregation first, as much as to say,
"You have heard my friend overhead; oblige me with your opinion of this
style!"
I opened the door to the company,--making believe that it was a habit
of ours to open that door,--and I opened it first to Mr. Wopsle, next
to Mr. and Mrs. Hubble, and last of all to Uncle Pumblechook. N.B. I was
not allowed to call him uncle, under the severest penalties.
"Mrs. Joe," said Uncle Pumblechook, a large hard-breathing middle-aged
slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair
standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been
all but choked, and had that moment come to, "I have brought you as the
compliments of the season--I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of sherry
wine--and I have brought you, Mum, a bottle of port wine."
Every Christmas Day he presented himself, as a profound novelty, with
exactly the same words, and carrying the two bottles like dumb-bells.
Every Christmas Day, Mrs. Joe replied, as she now replied, "O, Un--cle
Pum-ble--chook! This is kind!" Every Christmas Day, he retorted, as
he now retorted, "It's no more than your merits. And now are you all
bobbish, and how's Sixpennorth of halfpence?" meaning me.
We dined on these occasions in the kitchen, and adjourned, for the nuts
and oranges and apples to the parlor; which was a change very like
Joe's change from his working-clothes to his Sunday dress. My sister was
uncommonly lively on the present occasion, and indeed was generally more
gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble than in other company. I remember
Mrs. Hubble as a little curly sharp-edged person in sky-blue, who held a
conventionally juvenile position, because she had married Mr. Hubble,--I
don't know at what remote period,--when she was much younger than he. I
remember Mr Hubble as a tough, high-shouldered, stooping old man, of a
sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart: so that in
my short days I always saw some miles of open country between them when
I met him coming up the lane.
Among this good company I should have felt myself, even if I hadn't
robbed the pantry, in a false position. Not because I was squeezed in
at an acute angle of the tablecloth, with the table in my chest, and the
Pumblechookian elbow in my eye, nor because I was not allowed to speak
(I didn't want to speak), nor because I was regaled with the scaly tips
of the drumsticks of the fowls, and with those obscure corners of pork
of which the pig, when living, had had the least reason to be vain. No;
I should not have minded that, if they would only have left me alone.
But they wouldn't leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity
lost, if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and
then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate
little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by these
moral goads.
It began the moment we sat down to dinner. Mr. Wopsle said grace with
theatrical declamation,--as it now appears to me, something like a
religious cross of the Ghost in Hamlet with Richard the Third,--and
ended with the very proper aspiration that we might be truly grateful.
Upon which my sister fixed me with her eye, and said, in a low
reproachful voice, "Do you hear that? Be grateful."
"Especially," said Mr. Pumblechook, "be grateful, boy, to them which
brought you up by hand."
Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful
presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, "Why is it that the
young are never grateful?" This moral mystery seemed too much for
the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, "Naterally
wicious." Everybody then murmured "True!" and looked at me in a
particularly unpleasant and personal manner.
Joe's station and influence were something feebler (if possible) when
there was company than when there was none. But he always aided and
comforted me when he could, in some way of his own, and he always did so
at dinner-time by giving me gravy, if there were any. There being plenty
of gravy to-day, Joe spooned into my plate, at this point, about half a
pint.
A little later on in the dinner, Mr. Wopsle reviewed the sermon with
some severity, and intimated--in the usual hypothetical case of the
Church being "thrown open"--what kind of sermon he would have given
them. After favoring them with some heads of that discourse, he remarked
that he considered the subject of the day's homily, ill chosen; which
was the less excusable, he added, when there were so many subjects
"going about."
"True again," said Uncle Pumblechook. "You've hit it, sir! Plenty of
subjects going about, for them that know how to put salt upon their
tails. That's what's wanted. A man needn't go far to find a subject,
if he's ready with his salt-box." Mr. Pumblechook added, after a short
interval of reflection, "Look at Pork alone. There's a subject! If you
want a subject, look at Pork!"
"True, sir. Many a moral for the young," returned Mr. Wopsle,--and I
knew he was going to lug me in, before he said it; "might be deduced
from that text."
("You listen to this," said my sister to me, in a severe parenthesis.)
Joe gave me some more gravy.
"Swine," pursued Mr. Wopsle, in his deepest voice, and pointing his fork
at my blushes, as if he were mentioning my Christian name,--"swine were
the companions of the prodigal. The gluttony of Swine is put before us,
as an example to the young." (I thought this pretty well in him who
had been praising up the pork for being so plump and juicy.) "What is
detestable in a pig is more detestable in a boy."
"Or girl," suggested Mr. Hubble.
"Of course, or girl, Mr. Hubble," assented Mr. Wopsle, rather irritably,
"but there is no girl present."
"Besides," said Mr. Pumblechook, turning sharp on me, "think what you've
got to be grateful for. If you'd been born a Squeaker--"
"He was, if ever a child was," said my sister, most emphatically.
Joe gave me some more gravy.
"Well, but I mean a four-footed Squeaker," said Mr. Pumblechook. "If you
had been born such, would you have been here now? Not you--"
"Unless in that form," said Mr. Wopsle, nodding towards the dish.
"But I don't mean in that form, sir," returned Mr. Pumblechook, who had
an objection to being interrupted; "I mean, enjoying himself with his
elders and betters, and improving himself with their conversation, and
rolling in the lap of luxury. Would he have been doing that? No, he
wouldn't. And what would have been your destination?" turning on me
again. "You would have been disposed of for so many shillings according
to the market price of the article, and Dunstable the butcher would have
come up to you as you lay in your straw, and he would have whipped you
under his left arm, and with his right he would have tucked up his frock
to get a penknife from out of his waistcoat-pocket, and he would have
shed your blood and had your life. No bringing up by hand then. Not a
bit of it!"
Joe offered me more gravy, which I was afraid to take.
"He was a world of trouble to you, ma'am," said Mrs. Hubble,
commiserating my sister.
"Trouble?" echoed my sister; "trouble?" and then entered on a fearful
catalogue of all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and all the acts
of sleeplessness I had committed, and all the high places I had tumbled
from, and all the low places I had tumbled into, and all the injuries I
had done myself, and all the times she had wished me in my grave, and I
had contumaciously refused to go there.
I think the Romans must have aggravated one another very much, with
their noses. Perhaps, they became the restless people they were, in
consequence. Anyhow, Mr. Wopsle's Roman nose so aggravated me, during
the recital of my misdemeanours, that I should have liked to pull it
until he howled. But, all I had endured up to this time was nothing in
comparison with the awful feelings that took possession of me when the
pause was broken which ensued upon my sister's recital, and in which
pause everybody had looked at me (as I felt painfully conscious) with
indignation and abhorrence.
"Yet," said Mr. Pumblechook, leading the company gently back to the
theme from which they had strayed, "Pork--regarded as biled--is rich,
too; ain't it?"
"Have a little brandy, uncle," said my sister.
O Heavens, it had come at last! He would find it was weak, he would say
it was weak, and I was lost! I held tight to the leg of the table under
the cloth, with both hands, and awaited my fate.
My sister went for the stone bottle, came back with the stone bottle,
and poured his brandy out: no one else taking any. The wretched man
trifled with his glass,--took it up, looked at it through the light,
put it down,--prolonged my misery. All this time Mrs. Joe and Joe were
briskly clearing the table for the pie and pudding.
I couldn't keep my eyes off him. Always holding tight by the leg of the
table with my hands and feet, I saw the miserable creature finger his
glass playfully, take it up, smile, throw his head back, and drink
the brandy off. Instantly afterwards, the company were seized with
unspeakable consternation, owing to his springing to his feet, turning
round several times in an appalling spasmodic whooping-cough dance,
and rushing out at the door; he then became visible through the window,
violently plunging and expectorating, making the most hideous faces, and
apparently out of his mind.
I held on tight, while Mrs. Joe and Joe ran to him. I didn't know how
I had done it, but I had no doubt I had murdered him somehow. In my
dreadful situation, it was a relief when he was brought back, and
surveying the company all round as if they had disagreed with him, sank
down into his chair with the one significant gasp, "Tar!"
I had filled up the bottle from the tar-water jug. I knew he would be
worse by and by. I moved the table, like a Medium of the present day, by
the vigor of my unseen hold upon it.
"Tar!" cried my sister, in amazement. "Why, how ever could Tar come
there?"
But, Uncle Pumblechook, who was omnipotent in that kitchen, wouldn't
hear the word, wouldn't hear of the subject, imperiously waved it all
away with his hand, and asked for hot gin and water. My sister, who had
begun to be alarmingly meditative, had to employ herself actively in
getting the gin, the hot water, the sugar, and the lemon-peel, and mixing
them. For the time being at least, I was saved. I still held on to the
leg of the table, but clutched it now with the fervor of gratitude.
By degrees, I became calm enough to release my grasp and partake of
pudding. Mr. Pumblechook partook of pudding. All partook of pudding.
The course terminated, and Mr. Pumblechook had begun to beam under the
genial influence of gin and water. I began to think I should get over
the day, when my sister said to Joe, "Clean plates,--cold."
I clutched the leg of the table again immediately, and pressed it to my
bosom as if it had been the companion of my youth and friend of my soul.
I foresaw what was coming, and I felt that this time I really was gone.
"You must taste," said my sister, addressing the guests with her best
grace--"you must taste, to finish with, such a delightful and delicious
present of Uncle Pumblechook's!"
Must they! Let them not hope to taste it!
"You must know," said my sister, rising, "it's a pie; a savory pork
pie."
The company murmured their compliments. Uncle Pumblechook, sensible of
having deserved well of his fellow-creatures, said,--quite vivaciously,
all things considered,--"Well, Mrs. Joe, we'll do our best endeavors;
let us have a cut at this same pie."
My sister went out to get it. I heard her steps proceed to the pantry. I
saw Mr. Pumblechook balance his knife. I saw reawakening appetite in the
Roman nostrils of Mr. Wopsle. I heard Mr. Hubble remark that "a bit of
savory pork pie would lay atop of anything you could mention, and do
no harm," and I heard Joe say, "You shall have some, Pip." I have never
been absolutely certain whether I uttered a shrill yell of terror,
merely in spirit, or in the bodily hearing of the company. I felt that I
could bear no more, and that I must run away. I released the leg of the
table, and ran for my life.
But I ran no farther than the house door, for there I ran head-foremost
into a party of soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held out a pair
of handcuffs to me, saying, "Here you are, look sharp, come on!"
Chapter V
The apparition of a file of soldiers ringing down the but-ends of their
loaded muskets on our door-step, caused the dinner-party to rise
from table in confusion, and caused Mrs. Joe re-entering the kitchen
empty-handed, to stop short and stare, in her wondering lament of
"Gracious goodness gracious me, what's gone--with the--pie!"
The sergeant and I were in the kitchen when Mrs. Joe stood staring;
at which crisis I partially recovered the use of my senses. It was
the sergeant who had spoken to me, and he was now looking round at the
company, with his handcuffs invitingly extended towards them in his
right hand, and his left on my shoulder.
"Excuse me, ladies and gentleman," said the sergeant, "but as I have
mentioned at the door to this smart young shaver," (which he hadn't), "I
am on a chase in the name of the king, and I want the blacksmith."
"And pray what might you want with him?" retorted my sister, quick to
resent his being wanted at all.
"Missis," returned the gallant sergeant, "speaking for myself, I should
reply, the honor and pleasure of his fine wife's acquaintance; speaking
for the king, I answer, a little job done."
This was received as rather neat in the sergeant; insomuch that Mr.
Pumblechook cried audibly, "Good again!"
"You see, blacksmith," said the sergeant, who had by this time picked
out Joe with his eye, "we have had an accident with these, and I find
the lock of one of 'em goes wrong, and the coupling don't act pretty.
As they are wanted for immediate service, will you throw your eye over
them?"
Joe threw his eye over them, and pronounced that the job would
necessitate the lighting of his forge fire, and would take nearer
two hours than one. "Will it? Then will you set about it at once,
blacksmith?" said the off-hand sergeant, "as it's on his Majesty's
service. And if my men can bear a hand anywhere, they'll make themselves
useful." With that, he called to his men, who came trooping into the
kitchen one after another, and piled their arms in a corner. And then
they stood about, as soldiers do; now, with their hands loosely clasped
before them; now, resting a knee or a shoulder; now, easing a belt or a
pouch; now, opening the door to spit stiffly over their high stocks, out
into the yard.
All these things I saw without then knowing that I saw them, for I
was in an agony of apprehension. But beginning to perceive that the
handcuffs were not for me, and that the military had so far got the
better of the pie as to put it in the background, I collected a little
more of my scattered wits.
"Would you give me the time?" said the sergeant, addressing himself to
Mr. Pumblechook, as to a man whose appreciative powers justified the
inference that he was equal to the time.
"It's just gone half past two."
"That's not so bad," said the sergeant, reflecting; "even if I was
forced to halt here nigh two hours, that'll do. How far might you call
yourselves from the marshes, hereabouts? Not above a mile, I reckon?"
"Just a mile," said Mrs. Joe.
"That'll do. We begin to close in upon 'em about dusk. A little before
dusk, my orders are. That'll do."
"Convicts, sergeant?" asked Mr. Wopsle, in a matter-of-course way.
"Ay!" returned the sergeant, "two. They're pretty well known to be out
on the marshes still, and they won't try to get clear of 'em before
dusk. Anybody here seen anything of any such game?"
Everybody, myself excepted, said no, with confidence. Nobody thought of
me.
"Well!" said the sergeant, "they'll find themselves trapped in a circle,
I expect, sooner than they count on. Now, blacksmith! If you're ready,
his Majesty the King is."
Joe had got his coat and waistcoat and cravat off, and his leather apron
on, and passed into the forge. One of the soldiers opened its wooden
windows, another lighted the fire, another turned to at the bellows, the
rest stood round the blaze, which was soon roaring. Then Joe began to
hammer and clink, hammer and clink, and we all looked on.
The interest of the impending pursuit not only absorbed the general
attention, but even made my sister liberal. She drew a pitcher of beer
from the cask for the soldiers, and invited the sergeant to take a glass
of brandy. But Mr. Pumblechook said, sharply, "Give him wine, Mum. I'll
engage there's no tar in that:" so, the sergeant thanked him and said
that as he preferred his drink without tar, he would take wine, if it
was equally convenient. When it was given him, he drank his Majesty's
health and compliments of the season, and took it all at a mouthful and
smacked his lips.
"Good stuff, eh, sergeant?" said Mr. Pumblechook.
"I'll tell you something," returned the sergeant; "I suspect that
stuff's of your providing."
Mr. Pumblechook, with a fat sort of laugh, said, "Ay, ay? Why?"
"Because," returned the sergeant, clapping him on the shoulder, "you're
a man that knows what's what."
"D'ye think so?" said Mr. Pumblechook, with his former laugh. "Have
another glass!"
"With you. Hob and nob," returned the sergeant. "The top of mine to the
foot of yours,--the foot of yours to the top of mine,--Ring once, ring
twice,--the best tune on the Musical Glasses! Your health. May you live
a thousand years, and never be a worse judge of the right sort than you
are at the present moment of your life!"
The sergeant tossed off his glass again and seemed quite ready for
another glass. I noticed that Mr. Pumblechook in his hospitality
appeared to forget that he had made a present of the wine, but took the
bottle from Mrs. Joe and had all the credit of handing it about in a
gush of joviality. Even I got some. And he was so very free of the wine
that he even called for the other bottle, and handed that about with the
same liberality, when the first was gone.
As I watched them while they all stood clustering about the forge,
enjoying themselves so much, I thought what terrible good sauce for
a dinner my fugitive friend on the marshes was. They had not enjoyed
themselves a quarter so much, before the entertainment was brightened
with the excitement he furnished. And now, when they were all in lively
anticipation of "the two villains" being taken, and when the bellows
seemed to roar for the fugitives, the fire to flare for them, the smoke
to hurry away in pursuit of them, Joe to hammer and clink for them,
and all the murky shadows on the wall to shake at them in menace as the
blaze rose and sank, and the red-hot sparks dropped and died, the pale
afternoon outside almost seemed in my pitying young fancy to have turned
pale on their account, poor wretches.
At last, Joe's job was done, and the ringing and roaring stopped. As Joe
got on his coat, he mustered courage to propose that some of us should
go down with the soldiers and see what came of the hunt. Mr. Pumblechook
and Mr. Hubble declined, on the plea of a pipe and ladies' society; but
Mr. Wopsle said he would go, if Joe would. Joe said he was agreeable,
and would take me, if Mrs. Joe approved. We never should have got leave
to go, I am sure, but for Mrs. Joe's curiosity to know all about it and
how it ended. As it was, she merely stipulated, "If you bring the boy
back with his head blown to bits by a musket, don't look to me to put it
together again."
The sergeant took a polite leave of the ladies, and parted from Mr.
Pumblechook as from a comrade; though I doubt if he were quite as fully
sensible of that gentleman's merits under arid conditions, as when
something moist was going. His men resumed their muskets and fell in.
Mr. Wopsle, Joe, and I, received strict charge to keep in the rear, and
to speak no word after we reached the marshes. When we were all out in
the raw air and were steadily moving towards our business, I treasonably
whispered to Joe, "I hope, Joe, we shan't find them." and Joe whispered
to me, "I'd give a shilling if they had cut and run, Pip."
We were joined by no stragglers from the village, for the weather was
cold and threatening, the way dreary, the footing bad, darkness coming
on, and the people had good fires in-doors and were keeping the day. A
few faces hurried to glowing windows and looked after us, but none came
out. We passed the finger-post, and held straight on to the churchyard.
There we were stopped a few minutes by a signal from the sergeant's
hand, while two or three of his men dispersed themselves among the
graves, and also examined the porch. They came in again without finding
anything, and then we struck out on the open marshes, through the gate
at the side of the churchyard. A bitter sleet came rattling against us
here on the east wind, and Joe took me on his back.
Now that we were out upon the dismal wilderness where they little
thought I had been within eight or nine hours and had seen both men
hiding, I considered for the first time, with great dread, if we should
come upon them, would my particular convict suppose that it was I who
had brought the soldiers there? He had asked me if I was a deceiving
imp, and he had said I should be a fierce young hound if I joined the
hunt against him. Would he believe that I was both imp and hound in
treacherous earnest, and had betrayed him?
It was of no use asking myself this question now. There I was, on Joe's
back, and there was Joe beneath me, charging at the ditches like a
hunter, and stimulating Mr. Wopsle not to tumble on his Roman nose, and
to keep up with us. The soldiers were in front of us, extending into a
pretty wide line with an interval between man and man. We were taking
the course I had begun with, and from which I had diverged in the mist.
Either the mist was not out again yet, or the wind had dispelled it.
Under the low red glare of sunset, the beacon, and the gibbet, and the
mound of the Battery, and the opposite shore of the river, were plain,
though all of a watery lead color.
With my heart thumping like a blacksmith at Joe's broad shoulder, I
looked all about for any sign of the convicts. I could see none, I could
hear none. Mr. Wopsle had greatly alarmed me more than once, by his
blowing and hard breathing; but I knew the sounds by this time, and
could dissociate them from the object of pursuit. I got a dreadful
start, when I thought I heard the file still going; but it was only a
sheep-bell. The sheep stopped in their eating and looked timidly at
us; and the cattle, their heads turned from the wind and sleet, stared
angrily as if they held us responsible for both annoyances; but, except
these things, and the shudder of the dying day in every blade of grass,
there was no break in the bleak stillness of the marshes.
The soldiers were moving on in the direction of the old Battery, and we
were moving on a little way behind them, when, all of a sudden, we all
stopped. For there had reached us on the wings of the wind and rain, a
long shout. It was repeated. It was at a distance towards the east, but
it was long and loud. Nay, there seemed to be two or more shouts raised
together,--if one might judge from a confusion in the sound.
To this effect the sergeant and the nearest men were speaking under
their breath, when Joe and I came up. After another moment's listening,
Joe (who was a good judge) agreed, and Mr. Wopsle (who was a bad judge)
agreed. The sergeant, a decisive man, ordered that the sound should not
be answered, but that the course should be changed, and that his men
should make towards it "at the double." So we slanted to the right
(where the East was), and Joe pounded away so wonderfully, that I had to
hold on tight to keep my seat.
It was a run indeed now, and what Joe called, in the only two words he
spoke all the time, "a Winder." Down banks and up banks, and over gates,
and splashing into dikes, and breaking among coarse rushes: no man cared
where he went. As we came nearer to the shouting, it became more and
more apparent that it was made by more than one voice. Sometimes, it
seemed to stop altogether, and then the soldiers stopped. When it broke
out again, the soldiers made for it at a greater rate than ever, and we
after them. After a while, we had so run it down, that we could hear one
voice calling "Murder!" and another voice, "Convicts! Runaways! Guard!
This way for the runaway convicts!" Then both voices would seem to be
stifled in a struggle, and then would break out again. And when it had
come to this, the soldiers ran like deer, and Joe too.
The sergeant ran in first, when we had run the noise quite down, and two
of his men ran in close upon him. Their pieces were cocked and levelled
when we all ran in.
"Here are both men!" panted the sergeant, struggling at the bottom of a
ditch. "Surrender, you two! and confound you for two wild beasts! Come
asunder!"
Water was splashing, and mud was flying, and oaths were being sworn, and
blows were being struck, when some more men went down into the ditch to
help the sergeant, and dragged out, separately, my convict and the other
one. Both were bleeding and panting and execrating and struggling; but
of course I knew them both directly.
"Mind!" said my convict, wiping blood from his face with his ragged
sleeves, and shaking torn hair from his fingers: "I took him! I give him
up to you! Mind that!"
"It's not much to be particular about," said the sergeant; "it'll do you
small good, my man, being in the same plight yourself. Handcuffs there!"
"I don't expect it to do me any good. I don't want it to do me more good
than it does now," said my convict, with a greedy laugh. "I took him. He
knows it. That's enough for me."
The other convict was livid to look at, and, in addition to the old
bruised left side of his face, seemed to be bruised and torn all over.
He could not so much as get his breath to speak, until they were both
separately handcuffed, but leaned upon a soldier to keep himself from
falling.
"Take notice, guard,--he tried to murder me," were his first words.
"Tried to murder him?" said my convict, disdainfully. "Try, and not
do it? I took him, and giv' him up; that's what I done. I not only
prevented him getting off the marshes, but I dragged him here,--dragged
him this far on his way back. He's a gentleman, if you please, this
villain. Now, the Hulks has got its gentleman again, through me. Murder
him? Worth my while, too, to murder him, when I could do worse and drag
him back!"
The other one still gasped, "He tried--he tried-to--murder me.
Bear--bear witness."
"Lookee here!" said my convict to the sergeant. "Single-handed I got
clear of the prison-ship; I made a dash and I done it. I could ha' got
clear of these death-cold flats likewise--look at my leg: you won't find
much iron on it--if I hadn't made the discovery that he was here. Let
him go free? Let him profit by the means as I found out? Let him make a
tool of me afresh and again? Once more? No, no, no. If I had died at
the bottom there," and he made an emphatic swing at the ditch with his
manacled hands, "I'd have held to him with that grip, that you should
have been safe to find him in my hold."
The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his
companion, repeated, "He tried to murder me. I should have been a dead
man if you had not come up."
"He lies!" said my convict, with fierce energy. "He's a liar born, and
he'll die a liar. Look at his face; ain't it written there? Let him turn
those eyes of his on me. I defy him to do it."
The other, with an effort at a scornful smile, which could not, however,
collect the nervous working of his mouth into any set expression, looked
at the soldiers, and looked about at the marshes and at the sky, but
certainly did not look at the speaker.
"Do you see him?" pursued my convict. "Do you see what a villain he is?
Do you see those grovelling and wandering eyes? That's how he looked
when we were tried together. He never looked at me."
The other, always working and working his dry lips and turning his eyes
restlessly about him far and near, did at last turn them for a moment on
the speaker, with the words, "You are not much to look at," and with
a half-taunting glance at the bound hands. At that point, my convict
became so frantically exasperated, that he would have rushed upon him
but for the interposition of the soldiers. "Didn't I tell you," said the
other convict then, "that he would murder me, if he could?" And any one
could see that he shook with fear, and that there broke out upon his
lips curious white flakes, like thin snow.
"Enough of this parley," said the sergeant. "Light those torches."
As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket in lieu of a gun, went down
on his knee to open it, my convict looked round him for the first time,
and saw me. I had alighted from Joe's back on the brink of the ditch
when we came up, and had not moved since. I looked at him eagerly when
he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and shook my head. I had
been waiting for him to see me that I might try to assure him of my
innocence. It was not at all expressed to me that he even comprehended
my intention, for he gave me a look that I did not understand, and it
all passed in a moment. But if he had looked at me for an hour or for
a day, I could not have remembered his face ever afterwards, as having
been more attentive.
The soldier with the basket soon got a light, and lighted three or four
torches, and took one himself and distributed the others. It had been
almost dark before, but now it seemed quite dark, and soon afterwards
very dark. Before we departed from that spot, four soldiers standing in
a ring, fired twice into the air. Presently we saw other torches kindled
at some distance behind us, and others on the marshes on the opposite
bank of the river. "All right," said the sergeant. "March."
We had not gone far when three cannon were fired ahead of us with a
sound that seemed to burst something inside my ear. "You are expected
on board," said the sergeant to my convict; "they know you are coming.
Don't straggle, my man. Close up here."
The two were kept apart, and each walked surrounded by a separate guard.
I had hold of Joe's hand now, and Joe carried one of the torches. Mr.
Wopsle had been for going back, but Joe was resolved to see it out, so
we went on with the party. There was a reasonably good path now, mostly
on the edge of the river, with a divergence here and there where a dike
came, with a miniature windmill on it and a muddy sluice-gate. When
I looked round, I could see the other lights coming in after us. The
torches we carried dropped great blotches of fire upon the track, and
I could see those, too, lying smoking and flaring. I could see nothing
else but black darkness. Our lights warmed the air about us with their
pitchy blaze, and the two prisoners seemed rather to like that, as they
limped along in the midst of the muskets. We could not go fast, because
of their lameness; and they were so spent, that two or three times we
had to halt while they rested.
After an hour or so of this travelling, we came to a rough wooden hut
and a landing-place. There was a guard in the hut, and they challenged,
and the sergeant answered. Then, we went into the hut, where there was
a smell of tobacco and whitewash, and a bright fire, and a lamp, and
a stand of muskets, and a drum, and a low wooden bedstead, like an
overgrown mangle without the machinery, capable of holding about a dozen
soldiers all at once. Three or four soldiers who lay upon it in their
great-coats were not much interested in us, but just lifted their heads
and took a sleepy stare, and then lay down again. The sergeant made some
kind of report, and some entry in a book, and then the convict whom I
call the other convict was drafted off with his guard, to go on board
first.
My convict never looked at me, except that once. While we stood in the
hut, he stood before the fire looking thoughtfully at it, or putting up
his feet by turns upon the hob, and looking thoughtfully at them as if
he pitied them for their recent adventures. Suddenly, he turned to the
sergeant, and remarked,--
"I wish to say something respecting this escape. It may prevent some
persons laying under suspicion alonger me."
"You can say what you like," returned the sergeant, standing coolly
looking at him with his arms folded, "but you have no call to say it
here. You'll have opportunity enough to say about it, and hear about it,
before it's done with, you know."
"I know, but this is another pint, a separate matter. A man can't
starve; at least I can't. I took some wittles, up at the willage over
yonder,--where the church stands a'most out on the marshes."
"You mean stole," said the sergeant.
"And I'll tell you where from. From the blacksmith's."
"Halloa!" said the sergeant, staring at Joe.
"Halloa, Pip!" said Joe, staring at me.
"It was some broken wittles--that's what it was--and a dram of liquor,
and a pie."
"Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?" asked
the sergeant, confidentially.
"My wife did, at the very moment when you came in. Don't you know, Pip?"
"So," said my convict, turning his eyes on Joe in a moody manner, and
without the least glance at me,--"so you're the blacksmith, are you?
Than I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie."
"God knows you're welcome to it,--so far as it was ever mine," returned
Joe, with a saving remembrance of Mrs. Joe. "We don't know what you have
done, but we wouldn't have you starved to death for it, poor miserable
fellow-creatur.--Would us, Pip?"
The something that I had noticed before, clicked in the man's throat
again, and he turned his back. The boat had returned, and his guard were
ready, so we followed him to the landing-place made of rough stakes
and stones, and saw him put into the boat, which was rowed by a crew of
convicts like himself. No one seemed surprised to see him, or interested
in seeing him, or glad to see him, or sorry to see him, or spoke a word,
except that somebody in the boat growled as if to dogs, "Give way,
you!" which was the signal for the dip of the oars. By the light of the
torches, we saw the black Hulk lying out a little way from the mud of
the shore, like a wicked Noah's ark. Cribbed and barred and moored by
massive rusty chains, the prison-ship seemed in my young eyes to be
ironed like the prisoners. We saw the boat go alongside, and we saw
him taken up the side and disappear. Then, the ends of the torches were
flung hissing into the water, and went out, as if it were all over with
him.
Chapter VI
My state of mind regarding the pilfering from which I had been so
unexpectedly exonerated did not impel me to frank disclosure; but I hope
it had some dregs of good at the bottom of it.
I do not recall that I felt any tenderness of conscience in reference
to Mrs. Joe, when the fear of being found out was lifted off me. But
I loved Joe,--perhaps for no better reason in those early days than
because the dear fellow let me love him,--and, as to him, my inner self
was not so easily composed. It was much upon my mind (particularly when
I first saw him looking about for his file) that I ought to tell Joe the
whole truth. Yet I did not, and for the reason that I mistrusted that
if I did, he would think me worse than I was. The fear of losing Joe's
confidence, and of thenceforth sitting in the chimney corner at night
staring drearily at my forever lost companion and friend, tied up my
tongue. I morbidly represented to myself that if Joe knew it, I never
afterwards could see him at the fireside feeling his fair whisker,
without thinking that he was meditating on it. That, if Joe knew it, I
never afterwards could see him glance, however casually, at yesterday's
meat or pudding when it came on to-day's table, without thinking that he
was debating whether I had been in the pantry. That, if Joe knew it, and
at any subsequent period of our joint domestic life remarked that his
beer was flat or thick, the conviction that he suspected tar in it,
would bring a rush of blood to my face. In a word, I was too cowardly
to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing
what I knew to be wrong. I had had no intercourse with the world at
that time, and I imitated none of its many inhabitants who act in this
manner. Quite an untaught genius, I made the discovery of the line of
action for myself.
As I was sleepy before we were far away from the prison-ship, Joe took
me on his back again and carried me home. He must have had a tiresome
journey of it, for Mr. Wopsle, being knocked up, was in such a very bad
temper that if the Church had been thrown open, he would probably have
excommunicated the whole expedition, beginning with Joe and myself. In
his lay capacity, he persisted in sitting down in the damp to such
an insane extent, that when his coat was taken off to be dried at the
kitchen fire, the circumstantial evidence on his trousers would have
hanged him, if it had been a capital offence.
By that time, I was staggering on the kitchen floor like a little
drunkard, through having been newly set upon my feet, and through having
been fast asleep, and through waking in the heat and lights and noise of
tongues. As I came to myself (with the aid of a heavy thump between the
shoulders, and the restorative exclamation "Yah! Was there ever such
a boy as this!" from my sister,) I found Joe telling them about the
convict's confession, and all the visitors suggesting different ways
by which he had got into the pantry. Mr. Pumblechook made out, after
carefully surveying the premises, that he had first got upon the roof of
the forge, and had then got upon the roof of the house, and had then let
himself down the kitchen chimney by a rope made of his bedding cut
into strips; and as Mr. Pumblechook was very positive and drove his
own chaise-cart--over everybody--it was agreed that it must be so. Mr.
Wopsle, indeed, wildly cried out, "No!" with the feeble malice of a
tired man; but, as he had no theory, and no coat on, he was unanimously
set at naught,--not to mention his smoking hard behind, as he stood
with his back to the kitchen fire to draw the damp out: which was not
calculated to inspire confidence.
This was all I heard that night before my sister clutched me, as a
slumberous offence to the company's eyesight, and assisted me up to bed
with such a strong hand that I seemed to have fifty boots on, and to be
dangling them all against the edges of the stairs. My state of mind, as
I have described it, began before I was up in the morning, and lasted
long after the subject had died out, and had ceased to be mentioned
saving on exceptional occasions.
Chapter VII
At the time when I stood in the churchyard reading the family
tombstones, I had just enough learning to be able to spell them out. My
construction even of their simple meaning was not very correct, for I
read "wife of the Above" as a complimentary reference to my father's
exaltation to a better world; and if any one of my deceased relations
had been referred to as "Below," I have no doubt I should have formed
the worst opinions of that member of the family. Neither were my notions
of the theological positions to which my Catechism bound me, at
all accurate; for, I have a lively remembrance that I supposed my
declaration that I was to "walk in the same all the days of my life,"
laid me under an obligation always to go through the village from our
house in one particular direction, and never to vary it by turning down
by the wheelwright's or up by the mill.
When I was old enough, I was to be apprenticed to Joe, and until I could
assume that dignity I was not to be what Mrs. Joe called "Pompeyed," or
(as I render it) pampered. Therefore, I was not only odd-boy about the
forge, but if any neighbor happened to want an extra boy to frighten
birds, or pick up stones, or do any such job, I was favored with the
employment. In order, however, that our superior position might not be
compromised thereby, a money-box was kept on the kitchen mantel-shelf,
into which it was publicly made known that all my earnings were
dropped. I have an impression that they were to be contributed
eventually towards the liquidation of the National Debt, but I know I
had no hope of any personal participation in the treasure.
Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is
to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited
infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in
the society of youth who paid two pence per week each, for the improving
opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage, and Mr.
Wopsle had the room upstairs, where we students used to overhear him
reading aloud in a most dignified and terrific manner, and occasionally
bumping on the ceiling. There was a fiction that Mr. Wopsle "examined"
the scholars once a quarter. What he did on those occasions was to turn
up his cuffs, stick up his hair, and give us Mark Antony's oration over
the body of Caesar. This was always followed by Collins's Ode on
the Passions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge
throwing his blood-stained sword in thunder down, and taking the
War-denouncing trumpet with a withering look. It was not with me then,
as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of the Passions,
and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the disadvantage of
both gentlemen.
Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, besides keeping this Educational Institution,
kept in the same room--a little general shop. She had no idea what stock
she had, or what the price of anything in it was; but there was a little
greasy memorandum-book kept in a drawer, which served as a Catalogue
of Prices, and by this oracle Biddy arranged all the shop transactions.
Biddy was Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's granddaughter; I confess myself
quite unequal to the working out of the problem, what relation she was
to Mr. Wopsle. She was an orphan like myself; like me, too, had been
brought up by hand. She was most noticeable, I thought, in respect of
her extremities; for, her hair always wanted brushing, her hands always
wanted washing, and her shoes always wanted mending and pulling up at
heel. This description must be received with a week-day limitation. On
Sundays, she went to church elaborated.
Much of my unassisted self, and more by the help of Biddy than of Mr.
Wopsle's great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if it had been
a bramble-bush; getting considerably worried and scratched by every
letter. After that I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, who
seemed every evening to do something new to disguise themselves and
baffle recognition. But, at last I began, in a purblind groping way, to
read, write, and cipher, on the very smallest scale.
One night I was sitting in the chimney corner with my slate, expending
great efforts on the production of a letter to Joe. I think it must have
been a full year after our hunt upon the marshes, for it was a long
time after, and it was winter and a hard frost. With an alphabet on the
hearth at my feet for reference, I contrived in an hour or two to print
and smear this epistle:--
"MI DEER JO i OPE U R KRWITE WELL i OPE i SHAL SON B HABELL 4 2 TEEDGE
U JO AN THEN WE SHORL B SO GLODD AN WEN i M PRENGTD 2 U JO WOT LARX AN
BLEVE ME INF XN PIP."
There was no indispensable necessity for my communicating with Joe by
letter, inasmuch as he sat beside me and we were alone. But I delivered
this written communication (slate and all) with my own hand, and Joe
received it as a miracle of erudition.
"I say, Pip, old chap!" cried Joe, opening his blue eyes wide, "what a
scholar you are! An't you?"
"I should like to be," said I, glancing at the slate as he held it; with
a misgiving that the writing was rather hilly.
"Why, here's a J," said Joe, "and a O equal to anythink! Here's a J and
a O, Pip, and a J-O, Joe."
I had never heard Joe read aloud to any greater extent than this
monosyllable, and I had observed at church last Sunday, when I
accidentally held our Prayer-Book upside down, that it seemed to suit
his convenience quite as well as if it had been all right. Wishing to
embrace the present occasion of finding out whether in teaching Joe, I
should have to begin quite at the beginning, I said, "Ah! But read the
rest, Jo."
"The rest, eh, Pip?" said Joe, looking at it with a slow, searching eye,
"One, two, three. Why, here's three Js, and three Os, and three J-O,
Joes in it, Pip!"
I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my forefinger read him the whole
letter.
"Astonishing!" said Joe, when I had finished. "You ARE a scholar."
"How do you spell Gargery, Joe?" I asked him, with a modest patronage.
"I don't spell it at all," said Joe.
"But supposing you did?"
"It can't be supposed," said Joe. "Tho' I'm uncommon fond of reading,
too."
"Are you, Joe?"
"On-common. Give me," said Joe, "a good book, or a good newspaper, and
sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord!" he continued,
after rubbing his knees a little, "when you do come to a J and a O, and
says you, 'Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,' how interesting reading is!"
I derived from this, that Joe's education, like Steam, was yet in its
infancy. Pursuing the subject, I inquired,--
"Didn't you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?"
"No, Pip."
"Why didn't you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?"
"Well, Pip," said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling himself to
his usual occupation when he was thoughtful, of slowly raking the fire
between the lower bars; "I'll tell you. My father, Pip, he were given
to drink, and when he were overtook with drink, he hammered away at
my mother, most onmerciful. It were a'most the only hammering he did,
indeed, 'xcepting at myself. And he hammered at me with a wigor only
to be equalled by the wigor with which he didn't hammer at his
anwil.--You're a listening and understanding, Pip?"
"Yes, Joe."
"'Consequence, my mother and me we ran away from my father several
times; and then my mother she'd go out to work, and she'd say, "Joe,"
she'd say, "now, please God, you shall have some schooling, child," and
she'd put me to school. But my father were that good in his hart that
he couldn't abear to be without us. So, he'd come with a most tremenjous
crowd and make such a row at the doors of the houses where we was, that
they used to be obligated to have no more to do with us and to give us
up to him. And then he took us home and hammered us. Which, you see,
Pip," said Joe, pausing in his meditative raking of the fire, and
looking at me, "were a drawback on my learning."
"Certainly, poor Joe!"
"Though mind you, Pip," said Joe, with a judicial touch or two of the
poker on the top bar, "rendering unto all their doo, and maintaining
equal justice betwixt man and man, my father were that good in his hart,
don't you see?"
I didn't see; but I didn't say so.
"Well!" Joe pursued, "somebody must keep the pot a biling, Pip, or the
pot won't bile, don't you know?"
I saw that, and said so.
"'Consequence, my father didn't make objections to my going to work; so
I went to work at my present calling, which were his too, if he
would have followed it, and I worked tolerable hard, I assure you, Pip.
In time I were able to keep him, and I kep him till he went off in a
purple leptic fit. And it were my intentions to have had put upon his
tombstone that, Whatsume'er the failings on his part, Remember reader he
were that good in his heart."
Joe recited this couplet with such manifest pride and careful
perspicuity, that I asked him if he had made it himself.
"I made it," said Joe, "my own self. I made it in a moment. It was like
striking out a horseshoe complete, in a single blow. I never was so much
surprised in all my life,--couldn't credit my own ed,--to tell you the
truth, hardly believed it were my own ed. As I was saying, Pip, it were
my intentions to have had it cut over him; but poetry costs money, cut
it how you will, small or large, and it were not done. Not to mention
bearers, all the money that could be spared were wanted for my mother.
She were in poor elth, and quite broke. She weren't long of following,
poor soul, and her share of peace come round at last."
Joe's blue eyes turned a little watery; he rubbed first one of them, and
then the other, in a most uncongenial and uncomfortable manner, with the
round knob on the top of the poker.
"It were but lonesome then," said Joe, "living here alone, and I got
acquainted with your sister. Now, Pip,"--Joe looked firmly at me as
if he knew I was not going to agree with him;--"your sister is a fine
figure of a woman."
I could not help looking at the fire, in an obvious state of doubt.
"Whatever family opinions, or whatever the world's opinions, on that
subject may be, Pip, your sister is," Joe tapped the top bar with the
poker after every word following, "a-fine-figure--of--a--woman!"
I could think of nothing better to say than "I am glad you think so,
Joe."
"So am I," returned Joe, catching me up. "I am glad I think so, Pip. A
little redness or a little matter of Bone, here or there, what does it
signify to Me?"
I sagaciously observed, if it didn't signify to him, to whom did it
signify?
"Certainly!" assented Joe. "That's it. You're right, old chap! When I
got acquainted with your sister, it were the talk how she was bringing
you up by hand. Very kind of her too, all the folks said, and I said,
along with all the folks. As to you," Joe pursued with a countenance
expressive of seeing something very nasty indeed, "if you could have
been aware how small and flabby and mean you was, dear me, you'd have
formed the most contemptible opinion of yourself!"
Not exactly relishing this, I said, "Never mind me, Joe."
"But I did mind you, Pip," he returned with tender simplicity. "When
I offered to your sister to keep company, and to be asked in church at
such times as she was willing and ready to come to the forge, I said to
her, 'And bring the poor little child. God bless the poor little child,'
I said to your sister, 'there's room for him at the forge!'"
I broke out crying and begging pardon, and hugged Joe round the neck:
who dropped the poker to hug me, and to say, "Ever the best of friends;
an't us, Pip? Don't cry, old chap!"
When this little interruption was over, Joe resumed:--
"Well, you see, Pip, and here we are! That's about where it lights; here
we are! Now, when you take me in hand in my learning, Pip (and I tell
you beforehand I am awful dull, most awful dull), Mrs. Joe mustn't see
too much of what we're up to. It must be done, as I may say, on the sly.
And why on the sly? I'll tell you why, Pip."
He had taken up the poker again; without which, I doubt if he could have
proceeded in his demonstration.
"Your sister is given to government."
"Given to government, Joe?" I was startled, for I had some shadowy idea
(and I am afraid I must add, hope) that Joe had divorced her in a favor
of the Lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury.
"Given to government," said Joe. "Which I meantersay the government of
you and myself."
"Oh!"
"And she an't over partial to having scholars on the premises," Joe
continued, "and in partickler would not be over partial to my being a
scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort of rebel, don't you see?"
I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far as "Why--"
when Joe stopped me.
"Stay a bit. I know what you're a going to say, Pip; stay a bit! I don't
deny that your sister comes the Mo-gul over us, now and again. I don't
deny that she do throw us back-falls, and that she do drop down upon us
heavy. At such times as when your sister is on the Ram-page, Pip," Joe
sank his voice to a whisper and glanced at the door, "candor compels fur
to admit that she is a Buster."
Joe pronounced this word, as if it began with at least twelve capital
Bs.
"Why don't I rise? That were your observation when I broke it off, Pip?"
"Yes, Joe."
"Well," said Joe, passing the poker into his left hand, that he might
feel his whisker; and I had no hope of him whenever he took to that
placid occupation; "your sister's a master-mind. A master-mind."
"What's that?" I asked, in some hope of bringing him to a stand. But
Joe was readier with his definition than I had expected, and completely
stopped me by arguing circularly, and answering with a fixed look,
"Her."
"And I ain't a master-mind," Joe resumed, when he had unfixed his look,
and got back to his whisker. "And last of all, Pip,--and this I want to
say very serious to you, old chap,--I see so much in my poor mother,
of a woman drudging and slaving and breaking her honest hart and never
getting no peace in her mortal days, that I'm dead afeerd of going wrong
in the way of not doing what's right by a woman, and I'd fur rather
of the two go wrong the t'other way, and be a little ill-conwenienced
myself. I wish it was only me that got put out, Pip; I wish there warn't
no Tickler for you, old chap; I wish I could take it all on myself;
but this is the up-and-down-and-straight on it, Pip, and I hope you'll
overlook shortcomings."
Young as I was, I believe that I dated a new admiration of Joe from that
night. We were equals afterwards, as we had been before; but, afterwards
at quiet times when I sat looking at Joe and thinking about him, I had
a new sensation of feeling conscious that I was looking up to Joe in my
heart.
"However," said Joe, rising to replenish the fire; "here's the
Dutch-clock a working himself up to being equal to strike Eight of 'em,
and she's not come home yet! I hope Uncle Pumblechook's mare mayn't have
set a forefoot on a piece o' ice, and gone down."
Mrs. Joe made occasional trips with Uncle Pumblechook on market-days,
to assist him in buying such household stuffs and goods as required a
woman's judgment; Uncle Pumblechook being a bachelor and reposing no
confidences in his domestic servant. This was market-day, and Mrs. Joe
was out on one of these expeditions.
Joe made the fire and swept the hearth, and then we went to the door to
listen for the chaise-cart. It was a dry cold night, and the wind blew
keenly, and the frost was white and hard. A man would die to-night of
lying out on the marshes, I thought. And then I looked at the stars, and
considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them
as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering
multitude.
"Here comes the mare," said Joe, "ringing like a peal of bells!"
The sound of her iron shoes upon the hard road was quite musical, as she
came along at a much brisker trot than usual. We got a chair out, ready
for Mrs. Joe's alighting, and stirred up the fire that they might see a
bright window, and took a final survey of the kitchen that nothing might
be out of its place. When we had completed these preparations, they
drove up, wrapped to the eyes. Mrs. Joe was soon landed, and Uncle
Pumblechook was soon down too, covering the mare with a cloth, and we
were soon all in the kitchen, carrying so much cold air in with us that
it seemed to drive all the heat out of the fire.
"Now," said Mrs. Joe, unwrapping herself with haste and excitement, and
throwing her bonnet back on her shoulders where it hung by the strings,
"if this boy ain't grateful this night, he never will be!"
I looked as grateful as any boy possibly could, who was wholly
uninformed why he ought to assume that expression.
"It's only to be hoped," said my sister, "that he won't be Pompeyed. But
I have my fears."
"She ain't in that line, Mum," said Mr. Pumblechook. "She knows better."
She? I looked at Joe, making the motion with my lips and eyebrows,
"She?" Joe looked at me, making the motion with his lips and eyebrows,
"She?" My sister catching him in the act, he drew the back of his hand
across his nose with his usual conciliatory air on such occasions, and
looked at her.
"Well?" said my sister, in her snappish way. "What are you staring at?
Is the house afire?"
"--Which some individual," Joe politely hinted, "mentioned--she."
"And she is a she, I suppose?" said my sister. "Unless you call Miss
Havisham a he. And I doubt if even you'll go so far as that."
"Miss Havisham, up town?" said Joe.
"Is there any Miss Havisham down town?" returned my sister.
"She wants this boy to go and play there. And of course he's going. And
he had better play there," said my sister, shaking her head at me as an
encouragement to be extremely light and sportive, "or I'll work him."
I had heard of Miss Havisham up town,--everybody for miles round had
heard of Miss Havisham up town,--as an immensely rich and grim lady who
lived in a large and dismal house barricaded against robbers, and who
led a life of seclusion.
"Well to be sure!" said Joe, astounded. "I wonder how she come to know
Pip!"
"Noodle!" cried my sister. "Who said she knew him?"
"--Which some individual," Joe again politely hinted, "mentioned that
she wanted him to go and play there."
"And couldn't she ask Uncle Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go and
play there? Isn't it just barely possible that Uncle Pumblechook may be
a tenant of hers, and that he may sometimes--we won't say quarterly
or half-yearly, for that would be requiring too much of you--but
sometimes--go there to pay his rent? And couldn't she then ask Uncle
Pumblechook if he knew of a boy to go and play there? And couldn't Uncle
Pumblechook, being always considerate and thoughtful for us--though you
may not think it, Joseph," in a tone of the deepest reproach, as if
he were the most callous of nephews, "then mention this boy, standing
Prancing here"--which I solemnly declare I was not doing--"that I have
for ever been a willing slave to?"
