Great Expectations. Чарльз Диккенс
was perfectly incomprehensible to me, I entertained an impression that there would be something coarse and treacherous in my dragging her as she really was (to say nothing of Miss Estella) before the contemplation of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I could, and had my face shoved against the kitchen wall.
The worst of it was that that bullying old Pumblechook, preyed upon by a devouring curiosity to be informed of all I had seen and heard, came gaping over in his chaise-cart at tea-time, to have the details divulged to him. And the mere sight of the torment, with his fishy eyes and mouth open, his sandy hair inquisitively on end, and his waistcoat heaving with windy arithmetic, made me vicious in my reticence.
“Well, boy,” Uncle Pumblechook began, as soon as he was seated in the chair of honour by the fire. “How did you get on up town?”
I answered, “Pretty well, sir,” and my sister shook her fist at me.
“Pretty well?” Mr. Pumblechook repeated. “Pretty well is no answer. Tell us what you mean by pretty well, boy?”
Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on my forehead, my obstinacy was adamantine. I reflected for some time, and then answered as if I had discovered a new idea, “I mean pretty well.”
My sister with an exclamation of impatience was going to fly at me – I had no shadow of defence, for Joe was busy in the forge – when Mr. Pumblechook interposed with “No! Don’t lose your temper. Leave this lad to me, ma’am; leave this lad to me.” Mr. Pumblechook then turned me towards him, as if he were going to cut my hair, and said:
“First (to get our thoughts in order): Forty-three pence.”
I calculated the consequences of replying “Four Hundred Pound,” and finding them against me, went as near the answer as I could – which was somewhere about eightpence off. Mr. Pumblechook then put me through my pence-table from “twelve pence make one shilling,” up to “forty pence make three and fourpence,” and then triumphantly demanded, as if he had done for me, “Now! How much is forty-three pence?” To which I replied, after a long interval of reflection, “I don’t know.” And I was so aggravated that I almost doubt if I did know.
Mr. Pumblechook worked his head like a screw to screw it out of me, and said, “Is forty-three pence seven and sixpence three fardens, for instance?”
“Yes!” said I. And although my sister instantly boxed my ears, it was highly gratifying to me to see that the answer spoilt his joke, and brought him to a dead stop.
“Boy! What like is Miss Havisham?” Mr. Pumblechook began again when he had recovered; folding his arms tight on his chest and applying the screw.
“Very tall and dark,” I told him.
“Is she, uncle?” asked my sister.
Mr. Pumblechook winked assent; from which I at once inferred that he had never seen Miss Havisham, for she was nothing of the kind.
“Good!” said Mr. Pumblechook, conceitedly. (“This is the way to have him! We are beginning to hold our own, I think, Mum?”)
“I am sure, uncle,” returned Mrs. Joe, “I wish you had him always: you know so well how to deal with him.”
“Now, boy! What was she a doing of when you went in today?” asked Mr. Pumblechook.
“She was sitting,” I answered, “in a black velvet coach.”
Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another – as they well might – and both repeated, “In a black velvet coach?”
“Yes,” said I. “And Miss Estella – that’s her niece, I think – handed her in cake and wine at the coach-window, on a gold plate. And we all had cake and wine on gold plates. And I got up behind the coach to eat mine, because she told me to.”
“Was anybody else there?” asked Mr. Pumblechook.
“Four dogs,” said I.
“Large or small?”
“Immense,” said I. “And they fought for veal cutlets out of a silver basket.”
Mr. Pumblechook and Mrs. Joe stared at one another again, in utter amazement. I was perfectly frantic – a reckless witness under the torture – and would have told them anything.
“Where was this coach, in the name of gracious?” asked my sister.
“In Miss Havisham’s room.” They stared again. “But there weren’t any horses to it.” I added this saving clause, in the moment of rejecting four richly caparisoned coursers which I had had wild thoughts of harnessing.
“Can this be possible, uncle?” asked Mrs. Joe. “What can the boy mean?”
“I’ll tell you, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “My opinion is, it’s a sedan-chair. She’s flighty, you know – very flighty – quite flighty enough to pass her days in a sedan-chair.”
“Did you ever see her in it, uncle?” asked Mrs. Joe.
“How could I?” he returned, forced to the admission, “when I never see her in my life? Never clapped eyes upon her!”
“Goodness, uncle! And yet you have spoken to her?”
“Why, don’t you know,” said Mr. Pumblechook, testily, “that when I have been there, I have been took up to the outside of her door, and the door has stood ajar, and she has spoke to me that way. Don’t say you don’t know that, Mum. Howsever, the boy went there to play. What did you play at, boy?”
“We played with flags,” I said. (I beg to observe that I think of myself with amazement, when I recal the lies I told on this occasion.)
“Flags!” echoed my sister.
“Yes,” said I. “Estella waved a blue flag, and I waved a red one, and Miss Havisham waved one sprinkled all over with little gold stars, out at the coach-window. And then we all waved our swords and hurrahed.”
“Swords!” repeated my sister. “Where did you get swords from?”
“Out of a cupboard,” said I. “And I saw pistols in it – and jam – and pills. And there was no daylight in the room, but it was lighted up with candles.”
“That’s true, Mum,” said Mr. Pumblechook, with a grave nod. “That’s the state of the case, for that much I’ve seen myself.” And then they both stared at me, and I with an obtrusive show of artlessness on my countenance, stared at them, and plaited the right leg of my trousers with my right hand.
If they had asked me any more questions I should undoubtedly have betrayed myself, for I was even then on the point of mentioning that there was a balloon in the yard, and should have hazarded the statement but for my invention being divided between that phenomenon and a bear in the brewery. They were so much occupied, however, in discussing the marvels I had already presented for their consideration, that I escaped. The subject still held them when Joe came in from his work to have a cup of tea. To whom my sister, more for the relief of her own mind than for the gratification of his, related my pretended experiences.
Now, when I saw Joe open his blue eyes and roll them all round the kitchen in helpless amazement, I was overtaken by penitence; but only as regarded him – not in the least as regarded the other two. Towards Joe, and Joe only, I considered myself a young monster, while they sat debating what results would come to me from Miss Havisham’s acquaintance and favour. They had no doubt that Miss Havisham would “do something” for me; their doubts related to the form that something would take. My sister stood out for “property.” Mr. Pumblechook was in favour of a handsome premium for binding me apprentice to some genteel trade – say, the corn and seed trade, for instance. Joe fell into the deepest disgrace with both, for offering the bright suggestion that I might only be presented with one of the dogs who had fought for the veal-cutlets. “If a fool’s head can’t express better opinions than that,” said