A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Oprah's Book Club) (78 page)

“Well? What are you stopping for?” said I.

“Not all of one kind,” resumed Biddy. “He may be too proud to let any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fills well and with respect. To tell you the truth, I think he is: though it sounds bold in me to say so, for you must know him far better than I do.”

“Now, Biddy,” said I, “I am very sorry to see this in you. I did not expect to see this in you. You are envious, Biddy, and grudging. You are dissatisfied on account of my rise in fortune, and you can’t help showing it.”

“If you have the heart to think so,” returned Biddy, “say so. Say so over and over again, if you have the heart to think so.”

“If you have the heart to be so, you mean, Biddy,” said I, in a virtuous and superior tone; “don’t put it off upon me. I am very sorry to see it, and it’s a—it’s a bad side of human nature. I did intend to ask you to use any little opportunities you might have after I was gone, of improving dear Joe. But after this, I ask you nothing. I am extremely sorry to see this in you, Biddy,” I repeated. “It’s a—it’s a bad side of human nature.”

“Whether you scold me or approve of me,” returned poor Biddy, “you may equally depend upon my trying to do all that lies in my power, here, at all times. And whatever opinion you take away of me, shall make no difference in my remembrance of you. Yet a gentleman should not be unjust neither,” said Biddy, turning away her head.

I again warmly repeated that it was a bad side of human nature (in which sentiment, waiving its application, I have since seen reason to think I was right), and I walked down the little path away from Biddy, and Biddy went into the house, and I went out at the garden gate and took a dejected stroll until supper-time; again feeling it very sorrowful and strange that this, the second night of my bright fortunes, should be as lonely and unsatisfactory as the first.

But, morning once more brightened my view, and I extended my clemency to Biddy, and we dropped the subject. Putting on the best clothes I had, I went into town as early as I could hope to find the shops open, and presented myself before Mr. Trabb, the tailor: who was having his breakfast in the parlour behind his shop, and who did not think it worth his while to come out to me, but called me in to him.

“Well!” said Mr. Trabb, in a hail-fellow-well-met kind of way. “How are you, and what can I do for you?”

Mr. Trabb had sliced his hot roll into three feather beds, and was slipping butter in between the blankets, and covering it up. He was a prosperous old bachelor, and his open window looked into a prosperous little garden and orchard, and there was a prosperous iron safe let into the wall at the side of his fireplace, and I did not doubt that heaps of his prosperity were put away in it in bags.

“Mr. Trabb,” said I, “it’s an unpleasant thing to have to mention, because it looks like boasting; but I have come into a handsome property.”

A change passed over Mr. Trabb. He forgot the butter in bed, got up from the bedside, and wiped his fingers on the tablecloth, exclaiming, “Lord bless my soul!”

“I am going up to my guardian in London,” said I, casually drawing some guineas out of my pocket and looking at them; “and I want a fashionable suit of clothes to go in. I wish to pay for them,” I added—otherwise I thought he might only pretend to make them, “with ready money.”

“My dear sir,” said Mr. Trabb, as he respectfully bent his body, opened his arms, and took the liberty of touching me on the outside of each elbow, “don’t hurt me by mentioning that. May I venture to congratulate you? Would you do me the favour of stepping into the shop?”

Mr. Trabb’s boy was the most audacious boy in all that countryside. When I had entered he was sweeping the shop, and he had sweetened his labours by sweeping over me. He was still sweeping when I came out into the shop with Mr. Trabb, and he knocked the broom against all possible corners and obstacles, to express (as I understood it) equality with any blacksmith, alive or dead.

“Hold that noise,” said Mr. Trabb, with the greatest sternness, “or I’ll knock your head off! Do me the favour to be seated, sir. Now, this,” said Mr. Trabb, taking down a roll of cloth, and tiding it out in a flowing manner over the counter, preparatory to getting his hand under it to show the gloss, “is a very sweet article. I can recommend it for your purpose, sir, because it really is extra super. But you shall see some others. Give me Number Four, you!” (To the boy, and with a dreadfully severe stare: foreseeing the danger of that miscreant’s brushing me with it, or making some other sign of familiarity.)

Mr. Trabb never removed his stern eye from the boy until he had deposited number four on the counter and was at a safe distance again. Then, he commanded him to bring number five, and number eight. “And let me have none of your tricks here,” said Mr. Trabb, “or you shall repent it, you young scoundrel, the longest day you have to live.”

Mr. Trabb then bent over number four, and in a sort of deferential confidence recommended it to me as a light article for summer wear, an article much in vogue among the nobility and gentry, an article that it would ever be an honour to him to reflect upon a distinguished fellow-townsman’s (if he might claim me for a fellow-townsman) having worn. “Are you bringing numbers five and eight, you vagabond,” said Mr. Trabb to the boy after that, “or shall I kick you out of the shop and bring them myself?”

I selected the material for a suit, with the assistance of Mr. Trabb’s judgment, and re-entered the parlour to be measured. For, although Mr. Trabb had my measure already, and had previously been quite contented with it, he said apologetically that it “wouldn’t do under existing circumstances, sir—wouldn’t do at all.” So, Mr. Trabb measured and calculated me, in the parlour, as if I were an estate and he the finest species of surveyor, and gave himself such a world of trouble that I felt that no suit of clothes could possibly remunerate him for his pains. When he had at last done and had appointed to send the articles to Mr. Pumblechook’s on the Thursday evening, he said, with his hand upon the parlour lock, “I know, sir, that London gentlemen cannot be expected to patronise local work, as a rule; but if you would give me a turn now and then in the quality of a townsman, I should greatly esteem it. Good morning, sir, much obliged.—Door!”