"Good again!" cried Uncle Pumblechook. "Well put! Prettily pointed! Good
indeed! Now Joseph, you know the case."
"No, Joseph," said my sister, still in a reproachful manner, while Joe
apologetically drew the back of his hand across and across his nose,
"you do not yet--though you may not think it--know the case. You may
consider that you do, but you do not, Joseph. For you do not know that
Uncle Pumblechook, being sensible that for anything we can tell, this
boy's fortune may be made by his going to Miss Havisham's, has offered
to take him into town to-night in his own chaise-cart, and to keep
him to-night, and to take him with his own hands to Miss Havisham's
to-morrow morning. And Lor-a-mussy me!" cried my sister, casting off her
bonnet in sudden desperation, "here I stand talking to mere Mooncalfs,
with Uncle Pumblechook waiting, and the mare catching cold at the door,
and the boy grimed with crock and dirt from the hair of his head to the
sole of his foot!"
With that, she pounced upon me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my face was
squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put under taps of
water-butts, and I was soaped, and kneaded, and towelled, and thumped,
and harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite beside myself. (I
may here remark that I suppose myself to be better acquainted than
any living authority, with the ridgy effect of a wedding-ring, passing
unsympathetically over the human countenance.)
When my ablutions were completed, I was put into clean linen of the
stiffest character, like a young penitent into sackcloth, and was
trussed up in my tightest and fearfullest suit. I was then delivered
over to Mr. Pumblechook, who formally received me as if he were the
Sheriff, and who let off upon me the speech that I knew he had been
dying to make all along: "Boy, be forever grateful to all friends, but
especially unto them which brought you up by hand!"
"Good-bye, Joe!"
"God bless you, Pip, old chap!"
I had never parted from him before, and what with my feelings and what
with soapsuds, I could at first see no stars from the chaise-cart.
But they twinkled out one by one, without throwing any light on the
questions why on earth I was going to play at Miss Havisham's, and what
on earth I was expected to play at.
Chapter VIII
Mr. Pumblechook's premises in the High Street of the market town,
were of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of a
cornchandler and seedsman should be. It appeared to me that he must be a
very happy man indeed, to have so many little drawers in his shop; and
I wondered when I peeped into one or two on the lower tiers, and saw the
tied-up brown paper packets inside, whether the flower-seeds and bulbs
ever wanted of a fine day to break out of those jails, and bloom.
It was in the early morning after my arrival that I entertained this
speculation. On the previous night, I had been sent straight to bed in
an attic with a sloping roof, which was so low in the corner where the
bedstead was, that I calculated the tiles as being within a foot of my
eyebrows. In the same early morning, I discovered a singular affinity
between seeds and corduroys. Mr. Pumblechook wore corduroys, and so did
his shopman; and somehow, there was a general air and flavor about the
corduroys, so much in the nature of seeds, and a general air and flavor
about the seeds, so much in the nature of corduroys, that I hardly knew
which was which. The same opportunity served me for noticing that Mr.
Pumblechook appeared to conduct his business by looking across the
street at the saddler, who appeared to transact his business by keeping
his eye on the coachmaker, who appeared to get on in life by putting his
hands in his pockets and contemplating the baker, who in his turn folded
his arms and stared at the grocer, who stood at his door and yawned at
the chemist. The watchmaker, always poring over a little desk with
a magnifying-glass at his eye, and always inspected by a group of
smock-frocks poring over him through the glass of his shop-window,
seemed to be about the only person in the High Street whose trade
engaged his attention.
Mr. Pumblechook and I breakfasted at eight o'clock in the parlor behind
the shop, while the shopman took his mug of tea and hunch of bread
and butter on a sack of peas in the front premises. I considered Mr.
Pumblechook wretched company. Besides being possessed by my sister's
idea that a mortifying and penitential character ought to be imparted
to my diet,--besides giving me as much crumb as possible in combination
with as little butter, and putting such a quantity of warm water into
my milk that it would have been more candid to have left the milk out
altogether,--his conversation consisted of nothing but arithmetic. On
my politely bidding him Good morning, he said, pompously, "Seven times
nine, boy?" And how should I be able to answer, dodged in that way, in
a strange place, on an empty stomach! I was hungry, but before I had
swallowed a morsel, he began a running sum that lasted all through the
breakfast. "Seven?" "And four?" "And eight?" "And six?" "And two?" "And
ten?" And so on. And after each figure was disposed of, it was as much
as I could do to get a bite or a sup, before the next came; while he sat
at his ease guessing nothing, and eating bacon and hot roll, in (if I
may be allowed the expression) a gorging and gormandizing manner.
For such reasons, I was very glad when ten o'clock came and we started
for Miss Havisham's; though I was not at all at my ease regarding the
manner in which I should acquit myself under that lady's roof. Within
a quarter of an hour we came to Miss Havisham's house, which was of old
brick, and dismal, and had a great many iron bars to it. Some of the
windows had been walled up; of those that remained, all the lower were
rustily barred. There was a courtyard in front, and that was barred; so
we had to wait, after ringing the bell, until some one should come
to open it. While we waited at the gate, I peeped in (even then Mr.
Pumblechook said, "And fourteen?" but I pretended not to hear him), and
saw that at the side of the house there was a large brewery. No brewing
was going on in it, and none seemed to have gone on for a long long
time.
A window was raised, and a clear voice demanded "What name?" To which my
conductor replied, "Pumblechook." The voice returned, "Quite right," and
the window was shut again, and a young lady came across the court-yard,
with keys in her hand.
"This," said Mr. Pumblechook, "is Pip."
"This is Pip, is it?" returned the young lady, who was very pretty and
seemed very proud; "come in, Pip."
Mr. Pumblechook was coming in also, when she stopped him with the gate.
"Oh!" she said. "Did you wish to see Miss Havisham?"
"If Miss Havisham wished to see me," returned Mr. Pumblechook,
discomfited.
"Ah!" said the girl; "but you see she don't."
She said it so finally, and in such an undiscussible way, that Mr.
Pumblechook, though in a condition of ruffled dignity, could not
protest. But he eyed me severely,--as if I had done anything to
him!--and departed with the words reproachfully delivered: "Boy! Let
your behavior here be a credit unto them which brought you up by hand!"
I was not free from apprehension that he would come back to propound
through the gate, "And sixteen?" But he didn't.
My young conductress locked the gate, and we went across the courtyard.
It was paved and clean, but grass was growing in every crevice. The
brewery buildings had a little lane of communication with it, and the
wooden gates of that lane stood open, and all the brewery beyond stood
open, away to the high enclosing wall; and all was empty and disused.
The cold wind seemed to blow colder there than outside the gate; and
it made a shrill noise in howling in and out at the open sides of the
brewery, like the noise of wind in the rigging of a ship at sea.
She saw me looking at it, and she said, "You could drink without hurt
all the strong beer that's brewed there now, boy."
"I should think I could, miss," said I, in a shy way.
"Better not try to brew beer there now, or it would turn out sour, boy;
don't you think so?"
"It looks like it, miss."
"Not that anybody means to try," she added, "for that's all done with,
and the place will stand as idle as it is till it falls. As to strong
beer, there's enough of it in the cellars already, to drown the Manor
House."
"Is that the name of this house, miss?"
"One of its names, boy."
"It has more than one, then, miss?"
"One more. Its other name was Satis; which is Greek, or Latin, or
Hebrew, or all three--or all one to me--for enough."
"Enough House," said I; "that's a curious name, miss."
"Yes," she replied; "but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it
was given, that whoever had this house could want nothing else. They
must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should think. But don't
loiter, boy."
Though she called me "boy" so often, and with a carelessness that was
far from complimentary, she was of about my own age. She seemed much
older than I, of course, being a girl, and beautiful and self-possessed;
and she was as scornful of me as if she had been one-and-twenty, and a
queen.
We went into the house by a side door, the great front entrance had two
chains across it outside,--and the first thing I noticed was, that the
passages were all dark, and that she had left a candle burning there.
She took it up, and we went through more passages and up a staircase,
and still it was all dark, and only the candle lighted us.
At last we came to the door of a room, and she said, "Go in."
I answered, more in shyness than politeness, "After you, miss."
To this she returned: "Don't be ridiculous, boy; I am not going in." And
scornfully walked away, and--what was worse--took the candle with her.
This was very uncomfortable, and I was half afraid. However, the only
thing to be done being to knock at the door, I knocked, and was told
from within to enter. I entered, therefore, and found myself in a pretty
large room, well lighted with wax candles. No glimpse of daylight was to
be seen in it. It was a dressing-room, as I supposed from the furniture,
though much of it was of forms and uses then quite unknown to me. But
prominent in it was a draped table with a gilded looking-glass, and that
I made out at first sight to be a fine lady's dressing-table.
Whether I should have made out this object so soon if there had been no
fine lady sitting at it, I cannot say. In an arm-chair, with an
elbow resting on the table and her head leaning on that hand, sat the
strangest lady I have ever seen, or shall ever see.
She was dressed in rich materials,--satins, and lace, and silks,--all
of white. Her shoes were white. And she had a long white veil dependent
from her hair, and she had bridal flowers in her hair, but her hair was
white. Some bright jewels sparkled on her neck and on her hands, and
some other jewels lay sparkling on the table. Dresses, less splendid
than the dress she wore, and half-packed trunks, were scattered about.
She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on,--the
other was on the table near her hand,--her veil was but half arranged,
her watch and chain were not put on, and some lace for her bosom lay
with those trinkets, and with her handkerchief, and gloves, and
some flowers, and a Prayer-Book all confusedly heaped about the
looking-glass.
It was not in the first few moments that I saw all these things, though
I saw more of them in the first moments than might be supposed. But I
saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been
white long ago, and had lost its lustre and was faded and yellow. I saw
that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and
like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her
sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure
of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose had
shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly
waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage
lying in state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches
to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress that had been dug out of
a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to
have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if
I could.
"Who is it?" said the lady at the table.
"Pip, ma'am."
"Pip?"
"Mr. Pumblechook's boy, ma'am. Come--to play."
"Come nearer; let me look at you. Come close."
It was when I stood before her, avoiding her eyes, that I took note of
the surrounding objects in detail, and saw that her watch had stopped
at twenty minutes to nine, and that a clock in the room had stopped at
twenty minutes to nine.
"Look at me," said Miss Havisham. "You are not afraid of a woman who has
never seen the sun since you were born?"
I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie
comprehended in the answer "No."
"Do you know what I touch here?" she said, laying her hands, one upon
the other, on her left side.
"Yes, ma'am." (It made me think of the young man.)
"What do I touch?"
"Your heart."
"Broken!"
She uttered the word with an eager look, and with strong emphasis, and
with a weird smile that had a kind of boast in it. Afterwards she kept
her hands there for a little while, and slowly took them away as if they
were heavy.
"I am tired," said Miss Havisham. "I want diversion, and I have done
with men and women. Play."
I think it will be conceded by my most disputatious reader, that she
could hardly have directed an unfortunate boy to do anything in the wide
world more difficult to be done under the circumstances.
"I sometimes have sick fancies," she went on, "and I have a sick fancy
that I want to see some play. There, there!" with an impatient movement
of the fingers of her right hand; "play, play, play!"
For a moment, with the fear of my sister's working me before my eyes, I
had a desperate idea of starting round the room in the assumed character
of Mr. Pumblechook's chaise-cart. But I felt myself so unequal to the
performance that I gave it up, and stood looking at Miss Havisham in
what I suppose she took for a dogged manner, inasmuch as she said, when
we had taken a good look at each other,--
"Are you sullen and obstinate?"
"No, ma'am, I am very sorry for you, and very sorry I can't play just
now. If you complain of me I shall get into trouble with my sister, so
I would do it if I could; but it's so new here, and so strange, and so
fine,--and melancholy--." I stopped, fearing I might say too much, or
had already said it, and we took another look at each other.
Before she spoke again, she turned her eyes from me, and looked at the
dress she wore, and at the dressing-table, and finally at herself in the
looking-glass.
"So new to him," she muttered, "so old to me; so strange to him, so
familiar to me; so melancholy to both of us! Call Estella."
As she was still looking at the reflection of herself, I thought she was
still talking to herself, and kept quiet.
"Call Estella," she repeated, flashing a look at me. "You can do that.
Call Estella. At the door."
To stand in the dark in a mysterious passage of an unknown house,
bawling Estella to a scornful young lady neither visible nor responsive,
and feeling it a dreadful liberty so to roar out her name, was almost
as bad as playing to order. But she answered at last, and her light came
along the dark passage like a star.
Miss Havisham beckoned her to come close, and took up a jewel from the
table, and tried its effect upon her fair young bosom and against her
pretty brown hair. "Your own, one day, my dear, and you will use it
well. Let me see you play cards with this boy."
"With this boy? Why, he is a common laboring boy!"
I thought I overheard Miss Havisham answer,--only it seemed so
unlikely,--"Well? You can break his heart."
"What do you play, boy?" asked Estella of myself, with the greatest
disdain.
"Nothing but beggar my neighbor, miss."
"Beggar him," said Miss Havisham to Estella. So we sat down to cards.
It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had
stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that
Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had
taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table
again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never
been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent,
and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been
trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still
of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on
the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long
veil so like a shroud.
So she sat, corpse-like, as we played at cards; the frillings and
trimmings on her bridal dress, looking like earthy paper. I knew nothing
then of the discoveries that are occasionally made of bodies buried in
ancient times, which fall to powder in the moment of being distinctly
seen; but, I have often thought since, that she must have looked as if
the admission of the natural light of day would have struck her to dust.
"He calls the knaves Jacks, this boy!" said Estella with disdain, before
our first game was out. "And what coarse hands he has! And what thick
boots!"
I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began
to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so
strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.
She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural, when I
knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she denounced me for
a stupid, clumsy laboring-boy.
"You say nothing of her," remarked Miss Havisham to me, as she looked
on. "She says many hard things of you, but you say nothing of her. What
do you think of her?"
"I don't like to say," I stammered.
"Tell me in my ear," said Miss Havisham, bending down.
"I think she is very proud," I replied, in a whisper.
"Anything else?"
"I think she is very pretty."
"Anything else?"
"I think she is very insulting." (She was looking at me then with a look
of supreme aversion.)
"Anything else?"
"I think I should like to go home."
"And never see her again, though she is so pretty?"
"I am not sure that I shouldn't like to see her again, but I should like
to go home now."
"You shall go soon," said Miss Havisham, aloud. "Play the game out."
Saving for the one weird smile at first, I should have felt almost
sure that Miss Havisham's face could not smile. It had dropped into a
watchful and brooding expression,--most likely when all the things about
her had become transfixed,--and it looked as if nothing could ever lift
it up again. Her chest had dropped, so that she stooped; and her voice
had dropped, so that she spoke low, and with a dead lull upon her;
altogether, she had the appearance of having dropped body and soul,
within and without, under the weight of a crushing blow.
I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me. She
threw the cards down on the table when she had won them all, as if she
despised them for having been won of me.
"When shall I have you here again?" said Miss Havisham. "Let me think."
I was beginning to remind her that to-day was Wednesday, when she
checked me with her former impatient movement of the fingers of her
right hand.
"There, there! I know nothing of days of the week; I know nothing of
weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You hear?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat, and let him roam
and look about him while he eats. Go, Pip."
I followed the candle down, as I had followed the candle up, and she
stood it in the place where we had found it. Until she opened the
side entrance, I had fancied, without thinking about it, that it must
necessarily be night-time. The rush of the daylight quite confounded me,
and made me feel as if I had been in the candlelight of the strange room
many hours.
"You are to wait here, you boy," said Estella; and disappeared and
closed the door.
I took the opportunity of being alone in the courtyard to look at my
coarse hands and my common boots. My opinion of those accessories was
not favorable. They had never troubled me before, but they troubled
me now, as vulgar appendages. I determined to ask Joe why he had ever
taught me to call those picture-cards Jacks, which ought to be called
knaves. I wished Joe had been rather more genteelly brought up, and then
I should have been so too.
She came back, with some bread and meat and a little mug of beer. She
put the mug down on the stones of the yard, and gave me the bread
and meat without looking at me, as insolently as if I were a dog in
disgrace. I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry,--I
cannot hit upon the right name for the smart--God knows what its name
was,--that tears started to my eyes. The moment they sprang there, the
girl looked at me with a quick delight in having been the cause of them.
This gave me power to keep them back and to look at her: so, she gave a
contemptuous toss--but with a sense, I thought, of having made too sure
that I was so wounded--and left me.
But when she was gone, I looked about me for a place to hide my face
in, and got behind one of the gates in the brewery-lane, and leaned my
sleeve against the wall there, and leaned my forehead on it and cried.
As I cried, I kicked the wall, and took a hard twist at my hair; so
bitter were my feelings, and so sharp was the smart without a name, that
needed counteraction.
My sister's bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in
which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is
nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. It may be
only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child
is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many
hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within
myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with
injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my
sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had
cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand gave her
no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces,
fasts, and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed
this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and
unprotected way, I in great part refer the fact that I was morally timid
and very sensitive.
I got rid of my injured feelings for the time by kicking them into the
brewery wall, and twisting them out of my hair, and then I smoothed my
face with my sleeve, and came from behind the gate. The bread and meat
were acceptable, and the beer was warming and tingling, and I was soon
in spirits to look about me.
To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the pigeon-house in the
brewery-yard, which had been blown crooked on its pole by some high
wind, and would have made the pigeons think themselves at sea, if there
had been any pigeons there to be rocked by it. But there were no pigeons
in the dove-cot, no horses in the stable, no pigs in the sty, no malt in
the storehouse, no smells of grains and beer in the copper or the vat.
All the uses and scents of the brewery might have evaporated with its
last reek of smoke. In a by-yard, there was a wilderness of empty casks,
which had a certain sour remembrance of better days lingering about
them; but it was too sour to be accepted as a sample of the beer that
was gone,--and in this respect I remember those recluses as being like
most others.
Behind the furthest end of the brewery, was a rank garden with an old
wall; not so high but that I could struggle up and hold on long enough
to look over it, and see that the rank garden was the garden of the
house, and that it was overgrown with tangled weeds, but that there was
a track upon the green and yellow paths, as if some one sometimes walked
there, and that Estella was walking away from me even then. But she
seemed to be everywhere. For when I yielded to the temptation presented
by the casks, and began to walk on them, I saw her walking on them at
the end of the yard of casks. She had her back towards me, and held her
pretty brown hair spread out in her two hands, and never looked round,
and passed out of my view directly. So, in the brewery itself,--by which
I mean the large paved lofty place in which they used to make the beer,
and where the brewing utensils still were. When I first went into it,
and, rather oppressed by its gloom, stood near the door looking about
me, I saw her pass among the extinguished fires, and ascend some light
iron stairs, and go out by a gallery high overhead, as if she were going
out into the sky.
It was in this place, and at this moment, that a strange thing happened
to my fancy. I thought it a strange thing then, and I thought it a
stranger thing long afterwards. I turned my eyes--a little dimmed by
looking up at the frosty light--towards a great wooden beam in a low
nook of the building near me on my right hand, and I saw a figure
hanging there by the neck. A figure all in yellow white, with but
one shoe to the feet; and it hung so, that I could see that the faded
trimmings of the dress were like earthy paper, and that the face was
Miss Havisham's, with a movement going over the whole countenance as if
she were trying to call to me. In the terror of seeing the figure,
and in the terror of being certain that it had not been there a moment
before, I at first ran from it, and then ran towards it. And my terror
was greatest of all when I found no figure there.
Nothing less than the frosty light of the cheerful sky, the sight of
people passing beyond the bars of the court-yard gate, and the reviving
influence of the rest of the bread and meat and beer, would have brought
me round. Even with those aids, I might not have come to myself as soon
as I did, but that I saw Estella approaching with the keys, to let
me out. She would have some fair reason for looking down upon me, I
thought, if she saw me frightened; and she would have no fair reason.
She gave me a triumphant glance in passing me, as if she rejoiced that
my hands were so coarse and my boots were so thick, and she opened the
gate, and stood holding it. I was passing out without looking at her,
when she touched me with a taunting hand.
"Why don't you cry?"
"Because I don't want to."
"You do," said she. "You have been crying till you are half blind, and
you are near crying again now."
She laughed contemptuously, pushed me out, and locked the gate upon me.
I went straight to Mr. Pumblechook's, and was immensely relieved to find
him not at home. So, leaving word with the shopman on what day I was
wanted at Miss Havisham's again, I set off on the four-mile walk to
our forge; pondering, as I went along, on all I had seen, and deeply
revolving that I was a common laboring-boy; that my hands were coarse;
that my boots were thick; that I had fallen into a despicable habit
of calling knaves Jacks; that I was much more ignorant than I had
considered myself last night, and generally that I was in a low-lived
bad way.
Chapter IX
When I reached home, my sister was very curious to know all about Miss
Havisham's, and asked a number of questions. And I soon found myself
getting heavily bumped from behind in the nape of the neck and the small
of the back, and having my face ignominiously shoved against the kitchen
wall, because I did not answer those questions at sufficient length.
If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of other
young people to anything like the extent to which it used to be hidden
in mine,--which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason
to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity,--it is the key to many
reservations. I felt convinced that if I described Miss Havisham's as my
eyes had seen it, I should not be understood. Not only that, but I felt
convinced that Miss Havisham too would not be understood; and although
she was perfectly incomprehensible to me, I entertained an impression
that there would be something coarse and treacherous in my dragging
her as she really was (to say nothing of Miss Estella) before the
contemplation of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I could,
and had my face shoved against the kitchen wall.
The worst of it was that that bullying old Pumblechook, preyed upon by
a devouring curiosity to be informed of all I had seen and heard, came
gaping over in his chaise-cart at tea-time, to have the details divulged
to him. And the mere sight of the torment, with his fishy eyes and mouth
open, his sandy hair inquisitively on end, and his waistcoat heaving
with windy arithmetic, made me vicious in my reticence.
"Well, boy," Uncle Pumblechook began, as soon as he was seated in the
chair of honor by the fire. "How did you get on up town?"
I answered, "Pretty well, sir," and my sister shook her fist at me.
"Pretty well?" Mr. Pumblechook repeated. "Pretty well is no answer. Tell
us what you mean by pretty well, boy?"
Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy
perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on my forehead, my
obstinacy was adamantine. I reflected for some time, and then answered
as if I had discovered a new idea, "I mean pretty well."
My sister with an exclamation of impatience was going to fly at me,--I
had no shadow of defence, for Joe was busy in the forge,--when Mr.
Pumblechook interposed with "No! Don't lose your temper. Leave this
lad to me, ma'am; leave this lad to me." Mr. Pumblechook then turned me
towards him, as if he were going to cut my hair, and said,--
"First (to get our thoughts in order): Forty-three pence?"
I calculated the consequences of replying "Four Hundred Pound," and
finding them against me, went as near the answer as I could--which was
somewhere about eightpence off. Mr. Pumblechook then put me through my
pence-table from "twelve pence make one shilling," up to "forty pence
make three and fourpence," and then triumphantly demanded, as if he had
done for me, "Now! How much is forty-three pence?" To which I replied,
after a long interval of reflection, "I don't know." And I was so
aggravated that I almost doubt if I did know.
Mr. Pumblechook worked his head like a screw to screw it out of me,
and said, "Is forty-three pence seven and sixpence three fardens, for
instance?"
"Yes!" said I. And although my sister instantly boxed my ears, it was
highly gratifying to me to see that the answer spoilt his joke, and
brought him to a dead stop.
"Boy! What like is Miss Havisham?" Mr. Pumblechook began again when
he had recovered; folding his arms tight on his chest and applying the
screw.
"Very tall and dark," I told him.
"Is she, uncle?" asked my sister.
Mr. Pumblechook winked assent; from which I at once inferred that he had
never seen Miss Havisham, for she was nothing of the kind.
"Good!" said Mr. Pumblechook conceitedly. ("This is the way to have him!
We are beginning to hold our own, I think, Mum?")
"I am sure, uncle," returned Mrs. Joe, "I wish you had him always; you
know so well how to deal with him."
"Now, boy! What was she a doing of, when you went in today?" asked Mr.
Pumblechook.
"She was sitting," I answered, "in a black velvet coach."
Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another--as they well
might--and both repeated, "In a black velvet coach?"
"Yes," said I. "And Miss Estella--that's her niece, I think--handed her
in cake and wine at the coach-window, on a gold plate. And we all had
cake and wine on gold plates. And I got up behind the coach to eat mine,
because she told me to."
"Was anybody else there?" asked Mr. Pumblechook.
"Four dogs," said I.
"Large or small?"
"Immense," said I. "And they fought for veal-cutlets out of a silver
basket."
Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another again, in utter
amazement. I was perfectly frantic,--a reckless witness under the
torture,--and would have told them anything.
"Where was this coach, in the name of gracious?" asked my sister.
"In Miss Havisham's room." They stared again. "But there weren't any
horses to it." I added this saving clause, in the moment of rejecting
four richly caparisoned coursers which I had had wild thoughts of
harnessing.
"Can this be possible, uncle?" asked Mrs. Joe. "What can the boy mean?"
"I'll tell you, Mum," said Mr. Pumblechook. "My opinion is, it's a
sedan-chair. She's flighty, you know,--very flighty,--quite flighty
enough to pass her days in a sedan-chair."
"Did you ever see her in it, uncle?" asked Mrs. Joe.
"How could I," he returned, forced to the admission, "when I never see
her in my life? Never clapped eyes upon her!"
"Goodness, uncle! And yet you have spoken to her?"
"Why, don't you know," said Mr. Pumblechook, testily, "that when I have
been there, I have been took up to the outside of her door, and the door
has stood ajar, and she has spoke to me that way. Don't say you don't
know that, Mum. Howsever, the boy went there to play. What did you play
at, boy?"
"We played with flags," I said. (I beg to observe that I think of myself
with amazement, when I recall the lies I told on this occasion.)
"Flags!" echoed my sister.
"Yes," said I. "Estella waved a blue flag, and I waved a red one, and
Miss Havisham waved one sprinkled all over with little gold stars, out
at the coach-window. And then we all waved our swords and hurrahed."
"Swords!" repeated my sister. "Where did you get swords from?"
"Out of a cupboard," said I. "And I saw pistols in it,--and jam,--and
pills. And there was no daylight in the room, but it was all lighted up
with candles."
"That's true, Mum," said Mr. Pumblechook, with a grave nod. "That's the
state of the case, for that much I've seen myself." And then they
both stared at me, and I, with an obtrusive show of artlessness on my
countenance, stared at them, and plaited the right leg of my trousers
with my right hand.
If they had asked me any more questions, I should undoubtedly have
betrayed myself, for I was even then on the point of mentioning that
there was a balloon in the yard, and should have hazarded the statement
but for my invention being divided between that phenomenon and a bear
in the brewery. They were so much occupied, however, in discussing the
marvels I had already presented for their consideration, that I escaped.
The subject still held them when Joe came in from his work to have a cup
of tea. To whom my sister, more for the relief of her own mind than for
the gratification of his, related my pretended experiences.
Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes and roll them all round the
kitchen in helpless amazement, I was overtaken by penitence; but only as
regarded him,--not in the least as regarded the other two. Towards
Joe, and Joe only, I considered myself a young monster, while they sat
debating what results would come to me from Miss Havisham's acquaintance
and favor. They had no doubt that Miss Havisham would "do something"
for me; their doubts related to the form that something would take.
My sister stood out for "property." Mr. Pumblechook was in favor of a
handsome premium for binding me apprentice to some genteel trade,--say,
the corn and seed trade, for instance. Joe fell into the deepest
disgrace with both, for offering the bright suggestion that I might only
be presented with one of the dogs who had fought for the veal-cutlets.
"If a fool's head can't express better opinions than that," said my
sister, "and you have got any work to do, you had better go and do it."
So he went.
After Mr. Pumblechook had driven off, and when my sister was washing up,
I stole into the forge to Joe, and remained by him until he had done for
the night. Then I said, "Before the fire goes out, Joe, I should like to
tell you something."
"Should you, Pip?" said Joe, drawing his shoeing-stool near the forge.
"Then tell us. What is it, Pip?"
"Joe," said I, taking hold of his rolled-up shirt sleeve, and twisting
it between my finger and thumb, "you remember all that about Miss
Havisham's?"
"Remember?" said Joe. "I believe you! Wonderful!"
"It's a terrible thing, Joe; it ain't true."
"What are you telling of, Pip?" cried Joe, falling back in the greatest
amazement. "You don't mean to say it's--"
"Yes I do; it's lies, Joe."
"But not all of it? Why sure you don't mean to say, Pip, that there was
no black welwet co--eh?" For, I stood shaking my head. "But at least
there was dogs, Pip? Come, Pip," said Joe, persuasively, "if there
warn't no weal-cutlets, at least there was dogs?"
"No, Joe."
"A dog?" said Joe. "A puppy? Come?"
"No, Joe, there was nothing at all of the kind."
As I fixed my eyes hopelessly on Joe, Joe contemplated me in dismay.
"Pip, old chap! This won't do, old fellow! I say! Where do you expect to
go to?"
"It's terrible, Joe; ain't it?"
"Terrible?" cried Joe. "Awful! What possessed you?"
"I don't know what possessed me, Joe," I replied, letting his shirt
sleeve go, and sitting down in the ashes at his feet, hanging my head;
"but I wish you hadn't taught me to call Knaves at cards Jacks; and I
wish my boots weren't so thick nor my hands so coarse."
And then I told Joe that I felt very miserable, and that I hadn't been
able to explain myself to Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, who were so rude to
me, and that there had been a beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham's
who was dreadfully proud, and that she had said I was common, and that I
knew I was common, and that I wished I was not common, and that the lies
had come of it somehow, though I didn't know how.
This was a case of metaphysics, at least as difficult for Joe to deal
with as for me. But Joe took the case altogether out of the region of
metaphysics, and by that means vanquished it.
"There's one thing you may be sure of, Pip," said Joe, after some
rumination, "namely, that lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn't
ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, and work round to
the same. Don't you tell no more of 'em, Pip. That ain't the way to get
out of being common, old chap. And as to being common, I don't make
it out at all clear. You are oncommon in some things. You're oncommon
small. Likewise you're a oncommon scholar."
"No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe."
"Why, see what a letter you wrote last night! Wrote in print even! I've
seen letters--Ah! and from gentlefolks!--that I'll swear weren't wrote
in print," said Joe.
"I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You think much of me. It's only
that."
"Well, Pip," said Joe, "be it so or be it son't, you must be a common
scholar afore you can be a oncommon one, I should hope! The king upon
his throne, with his crown upon his ed, can't sit and write his acts
of Parliament in print, without having begun, when he were a unpromoted
Prince, with the alphabet.--Ah!" added Joe, with a shake of the head
that was full of meaning, "and begun at A too, and worked his way to Z.
And I know what that is to do, though I can't say I've exactly done it."
There was some hope in this piece of wisdom, and it rather encouraged
me.
"Whether common ones as to callings and earnings," pursued Joe,
reflectively, "mightn't be the better of continuing for to keep
company with common ones, instead of going out to play with oncommon
ones,--which reminds me to hope that there were a flag, perhaps?"
"No, Joe."
"(I'm sorry there weren't a flag, Pip). Whether that might be or
mightn't be, is a thing as can't be looked into now, without putting
your sister on the Rampage; and that's a thing not to be thought of as
being done intentional. Lookee here, Pip, at what is said to you by a
true friend. Which this to you the true friend say. If you can't get to
be oncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through
going crooked. So don't tell no more on 'em, Pip, and live well and die
happy."
"You are not angry with me, Joe?"
"No, old chap. But bearing in mind that them were which I meantersay
of a stunning and outdacious sort,--alluding to them which bordered on
weal-cutlets and dog-fighting,--a sincere well-wisher would adwise, Pip,
their being dropped into your meditations, when you go upstairs to bed.
That's all, old chap, and don't never do it no more."
When I got up to my little room and said my prayers, I did not forget
Joe's recommendation, and yet my young mind was in that disturbed and
unthankful state, that I thought long after I laid me down, how common
Estella would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith; how thick his boots, and
how coarse his hands. I thought how Joe and my sister were then sitting
in the kitchen, and how I had come up to bed from the kitchen, and how
Miss Havisham and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far above the
level of such common doings. I fell asleep recalling what I "used to
do" when I was at Miss Havisham's; as though I had been there weeks or
months, instead of hours; and as though it were quite an old subject of
remembrance, instead of one that had arisen only that day.
That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it
is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it,
and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read
this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold,
of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the
formation of the first link on one memorable day.
Chapter X
The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two later when I woke,
that the best step I could take towards making myself uncommon was to
get out of Biddy everything she knew. In pursuance of this luminous
conception I mentioned to Biddy when I went to Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's
at night, that I had a particular reason for wishing to get on in life,
and that I should feel very much obliged to her if she would impart
all her learning to me. Biddy, who was the most obliging of girls,
immediately said she would, and indeed began to carry out her promise
within five minutes.
The Educational scheme or Course established by Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt
may be resolved into the following synopsis. The pupils ate apples
and put straws down one another's backs, until Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt
collected her energies, and made an indiscriminate totter at them with
a birch-rod. After receiving the charge with every mark of derision, the
pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to
hand. The book had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and
a little spelling,--that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this
volume began to circulate, Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt fell into a state of
coma, arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils then
entered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the subject
of Boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the hardest upon
whose toes. This mental exercise lasted until Biddy made a rush at
them and distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped as if they had been
unskilfully cut off the chump end of something), more illegibly printed
at the best than any curiosities of literature I have since met with,
speckled all over with ironmould, and having various specimens of the
insect world smashed between their leaves. This part of the Course was
usually lightened by several single combats between Biddy and refractory
students. When the fights were over, Biddy gave out the number of a
page, and then we all read aloud what we could,--or what we couldn't--in
a frightful chorus; Biddy leading with a high, shrill, monotonous voice,
and none of us having the least notion of, or reverence for, what we
were reading about. When this horrible din had lasted a certain time,
it mechanically awoke Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt, who staggered at a boy
fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was understood to terminate
the Course for the evening, and we emerged into the air with shrieks of
intellectual victory. It is fair to remark that there was no prohibition
against any pupil's entertaining himself with a slate or even with the
ink (when there was any), but that it was not easy to pursue that branch
of study in the winter season, on account of the little general shop
in which the classes were holden--and which was also Mr. Wopsle's
great-aunt's sitting-room and bedchamber--being but faintly illuminated
through the agency of one low-spirited dip-candle and no snuffers.
It appeared to me that it would take time to become uncommon, under
these circumstances: nevertheless, I resolved to try it, and that
very evening Biddy entered on our special agreement, by imparting some
information from her little catalogue of Prices, under the head of moist
sugar, and lending me, to copy at home, a large old English D which she
had imitated from the heading of some newspaper, and which I supposed,
until she told me what it was, to be a design for a buckle.
Of course there was a public-house in the village, and of course Joe
liked sometimes to smoke his pipe there. I had received strict orders
from my sister to call for him at the Three Jolly Bargemen, that
evening, on my way from school, and bring him home at my peril. To the
Three Jolly Bargemen, therefore, I directed my steps.
There was a bar at the Jolly Bargemen, with some alarmingly long chalk
scores in it on the wall at the side of the door, which seemed to me to
be never paid off. They had been there ever since I could remember, and
had grown more than I had. But there was a quantity of chalk about our
country, and perhaps the people neglected no opportunity of turning it
to account.
It being Saturday night, I found the landlord looking rather grimly
at these records; but as my business was with Joe and not with him, I
merely wished him good evening, and passed into the common room at the
end of the passage, where there was a bright large kitchen fire,
and where Joe was smoking his pipe in company with Mr. Wopsle and a
stranger. Joe greeted me as usual with "Halloa, Pip, old chap!" and the
moment he said that, the stranger turned his head and looked at me.
He was a secret-looking man whom I had never seen before. His head was
all on one side, and one of his eyes was half shut up, as if he were
taking aim at something with an invisible gun. He had a pipe in his
mouth, and he took it out, and, after slowly blowing all his smoke away
and looking hard at me all the time, nodded. So, I nodded, and then he
nodded again, and made room on the settle beside him that I might sit
down there.
But as I was used to sit beside Joe whenever I entered that place of
resort, I said "No, thank you, sir," and fell into the space Joe made
for me on the opposite settle. The strange man, after glancing at Joe,
and seeing that his attention was otherwise engaged, nodded to me again
when I had taken my seat, and then rubbed his leg--in a very odd way, as
it struck me.
"You was saying," said the strange man, turning to Joe, "that you was a
blacksmith."
"Yes. I said it, you know," said Joe.
"What'll you drink, Mr.--? You didn't mention your name, by the bye."
Joe mentioned it now, and the strange man called him by it. "What'll you
drink, Mr. Gargery? At my expense? To top up with?"
"Well," said Joe, "to tell you the truth, I ain't much in the habit of
drinking at anybody's expense but my own."
"Habit? No," returned the stranger, "but once and away, and on a
Saturday night too. Come! Put a name to it, Mr. Gargery."
"I wouldn't wish to be stiff company," said Joe. "Rum."
"Rum," repeated the stranger. "And will the other gentleman originate a
sentiment."
"Rum," said Mr. Wopsle.
"Three Rums!" cried the stranger, calling to the landlord. "Glasses
round!"
"This other gentleman," observed Joe, by way of introducing Mr. Wopsle,
"is a gentleman that you would like to hear give it out. Our clerk at
church."
"Aha!" said the stranger, quickly, and cocking his eye at me. "The
lonely church, right out on the marshes, with graves round it!"
"That's it," said Joe.
The stranger, with a comfortable kind of grunt over his pipe, put
his legs up on the settle that he had to himself. He wore a flapping
broad-brimmed traveller's hat, and under it a handkerchief tied over his
head in the manner of a cap: so that he showed no hair. As he looked
at the fire, I thought I saw a cunning expression, followed by a
half-laugh, come into his face.
"I am not acquainted with this country, gentlemen, but it seems a
solitary country towards the river."
"Most marshes is solitary," said Joe.
"No doubt, no doubt. Do you find any gypsies, now, or tramps, or
vagrants of any sort, out there?"
"No," said Joe; "none but a runaway convict now and then. And we don't
find them, easy. Eh, Mr. Wopsle?"
Mr. Wopsle, with a majestic remembrance of old discomfiture, assented;
but not warmly.
"Seems you have been out after such?" asked the stranger.
"Once," returned Joe. "Not that we wanted to take them, you understand;
we went out as lookers on; me, and Mr. Wopsle, and Pip. Didn't us, Pip?"
"Yes, Joe."
The stranger looked at me again,--still cocking his eye, as if he were
expressly taking aim at me with his invisible gun,--and said, "He's a
likely young parcel of bones that. What is it you call him?"
"Pip," said Joe.
"Christened Pip?"
"No, not christened Pip."
"Surname Pip?"
"No," said Joe, "it's a kind of family name what he gave himself when a
infant, and is called by."
"Son of yours?"
"Well," said Joe, meditatively, not, of course, that it could be in
anywise necessary to consider about it, but because it was the way at
the Jolly Bargemen to seem to consider deeply about everything that was
discussed over pipes,--"well--no. No, he ain't."
"Nevvy?" said the strange man.
"Well," said Joe, with the same appearance of profound cogitation, "he
is not--no, not to deceive you, he is not--my nevvy."
"What the Blue Blazes is he?" asked the stranger. Which appeared to me
to be an inquiry of unnecessary strength.
Mr. Wopsle struck in upon that; as one who knew all about relationships,
having professional occasion to bear in mind what female relations a man
might not marry; and expounded the ties between me and Joe. Having
his hand in, Mr. Wopsle finished off with a most terrifically snarling
passage from Richard the Third, and seemed to think he had done quite
enough to account for it when he added, "--as the poet says."
And here I may remark that when Mr. Wopsle referred to me, he considered
it a necessary part of such reference to rumple my hair and poke it into
my eyes. I cannot conceive why everybody of his standing who visited
at our house should always have put me through the same inflammatory
process under similar circumstances. Yet I do not call to mind that I
was ever in my earlier youth the subject of remark in our social family
circle, but some large-handed person took some such ophthalmic steps to
patronize me.
All this while, the strange man looked at nobody but me, and looked at
me as if he were determined to have a shot at me at last, and bring me
down. But he said nothing after offering his Blue Blazes observation,
until the glasses of rum and water were brought; and then he made his
shot, and a most extraordinary shot it was.
It was not a verbal remark, but a proceeding in dumb-show, and was
pointedly addressed to me. He stirred his rum and water pointedly at me,
and he tasted his rum and water pointedly at me. And he stirred it and
he tasted it; not with a spoon that was brought to him, but with a file.
He did this so that nobody but I saw the file; and when he had done it
he wiped the file and put it in a breast-pocket. I knew it to be
Joe's file, and I knew that he knew my convict, the moment I saw the
instrument. I sat gazing at him, spell-bound. But he now reclined on his
settle, taking very little notice of me, and talking principally about
turnips.
There was a delicious sense of cleaning-up and making a quiet pause
before going on in life afresh, in our village on Saturday nights, which
stimulated Joe to dare to stay out half an hour longer on Saturdays
than at other times. The half-hour and the rum and water running out
together, Joe got up to go, and took me by the hand.
"Stop half a moment, Mr. Gargery," said the strange man. "I think I've
got a bright new shilling somewhere in my pocket, and if I have, the boy
shall have it."
He looked it out from a handful of small change, folded it in some
crumpled paper, and gave it to me. "Yours!" said he. "Mind! Your own."
I thanked him, staring at him far beyond the bounds of good manners,
and holding tight to Joe. He gave Joe good-night, and he gave Mr. Wopsle
good-night (who went out with us), and he gave me only a look with his
aiming eye,--no, not a look, for he shut it up, but wonders may be done
with an eye by hiding it.
On the way home, if I had been in a humor for talking, the talk must
have been all on my side, for Mr. Wopsle parted from us at the door of
the Jolly Bargemen, and Joe went all the way home with his mouth wide
open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible. But I was in
a manner stupefied by this turning up of my old misdeed and old
acquaintance, and could think of nothing else.
My sister was not in a very bad temper when we presented ourselves in
the kitchen, and Joe was encouraged by that unusual circumstance to tell
her about the bright shilling. "A bad un, I'll be bound," said Mrs. Joe
triumphantly, "or he wouldn't have given it to the boy! Let's look at
it."
I took it out of the paper, and it proved to be a good one. "But what's
this?" said Mrs. Joe, throwing down the shilling and catching up the
paper. "Two One-Pound notes?"
Nothing less than two fat sweltering one-pound notes that seemed to have
been on terms of the warmest intimacy with all the cattle-markets in
the county. Joe caught up his hat again, and ran with them to the Jolly
Bargemen to restore them to their owner. While he was gone, I sat down
on my usual stool and looked vacantly at my sister, feeling pretty sure
that the man would not be there.
Presently, Joe came back, saying that the man was gone, but that he,
Joe, had left word at the Three Jolly Bargemen concerning the notes.
Then my sister sealed them up in a piece of paper, and put them under
some dried rose-leaves in an ornamental teapot on the top of a press in
the state parlor. There they remained, a nightmare to me, many and many
a night and day.
I had sadly broken sleep when I got to bed, through thinking of the
strange man taking aim at me with his invisible gun, and of the guiltily
coarse and common thing it was, to be on secret terms of conspiracy with
convicts,--a feature in my low career that I had previously forgotten.
I was haunted by the file too. A dread possessed me that when I least
expected it, the file would reappear. I coaxed myself to sleep by
thinking of Miss Havisham's, next Wednesday; and in my sleep I saw
the file coming at me out of a door, without seeing who held it, and I
screamed myself awake.
Chapter XI
At the appointed time I returned to Miss Havisham's, and my hesitating
ring at the gate brought out Estella. She locked it after admitting
me, as she had done before, and again preceded me into the dark passage
where her candle stood. She took no notice of me until she had the
candle in her hand, when she looked over her shoulder, superciliously
saying, "You are to come this way to-day," and took me to quite another
part of the house.
The passage was a long one, and seemed to pervade the whole square
basement of the Manor House. We traversed but one side of the square,
however, and at the end of it she stopped, and put her candle down and
opened a door. Here, the daylight reappeared, and I found myself in
a small paved courtyard, the opposite side of which was formed by a
detached dwelling-house, that looked as if it had once belonged to the
manager or head clerk of the extinct brewery. There was a clock in the
outer wall of this house. Like the clock in Miss Havisham's room, and
like Miss Havisham's watch, it had stopped at twenty minutes to nine.
We went in at the door, which stood open, and into a gloomy room with a
low ceiling, on the ground-floor at the back. There was some company in
the room, and Estella said to me as she joined it, "You are to go and
stand there boy, till you are wanted." "There", being the window, I
crossed to it, and stood "there," in a very uncomfortable state of mind,
looking out.
It opened to the ground, and looked into a most miserable corner of the
neglected garden, upon a rank ruin of cabbage-stalks, and one box-tree
that had been clipped round long ago, like a pudding, and had a new
growth at the top of it, out of shape and of a different color, as if
that part of the pudding had stuck to the saucepan and got burnt. This
was my homely thought, as I contemplated the box-tree. There had been
some light snow, overnight, and it lay nowhere else to my knowledge;
but, it had not quite melted from the cold shadow of this bit of garden,
and the wind caught it up in little eddies and threw it at the window,
as if it pelted me for coming there.
I divined that my coming had stopped conversation in the room, and that
its other occupants were looking at me. I could see nothing of the room
except the shining of the fire in the window-glass, but I stiffened in
all my joints with the consciousness that I was under close inspection.
There were three ladies in the room and one gentleman. Before I had been
standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that
they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not
to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: because the admission
that he or she did know it, would have made him or her out to be a toady
and humbug.
They all had a listless and dreary air of waiting somebody's pleasure,
and the most talkative of the ladies had to speak quite rigidly to
repress a yawn. This lady, whose name was Camilla, very much reminded
me of my sister, with the difference that she was older, and (as I found
when I caught sight of her) of a blunter cast of features. Indeed, when
I knew her better I began to think it was a Mercy she had any features
at all, so very blank and high was the dead wall of her face.
"Poor dear soul!" said this lady, with an abruptness of manner quite my
sister's. "Nobody's enemy but his own!"
"It would be much more commendable to be somebody else's enemy," said
the gentleman; "far more natural."
"Cousin Raymond," observed another lady, "we are to love our neighbor."
"Sarah Pocket," returned Cousin Raymond, "if a man is not his own
neighbor, who is?"
Miss Pocket laughed, and Camilla laughed and said (checking a yawn),
"The idea!" But I thought they seemed to think it rather a good
idea too. The other lady, who had not spoken yet, said gravely and
emphatically, "Very true!"
"Poor soul!" Camilla presently went on (I knew they had all been looking
at me in the mean time), "he is so very strange! Would anyone believe
that when Tom's wife died, he actually could not be induced to see the
importance of the children's having the deepest of trimmings to their
mourning? 'Good Lord!' says he, 'Camilla, what can it signify so long
as the poor bereaved little things are in black?' So like Matthew! The
idea!"
"Good points in him, good points in him," said Cousin Raymond; "Heaven
forbid I should deny good points in him; but he never had, and he never
will have, any sense of the proprieties."
"You know I was obliged," said Camilla,--"I was obliged to be firm. I
said, 'It WILL NOT DO, for the credit of the family.' I told him that,
without deep trimmings, the family was disgraced. I cried about it from
breakfast till dinner. I injured my digestion. And at last he flung out
in his violent way, and said, with a D, 'Then do as you like.' Thank
Goodness it will always be a consolation to me to know that I instantly
went out in a pouring rain and bought the things."
"He paid for them, did he not?" asked Estella.
"It's not the question, my dear child, who paid for them," returned
Camilla. "I bought them. And I shall often think of that with peace,
when I wake up in the night."
The ringing of a distant bell, combined with the echoing of some cry or
call along the passage by which I had come, interrupted the conversation
and caused Estella to say to me, "Now, boy!" On my turning round, they
all looked at me with the utmost contempt, and, as I went out, I heard
Sarah Pocket say, "Well I am sure! What next!" and Camilla add, with
indignation, "Was there ever such a fancy! The i-de-a!"
