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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



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is no place like a great city

when you are once in it. Don’t break cover too soon. Lie close.

Wait till things slacken, before you try the open, even for foreign

air.”

I thanked him for his valuable advice, and asked him what Herbert

had done?

“Mr. Herbert,” said Wemmick, “after being all of a heap for half an

hour, struck out a plan. He mentioned to me as a secret, that he is

courting a young lady who has, as no doubt you are aware, a

bedridden Pa. Which Pa, having been in the Purser line of life,

lies a-bed in a bow-window where he can see the ships sail up and

down the river. You are acquainted with the young lady, most

probably?”

“Not personally,” said I.

The truth was, that she had objected to me as an expensive

companion who did Herbert no good, and that, when Herbert had first

proposed to present me to her, she had received the proposal with

such very moderate warmth, that Herbert had felt himself obliged to

confide the state of the case to me, with a view to the lapse of a

little time before I made her acquaintance. When I had begun to

advance Herbert’s prospects by stealth, I had been able to bear

this with cheerful philosophy: he and his affianced, for their

part, had naturally not been very anxious to introduce a third

person into their interviews; and thus, although I was assured that

I had risen in Clara’s esteem, and although the young lady and I

had long regularly interchanged messages and remembrances by

Herbert, I had never seen her. However, I did not trouble Wemmick

with these particulars.

“The house with the bow-window,” said Wemmick, “being by the

river-side, down the Pool there between Limehouse and Greenwich,

and being kept, it seems, by a very respectable widow who has a

furnished upper floor to let, Mr. Herbert put it to me, what did I

think of that as a temporary tenement for Tom, Jack, or Richard?

Now, I thought very well of it, for three reasons I’ll give you.

That is to say: Firstly. It’s altogether out of all your beats, and

is well away from the usual heap of streets great and small.

Secondly. Without going near it yourself, you could always hear of

the safety of Tom, Jack, or Richard, through Mr. Herbert. Thirdly.

After a while and when it might be prudent, if you should want to

slip Tom, Jack, or Richard on board a foreign packet-boat, there

he is—ready.”

Much comforted by these considerations, I thanked Wemmick again and

again, and begged him to proceed.

“Well, sir! Mr. Herbert threw himself into the business with a will,

and by nine o’clock last night he housed Tom, Jack, or Richard,—

whichever it may be,—you and I don’t want to know,—quite

successfully. At the old lodgings it was understood that he was

summoned to Dover, and, in fact, he was taken down the Dover road and

cornered out of it. Now, another great advantage of all this is,

that it was done without you, and when, if any one was concerning

himself about your movements, you must be known to be ever so many

miles off and quite otherwise engaged. This diverts suspicion and

confuses it; and for the same reason I recommended that, even if you

came back last night, you should not go home. It brings in more

confusion, and you want confusion.”

Wemmick, having finished his breakfast, here looked at his watch,

and began to get his coat on.

“And now, Mr. Pip,” said he, with his hands still in the sleeves, “I

have probably done the most I can do; but if I can ever do more,—

from a Walworth point of view, and in a strictly private and

personal capacity,—I shall be glad to do it. Here’s the address.

There can be no harm in your going here tonight, and seeing for

yourself that all is well with Tom, Jack, or Richard, before you go

home,—which is another reason for your not going home last night.

But, after you have gone home, don’t go back here. You are very

welcome, I am sure, Mr. Pip”; his hands were now out of his sleeves,

and I was shaking them; “and let me finally impress one important

point upon you.” He laid his hands upon my shoulders, and added in

a solemn whisper: “Avail yourself of this evening to lay hold of

his portable property. You don’t know what may happen to him. Don’t

let anything happen to the portable property.”

Quite despairing of making my mind clear to Wemmick on this point,

I forbore to try.

“Time’s up,” said Wemmick, “and I must be off. If you had nothing

more pressing to do than to keep here till dark, that’s what I

should advise. You look very much worried, and it would do you good

to have a perfectly quiet day with the Aged,—he’ll be up presently,

—and a little bit of—you remember the pig?”

“Of course,” said I.

“Well; and a little bit of him. That sausage you toasted was his,

and he was in all respects a first-rater. Do try him, if it is only

for old acquaintance sake. Good by, Aged Parent!” in a cheery

shout.

“All right, John; all right, my boy!” piped the old man from

within.

I soon fell asleep before Wemmick’s fire, and the Aged and I

enjoyed one another’s society by falling asleep before it more or

less all day. We had loin of pork for dinner, and greens grown on

the estate; and I nodded at the Aged with a good intention whenever

I failed to do it drowsily. When it was quite dark, I left the Aged

preparing the fire for toast; and I inferred from the number of

teacups, as well as from his glances at the two little doors in the

wall, that Miss Skiffins was expected.

