Great Expectations Vol.4 (English)

Great Expectations Vol.4

Les Grandes Espérances Vol.4

(English)

Author: Charles Dickens 1861

Translator: Charles Bernard-Derosne 1896

Translator/Editor: Nik Marcel 2016

English translated from French.

Copyright © 2018 Nik Marcel

All rights reserved.

A Bilingual (Dual-Language) Project

2Language Books

Great Expectations Vol.4

Chapter 1

In the morning, after considering the matter while I was dressing at the Blue Boar, I decided to tell my guardian that I was not all that sure whether Orlick was the right sort of man to fill a post of trust at Miss Havisham’s place.

“No doubt, he is not the right sort of man, Pip,” said my guardian, “because the man who fills a position of trust is never the right sort of man.”

He seemed delighted that this particular post was not held by the right sort of person; and he listened in a satisfied manner while I told him what I knew about Orlick.

“Very good, Pip,” he observed, when I had concluded, “I will go round presently, and dismiss our friend.”

A little alarmed by this swift response, I was in favour of a little delay. I indicated that our friend might be difficult to handle.

“Oh, come on!” said my guardian. “I would like to see him argue the matter with me.”

As we were returning to London together by the midday coach, I told him that I needed to walk, and that I would go on ahead on the London road, if he would let the bus driver know that I would take my place when the coach caught up to me.

I was thus able to flee the Blue Boar immediately after breakfast.

By making a detour of a couple of kilometres into the countryside, behind Pumblechook’s property, I got round into High Street again, a little beyond that trap, and felt relatively safe.

I was glad to be in the quiet old town once more, and it was not overly disagreeable to be recognized and stared at here and there.

One or two shopkeepers even came out of their shops and walked a little ahead of me, so as to be able to turn around, as if they had forgotten something, and find themselves face to face with me.

Nevertheless, my position seemed to me to be a distinguished one, and I was not at all dissatisfied with it, until fate threw that nameless miscreant, the tailor’s boy, on my path.

Looking ahead, I saw that boy approaching, lashing himself with a big blue bag.

As I passed by him, his teeth chattered loudly, and he prostrated himself in the dust.

This was a hard thing to bear, but this was nothing.

I had not advanced another two hundred paces when, to my inexpressible terror, utter amazement, and profound indignation, I again saw Trabb’s boy approaching.

He was coming round a street corner. His blue bag was slung over his shoulder.

This time, he staggered around me with weak and trembling knees, and with uplifted hands as if asking for mercy.

The spectators were enthralled. As for me, I was utterly confounded.

I had not gone far past the post office, when I again saw Trabb’s boy.

This time, he was entirely changed. He wore the blue bag in the casual manner much like I wore my overcoat.

He was being followed by a joyous crowd of young friends, to whom he cried out from time to time, with a wave of his hand, “I do not know you! I do not know you!”

His appalling procession immediately started yelling, and pursued me across the bridge. I left the town, and they pursued me into the countryside.

I really do not know what I could have done. To pick a fight with him in the street would have been futile and degrading.

Moreover, he was a boy whom no one could reach; an invulnerable and astute serpent who, when tracked into a corner, would escape between the legs of the one who was pursuing it, whistling scornfully.

I wrote, however, to Mr Trabb by next day’s post, to inform him that Mr Pip felt duty-bound to discontinue all contact with a man who could employ a boy like him.

The coach, carrying Mr Jaggers and our luggage, turned up in a timely manner.

Hence I took my seat again, and arrived in London, safe, but not sound, for my heart was torn.

As soon as I arrived, I sent a tin of oysters to Joe, as compensation for not going to pay him a visit. Then, I went to Barnard’s Hotel.

I found Herbert dining on cold meat, and delighted to have me back.

Having despatched the Avenger to the theatre, I felt that I must open my heart to my friend that very evening.

When we had finished dinner, I said to him, “My dear Herbert, I have something very particular to convey to you.”

“My dear Handel,” he responded, “I will listen carefully to what you would like to say to me.”

“It concerns myself, Herbert,” I said, “as well as another person.”

Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with his head on one side, and having looked at it in vain for a while, he looked at me again, because I did not go on.

“Herbert,” I said, laying my hand upon his knee, “I love… I adore… Estella.”

Instead of being stunned, Herbert replied as if it were nothing: “Exactly. And?”

“And, Herbert? Is that all you have to say: And?”

“I mean, then what?” said Herbert. “It goes without saying that I know that.”

“How do you know it?” I said.

“How do I know it, Handel? Why, from you.”

“I have never told you.”

“You have never told me! Neither have you ever told me when you have got your hair cut, but I have had enough intelligence to notice it.

You have always adored her, ever since I have known you. You arrived here with your adoration and your portmanteau. When you told me your own story, you told me plainly that you started to adore her the first time you saw her, when you were very young.”

“Very well, then,” I said, in no way concerned by this new light thrown on my heart, “I have never stopped adoring her; and she has become the most beautiful and the most adorable creature. I saw her yesterday, and if I adored her before, I adore her doubly now.”

“It is lucky for you then, Handel,” said Herbert, “that you have been picked out for her. Without concerning ourselves with what we are forbidden to investigate, we can risk saying that there can be no doubt on that point. But do you know what Estella thinks of this adoration?”

I shook my head gloomily.

“Oh! She is so far away from here,” I said.

“Patience, my dear Handel: You have enough time… you have plenty of time! But do you have something more to say to me?”