As we were going with our candle along the dark passage, Estella stopped
all of a sudden, and, facing round, said in her taunting manner, with
her face quite close to mine,--
"Well?"
"Well, miss?" I answered, almost falling over her and checking myself.
She stood looking at me, and, of course, I stood looking at her.
"Am I pretty?"
"Yes; I think you are very pretty."
"Am I insulting?"
"Not so much so as you were last time," said I.
"Not so much so?"
"No."
She fired when she asked the last question, and she slapped my face with
such force as she had, when I answered it.
"Now?" said she. "You little coarse monster, what do you think of me
now?"
"I shall not tell you."
"Because you are going to tell upstairs. Is that it?"
"No," said I, "that's not it."
"Why don't you cry again, you little wretch?"
"Because I'll never cry for you again," said I. Which was, I suppose, as
false a declaration as ever was made; for I was inwardly crying for her
then, and I know what I know of the pain she cost me afterwards.
We went on our way upstairs after this episode; and, as we were going
up, we met a gentleman groping his way down.
"Whom have we here?" asked the gentleman, stopping and looking at me.
"A boy," said Estella.
He was a burly man of an exceedingly dark complexion, with an
exceedingly large head, and a corresponding large hand. He took my chin
in his large hand and turned up my face to have a look at me by the
light of the candle. He was prematurely bald on the top of his head, and
had bushy black eyebrows that wouldn't lie down but stood up bristling.
His eyes were set very deep in his head, and were disagreeably sharp and
suspicious. He had a large watch-chain, and strong black dots where his
beard and whiskers would have been if he had let them. He was nothing
to me, and I could have had no foresight then, that he ever would be
anything to me, but it happened that I had this opportunity of observing
him well.
"Boy of the neighborhood? Hey?" said he.
"Yes, sir," said I.
"How do you come here?"
"Miss Havisham sent for me, sir," I explained.
"Well! Behave yourself. I have a pretty large experience of boys, and
you're a bad set of fellows. Now mind!" said he, biting the side of his
great forefinger as he frowned at me, "you behave yourself!"
With those words, he released me--which I was glad of, for his hand
smelt of scented soap--and went his way downstairs. I wondered whether
he could be a doctor; but no, I thought; he couldn't be a doctor, or he
would have a quieter and more persuasive manner. There was not much time
to consider the subject, for we were soon in Miss Havisham's room, where
she and everything else were just as I had left them. Estella left me
standing near the door, and I stood there until Miss Havisham cast her
eyes upon me from the dressing-table.
"So!" she said, without being startled or surprised: "the days have worn
away, have they?"
"Yes, ma'am. To-day is--"
"There, there, there!" with the impatient movement of her fingers. "I
don't want to know. Are you ready to play?"
I was obliged to answer in some confusion, "I don't think I am, ma'am."
"Not at cards again?" she demanded, with a searching look.
"Yes, ma'am; I could do that, if I was wanted."
"Since this house strikes you old and grave, boy," said Miss Havisham,
impatiently, "and you are unwilling to play, are you willing to work?"
I could answer this inquiry with a better heart than I had been able to
find for the other question, and I said I was quite willing.
"Then go into that opposite room," said she, pointing at the door behind
me with her withered hand, "and wait there till I come."
I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indicated.
From that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had an
airless smell that was oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in
the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than
to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed colder
than the clearer air,--like our own marsh mist. Certain wintry branches
of candles on the high chimney-piece faintly lighted the chamber; or it
would be more expressive to say, faintly troubled its darkness. It was
spacious, and I dare say had once been handsome, but every discernible
thing in it was covered with dust and mould, and dropping to pieces. The
most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on it,
as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all
stopped together. An epergne or centre-piece of some kind was in the
middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its
form was quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow
expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black
fungus, I saw speckle-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home
to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstances of the greatest
public importance had just transpired in the spider community.
I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same
occurrence were important to their interests. But the black beetles took
no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a ponderous
elderly way, as if they were short-sighted and hard of hearing, and not
on terms with one another.
These crawling things had fascinated my attention, and I was watching
them from a distance, when Miss Havisham laid a hand upon my shoulder.
In her other hand she had a crutch-headed stick on which she leaned, and
she looked like the Witch of the place.
"This," said she, pointing to the long table with her stick, "is where I
will be laid when I am dead. They shall come and look at me here."
With some vague misgiving that she might get upon the table then and
there and die at once, the complete realization of the ghastly waxwork
at the Fair, I shrank under her touch.
"What do you think that is?" she asked me, again pointing with her
stick; "that, where those cobwebs are?"
"I can't guess what it is, ma'am."
"It's a great cake. A bride-cake. Mine!"
She looked all round the room in a glaring manner, and then said,
leaning on me while her hand twitched my shoulder, "Come, come, come!
Walk me, walk me!"
I made out from this, that the work I had to do, was to walk Miss
Havisham round and round the room. Accordingly, I started at once, and
she leaned upon my shoulder, and we went away at a pace that might have
been an imitation (founded on my first impulse under that roof) of Mr.
Pumblechook's chaise-cart.
She was not physically strong, and after a little time said, "Slower!"
Still, we went at an impatient fitful speed, and as we went, she
twitched the hand upon my shoulder, and worked her mouth, and led me to
believe that we were going fast because her thoughts went fast. After a
while she said, "Call Estella!" so I went out on the landing and
roared that name as I had done on the previous occasion. When her light
appeared, I returned to Miss Havisham, and we started away again round
and round the room.
If only Estella had come to be a spectator of our proceedings, I should
have felt sufficiently discontented; but as she brought with her the
three ladies and the gentleman whom I had seen below, I didn't know
what to do. In my politeness, I would have stopped; but Miss
Havisham twitched my shoulder, and we posted on,--with a shame-faced
consciousness on my part that they would think it was all my doing.
"Dear Miss Havisham," said Miss Sarah Pocket. "How well you look!"
"I do not," returned Miss Havisham. "I am yellow skin and bone."
Camilla brightened when Miss Pocket met with this rebuff; and she
murmured, as she plaintively contemplated Miss Havisham, "Poor dear
soul! Certainly not to be expected to look well, poor thing. The idea!"
"And how are you?" said Miss Havisham to Camilla. As we were close to
Camilla then, I would have stopped as a matter of course, only Miss
Havisham wouldn't stop. We swept on, and I felt that I was highly
obnoxious to Camilla.
"Thank you, Miss Havisham," she returned, "I am as well as can be
expected."
"Why, what's the matter with you?" asked Miss Havisham, with exceeding
sharpness.
"Nothing worth mentioning," replied Camilla. "I don't wish to make a
display of my feelings, but I have habitually thought of you more in the
night than I am quite equal to."
"Then don't think of me," retorted Miss Havisham.
"Very easily said!" remarked Camilla, amiably repressing a sob, while a
hitch came into her upper lip, and her tears overflowed. "Raymond is a
witness what ginger and sal volatile I am obliged to take in the night.
Raymond is a witness what nervous jerkings I have in my legs. Chokings
and nervous jerkings, however, are nothing new to me when I think with
anxiety of those I love. If I could be less affectionate and sensitive,
I should have a better digestion and an iron set of nerves. I am sure
I wish it could be so. But as to not thinking of you in the night--The
idea!" Here, a burst of tears.
The Raymond referred to, I understood to be the gentleman present, and
him I understood to be Mr. Camilla. He came to the rescue at this point,
and said in a consolatory and complimentary voice, "Camilla, my dear, it
is well known that your family feelings are gradually undermining you to
the extent of making one of your legs shorter than the other."
"I am not aware," observed the grave lady whose voice I had heard but
once, "that to think of any person is to make a great claim upon that
person, my dear."
Miss Sarah Pocket, whom I now saw to be a little dry, brown, corrugated
old woman, with a small face that might have been made of walnut-shells,
and a large mouth like a cat's without the whiskers, supported this
position by saying, "No, indeed, my dear. Hem!"
"Thinking is easy enough," said the grave lady.
"What is easier, you know?" assented Miss Sarah Pocket.
"Oh, yes, yes!" cried Camilla, whose fermenting feelings appeared to
rise from her legs to her bosom. "It's all very true! It's a weakness
to be so affectionate, but I can't help it. No doubt my health would be
much better if it was otherwise, still I wouldn't change my disposition
if I could. It's the cause of much suffering, but it's a consolation to
know I posses it, when I wake up in the night." Here another burst of
feeling.
Miss Havisham and I had never stopped all this time, but kept going
round and round the room; now brushing against the skirts of the
visitors, now giving them the whole length of the dismal chamber.
"There's Matthew!" said Camilla. "Never mixing with any natural ties,
never coming here to see how Miss Havisham is! I have taken to the sofa
with my staylace cut, and have lain there hours insensible, with my head
over the side, and my hair all down, and my feet I don't know where--"
("Much higher than your head, my love," said Mr. Camilla.)
"I have gone off into that state, hours and hours, on account of
Matthew's strange and inexplicable conduct, and nobody has thanked me."
"Really I must say I should think not!" interposed the grave lady.
"You see, my dear," added Miss Sarah Pocket (a blandly vicious
personage), "the question to put to yourself is, who did you expect to
thank you, my love?"
"Without expecting any thanks, or anything of the sort," resumed
Camilla, "I have remained in that state, hours and hours, and Raymond
is a witness of the extent to which I have choked, and what the total
inefficacy of ginger has been, and I have been heard at the piano-forte
tuner's across the street, where the poor mistaken children have even
supposed it to be pigeons cooing at a distance,--and now to be told--"
Here Camilla put her hand to her throat, and began to be quite chemical
as to the formation of new combinations there.
When this same Matthew was mentioned, Miss Havisham stopped me and
herself, and stood looking at the speaker. This change had a great
influence in bringing Camilla's chemistry to a sudden end.
"Matthew will come and see me at last," said Miss Havisham, sternly,
"when I am laid on that table. That will be his place,--there," striking
the table with her stick, "at my head! And yours will be there! And your
husband's there! And Sarah Pocket's there! And Georgiana's there! Now
you all know where to take your stations when you come to feast upon me.
And now go!"
At the mention of each name, she had struck the table with her stick in
a new place. She now said, "Walk me, walk me!" and we went on again.
"I suppose there's nothing to be done," exclaimed Camilla, "but comply
and depart. It's something to have seen the object of one's love and
duty for even so short a time. I shall think of it with a melancholy
satisfaction when I wake up in the night. I wish Matthew could have
that comfort, but he sets it at defiance. I am determined not to make a
display of my feelings, but it's very hard to be told one wants to feast
on one's relations,--as if one was a Giant,--and to be told to go. The
bare idea!"
Mr. Camilla interposing, as Mrs. Camilla laid her hand upon her heaving
bosom, that lady assumed an unnatural fortitude of manner which I
supposed to be expressive of an intention to drop and choke when out of
view, and kissing her hand to Miss Havisham, was escorted forth. Sarah
Pocket and Georgiana contended who should remain last; but Sarah was
too knowing to be outdone, and ambled round Georgiana with that artful
slipperiness that the latter was obliged to take precedence. Sarah
Pocket then made her separate effect of departing with, "Bless you, Miss
Havisham dear!" and with a smile of forgiving pity on her walnut-shell
countenance for the weaknesses of the rest.
While Estella was away lighting them down, Miss Havisham still walked
with her hand on my shoulder, but more and more slowly. At last she
stopped before the fire, and said, after muttering and looking at it
some seconds,--
"This is my birthday, Pip."
I was going to wish her many happy returns, when she lifted her stick.
"I don't suffer it to be spoken of. I don't suffer those who were here
just now, or any one to speak of it. They come here on the day, but they
dare not refer to it."
Of course I made no further effort to refer to it.
"On this day of the year, long before you were born, this heap of
decay," stabbing with her crutched stick at the pile of cobwebs on the
table, but not touching it, "was brought here. It and I have worn away
together. The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of
mice have gnawed at me."
She held the head of her stick against her heart as she stood looking
at the table; she in her once white dress, all yellow and withered; the
once white cloth all yellow and withered; everything around in a state
to crumble under a touch.
"When the ruin is complete," said she, with a ghastly look, "and when
they lay me dead, in my bride's dress on the bride's table,--which shall
be done, and which will be the finished curse upon him,--so much the
better if it is done on this day!"
She stood looking at the table as if she stood looking at her own figure
lying there. I remained quiet. Estella returned, and she too remained
quiet. It seemed to me that we continued thus for a long time. In
the heavy air of the room, and the heavy darkness that brooded in its
remoter corners, I even had an alarming fancy that Estella and I might
presently begin to decay.
At length, not coming out of her distraught state by degrees, but in an
instant, Miss Havisham said, "Let me see you two play cards; why have
you not begun?" With that, we returned to her room, and sat down as
before; I was beggared, as before; and again, as before, Miss Havisham
watched us all the time, directed my attention to Estella's beauty, and
made me notice it the more by trying her jewels on Estella's breast and
hair.
Estella, for her part, likewise treated me as before, except that she
did not condescend to speak. When we had played some half-dozen games,
a day was appointed for my return, and I was taken down into the yard
to be fed in the former dog-like manner. There, too, I was again left to
wander about as I liked.
It is not much to the purpose whether a gate in that garden wall which
I had scrambled up to peep over on the last occasion was, on that last
occasion, open or shut. Enough that I saw no gate then, and that I
saw one now. As it stood open, and as I knew that Estella had let
the visitors out,--for she had returned with the keys in her hand,--I
strolled into the garden, and strolled all over it. It was quite a
wilderness, and there were old melon-frames and cucumber-frames in it,
which seemed in their decline to have produced a spontaneous growth of
weak attempts at pieces of old hats and boots, with now and then a weedy
offshoot into the likeness of a battered saucepan.
When I had exhausted the garden and a greenhouse with nothing in it but
a fallen-down grape-vine and some bottles, I found myself in the dismal
corner upon which I had looked out of the window. Never questioning for
a moment that the house was now empty, I looked in at another window,
and found myself, to my great surprise, exchanging a broad stare with a
pale young gentleman with red eyelids and light hair.
This pale young gentleman quickly disappeared, and reappeared beside me.
He had been at his books when I had found myself staring at him, and I
now saw that he was inky.
"Halloa!" said he, "young fellow!"
Halloa being a general observation which I had usually observed to
be best answered by itself, I said, "Halloa!" politely omitting young
fellow.
"Who let you in?" said he.
"Miss Estella."
"Who gave you leave to prowl about?"
"Miss Estella."
"Come and fight," said the pale young gentleman.
What could I do but follow him? I have often asked myself the question
since; but what else could I do? His manner was so final, and I was
so astonished, that I followed where he led, as if I had been under a
spell.
"Stop a minute, though," he said, wheeling round before we had gone many
paces. "I ought to give you a reason for fighting, too. There it is!"
In a most irritating manner he instantly slapped his hands against one
another, daintily flung one of his legs up behind him, pulled my hair,
slapped his hands again, dipped his head, and butted it into my stomach.
The bull-like proceeding last mentioned, besides that it was
unquestionably to be regarded in the light of a liberty, was
particularly disagreeable just after bread and meat. I therefore hit out
at him and was going to hit out again, when he said, "Aha! Would you?"
and began dancing backwards and forwards in a manner quite unparalleled
within my limited experience.
"Laws of the game!" said he. Here, he skipped from his left leg on to
his right. "Regular rules!" Here, he skipped from his right leg on to
his left. "Come to the ground, and go through the preliminaries!" Here,
he dodged backwards and forwards, and did all sorts of things while I
looked helplessly at him.
I was secretly afraid of him when I saw him so dexterous; but I felt
morally and physically convinced that his light head of hair could have
had no business in the pit of my stomach, and that I had a right to
consider it irrelevant when so obtruded on my attention. Therefore, I
followed him without a word, to a retired nook of the garden, formed by
the junction of two walls and screened by some rubbish. On his asking me
if I was satisfied with the ground, and on my replying Yes, he begged my
leave to absent himself for a moment, and quickly returned with a bottle
of water and a sponge dipped in vinegar. "Available for both," he said,
placing these against the wall. And then fell to pulling off, not
only his jacket and waistcoat, but his shirt too, in a manner at once
light-hearted, business-like, and bloodthirsty.
Although he did not look very healthy,--having pimples on his face, and
a breaking out at his mouth,--these dreadful preparations quite appalled
me. I judged him to be about my own age, but he was much taller, and he
had a way of spinning himself about that was full of appearance. For
the rest, he was a young gentleman in a gray suit (when not denuded
for battle), with his elbows, knees, wrists, and heels considerably in
advance of the rest of him as to development.
My heart failed me when I saw him squaring at me with every
demonstration of mechanical nicety, and eyeing my anatomy as if he were
minutely choosing his bone. I never have been so surprised in my life,
as I was when I let out the first blow, and saw him lying on his
back, looking up at me with a bloody nose and his face exceedingly
fore-shortened.
But, he was on his feet directly, and after sponging himself with
a great show of dexterity began squaring again. The second greatest
surprise I have ever had in my life was seeing him on his back again,
looking up at me out of a black eye.
His spirit inspired me with great respect. He seemed to have no
strength, and he never once hit me hard, and he was always knocked down;
but he would be up again in a moment, sponging himself or drinking out
of the water-bottle, with the greatest satisfaction in seconding himself
according to form, and then came at me with an air and a show that made
me believe he really was going to do for me at last. He got heavily
bruised, for I am sorry to record that the more I hit him, the harder I
hit him; but he came up again and again and again, until at last he got
a bad fall with the back of his head against the wall. Even after that
crisis in our affairs, he got up and turned round and round confusedly a
few times, not knowing where I was; but finally went on his knees to his
sponge and threw it up: at the same time panting out, "That means you
have won."
He seemed so brave and innocent, that although I had not proposed the
contest, I felt but a gloomy satisfaction in my victory. Indeed, I go
so far as to hope that I regarded myself while dressing as a species of
savage young wolf or other wild beast. However, I got dressed, darkly
wiping my sanguinary face at intervals, and I said, "Can I help you?"
and he said "No thankee," and I said "Good afternoon," and he said "Same
to you."
When I got into the courtyard, I found Estella waiting with the keys.
But she neither asked me where I had been, nor why I had kept her
waiting; and there was a bright flush upon her face, as though something
had happened to delight her. Instead of going straight to the gate, too,
she stepped back into the passage, and beckoned me.
"Come here! You may kiss me, if you like."
I kissed her cheek as she turned it to me. I think I would have gone
through a great deal to kiss her cheek. But I felt that the kiss was
given to the coarse common boy as a piece of money might have been, and
that it was worth nothing.
What with the birthday visitors, and what with the cards, and what with
the fight, my stay had lasted so long, that when I neared home the light
on the spit of sand off the point on the marshes was gleaming against
a black night-sky, and Joe's furnace was flinging a path of fire across
the road.
Chapter XII
My mind grew very uneasy on the subject of the pale young gentleman. The
more I thought of the fight, and recalled the pale young gentleman on
his back in various stages of puffy and incrimsoned countenance, the
more certain it appeared that something would be done to me. I felt that
the pale young gentleman's blood was on my head, and that the Law would
avenge it. Without having any definite idea of the penalties I had
incurred, it was clear to me that village boys could not go stalking
about the country, ravaging the houses of gentlefolks and pitching into
the studious youth of England, without laying themselves open to severe
punishment. For some days, I even kept close at home, and looked out at
the kitchen door with the greatest caution and trepidation before going
on an errand, lest the officers of the County Jail should pounce upon
me. The pale young gentleman's nose had stained my trousers, and I tried
to wash out that evidence of my guilt in the dead of night. I had cut
my knuckles against the pale young gentleman's teeth, and I twisted my
imagination into a thousand tangles, as I devised incredible ways of
accounting for that damnatory circumstance when I should be haled before
the Judges.
When the day came round for my return to the scene of the deed of
violence, my terrors reached their height. Whether myrmidons of Justice,
specially sent down from London, would be lying in ambush behind the
gate;--whether Miss Havisham, preferring to take personal vengeance for
an outrage done to her house, might rise in those grave-clothes of hers,
draw a pistol, and shoot me dead:--whether suborned boys--a numerous
band of mercenaries--might be engaged to fall upon me in the brewery,
and cuff me until I was no more;--it was high testimony to my confidence
in the spirit of the pale young gentleman, that I never imagined him
accessory to these retaliations; they always came into my mind as the
acts of injudicious relatives of his, goaded on by the state of his
visage and an indignant sympathy with the family features.
However, go to Miss Havisham's I must, and go I did. And behold! nothing
came of the late struggle. It was not alluded to in any way, and no pale
young gentleman was to be discovered on the premises. I found the same
gate open, and I explored the garden, and even looked in at the windows
of the detached house; but my view was suddenly stopped by the closed
shutters within, and all was lifeless. Only in the corner where
the combat had taken place could I detect any evidence of the young
gentleman's existence. There were traces of his gore in that spot, and I
covered them with garden-mould from the eye of man.
On the broad landing between Miss Havisham's own room and that other
room in which the long table was laid out, I saw a garden-chair,--a
light chair on wheels, that you pushed from behind. It had been placed
there since my last visit, and I entered, that same day, on a regular
occupation of pushing Miss Havisham in this chair (when she was tired of
walking with her hand upon my shoulder) round her own room, and across
the landing, and round the other room. Over and over and over again,
we would make these journeys, and sometimes they would last as long as
three hours at a stretch. I insensibly fall into a general mention of
these journeys as numerous, because it was at once settled that I should
return every alternate day at noon for these purposes, and because I am
now going to sum up a period of at least eight or ten months.
As we began to be more used to one another, Miss Havisham talked more
to me, and asked me such questions as what had I learnt and what was
I going to be? I told her I was going to be apprenticed to Joe, I
believed; and I enlarged upon my knowing nothing and wanting to know
everything, in the hope that she might offer some help towards that
desirable end. But she did not; on the contrary, she seemed to prefer my
being ignorant. Neither did she ever give me any money,--or anything
but my daily dinner,--nor ever stipulate that I should be paid for my
services.
Estella was always about, and always let me in and out, but never told
me I might kiss her again. Sometimes, she would coldly tolerate me;
sometimes, she would condescend to me; sometimes, she would be quite
familiar with me; sometimes, she would tell me energetically that she
hated me. Miss Havisham would often ask me in a whisper, or when we were
alone, "Does she grow prettier and prettier, Pip?" And when I said yes
(for indeed she did), would seem to enjoy it greedily. Also, when we
played at cards Miss Havisham would look on, with a miserly relish of
Estella's moods, whatever they were. And sometimes, when her moods were
so many and so contradictory of one another that I was puzzled what
to say or do, Miss Havisham would embrace her with lavish fondness,
murmuring something in her ear that sounded like "Break their hearts my
pride and hope, break their hearts and have no mercy!"
There was a song Joe used to hum fragments of at the forge, of which the
burden was Old Clem. This was not a very ceremonious way of rendering
homage to a patron saint, but I believe Old Clem stood in that relation
towards smiths. It was a song that imitated the measure of beating upon
iron, and was a mere lyrical excuse for the introduction of Old Clem's
respected name. Thus, you were to hammer boys round--Old Clem! With a
thump and a sound--Old Clem! Beat it out, beat it out--Old Clem! With a
clink for the stout--Old Clem! Blow the fire, blow the fire--Old
Clem! Roaring dryer, soaring higher--Old Clem! One day soon after the
appearance of the chair, Miss Havisham suddenly saying to me, with the
impatient movement of her fingers, "There, there, there! Sing!" I was
surprised into crooning this ditty as I pushed her over the floor. It
happened so to catch her fancy that she took it up in a low brooding
voice as if she were singing in her sleep. After that, it became
customary with us to have it as we moved about, and Estella would often
join in; though the whole strain was so subdued, even when there were
three of us, that it made less noise in the grim old house than the
lightest breath of wind.
What could I become with these surroundings? How could my character fail
to be influenced by them? Is it to be wondered at if my thoughts were
dazed, as my eyes were, when I came out into the natural light from the
misty yellow rooms?
Perhaps I might have told Joe about the pale young gentleman, if I had
not previously been betrayed into those enormous inventions to which
I had confessed. Under the circumstances, I felt that Joe could hardly
fail to discern in the pale young gentleman, an appropriate passenger
to be put into the black velvet coach; therefore, I said nothing of him.
Besides, that shrinking from having Miss Havisham and Estella discussed,
which had come upon me in the beginning, grew much more potent as time
went on. I reposed complete confidence in no one but Biddy; but I told
poor Biddy everything. Why it came natural to me to do so, and why Biddy
had a deep concern in everything I told her, I did not know then, though
I think I know now.
Meanwhile, councils went on in the kitchen at home, fraught with
almost insupportable aggravation to my exasperated spirit. That ass,
Pumblechook, used often to come over of a night for the purpose of
discussing my prospects with my sister; and I really do believe (to
this hour with less penitence than I ought to feel), that if these hands
could have taken a linchpin out of his chaise-cart, they would have done
it. The miserable man was a man of that confined stolidity of mind, that
he could not discuss my prospects without having me before him,--as it
were, to operate upon,--and he would drag me up from my stool (usually
by the collar) where I was quiet in a corner, and, putting me before the
fire as if I were going to be cooked, would begin by saying, "Now, Mum,
here is this boy! Here is this boy which you brought up by hand. Hold up
your head, boy, and be forever grateful unto them which so did do. Now,
Mum, with respections to this boy!" And then he would rumple my hair
the wrong way,--which from my earliest remembrance, as already hinted,
I have in my soul denied the right of any fellow-creature to do,--and
would hold me before him by the sleeve,--a spectacle of imbecility only
to be equalled by himself.
Then, he and my sister would pair off in such nonsensical speculations
about Miss Havisham, and about what she would do with me and for me,
that I used to want--quite painfully--to burst into spiteful tears, fly
at Pumblechook, and pummel him all over. In these dialogues, my sister
spoke to me as if she were morally wrenching one of my teeth out at
every reference; while Pumblechook himself, self-constituted my patron,
would sit supervising me with a depreciatory eye, like the architect of
my fortunes who thought himself engaged on a very unremunerative job.
In these discussions, Joe bore no part. But he was often talked at,
while they were in progress, by reason of Mrs. Joe's perceiving that
he was not favorable to my being taken from the forge. I was fully old
enough now to be apprenticed to Joe; and when Joe sat with the poker on
his knees thoughtfully raking out the ashes between the lower bars, my
sister would so distinctly construe that innocent action into opposition
on his part, that she would dive at him, take the poker out of his
hands, shake him, and put it away. There was a most irritating end to
every one of these debates. All in a moment, with nothing to lead up to
it, my sister would stop herself in a yawn, and catching sight of me as
it were incidentally, would swoop upon me with, "Come! there's enough of
you! You get along to bed; you've given trouble enough for one night, I
hope!" As if I had besought them as a favor to bother my life out.
We went on in this way for a long time, and it seemed likely that we
should continue to go on in this way for a long time, when one day Miss
Havisham stopped short as she and I were walking, she leaning on my
shoulder; and said with some displeasure,--
"You are growing tall, Pip!"
I thought it best to hint, through the medium of a meditative look, that
this might be occasioned by circumstances over which I had no control.
She said no more at the time; but she presently stopped and looked at me
again; and presently again; and after that, looked frowning and moody.
On the next day of my attendance, when our usual exercise was over, and
I had landed her at her dressing-table, she stayed me with a movement of
her impatient fingers:--
"Tell me the name again of that blacksmith of yours."
"Joe Gargery, ma'am."
"Meaning the master you were to be apprenticed to?"
"Yes, Miss Havisham."
"You had better be apprenticed at once. Would Gargery come here with
you, and bring your indentures, do you think?"
I signified that I had no doubt he would take it as an honor to be
asked.
"Then let him come."
"At any particular time, Miss Havisham?"
"There, there! I know nothing about times. Let him come soon, and come
along with you."
When I got home at night, and delivered this message for Joe, my sister
"went on the Rampage," in a more alarming degree than at any previous
period. She asked me and Joe whether we supposed she was door-mats under
our feet, and how we dared to use her so, and what company we graciously
thought she was fit for? When she had exhausted a torrent of such
inquiries, she threw a candlestick at Joe, burst into a loud sobbing,
got out the dustpan,--which was always a very bad sign,--put on her
coarse apron, and began cleaning up to a terrible extent. Not satisfied
with a dry cleaning, she took to a pail and scrubbing-brush, and cleaned
us out of house and home, so that we stood shivering in the back-yard.
It was ten o'clock at night before we ventured to creep in again, and
then she asked Joe why he hadn't married a Negress Slave at once?
Joe offered no answer, poor fellow, but stood feeling his whisker and
looking dejectedly at me, as if he thought it really might have been a
better speculation.
Chapter XIII
It was a trial to my feelings, on the next day but one, to see
Joe arraying himself in his Sunday clothes to accompany me to Miss
Havisham's. However, as he thought his court-suit necessary to the
occasion, it was not for me to tell him that he looked far better in his
working-dress; the rather, because I knew he made himself so dreadfully
uncomfortable, entirely on my account, and that it was for me he pulled
up his shirt-collar so very high behind, that it made the hair on the
crown of his head stand up like a tuft of feathers.
At breakfast-time my sister declared her intention of going to town with
us, and being left at Uncle Pumblechook's and called for "when we had
done with our fine ladies"--a way of putting the case, from which Joe
appeared inclined to augur the worst. The forge was shut up for the day,
and Joe inscribed in chalk upon the door (as it was his custom to do on
the very rare occasions when he was not at work) the monosyllable
HOUT, accompanied by a sketch of an arrow supposed to be flying in the
direction he had taken.
We walked to town, my sister leading the way in a very large beaver
bonnet, and carrying a basket like the Great Seal of England in plaited
Straw, a pair of pattens, a spare shawl, and an umbrella, though it
was a fine bright day. I am not quite clear whether these articles were
carried penitentially or ostentatiously; but I rather think they were
displayed as articles of property,--much as Cleopatra or any other
sovereign lady on the Rampage might exhibit her wealth in a pageant or
procession.
When we came to Pumblechook's, my sister bounced in and left us. As it
was almost noon, Joe and I held straight on to Miss Havisham's house.
Estella opened the gate as usual, and, the moment she appeared, Joe took
his hat off and stood weighing it by the brim in both his hands; as if
he had some urgent reason in his mind for being particular to half a
quarter of an ounce.
Estella took no notice of either of us, but led us the way that I knew
so well. I followed next to her, and Joe came last. When I looked back
at Joe in the long passage, he was still weighing his hat with the
greatest care, and was coming after us in long strides on the tips of
his toes.
Estella told me we were both to go in, so I took Joe by the coat-cuff
and conducted him into Miss Havisham's presence. She was seated at her
dressing-table, and looked round at us immediately.
"Oh!" said she to Joe. "You are the husband of the sister of this boy?"
I could hardly have imagined dear old Joe looking so unlike himself or
so like some extraordinary bird; standing as he did speechless, with his
tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if he wanted a worm.
"You are the husband," repeated Miss Havisham, "of the sister of this
boy?"
It was very aggravating; but, throughout the interview, Joe persisted in
addressing Me instead of Miss Havisham.
"Which I meantersay, Pip," Joe now observed in a manner that was at
once expressive of forcible argumentation, strict confidence, and great
politeness, "as I hup and married your sister, and I were at the time
what you might call (if you was anyways inclined) a single man."
"Well!" said Miss Havisham. "And you have reared the boy, with the
intention of taking him for your apprentice; is that so, Mr. Gargery?"
"You know, Pip," replied Joe, "as you and me were ever friends, and it
were looked for'ard to betwixt us, as being calc'lated to lead to
larks. Not but what, Pip, if you had ever made objections to the
business,--such as its being open to black and sut, or such-like,--not
but what they would have been attended to, don't you see?"
"Has the boy," said Miss Havisham, "ever made any objection? Does he
like the trade?"
"Which it is well beknown to yourself, Pip," returned Joe, strengthening
his former mixture of argumentation, confidence, and politeness, "that
it were the wish of your own hart." (I saw the idea suddenly break upon
him that he would adapt his epitaph to the occasion, before he went on
to say) "And there weren't no objection on your part, and Pip it were
the great wish of your hart!"
It was quite in vain for me to endeavor to make him sensible that he
ought to speak to Miss Havisham. The more I made faces and gestures
to him to do it, the more confidential, argumentative, and polite, he
persisted in being to Me.
"Have you brought his indentures with you?" asked Miss Havisham.
"Well, Pip, you know," replied Joe, as if that were a little
unreasonable, "you yourself see me put 'em in my 'at, and therefore you
know as they are here." With which he took them out, and gave them, not
to Miss Havisham, but to me. I am afraid I was ashamed of the dear good
fellow,--I know I was ashamed of him,--when I saw that Estella stood
at the back of Miss Havisham's chair, and that her eyes laughed
mischievously. I took the indentures out of his hand and gave them to
Miss Havisham.
"You expected," said Miss Havisham, as she looked them over, "no premium
with the boy?"
"Joe!" I remonstrated, for he made no reply at all. "Why don't you
answer--"
"Pip," returned Joe, cutting me short as if he were hurt, "which I
meantersay that were not a question requiring a answer betwixt yourself
and me, and which you know the answer to be full well No. You know it to
be No, Pip, and wherefore should I say it?"
Miss Havisham glanced at him as if she understood what he really was
better than I had thought possible, seeing what he was there; and took
up a little bag from the table beside her.
"Pip has earned a premium here," she said, "and here it is. There are
five-and-twenty guineas in this bag. Give it to your master, Pip."
As if he were absolutely out of his mind with the wonder awakened in
him by her strange figure and the strange room, Joe, even at this pass,
persisted in addressing me.
"This is wery liberal on your part, Pip," said Joe, "and it is as such
received and grateful welcome, though never looked for, far nor near,
nor nowheres. And now, old chap," said Joe, conveying to me a sensation,
first of burning and then of freezing, for I felt as if that familiar
expression were applied to Miss Havisham,--"and now, old chap, may we
do our duty! May you and me do our duty, both on us, by one and another,
and by them which your liberal present--have-conweyed--to be--for the
satisfaction of mind-of--them as never--" here Joe showed that he felt
he had fallen into frightful difficulties, until he triumphantly rescued
himself with the words, "and from myself far be it!" These words had
such a round and convincing sound for him that he said them twice.
"Good-bye, Pip!" said Miss Havisham. "Let them out, Estella."
"Am I to come again, Miss Havisham?" I asked.
"No. Gargery is your master now. Gargery! One word!"
Thus calling him back as I went out of the door, I heard her say to Joe
in a distinct emphatic voice, "The boy has been a good boy here, and
that is his reward. Of course, as an honest man, you will expect no
other and no more."
How Joe got out of the room, I have never been able to determine; but
I know that when he did get out he was steadily proceeding upstairs
instead of coming down, and was deaf to all remonstrances until I went
after him and laid hold of him. In another minute we were outside the
gate, and it was locked, and Estella was gone. When we stood in the
daylight alone again, Joe backed up against a wall, and said to me,
"Astonishing!" And there he remained so long saying, "Astonishing" at
intervals, so often, that I began to think his senses were never coming
back. At length he prolonged his remark into "Pip, I do assure you this
is as-TON-ishing!" and so, by degrees, became conversational and able to
walk away.
I have reason to think that Joe's intellects were brightened by the
encounter they had passed through, and that on our way to Pumblechook's
he invented a subtle and deep design. My reason is to be found in
what took place in Mr. Pumblechook's parlor: where, on our presenting
ourselves, my sister sat in conference with that detested seedsman.
"Well?" cried my sister, addressing us both at once. "And what's
happened to you? I wonder you condescend to come back to such poor
society as this, I am sure I do!"
"Miss Havisham," said Joe, with a fixed look at me, like an effort of
remembrance, "made it wery partick'ler that we should give her--were it
compliments or respects, Pip?"
"Compliments," I said.
"Which that were my own belief," answered Joe; "her compliments to Mrs.
J. Gargery--"
"Much good they'll do me!" observed my sister; but rather gratified too.
"And wishing," pursued Joe, with another fixed look at me, like another
effort of remembrance, "that the state of Miss Havisham's elth were
sitch as would have--allowed, were it, Pip?"
"Of her having the pleasure," I added.
"Of ladies' company," said Joe. And drew a long breath.
"Well!" cried my sister, with a mollified glance at Mr. Pumblechook.
"She might have had the politeness to send that message at first, but
it's better late than never. And what did she give young Rantipole
here?"
"She giv' him," said Joe, "nothing."
Mrs. Joe was going to break out, but Joe went on.
"What she giv'," said Joe, "she giv' to his friends. 'And by his
friends,' were her explanation, 'I mean into the hands of his sister
Mrs. J. Gargery.' Them were her words; 'Mrs. J. Gargery.' She mayn't
have know'd," added Joe, with an appearance of reflection, "whether it
were Joe, or Jorge."
My sister looked at Pumblechook: who smoothed the elbows of his wooden
arm-chair, and nodded at her and at the fire, as if he had known all
about it beforehand.
"And how much have you got?" asked my sister, laughing. Positively
laughing!
"What would present company say to ten pound?" demanded Joe.
"They'd say," returned my sister, curtly, "pretty well. Not too much,
but pretty well."
"It's more than that, then," said Joe.
That fearful Impostor, Pumblechook, immediately nodded, and said, as he
rubbed the arms of his chair, "It's more than that, Mum."
"Why, you don't mean to say--" began my sister.
"Yes I do, Mum," said Pumblechook; "but wait a bit. Go on, Joseph. Good
in you! Go on!"
"What would present company say," proceeded Joe, "to twenty pound?"
"Handsome would be the word," returned my sister.
"Well, then," said Joe, "It's more than twenty pound."
That abject hypocrite, Pumblechook, nodded again, and said, with a
patronizing laugh, "It's more than that, Mum. Good again! Follow her up,
Joseph!"
"Then to make an end of it," said Joe, delightedly handing the bag to my
sister; "it's five-and-twenty pound."
"It's five-and-twenty pound, Mum," echoed that basest of swindlers,
Pumblechook, rising to shake hands with her; "and it's no more than your
merits (as I said when my opinion was asked), and I wish you joy of the
money!"
If the villain had stopped here, his case would have been sufficiently
awful, but he blackened his guilt by proceeding to take me into custody,
with a right of patronage that left all his former criminality far
behind.
"Now you see, Joseph and wife," said Pumblechook, as he took me by the
arm above the elbow, "I am one of them that always go right through with
what they've begun. This boy must be bound, out of hand. That's my way.
Bound out of hand."
"Goodness knows, Uncle Pumblechook," said my sister (grasping the
money), "we're deeply beholden to you."
"Never mind me, Mum," returned that diabolical cornchandler. "A
pleasure's a pleasure all the world over. But this boy, you know; we
must have him bound. I said I'd see to it--to tell you the truth."
The Justices were sitting in the Town Hall near at hand, and we at
once went over to have me bound apprentice to Joe in the Magisterial
presence. I say we went over, but I was pushed over by Pumblechook,
exactly as if I had that moment picked a pocket or fired a rick; indeed,
it was the general impression in Court that I had been taken red-handed;
for, as Pumblechook shoved me before him through the crowd, I heard some
people say, "What's he done?" and others, "He's a young 'un, too, but
looks bad, don't he?" One person of mild and benevolent aspect even gave
me a tract ornamented with a woodcut of a malevolent young man fitted
up with a perfect sausage-shop of fetters, and entitled TO BE READ IN MY
CELL.
The Hall was a queer place, I thought, with higher pews in it than a
church,--and with people hanging over the pews looking on,--and with
mighty Justices (one with a powdered head) leaning back in chairs, with
folded arms, or taking snuff, or going to sleep, or writing, or reading
the newspapers,--and with some shining black portraits on the walls,
which my unartistic eye regarded as a composition of hardbake and
sticking-plaster. Here, in a corner my indentures were duly signed and
attested, and I was "bound"; Mr. Pumblechook holding me all the while
as if we had looked in on our way to the scaffold, to have those little
preliminaries disposed of.
When we had come out again, and had got rid of the boys who had been put
into great spirits by the expectation of seeing me publicly tortured,
and who were much disappointed to find that my friends were merely
rallying round me, we went back to Pumblechook's. And there my sister
became so excited by the twenty-five guineas, that nothing would serve
her but we must have a dinner out of that windfall at the Blue Boar, and
that Pumblechook must go over in his chaise-cart, and bring the Hubbles
and Mr. Wopsle.
It was agreed to be done; and a most melancholy day I passed. For,
it inscrutably appeared to stand to reason, in the minds of the whole
company, that I was an excrescence on the entertainment. And to make it
worse, they all asked me from time to time,--in short, whenever they
had nothing else to do,--why I didn't enjoy myself? And what could I
possibly do then, but say I was enjoying myself,--when I wasn't!
However, they were grown up and had their own way, and they made the
most of it. That swindling Pumblechook, exalted into the beneficent
contriver of the whole occasion, actually took the top of the table;
and, when he addressed them on the subject of my being bound, and had
fiendishly congratulated them on my being liable to imprisonment if I
played at cards, drank strong liquors, kept late hours or bad company,
or indulged in other vagaries which the form of my indentures appeared
to contemplate as next to inevitable, he placed me standing on a chair
beside him to illustrate his remarks.
My only other remembrances of the great festival are, That they wouldn't
let me go to sleep, but whenever they saw me dropping off, woke me up
and told me to enjoy myself. That, rather late in the evening Mr. Wopsle
gave us Collins's ode, and threw his bloodstained sword in thunder
down, with such effect, that a waiter came in and said, "The Commercials
underneath sent up their compliments, and it wasn't the Tumblers' Arms."
That, they were all in excellent spirits on the road home, and sang, O
Lady Fair! Mr. Wopsle taking the bass, and asserting with a tremendously
strong voice (in reply to the inquisitive bore who leads that piece
of music in a most impertinent manner, by wanting to know all about
everybody's private affairs) that he was the man with his white locks
flowing, and that he was upon the whole the weakest pilgrim going.
Finally, I remember that when I got into my little bedroom, I was truly
wretched, and had a strong conviction on me that I should never like
Joe's trade. I had liked it once, but once was not now.
Chapter XIV
It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home. There may be black
ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well
deserved; but that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.
Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of my sister's
temper. But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed in it. I had
believed in the best parlor as a most elegant saloon; I had believed
in the front door, as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose
solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had
believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment;
I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and
independence. Within a single year all this was changed. Now it was all
coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella
see it on any account.
How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own fault,
how much Miss Havisham's, how much my sister's, is now of no moment to
me or to any one. The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well or
ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.
Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my
shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe's 'prentice, I should be
distinguished and happy. Now the reality was in my hold, I only felt
that I was dusty with the dust of small-coal, and that I had a weight
upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather. There have
been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have
felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest
and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more.
Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in
life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly entered road
of apprenticeship to Joe.
I remember that at a later period of my "time," I used to stand about
the churchyard on Sunday evenings when night was falling, comparing my
own perspective with the windy marsh view, and making out some likeness
between them by thinking how flat and low both were, and how on both
there came an unknown way and a dark mist and then the sea. I was quite
as dejected on the first working-day of my apprenticeship as in that
after-time; but I am glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe
while my indentures lasted. It is about the only thing I am glad to know
of myself in that connection.
For, though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit of what I
proceed to add was Joe's. It was not because I was faithful, but because
Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went for a soldier or
a sailor. It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of
industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry,
that I worked with tolerable zeal against the grain. It is not possible
to know how far the influence of any amiable honest-hearted duty-doing
man flies out into the world; but it is very possible to know how it has
touched one's self in going by, and I know right well that any good that
intermixed itself with my apprenticeship came of plain contented Joe,
and not of restlessly aspiring discontented me.
What I wanted, who can say? How can I say, when I never knew? What
I dreaded was, that in some unlucky hour I, being at my grimiest and
commonest, should lift up my eyes and see Estella looking in at one
of the wooden windows of the forge. I was haunted by the fear that she
would, sooner or later, find me out, with a black face and hands, doing
the coarsest part of my work, and would exult over me and despise me.
Often after dark, when I was pulling the bellows for Joe, and we were
singing Old Clem, and when the thought how we used to sing it at Miss
Havisham's would seem to show me Estella's face in the fire, with her
pretty hair fluttering in the wind and her eyes scorning me,--often at
such a time I would look towards those panels of black night in the wall
which the wooden windows then were, and would fancy that I saw her just
drawing her face away, and would believe that she had come at last.
After that, when we went in to supper, the place and the meal would have
a more homely look than ever, and I would feel more ashamed of home than
ever, in my own ungracious breast.
Chapter XV
As I was getting too big for Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's room, my
education under that preposterous female terminated. Not, however, until
Biddy had imparted to me everything she knew, from the little catalogue
of prices, to a comic song she had once bought for a half-penny.
Although the only coherent part of the latter piece of literature were
the opening lines.
When I went to Lunnon town sirs,
Too rul loo rul
Too rul loo rul
Wasn't I done very brown sirs?
Too rul loo rul
Too rul loo rul
--still, in my desire to be wiser, I got this composition by heart with the utmost gravity; nor do I recollect that I questioned its merit, except that I
thought (as I still do) the amount of Too rul somewhat in excess of the
poetry. In my hunger for information, I made proposals to Mr. Wopsle to
bestow some intellectual crumbs upon me, with which he kindly complied.
As it turned out, however, that he only wanted me for a dramatic
lay-figure, to be contradicted and embraced and wept over and bullied
and clutched and stabbed and knocked about in a variety of ways, I soon
declined that course of instruction; though not until Mr. Wopsle in his
poetic fury had severely mauled me.
Whatever I acquired, I tried to impart to Joe. This statement sounds so
well, that I cannot in my conscience let it pass unexplained. I wanted
to make Joe less ignorant and common, that he might be worthier of my
society and less open to Estella's reproach.
The old Battery out on the marshes was our place of study, and a broken
slate and a short piece of slate-pencil were our educational implements:
to which Joe always added a pipe of tobacco. I never knew Joe to
remember anything from one Sunday to another, or to acquire, under my
tuition, any piece of information whatever. Yet he would smoke his pipe
at the Battery with a far more sagacious air than anywhere else,--even
with a learned air,--as if he considered himself to be advancing
immensely. Dear fellow, I hope he did.
It was pleasant and quiet, out there with the sails on the river passing
beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low, looking
as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing on at the
bottom of the water. Whenever I watched the vessels standing out to sea
with their white sails spread, I somehow thought of Miss Havisham and
Estella; and whenever the light struck aslant, afar off, upon a cloud
or sail or green hillside or water-line, it was just the same.--Miss
Havisham and Estella and the strange house and the strange life appeared
to have something to do with everything that was picturesque.
One Sunday when Joe, greatly enjoying his pipe, had so plumed himself on
being "most awful dull," that I had given him up for the day, I lay on
the earthwork for some time with my chin on my hand, descrying traces of
Miss Havisham and Estella all over the prospect, in the sky and in the
water, until at last I resolved to mention a thought concerning them
that had been much in my head.
"Joe," said I; "don't you think I ought to make Miss Havisham a visit?"
"Well, Pip," returned Joe, slowly considering. "What for?"
"What for, Joe? What is any visit made for?"
"There is some wisits p'r'aps," said Joe, "as for ever remains open to
the question, Pip. But in regard to wisiting Miss Havisham. She might
think you wanted something,--expected something of her."
"Don't you think I might say that I did not, Joe?"
"You might, old chap," said Joe. "And she might credit it. Similarly she
mightn't."
Joe felt, as I did, that he had made a point there, and he pulled hard
at his pipe to keep himself from weakening it by repetition.
"You see, Pip," Joe pursued, as soon as he was past that danger, "Miss
Havisham done the handsome thing by you. When Miss Havisham done the
handsome thing by you, she called me back to say to me as that were
all."
"Yes, Joe. I heard her."
"ALL," Joe repeated, very emphatically.
"Yes, Joe. I tell you, I heard her."
"Which I meantersay, Pip, it might be that her meaning were,--Make a
end on it!--As you was!--Me to the North, and you to the South!--Keep in
sunders!"
