Гордость и предубеждение / Pride and Prejudice. Great Expectations / Большие надежды - Остин Джейн (книги читать бесплатно без регистрации TXT) 📗

“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. 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.”

“I could lead a very different sort of life from the life I lead now. See how I am going on. Dissatisfied and uncomfortable, coarse and common!”

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 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. [74]”

“Do you want to be a gentleman, to spite her or to gain her over? [75]” Biddy quietly asked me, after a pause.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I admire her dreadfully.”

Biddy was the wisest of girls, and she tried to reason no more with me. She put her hand upon my hands, one after another, and gently took them out of my hair.

“I am glad of one thing,” said Biddy, “and that is 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. 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.”

“Ah!” said Biddy, quite in a whisper. 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. 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,” said I, when we were walking homeward, “If I could only get myself to fall in love with you, that would be the thing for me. [76]”

“But you never will, you see,” said Biddy.

Biddy was immeasurably better than Estella, and 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 I was becoming a partner with Joe and Biddy.

Chapter 18

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.

I noticed a strange gentleman leaning over the back of the settle opposite me, looking on.

“From information I have received,” said he, looking round at us, “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 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.”

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, [77] and I am a lawyer in London. I am pretty well known. I have unusual business with you. If my advice had been asked, I should not have been here.”

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.

“Now, Joseph Gargery, I am ready to relieve you of this young fellow. You would not object to cancel his indentures at his request and for his good? You 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 the question is, Would you want anything? Do you want anything?” returned Mr. Jaggers.

“The answer is,” returned Joe, sternly, “No.”

I thought Mr. Jaggers glanced at Joe, as if he considered him a fool.

“Very well,” said Mr. Jaggers. “Now, I return to this young fellow. 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. [78] Further, that it is the desire of the present possessor of that property, [79] that he be immediately removed from this place, and be brought up as a gentleman – in a word, as a young fellow of great expectations.”

My dream came true; Miss Havisham was going to make my fortune on a grand scale. [80]

“Now, Mr. Pip,” pursued the lawyer, “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. But if you have any objection, this is the time to mention it.”

My heart was beating very fast, I could scarcely stammer I had no objection.

“Good. Now you are to understand, 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 [81] 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. 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, we come next, to mere details of arrangement. We have to choose your tutor. Have you ever heard of any tutor whom you would prefer to another?”

I replied in the negative.

“There is a certain tutor, of whom I have some knowledge,” said Mr. Jaggers. “I don’t recommend him; because I never recommend anybody. The gentleman I speak of is one Mr. Matthew Pocket. [82]”

Ah! I caught at the name directly. Miss Havisham’s relation. 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.