“I am ashamed to say it,” I responded, “and yet it is no worse to say it than to think it: you call me a lucky fellow… no doubt I am. Yesterday, I was but a poor blacksmith’s boy. Today, I am… what…?”

“Say a good fellow, if you want to finish your sentence,” replied Herbert, smiling, and squeezing my hands; “a good fellow; a curious mix of impetuosity and hesitation, of audacity and distrust, of liveliness and daydreaming.”

I stopped for a moment to consider whether my character really contained this mixture. On the whole, I disagreed with the analysis, but thought that it was not worth disputing.

“When I ask what I am today, Herbert,” I went on, “I convey in words the thought that worries me the most. You say that I am lucky. I know I have done nothing to raise myself, and that Fortune alone has done everything. I am lucky, and yet, when I think of Estella…”

“And when you don’t think about her, are you quieter?” Herbert threw in, with his eyes fixed on the fire; which I thought was very nice of him.

“…Then, my dear Herbert, I cannot tell you how vulnerable and frightened I feel.

Avoiding forbidden ground, as you did just now, I may still say that all my expectations depend on one person — not naming anyone —, and it pains me to see these expectations still so vague and undefined.”

In saying this, I relieved my mind of what had always tormented it, more or less; though, no doubt, more than ever since yesterday.

“Now, Handel,” replied Herbert, in his cheerful and encouraging tone, “it seems to me that the anguishes of a tender passion are causing us to look at our horse’s shortcoming with a magnifying glass, and to divert our attention from its good qualities.

Did you not tell me that your guardian, Mr Jaggers, told you, at the outset, that you did not have expectations alone?

And even if he had not told you so, do you not think that of all the men in London, Mr Jaggers would be the last to continue his association with you, if he were not sure of his ground?”

I said that I could not deny that that was a good point; and, as often happens in such cases, I said it as if I had suppressed the need to deny it!

“I should think that it is a good point,” said Herbert, “You will soon be twenty-one years old. Maybe then you will receive some clarification. In any case, you will be closer to receiving it, for it must come some day.”

“What a delightful disposition you have!” I said, with gratitude.

“It must be,” said Herbert, “for I do not have much else. However, I must acknowledge, that the good sense of what I have just said is not my own, but that of my father.

The only remark I ever heard him make on your situation, is this conclusion: ‘The thing is settled and done, else Mr Jaggers would not get mixed up in it.’

And now, before I say anything more about my father, or my father’s son, I feel the need to make myself seriously disagreeable… positively repulsive.”

“You will not succeed,” I said.

“Oh yes I shall!” he said. “One… two… three… and I commence, Handel, my good friend. I just thought of something. Your marriage to Estella surely cannot be a condition of your inheritance, if your guardian has never spoken to you about it.

Am I right in understanding that he never alluded to her, in any way, directly or indirectly; that your patron might have views as to your future marriage?”

“Never!”

“Now, Handel, I do not want to cause you any trouble, upon my soul and honour! Not being committed to her, can you not detach yourself from her? I told you that I was going to be disagreeable.”

I turned my head away, for something glacial and unexpected swept down on me, like the old marsh wind coming from the sea — a painful feeling like that which had overwhelmed me the morning I left the forge, when the mist was rising, and when I had laid my hand upon our village signpost —, made my heart rattle again.

There was silence between us for a little while.

“Yes; but my dear Handel,” Herbert went on, as if we had been talking, instead of remaining silent, “she has taken root in your vulnerable heart.

Think about the way in which she has been brought up, and think about Miss Havisham. Think about her life. And now I am becoming repulsive, and you detest me… this may lead to miserable things.”

“I agree with you, Herbert,” I returned, “but I cannot help loving her.”

“You cannot detach yourself from her?”

“No, that is impossible!”

“You cannot try, Handel?”

“No, that is impossible for me to do!”

“Well,” said Herbert, getting up and shaking himself, as if he had been asleep, and beginning to stir the fire, “now I am going to try to become agreeable!”

He went round the room, shook the curtains out, put the chairs in their places, tidied the books and all that was lying around, looked into the hall, peeped into the letterbox, shut the door, and came back to take his place by the fire, where he sat down, nursing his left leg in both arms.

“I am going to say a word or two to you, Handel, concerning my father and my father’s son. I am afraid it is scarcely necessary for my father’s son to remark that my father’s establishment is not managed in a particularly brilliant manner.”

“There is always more than enough, Herbert,” I said, to say something encouraging.

“Oh yes! That is also what the street sweeper says, and so too does the fish merchant who resides in the back street. Seriously, Handel, for the subject is serious enough, you know it only too well.

May I ask you if you have had the opportunity to notice that children of inappropriate marriages are always in a hurry to get married?”

This question was so peculiar that I asked him in return, “Is it so?”

“I don’t know,” said Herbert, “and that is what I need to know, because it is decidedly the case with us.

My poor sister Charlotte, who came after me, and who died before she was fourteen, is a striking example of it.

Little Jane is the same. Her desire to be a wife might make you think that she passed her short existence in the perpetual contemplation of domestic bliss.

Little Alick has already made arrangements for his union with an eminently suitable young person at Kew; and, in truth, I think that, with the exception of the baby, we are all engaged.”

“Then you are too?” I said.

“I am,” said Herbert; “but it is a secret.”

I assured him of my discretion, and begged him to give me more details. He had spoken with such tact about my weakness that I needed to know something about his strength.

“May I ask the name of the person?” I said.

“Her name is Clara,” said Herbert.

“She lives in London?”

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