I had thought of that too, and it was very far from comforting to me
to find that he had thought of it; for it seemed to render it more
probable.
"But, Joe."
"Yes, old chap."
"Here am I, getting on in the first year of my time, and, since the day
of my being bound, I have never thanked Miss Havisham, or asked after
her, or shown that I remember her."
"That's true, Pip; and unless you was to turn her out a set of shoes
all four round,--and which I meantersay as even a set of shoes all
four round might not be acceptable as a present, in a total wacancy of
hoofs--"
"I don't mean that sort of remembrance, Joe; I don't mean a present."
But Joe had got the idea of a present in his head and must harp upon it.
"Or even," said he, "if you was helped to knocking her up a new chain
for the front door,--or say a gross or two of shark-headed screws for
general use,--or some light fancy article, such as a toasting-fork
when she took her muffins,--or a gridiron when she took a sprat or such
like--"
"I don't mean any present at all, Joe," I interposed.
"Well," said Joe, still harping on it as though I had particularly
pressed it, "if I was yourself, Pip, I wouldn't. No, I would not. For
what's a door-chain when she's got one always up? And shark-headers is
open to misrepresentations. And if it was a toasting-fork, you'd go into
brass and do yourself no credit. And the oncommonest workman can't show
himself oncommon in a gridiron,--for a gridiron IS a gridiron," said
Joe, steadfastly impressing it upon me, as if he were endeavouring to
rouse me from a fixed delusion, "and you may haim at what you like, but
a gridiron it will come out, either by your leave or again your leave,
and you can't help yourself--"
"My dear Joe," I cried, in desperation, taking hold of his coat, "don't
go on in that way. I never thought of making Miss Havisham any present."
"No, Pip," Joe assented, as if he had been contending for that, all
along; "and what I say to you is, you are right, Pip."
"Yes, Joe; but what I wanted to say, was, that as we are rather slack
just now, if you would give me a half-holiday to-morrow, I think I would
go uptown and make a call on Miss Est--Havisham."
"Which her name," said Joe, gravely, "ain't Estavisham, Pip, unless she
have been rechris'ened."
"I know, Joe, I know. It was a slip of mine. What do you think of it,
Joe?"
In brief, Joe thought that if I thought well of it, he thought well of
it. But, he was particular in stipulating that if I were not received
with cordiality, or if I were not encouraged to repeat my visit as a
visit which had no ulterior object but was simply one of gratitude for a
favor received, then this experimental trip should have no successor. By
these conditions I promised to abide.
Now, Joe kept a journeyman at weekly wages whose name was Orlick.
He pretended that his Christian name was Dolge,--a clear
Impossibility,--but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition that I
believe him to have been the prey of no delusion in this particular, but
wilfully to have imposed that name upon the village as an affront to its
understanding. He was a broadshouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of
great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching. He never even
seemed to come to his work on purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere
accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or
went away at night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the Wandering Jew,
as if he had no idea where he was going and no intention of ever
coming back. He lodged at a sluice-keeper's out on the marshes, and on
working-days would come slouching from his hermitage, with his hands in
his pockets and his dinner loosely tied in a bundle round his neck
and dangling on his back. On Sundays he mostly lay all day on the
sluice-gates, or stood against ricks and barns. He always slouched,
locomotively, with his eyes on the ground; and, when accosted or
otherwise required to raise them, he looked up in a half-resentful,
half-puzzled way, as though the only thought he ever had was, that it
was rather an odd and injurious fact that he should never be thinking.
This morose journeyman had no liking for me. When I was very small and
timid, he gave me to understand that the Devil lived in a black corner
of the forge, and that he knew the fiend very well: also that it was
necessary to make up the fire, once in seven years, with a live boy, and
that I might consider myself fuel. When I became Joe's 'prentice, Orlick
was perhaps confirmed in some suspicion that I should displace him;
howbeit, he liked me still less. Not that he ever said anything, or did
anything, openly importing hostility; I only noticed that he always beat
his sparks in my direction, and that whenever I sang Old Clem, he came
in out of time.
Dolge Orlick was at work and present, next day, when I reminded Joe of
my half-holiday. He said nothing at the moment, for he and Joe had just
got a piece of hot iron between them, and I was at the bellows; but by
and by he said, leaning on his hammer,--
"Now, master! Sure you're not a going to favor only one of us. If Young
Pip has a half-holiday, do as much for Old Orlick." I suppose he was
about five-and-twenty, but he usually spoke of himself as an ancient
person.
"Why, what'll you do with a half-holiday, if you get it?" said Joe.
"What'll I do with it! What'll he do with it? I'll do as much with it as
him," said Orlick.
"As to Pip, he's going up town," said Joe.
"Well then, as to Old Orlick, he's a going up town," retorted that
worthy. "Two can go up town. Tain't only one wot can go up town.
"Don't lose your temper," said Joe.
"Shall if I like," growled Orlick. "Some and their uptowning! Now,
master! Come. No favoring in this shop. Be a man!"
The master refusing to entertain the subject until the journeyman was in
a better temper, Orlick plunged at the furnace, drew out a red-hot
bar, made at me with it as if he were going to run it through my body,
whisked it round my head, laid it on the anvil, hammered it out,--as
if it were I, I thought, and the sparks were my spirting blood,--and
finally said, when he had hammered himself hot and the iron cold, and he
again leaned on his hammer,--
"Now, master!"
"Are you all right now?" demanded Joe.
"Ah! I am all right," said gruff Old Orlick.
"Then, as in general you stick to your work as well as most men," said
Joe, "let it be a half-holiday for all."
My sister had been standing silent in the yard, within hearing,--she was
a most unscrupulous spy and listener,--and she instantly looked in at
one of the windows.
"Like you, you fool!" said she to Joe, "giving holidays to great idle
hulkers like that. You are a rich man, upon my life, to waste wages in
that way. I wish I was his master!"
"You'd be everybody's master, if you durst," retorted Orlick, with an
ill-favored grin.
("Let her alone," said Joe.)
"I'd be a match for all noodles and all rogues," returned my sister,
beginning to work herself into a mighty rage. "And I couldn't be a
match for the noodles, without being a match for your master, who's the
dunder-headed king of the noodles. And I couldn't be a match for the
rogues, without being a match for you, who are the blackest-looking and
the worst rogue between this and France. Now!"
"You're a foul shrew, Mother Gargery," growled the journeyman. "If that
makes a judge of rogues, you ought to be a good'un."
("Let her alone, will you?" said Joe.)
"What did you say?" cried my sister, beginning to scream. "What did you
say? What did that fellow Orlick say to me, Pip? What did he call me,
with my husband standing by? Oh! oh! oh!" Each of these exclamations was
a shriek; and I must remark of my sister, what is equally true of all
the violent women I have ever seen, that passion was no excuse for
her, because it is undeniable that instead of lapsing into passion, she
consciously and deliberately took extraordinary pains to force herself
into it, and became blindly furious by regular stages; "what was the
name he gave me before the base man who swore to defend me? Oh! Hold me!
Oh!"
"Ah-h-h!" growled the journeyman, between his teeth, "I'd hold you, if
you was my wife. I'd hold you under the pump, and choke it out of you."
("I tell you, let her alone," said Joe.)
"Oh! To hear him!" cried my sister, with a clap of her hands and a
scream together,--which was her next stage. "To hear the names he's
giving me! That Orlick! In my own house! Me, a married woman! With my
husband standing by! Oh! Oh!" Here my sister, after a fit of clappings
and screamings, beat her hands upon her bosom and upon her knees, and
threw her cap off, and pulled her hair down,--which were the last stages
on her road to frenzy. Being by this time a perfect Fury and a complete
success, she made a dash at the door which I had fortunately locked.
What could the wretched Joe do now, after his disregarded parenthetical
interruptions, but stand up to his journeyman, and ask him what he meant
by interfering betwixt himself and Mrs. Joe; and further whether he was
man enough to come on? Old Orlick felt that the situation admitted of
nothing less than coming on, and was on his defence straightway; so,
without so much as pulling off their singed and burnt aprons, they went
at one another, like two giants. But, if any man in that neighborhood
could stand uplong against Joe, I never saw the man. Orlick, as if he
had been of no more account than the pale young gentleman, was very
soon among the coal-dust, and in no hurry to come out of it. Then Joe
unlocked the door and picked up my sister, who had dropped insensible
at the window (but who had seen the fight first, I think), and who was
carried into the house and laid down, and who was recommended to revive,
and would do nothing but struggle and clench her hands in Joe's hair.
Then, came that singular calm and silence which succeed all uproars; and
then, with the vague sensation which I have always connected with such
a lull,--namely, that it was Sunday, and somebody was dead,--I went upstairs
stto dress myself.
When I came down again, I found Joe and Orlick sweeping up, without any
other traces of discomposure than a slit in one of Orlick's nostrils,
which was neither expressive nor ornamental. A pot of beer had appeared
from the Jolly Bargemen, and they were sharing it by turns in a
peaceable manner. The lull had a sedative and philosophical influence on
Joe, who followed me out into the road to say, as a parting observation
that might do me good, "On the Rampage, Pip, and off the Rampage,
Pip:--such is Life!"
With what absurd emotions (for we think the feelings that are very
serious in a man quite comical in a boy) I found myself again going to
Miss Havisham's, matters little here. Nor, how I passed and repassed
the gate many times before I could make up my mind to ring. Nor, how
I debated whether I should go away without ringing; nor, how I should
undoubtedly have gone, if my time had been my own, to come back.
Miss Sarah Pocket came to the gate. No Estella.
"How, then? You here again?" said Miss Pocket. "What do you want?"
When I said that I only came to see how Miss Havisham was, Sarah
evidently deliberated whether or no she should send me about my
business. But unwilling to hazard the responsibility, she let me in, and
presently brought the sharp message that I was to "come up."
Everything was unchanged, and Miss Havisham was alone.
"Well?" said she, fixing her eyes upon me. "I hope you want nothing?
You'll get nothing."
"No indeed, Miss Havisham. I only wanted you to know that I am doing
very well in my apprenticeship, and am always much obliged to you."
"There, there!" with the old restless fingers. "Come now and then; come
on your birthday.--Ay!" she cried suddenly, turning herself and her
chair towards me, "You are looking round for Estella? Hey?"
I had been looking round,--in fact, for Estella,--and I stammered that I
hoped she was well.
"Abroad," said Miss Havisham; "educating for a lady; far out of reach;
prettier than ever; admired by all who see her. Do you feel that you
have lost her?"
There was such a malignant enjoyment in her utterance of the last words,
and she broke into such a disagreeable laugh, that I was at a loss what
to say. She spared me the trouble of considering, by dismissing me. When
the gate was closed upon me by Sarah of the walnut-shell countenance, I
felt more than ever dissatisfied with my home and with my trade and with
everything; and that was all I took by that motion.
As I was loitering along the High Street, looking in disconsolately at
the shop windows, and thinking what I would buy if I were a gentleman,
who should come out of the bookshop but Mr. Wopsle. Mr. Wopsle had in
his hand the affecting tragedy of George Barnwell, in which he had that
moment invested sixpence, with the view of heaping every word of it on
the head of Pumblechook, with whom he was going to drink tea. No sooner
did he see me, than he appeared to consider that a special Providence
had put a 'prentice in his way to be read at; and he laid hold of me,
and insisted on my accompanying him to the Pumblechookian parlor. As I
knew it would be miserable at home, and as the nights were dark and the
way was dreary, and almost any companionship on the road was better
than none, I made no great resistance; consequently, we turned into
Pumblechook's just as the street and the shops were lighting up.
As I never assisted at any other representation of George Barnwell, I
don't know how long it may usually take; but I know very well that it
took until half-past nine o' clock that night, and that when Mr. Wopsle
got into Newgate, I thought he never would go to the scaffold, he became
so much slower than at any former period of his disgraceful career. I
thought it a little too much that he should complain of being cut short
in his flower after all, as if he had not been running to seed, leaf
after leaf, ever since his course began. This, however, was a
mere question of length and wearisomeness. What stung me, was the
identification of the whole affair with my unoffending self. When
Barnwell began to go wrong, I declare that I felt positively apologetic,
Pumblechook's indignant stare so taxed me with it. Wopsle, too, took
pains to present me in the worst light. At once ferocious and maudlin, I
was made to murder my uncle with no extenuating circumstances whatever;
Millwood put me down in argument, on every occasion; it became sheer
monomania in my master's daughter to care a button for me; and all I can
say for my gasping and procrastinating conduct on the fatal morning, is,
that it was worthy of the general feebleness of my character. Even after
I was happily hanged and Wopsle had closed the book, Pumblechook sat
staring at me, and shaking his head, and saying, "Take warning, boy,
take warning!" as if it were a well-known fact that I contemplated
murdering a near relation, provided I could only induce one to have the
weakness to become my benefactor.
It was a very dark night when it was all over, and when I set out with
Mr. Wopsle on the walk home. Beyond town, we found a heavy mist out, and
it fell wet and thick. The turnpike lamp was a blur, quite out of the
lamp's usual place apparently, and its rays looked solid substance on
the fog. We were noticing this, and saying how that the mist rose with a
change of wind from a certain quarter of our marshes, when we came upon
a man, slouching under the lee of the turnpike house.
"Halloa!" we said, stopping. "Orlick there?"
"Ah!" he answered, slouching out. "I was standing by a minute, on the
chance of company."
"You are late," I remarked.
Orlick not unnaturally answered, "Well? And you're late."
"We have been," said Mr. Wopsle, exalted with his late performance,--"we
have been indulging, Mr. Orlick, in an intellectual evening."
Old Orlick growled, as if he had nothing to say about that, and we all
went on together. I asked him presently whether he had been spending his
half-holiday up and down town?
"Yes," said he, "all of it. I come in behind yourself. I didn't see you,
but I must have been pretty close behind you. By the by, the guns is
going again."
"At the Hulks?" said I.
"Ay! There's some of the birds flown from the cages. The guns have been
going since dark, about. You'll hear one presently."
In effect, we had not walked many yards further, when the
well-remembered boom came towards us, deadened by the mist, and heavily
rolled away along the low grounds by the river, as if it were pursuing
and threatening the fugitives.
"A good night for cutting off in," said Orlick. "We'd be puzzled how to
bring down a jail-bird on the wing, to-night."
The subject was a suggestive one to me, and I thought about it in
silence. Mr. Wopsle, as the ill-requited uncle of the evening's tragedy,
fell to meditating aloud in his garden at Camberwell. Orlick, with his
hands in his pockets, slouched heavily at my side. It was very dark,
very wet, very muddy, and so we splashed along. Now and then, the sound
of the signal cannon broke upon us again, and again rolled sulkily along
the course of the river. I kept myself to myself and my thoughts. Mr.
Wopsle died amiably at Camberwell, and exceedingly game on Bosworth
Field, and in the greatest agonies at Glastonbury. Orlick sometimes
growled, "Beat it out, beat it out,--Old Clem! With a clink for the
stout,--Old Clem!" I thought he had been drinking, but he was not drunk.
Thus, we came to the village. The way by which we approached it took us
past the Three Jolly Bargemen, which we were surprised to find--it being
eleven o'clock--in a state of commotion, with the door wide open, and
unwonted lights that had been hastily caught up and put down scattered
about. Mr. Wopsle dropped in to ask what was the matter (surmising that
a convict had been taken), but came running out in a great hurry.
"There's something wrong," said he, without stopping, "up at your place,
Pip. Run all!"
"What is it?" I asked, keeping up with him. So did Orlick, at my side.
"I can't quite understand. The house seems to have been violently
entered when Joe Gargery was out. Supposed by convicts. Somebody has
been attacked and hurt."
We were running too fast to admit of more being said, and we made no
stop until we got into our kitchen. It was full of people; the whole
village was there, or in the yard; and there was a surgeon, and there
was Joe, and there were a group of women, all on the floor in the midst
of the kitchen. The unemployed bystanders drew back when they saw me,
and so I became aware of my sister,--lying without sense or movement on
the bare boards where she had been knocked down by a tremendous blow
on the back of the head, dealt by some unknown hand when her face was
turned towards the fire,--destined never to be on the Rampage again,
while she was the wife of Joe.
Chapter XVI
With my head full of George Barnwell, I was at first disposed to believe
that I must have had some hand in the attack upon my sister, or at
all events that as her near relation, popularly known to be under
obligations to her, I was a more legitimate object of suspicion than
any one else. But when, in the clearer light of next morning, I began to
reconsider the matter and to hear it discussed around me on all sides, I
took another view of the case, which was more reasonable.
Joe had been at the Three Jolly Bargemen, smoking his pipe, from a
quarter after eight o'clock to a quarter before ten. While he was there,
my sister had been seen standing at the kitchen door, and had exchanged
Good Night with a farm-laborer going home. The man could not be more
particular as to the time at which he saw her (he got into dense
confusion when he tried to be), than that it must have been before nine.
When Joe went home at five minutes before ten, he found her struck down
on the floor, and promptly called in assistance. The fire had not then
burnt unusually low, nor was the snuff of the candle very long; the
candle, however, had been blown out.
Nothing had been taken away from any part of the house. Neither, beyond
the blowing out of the candle,--which stood on a table between the door
and my sister, and was behind her when she stood facing the fire and was
struck,--was there any disarrangement of the kitchen, excepting such
as she herself had made, in falling and bleeding. But, there was one
remarkable piece of evidence on the spot. She had been struck with
something blunt and heavy, on the head and spine; after the blows were
dealt, something heavy had been thrown down at her with considerable
violence, as she lay on her face. And on the ground beside her, when Joe
picked her up, was a convict's leg-iron which had been filed asunder.
Now, Joe, examining this iron with a smith's eye, declared it to have
been filed asunder some time ago. The hue and cry going off to the
Hulks, and people coming thence to examine the iron, Joe's opinion
was corroborated. They did not undertake to say when it had left the
prison-ships to which it undoubtedly had once belonged; but they claimed
to know for certain that that particular manacle had not been worn by
either of the two convicts who had escaped last night. Further, one of
those two was already retaken, and had not freed himself of his iron.
Knowing what I knew, I set up an inference of my own here. I believed
the iron to be my convict's iron,--the iron I had seen and heard him
filing at, on the marshes,--but my mind did not accuse him of having put
it to its latest use. For I believed one of two other persons to have
become possessed of it, and to have turned it to this cruel account.
Either Orlick, or the strange man who had shown me the file.
Now, as to Orlick; he had gone to town exactly as he told us when we
picked him up at the turnpike, he had been seen about town all the
evening, he had been in divers companies in several public-houses, and
he had come back with myself and Mr. Wopsle. There was nothing against
him, save the quarrel; and my sister had quarrelled with him, and with
everybody else about her, ten thousand times. As to the strange man; if
he had come back for his two bank-notes there could have been no dispute
about them, because my sister was fully prepared to restore them.
Besides, there had been no altercation; the assailant had come in so
silently and suddenly, that she had been felled before she could look
round.
It was horrible to think that I had provided the weapon, however
undesignedly, but I could hardly think otherwise. I suffered unspeakable
trouble while I considered and reconsidered whether I should at last
dissolve that spell of my childhood and tell Joe all the story. For
months afterwards, I every day settled the question finally in the
negative, and reopened and reargued it next morning. The contention
came, after all, to this;--the secret was such an old one now, had so
grown into me and become a part of myself, that I could not tear it
away. In addition to the dread that, having led up to so much mischief,
it would be now more likely than ever to alienate Joe from me if he
believed it, I had a further restraining dread that he would not believe
it, but would assort it with the fabulous dogs and veal-cutlets as a
monstrous invention. However, I temporized with myself, of course--for,
was I not wavering between right and wrong, when the thing is always
done?--and resolved to make a full disclosure if I should see any
such new occasion as a new chance of helping in the discovery of the
assailant.
The Constables and the Bow Street men from London--for, this happened in
the days of the extinct red-waistcoated police--were about the house for
a week or two, and did pretty much what I have heard and read of like
authorities doing in other such cases. They took up several obviously
wrong people, and they ran their heads very hard against wrong ideas,
and persisted in trying to fit the circumstances to the ideas, instead
of trying to extract ideas from the circumstances. Also, they stood
about the door of the Jolly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks
that filled the whole neighborhood with admiration; and they had a
mysterious manner of taking their drink, that was almost as good as
taking the culprit. But not quite, for they never did it.
Long after these constitutional powers had dispersed, my sister lay very
ill in bed. Her sight was disturbed, so that she saw objects multiplied,
and grasped at visionary teacups and wineglasses instead of the
realities; her hearing was greatly impaired; her memory also; and her
speech was unintelligible. When, at last, she came round so far as to
be helped downstairs, it was still necessary to keep my slate always by
her, that she might indicate in writing what she could not indicate in
speech. As she was (very bad handwriting apart) a more than indifferent
speller, and as Joe was a more than indifferent reader, extraordinary
complications arose between them which I was always called in to solve.
The administration of mutton instead of medicine, the substitution of
Tea for Joe, and the baker for bacon, were among the mildest of my own
mistakes.
However, her temper was greatly improved, and she was patient. A
tremulous uncertainty of the action of all her limbs soon became a
part of her regular state, and afterwards, at intervals of two or three
months, she would often put her hands to her head, and would then remain
for about a week at a time in some gloomy aberration of mind. We were
at a loss to find a suitable attendant for her, until a circumstance
happened conveniently to relieve us. Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt conquered a
confirmed habit of living into which she had fallen, and Biddy became a
part of our establishment.
It may have been about a month after my sister's reappearance in the
kitchen, when Biddy came to us with a small speckled box containing the
whole of her worldly effects, and became a blessing to the household.
Above all, she was a blessing to Joe, for the dear old fellow was sadly
cut up by the constant contemplation of the wreck of his wife, and had
been accustomed, while attending on her of an evening, to turn to me
every now and then and say, with his blue eyes moistened, "Such a fine
figure of a woman as she once were, Pip!" Biddy instantly taking the
cleverest charge of her as though she had studied her from infancy; Joe
became able in some sort to appreciate the greater quiet of his life,
and to get down to the Jolly Bargemen now and then for a change that did
him good. It was characteristic of the police people that they had all
more or less suspected poor Joe (though he never knew it), and that they
had to a man concurred in regarding him as one of the deepest spirits
they had ever encountered.
Biddy's first triumph in her new office, was to solve a difficulty
that had completely vanquished me. I had tried hard at it, but had made
nothing of it. Thus it was:--
Again and again and again, my sister had traced upon the slate, a
character that looked like a curious T, and then with the utmost
eagerness had called our attention to it as something she particularly
wanted. I had in vain tried everything producible that began with a T,
from tar to toast and tub. At length it had come into my head that the
sign looked like a hammer, and on my lustily calling that word in my
sister's ear, she had begun to hammer on the table and had expressed a
qualified assent. Thereupon, I had brought in all our hammers, one after
another, but without avail. Then I bethought me of a crutch, the shape
being much the same, and I borrowed one in the village, and displayed
it to my sister with considerable confidence. But she shook her head to
that extent when she was shown it, that we were terrified lest in her
weak and shattered state she should dislocate her neck.
When my sister found that Biddy was very quick to understand her, this
mysterious sign reappeared on the slate. Biddy looked thoughtfully
at it, heard my explanation, looked thoughtfully at my sister, looked
thoughtfully at Joe (who was always represented on the slate by his
initial letter), and ran into the forge, followed by Joe and me.
"Why, of course!" cried Biddy, with an exultant face. "Don't you see?
It's him!"
Orlick, without a doubt! She had lost his name, and could only signify
him by his hammer. We told him why we wanted him to come into the
kitchen, and he slowly laid down his hammer, wiped his brow with his
arm, took another wipe at it with his apron, and came slouching
out, with a curious loose vagabond bend in the knees that strongly
distinguished him.
I confess that I expected to see my sister denounce him, and that I
was disappointed by the different result. She manifested the greatest
anxiety to be on good terms with him, was evidently much pleased by his
being at length produced, and motioned that she would have him
given something to drink. She watched his countenance as if she were
particularly wishful to be assured that he took kindly to his reception,
she showed every possible desire to conciliate him, and there was an air
of humble propitiation in all she did, such as I have seen pervade the
bearing of a child towards a hard master. After that day, a day rarely
passed without her drawing the hammer on her slate, and without Orlick's
slouching in and standing doggedly before her, as if he knew no more
than I did what to make of it.
Chapter XVII
I now fell into a regular routine of apprenticeship life, which was
varied beyond the limits of the village and the marshes, by no more
remarkable circumstance than the arrival of my birthday and my paying
another visit to Miss Havisham. I found Miss Sarah Pocket still on duty
at the gate; I found Miss Havisham just as I had left her, and she spoke
of Estella in the very same way, if not in the very same words. The
interview lasted but a few minutes, and she gave me a guinea when I was
going, and told me to come again on my next birthday. I may mention at
once that this became an annual custom. I tried to decline taking the
guinea on the first occasion, but with no better effect than causing her
to ask me very angrily, if I expected more? Then, and after that, I took
it.
So unchanging was the dull old house, the yellow light in the darkened
room, the faded spectre in the chair by the dressing-table glass, that
I felt as if the stopping of the clocks had stopped Time in that
mysterious place, and, while I and everything else outside it grew
older, it stood still. Daylight never entered the house as to my
thoughts and remembrances of it, any more than as to the actual fact. It
bewildered me, and under its influence I continued at heart to hate my
trade and to be ashamed of home.
Imperceptibly I became conscious of a change in Biddy, however. Her
shoes came up at the heel, her hair grew bright and neat, her hands were
always clean. She was not beautiful,--she was common, and could not be
like Estella,--but she was pleasant and wholesome and sweet-tempered.
She had not been with us more than a year (I remember her being newly
out of mourning at the time it struck me), when I observed to myself one
evening that she had curiously thoughtful and attentive eyes; eyes that
were very pretty and very good.
It came of my lifting up my own eyes from a task I was poring
at--writing some passages from a book, to improve myself in two ways at
once by a sort of stratagem--and seeing Biddy observant of what I was
about. I laid down my pen, and Biddy stopped in her needlework without
laying it down.
"Biddy," said I, "how do you manage it? Either I am very stupid, or you
are very clever."
"What is it that I manage? I don't know," returned Biddy, smiling.
She managed our whole domestic life, and wonderfully too; but I did not
mean that, though that made what I did mean more surprising.
"How do you manage, Biddy," said I, "to learn everything that I learn,
and always to keep up with me?" I was beginning to be rather vain of
my knowledge, for I spent my birthday guineas on it, and set aside the
greater part of my pocket-money for similar investment; though I have no
doubt, now, that the little I knew was extremely dear at the price.
"I might as well ask you," said Biddy, "how you manage?"
"No; because when I come in from the forge of a night, any one can see
me turning to at it. But you never turn to at it, Biddy."
"I suppose I must catch it like a cough," said Biddy, quietly; and went
on with her sewing.
Pursuing my idea as I leaned back in my wooden chair, and looked at
Biddy sewing away with her head on one side, I began to think her rather
an extraordinary girl. For I called to mind now, that she was equally
accomplished in the terms of our trade, and the names of our different
sorts of work, and our various tools. In short, whatever I knew, Biddy
knew. Theoretically, she was already as good a blacksmith as I, or
better.
"You are one of those, Biddy," said I, "who make the most of every
chance. You never had a chance before you came here, and see how
improved you are!"
Biddy looked at me for an instant, and went on with her sewing. "I was
your first teacher though; wasn't I?" said she, as she sewed.
"Biddy!" I exclaimed, in amazement. "Why, you are crying!"
"No I am not," said Biddy, looking up and laughing. "What put that in
your head?"
What could have put it in my head but the glistening of a tear as it
dropped on her work? I sat silent, recalling what a drudge she had been
until Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt successfully overcame that bad habit of
living, so highly desirable to be got rid of by some people. I recalled
the hopeless circumstances by which she had been surrounded in the
miserable little shop and the miserable little noisy evening school,
with that miserable old bundle of incompetence always to be dragged and
shouldered. I reflected that even in those untoward times there must
have been latent in Biddy what was now developing, for, in my first
uneasiness and discontent I had turned to her for help, as a matter of
course. Biddy sat quietly sewing, shedding no more tears, and while I
looked at her and thought about it all, it occurred to me that perhaps
I had not been sufficiently grateful to Biddy. I might have been too
reserved, and should have patronized her more (though I did not use that
precise word in my meditations) with my confidence.
"Yes, Biddy," I observed, when I had done turning it over, "you were my
first teacher, and that at a time when we little thought of ever being
together like this, in this kitchen."
"Ah, poor thing!" replied Biddy. It was like her self-forgetfulness to
transfer the remark to my sister, and to get up and be busy about her,
making her more comfortable; "that's sadly true!"
"Well!" said I, "we must talk together a little more, as we used to do.
And I must consult you a little more, as I used to do. Let us have a
quiet walk on the marshes next Sunday, Biddy, and a long chat."
My sister was never left alone now; but Joe more than readily undertook
the care of her on that Sunday afternoon, and Biddy and I went out
together. It was summer-time, and lovely weather. When we had passed the
village and the church and the churchyard, and were out on the marshes
and began to see the sails of the ships as they sailed on, I began to
combine Miss Havisham and Estella with the prospect, in my usual way.
When we came to the river-side and sat down on the bank, with the water
rippling at our feet, making it all more quiet than it would have been
without that sound, I resolved that it was a good time and place for the
admission of Biddy into my inner confidence.
"Biddy," said I, after binding her to secrecy, "I want to be a
gentleman."
"O, I wouldn't, if I was you!" she returned. "I don't think it would
answer."
"Biddy," said I, with some severity, "I have particular reasons for
wanting to be a gentleman."
"You know best, Pip; but don't you think you are happier as you are?"
"Biddy," I exclaimed, impatiently, "I am not at all happy as I am. I
am disgusted with my calling and with my life. I have never taken to
either, since I was bound. Don't be absurd."
"Was I absurd?" said Biddy, quietly raising her eyebrows; "I am sorry
for that; I didn't mean to be. I only want you to do well, and to be
comfortable."
"Well, then, understand once for all that I never shall or can be
comfortable--or anything but miserable--there, Biddy!--unless I can lead
a very different sort of life from the life I lead now."
"That's a pity!" said Biddy, shaking her head with a sorrowful air.
Now, I too had so often thought it a pity, that, in the singular kind of
quarrel with myself which I was always carrying on, I was half inclined
to shed tears of vexation and distress when Biddy gave utterance to her
sentiment and my own. I told her she was right, and I knew it was much
to be regretted, but still it was not to be helped.
"If I could have settled down," I said to Biddy, plucking up the short
grass within reach, much as I had once upon a time pulled my feelings
out of my hair and kicked them into the brewery wall,--"if I could have
settled down and been but half as fond of the forge as I was when I was
little, I know it would have been much better for me. You and I and Joe
would have wanted nothing then, and Joe and I would perhaps have gone
partners when I was out of my time, and I might even have grown up to
keep company with you, and we might have sat on this very bank on a fine
Sunday, quite different people. I should have been good enough for you;
shouldn't I, Biddy?"
Biddy sighed as she looked at the ships sailing on, and returned for
answer, "Yes; I am not over-particular." It scarcely sounded flattering,
but I knew she meant well.
"Instead of that," said I, plucking up more grass and chewing a blade or
two, "see how I am going on. Dissatisfied, and uncomfortable, and--what
would it signify to me, being coarse and common, if nobody had told me
so!"
Biddy turned her face suddenly towards mine, and looked far more
attentively at me than she had looked at the sailing ships.
"It was neither a very true nor a very polite thing to say," she
remarked, directing her eyes to the ships again. "Who said it?"
I was disconcerted, for I had broken away without quite seeing where
I was going to. It was not to be shuffled off now, however, and I
answered, "The beautiful young lady at Miss Havisham's, and she's more
beautiful than anybody ever was, and I admire her dreadfully, and I want
to be a gentleman on her account." Having made this lunatic confession,
I began to throw my torn-up grass into the river, as if I had some
thoughts of following it.
"Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over?" Biddy
quietly asked me, after a pause.
"I don't know," I moodily answered.
"Because, if it is to spite her," Biddy pursued, "I should think--but
you know best--that might be better and more independently done by
caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should
think--but you know best--she was not worth gaining over."
Exactly what I myself had thought, many times. Exactly what was
perfectly manifest to me at the moment. But how could I, a poor dazed
village lad, avoid that wonderful inconsistency into which the best and
wisest of men fall every day?
"It may be all quite true," said I to Biddy, "but I admire her
dreadfully."
In short, I turned over on my face when I came to that, and got a good
grasp on the hair on each side of my head, and wrenched it well. All the
while knowing the madness of my heart to be so very mad and misplaced,
that I was quite conscious it would have served my face right, if I
had lifted it up by my hair, and knocked it against the pebbles as a
punishment for belonging to such an idiot.
Biddy was the wisest of girls, and she tried to reason no more with me.
She put her hand, which was a comfortable hand though roughened by work,
upon my hands, one after another, and gently took them out of my hair.
Then she softly patted my shoulder in a soothing way, while with my face
upon my sleeve I cried a little,--exactly as I had done in the brewery
yard,--and felt vaguely convinced that I was very much ill-used by
somebody, or by everybody; I can't say which.
"I am glad of one thing," said Biddy, "and that is, that you have felt
you could give me your confidence, Pip. And I am glad of another thing,
and that is, that of course you know you may depend upon my keeping it
and always so far deserving it. If your first teacher (dear! such a poor
one, and so much in need of being taught herself!) had been your teacher
at the present time, she thinks she knows what lesson she would set. But
it would be a hard one to learn, and you have got beyond her, and it's
of no use now." So, with a quiet sigh for me, Biddy rose from the bank,
and said, with a fresh and pleasant change of voice, "Shall we walk a
little farther, or go home?"
"Biddy," I cried, getting up, putting my arm round her neck, and giving
her a kiss, "I shall always tell you everything."
"Till you're a gentleman," said Biddy.
"You know I never shall be, so that's always. Not that I have any
occasion to tell you anything, for you know everything I know,--as I
told you at home the other night."
"Ah!" said Biddy, quite in a whisper, as she looked away at the ships.
And then repeated, with her former pleasant change, "shall we walk a
little farther, or go home?"
I said to Biddy we would walk a little farther, and we did so, and the
summer afternoon toned down into the summer evening, and it was very
beautiful. I began to consider whether I was not more naturally and
wholesomely situated, after all, in these circumstances, than playing
beggar my neighbor by candle-light in the room with the stopped clocks,
and being despised by Estella. I thought it would be very good for me if
I could get her out of my head, with all the rest of those remembrances
and fancies, and could go to work determined to relish what I had to do,
and stick to it, and make the best of it. I asked myself the question
whether I did not surely know that if Estella were beside me at that
moment instead of Biddy, she would make me miserable? I was obliged to
admit that I did know it for a certainty, and I said to myself, "Pip,
what a fool you are!"
We talked a good deal as we walked, and all that Biddy said seemed
right. Biddy was never insulting, or capricious, or Biddy to-day and
somebody else to-morrow; she would have derived only pain, and no
pleasure, from giving me pain; she would far rather have wounded her own
breast than mine. How could it be, then, that I did not like her much
the better of the two?
"Biddy," said I, when we were walking homeward, "I wish you could put me
right."
"I wish I could!" said Biddy.
"If I could only get myself to fall in love with you,--you don't mind my
speaking so openly to such an old acquaintance?"
"Oh dear, not at all!" said Biddy. "Don't mind me."
"If I could only get myself to do it, that would be the thing for me."
"But you never will, you see," said Biddy.
It did not appear quite so unlikely to me that evening, as it would have
done if we had discussed it a few hours before. I therefore observed
I was not quite sure of that. But Biddy said she was, and she said it
decisively. In my heart I believed her to be right; and yet I took it
rather ill, too, that she should be so positive on the point.
When we came near the churchyard, we had to cross an embankment, and
get over a stile near a sluice-gate. There started up, from the gate, or
from the rushes, or from the ooze (which was quite in his stagnant way),
Old Orlick.
"Halloa!" he growled, "where are you two going?"
"Where should we be going, but home?"
"Well, then," said he, "I'm jiggered if I don't see you home!"
This penalty of being jiggered was a favorite supposititious case of
his. He attached no definite meaning to the word that I am aware of, but
used it, like his own pretended Christian name, to affront mankind, and
convey an idea of something savagely damaging. When I was younger, I
had had a general belief that if he had jiggered me personally, he would
have done it with a sharp and twisted hook.
Biddy was much against his going with us, and said to me in a whisper,
"Don't let him come; I don't like him." As I did not like him either,
I took the liberty of saying that we thanked him, but we didn't want
seeing home. He received that piece of information with a yell of
laughter, and dropped back, but came slouching after us at a little
distance.
Curious to know whether Biddy suspected him of having had a hand in
that murderous attack of which my sister had never been able to give any
account, I asked her why she did not like him.
"Oh!" she replied, glancing over her shoulder as he slouched after us,
"because I--I am afraid he likes me."
"Did he ever tell you he liked you?" I asked indignantly.
"No," said Biddy, glancing over her shoulder again, "he never told me
so; but he dances at me, whenever he can catch my eye."
However novel and peculiar this testimony of attachment, I did not
doubt the accuracy of the interpretation. I was very hot indeed upon
Old Orlick's daring to admire her; as hot as if it were an outrage on
myself.
"But it makes no difference to you, you know," said Biddy, calmly.
"No, Biddy, it makes no difference to me; only I don't like it; I don't
approve of it."
"Nor I neither," said Biddy. "Though that makes no difference to you."
"Exactly," said I; "but I must tell you I should have no opinion of you,
Biddy, if he danced at you with your own consent."
I kept an eye on Orlick after that night, and, whenever circumstances
were favorable to his dancing at Biddy, got before him to obscure that
demonstration. He had struck root in Joe's establishment, by reason
of my sister's sudden fancy for him, or I should have tried to get him
dismissed. He quite understood and reciprocated my good intentions, as I
had reason to know thereafter.
And now, because my mind was not confused enough before, I complicated
its confusion fifty thousand-fold, by having states and seasons when I
was clear that Biddy was immeasurably better than Estella, and that the
plain honest working life to which I was born had nothing in it to
be ashamed of, but offered me sufficient means of self-respect
and happiness. At those times, I would decide conclusively that my
disaffection to dear old Joe and the forge was gone, and that I was
growing up in a fair way to be partners with Joe and to keep company
with Biddy,--when all in a moment some confounding remembrance of the
Havisham days would fall upon me like a destructive missile, and scatter
my wits again. Scattered wits take a long time picking up; and often
before I had got them well together, they would be dispersed in all
directions by one stray thought, that perhaps after all Miss Havisham
was going to make my fortune when my time was out.
If my time had run out, it would have left me still at the height of my
perplexities, I dare say. It never did run out, however, but was brought
to a premature end, as I proceed to relate.
Chapter XVIII
It was in the fourth year of my apprenticeship to Joe, and it was a
Saturday night. There was a group assembled round the fire at the Three
Jolly Bargemen, attentive to Mr. Wopsle as he read the newspaper aloud.
Of that group I was one.
A highly popular murder had been committed, and Mr. Wopsle was imbrued
in blood to the eyebrows. He gloated over every abhorrent adjective
in the description, and identified himself with every witness at the
Inquest. He faintly moaned, "I am done for," as the victim, and he
barbarously bellowed, "I'll serve you out," as the murderer. He gave the
medical testimony, in pointed imitation of our local practitioner; and
he piped and shook, as the aged turnpike-keeper who had heard blows, to
an extent so very paralytic as to suggest a doubt regarding the mental
competency of that witness. The coroner, in Mr. Wopsle's hands, became
Timon of Athens; the beadle, Coriolanus. He enjoyed himself thoroughly,
and we all enjoyed ourselves, and were delightfully comfortable. In this
cosey state of mind we came to the verdict Wilful Murder.
Then, and not sooner, I became aware of a strange gentleman leaning over
the back of the settle opposite me, looking on. There was an expression
of contempt on his face, and he bit the side of a great forefinger as he
watched the group of faces.
"Well!" said the stranger to Mr. Wopsle, when the reading was done, "you
have settled it all to your own satisfaction, I have no doubt?"
Everybody started and looked up, as if it were the murderer. He looked
at everybody coldly and sarcastically.
"Guilty, of course?" said he. "Out with it. Come!"
"Sir," returned Mr. Wopsle, "without having the honor of your
acquaintance, I do say Guilty." Upon this we all took courage to unite
in a confirmatory murmur.
"I know you do," said the stranger; "I knew you would. I told you so.
But now I'll ask you a question. Do you know, or do you not know,
that the law of England supposes every man to be innocent, until he is
proved--proved--to be guilty?"
"Sir," Mr. Wopsle began to reply, "as an Englishman myself, I--"
"Come!" said the stranger, biting his forefinger at him. "Don't evade
the question. Either you know it, or you don't know it. Which is it to
be?"
He stood with his head on one side and himself on one side, in a
bullying, interrogative manner, and he threw his forefinger at Mr.
Wopsle,--as it were to mark him out--before biting it again.
"Now!" said he. "Do you know it, or don't you know it?"
"Certainly I know it," replied Mr. Wopsle.
"Certainly you know it. Then why didn't you say so at first? Now, I'll
ask you another question,"--taking possession of Mr. Wopsle, as if he
had a right to him,--"do you know that none of these witnesses have yet
been cross-examined?"
Mr. Wopsle was beginning, "I can only say--" when the stranger stopped
him.
"What? You won't answer the question, yes or no? Now, I'll try you
again." Throwing his finger at him again. "Attend to me. Are you
aware, or are you not aware, that none of these witnesses have yet been
cross-examined? Come, I only want one word from you. Yes, or no?"
Mr. Wopsle hesitated, and we all began to conceive rather a poor opinion
of him.
"Come!" said the stranger, "I'll help you. You don't deserve help, but
I'll help you. Look at that paper you hold in your hand. What is it?"
"What is it?" repeated Mr. Wopsle, eyeing it, much at a loss.
"Is it," pursued the stranger in his most sarcastic and suspicious
manner, "the printed paper you have just been reading from?"
"Undoubtedly."
"Undoubtedly. Now, turn to that paper, and tell me whether it distinctly
states that the prisoner expressly said that his legal advisers
instructed him altogether to reserve his defence?"
"I read that just now," Mr. Wopsle pleaded.
"Never mind what you read just now, sir; I don't ask you what you read
just now. You may read the Lord's Prayer backwards, if you like,--and,
perhaps, have done it before to-day. Turn to the paper. No, no, no my
friend; not to the top of the column; you know better than that; to
the bottom, to the bottom." (We all began to think Mr. Wopsle full of
subterfuge.) "Well? Have you found it?"
"Here it is," said Mr. Wopsle.
"Now, follow that passage with your eye, and tell me whether it
distinctly states that the prisoner expressly said that he was
instructed by his legal advisers wholly to reserve his defence? Come! Do
you make that of it?"
Mr. Wopsle answered, "Those are not the exact words."
"Not the exact words!" repeated the gentleman bitterly. "Is that the
exact substance?"
"Yes," said Mr. Wopsle.
"Yes," repeated the stranger, looking round at the rest of the company
with his right hand extended towards the witness, Wopsle. "And now I ask
you what you say to the conscience of that man who, with that passage
before his eyes, can lay his head upon his pillow after having
pronounced a fellow-creature guilty, unheard?"
We all began to suspect that Mr. Wopsle was not the man we had thought
him, and that he was beginning to be found out.
"And that same man, remember," pursued the gentleman, throwing his
finger at Mr. Wopsle heavily,--"that same man might be summoned as a
juryman upon this very trial, and, having thus deeply committed himself,
might return to the bosom of his family and lay his head upon his
pillow, after deliberately swearing that he would well and truly try the
issue joined between Our Sovereign Lord the King and the prisoner at the
bar, and would a true verdict give according to the evidence, so help
him God!"
We were all deeply persuaded that the unfortunate Wopsle had gone too
far, and had better stop in his reckless career while there was yet
time.
The strange gentleman, with an air of authority not to be disputed, and
with a manner expressive of knowing something secret about every one of
us that would effectually do for each individual if he chose to disclose
it, left the back of the settle, and came into the space between the two
settles, in front of the fire, where he remained standing, his left hand
in his pocket, and he biting the forefinger of his right.
"From information I have received," said he, looking round at us as we
all quailed before him, "I have reason to believe there is a blacksmith
among you, by name Joseph--or Joe--Gargery. Which is the man?"
"Here is the man," said Joe.
The strange gentleman beckoned him out of his place, and Joe went.
"You have an apprentice," pursued the stranger, "commonly known as Pip?
Is he here?"
"I am here!" I cried.
The stranger did not recognize me, but I recognized him as the gentleman
I had met on the stairs, on the occasion of my second visit to Miss
Havisham. I had known him the moment I saw him looking over the settle,
and now that I stood confronting him with his hand upon my shoulder,
I checked off again in detail his large head, his dark complexion, his
deep-set eyes, his bushy black eyebrows, his large watch-chain, his
strong black dots of beard and whisker, and even the smell of scented
soap on his great hand.
"I wish to have a private conference with you two," said he, when he had
surveyed me at his leisure. "It will take a little time. Perhaps we
had better go to your place of residence. I prefer not to anticipate my
communication here; you will impart as much or as little of it as you
please to your friends afterwards; I have nothing to do with that."
Amidst a wondering silence, we three walked out of the Jolly Bargemen,
and in a wondering silence walked home. While going along, the strange
gentleman occasionally looked at me, and occasionally bit the side of
his finger. As we neared home, Joe vaguely acknowledging the occasion as
an impressive and ceremonious one, went on ahead to open the front door.
Our conference was held in the state parlor, which was feebly lighted by
one candle.
It began with the strange gentleman's sitting down at the table, drawing
the candle to him, and looking over some entries in his pocket-book.
He then put up the pocket-book and set the candle a little aside, after
peering round it into the darkness at Joe and me, to ascertain which was
which.
"My name," he said, "is Jaggers, and I am a lawyer in London. I am
pretty well known. I have unusual business to transact with you, and I
commence by explaining that it is not of my originating. If my advice
had been asked, I should not have been here. It was not asked, and you
see me here. What I have to do as the confidential agent of another, I
do. No less, no more."
Finding that he could not see us very well from where he sat, he got
up, and threw one leg over the back of a chair and leaned upon it; thus
having one foot on the seat of the chair, and one foot on the ground.
"Now, Joseph Gargery, I am the bearer of an offer to relieve you of
this young fellow your apprentice. You would not object to cancel his
indentures at his request and for his good? You would want nothing for
so doing?"
"Lord forbid that I should want anything for not standing in Pip's way,"
said Joe, staring.
"Lord forbidding is pious, but not to the purpose," returned Mr.
Jaggers. "The question is, Would you want anything? Do you want
anything?"
"The answer is," returned Joe, sternly, "No."
I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as if he considered him a fool for
his disinterestedness. But I was too much bewildered between breathless
curiosity and surprise, to be sure of it.
"Very well," said Mr. Jaggers. "Recollect the admission you have made,
and don't try to go from it presently."
"Who's a going to try?" retorted Joe.
"I don't say anybody is. Do you keep a dog?"
"Yes, I do keep a dog."
"Bear in mind then, that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better.
Bear that in mind, will you?" repeated Mr. Jaggers, shutting his eyes
and nodding his head at Joe, as if he were forgiving him something.
"Now, I return to this young fellow. And the communication I have got to
make is, that he has great expectations."
Joe and I gasped, and looked at one another.
"I am instructed to communicate to him," said Mr. Jaggers, throwing
his finger at me sideways, "that he will come into a handsome property.
Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of that
property, that he be immediately removed from his present sphere of life
and from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman,--in a word, as a
young fellow of great expectations."
My dream was out; my wild fancy was surpassed by sober reality; Miss
Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale.
"Now, Mr. Pip," pursued the lawyer, "I address the rest of what I have
to say, to you. You are to understand, first, that it is the request
of the person from whom I take my instructions that you always bear
the name of Pip. You will have no objection, I dare say, to your great
expectations being encumbered with that easy condition. But if you have
any objection, this is the time to mention it."
My heart was beating so fast, and there was such a singing in my ears,
that I could scarcely stammer I had no objection.
