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