Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter XXII Page 2
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 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."
subject.
"They fell into deeper shame and degradation--if there can be
deeper--and ruin."
"Are they alive now?"
"I don't know."
but adopted. 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,
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
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,
benefactress, as I understood the fact myself.
It had not occurred to me before, 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."
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
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.
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.
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."
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.
is, it doesn't pay me anything, and I have to--keep myself."
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
prepossessions are certainly not concerned, I saw that Mr. and Mrs.
Pocket's children were not growing up or being 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
"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
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
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
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
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
"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
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.
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.