"I should think not! Now you are to understand, secondly, Mr. Pip, that
the name of the person who is your liberal benefactor remains a profound
secret, until the person chooses to reveal it. I am empowered to mention
that it is the intention of the person to reveal it at first hand by
word of mouth to yourself. When or where that intention may be carried
out, I cannot say; no one can say. It may be years hence. Now, you are
distinctly to understand that you are most positively prohibited from
making any inquiry on this head, or any allusion or reference, however
distant, to any individual whomsoever as the individual, in all the
communications you may have with me. If you have a suspicion in your own
breast, keep that suspicion in your own breast. It is not the least to
the purpose what the reasons of this prohibition are; they may be the
strongest and gravest reasons, or they may be mere whim. This is not for
you to inquire into. The condition is laid down. Your acceptance of it,
and your observance of it as binding, is the only remaining condition
that I am charged with, by the person from whom I take my instructions,
and for whom I am not otherwise responsible. That person is the person
from whom you derive your expectations, and the secret is solely held by
that person and by me. Again, not a very difficult condition with which
to encumber such a rise in fortune; but if you have any objection to it,
this is the time to mention it. Speak out."
Once more, I stammered with difficulty that I had no objection.
"I should think not! Now, Mr. Pip, I have done with stipulations."
Though he called me Mr. Pip, and began rather to make up to me, he still
could not get rid of a certain air of bullying suspicion; and even now
he occasionally shut his eyes and threw his finger at me while he
spoke, as much as to express that he knew all kinds of things to my
disparagement, if he only chose to mention them. "We come next, to mere
details of arrangement. You must know that, although I have used
the term 'expectations' more than once, you are not endowed with
expectations only. There is already lodged in my hands a sum of money
amply sufficient for your suitable education and maintenance. You will
please consider me your guardian. Oh!" for I was going to thank him, "I
tell you at once, I am paid for my services, or I shouldn't render them.
It is considered that you must be better educated, in accordance with
your altered position, and that you will be alive to the importance and
necessity of at once entering on that advantage."
I said I had always longed for it.
"Never mind what you have always longed for, Mr. Pip," he retorted;
"keep to the record. If you long for it now, that's enough. Am I
answered that you are ready to be placed at once under some proper
tutor? Is that it?"
I stammered yes, that was it.
"Good. Now, your inclinations are to be consulted. I don't think that
wise, mind, but it's my trust. Have you ever heard of any tutor whom you
would prefer to another?"
I had never heard of any tutor but Biddy and Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt;
so, I replied in the negative.
"There is a certain tutor, of whom I have some knowledge, who I think
might suit the purpose," said Mr. Jaggers. "I don't recommend him,
observe; because I never recommend anybody. The gentleman I speak of is
one Mr. Matthew Pocket."
Ah! I caught at the name directly. Miss Havisham's relation. The Matthew
whom Mr. and Mrs. Camilla had spoken of. The Matthew whose place was to
be at Miss Havisham's head, when she lay dead, in her bride's dress on
the bride's table.
"You know the name?" said Mr. Jaggers, looking shrewdly at me, and then
shutting up his eyes while he waited for my answer.
My answer was, that I had heard of the name.
"Oh!" said he. "You have heard of the name. But the question is, what do
you say of it?"
I said, or tried to say, that I was much obliged to him for his
recommendation--
"No, my young friend!" he interrupted, shaking his great head very
slowly. "Recollect yourself!"
Not recollecting myself, I began again that I was much obliged to him
for his recommendation--
"No, my young friend," he interrupted, shaking his head and frowning and
smiling both at once,--"no, no, no; it's very well done, but it won't
do; you are too young to fix me with it. Recommendation is not the word,
Mr. Pip. Try another."
Correcting myself, I said that I was much obliged to him for his mention
of Mr. Matthew Pocket--
"That's more like it!" cried Mr. Jaggers.--And (I added), I would
gladly try that gentleman.
"Good. You had better try him in his own house. The way shall be
prepared for you, and you can see his son first, who is in London. When
will you come to London?"
I said (glancing at Joe, who stood looking on, motionless), that I
supposed I could come directly.
"First," said Mr. Jaggers, "you should have some new clothes to come in,
and they should not be working-clothes. Say this day week. You'll want
some money. Shall I leave you twenty guineas?"
He produced a long purse, with the greatest coolness, and counted them
out on the table and pushed them over to me. This was the first time he
had taken his leg from the chair. He sat astride of the chair when he
had pushed the money over, and sat swinging his purse and eyeing Joe.
"Well, Joseph Gargery? You look dumbfoundered?"
"I am!" said Joe, in a very decided manner.
"It was understood that you wanted nothing for yourself, remember?"
"It were understood," said Joe. "And it are understood. And it ever will
be similar according."
"But what," said Mr. Jaggers, swinging his purse,--"what if it was in my
instructions to make you a present, as compensation?"
"As compensation what for?" Joe demanded.
"For the loss of his services."
Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the touch of a woman. I have
often thought him since, like the steam-hammer that can crush a man or
pat an egg-shell, in his combination of strength with gentleness. "Pip
is that hearty welcome," said Joe, "to go free with his services, to
honor and fortun', as no words can tell him. But if you think as Money
can make compensation to me for the loss of the little child--what come
to the forge--and ever the best of friends!--"
O dear good Joe, whom I was so ready to leave and so unthankful to, I
see you again, with your muscular blacksmith's arm before your eyes,
and your broad chest heaving, and your voice dying away. O dear good
faithful tender Joe, I feel the loving tremble of your hand upon my arm,
as solemnly this day as if it had been the rustle of an angel's wing!
But I encouraged Joe at the time. I was lost in the mazes of my future
fortunes, and could not retrace the by-paths we had trodden together. I
begged Joe to be comforted, for (as he said) we had ever been the best
of friends, and (as I said) we ever would be so. Joe scooped his eyes
with his disengaged wrist, as if he were bent on gouging himself, but
said not another word.
Mr. Jaggers had looked on at this, as one who recognized in Joe the
village idiot, and in me his keeper. When it was over, he said, weighing
in his hand the purse he had ceased to swing:--
"Now, Joseph Gargery, I warn you this is your last chance. No half
measures with me. If you mean to take a present that I have it in charge
to make you, speak out, and you shall have it. If on the contrary you
mean to say--" Here, to his great amazement, he was stopped by Joe's
suddenly working round him with every demonstration of a fell pugilistic
purpose.
"Which I meantersay," cried Joe, "that if you come into my place
bull-baiting and badgering me, come out! Which I meantersay as sech if
you're a man, come on! Which I meantersay that what I say, I meantersay
and stand or fall by!"
I drew Joe away, and he immediately became placable; merely stating to
me, in an obliging manner and as a polite expostulatory notice to any
one whom it might happen to concern, that he were not a going to be
bull-baited and badgered in his own place. Mr. Jaggers had risen when
Joe demonstrated, and had backed near the door. Without evincing
any inclination to come in again, he there delivered his valedictory
remarks. They were these.
"Well, Mr. Pip, I think the sooner you leave here--as you are to be a
gentleman--the better. Let it stand for this day week, and you shall
receive my printed address in the meantime. You can take a hackney-coach
at the stage-coach office in London, and come straight to me.
Understand, that I express no opinion, one way or other, on the trust
I undertake. I am paid for undertaking it, and I do so. Now, understand
that, finally. Understand that!"
He was throwing his finger at both of us, and I think would have gone
on, but for his seeming to think Joe dangerous, and going off.
Something came into my head which induced me to run after him, as he was
going down to the Jolly Bargemen, where he had left a hired carriage.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Jaggers."
"Halloa!" said he, facing round, "what's the matter?"
"I wish to be quite right, Mr. Jaggers, and to keep to your directions;
so I thought I had better ask. Would there be any objection to my taking
leave of any one I know, about here, before I go away?"
"No," said he, looking as if he hardly understood me.
"I don't mean in the village only, but up town?"
"No," said he. "No objection."
I thanked him and ran home again, and there I found that Joe had already
locked the front door and vacated the state parlor, and was seated
by the kitchen fire with a hand on each knee, gazing intently at the
burning coals. I too sat down before the fire and gazed at the coals,
and nothing was said for a long time.
My sister was in her cushioned chair in her corner, and Biddy sat at her
needle-work before the fire, and Joe sat next Biddy, and I sat next Joe
in the corner opposite my sister. The more I looked into the glowing
coals, the more incapable I became of looking at Joe; the longer the
silence lasted, the more unable I felt to speak.
At length I got out, "Joe, have you told Biddy?"
"No, Pip," returned Joe, still looking at the fire, and holding his
knees tight, as if he had private information that they intended to make
off somewhere, "which I left it to yourself, Pip."
"I would rather you told, Joe."
"Pip's a gentleman of fortun' then," said Joe, "and God bless him in
it!"
Biddy dropped her work, and looked at me. Joe held his knees and looked
at me. I looked at both of them. After a pause, they both heartily
congratulated me; but there was a certain touch of sadness in their
congratulations that I rather resented.
I took it upon myself to impress Biddy (and through Biddy, Joe) with the
grave obligation I considered my friends under, to know nothing and say
nothing about the maker of my fortune. It would all come out in good
time, I observed, and in the meanwhile nothing was to be said, save
that I had come into great expectations from a mysterious patron. Biddy
nodded her head thoughtfully at the fire as she took up her work again,
and said she would be very particular; and Joe, still detaining his
knees, said, "Ay, ay, I'll be ekervally partickler, Pip;" and then they
congratulated me again, and went on to express so much wonder at the
notion of my being a gentleman that I didn't half like it.
Infinite pains were then taken by Biddy to convey to my sister some idea
of what had happened. To the best of my belief, those efforts entirely
failed. She laughed and nodded her head a great many times, and even
repeated after Biddy, the words "Pip" and "Property." But I doubt if
they had more meaning in them than an election cry, and I cannot suggest
a darker picture of her state of mind.
I never could have believed it without experience, but as Joe and
Biddy became more at their cheerful ease again, I became quite gloomy.
Dissatisfied with my fortune, of course I could not be; but it is
possible that I may have been, without quite knowing it, dissatisfied
with myself.
Any how, I sat with my elbow on my knee and my face upon my hand,
looking into the fire, as those two talked about my going away, and
about what they should do without me, and all that. And whenever I
caught one of them looking at me, though never so pleasantly (and they
often looked at me,--particularly Biddy), I felt offended: as if they
were expressing some mistrust of me. Though Heaven knows they never did
by word or sign.
At those times I would get up and look out at the door; for our kitchen
door opened at once upon the night, and stood open on summer evenings to
air the room. The very stars to which I then raised my eyes, I am afraid
I took to be but poor and humble stars for glittering on the rustic
objects among which I had passed my life.
"Saturday night," said I, when we sat at our supper of bread and cheese
and beer. "Five more days, and then the day before the day! They'll soon
go."
"Yes, Pip," observed Joe, whose voice sounded hollow in his beer-mug.
"They'll soon go."
"Soon, soon go," said Biddy.
"I have been thinking, Joe, that when I go down town on Monday, and
order my new clothes, I shall tell the tailor that I'll come and put
them on there, or that I'll have them sent to Mr. Pumblechook's. It
would be very disagreeable to be stared at by all the people here."
"Mr. and Mrs. Hubble might like to see you in your new gen-teel figure
too, Pip," said Joe, industriously cutting his bread, with his cheese on
it, in the palm of his left hand, and glancing at my untasted supper
as if he thought of the time when we used to compare slices. "So might
Wopsle. And the Jolly Bargemen might take it as a compliment."
"That's just what I don't want, Joe. They would make such a business of
it,--such a coarse and common business,--that I couldn't bear myself."
"Ah, that indeed, Pip!" said Joe. "If you couldn't abear yourself--"
Biddy asked me here, as she sat holding my sister's plate, "Have you
thought about when you'll show yourself to Mr. Gargery, and your sister
and me? You will show yourself to us; won't you?"
"Biddy," I returned with some resentment, "you are so exceedingly quick
that it's difficult to keep up with you."
("She always were quick," observed Joe.)
"If you had waited another moment, Biddy, you would have heard me say
that I shall bring my clothes here in a bundle one evening,--most likely
on the evening before I go away."
Biddy said no more. Handsomely forgiving her, I soon exchanged an
affectionate good night with her and Joe, and went up to bed. When I got
into my little room, I sat down and took a long look at it, as a mean
little room that I should soon be parted from and raised above, for
ever. It was furnished with fresh young remembrances too, and even at
the same moment I fell into much the same confused division of mind
between it and the better rooms to which I was going, as I had been in
so often between the forge and Miss Havisham's, and Biddy and Estella.
The sun had been shining brightly all day on the roof of my attic, and
the room was warm. As I put the window open and stood looking out, I saw
Joe come slowly forth at the dark door, below, and take a turn or two
in the air; and then I saw Biddy come, and bring him a pipe and light
it for him. He never smoked so late, and it seemed to hint to me that he
wanted comforting, for some reason or other.
He presently stood at the door immediately beneath me, smoking his pipe,
and Biddy stood there too, quietly talking to him, and I knew that they
talked of me, for I heard my name mentioned in an endearing tone by both
of them more than once. I would not have listened for more, if I could
have heard more; so I drew away from the window, and sat down in my one
chair by the bedside, feeling it very sorrowful and strange that this
first night of my bright fortunes should be the loneliest I had ever
known.
Looking towards the open window, I saw light wreaths from Joe's pipe
floating there, and I fancied it was like a blessing from Joe,--not
obtruded on me or paraded before me, but pervading the air we shared
together. I put my light out, and crept into bed; and it was an uneasy
bed now, and I never slept the old sound sleep in it any more.
Chapter XIX
Morning made a considerable difference in my general prospect of Life,
and brightened it so much that it scarcely seemed the same. What lay
heaviest on my mind was, the consideration that six days intervened
between me and the day of departure; for I could not divest myself of
a misgiving that something might happen to London in the meanwhile, and
that, when I got there, it would be either greatly deteriorated or clean
gone.
Joe and Biddy were very sympathetic and pleasant when I spoke of our
approaching separation; but they only referred to it when I did. After
breakfast, Joe brought out my indentures from the press in the best
parlor, and we put them in the fire, and I felt that I was free. With
all the novelty of my emancipation on me, I went to church with Joe, and
thought perhaps the clergyman wouldn't have read that about the rich man
and the kingdom of Heaven, if he had known all.
After our early dinner, I strolled out alone, purposing to finish off
the marshes at once, and get them done with. As I passed the church, I
felt (as I had felt during service in the morning) a sublime compassion
for the poor creatures who were destined to go there, Sunday after
Sunday, all their lives through, and to lie obscurely at last among the
low green mounds. I promised myself that I would do something for them
one of these days, and formed a plan in outline for bestowing a
dinner of roast-beef and plum-pudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of
condescension, upon everybody in the village.
If I had often thought before, with something allied to shame, of my
companionship with the fugitive whom I had once seen limping among those
graves, what were my thoughts on this Sunday, when the place recalled
the wretch, ragged and shivering, with his felon iron and badge! My
comfort was, that it happened a long time ago, and that he had doubtless
been transported a long way off, and that he was dead to me, and might
be veritably dead into the bargain.
No more low, wet grounds, no more dikes and sluices, no more of these
grazing cattle,--though they seemed, in their dull manner, to wear a
more respectful air now, and to face round, in order that they
might stare as long as possible at the possessor of such great
expectations,--farewell, monotonous acquaintances of my childhood,
henceforth I was for London and greatness; not for smith's work in
general, and for you! I made my exultant way to the old Battery, and,
lying down there to consider the question whether Miss Havisham intended
me for Estella, fell asleep.
When I awoke, I was much surprised to find Joe sitting beside me,
smoking his pipe. He greeted me with a cheerful smile on my opening my
eyes, and said,--
"As being the last time, Pip, I thought I'd foller."
"And Joe, I am very glad you did so."
"Thankee, Pip."
"You may be sure, dear Joe," I went on, after we had shaken hands, "that
I shall never forget you."
"No, no, Pip!" said Joe, in a comfortable tone, "I'm sure of that. Ay,
ay, old chap! Bless you, it were only necessary to get it well round in
a man's mind, to be certain on it. But it took a bit of time to get it
well round, the change come so oncommon plump; didn't it?"
Somehow, I was not best pleased with Joe's being so mightily secure of
me. I should have liked him to have betrayed emotion, or to have said,
"It does you credit, Pip," or something of that sort. Therefore, I made
no remark on Joe's first head; merely saying as to his second, that the
tidings had indeed come suddenly, but that I had always wanted to be a
gentleman, and had often and often speculated on what I would do, if I
were one.
"Have you though?" said Joe. "Astonishing!"
"It's a pity now, Joe," said I, "that you did not get on a little more,
when we had our lessons here; isn't it?"
"Well, I don't know," returned Joe. "I'm so awful dull. I'm only master
of my own trade. It were always a pity as I was so awful dull; but it's
no more of a pity now, than it was--this day twelvemonth--don't you
see?"
What I had meant was, that when I came into my property and was able to
do something for Joe, it would have been much more agreeable if he
had been better qualified for a rise in station. He was so perfectly
innocent of my meaning, however, that I thought I would mention it to
Biddy in preference.
So, when we had walked home and had had tea, I took Biddy into our
little garden by the side of the lane, and, after throwing out in a
general way for the elevation of her spirits, that I should never forget
her, said I had a favor to ask of her.
"And it is, Biddy," said I, "that you will not omit any opportunity of
helping Joe on, a little."
"How helping him on?" asked Biddy, with a steady sort of glance.
"Well! Joe is a dear good fellow,--in fact, I think he is the dearest
fellow that ever lived,--but he is rather backward in some things. For
instance, Biddy, in his learning and his manners."
Although I was looking at Biddy as I spoke, and although she opened her
eyes very wide when I had spoken, she did not look at me.
"O, his manners! won't his manners do then?" asked Biddy, plucking a
black-currant leaf.
"My dear Biddy, they do very well here--"
"O! they do very well here?" interrupted Biddy, looking closely at the
leaf in her hand.
"Hear me out,--but if I were to remove Joe into a higher sphere, as I
shall hope to remove him when I fully come into my property, they would
hardly do him justice."
"And don't you think he knows that?" asked Biddy.
It was such a very provoking question (for it had never in the most
distant manner occurred to me), that I said, snappishly,--
"Biddy, what do you mean?"
Biddy, having rubbed the leaf to pieces between her hands,--and the
smell of a black-currant bush has ever since recalled to me that evening
in the little garden by the side of the lane,--said, "Have you never
considered that he may be proud?"
"Proud?" I repeated, with disdainful emphasis.
"O! there are many kinds of pride," said Biddy, looking full at me and
shaking her head; "pride is not all of one kind--"
"Well? What are you stopping for?" said I.
"Not all of one kind," resumed Biddy. "He may be too proud to let any
one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fills well
and with respect. To tell you the truth, I think he is; though it sounds
bold in me to say so, for you must know him far better than I do."
"Now, Biddy," said I, "I am very sorry to see this in you. I did not
expect to see this in you. You are envious, Biddy, and grudging. You
are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune, and you can't help
showing it."
"If you have the heart to think so," returned Biddy, "say so. Say so
over and over again, if you have the heart to think so."
"If you have the heart to be so, you mean, Biddy," said I, in a virtuous
and superior tone; "don't put it off upon me. I am very sorry to see it,
and it's a--it's a bad side of human nature. I did intend to ask you
to use any little opportunities you might have after I was gone, of
improving dear Joe. But after this I ask you nothing. I am extremely
sorry to see this in you, Biddy," I repeated. "It's a--it's a bad side
of human nature."
"Whether you scold me or approve of me," returned poor Biddy, "you may
equally depend upon my trying to do all that lies in my power, here,
at all times. And whatever opinion you take away of me, shall make
no difference in my remembrance of you. Yet a gentleman should not be
unjust neither," said Biddy, turning away her head.
I again warmly repeated that it was a bad side of human nature (in which
sentiment, waiving its application, I have since seen reason to think I
was right), and I walked down the little path away from Biddy, and
Biddy went into the house, and I went out at the garden gate and took a
dejected stroll until supper-time; again feeling it very sorrowful and
strange that this, the second night of my bright fortunes, should be as
lonely and unsatisfactory as the first.
But, morning once more brightened my view, and I extended my clemency to
Biddy, and we dropped the subject. Putting on the best clothes I had,
I went into town as early as I could hope to find the shops open,
and presented myself before Mr. Trabb, the tailor, who was having his
breakfast in the parlor behind his shop, and who did not think it worth
his while to come out to me, but called me in to him.
"Well!" said Mr. Trabb, in a hail-fellow-well-met kind of way. "How are
you, and what can I do for you?"
Mr. Trabb had sliced his hot roll into three feather-beds, and was
slipping butter in between the blankets, and covering it up. He was a
prosperous old bachelor, and his open window looked into a prosperous
little garden and orchard, and there was a prosperous iron safe let into
the wall at the side of his fireplace, and I did not doubt that heaps of
his prosperity were put away in it in bags.
"Mr. Trabb," said I, "it's an unpleasant thing to have to mention,
because it looks like boasting; but I have come into a handsome
property."
A change passed over Mr. Trabb. He forgot the butter in bed, got up from
the bedside, and wiped his fingers on the tablecloth, exclaiming, "Lord
bless my soul!"
"I am going up to my guardian in London," said I, casually drawing some
guineas out of my pocket and looking at them; "and I want a fashionable
suit of clothes to go in. I wish to pay for them," I added--otherwise I
thought he might only pretend to make them, "with ready money."
"My dear sir," said Mr. Trabb, as he respectfully bent his body, opened
his arms, and took the liberty of touching me on the outside of each
elbow, "don't hurt me by mentioning that. May I venture to congratulate
you? Would you do me the favor of stepping into the shop?"
Mr. Trabb's boy was the most audacious boy in all that country-side.
When I had entered he was sweeping the shop, and he had sweetened his
labors by sweeping over me. He was still sweeping when I came out into
the shop with Mr. Trabb, and he knocked the broom against all possible
corners and obstacles, to express (as I understood it) equality with any
blacksmith, alive or dead.
"Hold that noise," said Mr. Trabb, with the greatest sternness, "or I'll
knock your head off!--Do me the favor to be seated, sir. Now, this,"
said Mr. Trabb, taking down a roll of cloth, and tiding it out in a
flowing manner over the counter, preparatory to getting his hand under
it to show the gloss, "is a very sweet article. I can recommend it for
your purpose, sir, because it really is extra super. But you shall
see some others. Give me Number Four, you!" (To the boy, and with a
dreadfully severe stare; foreseeing the danger of that miscreant's
brushing me with it, or making some other sign of familiarity.)
Mr. Trabb never removed his stern eye from the boy until he had
deposited number four on the counter and was at a safe distance again.
Then he commanded him to bring number five, and number eight. "And let
me have none of your tricks here," said Mr. Trabb, "or you shall repent
it, you young scoundrel, the longest day you have to live."
Mr. Trabb then bent over number four, and in a sort of deferential
confidence recommended it to me as a light article for summer wear, an
article much in vogue among the nobility and gentry, an article that
it would ever be an honor to him to reflect upon a distinguished
fellow-townsman's (if he might claim me for a fellow-townsman) having
worn. "Are you bringing numbers five and eight, you vagabond," said Mr.
Trabb to the boy after that, "or shall I kick you out of the shop and
bring them myself?"
I selected the materials for a suit, with the assistance of Mr. Trabb's
judgment, and re-entered the parlor to be measured. For although Mr.
Trabb had my measure already, and had previously been quite contented
with it, he said apologetically that it "wouldn't do under existing
circumstances, sir,--wouldn't do at all." So, Mr. Trabb measured and
calculated me in the parlor, as if I were an estate and he the finest
species of surveyor, and gave himself such a world of trouble that
I felt that no suit of clothes could possibly remunerate him for his
pains. When he had at last done and had appointed to send the articles
to Mr. Pumblechook's on the Thursday evening, he said, with his hand
upon the parlor lock, "I know, sir, that London gentlemen cannot be
expected to patronize local work, as a rule; but if you would give me a
turn now and then in the quality of a townsman, I should greatly esteem
it. Good morning, sir, much obliged.--Door!"
The last word was flung at the boy, who had not the least notion what
it meant. But I saw him collapse as his master rubbed me out with his
hands, and my first decided experience of the stupendous power of money
was, that it had morally laid upon his back Trabb's boy.
After this memorable event, I went to the hatter's, and the bootmaker's,
and the hosier's, and felt rather like Mother Hubbard's dog whose outfit
required the services of so many trades. I also went to the coach-office
and took my place for seven o'clock on Saturday morning. It was
not necessary to explain everywhere that I had come into a handsome
property; but whenever I said anything to that effect, it followed that
the officiating tradesman ceased to have his attention diverted through
the window by the High Street, and concentrated his mind upon me. When
I had ordered everything I wanted, I directed my steps towards
Pumblechook's, and, as I approached that gentleman's place of business,
I saw him standing at his door.
He was waiting for me with great impatience. He had been out early with
the chaise-cart, and had called at the forge and heard the news. He had
prepared a collation for me in the Barnwell parlor, and he too ordered
his shopman to "come out of the gangway" as my sacred person passed.
"My dear friend," said Mr. Pumblechook, taking me by both hands, when
he and I and the collation were alone, "I give you joy of your good
fortune. Well deserved, well deserved!"
This was coming to the point, and I thought it a sensible way of
expressing himself.
"To think," said Mr. Pumblechook, after snorting admiration at me for
some moments, "that I should have been the humble instrument of leading
up to this, is a proud reward."
I begged Mr. Pumblechook to remember that nothing was to be ever said or
hinted, on that point.
"My dear young friend," said Mr. Pumblechook; "if you will allow me to
call you so--"
I murmured "Certainly," and Mr. Pumblechook took me by both hands again,
and communicated a movement to his waistcoat, which had an emotional
appearance, though it was rather low down, "My dear young friend, rely
upon my doing my little all in your absence, by keeping the fact before
the mind of Joseph.--Joseph!" said Mr. Pumblechook, in the way of a
compassionate adjuration. "Joseph!! Joseph!!!" Thereupon he shook his
head and tapped it, expressing his sense of deficiency in Joseph.
"But my dear young friend," said Mr. Pumblechook, "you must be hungry,
you must be exhausted. Be seated. Here is a chicken had round from the
Boar, here is a tongue had round from the Boar, here's one or two little
things had round from the Boar, that I hope you may not despise. But do
I," said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again the moment after he had sat
down, "see afore me, him as I ever sported with in his times of happy
infancy? And may I--may I--?"
This May I, meant might he shake hands? I consented, and he was fervent,
and then sat down again.
"Here is wine," said Mr. Pumblechook. "Let us drink, Thanks to Fortune,
and may she ever pick out her favorites with equal judgment! And yet I
cannot," said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again, "see afore me One--and
likewise drink to One--without again expressing--May I--may I--?"
I said he might, and he shook hands with me again, and emptied his glass
and turned it upside down. I did the same; and if I had turned myself
upside down before drinking, the wine could not have gone more direct to
my head.
Mr. Pumblechook helped me to the liver wing, and to the best slice of
tongue (none of those out-of-the-way No Thoroughfares of Pork now), and
took, comparatively speaking, no care of himself at all. "Ah! poultry,
poultry! You little thought," said Mr. Pumblechook, apostrophizing the
fowl in the dish, "when you was a young fledgling, what was in store for
you. You little thought you was to be refreshment beneath this humble
roof for one as--Call it a weakness, if you will," said Mr. Pumblechook,
getting up again, "but may I? may I--?"
It began to be unnecessary to repeat the form of saying he might, so
he did it at once. How he ever did it so often without wounding himself
with my knife, I don't know.
"And your sister," he resumed, after a little steady eating, "which had
the honor of bringing you up by hand! It's a sad picter, to reflect that
she's no longer equal to fully understanding the honor. May--"
I saw he was about to come at me again, and I stopped him.
"We'll drink her health," said I.
"Ah!" cried Mr. Pumblechook, leaning back in his chair, quite flaccid
with admiration, "that's the way you know 'em, sir!" (I don't know
who Sir was, but he certainly was not I, and there was no third person
present); "that's the way you know the noble-minded, sir! Ever forgiving
and ever affable. It might," said the servile Pumblechook, putting down
his untasted glass in a hurry and getting up again, "to a common person,
have the appearance of repeating--but may I--?"
When he had done it, he resumed his seat and drank to my sister. "Let us
never be blind," said Mr. Pumblechook, "to her faults of temper, but it
is to be hoped she meant well."
At about this time, I began to observe that he was getting flushed in
the face; as to myself, I felt all face, steeped in wine and smarting.
I mentioned to Mr. Pumblechook that I wished to have my new clothes
sent to his house, and he was ecstatic on my so distinguishing him. I
mentioned my reason for desiring to avoid observation in the village,
and he lauded it to the skies. There was nobody but himself, he
intimated, worthy of my confidence, and--in short, might he? Then he
asked me tenderly if I remembered our boyish games at sums, and how we
had gone together to have me bound apprentice, and, in effect, how he
had ever been my favorite fancy and my chosen friend? If I had taken
ten times as many glasses of wine as I had, I should have known that he
never had stood in that relation towards me, and should in my heart of
hearts have repudiated the idea. Yet for all that, I remember feeling
convinced that I had been much mistaken in him, and that he was a
sensible, practical, good-hearted prime fellow.
By degrees he fell to reposing such great confidence in me, as to ask my
advice in reference to his own affairs. He mentioned that there was an
opportunity for a great amalgamation and monopoly of the corn and seed
trade on those premises, if enlarged, such as had never occurred
before in that or any other neighborhood. What alone was wanting to the
realization of a vast fortune, he considered to be More Capital.
Those were the two little words, more capital. Now it appeared to him
(Pumblechook) that if that capital were got into the business, through a
sleeping partner, sir,--which sleeping partner would have nothing to
do but walk in, by self or deputy, whenever he pleased, and examine
the books,--and walk in twice a year and take his profits away in his
pocket, to the tune of fifty per cent,--it appeared to him that that
might be an opening for a young gentleman of spirit combined with
property, which would be worthy of his attention. But what did I think?
He had great confidence in my opinion, and what did I think? I gave it
as my opinion. "Wait a bit!" The united vastness and distinctness of
this view so struck him, that he no longer asked if he might shake hands
with me, but said he really must,--and did.
We drank all the wine, and Mr. Pumblechook pledged himself over and over
again to keep Joseph up to the mark (I don't know what mark), and to
render me efficient and constant service (I don't know what service). He
also made known to me for the first time in my life, and certainly after
having kept his secret wonderfully well, that he had always said of me,
"That boy is no common boy, and mark me, his fortun' will be no common
fortun'." He said with a tearful smile that it was a singular thing to
think of now, and I said so too. Finally, I went out into the air, with
a dim perception that there was something unwonted in the conduct of the
sunshine, and found that I had slumberously got to the turnpike without
having taken any account of the road.
There, I was roused by Mr. Pumblechook's hailing me. He was a long way
down the sunny street, and was making expressive gestures for me to
stop. I stopped, and he came up breathless.
"No, my dear friend," said he, when he had recovered wind for speech.
"Not if I can help it. This occasion shall not entirely pass without
that affability on your part.--May I, as an old friend and well-wisher?
May I?"
We shook hands for the hundredth time at least, and he ordered a young
carter out of my way with the greatest indignation. Then, he blessed
me and stood waving his hand to me until I had passed the crook in the
road; and then I turned into a field and had a long nap under a hedge
before I pursued my way home.
I had scant luggage to take with me to London, for little of the little
I possessed was adapted to my new station. But I began packing that same
afternoon, and wildly packed up things that I knew I should want next
morning, in a fiction that there was not a moment to be lost.
So, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, passed; and on Friday morning I
went to Mr. Pumblechook's, to put on my new clothes and pay my visit to
Miss Havisham. Mr. Pumblechook's own room was given up to me to dress
in, and was decorated with clean towels expressly for the event. My
clothes were rather a disappointment, of course. Probably every new
and eagerly expected garment ever put on since clothes came in, fell
a trifle short of the wearer's expectation. But after I had had my
new suit on some half an hour, and had gone through an immensity of
posturing with Mr. Pumblechook's very limited dressing-glass, in the
futile endeavor to see my legs, it seemed to fit me better. It being
market morning at a neighboring town some ten miles off, Mr. Pumblechook
was not at home. I had not told him exactly when I meant to leave, and
was not likely to shake hands with him again before departing. This was
all as it should be, and I went out in my new array, fearfully ashamed
of having to pass the shopman, and suspicious after all that I was at a
personal disadvantage, something like Joe's in his Sunday suit.
I went circuitously to Miss Havisham's by all the back ways, and rang
at the bell constrainedly, on account of the stiff long fingers of my
gloves. Sarah Pocket came to the gate, and positively reeled back when
she saw me so changed; her walnut-shell countenance likewise turned from
brown to green and yellow.
"You?" said she. "You? Good gracious! What do you want?"
"I am going to London, Miss Pocket," said I, "and want to say good-bye to
Miss Havisham."
I was not expected, for she left me locked in the yard, while she went
to ask if I were to be admitted. After a very short delay, she returned
and took me up, staring at me all the way.
Miss Havisham was taking exercise in the room with the long spread
table, leaning on her crutch stick. The room was lighted as of yore, and
at the sound of our entrance, she stopped and turned. She was then just
abreast of the rotted bride-cake.
"Don't go, Sarah," she said. "Well, Pip?"
"I start for London, Miss Havisham, to-morrow," I was exceedingly
careful what I said, "and I thought you would kindly not mind my taking
leave of you."
"This is a gay figure, Pip," said she, making her crutch stick play
round me, as if she, the fairy godmother who had changed me, were
bestowing the finishing gift.
"I have come into such good fortune since I saw you last, Miss
Havisham," I murmured. "And I am so grateful for it, Miss Havisham!"
"Ay, ay!" said she, looking at the discomfited and envious Sarah, with
delight. "I have seen Mr. Jaggers. I have heard about it, Pip. So you go
to-morrow?"
"Yes, Miss Havisham."
"And you are adopted by a rich person?"
"Yes, Miss Havisham."
"Not named?"
"No, Miss Havisham."
"And Mr. Jaggers is made your guardian?"
"Yes, Miss Havisham."
She quite gloated on these questions and answers, so keen was her
enjoyment of Sarah Pocket's jealous dismay. "Well!" she went on; "you
have a promising career before you. Be good--deserve it--and abide by
Mr. Jaggers's instructions." She looked at me, and looked at Sarah, and
Sarah's countenance wrung out of her watchful face a cruel smile. "Good-bye,
Pip!--you will always keep the name of Pip, you know."
"Yes, Miss Havisham."
"Good-bye, Pip!"
She stretched out her hand, and I went down on my knee and put it to
my lips. I had not considered how I should take leave of her; it came
naturally to me at the moment to do this. She looked at Sarah Pocket
with triumph in her weird eyes, and so I left my fairy godmother, with
both her hands on her crutch stick, standing in the midst of the dimly
lighted room beside the rotten bride-cake that was hidden in cobwebs.
Sarah Pocket conducted me down, as if I were a ghost who must be seen
out. She could not get over my appearance, and was in the last degree
confounded. I said "Good-bye, Miss Pocket;" but she merely stared, and
did not seem collected enough to know that I had spoken. Clear of the
house, I made the best of my way back to Pumblechook's, took off my new
clothes, made them into a bundle, and went back home in my older dress,
carrying it--to speak the truth--much more at my ease too, though I had
the bundle to carry.
And now, those six days which were to have run out so slowly, had
run out fast and were gone, and to-morrow looked me in the face more
steadily than I could look at it. As the six evenings had dwindled
away, to five, to four, to three, to two, I had become more and more
appreciative of the society of Joe and Biddy. On this last evening, I
dressed my self out in my new clothes for their delight, and sat in my
splendor until bedtime. We had a hot supper on the occasion, graced by
the inevitable roast fowl, and we had some flip to finish with. We were
all very low, and none the higher for pretending to be in spirits.
I was to leave our village at five in the morning, carrying my little
hand-portmanteau, and I had told Joe that I wished to walk away all
alone. I am afraid--sore afraid--that this purpose originated in my
sense of the contrast there would be between me and Joe, if we went to
the coach together. I had pretended with myself that there was nothing
of this taint in the arrangement; but when I went up to my little room
on this last night, I felt compelled to admit that it might be so, and
had an impulse upon me to go down again and entreat Joe to walk with me
in the morning. I did not.
All night there were coaches in my broken sleep, going to wrong places
instead of to London, and having in the traces, now dogs, now cats, now
pigs, now men,--never horses. Fantastic failures of journeys occupied
me until the day dawned and the birds were singing. Then, I got up and
partly dressed, and sat at the window to take a last look out, and in
taking it fell asleep.
Biddy was astir so early to get my breakfast, that, although I did not
sleep at the window an hour, I smelt the smoke of the kitchen fire when
I started up with a terrible idea that it must be late in the afternoon.
But long after that, and long after I had heard the clinking of the
teacups and was quite ready, I wanted the resolution to go downstairs.
After all, I remained up there, repeatedly unlocking and unstrapping
my small portmanteau and locking and strapping it up again, until Biddy
called to me that I was late.
It was a hurried breakfast with no taste in it. I got up from the meal,
saying with a sort of briskness, as if it had only just occurred to me,
"Well! I suppose I must be off!" and then I kissed my sister who was
laughing and nodding and shaking in her usual chair, and kissed
Biddy, and threw my arms around Joe's neck. Then I took up my little
portmanteau and walked out. The last I saw of them was, when I presently
heard a scuffle behind me, and looking back, saw Joe throwing an old
shoe after me and Biddy throwing another old shoe. I stopped then, to
wave my hat, and dear old Joe waved his strong right arm above his head,
crying huskily "Hooroar!" and Biddy put her apron to her face.
I walked away at a good pace, thinking it was easier to go than I had
supposed it would be, and reflecting that it would never have done to
have had an old shoe thrown after the coach, in sight of all the High
Street. I whistled and made nothing of going. But the village was very
peaceful and quiet, and the light mists were solemnly rising, as if to
show me the world, and I had been so innocent and little there, and all
beyond was so unknown and great, that in a moment with a strong heave
and sob I broke into tears. It was by the finger-post at the end of the
village, and I laid my hand upon it, and said, "Good-bye, O my dear, dear
friend!"
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain
upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was
better after I had cried than before,--more sorry, more aware of my own
ingratitude, more gentle. If I had cried before, I should have had Joe
with me then.
So subdued I was by those tears, and by their breaking out again in the
course of the quiet walk, that when I was on the coach, and it was clear
of the town, I deliberated with an aching heart whether I would not get
down when we changed horses and walk back, and have another evening at
home, and a better parting. We changed, and I had not made up my mind,
and still reflected for my comfort that it would be quite practicable to
get down and walk back, when we changed again. And while I was occupied
with these deliberations, I would fancy an exact resemblance to Joe
in some man coming along the road towards us, and my heart would beat
high.--As if he could possibly be there!
We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to
go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and
the world lay spread before me.
This is the end of the first stage of Pip's expectations.
Chapter XX
The journey from our town to the metropolis was a journey of about five
hours. It was a little past midday when the four-horse stage-coach by
which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of traffic frayed out about
the Cross Keys, Wood Street, Cheapside, London.
We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was treasonable
to doubt our having and our being the best of everything: otherwise,
while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I might have had
some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and
dirty.
Mr. Jaggers had duly sent me his address; it was, Little Britain, and he
had written after it on his card, "just out of Smithfield, and close by
the coach-office." Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman, who seemed to have
as many capes to his greasy great-coat as he was years old, packed me
up in his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and jingling barrier of
steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. His getting on his
box, which I remember to have been decorated with an old weather-stained
pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of time.
It was a wonderful equipage, with six great coronets outside, and ragged
things behind for I don't know how many footmen to hold on by, and
a harrow below them, to prevent amateur footmen from yielding to the
temptation.
I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to think how like a
straw-yard it was, and yet how like a rag-shop, and to wonder why
the horses' nose-bags were kept inside, when I observed the coachman
beginning to get down, as if we were going to stop presently. And stop
we presently did, in a gloomy street, at certain offices with an open
door, whereon was painted MR. JAGGERS.
"How much?" I asked the coachman.
The coachman answered, "A shilling--unless you wish to make it more."
I naturally said I had no wish to make it more.
"Then it must be a shilling," observed the coachman. "I don't want to
get into trouble. I know him!" He darkly closed an eye at Mr. Jaggers's
name, and shook his head.
When he had got his shilling, and had in course of time completed the
ascent to his box, and had got away (which appeared to relieve his
mind), I went into the front office with my little portmanteau in my
hand and asked, Was Mr. Jaggers at home?
"He is not," returned the clerk. "He is in Court at present. Am I
addressing Mr. Pip?"
I signified that he was addressing Mr. Pip.
"Mr. Jaggers left word, would you wait in his room. He couldn't say how
long he might be, having a case on. But it stands to reason, his time
being valuable, that he won't be longer than he can help."
With those words, the clerk opened a door, and ushered me into an inner
chamber at the back. Here, we found a gentleman with one eye, in a
velveteen suit and knee-breeches, who wiped his nose with his sleeve on
being interrupted in the perusal of the newspaper.
"Go and wait outside, Mike," said the clerk.
I began to say that I hoped I was not interrupting, when the clerk
shoved this gentleman out with as little ceremony as I ever saw used,
and tossing his fur cap out after him, left me alone.
Mr. Jaggers's room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a most dismal
place; the skylight, eccentrically pitched like a broken head, and the
distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had twisted themselves to
peep down at me through it. There were not so many papers about, as I
should have expected to see; and there were some odd objects about, that
I should not have expected to see,--such as an old rusty pistol, a
sword in a scabbard, several strange-looking boxes and packages, and
two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy
about the nose. Mr. Jaggers's own high-backed chair was of deadly black
horsehair, with rows of brass nails round it, like a coffin; and I
fancied I could see how he leaned back in it, and bit his forefinger at
the clients. The room was but small, and the clients seemed to have had
a habit of backing up against the wall; the wall, especially opposite to
Mr. Jaggers's chair, being greasy with shoulders. I recalled, too, that
the one-eyed gentleman had shuffled forth against the wall when I was
the innocent cause of his being turned out.
I sat down in the cliental chair placed over against Mr. Jaggers's
chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of the place. I
called to mind that the clerk had the same air of knowing something to
everybody else's disadvantage, as his master had. I wondered how many
other clerks there were upstairs, and whether they all claimed to have
the same detrimental mastery of their fellow-creatures. I wondered what
was the history of all the odd litter about the room, and how it came
there. I wondered whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers's
family, and, if he were so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such
ill-looking relations, why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the
blacks and flies to settle on, instead of giving them a place at home.
Of course I had no experience of a London summer day, and my spirits may
have been oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by the dust and grit
that lay thick on everything. But I sat wondering and waiting in Mr.
Jaggers's close room, until I really could not bear the two casts on the
shelf above Mr. Jaggers's chair, and got up and went out.
When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the air while I
waited, he advised me to go round the corner and I should come into
Smithfield. So I came into Smithfield; and the shameful place, being all
asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to stick to me. So,
I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning into a street where
I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul's bulging at me from behind a
grim stone building which a bystander said was Newgate Prison. Following
the wall of the jail, I found the roadway covered with straw to deaden
the noise of passing vehicles; and from this, and from the quantity of
people standing about smelling strongly of spirits and beer, I inferred
that the trials were on.
While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially drunk
minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and hear a
trial or so: informing me that he could give me a front place for half a
crown, whence I should command a full view of the Lord Chief Justice in
his wig and robes,--mentioning that awful personage like waxwork, and
presently offering him at the reduced price of eighteen-pence. As I
declined the proposal on the plea of an appointment, he was so good as
to take me into a yard and show me where the gallows was kept, and also
where people were publicly whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors'
Door, out of which culprits came to be hanged; heightening the interest
of that dreadful portal by giving me to understand that "four on 'em"
would come out at that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the
morning, to be killed in a row. This was horrible, and gave me a
sickening idea of London; the more so as the Lord Chief Justice's
proprietor wore (from his hat down to his boots and up again to his
pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed clothes which had evidently
not belonged to him originally, and which I took it into my head he had
bought cheap of the executioner. Under these circumstances I thought
myself well rid of him for a shilling.
I dropped into the office to ask if Mr. Jaggers had come in yet, and I
found he had not, and I strolled out again. This time, I made the tour
of Little Britain, and turned into Bartholomew Close; and now I became
aware that other people were waiting about for Mr. Jaggers, as well
as I. There were two men of secret appearance lounging in Bartholomew
Close, and thoughtfully fitting their feet into the cracks of the
pavement as they talked together, one of whom said to the other when
they first passed me, that "Jaggers would do it if it was to be done."
There was a knot of three men and two women standing at a corner, and
one of the women was crying on her dirty shawl, and the other comforted
her by saying, as she pulled her own shawl over her shoulders, "Jaggers
is for him, 'Melia, and what more could you have?" There was a red-eyed
little Jew who came into the Close while I was loitering there, in
company with a second little Jew whom he sent upon an errand; and
while the messenger was gone, I remarked this Jew, who was of a highly
excitable temperament, performing a jig of anxiety under a lamp-post and
accompanying himself, in a kind of frenzy, with the words, "O Jaggerth,
Jaggerth, Jaggerth! all otherth ith Cag-Maggerth, give me Jaggerth!"
These testimonies to the popularity of my guardian made a deep
impression on me, and I admired and wondered more than ever.
At length, as I was looking out at the iron gate of Bartholomew Close
into Little Britain, I saw Mr. Jaggers coming across the road towards
me. All the others who were waiting saw him at the same time, and there
was quite a rush at him. Mr. Jaggers, putting a hand on my shoulder
and walking me on at his side without saying anything to me, addressed
himself to his followers.
First, he took the two secret men.
"Now, I have nothing to say to you," said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his
finger at them. "I want to know no more than I know. As to the result,
it's a toss-up. I told you from the first it was a toss-up. Have you
paid Wemmick?"
"We made the money up this morning, sir," said one of the men,
submissively, while the other perused Mr. Jaggers's face.
"I don't ask you when you made it up, or where, or whether you made it
up at all. Has Wemmick got it?"
"Yes, sir," said both the men together.
"Very well; then you may go. Now, I won't have it!" said Mr Jaggers,
waving his hand at them to put them behind him. "If you say a word to
me, I'll throw up the case."
"We thought, Mr. Jaggers--" one of the men began, pulling off his hat.
"That's what I told you not to do," said Mr. Jaggers. "You thought! I
think for you; that's enough for you. If I want you, I know where to
find you; I don't want you to find me. Now I won't have it. I won't hear
a word."
The two men looked at one another as Mr. Jaggers waved them behind
again, and humbly fell back and were heard no more.
"And now you!" said Mr. Jaggers, suddenly stopping, and turning on
the two women with the shawls, from whom the three men had meekly
separated,--"Oh! Amelia, is it?"
"Yes, Mr. Jaggers."
"And do you remember," retorted Mr. Jaggers, "that but for me you
wouldn't be here and couldn't be here?"
"O yes, sir!" exclaimed both women together. "Lord bless you, sir, well
we knows that!"
"Then why," said Mr. Jaggers, "do you come here?"
"My Bill, sir!" the crying woman pleaded.
"Now, I tell you what!" said Mr. Jaggers. "Once for all. If you don't
know that your Bill's in good hands, I know it. And if you come here
bothering about your Bill, I'll make an example of both your Bill and
you, and let him slip through my fingers. Have you paid Wemmick?"
"O yes, sir! Every farden."
"Very well. Then you have done all you have got to do. Say another
word--one single word--and Wemmick shall give you your money back."
This terrible threat caused the two women to fall off immediately.
No one remained now but the excitable Jew, who had already raised the
skirts of Mr. Jaggers's coat to his lips several times.
"I don't know this man!" said Mr. Jaggers, in the same devastating
strain: "What does this fellow want?"
"Ma thear Mithter Jaggerth. Hown brother to Habraham Latharuth?"
"Who's he?" said Mr. Jaggers. "Let go of my coat."
The suitor, kissing the hem of the garment again before relinquishing
it, replied, "Habraham Latharuth, on thuthpithion of plate."