Chapter XLVI

Eight o’clock had struck before I got into the air, that was

scented, not disagreeably, by the chips and shavings of the

long-shore boat-builders, and mast, oar, and block makers. All that

water-side region of the upper and lower Pool below Bridge was

unknown ground to me; and when I struck down by the river, I found

that the spot I wanted was not where I had supposed it to be, and

was anything but easy to find. It was called Mill Pond Bank,

Chinks’s Basin; and I had no other guide to Chinks’s Basin than the

Old Green Copper Ropewalk.

It matters not what stranded ships repairing in dry docks I lost

myself among, what old hulls of ships in course of being knocked to

pieces, what ooze and slime and other dregs of tide, what yards of

ship-builders and ship-breakers, what rusty anchors blindly biting

into the ground, though for years off duty, what mountainous country

of accumulated casks and timber, how many ropewalks that were not

the Old Green Copper. After several times falling short of my

destination and as often overshooting it, I came unexpectedly

round a corner, upon Mill Pond Bank. It was a fresh kind of place,

all circumstances considered, where the wind from the river had

room to turn itself round; and there were two or three trees in it,

and there was the stump of a ruined windmill, and there was the Old

Green Copper Ropewalk,—whose long and narrow vista I could trace

in the moonlight, along a series of wooden frames set in the

ground, that looked like superannuated haymaking-rakes which had

grown old and lost most of their teeth.

Selecting from the few queer houses upon Mill Pond Bank a house

with a wooden front and three stories of bow-window (not

bay-window, which is another thing), I looked at the plate upon the

door, and read there, Mrs. Whimple. That being the name I wanted, I

knocked, and an elderly woman of a pleasant and thriving appearance

responded. She was immediately deposed, however, by Herbert, who

silently led me into the parlor and shut the door. It was an odd

sensation to see his very familiar face established quite at home

in that very unfamiliar room and region; and I found myself looking

at him, much as I looked at the corner-cupboard with the glass and

china, the shells upon the chimney-piece, and the colored

engravings on the wall, representing the death of Captain Cook, a

ship-launch, and his Majesty King George the Third in a

state coachman’s wig, leather-breeches, and top-boots, on the

terrace at Windsor.

“All is well, Handel,” said Herbert, “and he is quite satisfied,

though eager to see you. My dear girl is with her father; and if

you’ll wait till she comes down, I’ll make you known to her, and

then we’ll go up stairs. That’s her father.”

I had become aware of an alarming growling overhead, and had

probably expressed the fact in my countenance.

“I am afraid he is a sad old rascal,” said Herbert, smiling, “but I

have never seen him. Don’t you smell rum? He is always at it.”

“At rum?” said I.

“Yes,” returned Herbert, “and you may suppose how mild it makes his

gout. He persists, too, in keeping all the provisions up stairs in

his room, and serving them out. He keeps them on shelves over his

head, and will weigh them all. His room must be like a chandler’s

shop.”

While he thus spoke, the growling noise became a prolonged roar,

and then died away.

“What else can be the consequence,” said Herbert, in explanation,

“if he will cut the cheese? A man with the gout in his right hand—

and everywhere else—can’t expect to get through a Double

Gloucester without hurting himself.”

He seemed to have hurt himself very much, for he gave another

furious roar.

“To have Provis for an upper lodger is quite a godsend to Mrs.

Whimple,” said Herbert, “for of course people in general won’t

stand that noise. A curious place, Handel; isn’t it?”

It was a curious place, indeed; but remarkably well kept and clean.

“Mrs. Whimple,” said Herbert, when I told him so, “is the best of

housewives, and I really do not know what my Clara would do without

her motherly help. For, Clara has no mother of her own, Handel, and

no relation in the world but old Gruffandgrim.”

“Surely that’s not his name, Herbert?”

“No, no,” said Herbert, “that’s my name for him. His name is Mr.

Barley. But what a blessing it is for the son of my father and

mother to love a girl who has no relations, and who can never

bother herself or anybody else about her family!”

Herbert had told me on former occasions, and now reminded me, that

he first knew Miss Clara Barley when she was completing her

education at an establishment at Hammersmith, and that on her being

recalled home to nurse her father, he and she had confided their

affection to the motherly Mrs. Whimple, by whom it had been fostered

and regulated with equal kindness and discretion, ever since. It

was understood that nothing of a tender nature could possibly be

confided to old Barley, by reason of his being totally unequal to

the consideration of any subject more psychological than Gout, Rum,

and Purser’s stores.

As we were thus conversing in a low tone while Old Barley’s

sustained growl vibrated in the beam that crossed the ceiling, the

room door opened, and a very pretty, slight, dark-eyed girl of twenty

or so came in with a basket in her hand: whom Herbert tenderly

relieved of the basket, and presented, blushing, as “Clara.” She

really was a most charming girl, and might have passed for a

captive fairy, whom that truculent Ogre, Old Barley, had pressed

into his service.

“Look here,” said Herbert, showing me the basket, with a

compassionate and

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