Read FICTION books online

Reading books fiction Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself.



Fiction genre suitable for people of all ages. Everyone will find something interesting for themselves. Our electronic library is always at your service. Reading online free books without registration. Nowadays ebooks are convenient and efficient. After all, don’t forget: literature exists and develops largely thanks to readers.
The genre of fiction is interesting to read not only by the process of cognition and the desire to empathize with the fate of the hero, this genre is interesting for the ability to rethink one's own life. Of course the reader may accept the author's point of view or disagree with them, but the reader should understand that the author has done a great job and deserves respect. Take a closer look at genre fiction in all its manifestations in our elibrary.



Read books online » Fiction » Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📖

Book online «Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📖». Author Charles Dickens



1 ... 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 ... 94
Go to page:
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 tomorrow.”

I asked him where we should come to (for I had no idea where he

lived), and I believe it was in his general objection to make

anything like an admission, that he replied, “Come here, and I’ll

take you home with me.” I embrace this opportunity of remarking

that he washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or a

dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose,

which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer’s shop. It had an

unusually large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he

would wash his hands, and wipe them and dry them all over this

towel, whenever he came in from a police court or dismissed a

client from his room. When I and my friends repaired to him at six

o’clock next day, he seemed to have been engaged on a case of a

darker complexion than usual, for we found him with his head

butted into this closet, not only washing his hands, but laving his

face and gargling his throat. And even when he had done all that,

and had gone all round the jack-towel, he took out his penknife and

scraped the case out of his nails before he put his coat on.

There were some people slinking about as usual when we passed out

into the street, who were evidently anxious to speak with him; but

there was something so conclusive in the halo of scented soap which

encircled his presence, that they gave it up for that day. As we

walked along westward, he was recognized ever and again by some

face in the crowd of the streets, and whenever that happened he

talked louder to me; but he never otherwise recognized anybody, or

took notice that anybody recognized him.

He conducted us to Gerrard Street, Soho, to a house on the south

side of that street. Rather a stately house of its kind, but

dolefully in want of painting, and with dirty windows. He took out

his key and opened the door, and we all went into a stone hall,

bare, gloomy, and little used. So, up a dark brown staircase into a

series of three dark brown rooms on the first floor. There were

carved garlands on the panelled walls, and as he stood among them

giving us welcome, I know what kind of loops I thought they looked

like.

Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms; the second was his

dressing-room; the third, his bedroom. He told us that he held the

whole house, but rarely used more of it than we saw. The table was

comfortably laid—no silver in the service, of course—and at the

side of his chair was a capacious dumb-waiter, with a variety of

bottles and decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert.

I noticed throughout, that he kept everything under his own hand,

and distributed everything himself.

There was a bookcase in the room; I saw from the backs of the

books, that they were about evidence, criminal law, criminal

biography, trials, acts of Parliament, and such things. The

furniture was all very solid and good, like his watch-chain. It had

an official look, however, and there was nothing merely ornamental

to be seen. In a corner was a little table of papers with a shaded

lamp: so that he seemed to bring the office home with him in that

respect too, and to wheel it out of an evening and fall to work.

As he had scarcely seen my three companions until now,—for he and

I had walked together,—he stood on the hearth-rug, after ringing

the bell, and took a searching look at them. To my surprise, he

seemed at once to be principally if not solely interested in

Drummle.

“Pip,” said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder and moving me

to the window, “I don’t know one from the other. Who’s the Spider?”

“The spider?” said I.

“The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow.”

“That’s Bentley Drummle,” I replied; “the one with the delicate

face is Startop.”

Not making the least account of “the one with the delicate face,”

he returned, “Bentley Drummle is his name, is it? I like the look

of that fellow.”

He immediately began to talk to Drummle: not at all deterred by his

replying in his heavy reticent way, but apparently led on by it to

screw discourse out of him. I was looking at the two, when there

came between me and them the housekeeper, with the first dish for

the table.

She was a woman of about forty, I supposed,—but I may have thought

her younger than she was. Rather tall, of a lithe nimble figure,

extremely pale, with large faded eyes, and a quantity of streaming

hair. I cannot say whether any diseased affection of the heart

caused her lips to be parted as if she were panting, and her face

to bear a curious expression of suddenness and flutter; but I know

that I had been to see Macbeth at the theatre, a night or two

before, and that her face looked to me as if it were all disturbed

by fiery air, like the faces I had seen rise out of the Witches’

caldron.

She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm with a

finger to notify that dinner was ready, and vanished. We took our

seats at the round table, and my guardian kept Drummle on one side

of him, while Startop sat on the other. It was a noble dish of fish

that the housekeeper had put on table, and we had a joint of

equally choice mutton afterwards, and then an equally choice bird.

Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all of the best,

were given out by our host from his dumb-waiter; and when they had

made the circuit of the table, he

1 ... 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 ... 94
Go to page:

Free ebook «Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (best ereader under 100 TXT) 📖» - read online now

Comments (0)

There are no comments yet. You can be the first!
Add a comment