"You're too late," said Mr. Jaggers. "I am over the way."
"Holy father, Mithter Jaggerth!" cried my excitable acquaintance,
turning white, "don't thay you're again Habraham Latharuth!"
"I am," said Mr. Jaggers, "and there's an end of it. Get out of the
way."
"Mithter Jaggerth! Half a moment! My hown cuthen'th gone to Mithter
Wemmick at thith prethent minute, to hoffer him hany termth. Mithter
Jaggerth! Half a quarter of a moment! If you'd have the condethenthun to
be bought off from the t'other thide--at hany thuperior prithe!--money
no object!--Mithter Jaggerth--Mithter--!"
My guardian threw his supplicant off with supreme indifference, and
left him dancing on the pavement as if it were red hot. Without further
interruption, we reached the front office, where we found the clerk and
the man in velveteen with the fur cap.
"Here's Mike," said the clerk, getting down from his stool, and
approaching Mr. Jaggers confidentially.
"Oh!" said Mr. Jaggers, turning to the man, who was pulling a lock of
hair in the middle of his forehead, like the Bull in Cock Robin pulling
at the bell-rope; "your man comes on this afternoon. Well?"
"Well, Mas'r Jaggers," returned Mike, in the voice of a sufferer from a
constitutional cold; "arter a deal o' trouble, I've found one, sir, as
might do."
"What is he prepared to swear?"
"Well, Mas'r Jaggers," said Mike, wiping his nose on his fur cap this
time; "in a general way, anythink."
Mr. Jaggers suddenly became most irate. "Now, I warned you before," said
he, throwing his forefinger at the terrified client, "that if you ever
presumed to talk in that way here, I'd make an example of you. You
infernal scoundrel, how dare you tell ME that?"
The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if he were unconscious
what he had done.
"Spooney!" said the clerk, in a low voice, giving him a stir with his
elbow. "Soft Head! Need you say it face to face?"
"Now, I ask you, you blundering booby," said my guardian, very sternly,
"once more and for the last time, what the man you have brought here is
prepared to swear?"
Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were trying to learn a lesson
from his face, and slowly replied, "Ayther to character, or to having
been in his company and never left him all the night in question."
"Now, be careful. In what station of life is this man?"
Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor, and looked at the
ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even looked at me, before
beginning to reply in a nervous manner, "We've dressed him up like--"
when my guardian blustered out,--
"What? You WILL, will you?"
("Spooney!" added the clerk again, with another stir.)
After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened and began again:--
"He is dressed like a 'spectable pieman. A sort of a pastry-cook."
"Is he here?" asked my guardian.
"I left him," said Mike, "a setting on some doorsteps round the corner."
"Take him past that window, and let me see him."
The window indicated was the office window. We all three went to
it, behind the wire blind, and presently saw the client go by in an
accidental manner, with a murderous-looking tall individual, in a short
suit of white linen and a paper cap. This guileless confectioner was not
by any means sober, and had a black eye in the green stage of recovery,
which was painted over.
"Tell him to take his witness away directly," said my guardian to the
clerk, in extreme disgust, "and ask him what he means by bringing such a
fellow as that."
My guardian then took me into his own room, and while he lunched,
standing, from a sandwich-box and a pocket-flask of sherry (he seemed to
bully his very sandwich as he ate it), informed me what arrangements he
had made for me. I was to go to "Barnard's Inn," to young Mr. Pocket's
rooms, where a bed had been sent in for my accommodation; I was to
remain with young Mr. Pocket until Monday; on Monday I was to go with
him to his father's house on a visit, that I might try how I liked it.
Also, I was told what my allowance was to be,--it was a very liberal
one,--and had handed to me from one of my guardian's drawers, the cards
of certain tradesmen with whom I was to deal for all kinds of clothes,
and such other things as I could in reason want. "You will find your
credit good, Mr. Pip," said my guardian, whose flask of sherry smelt
like a whole caskful, as he hastily refreshed himself, "but I shall by
this means be able to check your bills, and to pull you up if I find you
outrunning the constable. Of course you'll go wrong somehow, but that's
no fault of mine."
After I had pondered a little over this encouraging sentiment, I asked
Mr. Jaggers if I could send for a coach? He said it was not worth while,
I was so near my destination; Wemmick should walk round with me, if I
pleased.
I then found that Wemmick was the clerk in the next room. Another clerk
was rung down from upstairs to take his place while he was out, and I
accompanied him into the street, after shaking hands with my guardian.
We found a new set of people lingering outside, but Wemmick made a way
among them by saying coolly yet decisively, "I tell you it's no use; he
won't have a word to say to one of you;" and we soon got clear of them,
and went on side by side.
Chapter XXI
Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was
like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in
stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been
imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks
in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and
the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel
had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose,
but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off. I judged him
to be a bachelor from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared
to have sustained a good many bereavements; for he wore at least four
mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping
willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, too, that several rings
and seals hung at his watch-chain, as if he were quite laden with
remembrances of departed friends. He had glittering eyes,--small, keen,
and black,--and thin wide mottled lips. He had had them, to the best of
my belief, from forty to fifty years.
"So you were never in London before?" said Mr. Wemmick to me.
"No," said I.
"I was new here once," said Mr. Wemmick. "Rum to think of now!"
"You are well acquainted with it now?"
"Why, yes," said Mr. Wemmick. "I know the moves of it."
"Is it a very wicked place?" I asked, more for the sake of saying
something than for information.
"You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered in London. But there are
plenty of people anywhere, who'll do that for you."
"If there is bad blood between you and them," said I, to soften it off a
little.
"O! I don't know about bad blood," returned Mr. Wemmick; "there's not
much bad blood about. They'll do it, if there's anything to be got by
it."
"That makes it worse."
"You think so?" returned Mr. Wemmick. "Much about the same, I should
say."
He wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked straight before him:
walking in a self-contained way as if there were nothing in the streets
to claim his attention. His mouth was such a post-office of a mouth
that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling. We had got to the top of
Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a mechanical appearance,
and that he was not smiling at all.
"Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket lives?" I asked Mr. Wemmick.
"Yes," said he, nodding in the direction. "At Hammersmith, west of
London."
"Is that far?"
"Well! Say five miles."
"Do you know him?"
"Why, you're a regular cross-examiner!" said Mr. Wemmick, looking at me
with an approving air. "Yes, I know him. I know him!"
There was an air of toleration or depreciation about his utterance of
these words that rather depressed me; and I was still looking sideways
at his block of a face in search of any encouraging note to the text,
when he said here we were at Barnard's Inn. My depression was not
alleviated by the announcement, for, I had supposed that establishment
to be an hotel kept by Mr. Barnard, to which the Blue Boar in our town
was a mere public-house. Whereas I now found Barnard to be a disembodied
spirit, or a fiction, and his inn the dingiest collection of shabby
buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner as a club for
Tom-cats.
We entered this haven through a wicket-gate, and were disgorged by an
introductory passage into a melancholy little square that looked to me
like a flat burying-ground. I thought it had the most dismal trees in
it, and the most dismal sparrows, and the most dismal cats, and the most
dismal houses (in number half a dozen or so), that I had ever seen. I
thought the windows of the sets of chambers into which those houses were
divided were in every stage of dilapidated blind and curtain, crippled
flower-pot, cracked glass, dusty decay, and miserable makeshift; while
To Let, To Let, To Let, glared at me from empty rooms, as if no new
wretches ever came there, and the vengeance of the soul of Barnard were
being slowly appeased by the gradual suicide of the present occupants
and their unholy interment under the gravel. A frowzy mourning of soot
and smoke attired this forlorn creation of Barnard, and it had strewn
ashes on its head, and was undergoing penance and humiliation as a mere
dust-hole. Thus far my sense of sight; while dry rot and wet rot and all
the silent rots that rot in neglected roof and cellar,--rot of rat
and mouse and bug and coaching-stables near at hand besides--addressed
themselves faintly to my sense of smell, and moaned, "Try Barnard's
Mixture."
So imperfect was this realization of the first of my great expectations,
that I looked in dismay at Mr. Wemmick. "Ah!" said he, mistaking me;
"the retirement reminds you of the country. So it does me."
He led me into a corner and conducted me up a flight of stairs,--which
appeared to me to be slowly collapsing into sawdust, so that one of
those days the upper lodgers would look out at their doors and find
themselves without the means of coming down,--to a set of chambers on
the top floor. MR. POCKET, JUN., was painted on the door, and there was
a label on the letter-box, "Return shortly."
"He hardly thought you'd come so soon," Mr. Wemmick explained. "You
don't want me any more?"
"No, thank you," said I.
"As I keep the cash," Mr. Wemmick observed, "we shall most likely meet
pretty often. Good day."
"Good day."
I put out my hand, and Mr. Wemmick at first looked at it as if he
thought I wanted something. Then he looked at me, and said, correcting
himself,--
"To be sure! Yes. You're in the habit of shaking hands?"
I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of the London fashion,
but said yes.
"I have got so out of it!" said Mr. Wemmick,--"except at last. Very
glad, I'm sure, to make your acquaintance. Good day!"
When we had shaken hands and he was gone, I opened the staircase window
and had nearly beheaded myself, for, the lines had rotted away, and it
came down like the guillotine. Happily it was so quick that I had not
put my head out. After this escape, I was content to take a foggy view
of the Inn through the window's encrusting dirt, and to stand dolefully
looking out, saying to myself that London was decidedly overrated.
Mr. Pocket, Junior's, idea of Shortly was not mine, for I had nearly
maddened myself with looking out for half an hour, and had written
my name with my finger several times in the dirt of every pane in the
window, before I heard footsteps on the stairs. Gradually there arose
before me the hat, head, neckcloth, waistcoat, trousers, boots, of a
member of society of about my own standing. He had a paper-bag under
each arm and a pottle of strawberries in one hand, and was out of
breath.
"Mr. Pip?" said he.
"Mr. Pocket?" said I.
"Dear me!" he exclaimed. "I am extremely sorry; but I knew there was a
coach from your part of the country at midday, and I thought you would
come by that one. The fact is, I have been out on your account,--not
that that is any excuse,--for I thought, coming from the country, you
might like a little fruit after dinner, and I went to Covent Garden
Market to get it good."
For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would start out of my
head. I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and began to think this
was a dream.
"Dear me!" said Mr. Pocket, Junior. "This door sticks so!"
As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling with the door while
the paper-bags were under his arms, I begged him to allow me to hold
them. He relinquished them with an agreeable smile, and combated with
the door as if it were a wild beast. It yielded so suddenly at last,
that he staggered back upon me, and I staggered back upon the opposite
door, and we both laughed. But still I felt as if my eyes must start out
of my head, and as if this must be a dream.
"Pray come in," said Mr. Pocket, Junior. "Allow me to lead the way. I am
rather bare here, but I hope you'll be able to make out tolerably well
till Monday. My father thought you would get on more agreeably through
to-morrow with me than with him, and might like to take a walk about
London. I am sure I shall be very happy to show London to you. As to our
table, you won't find that bad, I hope, for it will be supplied from our
coffee-house here, and (it is only right I should add) at your expense,
such being Mr. Jaggers's directions. As to our lodging, it's not by
any means splendid, because I have my own bread to earn, and my father
hasn't anything to give me, and I shouldn't be willing to take it, if he
had. This is our sitting-room,--just such chairs and tables and carpet
and so forth, you see, as they could spare from home. You mustn't give
me credit for the tablecloth and spoons and castors, because they come
for you from the coffee-house. This is my little bedroom; rather musty,
but Barnard's is musty. This is your bedroom; the furniture's hired for
the occasion, but I trust it will answer the purpose; if you should want
anything, I'll go and fetch it. The chambers are retired, and we shall
be alone together, but we shan't fight, I dare say. But dear me, I beg
your pardon, you're holding the fruit all this time. Pray let me take
these bags from you. I am quite ashamed."
As I stood opposite to Mr. Pocket, Junior, delivering him the bags, One,
Two, I saw the starting appearance come into his own eyes that I knew to
be in mine, and he said, falling back,--
"Lord bless me, you're the prowling boy!"
"And you," said I, "are the pale young gentleman!"
Chapter XXII
The pale young gentleman and I stood contemplating one another in
Barnard's Inn, until we both burst out laughing. "The idea of its
being you!" said he. "The idea of its being you!" said I. And then we
contemplated one another afresh, and laughed again. "Well!" said the
pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand good-humoredly, "it's all
over now, I hope, and it will be magnanimous in you if you'll forgive me
for having knocked you about so."
I derived from this speech that Mr. Herbert Pocket (for Herbert was the
pale young gentleman's name) still rather confounded his intention with
his execution. But I made a modest reply, and we shook hands warmly.
"You hadn't come into your good fortune at that time?" said Herbert
Pocket.
"No," said I.
"No," he acquiesced: "I heard it had happened very lately. I was rather
on the lookout for good fortune then."
"Indeed?"
"Yes. Miss Havisham had sent for me, to see if she could take a fancy to
me. But she couldn't,--at all events, she didn't."
I thought it polite to remark that I was surprised to hear that.
"Bad taste," said Herbert, laughing, "but a fact. Yes, she had sent for
me on a trial visit, and if I had come out of it successfully, I
suppose I should have been provided for; perhaps I should have been
what-you-may-called it to Estella."
"What's that?" I asked, with sudden gravity.
He was arranging his fruit in plates while we talked, which divided his
attention, and was the cause of his having made this lapse of a word.
"Affianced," he explained, still busy with the fruit. "Betrothed.
Engaged. What's-his-named. Any word of that sort."
"How did you bear your disappointment?" I asked.
"Pooh!" said he, "I didn't care much for it. She's a Tartar."
"Miss Havisham?"
"I don't say no to that, but I meant Estella. That girl's hard and
haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up by
Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the male sex."
"What relation is she to Miss Havisham?"
"None," said he. "Only adopted."
"Why should she wreak revenge on all the male sex? What revenge?"
"Lord, Mr. Pip!" said he. "Don't you know?"
"No," said I.
"Dear me! It's quite a story, and shall be saved till dinner-time. And
now let me take the liberty of asking you a question. How did you come
there, that day?"
I told him, and he was attentive until I had finished, and then burst
out laughing again, and asked me if I was sore afterwards? I didn't
ask him if he was, for my conviction on that point was perfectly
established.
"Mr. Jaggers is your guardian, I understand?" he went on.
"Yes."
"You know he is Miss Havisham's man of business and solicitor, and has
her confidence when nobody else has?"
This was bringing me (I felt) towards dangerous ground. I answered with
a constraint I made no attempt to disguise, that I had seen Mr. Jaggers
in Miss Havisham's house on the very day of our combat, but never at any
other time, and that I believed he had no recollection of having ever
seen me there.
"He was so obliging as to suggest my father for your tutor, and he
called on my father to propose it. Of course he knew about my father
from his connection with Miss Havisham. My father is Miss Havisham's
cousin; not that that implies familiar intercourse between them, for he
is a bad courtier and will not propitiate her."
Herbert Pocket had a frank and easy way with him that was very taking.
I had never seen any one then, and I have never seen any one since,
who more strongly expressed to me, in every look and tone, a natural
incapacity to do anything secret and mean. There was something
wonderfully hopeful about his general air, and something that at the
same time whispered to me he would never be very successful or rich. I
don't know how this was. I became imbued with the notion on that first
occasion before we sat down to dinner, but I cannot define by what
means.
He was still a pale young gentleman, and had a certain conquered languor
about him in the midst of his spirits and briskness, that did not seem
indicative of natural strength. He had not a handsome face, but it was
better than handsome: being extremely amiable and cheerful. His figure
was a little ungainly, as in the days when my knuckles had taken such
liberties with it, but it looked as if it would always be light and
young. Whether Mr. Trabb's local work would have sat more gracefully on
him than on me, may be a question; but I am conscious that he carried
off his rather old clothes much better than I carried off my new suit.
As he was so communicative, I felt that reserve on my part would be a
bad return unsuited to our years. I therefore told him my small story,
and laid stress on my being forbidden to inquire who my benefactor was.
I further mentioned that as I had been brought up a blacksmith in a
country place, and knew very little of the ways of politeness, I would
take it as a great kindness in him if he would give me a hint whenever
he saw me at a loss or going wrong.
"With pleasure," said he, "though I venture to prophesy that you'll want
very few hints. I dare say we shall be often together, and I should like
to banish any needless restraint between us. Will you do me the favour
to begin at once to call me by my Christian name, Herbert?"
I thanked him and said I would. I informed him in exchange that my
Christian name was Philip.
"I don't take to Philip," said he, smiling, "for it sounds like a moral
boy out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy that he fell into a pond,
or so fat that he couldn't see out of his eyes, or so avaricious that
he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so determined to go a
bird's-nesting that he got himself eaten by bears who lived handy in the
neighborhood. I tell you what I should like. We are so harmonious, and
you have been a blacksmith,---would you mind it?"
"I shouldn't mind anything that you propose," I answered, "but I don't
understand you."
"Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There's a charming piece of
music by Handel, called the Harmonious Blacksmith."
"I should like it very much."
"Then, my dear Handel," said he, turning round as the door opened,
"here is the dinner, and I must beg of you to take the top of the table,
because the dinner is of your providing."
This I would not hear of, so he took the top, and I faced him. It was a
nice little dinner,--seemed to me then a very Lord Mayor's Feast,--and
it acquired additional relish from being eaten under those independent
circumstances, with no old people by, and with London all around us.
This again was heightened by a certain gypsy character that set the
banquet off; for while the table was, as Mr. Pumblechook might have
said, the lap of luxury,--being entirely furnished forth from the
coffee-house,--the circumjacent region of sitting-room was of a
comparatively pastureless and shifty character; imposing on the waiter
the wandering habits of putting the covers on the floor (where he
fell over them), the melted butter in the arm-chair, the bread on the
bookshelves, the cheese in the coal-scuttle, and the boiled fowl into my
bed in the next room,--where I found much of its parsley and butter in
a state of congelation when I retired for the night. All this made the
feast delightful, and when the waiter was not there to watch me, my
pleasure was without alloy.
We had made some progress in the dinner, when I reminded Herbert of his
promise to tell me about Miss Havisham.
"True," he replied. "I'll redeem it at once. Let me introduce the topic,
Handel, by mentioning that in London it is not the custom to put the
knife in the mouth,--for fear of accidents,--and that while the fork is
reserved for that use, it is not put further in than necessary. It is
scarcely worth mentioning, only it's as well to do as other people do.
Also, the spoon is not generally used over-hand, but under. This has
two advantages. You get at your mouth better (which after all is the
object), and you save a good deal of the attitude of opening oysters, on
the part of the right elbow."
He offered these friendly suggestions in such a lively way, that we both
laughed and I scarcely blushed.
"Now," he pursued, "concerning Miss Havisham. Miss Havisham, you must
know, was a spoilt child. Her mother died when she was a baby, and her
father denied her nothing. Her father was a country gentleman down in
your part of the world, and was a brewer. I don't know why it should
be a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is indisputable that while you
cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was
and brew. You see it every day."
"Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?" said I.
"Not on any account," returned Herbert; "but a public-house may keep a
gentleman. Well! Mr. Havisham was very rich and very proud. So was his
daughter."
"Miss Havisham was an only child?" I hazarded.
"Stop a moment, I am coming to that. No, she was not an only child;
she had a half-brother. Her father privately married again--his cook, I
rather think."
"I thought he was proud," said I.
"My good Handel, so he was. He married his second wife privately,
because he was proud, and in course of time she died. When she was dead,
I apprehend he first told his daughter what he had done, and then
the son became a part of the family, residing in the house you are
acquainted with. As the son grew a young man, he turned out riotous,
extravagant, undutiful,--altogether bad. At last his father disinherited
him; but he softened when he was dying, and left him well off, though
not nearly so well off as Miss Havisham.--Take another glass of wine,
and excuse my mentioning that society as a body does not expect one
to be so strictly conscientious in emptying one's glass, as to turn it
bottom upwards with the rim on one's nose."
I had been doing this, in an excess of attention to his recital. I
thanked him, and apologized. He said, "Not at all," and resumed.
"Miss Havisham was now an heiress, and you may suppose was looked after
as a great match. Her half-brother had now ample means again, but what
with debts and what with new madness wasted them most fearfully again.
There were stronger differences between him and her than there had been
between him and his father, and it is suspected that he cherished a deep
and mortal grudge against her as having influenced the father's anger.
Now, I come to the cruel part of the story,--merely breaking off, my
dear Handel, to remark that a dinner-napkin will not go into a tumbler."
Why I was trying to pack mine into my tumbler, I am wholly unable to
say. I only know that I found myself, with a perseverance worthy of a
much better cause, making the most strenuous exertions to compress it
within those limits. Again I thanked him and apologized, and again he
said in the cheerfullest manner, "Not at all, I am sure!" and resumed.
"There appeared upon the scene--say at the races, or the public
balls, or anywhere else you like--a certain man, who made love to Miss
Havisham. I never saw him (for this happened five-and-twenty years ago,
before you and I were, Handel), but I have heard my father mention that
he was a showy man, and the kind of man for the purpose. But that he was
not to be, without ignorance or prejudice, mistaken for a gentleman, my
father most strongly asseverates; because it is a principle of his that
no man who was not a true gentleman at heart ever was, since the world
began, a true gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the
grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the
grain will express itself. Well! This man pursued Miss Havisham closely,
and professed to be devoted to her. I believe she had not shown much
susceptibility up to that time; but all the susceptibility she possessed
certainly came out then, and she passionately loved him. There is no
doubt that she perfectly idolized him. He practised on her affection in
that systematic way, that he got great sums of money from her, and he
induced her to buy her brother out of a share in the brewery (which had
been weakly left him by his father) at an immense price, on the plea
that when he was her husband he must hold and manage it all. Your
guardian was not at that time in Miss Havisham's counsels, and she was
too haughty and too much in love to be advised by any one. Her relations
were poor and scheming, with the exception of my father; he was poor
enough, but not time-serving or jealous. The only independent one among
them, he warned her that she was doing too much for this man, and
was placing herself too unreservedly in his power. She took the first
opportunity of angrily ordering my father out of the house, in his
presence, and my father has never seen her since."
I thought of her having said, "Matthew will come and see me at last when
I am laid dead upon that table;" and I asked Herbert whether his father
was so inveterate against her?
"It's not that," said he, "but she charged him, in the presence of her
intended husband, with being disappointed in the hope of fawning upon
her for his own advancement, and, if he were to go to her now, it would
look true--even to him--and even to her. To return to the man and make
an end of him. The marriage day was fixed, the wedding dresses were
bought, the wedding tour was planned out, the wedding guests were
invited. The day came, but not the bridegroom. He wrote her a letter--"
"Which she received," I struck in, "when she was dressing for her
marriage? At twenty minutes to nine?"
"At the hour and minute," said Herbert, nodding, "at which she
afterwards stopped all the clocks. What was in it, further than that
it most heartlessly broke the marriage off, I can't tell you, because I
don't know. When she recovered from a bad illness that she had, she
laid the whole place waste, as you have seen it, and she has never since
looked upon the light of day."
"Is that all the story?" I asked, after considering it.
"All I know of it; and indeed I only know so much, through piecing it
out for myself; for my father always avoids it, and, even when Miss
Havisham invited me to go there, told me no more of it than it was
absolutely requisite I should understand. But I have forgotten one
thing. It has been supposed that the man to whom she gave her misplaced
confidence acted throughout in concert with her half-brother; that it
was a conspiracy between them; and that they shared the profits."
"I wonder he didn't marry her and get all the property," said I.
"He may have been married already, and her cruel mortification may have
been a part of her half-brother's scheme," said Herbert. "Mind! I don't
know that."
"What became of the two men?" I asked, after again considering the
subject.
"They fell into deeper shame and degradation--if there can be
deeper--and ruin."
"Are they alive now?"
"I don't know."
"You said just now that Estella was not related to Miss Havisham, but
adopted. When adopted?"
Herbert shrugged his shoulders. "There has always been an Estella, since
I have heard of a Miss Havisham. I know no more. And now, Handel," said
he, finally throwing off the story as it were, "there is a perfectly
open understanding between us. All that I know about Miss Havisham, you
know."
"And all that I know," I retorted, "you know."
"I fully believe it. So there can be no competition or perplexity
between you and me. And as to the condition on which you hold your
advancement in life,--namely, that you are not to inquire or discuss to
whom you owe it,--you may be very sure that it will never be encroached
upon, or even approached, by me, or by any one belonging to me."
In truth, he said this with so much delicacy, that I felt the subject
done with, even though I should be under his father's roof for years and
years to come. Yet he said it with so much meaning, too, that I felt
he as perfectly understood Miss Havisham to be my benefactress, as I
understood the fact myself.
It had not occurred to me before, that he had led up to the theme for
the purpose of clearing it out of our way; but we were so much the
lighter and easier for having broached it, that I now perceived this
to be the case. We were very gay and sociable, and I asked him, in the
course of conversation, what he was? He replied, "A capitalist,--an
Insurer of Ships." I suppose he saw me glancing about the room in search
of some tokens of Shipping, or capital, for he added, "In the City."
I had grand ideas of the wealth and importance of Insurers of Ships in
the City, and I began to think with awe of having laid a young Insurer
on his back, blackened his enterprising eye, and cut his responsible
head open. But again there came upon me, for my relief, that odd
impression that Herbert Pocket would never be very successful or rich.
"I shall not rest satisfied with merely employing my capital in insuring
ships. I shall buy up some good Life Assurance shares, and cut into the
Direction. I shall also do a little in the mining way. None of these
things will interfere with my chartering a few thousand tons on my own
account. I think I shall trade," said he, leaning back in his chair, "to
the East Indies, for silks, shawls, spices, dyes, drugs, and precious
woods. It's an interesting trade."
"And the profits are large?" said I.
"Tremendous!" said he.
I wavered again, and began to think here were greater expectations than
my own.
"I think I shall trade, also," said he, putting his thumbs in his
waist-coat pockets, "to the West Indies, for sugar, tobacco, and rum.
Also to Ceylon, specially for elephants' tusks."
"You will want a good many ships," said I.
"A perfect fleet," said he.
Quite overpowered by the magnificence of these transactions, I asked him
where the ships he insured mostly traded to at present?
"I haven't begun insuring yet," he replied. "I am looking about me."
Somehow, that pursuit seemed more in keeping with Barnard's Inn. I said
(in a tone of conviction), "Ah-h!"
"Yes. I am in a counting-house, and looking about me."
"Is a counting-house profitable?" I asked.
"To--do you mean to the young fellow who's in it?" he asked, in reply.
"Yes; to you."
"Why, n-no; not to me." He said this with the air of one carefully
reckoning up and striking a balance. "Not directly profitable. That is,
it doesn't pay me anything, and I have to--keep myself."
This certainly had not a profitable appearance, and I shook my head as
if I would imply that it would be difficult to lay by much accumulative
capital from such a source of income.
"But the thing is," said Herbert Pocket, "that you look about you.
That's the grand thing. You are in a counting-house, you know, and you
look about you."
It struck me as a singular implication that you couldn't be out of a
counting-house, you know, and look about you; but I silently deferred to
his experience.
"Then the time comes," said Herbert, "when you see your opening. And you
go in, and you swoop upon it and you make your capital, and then there
you are! When you have once made your capital, you have nothing to do
but employ it."
This was very like his way of conducting that encounter in the garden;
very like. His manner of bearing his poverty, too, exactly corresponded
to his manner of bearing that defeat. It seemed to me that he took all
blows and buffets now with just the same air as he had taken mine
then. It was evident that he had nothing around him but the simplest
necessaries, for everything that I remarked upon turned out to have been
sent in on my account from the coffee-house or somewhere else.
Yet, having already made his fortune in his own mind, he was so
unassuming with it that I felt quite grateful to him for not being
puffed up. It was a pleasant addition to his naturally pleasant ways,
and we got on famously. In the evening we went out for a walk in the
streets, and went half-price to the Theatre; and next day we went to
church at Westminster Abbey, and in the afternoon we walked in the
Parks; and I wondered who shod all the horses there, and wished Joe did.
On a moderate computation, it was many months, that Sunday, since I had
left Joe and Biddy. The space interposed between myself and them partook
of that expansion, and our marshes were any distance off. That I could
have been at our old church in my old church-going clothes, on the very
last Sunday that ever was, seemed a combination of impossibilities,
geographical and social, solar and lunar. Yet in the London streets so
crowded with people and so brilliantly lighted in the dusk of evening,
there were depressing hints of reproaches for that I had put the poor
old kitchen at home so far away; and in the dead of night, the footsteps
of some incapable impostor of a porter mooning about Barnard's Inn,
under pretence of watching it, fell hollow on my heart.
On the Monday morning at a quarter before nine, Herbert went to
the counting-house to report himself,--to look about him, too, I
suppose,--and I bore him company. He was to come away in an hour or
two to attend me to Hammersmith, and I was to wait about for him. It
appeared to me that the eggs from which young Insurers were hatched were
incubated in dust and heat, like the eggs of ostriches, judging from the
places to which those incipient giants repaired on a Monday morning. Nor
did the counting-house where Herbert assisted, show in my eyes as at
all a good Observatory; being a back second floor up a yard, of a grimy
presence in all particulars, and with a look into another back second
floor, rather than a look out.
I waited about until it was noon, and I went upon 'Change, and I saw
fluey men sitting there under the bills about shipping, whom I took to
be great merchants, though I couldn't understand why they should all be
out of spirits. When Herbert came, we went and had lunch at a celebrated
house which I then quite venerated, but now believe to have been the
most abject superstition in Europe, and where I could not help noticing,
even then, that there was much more gravy on the tablecloths and knives
and waiters' clothes, than in the steaks. This collation disposed of at
a moderate price (considering the grease, which was not charged for), we
went back to Barnard's Inn and got my little portmanteau, and then took
coach for Hammersmith. We arrived there at two or three o'clock in
the afternoon, and had very little way to walk to Mr. Pocket's house.
Lifting the latch of a gate, we passed direct into a little garden
overlooking the river, where Mr. Pocket's children were playing
about. And unless I deceive myself on a point where my interests or
prepossessions are certainly not concerned, I saw that Mr. and Mrs.
Pocket's children were not growing up or being brought up, but were
tumbling up.
Mrs. Pocket was sitting on a garden chair under a tree, reading, with
her legs upon another garden chair; and Mrs. Pocket's two nurse-maids
were looking about them while the children played. "Mamma," said
Herbert, "this is young Mr. Pip." Upon which Mrs. Pocket received me
with an appearance of amiable dignity.
"Master Alick and Miss Jane," cried one of the nurses to two of the
children, "if you go a bouncing up against them bushes you'll fall over
into the river and be drownded, and what'll your pa say then?"
At the same time this nurse picked up Mrs. Pocket's handkerchief, and
said, "If that don't make six times you've dropped it, Mum!" Upon which
Mrs. Pocket laughed and said, "Thank you, Flopson," and settling herself
in one chair only, resumed her book. Her countenance immediately assumed
a knitted and intent expression as if she had been reading for a week,
but before she could have read half a dozen lines, she fixed her eyes
upon me, and said, "I hope your mamma is quite well?" This unexpected
inquiry put me into such a difficulty that I began saying in the
absurdest way that if there had been any such person I had no doubt she
would have been quite well and would have been very much obliged and
would have sent her compliments, when the nurse came to my rescue.
"Well!" she cried, picking up the pocket-handkerchief, "if that don't
make seven times! What ARE you a doing of this afternoon, Mum!" Mrs.
Pocket received her property, at first with a look of unutterable
surprise as if she had never seen it before, and then with a laugh of
recognition, and said, "Thank you, Flopson," and forgot me, and went on
reading.
I found, now I had leisure to count them, that there were no fewer than
six little Pockets present, in various stages of tumbling up. I had
scarcely arrived at the total when a seventh was heard, as in the region
of air, wailing dolefully.
"If there ain't Baby!" said Flopson, appearing to think it most
surprising. "Make haste up, Millers."
Millers, who was the other nurse, retired into the house, and by degrees
the child's wailing was hushed and stopped, as if it were a young
ventriloquist with something in its mouth. Mrs. Pocket read all the
time, and I was curious to know what the book could be.
We were waiting, I supposed, for Mr. Pocket to come out to us; at any
rate we waited there, and so I had an opportunity of observing the
remarkable family phenomenon that whenever any of the children strayed
near Mrs. Pocket in their play, they always tripped themselves up and
tumbled over her,--always very much to her momentary astonishment, and
their own more enduring lamentation. I was at a loss to account for
this surprising circumstance, and could not help giving my mind to
speculations about it, until by and by Millers came down with the baby,
which baby was handed to Flopson, which Flopson was handing it to Mrs.
Pocket, when she too went fairly head foremost over Mrs. Pocket, baby
and all, and was caught by Herbert and myself.
"Gracious me, Flopson!" said Mrs. Pocket, looking off her book for a
moment, "everybody's tumbling!"
"Gracious you, indeed, Mum!" returned Flopson, very red in the face;
"what have you got there?"
"I got here, Flopson?" asked Mrs. Pocket.
"Why, if it ain't your footstool!" cried Flopson. "And if you keep it
under your skirts like that, who's to help tumbling? Here! Take the
baby, Mum, and give me your book."
Mrs. Pocket acted on the advice, and inexpertly danced the infant a
little in her lap, while the other children played about it. This had
lasted but a very short time, when Mrs. Pocket issued summary orders
that they were all to be taken into the house for a nap. Thus I made the
second discovery on that first occasion, that the nurture of the little
Pockets consisted of alternately tumbling up and lying down.
Under these circumstances, when Flopson and Millers had got the children
into the house, like a little flock of sheep, and Mr. Pocket came out
of it to make my acquaintance, I was not much surprised to find that Mr.
Pocket was a gentleman with a rather perplexed expression of face, and
with his very gray hair disordered on his head, as if he didn't quite
see his way to putting anything straight.
Chapter XXIII
Mr. Pocket said he was glad to see me, and he hoped I was not sorry to
see him. "For, I really am not," he added, with his son's smile,
"an alarming personage." He was a young-looking man, in spite of
his perplexities and his very gray hair, and his manner seemed quite
natural. I use the word natural, in the sense of its being unaffected;
there was something comic in his distraught way, as though it would have
been downright ludicrous but for his own perception that it was very
near being so. When he had talked with me a little, he said to Mrs.
Pocket, with a rather anxious contraction of his eyebrows, which were
black and handsome, "Belinda, I hope you have welcomed Mr. Pip?" And she
looked up from her book, and said, "Yes." She then smiled upon me in an
absent state of mind, and asked me if I liked the taste of orange-flower
water? As the question had no bearing, near or remote, on any foregone
or subsequent transaction, I consider it to have been thrown out, like
her previous approaches, in general conversational condescension.
I found out within a few hours, and may mention at once, that Mrs.
Pocket was the only daughter of a certain quite accidental deceased
Knight, who had invented for himself a conviction that his deceased
father would have been made a Baronet but for somebody's determined
opposition arising out of entirely personal motives,--I forget whose,
if I ever knew,--the Sovereign's, the Prime Minister's, the Lord
Chancellor's, the Archbishop of Canterbury's, anybody's,--and had
tacked himself on to the nobles of the earth in right of this quite
supposititious fact. I believe he had been knighted himself for storming
the English grammar at the point of the pen, in a desperate address
engrossed on vellum, on the occasion of the laying of the first stone of
some building or other, and for handing some Royal Personage either the
trowel or the mortar. Be that as it may, he had directed Mrs. Pocket to
be brought up from her cradle as one who in the nature of things
must marry a title, and who was to be guarded from the acquisition of
plebeian domestic knowledge.
So successful a watch and ward had been established over the young lady
by this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly ornamental, but
perfectly helpless and useless. With her character thus happily formed,
in the first bloom of her youth she had encountered Mr. Pocket: who was
also in the first bloom of youth, and not quite decided whether to mount
to the Woolsack, or to roof himself in with a mitre. As his doing the
one or the other was a mere question of time, he and Mrs. Pocket had
taken Time by the forelock (when, to judge from its length, it would
seem to have wanted cutting), and had married without the knowledge of
the judicious parent. The judicious parent, having nothing to bestow or
withhold but his blessing, had handsomely settled that dower upon them
after a short struggle, and had informed Mr. Pocket that his wife was "a
treasure for a Prince." Mr. Pocket had invested the Prince's treasure
in the ways of the world ever since, and it was supposed to have brought
him in but indifferent interest. Still, Mrs. Pocket was in general the
object of a queer sort of respectful pity, because she had not married
a title; while Mr. Pocket was the object of a queer sort of forgiving
reproach, because he had never got one.
Mr. Pocket took me into the house and showed me my room: which was a
pleasant one, and so furnished as that I could use it with comfort for
my own private sitting-room. He then knocked at the doors of two other
similar rooms, and introduced me to their occupants, by name Drummle
and Startop. Drummle, an old-looking young man of a heavy order of
architecture, was whistling. Startop, younger in years and appearance,
was reading and holding his head, as if he thought himself in danger of
exploding it with too strong a charge of knowledge.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had such a noticeable air of being in somebody
else's hands, that I wondered who really was in possession of the house
and let them live there, until I found this unknown power to be the
servants. It was a smooth way of going on, perhaps, in respect of saving
trouble; but it had the appearance of being expensive, for the servants
felt it a duty they owed to themselves to be nice in their eating and
drinking, and to keep a deal of company downstairs. They allowed a very
liberal table to Mr. and Mrs. Pocket, yet it always appeared to me that
by far the best part of the house to have boarded in would have been
the kitchen,--always supposing the boarder capable of self-defence, for,
before I had been there a week, a neighboring lady with whom the family
were personally unacquainted, wrote in to say that she had seen Millers
slapping the baby. This greatly distressed Mrs. Pocket, who burst into
tears on receiving the note, and said that it was an extraordinary thing
that the neighbors couldn't mind their own business.
By degrees I learnt, and chiefly from Herbert, that Mr. Pocket had been
educated at Harrow and at Cambridge, where he had distinguished himself;
but that when he had had the happiness of marrying Mrs. Pocket very
early in life, he had impaired his prospects and taken up the calling
of a Grinder. After grinding a number of dull blades,--of whom it was
remarkable that their fathers, when influential, were always going to
help him to preferment, but always forgot to do it when the blades had
left the Grindstone,--he had wearied of that poor work and had come to
London. Here, after gradually failing in loftier hopes, he had "read"
with divers who had lacked opportunities or neglected them, and had
refurbished divers others for special occasions, and had turned his
acquirements to the account of literary compilation and correction,
and on such means, added to some very moderate private resources, still
maintained the house I saw.
Mr. and Mrs. Pocket had a toady neighbor; a widow lady of that highly
sympathetic nature that she agreed with everybody, blessed everybody,
and shed smiles and tears on everybody, according to circumstances. This
lady's name was Mrs. Coiler, and I had the honor of taking her down to
dinner on the day of my installation. She gave me to understand on the
stairs, that it was a blow to dear Mrs. Pocket that dear Mr. Pocket
should be under the necessity of receiving gentlemen to read with him.
That did not extend to me, she told me in a gush of love and confidence
(at that time, I had known her something less than five minutes); if
they were all like Me, it would be quite another thing.
"But dear Mrs. Pocket," said Mrs. Coiler, "after her early
disappointment (not that dear Mr. Pocket was to blame in that), requires
so much luxury and elegance--"
"Yes, ma'am," I said, to stop her, for I was afraid she was going to
cry.
"And she is of so aristocratic a disposition--"
"Yes, ma'am," I said again, with the same object as before.
"--That it is hard," said Mrs. Coiler, "to have dear Mr. Pocket's time
and attention diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket."
I could not help thinking that it might be harder if the butcher's time
and attention were diverted from dear Mrs. Pocket; but I said nothing,
and indeed had enough to do in keeping a bashful watch upon my company
manners.
It came to my knowledge, through what passed between Mrs. Pocket and
Drummle while I was attentive to my knife and fork, spoon, glasses, and
other instruments of self-destruction, that Drummle, whose Christian
name was Bentley, was actually the next heir but one to a baronetcy.
It further appeared that the book I had seen Mrs. Pocket reading in the
garden was all about titles, and that she knew the exact date at which
her grandpapa would have come into the book, if he ever had come at all.
Drummle didn't say much, but in his limited way (he struck me as a sulky
kind of fellow) he spoke as one of the elect, and recognized Mrs. Pocket
as a woman and a sister. No one but themselves and Mrs. Coiler the toady
neighbor showed any interest in this part of the conversation, and it
appeared to me that it was painful to Herbert; but it promised to last
a long time, when the page came in with the announcement of a domestic
affliction. It was, in effect, that the cook had mislaid the beef. To my
unutterable amazement, I now, for the first time, saw Mr. Pocket
relieve his mind by going through a performance that struck me as very
extraordinary, but which made no impression on anybody else, and
with which I soon became as familiar as the rest. He laid down the
carving-knife and fork,--being engaged in carving, at the moment,--put
his two hands into his disturbed hair, and appeared to make an
extraordinary effort to lift himself up by it. When he had done this,
and had not lifted himself up at all, he quietly went on with what he
was about.
Mrs. Coiler then changed the subject and began to flatter me. I liked
it for a few moments, but she flattered me so very grossly that the
pleasure was soon over. She had a serpentine way of coming close at
me when she pretended to be vitally interested in the friends and
localities I had left, which was altogether snaky and fork-tongued; and
when she made an occasional bounce upon Startop (who said very little to
her), or upon Drummle (who said less), I rather envied them for being on
the opposite side of the table.
After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs. Coiler made admiring
comments on their eyes, noses, and legs,--a sagacious way of improving
their minds. There were four little girls, and two little boys, besides
the baby who might have been either, and the baby's next successor who
was as yet neither. They were brought in by Flopson and Millers, much as
though those two non-commissioned officers had been recruiting somewhere
for children and had enlisted these, while Mrs. Pocket looked at the
young Nobles that ought to have been as if she rather thought she had
had the pleasure of inspecting them before, but didn't quite know what
to make of them.
"Here! Give me your fork, Mum, and take the baby," said Flopson. "Don't
take it that way, or you'll get its head under the table."
Thus advised, Mrs. Pocket took it the other way, and got its head
upon the table; which was announced to all present by a prodigious
concussion.
"Dear, dear! Give it me back, Mum," said Flopson; "and Miss Jane, come
and dance to baby, do!"
One of the little girls, a mere mite who seemed to have prematurely
taken upon herself some charge of the others, stepped out of her place
by me, and danced to and from the baby until it left off crying, and
laughed. Then, all the children laughed, and Mr. Pocket (who in the
meantime had twice endeavored to lift himself up by the hair) laughed,
and we all laughed and were glad.
Flopson, by dint of doubling the baby at the joints like a Dutch doll,
then got it safely into Mrs. Pocket's lap, and gave it the nut-crackers
to play with; at the same time recommending Mrs. Pocket to take notice
that the handles of that instrument were not likely to agree with its
eyes, and sharply charging Miss Jane to look after the same. Then, the
two nurses left the room, and had a lively scuffle on the staircase with
a dissipated page who had waited at dinner, and who had clearly lost
half his buttons at the gaming-table.
I was made very uneasy in my mind by Mrs. Pocket's falling into a
discussion with Drummle respecting two baronetcies, while she ate a
sliced orange steeped in sugar and wine, and, forgetting all about the
baby on her lap, who did most appalling things with the nut-crackers. At
length little Jane, perceiving its young brains to be imperilled, softly
left her place, and with many small artifices coaxed the dangerous
weapon away. Mrs. Pocket finishing her orange at about the same time,
and not approving of this, said to Jane,--
"You naughty child, how dare you? Go and sit down this instant!"
"Mamma dear," lisped the little girl, "baby ood have put hith eyeth
out."
"How dare you tell me so?" retorted Mrs. Pocket. "Go and sit down in
your chair this moment!"
Mrs. Pocket's dignity was so crushing, that I felt quite abashed, as if
I myself had done something to rouse it.
"Belinda," remonstrated Mr. Pocket, from the other end of the table,
"how can you be so unreasonable? Jane only interfered for the protection
of baby."
"I will not allow anybody to interfere," said Mrs. Pocket. "I am
surprised, Matthew, that you should expose me to the affront of
interference."
"Good God!" cried Mr. Pocket, in an outbreak of desolate desperation.
"Are infants to be nut-crackered into their tombs, and is nobody to save
them?"
"I will not be interfered with by Jane," said Mrs. Pocket, with a
majestic glance at that innocent little offender. "I hope I know my poor
grandpapa's position. Jane, indeed!"
Mr. Pocket got his hands in his hair again, and this time really did
lift himself some inches out of his chair. "Hear this!" he helplessly
exclaimed to the elements. "Babies are to be nut-crackered dead, for
people's poor grandpapa's positions!" Then he let himself down again,
and became silent.
We all looked awkwardly at the tablecloth while this was going on. A
pause succeeded, during which the honest and irrepressible baby made a
series of leaps and crows at little Jane, who appeared to me to be the
only member of the family (irrespective of servants) with whom it had
any decided acquaintance.
"Mr. Drummle," said Mrs. Pocket, "will you ring for Flopson? Jane, you
undutiful little thing, go and lie down. Now, baby darling, come with
ma!"
The baby was the soul of honor, and protested with all its might. It
doubled itself up the wrong way over Mrs. Pocket's arm, exhibited a pair
of knitted shoes and dimpled ankles to the company in lieu of its soft
face, and was carried out in the highest state of mutiny. And it gained
its point after all, for I saw it through the window within a few
minutes, being nursed by little Jane.
It happened that the other five children were left behind at the
dinner-table, through Flopson's having some private engagement, and
their not being anybody else's business. I thus became aware of the
mutual relations between them and Mr. Pocket, which were exemplified in
the following manner. Mr. Pocket, with the normal perplexity of his face
heightened and his hair rumpled, looked at them for some minutes, as if
he couldn't make out how they came to be boarding and lodging in that
establishment, and why they hadn't been billeted by Nature on
somebody else. Then, in a distant Missionary way he asked them certain
questions,--as why little Joe had that hole in his frill, who said, Pa,
Flopson was going to mend it when she had time,--and how little Fanny
came by that whitlow, who said, Pa, Millers was going to poultice it
when she didn't forget. Then, he melted into parental tenderness, and
gave them a shilling apiece and told them to go and play; and then as
they went out, with one very strong effort to lift himself up by the
hair he dismissed the hopeless subject.
In the evening there was rowing on the river. As Drummle and Startop had
each a boat, I resolved to set up mine, and to cut them both out. I was
pretty good at most exercises in which country boys are adepts, but as
I was conscious of wanting elegance of style for the Thames,--not to say
for other waters,--I at once engaged to place myself under the tuition
of the winner of a prize-wherry who plied at our stairs, and to whom I
was introduced by my new allies. This practical authority confused me
very much by saying I had the arm of a blacksmith. If he could have
known how nearly the compliment lost him his pupil, I doubt if he would
have paid it.
There was a supper-tray after we got home at night, and I think we
should all have enjoyed ourselves, but for a rather disagreeable
domestic occurrence. Mr. Pocket was in good spirits, when a housemaid
came in, and said, "If you please, sir, I should wish to speak to you."
"Speak to your master?" said Mrs. Pocket, whose dignity was roused
again. "How can you think of such a thing? Go and speak to Flopson. Or
speak to me--at some other time."
"Begging your pardon, ma'am," returned the housemaid, "I should wish to
speak at once, and to speak to master."
Hereupon, Mr. Pocket went out of the room, and we made the best of
ourselves until he came back.
"This is a pretty thing, Belinda!" said Mr. Pocket, returning with a
countenance expressive of grief and despair. "Here's the cook lying
insensibly drunk on the kitchen floor, with a large bundle of fresh
butter made up in the cupboard ready to sell for grease!"
Mrs. Pocket instantly showed much amiable emotion, and said, "This is
that odious Sophia's doing!"
"What do you mean, Belinda?" demanded Mr. Pocket.
"Sophia has told you," said Mrs. Pocket. "Did I not see her with my own
eyes and hear her with my own ears, come into the room just now and ask
to speak to you?"
"But has she not taken me downstairs, Belinda," returned Mr. Pocket,
"and shown me the woman, and the bundle too?"
"And do you defend her, Matthew," said Mrs. Pocket, "for making
mischief?"
Mr. Pocket uttered a dismal groan.
"Am I, grandpapa's granddaughter, to be nothing in the house?" said Mrs.
Pocket. "Besides, the cook has always been a very nice respectful woman,
and said in the most natural manner when she came to look after the
situation, that she felt I was born to be a Duchess."
There was a sofa where Mr. Pocket stood, and he dropped upon it in the
attitude of the Dying Gladiator. Still in that attitude he said, with a
hollow voice, "Good night, Mr. Pip," when I deemed it advisable to go to
bed and leave him.
Chapter XXIV
After two or three days, when I had established myself in my room and
had gone backwards and forwards to London several times, and had ordered
all I wanted of my tradesmen, Mr. Pocket and I had a long talk together.
He knew more of my intended career than I knew myself, for he referred
to his having been told by Mr. Jaggers that I was not designed for any
profession, and that I should be well enough educated for my destiny
if I could "hold my own" with the average of young men in prosperous
circumstances. I acquiesced, of course, knowing nothing to the contrary.
He advised my attending certain places in London, for the acquisition of
such mere rudiments as I wanted, and my investing him with the functions
of explainer and director of all my studies. He hoped that with
intelligent assistance I should meet with little to discourage me, and
should soon be able to dispense with any aid but his. Through his way
of saying this, and much more to similar purpose, he placed himself on
confidential terms with me in an admirable manner; and I may state
at once that he was always so zealous and honorable in fulfilling his
compact with me, that he made me zealous and honorable in fulfilling
mine with him. If he had shown indifference as a master, I have no doubt
I should have returned the compliment as a pupil; he gave me no such
excuse, and each of us did the other justice. Nor did I ever regard
him as having anything ludicrous about him--or anything but what was
serious, honest, and good--in his tutor communication with me.
When these points were settled, and so far carried out as that I had
begun to work in earnest, it occurred to me that if I could retain my
bedroom in Barnard's Inn, my life would be agreeably varied, while my
manners would be none the worse for Herbert's society. Mr. Pocket did
not object to this arrangement, but urged that before any step could
possibly be taken in it, it must be submitted to my guardian. I felt
that this delicacy arose out of the consideration that the plan would
save Herbert some expense, so I went off to Little Britain and imparted
my wish to Mr. Jaggers.
"If I could buy the furniture now hired for me," said I, "and one or two
other little things, I should be quite at home there."
"Go it!" said Mr. Jaggers, with a short laugh. "I told you you'd get on.
Well! How much do you want?"
I said I didn't know how much.
"Come!" retorted Mr. Jaggers. "How much? Fifty pounds?"
"O, not nearly so much."
"Five pounds?" said Mr. Jaggers.
This was such a great fall, that I said in discomfiture, "O, more than
that."
"More than that, eh!" retorted Mr. Jaggers, lying in wait for me, with
his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, and his eyes on the wall
behind me; "how much more?"
"It is so difficult to fix a sum," said I, hesitating.
"Come!" said Mr. Jaggers. "Let's get at it. Twice five; will that do?
Three times five; will that do? Four times five; will that do?"
I said I thought that would do handsomely.
"Four times five will do handsomely, will it?" said Mr. Jaggers,
knitting his brows. "Now, what do you make of four times five?"
"What do I make of it?"
"Ah!" said Mr. Jaggers; "how much?"
"I suppose you make it twenty pounds," said I, smiling.
"Never mind what I make it, my friend," observed Mr. Jaggers, with a
knowing and contradictory toss of his head. "I want to know what you
make it."
"Twenty pounds, of course."
"Wemmick!" said Mr. Jaggers, opening his office door. "Take Mr. Pip's
written order, and pay him twenty pounds."
This strongly marked way of doing business made a strongly marked
impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr. Jaggers never
laughed; but he wore great bright creaking boots, and, in poising
himself on these boots, with his large head bent down and his eyebrows
joined together, awaiting an answer, he sometimes caused the boots to
creak, as if they laughed in a dry and suspicious way. As he happened
to go out now, and as Wemmick was brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick
that I hardly knew what to make of Mr. Jaggers's manner.
"Tell him that, and he'll take it as a compliment," answered Wemmick;
"he don't mean that you should know what to make of it.--Oh!" for
I looked surprised, "it's not personal; it's professional: only
professional."
Wemmick was at his desk, lunching--and crunching--on a dry hard biscuit;
pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit of a mouth, as
if he were posting them.
"Always seems to me," said Wemmick, "as if he had set a man-trap and was
watching it. Suddenly-click--you're caught!"
Without remarking that man-traps were not among the amenities of life, I
said I supposed he was very skilful?
"Deep," said Wemmick, "as Australia." Pointing with his pen at the
office floor, to express that Australia was understood, for the purposes
of the figure, to be symmetrically on the opposite spot of the globe.
"If there was anything deeper," added Wemmick, bringing his pen to
paper, "he'd be it."
Then, I said I supposed he had a fine business, and Wemmick said,
"Ca-pi-tal!" Then I asked if there were many clerks? to which he
replied,--
"We don't run much into clerks, because there's only one Jaggers, and
people won't have him at second hand. There are only four of us. Would
you like to see 'em? You are one of us, as I may say."
I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had put all the biscuit into the
post, and had paid me my money from a cash-box in a safe, the key
of which safe he kept somewhere down his back and produced from his
coat-collar like an iron-pigtail, we went upstairs. The house was dark
and shabby, and the greasy shoulders that had left their mark in Mr.
Jaggers's room seemed to have been shuffling up and down the staircase
for years. In the front first floor, a clerk who looked something
between a publican and a rat-catcher--a large pale, puffed, swollen
man--was attentively engaged with three or four people of shabby
appearance, whom he treated as unceremoniously as everybody seemed to
be treated who contributed to Mr. Jaggers's coffers. "Getting evidence
together," said Mr. Wemmick, as we came out, "for the Bailey." In the
room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with dangling hair
(his cropping seemed to have been forgotten when he was a puppy) was
similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes, whom Mr. Wemmick presented
to me as a smelter who kept his pot always boiling, and who would melt
me anything I pleased,--and who was in an excessive white-perspiration,
as if he had been trying his art on himself. In a back room, a
high-shouldered man with a face-ache tied up in dirty flannel, who was
dressed in old black clothes that bore the appearance of having been
waxed, was stooping over his work of making fair copies of the notes of
the other two gentlemen, for Mr. Jaggers's own use.
This was all the establishment. When we went downstairs again, Wemmick
led me into my guardian's room, and said, "This you've seen already."
"Pray," said I, as the two odious casts with the twitchy leer upon them
caught my sight again, "whose likenesses are those?"
"These?" said Wemmick, getting upon a chair, and blowing the dust off
the horrible heads before bringing them down. "These are two celebrated
ones. Famous clients of ours that got us a world of credit. This chap
(why you must have come down in the night and been peeping into the
inkstand, to get this blot upon your eyebrow, you old rascal!) murdered
his master, and, considering that he wasn't brought up to evidence,
didn't plan it badly."
"Is it like him?" I asked, recoiling from the brute, as Wemmick spat
upon his eyebrow and gave it a rub with his sleeve.
"Like him? It's himself, you know. The cast was made in Newgate,
directly after he was taken down. You had a particular fancy for
me, hadn't you, Old Artful?" said Wemmick. He then explained this
affectionate apostrophe, by touching his brooch representing the lady
and the weeping willow at the tomb with the urn upon it, and saying,
"Had it made for me, express!"
"Is the lady anybody?" said I.
"No," returned Wemmick. "Only his game. (You liked your bit of game,
didn't you?) No; deuce a bit of a lady in the case, Mr. Pip, except
one,--and she wasn't of this slender lady-like sort, and you wouldn't
have caught her looking after this urn, unless there was something to
drink in it." Wemmick's attention being thus directed to his brooch, he
put down the cast, and polished the brooch with his pocket-handkerchief.
"Did that other creature come to the same end?" I asked. "He has the
same look."
"You're right," said Wemmick; "it's the genuine look. Much as if one
nostril was caught up with a horse-hair and a little fish-hook. Yes,
he came to the same end; quite the natural end here, I assure you.
He forged wills, this blade did, if he didn't also put the supposed
testators to sleep too. You were a gentlemanly Cove, though" (Mr.
Wemmick was again apostrophizing), "and you said you could write Greek.
Yah, Bounceable! What a liar you were! I never met such a liar as you!"
Before putting his late friend on his shelf again, Wemmick touched the
largest of his mourning rings and said, "Sent out to buy it for me, only
the day before."
While he was putting up the other cast and coming down from the chair,
the thought crossed my mind that all his personal jewelry was derived
from like sources. As he had shown no diffidence on the subject, I
ventured on the liberty of asking him the question, when he stood before
me, dusting his hands.
"O yes," he returned, "these are all gifts of that kind. One brings
another, you see; that's the way of it. I always take 'em. They're
curiosities. And they're property. They may not be worth much, but,
after all, they're property and portable. It don't signify to you with
your brilliant lookout, but as to myself, my guiding-star always is,
'Get hold of portable property'."
When I had rendered homage to this light, he went on to say, in a
friendly manner:--
"If at any odd time when you have nothing better to do, you wouldn't
mind coming over to see me at Walworth, I could offer you a bed, and I
should consider it an honor. I have not much to show you; but such two
or three curiosities as I have got you might like to look over; and I am
fond of a bit of garden and a summer-house."
I said I should be delighted to accept his hospitality.
"Thankee," said he; "then we'll consider that it's to come off, when
convenient to you. Have you dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?"
"Not yet."
"Well," said Wemmick, "he'll give you wine, and good wine. I'll give you
punch, and not bad punch. And now I'll tell you something. When you go
to dine with Mr. Jaggers, look at his housekeeper."
"Shall I see something very uncommon?"
"Well," said Wemmick, "you'll see a wild beast tamed. Not so very
uncommon, you'll tell me. I reply, that depends on the original wildness
of the beast, and the amount of taming. It won't lower your opinion of
Mr. Jaggers's powers. Keep your eye on it."
I told him I would do so, with all the interest and curiosity that his
preparation awakened. As I was taking my departure, he asked me if I
would like to devote five minutes to seeing Mr. Jaggers "at it?"
For several reasons, and not least because I didn't clearly know what
Mr. Jaggers would be found to be "at," I replied in the affirmative.
We dived into the City, and came up in a crowded police-court, where
a blood-relation (in the murderous sense) of the deceased, with the
fanciful taste in brooches, was standing at the bar, uncomfortably
chewing something; while my guardian had a woman under examination or
cross-examination,--I don't know which,--and was striking her, and
the bench, and everybody present, with awe. If anybody, of whatsoever
degree, said a word that he didn't approve of, he instantly required to
have it "taken down." If anybody wouldn't make an admission, he said,
"I'll have it out of you!" and if anybody made an admission, he said,
"Now I have got you!" The magistrates shivered under a single bite of
his finger. Thieves and thief-takers hung in dread rapture on his words,
and shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned in their direction. Which
side he was on I couldn't make out, for he seemed to me to be grinding
the whole place in a mill; I only know that when I stole out on tiptoe,
he was not on the side of the bench; for, he was making the legs of the
old gentleman who presided, quite convulsive under the table, by his
denunciations of his conduct as the representative of British law and
justice in that chair that day.
Chapter XXV
Bentley Drummle, who was so sulky a fellow that he even took up a book
as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up an
acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement,
and comprehension,--in the sluggish complexion of his face, and in
the large, awkward tongue that seemed to loll about in his mouth as
he himself lolled about in a room,--he was idle, proud, niggardly,
reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in Somersetshire,
who had nursed this combination of qualities until they made the
discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead. Thus, Bentley Drummle
had come to Mr. Pocket when he was a head taller than that gentleman,
and half a dozen heads thicker than most gentlemen.
Startop had been spoilt by a weak mother and kept at home when he
ought to have been at school, but he was devotedly attached to her, and
admired her beyond measure. He had a woman's delicacy of feature,
and was--"as you may see, though you never saw her," said Herbert to
me--"exactly like his mother." It was but natural that I should take to
him much more kindly than to Drummle, and that, even in the earliest
evenings of our boating, he and I should pull homeward abreast of one
another, conversing from boat to boat, while Bentley Drummle came up
in our wake alone, under the overhanging banks and among the rushes. He
would always creep in-shore like some uncomfortable amphibious creature,
even when the tide would have sent him fast upon his way; and I always
think of him as coming after us in the dark or by the back-water,
when our own two boats were breaking the sunset or the moonlight in
mid-stream.
Herbert was my intimate companion and friend. I presented him with a
half-share in my boat, which was the occasion of his often coming down
to Hammersmith; and my possession of a half-share in his chambers often
took me up to London. We used to walk between the two places at all
hours. I have an affection for the road yet (though it is not so
pleasant a road as it was then), formed in the impressibility of untried
youth and hope.
When I had been in Mr. Pocket's family a month or two, Mr. and Mrs.
Camilla turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket's sister. Georgiana, whom I
had seen at Miss Havisham's on the same occasion, also turned up. She
was a cousin,--an indigestive single woman, who called her rigidity
religion, and her liver love. These people hated me with the hatred of
cupidity and disappointment. As a matter of course, they fawned upon
me in my prosperity with the basest meanness. Towards Mr. Pocket, as
a grown-up infant with no notion of his own interests, they showed the
complacent forbearance I had heard them express. Mrs. Pocket they
held in contempt; but they allowed the poor soul to have been heavily
disappointed in life, because that shed a feeble reflected light upon
themselves.
These were the surroundings among which I settled down, and applied
myself to my education. I soon contracted expensive habits, and began
to spend an amount of money that within a few short months I should have
thought almost fabulous; but through good and evil I stuck to my books.
There was no other merit in this, than my having sense enough to feel
my deficiencies. Between Mr. Pocket and Herbert I got on fast; and, with
one or the other always at my elbow to give me the start I wanted, and
clear obstructions out of my road, I must have been as great a dolt as
Drummle if I had done less.
I had not seen Mr. Wemmick for some weeks, when I thought I would write
him a note and propose to go home with him on a certain evening. He
replied that it would give him much pleasure, and that he would expect
me at the office at six o'clock. Thither I went, and there I found him,
putting the key of his safe down his back as the clock struck.
"Did you think of walking down to Walworth?" said he.
"Certainly," said I, "if you approve."
"Very much," was Wemmick's reply, "for I have had my legs under the desk
all day, and shall be glad to stretch them. Now, I'll tell you what I
have got for supper, Mr. Pip. I have got a stewed steak,--which is
of home preparation,--and a cold roast fowl,--which is from the
cook's-shop. I think it's tender, because the master of the shop was a
Juryman in some cases of ours the other day, and we let him down easy.
I reminded him of it when I bought the fowl, and I said, "Pick us out
a good one, old Briton, because if we had chosen to keep you in the box
another day or two, we could easily have done it." He said to that,
"Let me make you a present of the best fowl in the shop." I let him, of
course. As far as it goes, it's property and portable. You don't object
to an aged parent, I hope?"
I really thought he was still speaking of the fowl, until he added,
"Because I have got an aged parent at my place." I then said what
politeness required.
"So, you haven't dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?" he pursued, as we walked
along.
"Not yet."
"He told me so this afternoon when he heard you were coming. I expect
you'll have an invitation to-morrow. He's going to ask your pals, too.
Three of 'em; ain't there?"
Although I was not in the habit of counting Drummle as one of my
intimate associates, I answered, "Yes."
"Well, he's going to ask the whole gang,"--I hardly felt complimented by
the word,--"and whatever he gives you, he'll give you good. Don't look
forward to variety, but you'll have excellence. And there's another rum
thing in his house," proceeded Wemmick, after a moment's pause, as if
the remark followed on the housekeeper understood; "he never lets a door
or window be fastened at night."
"Is he never robbed?"
"That's it!" returned Wemmick. "He says, and gives it out publicly, "I
want to see the man who'll rob me." Lord bless you, I have heard him, a
hundred times, if I have heard him once, say to regular cracksmen in our
front office, "You know where I live; now, no bolt is ever drawn there;
why don't you do a stroke of business with me? Come; can't I tempt you?"
Not a man of them, sir, would be bold enough to try it on, for love or
money."
"They dread him so much?" said I.
"Dread him," said Wemmick. "I believe you they dread him. Not but what
he's artful, even in his defiance of them. No silver, sir. Britannia
metal, every spoon."
"So they wouldn't have much," I observed, "even if they--"
"Ah! But he would have much," said Wemmick, cutting me short, "and they
know it. He'd have their lives, and the lives of scores of 'em. He'd
have all he could get. And it's impossible to say what he couldn't get,
if he gave his mind to it."
I was falling into meditation on my guardian's greatness, when Wemmick
remarked:--
"As to the absence of plate, that's only his natural depth, you know.
A river's its natural depth, and he's his natural depth. Look at his
watch-chain. That's real enough."
"It's very massive," said I.
"Massive?" repeated Wemmick. "I think so. And his watch is a gold
repeater, and worth a hundred pound if it's worth a penny. Mr. Pip,
there are about seven hundred thieves in this town who know all about
that watch; there's not a man, a woman, or a child, among them, who
wouldn't identify the smallest link in that chain, and drop it as if it
was red hot, if inveigled into touching it."
At first with such discourse, and afterwards with conversation of a more
general nature, did Mr. Wemmick and I beguile the time and the road,
until he gave me to understand that we had arrived in the district of
Walworth.
It appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and little
gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement.
Wemmick's house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots of
garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted like a battery mounted
with guns.
"My own doing," said Wemmick. "Looks pretty; don't it?"
I highly commended it, I think it was the smallest house I ever saw;
with the queerest gothic windows (by far the greater part of them sham),
and a gothic door almost too small to get in at.
"That's a real flagstaff, you see," said Wemmick, "and on Sundays I
run up a real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed this bridge, I
hoist it up--so--and cut off the communication."
The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide
and two deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which he
hoisted it up and made it fast; smiling as he did so, with a relish and
not merely mechanically.
"At nine o'clock every night, Greenwich time," said Wemmick, "the gun
fires. There he is, you see! And when you hear him go, I think you'll
say he's a Stinger."
The piece of ordnance referred to, was mounted in a separate fortress,
constructed of lattice-work. It was protected from the weather by an
ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature of an umbrella.
"Then, at the back," said Wemmick, "out of sight, so as not to impede
the idea of fortifications,--for it's a principle with me, if you have
an idea, carry it out and keep it up,--I don't know whether that's your
opinion--"
I said, decidedly.
"--At the back, there's a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits; then,
I knock together my own little frame, you see, and grow cucumbers; and
you'll judge at supper what sort of a salad I can raise. So, sir," said
Wemmick, smiling again, but seriously too, as he shook his head, "if you
can suppose the little place besieged, it would hold out a devil of a
time in point of provisions."
Then, he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but which was
approached by such ingenious twists of path that it took quite a long
time to get at; and in this retreat our glasses were already set forth.
Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose margin the bower
was raised. This piece of water (with an island in the middle which
might have been the salad for supper) was of a circular form, and he had
constructed a fountain in it, which, when you set a little mill going
and took a cork out of a pipe, played to that powerful extent that it
made the back of your hand quite wet.
"I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and
my own gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades," said Wemmick, in
acknowledging my compliments. "Well; it's a good thing, you know. It
brushes the Newgate cobwebs away, and pleases the Aged. You wouldn't
mind being at once introduced to the Aged, would you? It wouldn't put
you out?"
I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle. There
we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel coat: clean,
cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for, but intensely deaf.
"Well aged parent," said Wemmick, shaking hands with him in a cordial
and jocose way, "how am you?"
"All right, John; all right!" replied the old man.
"Here's Mr. Pip, aged parent," said Wemmick, "and I wish you could hear
his name. Nod away at him, Mr. Pip; that's what he likes. Nod away at
him, if you please, like winking!"
"This is a fine place of my son's, sir," cried the old man, while I
nodded as hard as I possibly could. "This is a pretty pleasure-ground,
sir. This spot and these beautiful works upon it ought to be kept
together by the Nation, after my son's time, for the people's
enjoyment."
"You're as proud of it as Punch; ain't you, Aged?" said Wemmick,
contemplating the old man, with his hard face really softened; "there's
a nod for you;" giving him a tremendous one; "there's another for you;"
giving him a still more tremendous one; "you like that, don't you? If
you're not tired, Mr. Pip--though I know it's tiring to strangers--will
you tip him one more? You can't think how it pleases him."
I tipped him several more, and he was in great spirits. We left him
bestirring himself to feed the fowls, and we sat down to our punch in
the arbor; where Wemmick told me, as he smoked a pipe, that it had taken
him a good many years to bring the property up to its present pitch of
perfection.
"Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick?"
"O yes," said Wemmick, "I have got hold of it, a bit at a time. It's a
freehold, by George!"
"Is it indeed? I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it?"
"Never seen it," said Wemmick. "Never heard of it. Never seen the Aged.
Never heard of him. No; the office is one thing, and private life is
another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and
when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me. If it's not
in any way disagreeable to you, you'll oblige me by doing the same. I
don't wish it professionally spoken about."
Of course I felt my good faith involved in the observance of his
request. The punch being very nice, we sat there drinking it and
talking, until it was almost nine o'clock. "Getting near gun-fire," said
Wemmick then, as he laid down his pipe; "it's the Aged's treat."
Proceeding into the Castle again, we found the Aged heating the poker,
with expectant eyes, as a preliminary to the performance of this great
nightly ceremony. Wemmick stood with his watch in his hand until the
moment was come for him to take the red-hot poker from the Aged, and
repair to the battery. He took it, and went out, and presently the
Stinger went off with a Bang that shook the crazy little box of a
cottage as if it must fall to pieces, and made every glass and teacup in
it ring. Upon this, the Aged--who I believe would have been blown out
of his arm-chair but for holding on by the elbows--cried out exultingly,
"He's fired! I heerd him!" and I nodded at the old gentleman until it is
no figure of speech to declare that I absolutely could not see him.
The interval between that time and supper Wemmick devoted to showing
me his collection of curiosities. They were mostly of a felonious
character; comprising the pen with which a celebrated forgery had been
committed, a distinguished razor or two, some locks of hair, and several
manuscript confessions written under condemnation,--upon which Mr.
Wemmick set particular value as being, to use his own words, "every one
of 'em Lies, sir." These were agreeably dispersed among small specimens
of china and glass, various neat trifles made by the proprietor of the
museum, and some tobacco-stoppers carved by the Aged. They were all
displayed in that chamber of the Castle into which I had been first
inducted, and which served, not only as the general sitting-room but
as the kitchen too, if I might judge from a saucepan on the hob, and
a brazen bijou over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a
roasting-jack.
There was a neat little girl in attendance, who looked after the Aged in
the day. When she had laid the supper-cloth, the bridge was lowered to
give her means of egress, and she withdrew for the night. The supper was
excellent; and though the Castle was rather subject to dry-rot insomuch
that it tasted like a bad nut, and though the pig might have been
farther off, I was heartily pleased with my whole entertainment. Nor was
there any drawback on my little turret bedroom, beyond there being such
a very thin ceiling between me and the flagstaff, that when I lay down
on my back in bed, it seemed as if I had to balance that pole on my
forehead all night.
Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid I heard him
cleaning my boots. After that, he fell to gardening, and I saw him from
my gothic window pretending to employ the Aged, and nodding at him in
a most devoted manner. Our breakfast was as good as the supper, and at
half-past eight precisely we started for Little Britain. By degrees,
Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along, and his mouth tightened
into a post-office again. At last, when we got to his place of business
and he pulled out his key from his coat-collar, he looked as unconscious
of his Walworth property as if the Castle and the drawbridge and the
arbor and the lake and the fountain and the Aged, had all been blown
into space together by the last discharge of the Stinger.
Chapter XXVI
It fell out as Wemmick had told me it would, that I had an early
opportunity of comparing my guardian's establishment with that of his
cashier and clerk. My guardian was in his room, washing his hands with
his scented soap, when I went into the office from Walworth; and he
called me to him, and gave me the invitation for myself and friends
which Wemmick had prepared me to receive. "No ceremony," he stipulated,
"and no dinner dress, and say to-morrow." I asked him where we should
come to (for I had no idea where he lived), and I believe it was in his
general objection to make anything like an admission, that he replied,
"Come here, and I'll take you home with me." I embrace this opportunity
of remarking that he washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or
a dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose, which
smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer's shop. It had an unusually
large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he would wash his
hands, and wipe them and dry them all over this towel, whenever he came
in from a police court or dismissed a client from his room. When I and
my friends repaired to him at six o'clock next day, he seemed to have
been engaged on a case of a darker complexion than usual, for we found
him with his head butted into this closet, not only washing his hands,
but laving his face and gargling his throat. And even when he had
done all that, and had gone all round the jack-towel, he took out his
penknife and scraped the case out of his nails before he put his coat
on.
There were some people slinking about as usual when we passed out into
the street, who were evidently anxious to speak with him; but there was
something so conclusive in the halo of scented soap which encircled
his presence, that they gave it up for that day. As we walked along
westward, he was recognized ever and again by some face in the crowd of
the streets, and whenever that happened he talked louder to me; but
he never otherwise recognized anybody, or took notice that anybody
recognized him.
He conducted us to Gerrard Street, Soho, to a house on the south side of
that street. Rather a stately house of its kind, but dolefully in want
of painting, and with dirty windows. He took out his key and opened the
door, and we all went into a stone hall, bare, gloomy, and little used.
So, up a dark brown staircase into a series of three dark brown rooms on
the first floor. There were carved garlands on the panelled walls, and
as he stood among them giving us welcome, I know what kind of loops I
thought they looked like.
Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms; the second was his
dressing-room; the third, his bedroom. He told us that he held the whole
house, but rarely used more of it than we saw. The table was comfortably
laid--no silver in the service, of course--and at the side of his chair
was a capacious dumb-waiter, with a variety of bottles and decanters on
it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert. I noticed throughout, that he
kept everything under his own hand, and distributed everything himself.
There was a bookcase in the room; I saw from the backs of the books,
that they were about evidence, criminal law, criminal biography, trials,
acts of Parliament, and such things. The furniture was all very solid
and good, like his watch-chain. It had an official look, however, and
there was nothing merely ornamental to be seen. In a corner was a little
table of papers with a shaded lamp: so that he seemed to bring the
office home with him in that respect too, and to wheel it out of an
evening and fall to work.
As he had scarcely seen my three companions until now,--for he and I had
walked together,--he stood on the hearth-rug, after ringing the bell,
and took a searching look at them. To my surprise, he seemed at once to
be principally if not solely interested in Drummle.
"Pip," said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder and moving me to
the window, "I don't know one from the other. Who's the Spider?"
"The spider?" said I.
"The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow."
"That's Bentley Drummle," I replied; "the one with the delicate face is
Startop."
Not making the least account of "the one with the delicate face," he
returned, "Bentley Drummle is his name, is it? I like the look of that
fellow."
He immediately began to talk to Drummle: not at all deterred by his
replying in his heavy reticent way, but apparently led on by it to screw
discourse out of him. I was looking at the two, when there came between
me and them the housekeeper, with the first dish for the table.
She was a woman of about forty, I supposed,--but I may have thought her
younger than she was. Rather tall, of a lithe nimble figure, extremely
pale, with large faded eyes, and a quantity of streaming hair. I cannot
say whether any diseased affection of the heart caused her lips to be
parted as if she were panting, and her face to bear a curious expression
of suddenness and flutter; but I know that I had been to see Macbeth at
the theatre, a night or two before, and that her face looked to me as if
it were all disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out
of the Witches' caldron.
She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm with a
finger to notify that dinner was ready, and vanished. We took our seats
at the round table, and my guardian kept Drummle on one side of him,
while Startop sat on the other. It was a noble dish of fish that the
housekeeper had put on table, and we had a joint of equally choice
mutton afterwards, and then an equally choice bird. Sauces, wines, all
the accessories we wanted, and all of the best, were given out by our
host from his dumb-waiter; and when they had made the circuit of the
table, he always put them back again. Similarly, he dealt us clean
plates and knives and forks, for each course, and dropped those just
disused into two baskets on the ground by his chair. No other attendant
than the housekeeper appeared. She set on every dish; and I always saw
in her face, a face rising out of the caldron. Years afterwards, I made
a dreadful likeness of that woman, by causing a face that had no other
natural resemblance to it than it derived from flowing hair to pass
behind a bowl of flaming spirits in a dark room.
Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by her
own striking appearance and by Wemmick's preparation, I observed
that whenever she was in the room she kept her eyes attentively on my
guardian, and that she would remove her hands from any dish she put
before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded his calling her back, and
wanted him to speak when she was nigh, if he had anything to say. I
fancied that I could detect in his manner a consciousness of this, and a
purpose of always holding her in suspense.
Dinner went off gayly, and although my guardian seemed to follow rather
than originate subjects, I knew that he wrenched the weakest part of
our dispositions out of us. For myself, I found that I was expressing my
tendency to lavish expenditure, and to patronize Herbert, and to boast
of my great prospects, before I quite knew that I had opened my lips.
It was so with all of us, but with no one more than Drummle: the
development of whose inclination to gird in a grudging and suspicious
way at the rest, was screwed out of him before the fish was taken off.
It was not then, but when we had got to the cheese, that our
conversation turned upon our rowing feats, and that Drummle was rallied
for coming up behind of a night in that slow amphibious way of his.
Drummle upon this, informed our host that he much preferred our room to
our company, and that as to skill he was more than our master, and that
as to strength he could scatter us like chaff. By some invisible agency,
my guardian wound him up to a pitch little short of ferocity about this
trifle; and he fell to baring and spanning his arm to show how muscular
it was, and we all fell to baring and spanning our arms in a ridiculous
manner.
Now the housekeeper was at that time clearing the table; my guardian,
taking no heed of her, but with the side of his face turned from her,
was leaning back in his chair biting the side of his forefinger and
showing an interest in Drummle, that, to me, was quite inexplicable.
Suddenly, he clapped his large hand on the housekeeper's, like a trap,
as she stretched it across the table. So suddenly and smartly did he do
this, that we all stopped in our foolish contention.
"If you talk of strength," said Mr. Jaggers, "I'll show you a wrist.
Molly, let them see your wrist."
Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put her other
hand behind her waist. "Master," she said, in a low voice, with her eyes
attentively and entreatingly fixed upon him. "Don't."
"I'll show you a wrist," repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an immovable
determination to show it. "Molly, let them see your wrist."
"Master," she again murmured. "Please!"
"Molly," said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately looking
at the opposite side of the room, "let them see both your wrists. Show
them. Come!"
He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up on the table. She
brought her other hand from behind her, and held the two out side by
side. The last wrist was much disfigured,--deeply scarred and scarred
across and across. When she held her hands out she took her eyes from
Mr. Jaggers, and turned them watchfully on every one of the rest of us
in succession.
"There's power here," said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the sinews
with his forefinger. "Very few men have the power of wrist that this
woman has. It's remarkable what mere force of grip there is in these
hands. I have had occasion to notice many hands; but I never saw
stronger in that respect, man's or woman's, than these."
While he said these words in a leisurely, critical style, she continued
to look at every one of us in regular succession as we sat. The moment
he ceased, she looked at him again. "That'll do, Molly," said Mr.
Jaggers, giving her a slight nod; "you have been admired, and can
go." She withdrew her hands and went out of the room, and Mr. Jaggers,
putting the decanters on from his dumb-waiter, filled his glass and
passed round the wine.
"At half-past nine, gentlemen," said he, "we must break up. Pray make
the best use of your time. I am glad to see you all. Mr. Drummle, I
drink to you."
If his object in singling out Drummle were to bring him out still more,
it perfectly succeeded. In a sulky triumph, Drummle showed his morose
depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and more offensive degree,
until he became downright intolerable. Through all his stages, Mr.
Jaggers followed him with the same strange interest. He actually seemed
to serve as a zest to Mr. Jaggers's wine.
In our boyish want of discretion I dare say we took too much to drink,
and I know we talked too much. We became particularly hot upon some
boorish sneer of Drummle's, to the effect that we were too free with our
money. It led to my remarking, with more zeal than discretion, that it
came with a bad grace from him, to whom Startop had lent money in my
presence but a week or so before.
"Well," retorted Drummle; "he'll be paid."
"I don't mean to imply that he won't," said I, "but it might make you
hold your tongue about us and our money, I should think."
"You should think!" retorted Drummle. "Oh Lord!"
"I dare say," I went on, meaning to be very severe, "that you wouldn't
lend money to any of us if we wanted it."
"You are right," said Drummle. "I wouldn't lend one of you a sixpence. I
wouldn't lend anybody a sixpence."
"Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I should say."
"You should say," repeated Drummle. "Oh Lord!"
This was so very aggravating--the more especially as I found myself
making no way against his surly obtuseness--that I said, disregarding
Herbert's efforts to check me,--
"Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I'll tell you what
passed between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed that money."
"I don't want to know what passed between Herbert there and you,"
growled Drummle. And I think he added in a lower growl, that we might
both go to the devil and shake ourselves.
"I'll tell you, however," said I, "whether you want to know or not. We
said that as you put it in your pocket very glad to get it, you seemed
to be immensely amused at his being so weak as to lend it."
Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing in our faces, with his hands
in his pockets and his round shoulders raised; plainly signifying that
it was quite true, and that he despised us as asses all.
Hereupon Startop took him in hand, though with a much better grace than
I had shown, and exhorted him to be a little more agreeable. Startop,
being a lively, bright young fellow, and Drummle being the exact
opposite, the latter was always disposed to resent him as a direct
personal affront. He now retorted in a coarse, lumpish way, and Startop
tried to turn the discussion aside with some small pleasantry that made
us all laugh. Resenting this little success more than anything, Drummle,
without any threat or warning, pulled his hands out of his pockets,
dropped his round shoulders, swore, took up a large glass, and would
have flung it at his adversary's head, but for our entertainer's
dexterously seizing it at the instant when it was raised for that
purpose.
"Gentlemen," said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting down the glass, and
hauling out his gold repeater by its massive chain, "I am exceedingly
sorry to announce that it's half past nine."
On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we got to the street door,
Startop was cheerily calling Drummle "old boy," as if nothing had
happened. But the old boy was so far from responding, that he would not
even walk to Hammersmith on the same side of the way; so Herbert and I,
who remained in town, saw them going down the street on opposite sides;
Startop leading, and Drummle lagging behind in the shadow of the houses,
much as he was wont to follow in his boat.
As the door was not yet shut, I thought I would leave Herbert there for
a moment, and run upstairs again to say a word to my guardian. I found
him in his dressing-room surrounded by his stock of boots, already hard
at it, washing his hands of us.
I told him I had come up again to say how sorry I was that anything
disagreeable should have occurred, and that I hoped he would not blame
me much.
"Pooh!" said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through the
water-drops; "it's nothing, Pip. I like that Spider though."
He had turned towards me now, and was shaking his head, and blowing, and
towelling himself.
"I am glad you like him, sir," said I--"but I don't."
"No, no," my guardian assented; "don't have too much to do with him.
Keep as clear of him as you can. But I like the fellow, Pip; he is one
of the true sort. Why, if I was a fortune-teller--"
Looking out of the towel, he caught my eye.
"But I am not a fortune-teller," he said, letting his head drop into a
festoon of towel, and towelling away at his two ears. "You know what I
am, don't you? Good night, Pip."
"Good night, sir."
In about a month after that, the Spider's time with Mr. Pocket was up
for good, and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs. Pocket, he
went home to the family hole.
Chapter XXVII
"MY DEAR MR PIP:--
"I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for to let you know that he
is going to London in company with Mr. Wopsle and would be glad if
agreeable to be allowed to see you. He would call at Barnard's Hotel
Tuesday morning 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. If
now considered in the light of a liberty, excuse it for the love of
poor old days. No more, dear Mr. Pip, from your ever obliged, and
affectionate servant,
"BIDDY."
"P.S. He wishes me most particular to write what larks. He says you will
understand. I hope and do not doubt it will be agreeable to see him,
even though a gentleman, for you had ever a good heart, and he is a
worthy, worthy man. I have read him all, excepting only the last little
sentence, and he wishes me most particular to write again what larks."
I received this letter by the post on Monday morning, and therefore its
appointment was for next day. Let me confess exactly with what feelings
I looked forward to Joe's coming.
Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; no;
with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense of
incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly
would have paid money. My greatest reassurance was that he was coming
to Barnard's Inn, not to Hammersmith, and consequently would not fall
in Bentley Drummle's way. I had little objection to his being seen by
Herbert or his father, for both of whom I had a respect; but I had the
sharpest sensitiveness as to his being seen by Drummle, whom I held in
contempt. So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are
usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.
I had begun to be always decorating the chambers in some quite
unnecessary and inappropriate way or other, and very expensive those
wrestles with Barnard proved to be. By this time, the rooms were
vastly different from what I had found them, and I enjoyed the 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 washerwoman's family), and had clothed him with a blue
coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat, creamy breeches, and the boots
already mentioned, I had to find him a little to do and a great deal
to eat; and with both of those horrible requirements he haunted my
existence.
This avenging phantom was ordered to be on duty at eight on Tuesday
morning in the hall, (it was two feet square, as charged for
floorcloth,) and Herbert suggested certain things for breakfast that he
thought Joe would like. While I felt sincerely obliged to him for being
so interested and considerate, I had an odd half-provoked sense of
suspicion upon me, that if Joe had been coming to see him, he wouldn't
have been quite so brisk about it.
However, I came into town on the Monday night to be ready for Joe, and
I got up early in the morning, and caused the 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 ascent. When at last he stopped outside our door, I could hear his
finger tracing over the painted letters of my name, and I afterwards
distinctly heard him breathing in at the keyhole. Finally he gave a
faint single rap, and Pepper--such was the compromising name of the
avenging boy--announced "Mr. Gargery!" I thought he never would have
done wiping his feet, and that I must have gone out to lift him off the
mat, but at last he came in.
"Joe, how are you, Joe?"
"Pip, how AIR you, Pip?"
With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and his hat put
down on the floor between us, he caught both my hands and worked them
straight up and down, as if I had been the 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 of parting with that piece of property, and
persisted in standing talking over it in a most uncomfortable way.
"Which you have that growed," said Joe, "and that swelled, and that
gentle-folked;" Joe considered a little before he discovered this word;
"as to be sure you are a honor to your king and country."
"And you, Joe, look wonderfully well."
"Thank God," said Joe, "I'm ekerval to most. And your sister, she's
no worse than she were. And Biddy, she's ever right and ready. And all
friends is no backerder, if not no forarder. 'Ceptin Wopsle; he's had a
drop."
All this time (still with both hands taking great care of the
bird's-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room, and
round and round the flowered pattern of my dressing-gown.
"Had a drop, Joe?"
"Why yes," said Joe, lowering his voice, "he's left the Church and went
into the playacting. Which the playacting have likeways brought him
to London along with me. And his wish were," said Joe, getting the
bird's-nest under his left arm for the moment, and groping in it for an
egg with his right; "if no offence, as I would 'and you that."
I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the crumpled play-bill of
a small metropolitan theatre, announcing the first appearance, in that
very week, of "the celebrated Provincial Amateur of Roscian renown,
whose unique performance in the highest tragic walk of our National Bard
has lately occasioned so great a sensation in local dramatic circles."
"Were you at his performance, Joe?" I inquired.
"I were," said Joe, with emphasis and solemnity.
"Was there a great sensation?"
"Why," said Joe, "yes, there certainly were a peck of orange-peel.
Partickler when he see the ghost. Though I put it to yourself, sir,
whether it were calc'lated to keep a man up to his work with a good
hart, to be continiwally cutting in betwixt him and the Ghost with
"Amen!" A man may have had a misfortun' and been in the Church," said
Joe, lowering his voice to an argumentative and feeling tone, "but
that is no reason why you should put him out at such a time. Which I
meantersay, if the ghost of a man's own father cannot be allowed to
claim his attention, what can, Sir? Still more, when his mourning 'at
is unfortunately made so small as that the weight of the black feathers
brings it off, try to keep it on how you may."
A ghost-seeing effect in Joe's own countenance informed me that Herbert
had entered the room. So, I presented Joe to Herbert, who held out his
hand; but Joe backed from it, and held on by the bird's-nest.
"Your servant, Sir," said Joe, "which I hope as you and Pip"--here his
eye fell on the Avenger, who was putting some toast on table, and so
plainly denoted an intention to make that young gentleman one of the
family, that I frowned it down and confused him more--"I meantersay, you
two gentlemen,--which I hope as you get your elths in this close spot?
For the present may be a werry good inn, according to London opinions,"
said Joe, confidentially, "and I believe its character do stand it; 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 few rare substances in nature that it could find a
resting place,--and ultimately stood it on an extreme corner of the
chimney-piece, from which it ever afterwards fell off at intervals.
"Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?" asked Herbert, who always
presided of a morning.
"Thankee, Sir," said Joe, stiff from head to foot, "I'll take whichever
is most agreeable to yourself."
"What do you say to coffee?"
"Thankee, Sir," returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the proposal,
"since you are so kind as make chice of coffee, I will not run contrairy
to your own opinions. But don't you never find it a little 'eating?"
"Say tea then," said Herbert, pouring it out.
Here Joe's hat tumbled off the mantel-piece, and he started out of his
chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact spot. As if it
were an absolute point of good breeding that it should tumble off again
soon.
"When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery?"
"Were it yesterday afternoon?" said Joe, after coughing behind his hand,
as if he had had time to catch the whooping-cough since he came. "No
it were not. Yes it were. Yes. It were yesterday afternoon" (with an
appearance of mingled wisdom, relief, and strict impartiality).
"Have you seen anything of London yet?"
"Why, yes, Sir," said Joe, "me and Wopsle went off straight to look at
the Blacking Ware'us. But we didn't find that it come up to its likeness
in the red bills at the shop doors; which I meantersay," added Joe, in
an explanatory manner, "as it is there drawd too architectooralooral."
I really believe Joe would have prolonged this word (mightily expressive
to my mind of some architecture that I know) into a perfect Chorus, but
for his attention being providentially attracted by his hat, which
was toppling. Indeed, it demanded from him a constant attention, and a
quickness of eye and hand, very like that exacted by wicket-keeping.
He made extraordinary play with it, and showed the greatest skill; now,
rushing at it and catching it neatly as it dropped; now, merely stopping
it midway, beating it up, and 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 could consider himself full dressed? Why
should he suppose it necessary to be purified by suffering for
his holiday clothes? Then he fell into such unaccountable fits of
meditation, with his fork midway between his plate and his mouth; had
his eyes attracted in such strange directions; was afflicted with such
remarkable coughs; sat so far from the table, and dropped so much
more than he ate, and pretended that he hadn't dropped it; that I was
heartily glad when Herbert left us for the City.
I had neither the good sense nor the good feeling to know that this was
all my fault, and that if I had been easier with Joe, Joe would have
been easier with me. I felt impatient of him and out of temper with him;
in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head.
"Us two being now alone, sir,"--began Joe.
"Joe," I interrupted, pettishly, "how can you call me, sir?"
Joe looked at me for a single instant with something faintly like
reproach. Utterly preposterous as his cravat was, and as his collars
were, I was conscious of a sort of dignity in the look.
"Us two being now alone," resumed Joe, "and me having the intentions and
abilities to stay not many minutes more, I will now conclude--leastways
begin--to mention what have led to my having had the present 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 wittles in the company and abode of gentlemen."
I was so unwilling to see the look again, that I made no remonstrance
against this tone.
"Well, sir," pursued Joe, "this is how it were. I were at the Bargemen
t'other night, Pip;"--whenever he subsided into affection, he called me
Pip, and whenever he relapsed into politeness he called me sir; "when
there come up in his shay-cart, Pumblechook. Which that same identical,"
said Joe, going down a new track, "do comb my 'air the wrong way
sometimes, awful, by giving out up and down town as it were him which
ever had your infant companionation and were looked upon as a playfellow
by yourself."
"Nonsense. It was you, Joe."
"Which I fully believed it were, Pip," said Joe, slightly tossing
his head, "though it signify little now, sir. Well, Pip; this same
identical, which his manners is given to blusterous, come to me at
the Bargemen (wot a pipe and a pint of beer do give refreshment to the
workingman, sir, and do not over stimilate), and his word were, 'Joseph,
Miss Havisham she wish to speak to you.'"
"Miss Havisham, Joe?"
"'She wish,' were Pumblechook's word, 'to speak to you.'" Joe sat and
rolled his eyes at the ceiling.
"Yes, Joe? Go on, please."
"Next day, sir," said Joe, looking at me as if I were a long way off,
"having cleaned myself, I go and I see Miss A."
"Miss A., Joe? Miss Havisham?"
"Which I say, sir," replied Joe, with an air of legal formality, as if
he were making his will, "Miss A., or otherways Havisham. Her expression
air then as follering: 'Mr. Gargery. You air in correspondence with Mr.
Pip?' Having had a letter from you, I were able to say 'I am.' (When
I married your sister, sir, I said 'I will;' and when I answered your
friend, Pip, I said 'I am.') 'Would you tell him, then,' said she, 'that
which Estella has come home and would be glad to see him.'"
I felt my face fire up as I looked at Joe. I hope one remote cause
of its firing may have been my consciousness that if I had known his
errand, I should have given him more encouragement.
"Biddy," pursued Joe, "when I got home and asked her fur to write the
message to you, a little hung back. Biddy says, 'I know he will be very
glad to have it by word of mouth, it is 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. Diwisions
among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there's been
any fault at all to-day, it's mine. You and me is not two figures to
be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and
beknown, and understood among friends. It ain't that I am proud, but
that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these
clothes. I'm wrong in these clothes. I'm wrong out of the forge, the
kitchen, or off th' meshes. You won't find half so much fault in me if
you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even
my pipe. You won't find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you
should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge
window and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old
burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I'm awful dull, but I hope I've
beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. And so GOD bless
you, dear old Pip, old chap, GOD bless you!"
I had not been mistaken in my fancy that there was a simple dignity
in him. The fashion of his dress could no more come in its way when he
spoke these words than it could come in its way in Heaven. He touched me
gently on the forehead, and went out. As soon as I could recover
myself sufficiently, I hurried out after him and looked for him in the
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 to-morrow's coach, and had been
down to Mr. Pocket's and back, I was not by any means convinced on the
last point, and began to invent reasons and make excuses for putting
up at the Blue Boar. I should be an inconvenience at Joe's; I was not
expected, and my bed would not be ready; I should be too far from
Miss Havisham's, and she was exacting and mightn't like it. All other
swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such
pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should
innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture is
reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin
of my own make as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretence of
compactly folding up my bank-notes for security's sake, abstracts the
notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine,
when I fold up my own nutshells and pass them on myself as notes!
Having settled that I must go to the Blue Boar, my mind was much
disturbed by indecision whether or not to take the Avenger. It was
tempting to think of that expensive Mercenary publicly airing his boots
in the archway of the Blue Boar's posting-yard; it was almost solemn to
imagine him casually produced in the tailor's shop, and confounding
the disrespectful senses of Trabb's boy. On the other hand, Trabb's boy
might worm himself into his intimacy and tell him things; or, reckless
and desperate wretch as I knew he could be, might hoot him in the High
Street. My patroness, too, might hear of him, and not approve. On the
whole, I resolved to leave the Avenger behind.
It was the afternoon coach by which I had taken my place, and, as winter
had now come round, I should not arrive at my destination until two or
three hours after dark. Our time of starting from the Cross Keys was
two o'clock. I arrived on the ground with a quarter of an hour to spare,
attended by the Avenger,--if I may connect that expression with one who
never attended on me if he could possibly help it.
At that time it was customary to carry Convicts down to the dock-yards
by stage-coach. As I had often heard of them in the capacity of outside
passengers, and had more than once seen them on the high road dangling
their ironed legs over the coach roof, I had no cause to be surprised
when Herbert, meeting me in the yard, came up and told me there were two
convicts going down with me. But I had a reason that was an old reason
now for constitutionally faltering whenever I heard the word "convict."
"You don't mind them, Handel?" said Herbert.
"O no!"
"I thought you seemed as if you didn't like them?"
"I can't pretend that I do like them, and I suppose you don't
particularly. But I don't mind them."
"See! There they are," said Herbert, "coming out of the Tap. What a
degraded and vile sight it is!"
They had been treating their guard, I suppose, for they had a gaoler
with them, and all three came out wiping their mouths on their hands.
The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had irons on their
legs,--irons of a pattern that I knew well. They wore the dress that I
likewise knew well. Their keeper had a brace of pistols, and carried
a thick-knobbed bludgeon under his arm; but he was on terms of good
understanding with them, and stood with them beside him, looking on at
the putting-to of the horses, rather with an air as if the convicts were
an interesting Exhibition not formally open at the moment, and he the
Curator. One was a taller and stouter man than the other, and appeared
as a matter of course, according to the mysterious ways of the world,
both convict and free, to have had allotted to him the smaller suit of
clothes. His arms and legs were like great pincushions of those shapes,
and his attire disguised him absurdly; but I knew his half-closed eye
at one glance. There stood the man whom I had seen on the settle at the
Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, and who had brought me down
with his invisible gun!
It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no more than if he had
never seen me in his life. He looked across at me, and his eye appraised
my watch-chain, and then he incidentally spat and said something to the
other convict, and they laughed and slued themselves round with a clink
of their coupling manacle, and looked at something else. The great
numbers on their backs, as if they were street doors; their coarse mangy
ungainly outer surface, as if they were lower animals; their ironed
legs, apologetically garlanded with pocket-handkerchiefs; and the way
in which all present looked at them and kept from them; made them (as
Herbert had said) a most disagreeable and degraded spectacle.
But this was not the worst of it. It came out that the whole of the back
of the coach had been taken by a family removing from London, and that
there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat in front
behind the coachman. Hereupon, a choleric gentleman, who had taken the
fourth place on that seat, flew into a most violent passion, and said
that it was a breach of contract to mix him up with such villainous
company, and that it was poisonous, and pernicious, and infamous, and
shameful, and I don't know what else. At this time the coach was ready
and the coachman impatient, and we were all preparing to get up, and
the prisoners had come over with their keeper,--bringing with them that
curious flavor of bread-poultice, baize, rope-yarn, and hearthstone,
which attends the convict presence.
"Don't take it so much amiss, sir," pleaded the keeper to the angry
passenger; "I'll sit next you myself. I'll put 'em on the outside of
the row. They won't interfere with you, sir. You needn't know they're
there."
"And don't blame me," growled the convict I had recognized. "I don't
want to go. I am quite ready to stay behind. As fur as I am concerned
any one's welcome to my place."
"Or mine," said the other, gruffly. "I wouldn't have incommoded none
of you, if I'd had my way." Then they both laughed, and began cracking
nuts, and spitting the shells about.--As I really think I should have
liked to do myself, if I had been in their place and so despised.
At length, it was voted that there was no help for the angry gentleman,
and that he must either go in his chance company or remain behind. So he
got into his place, still making complaints, and the keeper got into the
place next him, and the convicts hauled themselves up as well as they
could, and the convict I had recognized sat behind me with his breath on
the hair of my head.
"Good-bye, Handel!" Herbert called out as we started. I thought what a
blessed fortune it was, that he had found another name for me than Pip.
It is impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the convict's
breathing, not only on the back of my head, but all along my spine. The
sensation was like being touched in the marrow with some pungent and
searching acid, it set my very teeth on edge. He seemed to have more
breathing business to do than another man, and to make more noise in
doing it; and I was conscious of growing high-shouldered on one side, in
my shrinking endeavors to fend him off.
The weather was miserably raw, and the two cursed the cold. It made us
all lethargic before we had gone far, and when we had left the Half-way
House behind, we habitually dozed and shivered and were silent. I dozed
off, myself, in considering the question whether I ought to restore a
couple of pounds sterling to this creature before losing sight of him,
and how it could best be done. In the act of dipping forward as if I
were going to bathe among the horses, I woke in a fright and took the
question up again.
But I must have lost it longer than I had thought, since, although
I could recognize nothing in the darkness and the fitful lights and
shadows of our lamps, I traced marsh country in the cold damp wind that
blew at us. Cowering forward for warmth and to make me a screen against
the wind, the convicts were closer to me than before. The very first
words I heard them interchange as I became conscious, were the words of
my own thought, "Two One Pound notes."
"How did he get 'em?" said the convict I had never seen.
"How should I know?" returned the other. "He had 'em stowed away
somehows. Giv him by friends, I expect."
"I wish," said the other, with a bitter curse upon the cold, "that I had
'em here."
"Two one pound notes, or friends?"
"Two one pound notes. I'd sell all the friends I ever had for one, and
think it a blessed good bargain. Well? So he says--?"
"So he says," resumed the convict I had recognized,--"it was all
said and done in half a minute, behind a pile of timber in the
Dock-yard,--'You're a going to be discharged?' Yes, I was. Would I find
out that boy that had fed him and kep his secret, and give him them two
one pound notes? Yes, I would. And I did."
"More fool you," growled the other. "I'd have spent 'em on a Man, in
wittles and drink. He must have been a green one. Mean to say he knowed
nothing of you?"
"Not a ha'porth. Different gangs and different ships. He was tried again
for prison breaking, and got made a Lifer."
"And was that--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 execrated the place in very strong language, and gradually
growled themselves out, and had nothing left to say.
After overhearing this dialogue, I should assuredly have got down and
been left in the solitude and darkness of the highway, but for feeling
certain that the man had no suspicion of my identity. Indeed, I was not
only so changed in the course of nature, but so differently dressed and
so differently circumstanced, that it was not at all likely he could
have known me without accidental help. Still, the coincidence of our
being together on the coach, was sufficiently strange to fill me with a
dread that some other coincidence might at any moment connect me, in his
hearing, with my name. For this reason, I resolved to alight as soon as
we touched the town, and put myself out of his hearing. This device I
executed successfully. My little portmanteau was in the boot under my
feet; I had but to turn a hinge to get it out; I threw it down before
me, got down after it, and was left at the first lamp on the first
stones of the town pavement. As to the convicts, they went their way
with the coach, and I knew at what point they would be spirited off to
the river. In my fancy, I saw the boat with its convict crew waiting for
them at the slime-washed stairs,--again heard the gruff "Give way, you!"
like and order to dogs,--again saw the wicked Noah's Ark lying out on
the black water.
I could not have said what I was afraid of, for my fear was altogether
undefined and vague, but there was great fear upon me. As I walked on to
the hotel, I felt that a dread, much exceeding the mere apprehension of
a painful or disagreeable recognition, made me tremble. I am confident
that it took no distinctness of shape, and that it was the revival for a
few minutes of the terror of childhood.
The coffee-room at the Blue Boar was empty, and I had not only ordered
my dinner there, but had sat down to it, before the waiter knew me. As
soon as he had apologized for the remissness of his memory, he asked me
if he should send Boots for Mr. Pumblechook?
"No," said I, "certainly not."
The waiter (it was he who had brought up the Great Remonstrance from the
Commercials, on the day when I was bound) appeared surprised, and
took the earliest opportunity of putting a dirty old copy of a local
newspaper so directly in my way, that I took it up and read this
paragraph:--
Our readers will learn, not altogether without interest, in reference to
the recent romantic rise in fortune of a young artificer in iron of this
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 commodious business premises
are situate within a hundred miles of the High Street. It is not wholly
irrespective of our personal feelings that we record HIM as the Mentor
of our young Telemachus, for it is good to know that our town produced
the founder of the latter's fortunes. Does the thought-contracted brow
of the local Sage or the lustrous eye of local Beauty inquire whose
fortunes? We believe that Quintin Matsys was the BLACKSMITH of Antwerp.
VERB. SAP.
I entertain a conviction, based upon large experience, that if in the
days of my prosperity I had gone to the North Pole, I should have met
somebody there, wandering Esquimaux or civilized man, who would have
told me that Pumblechook was my earliest patron and the founder of my
fortunes.
Chapter XXIX
Betimes in the morning I was up and out. It was too early yet to go to
Miss Havisham's, so I loitered into the country on Miss Havisham's
side of town,--which was not Joe's side; I could go there
to-morrow,--thinking about my patroness, and painting brilliant pictures
of her plans for me.
She had adopted Estella, she had as good as adopted me, and it could not
fail to be her intention to bring us together. She reserved it for me to
restore the desolate house, admit the sunshine into the dark rooms,
set the clocks a-going and the cold hearths a-blazing, tear down the
cobwebs, destroy the vermin,--in short, do all the shining deeds of the
young Knight of romance, and marry the Princess. I had stopped to
look at the house as I passed; and its seared red brick walls, blocked
windows, and strong green ivy clasping even the stacks of chimneys with
its twigs and tendons, as if with sinewy old arms, had made up a rich
attractive mystery, of which I was the hero. Estella was the inspiration
of it, and the heart of it, of course. But, though she had taken such
strong possession of me, though my fancy and my hope were so set upon
her, though her influence on my boyish life and character had been
all-powerful, I did not, even that romantic morning, invest her with any
attributes save those she possessed. I mention this in this place, of a
fixed purpose, because it is the clew 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.
"Orlick!"
"Ah, young master, there's more changes than yours. But come in, come
in. It's opposed to my orders to hold the gate open."
I entered and he swung it, and locked it, and took the key out. "Yes!"
said he, facing round, after doggedly preceding me a few steps towards
the house. "Here I am!"
"How did you come here?"
"I come her," he retorted, "on my legs. I had my box brought alongside
me in a barrow."
"Are you here for good?"
"I ain't here for harm, young master, I suppose?"
I was not so sure of that. I had leisure to entertain the retort in my
mind, while he slowly lifted his heavy glance from the pavement, up my
legs and arms, to my face.
"Then you have left the forge?" I said.
"Do this look like a forge?" replied Orlick, sending his glance all
round him with an air of injury. "Now, do it look like it?"
I asked him how long he had left Gargery's forge?
"One day is so like another here," he replied, "that I don't know
without casting it up. However, I come here some time since you left."
"I could have told you that, Orlick."
"Ah!" said he, dryly. "But then you've got to be a scholar."
By this time we had come to the house, where I found his room to be one
just within the side-door, with a little window in it looking on the
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 dormouse; while he,
looming dark and heavy in the shadow of a corner by the window, looked
like the human dormouse for whom it was fitted up,--as indeed he was.
"I never saw this room before," I remarked; "but there used to be no
Porter here."
"No," said he; "not till it got about that there was no protection on
the premises, and it come to be considered dangerous, with convicts and
Tag and Rag and Bobtail going up and down. And then I was recommended to
the place as a man who could give another man as good as he brought, and
I took it. It's easier than bellowsing and hammering.--That's loaded,
that is."
My eye had been caught by a gun with a brass-bound stock over the
chimney-piece, and his eye had followed mine.
"Well," said I, not desirous of more conversation, "shall I go up to
Miss Havisham?"
"Burn me, if I know!" he retorted, first stretching himself and then
shaking himself; "my orders ends here, young master. I give this here
bell a rap with this here hammer, and you go on along the passage till
you meet somebody."
"I am expected, I believe?"
"Burn me twice over, if I can say!" said he.
Upon that, I turned down the long passage which I had first trodden in
my thick boots, and he made his bell sound. At the end of the passage,
while the bell was still reverberating, I found Sarah Pocket, who
appeared to have now become constitutionally green and yellow by reason
of me.
"Oh!" said she. "You, is it, Mr. Pip?"
"It is, Miss Pocket. I am glad to tell you that Mr. Pocket and family
are all well."
"Are they any wiser?" said Sarah, with a dismal shake of the head; "they
had better be wiser, than well. Ah, Matthew, Matthew! You know your way,
sir?"
Tolerably, for I had gone up the staircase in the dark, many a time. I
ascended it now, in lighter boots than of yore, and tapped in my old
way at the door of Miss Havisham's room. "Pip's rap," I heard her say,
immediately; "come in, Pip."
She was in her chair near the old table, in the old dress, with her two
hands crossed on her stick, her chin resting on them, and her eyes on
the fire. Sitting near her, with the white shoe, that had never been
worn, in her hand, and her head bent as she looked at it, was an elegant
lady whom I had never seen.
"Come in, Pip," Miss Havisham continued to mutter, without looking round
or up; "come in, Pip, how do you do, Pip? so you kiss my hand as if I
were a queen, eh?--Well?"
She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes, and repeated in a
grimly playful manner,--
"Well?"
"I heard, Miss Havisham," said I, rather at a loss, "that you were so
kind as to wish me to come and see you, and I came directly."
"Well?"
The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and looked
archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella's eyes. But she
was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so much more womanly,
in all things winning admiration, had made such wonderful advance,
that I seemed to have made none. I fancied, as I looked at her, that
I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and common boy again. O
the sense of distance and disparity that came upon me, and the
inaccessibility that came about her!
She gave me her hand. I stammered something about the pleasure I felt in
seeing her again, and about my having looked forward to it, for a long,
long time.
"Do you find her much changed, Pip?" asked Miss Havisham, with her
greedy look, and striking her stick upon a chair that stood between
them, as a sign to me to sit down there.
"When I came in, Miss Havisham, I thought there was nothing of Estella
in the face or figure; but now it all settles down so curiously into the
old--"
"What? You are not going to say into the old Estella?" Miss Havisham
interrupted. "She was proud and insulting, and you wanted to go away
from her. Don't you remember?"
I said confusedly that that was long ago, and that I knew no better
then, and the like. Estella smiled with perfect composure, and said she
had no doubt of my having been quite right, and of her having been very
disagreeable.
"Is he changed?" Miss Havisham asked her.
"Very much," said Estella, looking at me.
"Less coarse and common?" said Miss Havisham, playing with Estella's
hair.
Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her hand, and laughed again,
and looked at me, and put the shoe down. She treated me as a boy still,
but she lured me on.
We sat in the dreamy room among the old strange influences which had
so wrought upon me, and I learnt that she had but just come home from
France, and that she was going to London. Proud and wilful as of old,
she had brought those qualities into such subjection to her beauty that
it was impossible and out of nature--or I thought so--to separate them
from her beauty. Truly it was impossible to dissociate her presence
from all those wretched hankerings after money and gentility that had
disturbed my boyhood,--from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had
first made me ashamed of home and Joe,--from all those visions that had
raised her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the
anvil, extracted it from the darkness of night to look in at the wooden
window of the forge, and flit away. In a word, it was impossible for me
to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life
of my life.
It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the day, and
return to the hotel at night, and to London to-morrow. When we had
conversed for a while, Miss Havisham sent us two out to walk in the
neglected garden: on our coming in by and by, she said, I should wheel
her about a little, as in times of yore.
So, Estella and I went out into the garden by the gate through which I
had strayed to my encounter with the pale young gentleman, now Herbert;
I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the very hem of her dress; she,
quite composed and most decidedly not worshipping the hem of mine. As we
drew near to the place of encounter, she stopped and said,--
"I must have been a singular little creature to hide and see that fight
that day; but I did, and I enjoyed it very much."
"You rewarded me very much."
"Did I?" she replied, in an incidental and forgetful way. "I remember I
entertained a great objection to your adversary, because I took it ill
that he should be brought here to pester me with his company."
"He and I are great friends now."
"Are you? I think I recollect though, that you read with his father?"
"Yes."
I made the admission with reluctance, for it seemed to have a boyish
look, and she already treated me more than enough like a boy.
"Since your change of fortune and prospects, you have changed your
companions," said Estella.
"Naturally," said I.
"And necessarily," she added, in a haughty tone; "what was fit company
for you once, would be quite unfit company for you now."
In my conscience, I doubt very much whether I had any lingering
intention left of going to see Joe; but if I had, this observation put
it to flight.
"You had no idea of your impending good fortune, in those times?" said
Estella, with a slight wave of her hand, signifying in the fighting
times.
"Not the least."
The air of completeness and superiority with which she walked at my
side, and the air of youthfulness and submission with which I walked at
hers, made a contrast that I strongly felt. It would have rankled in me
more than it did, if I had not regarded myself as eliciting it by being
so set apart for her and assigned to her.
The garden was too overgrown and rank for walking in with ease, and
after we had made the round of it twice or thrice, we came out again
into the brewery yard. I showed her to a nicety where I had seen her
walking on the casks, that first old day, and she said, with a cold and
careless look in that direction, "Did I?" I reminded her where she had
come out of the house and given me my meat and drink, and she said, "I
don't remember." "Not remember that you made me cry?" said I. "No," said
she, and shook her head and looked about her. I verily believe that
her not remembering and not minding in the least, made me cry again,
inwardly,--and that is the sharpest crying of all.
"You must know," said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant and
beautiful woman might, "that I have no heart,--if that has anything to
do with my memory."
I got through some jargon to the effect that I took the liberty of
doubting that. That I knew better. That there could be no such beauty
without it.
"Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt," said
Estella, "and of course if it ceased to beat I should cease
to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there,
no--sympathy--sentiment--nonsense."
What was it that was borne in upon my mind when she stood still and
looked attentively at me? Anything that I had seen in Miss Havisham? No.
In some of her looks and gestures there was that tinge of resemblance
to Miss Havisham which may often be noticed to have been acquired by
children, from grown person with whom they have been much associated and
secluded, and which, when childhood is passed, will produce a remarkable
occasional likeness of expression between faces that are otherwise quite
different. And yet I could not trace this to Miss Havisham. I looked
again, and though she was still looking at me, the suggestion was gone.
What was it?
"I am serious," said Estella, not so much with a frown (for her brow was
smooth) as with a darkening of her face; "if we are to be thrown much
together, you had better believe it at once. No!" imperiously stopping
me as I opened my lips. "I have not bestowed my tenderness anywhere. I
have never had any such thing."
In another moment we were in the brewery, so long disused, and she
pointed to the high gallery where I had seen her going out on that same
first day, and told me she remembered to have been up there, and to have
seen me standing scared below. As my eyes followed her white hand, again
the same dim suggestion that I could not possibly grasp crossed me. My
involuntary start occasioned her to lay her hand upon my arm. Instantly
the ghost passed once more and was gone.
What was it?
"What is the matter?" asked Estella. "Are you scared again?"
"I should be, if I believed what you said just now," I replied, to turn
it off.
"Then you don't? Very well. It is said, at any rate. Miss Havisham will
soon be expecting you at your old post, though I think that might be
laid aside now, with other old belongings. Let us make one more round
of the garden, and then go in. Come! You shall not shed tears for my
cruelty to-day; you shall be my Page, and give me your shoulder."
Her handsome dress had trailed upon the ground. She held it in one hand
now, and with the other lightly touched my shoulder as we walked. We
walked round the ruined garden twice or thrice more, and it was all in
bloom for me. If the green and yellow growth of weed in the chinks of
the old wall had been the most precious flowers that ever blew, it could
not have been more cherished in my remembrance.
There was no discrepancy of years between us to remove her far from me;
we were of nearly the same age, though of course the age told for more
in her case than in mine; but the air of inaccessibility which her
beauty and her manner gave her, tormented me in the midst of my delight,
and at the height of the assurance I felt that our patroness had chosen
us for one another. Wretched boy!
At last we went back into the house, and there I heard, with surprise,
that my guardian had come down to see Miss Havisham on business, and
would come back to dinner. The old wintry branches of chandeliers in
the room where the mouldering table was spread had been lighted while we
were out, and Miss Havisham was in her chair and waiting for me.
It was like pushing the chair itself back into the past, when we began
the old slow circuit round about the ashes of the bridal feast. But,
in the funereal room, with that figure of the grave fallen back in the
chair fixing its eyes upon her, Estella looked more bright and beautiful
than before, and I was under stronger enchantment.
The time so melted away, that our early dinner-hour drew close at hand,
and Estella left us to prepare herself. We had stopped near the centre
of the long table, and Miss Havisham, with one of her withered arms
stretched out of the chair, rested that clenched hand upon the yellow
cloth. As Estella looked back over her shoulder before going out at the
door, Miss Havisham kissed that hand to her, with a ravenous intensity
that was of its kind quite dreadful.
Then, Estella being gone and we two left alone, she turned to me, and
said in a whisper,--
"Is she beautiful, graceful, well-grown? Do you admire her?"
"Everybody must who sees her, Miss Havisham."
She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head close down to hers as
she sat in the chair. "Love her, love her, love her! How does she use
you?"
Before I could answer (if I could have answered so difficult a question
at all) she repeated, "Love her, love her, love her! If she favors
you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to
pieces,--and as it gets older and stronger it will tear deeper,--love
her, love her, love her!"
Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was joined to her
utterance of these words. I could feel the muscles of the thin arm round
my neck swell with the vehemence that possessed her.
"Hear me, Pip! I adopted her, to be loved. I bred her and educated her,
to be loved. I developed her into what she is, that she might be loved.
Love her!"
She said the word often enough, and there could be no doubt that she
meant to say it; but if the often repeated word had been hate instead of
love--despair--revenge--dire death--it could not have sounded from her
lips more like a curse.
"I'll tell you," said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, "what
real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation,
utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the
whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter--as I
did!"
When she came to that, and to a wild cry that followed that, I caught
her round the waist. For she rose up in the chair, in her shroud of a
dress, and struck at the air as if she would as soon have struck herself
against the wall and fallen dead.
All this passed in a few seconds. As I drew her down into her chair, I
was conscious of a scent that I knew, and turning, saw my guardian in
the room.
He always carried (I have not yet mentioned it, I think) a
pocket-handkerchief of rich silk and of imposing proportions, which was
of great value to him in his profession. I have seen him so terrify a
client or a witness by ceremoniously unfolding this pocket-handkerchief
as if he were immediately going to blow his nose, and then pausing,
as if he knew he should not have time to do it before such client
or witness committed himself, that the self-committal has followed
directly, quite as a matter of course. When I saw him in the room he had
this expressive pocket-handkerchief in both hands, and was looking at
us. On meeting my eye, he said plainly, by a momentary and silent pause
in that attitude, "Indeed? Singular!" and then put the handkerchief to
its right use with wonderful effect.
Miss Havisham had seen him as soon as I, and was (like everybody
else) afraid of him. She made a strong attempt to compose herself, and
stammered that he was as punctual as ever.
"As punctual as ever," he repeated, coming up to us. "(How do you do,
Pip? Shall I give you a ride, Miss Havisham? Once round?) And so you are
here, Pip?"
I told him when I had arrived, and how Miss Havisham had wished me to
come and see Estella. To which he replied, "Ah! Very fine young lady!"
Then he pushed Miss Havisham in her chair before him, with one of his
large hands, and put the other in his trousers-pocket as if the pocket
were full of secrets.
"Well, Pip! How often have you seen Miss Estella before?" said he, when
he came to a stop.
"How often?"
"Ah! How many times? Ten thousand times?"
"Oh! Certainly not so many."
"Twice?"
"Jaggers," interposed Miss Havisham, much to my relief, "leave my Pip
alone, and go with him to your dinner."
He complied, and we groped our way down the dark stairs together. While
we were still on our way to those detached apartments across the paved
yard at the back, he asked me how often I had seen Miss Havisham eat
and drink; offering me a breadth of choice, as usual, between a hundred
times and once.
I considered, and said, "Never."
"And never will, Pip," he retorted, with a frowning smile. "She has
never allowed herself to be seen doing either, since she lived this
present life of hers. She wanders about in the night, and then lays
hands on such food as she takes."
"Pray, sir," said I, "may I ask you a question?"
"You may," said he, "and I may decline to answer it. Put your question."
"Estella's name. Is it Havisham or--?" I had nothing to add.
"Or what?" said he.
"Is it Havisham?"
"It is Havisham."
This brought us to the dinner-table, where she and Sarah Pocket awaited
us. Mr. Jaggers presided, Estella sat opposite to him, I faced my
green and yellow friend. We dined very well, and were waited on by a
maid-servant whom I had never seen in all my comings and goings, but
who, for anything I know, had been in that mysterious house the whole
time. After dinner a bottle of choice old port was placed before my
guardian (he was evidently well acquainted with the vintage), and the
two ladies left us.
Anything to equal the determined reticence of Mr. Jaggers under that
roof I never saw elsewhere, even in him. He kept his very looks to
himself, and scarcely directed his eyes to Estella's face once during
dinner. When she spoke to him, he listened, and in due course answered,
but never looked at her, that I could see. On the other hand, she often
looked at him, with interest and curiosity, if not distrust, but his
face never showed the least consciousness. Throughout dinner he took
a dry delight in making Sarah Pocket greener and yellower, by often
referring in conversation with me to my expectations; but here,
again, he showed no consciousness, and even made it appear that he
extorted--and even did extort, though I don't know how--those references
out of my innocent self.
And when he and I were left alone together, he sat with an air upon him
of general lying by in consequence of information he possessed, that
really was too much for me. He cross-examined his very wine when he had
nothing else in hand. He held it between himself and the candle, tasted
the port, rolled it in his mouth, swallowed it, looked at his
glass again, smelt the port, tried it, drank it, filled again, and
cross-examined the glass again, until I was as nervous as if I had known
the wine to be telling him something to my disadvantage. Three or four
times I feebly thought I would start conversation; but whenever he saw
me going to ask him anything, he looked at me with his glass in his
hand, and rolling his wine about in his mouth, as if requesting me to
take notice that it was of no use, for he couldn't answer.
I think Miss Pocket was conscious that the sight of me involved her
in the danger of being goaded to madness, and perhaps tearing off her
cap,--which was a very hideous one, in the nature of a muslin mop,--and
strewing the ground with her hair,--which assuredly had never grown
on her head. She did not appear when we afterwards went up to Miss
Havisham's room, and we four played at whist. In the interval, Miss
Havisham, in a fantastic way, had put some of the most beautiful jewels
from her dressing-table into Estella's hair, and about her bosom and
arms; and I saw even my guardian look at her from under his thick
eyebrows, and raise them a little, when her loveliness was before him,
with those rich flushes of glitter and 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 towards Estella. It was not that I knew I could
never bear to speak to him about her, that I knew I could never bear to
hear him creak his boots at her, that I knew I could never bear to see
him wash his hands of her; it was, that my admiration should be within
a foot or two of him,--it was, that my feelings should be in the same
place with him,--that, was the agonizing circumstance.
We played until nine o'clock, and then it was arranged that when Estella
came to London I should be forewarned of her coming and should meet her
at the coach; and then I took leave of her, and touched her and left
her.
My guardian lay at the Boar in the next room to mine. Far into the
night, Miss Havisham's words, "Love her, love her, love her!" sounded in
my ears. I adapted them for my own repetition, and said to my pillow, "I
love her, I love her, I love her!" hundreds of times. Then, a burst of
gratitude came upon me, that she should be destined for me, once the
blacksmith's boy. Then I thought if she were, as I feared, by no means
rapturously grateful for that destiny yet, when would she begin to be
interested in me? When should I awaken the heart within her that was
mute and sleeping now?
Ah me! I thought those were high and great emotions. But I never thought
there was anything low and small in my keeping away from Joe, because
I knew she would be contemptuous of him. It was but a day gone, and Joe
had brought the tears into my eyes; they had soon dried, God forgive me!
soon dried.
Chapter XXX
After well considering the matter while I was dressing at the Blue Boar
in the morning, I resolved to tell my guardian that I doubted Orlick's
being the right sort of man to fill a post of trust at Miss Havisham's.
"Why of course he is not the right sort of man, Pip," said my guardian,
comfortably satisfied beforehand on the general head, "because the man
who fills the post of trust never is the right sort of man." It seemed
quite to put him into spirits to find that this particular post was
not exceptionally held by the right sort of man, and he listened in a
satisfied manner while I told him what knowledge I had of Orlick. "Very
good, Pip," he observed, when I had concluded, "I'll go round presently,
and pay our friend off." Rather alarmed by this summary action, I was
for a little delay, and even hinted that our friend himself might be
difficult to deal with. "Oh no he won't," said my guardian, making his
pocket-handkerchief-point, with perfect confidence; "I should like to
see him argue the question with me."
As we were going back together to London by the midday coach, and as I
breakfasted under such terrors of Pumblechook that I could scarcely hold
my cup, this gave me an opportunity of saying that I wanted a walk, and
that I would go on along the London road while Mr. Jaggers was occupied,
if he would let the coachman know that I would get into my place when
overtaken. I was thus enabled to fly from the Blue Boar immediately
after breakfast. By then making a loop of about a couple of miles into
the open country at the back of Pumblechook's premises, I got round into
the High Street again, a little beyond that pitfall, and felt myself in
comparative security.
It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once more, and it was not
disagreeable to be here and there suddenly recognized and stared after.
One or two of the tradespeople even darted out of their shops and went
a little way down the street before me, that they might turn, as if they
had forgotten something, and pass me face to face,--on which occasions I
don't know whether they or I made the worse pretence; they of not doing
it, or I of not seeing it. Still my position was a distinguished one,
and I was not at all dissatisfied with it, until Fate threw me in the
way of that unlimited miscreant, Trabb's boy.
Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my progress, I
beheld Trabb's boy approaching, lashing himself with an empty blue bag.
Deeming that a serene and unconscious contemplation of him would best
beseem me, and would be most likely to quell his evil mind, I advanced
with that expression of countenance, and was rather congratulating
myself on my success, when suddenly the knees of Trabb's boy smote
together, his hair uprose, his cap fell off, he trembled violently in
every limb, staggered out into the road, and crying to the populace,
"Hold me! I'm so frightened!" feigned to be in a paroxysm of terror and
contrition, occasioned by the dignity of my appearance. As I passed him,
his teeth loudly chattered in his head, and with every mark of extreme
humiliation, he prostrated himself in the dust.
This was a hard thing to bear, but this was nothing. I had not advanced
another two hundred yards when, to my inexpressible terror, amazement,
and indignation, I again beheld Trabb's boy approaching. He was coming
round a narrow corner. His blue bag was slung over his shoulder, honest
industry beamed in his eyes, a determination to proceed to Trabb's with
cheerful briskness was indicated in his gait. With a shock he became
aware of me, and was severely visited as before; but this time his
motion was rotatory, and he staggered round and round me with knees
more afflicted, and with uplifted hands as if beseeching for mercy. His
sufferings were hailed with the greatest joy by a knot of spectators,
and I felt utterly confounded.
I had not got as much further down the street as the post-office, when I
again beheld Trabb's boy shooting round by a back way. This time, he was
entirely changed. He wore the blue bag in the manner of my great-coat,
and was strutting along the pavement towards me on the opposite side of
the street, attended by a company of delighted young friends to whom he
from time to time exclaimed, with a wave of his hand, "Don't know yah!"
Words cannot state the amount of aggravation and injury wreaked upon
me by Trabb's boy, when passing abreast of me, he pulled up his
shirt-collar, twined his side-hair, stuck an arm akimbo, and smirked
extravagantly by, wriggling his elbows and body, and drawling to his
attendants, "Don't know yah, don't know yah, 'pon my soul don't know
yah!" The disgrace attendant on his immediately afterwards taking
to crowing and pursuing me across the bridge with crows, as from an
exceedingly dejected fowl who had known me when I was a blacksmith,
culminated the disgrace with which I left the town, and was, so to
speak, ejected by it into the open country.
But unless I had taken the life of Trabb's boy on that occasion, I
really do not even now see what I could have done save endure. To
have struggled with him in the street, or to have exacted any lower
recompense from him than his heart's best blood, would have been
futile and degrading. Moreover, he was a boy whom no man could hurt; an
invulnerable and dodging serpent who, when chased into a corner, flew
out again between his captor's legs, scornfully yelping. I wrote,
however, to Mr. Trabb by next day's post, to say that Mr. Pip must
decline to deal further with one who could so far forget what he owed to
the best interests of society, as to employ a boy who excited Loathing
in every respectable mind.
The coach, with Mr. Jaggers inside, came up in due time, and I took my
box-seat again, and arrived in London safe,--but not sound, for my heart
was gone. As soon as I arrived, I sent a penitential codfish and barrel
of oysters to Joe (as reparation for not having gone myself), and then
went on to Barnard's Inn.
I found Herbert dining on cold meat, and delighted to welcome me back.
Having despatched The Avenger to the coffee-house for an addition to the
dinner, I felt that I must open my breast that very evening to my friend
and chum. As confidence was out of the question with The Avenger in the
hall, which could merely be regarded in the light of an 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 Hyde Park
corner to see what o'clock it was.
Dinner done and we sitting with our feet upon the fender, I said to
Herbert, "My dear Herbert, I have something very particular to tell
you."
"My dear Handel," he returned, "I shall esteem and respect your
confidence."
"It concerns myself, Herbert," said I, "and one other person."
Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with his head on one side,
and having looked at it in vain for some time, looked at me because I
didn't go on.
"Herbert," said I, laying my hand upon his knee, "I love--I
adore--Estella."
Instead of being transfixed, Herbert replied in an easy matter-of-course
way, "Exactly. Well?"
"Well, Herbert? Is that all you say? Well?"
"What next, I mean?" said Herbert. "Of course I know that."
"How do you know it?" said I.
"How do I know it, Handel? Why, from you."
"I never told you."
"Told me! You have never told me when you have got your hair cut, but I
have had senses to perceive it. You have always adored her, ever since
I have known you. You brought your adoration and your portmanteau here
together. Told me! Why, you have always told me all day long. When you
told me your own story, you told me plainly that you began adoring her
the first time you saw her, when you were very young indeed."
"Very well, then," said I, to whom this was a new and not unwelcome
light, "I have never left off adoring her. And she has come back, a most
beautiful and most elegant creature. And I saw her yesterday. And if I
adored her before, I now doubly adore her."
"Lucky for you then, Handel," said Herbert, "that you are picked out for
her and allotted to her. Without encroaching on forbidden ground, we
may venture to say that there can be no doubt between ourselves of
that fact. Have you any idea yet, of Estella's views on the adoration
question?"
I shook my head gloomily. "Oh! She is thousands of miles away, from me,"
said I.
"Patience, my dear Handel: time enough, time enough. But you have
something more to say?"
"I am ashamed to say it," I returned, "and yet it's no worse to say it
than to think it. You call me a lucky fellow. Of course, I am. I was a
blacksmith's boy but yesterday; I am--what shall I say I am--to-day?"
"Say a good fellow, if you want a phrase," returned Herbert, smiling,
and clapping his hand on the back of mine--"a good fellow, with
impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and diffidence, action and
dreaming, curiously mixed in him."
I stopped for a moment to consider whether there really was this mixture
in my character. On the whole, I by no means recognized the analysis,
but thought it not worth disputing.
"When I ask what I am to call myself to-day, Herbert," I went on, "I
suggest what I have in my thoughts. You say I am lucky. I know I have
done nothing to raise myself in life, and that Fortune alone has raised
me; that is being very lucky. And yet, when I think of Estella--"
("And when don't you, you know?" Herbert threw in, with his eyes on the
fire; which I thought kind and sympathetic of him.)
"--Then, my dear Herbert, I cannot tell you how dependent and uncertain
I feel, and how exposed to hundreds of chances. Avoiding forbidden
ground, as you did just now, I may still say that on the constancy of
one person (naming no person) all my expectations depend. And at the
best, how indefinite and unsatisfactory, only to know so vaguely what
they are!" In saying this, I relieved my mind of what had always been
there, more or less, though no doubt most since yesterday.
"Now, Handel," Herbert replied, in his gay, hopeful way, "it seems to me
that in the despondency of the tender passion, we are looking into our
gift-horse's mouth with a magnifying-glass. Likewise, it seems to me
that, concentrating our attention on the examination, we altogether
overlook one of the best points of the animal. Didn't you tell me that
your guardian, Mr. Jaggers, told you in the beginning, that you were
not endowed with expectations only? And even if he had not told you
so,--though that is a very large If, I grant,--could you believe that of
all men in London, Mr. Jaggers is the man to hold his present relations
towards you unless he were sure of his ground?"
I said I could not deny that this was a strong point. I said it (people
often do so, in such cases) like a rather reluctant concession to truth
and justice;--as if I wanted to deny it!
"I should think it was a strong point," said Herbert, "and I should
think you would be puzzled to imagine a stronger; as to the rest, you
must bide your guardian's time, and he must bide his client's time.
You'll be one-and-twenty before you know where you are, and then perhaps
you'll get some further enlightenment. At all events, you'll be nearer
getting it, for it must come at last."
"What a hopeful disposition you have!" said I, gratefully admiring his
cheery ways.
"I ought to have," said Herbert, "for I have not much else. I must
acknowledge, by the 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 son, and repay confidence with confidence, I want
to make myself seriously disagreeable to you for a moment,--positively
repulsive."
"You won't succeed," said I.
"O yes I shall!" said he. "One, two, three, and now I am in for it.
Handel, my good fellow;"--though he spoke in this light tone, he was
very much in earnest,--"I have been thinking since we have been talking
with our feet on this fender, that Estella surely cannot be a condition
of your inheritance, if she was never referred to by your guardian. Am
I right in so understanding what you have told me, as that he never
referred to her, directly or indirectly, in any way? Never even hinted,
for instance, that your patron might have views as to your marriage
ultimately?"
"Never."
"Now, Handel, I am quite free from the 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 Handel," Herbert went on, as if we had been talking,
instead of silent, "its having been so strongly rooted in the breast of
a boy whom nature and circumstances made so romantic, renders it very
serious. Think of her bringing-up, and think of Miss Havisham. Think of
what she is herself (now I am repulsive and you abominate me). This may
lead to miserable things."
"I know it, Herbert," said I, with my head still turned away, "but I
can't help it."
"You can't detach yourself?"
"No. Impossible!"
"You can't try, Handel?"
"No. Impossible!"
"Well!" said Herbert, getting up with a lively shake as if he had
been asleep, and stirring the fire, "now I'll endeavor to make myself
agreeable again!"
So he went round the room and shook the curtains out, put the chairs
in their places, tidied the books and so forth that were lying about,
looked into the hall, peeped into the letter-box, shut the door, and
came back to his chair by the fire: where he sat down, nursing his left
leg in both arms.
"I was going to say a word or two, Handel, concerning my father and my
father's son. I am afraid it is scarcely necessary for my father's son
to remark that my father's establishment is not particularly brilliant
in its housekeeping."
"There is always plenty, Herbert," said I, to say something encouraging.
"O yes! and so the dustman says, I believe, with the strongest approval,
and so does the marine-store shop in the back street. Gravely, Handel,
for the subject is grave enough, you know how it is as well as I do. I
suppose there was a time once when my father had not given matters up;
but if ever there was, the time is gone. May I ask you if you have ever
had an opportunity of remarking, down in your part of the country,
that the children of not exactly suitable marriages are always most
particularly anxious to be married?"
This was such a singular question, that I asked him in return, "Is it
so?"
"I don't know," said Herbert, "that's what I want to know. Because it
is decidedly the case with us. My poor sister Charlotte, who was next me
and died before she was fourteen, was a striking example. Little Jane
is the same. In her desire to be matrimonially established, you
might suppose her to have passed her short existence in the perpetual
contemplation of domestic bliss. Little Alick in a frock has already
made arrangements for his union with a suitable young person at Kew. And
indeed, I think we are all engaged, except the baby."
"Then you are?" said I.
"I am," said Herbert; "but it's a secret."
I assured him of my keeping the secret, and begged to be 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 victualling of passenger-ships. I think he
was a species of purser."
"What is he now?" said I.
"He's an invalid now," replied Herbert.
"Living on--?"
"On the first floor," said Herbert. Which was not at all what I meant,
for I had intended my question to apply to his means. "I have never seen
him, for he has always kept his room overhead, since I have known Clara.
But I have heard him constantly. He makes tremendous rows,--roars, and
pegs at the floor with some frightful instrument." In looking at me and
then laughing heartily, Herbert for the time recovered his usual lively
manner.
"Don't you expect to see him?" said I.
"O yes, I constantly expect to see him," returned Herbert, "because
I never hear him, without expecting him to come tumbling through the
ceiling. But I don't know how long the rafters may hold."
When he had once more laughed heartily, he became meek again, and told
me that the moment he began to realize Capital, it was his intention
to marry this young lady. He added as a self-evident proposition,
engendering low spirits, "But you can't marry, you know, while you're
looking about you."
As we contemplated the fire, and as I thought what a difficult vision to
realize this same Capital sometimes was, I put my hands in my pockets.
A folded piece of paper in one of them attracting my attention, I opened
it and found it to be the play-bill I had received from Joe, relative
to the celebrated provincial amateur of Roscian renown. "And bless my
heart," I involuntarily added aloud, "it's to-night!"
This changed the subject in an instant, and made us hurriedly resolve
to go to the play. So, when I had pledged myself to comfort and abet
Herbert in the affair of his heart by all practicable and impracticable
means, and when Herbert had told me that his affianced already knew me
by reputation and that I should be presented to her, and when we had
warmly shaken hands upon our mutual confidence, we blew out our candles,
made up our fire, locked our door, and issued forth in quest of Mr.
Wopsle and Denmark.
Chapter XXXI
On our arrival in Denmark, we found the king and queen of that country
elevated in two arm-chairs on a kitchen-table, holding a Court. The
whole of the Danish nobility were in attendance; consisting of a noble
boy in the wash-leather boots of a gigantic ancestor, a venerable Peer
with a dirty face who seemed to have risen from the people late in life,
and the Danish chivalry with a comb in its hair and a pair of white
silk legs, and presenting on the whole a feminine appearance. My gifted
townsman stood gloomily apart, with folded arms, and I could have wished
that his curls and forehead had been more probable.
Several curious little circumstances transpired as the action proceeded.
The late king of the country not only appeared to have been troubled
with a cough at the time of his decease, but to have taken it with him
to the tomb, and to have brought it back. The royal phantom also carried
a ghostly manuscript round its truncheon, to which it had the appearance
of occasionally referring, and that too, with an air of anxiety and a
tendency to lose the place of reference which were suggestive of a state
of mortality. It was this, I conceive, which led to the Shade's being
advised by the gallery to "turn over!"--a recommendation which it took
extremely ill. It was likewise to be noted of this majestic spirit, that
whereas it always appeared with an air of having been out a long time
and walked an immense distance, it perceptibly came from a closely
contiguous wall. This occasioned its terrors to be received derisively.
The Queen of Denmark, a very buxom lady, though no doubt historically
brazen, was considered by the public to have too much brass about her;
her chin being attached to her diadem by a broad band of that metal (as
if she had a gorgeous toothache), her waist being encircled by another,
and each of her arms by another, so that she was openly mentioned
as "the 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 grave-digger, a clergyman, and a person
of the utmost importance at a Court fencing-match, on the authority
of whose practised eye and nice discrimination the finest strokes were
judged. This gradually led to a want of toleration for him, and even--on
his being detected in holy orders, and declining to perform the funeral
service--to the general indignation taking the form of nuts. Lastly,
Ophelia was a prey to such slow musical madness, that when, in course of
time, she had taken off her white muslin scarf, folded it up, and buried
it, a sulky man who had been long cooling his impatient nose against an
iron bar in the front row of the gallery, growled, "Now the baby's put
to bed let's have supper!" Which, to say the least of it, was out of
keeping.
Upon my unfortunate townsman all these incidents accumulated with
playful effect. Whenever that undecided Prince had to ask a question or
state a doubt, the public helped him out with it. As for example; on the
question whether 'twas nobler in the mind to suffer, some roared yes,
and some no, and some inclining to both opinions said "Toss up for
it;" and quite a Debating Society arose. When he asked what should such
fellows as he do crawling between earth and heaven, he was encouraged
with loud cries of "Hear, hear!" When he appeared with his stocking
disordered (its disorder expressed, according to usage, by one very neat
fold in the top, which I suppose to be always got up with a flat iron),
a conversation took place in the gallery respecting the paleness of his
leg, and whether it was occasioned by the turn the ghost had given him.
On his taking the recorders,--very like a little black flute that had
just been played in the orchestra and handed out at the door,--he was
called upon unanimously for Rule Britannia. When he recommended the
player not to saw the air thus, the sulky man said, "And don't you do
it, neither; you're a deal worse than him!" And I grieve to add that
peals of laughter greeted Mr. Wopsle on every one of these occasions.
But his greatest trials were in the churchyard, which had the appearance
of a primeval forest, with a kind of small ecclesiastical wash-house
on one side, and a turnpike gate on the other. Mr. Wopsle in a
comprehensive black cloak, being descried entering at the turnpike,
the gravedigger was admonished in a friendly way, "Look out! Here's the
undertaker a coming, to see how you're a getting on with your work!"
I believe it is well known in a constitutional country that Mr. Wopsle
could not possibly have returned the skull, after moralizing over it,
without dusting his fingers on a white napkin taken from his breast;
but even that innocent and indispensable action did not pass without the
comment, "Wai-ter!" The arrival of the body for interment (in an empty
black box with the lid tumbling open), was the signal for a general
joy, which was much enhanced by the discovery, among the bearers, of
an individual obnoxious to identification. The joy attended Mr. Wopsle
through his struggle with Laertes on the brink of the orchestra and
the grave, and slackened no more until he had tumbled the king off the
kitchen-table, and had died by inches from the ankles upward.
We had made some pale efforts in the beginning to applaud Mr. Wopsle;
but they were too hopeless to be persisted in. Therefore we had sat,
feeling keenly for him, but laughing, nevertheless, from ear to ear. I
laughed in spite of myself all the time, the whole thing was so droll;
and yet I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly
fine in Mr. Wopsle's elocution,--not for old associations' sake, I am
afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, very 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 hooted, 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. Waldengarver," said the man, "would be glad to have the honor."
"Waldengarver?" I repeated--when Herbert murmured in my ear, "Probably
Wopsle."
"Oh!" said I. "Yes. Shall we follow you?"
"A few steps, please." When we were in a side alley, he turned and
asked, "How did you think he looked?--I dressed him."
I don't know what he had looked like, except a funeral; with the
addition of a large Danish sun or star hanging round his neck by a
blue ribbon, that had given him the appearance of being insured in some
extraordinary Fire Office. But I said he had looked very nice.
"When he come to the grave," said our conductor, "he showed his cloak
beautiful. But, judging from the wing, it looked to me that when he
see the ghost in the queen's apartment, he might have made more of his
stockings."
I modestly assented, and we all fell through a little dirty swing door,
into a sort of hot packing-case immediately behind it. Here Mr. Wopsle
was divesting himself of his Danish garments, and here there was just
room for us to look at him over one another's shoulders, by keeping the
packing-case door, or lid, wide open.
"Gentlemen," said Mr. Wopsle, "I am proud to see you. I hope, Mr. Pip,
you will excuse my sending round. I had the happiness to know you in
former times, and the Drama has ever had a claim which has ever been
acknowledged, on the noble and the affluent."
Meanwhile, Mr. Waldengarver, in a frightful perspiration, was trying to
get himself out of his princely sables.
"Skin the stockings off Mr. Waldengarver," said the owner of that
property, "or you'll bust 'em. Bust 'em, and you'll bust five-and-thirty
shillings. Shakspeare never was complimented with a finer pair. Keep
quiet in your chair now, and leave 'em to me."
With that, he went upon his knees, and began to flay his victim; who, on
the first stocking coming off, would certainly have fallen over backward
with his chair, but for there being no room to fall anyhow.
I had been afraid until then to say a word about the play. But then, Mr.
Waldengarver looked up at us complacently, and said,--
"Gentlemen, how did it seem to you, to go, in front?"
Herbert said from behind (at the same time poking me), "Capitally." So I
said "Capitally."
"How did you like my reading of the character, gentlemen?" said Mr.
Waldengarver, almost, if not quite, with patronage.
Herbert said from behind (again poking me), "Massive and concrete." So I
said boldly, as if I had originated it, and must beg to insist upon it,
"Massive and concrete."
"I am glad to have your approbation, gentlemen," said Mr. Waldengarver,
with an air of dignity, in spite of his being ground against the wall at
the time, and holding on by the seat of the chair.
"But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Waldengarver," said the man who was on
his knees, "in which you're out in your reading. Now mind! I don't care
who says contrairy; I tell you so. You're out in your reading of Hamlet
when you get your legs in profile. The last Hamlet as I dressed, made
the same mistakes in his reading at rehearsal, till I got him to put a