The last word was flung at the boy, who had not the least notion what it meant. But I saw him collapse as his master rubbed me out with his hands, and my first decided experience of the stupendous power of money, was, that it had morally laid upon his back, Trabb’s boy.

After this memorable event, I went to the hatter’s, and the boot-maker’s, and the hosier’s, and felt rather like Mother Hubbard’s dog whose outfit required the services of so many trades. I also went to the coach-office and took my place for seven o’clock on Saturday morning. It was not necessary to explain everywhere that I had come into a handsome property; but whenever I said anything to that effect, it followed that the officiating tradesman ceased to have his attention diverted through the window by the High-street, and concentrated his mind upon me. When I had ordered everything I wanted, I directed my steps towards Pumblechook’s, and, as I approached that gentleman’s place of business, I saw him standing at his door.

He was waiting for me with great impatience. He had been out early with the chaise-cart, and had called at the forge and heard the news. He had prepared a collation for me in the Barnwell parlour, and he too ordered his shopman to “come out of the gangway” as my sacred person passed.

“My dear friend,” said Mr. Pumblechook, taking me by both hands, when he and I and the collation were alone, “I give you joy of your good fortune. Well deserved, well deserved!”

This was coming to the point, and I thought it a sensible way of expressing himself.

“To think,” said Mr. Pumblechook, after snorting admiration at me for some moments, “that I should have been the humble instrument of leading up to this, is a proud reward.”

I begged Mr. Pumblechook to remember that nothing was to be ever said or hinted, on that point.

“My dear young friend,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “if you will allow me to call you so—”

I murmured “Certainly,” and Mr. Pumblechook took me by both hands again, and communicated a movement to his waistcoat, which had an emotional appearance, though it was rather low down, “My dear young friend, rely upon my doing my little all in your absence, by keeping the fact before the mind of Joseph.—Joseph!” said Mr. Pumblechook, in the way of a compassionate adjuration. “Joseph!! Joseph!!!” Thereupon he shook his head and tapped it, expressing his sense of deficiency in Joseph.

“But my dear young friend,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “you must be hungry, you must be exhausted. Be seated. Here is a chicken had round from the Boar, here is a tongue had round from the Boar, here’s one or two little things had round from the Boar, that I hope you may not despise. But do I,” said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again the moment after he had sat down, “see afore me, him as I ever sported with in his times of happy infancy? And may I—
may
I—?”

This May I, meant might he shake hands? I consented, and he was fervent, and then sat down again.

“Here is wine,” said Mr. Pumblechook. “Let us drink, Thanks of Fortune, and may she ever pick out her favourites with equal judgment! And yet I cannot,” said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again, “see afore me One—and likeways drink to One—without again expressing—May I—
may
I—?”

I said he might, and he shook hands with me again, and emptied his glass and turned it upside-down. I did the same; and if I had turned myself upside down before drinking, the wine could not have gone more direct to my head.

Mr. Pumblechook helped me to the liver wing, and to the best slice of tongue (none of those out-of-the-way No Thoroughfares of Pork now), and took, comparatively speaking, no care of himself at all. “Ah! poultry, poultry! You little thought,” said Mr. Pumblechook, apostrophising the fowl in the dish, “when you was a young fledgling, what was in store for you. You little thought you was to be refreshment beneath this humble roof for one as—Call it a weakness, if you will,” said Mr. Pumblechook, getting up again, “but may I?
may
I—?”

It began to be unnecessary to repeat the form of saying he might, so he did it at once. How he ever did it so often without wounding himself with my knife, I don’t know.

“And your sister,” he resumed, after a little steady eating, “which had the honour of bringing you up by hand! It’s a sad picter, to reflect that she’s no longer equal to fully understanding the honour. May—”

I saw he was about to come at me again, and I stopped him.

“We’ll drink her health,” said I.

“Ah!” cried Mr. Pumblechook, leaning back in his chair, quite flaccid with admiration, “that’s the way you know ’em, sir!” (I don’t know who Sir was, but he certainly was not I, and there was no third person present); “that’s the way you know the noble minded, sir! Ever forgiving and ever affable. It might,” said the servile Pumblechook, putting down his untasted glass in a hurry and getting up again, “to a common person, have the appearance of repeating—but
may
I—?”

When he had done it, he resumed his seat and drank to my sister. “Let us never be blind,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “to her faults of temper, but it is to be hoped she meant well.”

At about this time, I began to observe that he was getting flushed in the face; as to myself, I felt all face, steeped in wine and smarting.

I mentioned to Mr. Pumblechook that I wished to have my new clothes sent to his house, and he was ecstatic on my so distinguishing him. I mentioned my reason for desiring to avoid observation in the village, and he lauded it to the skies. There was nobody but himself, he intimated, worthy of my confidence, and—in short, might he? Then he asked me tenderly if I remembered our boyish games at sums, and how we had gone together to have me bound apprentice, and, in effect, how he had ever been my favourite fancy and my chosen friend? If I had taken ten times as many glasses of wine as I had, I should have known that he never had stood in that relation towards me, and should in my heart of hearts have repudiated the idea. Yet for all that, I remember feeling convinced that I had been much mistaken in him, and that he was a sensible practical good-hearted prime fellow.

By degrees he fell to reposing such great confidence in me, as to ask my advice in reference to his own affairs. He mentioned that there was an opportunity for a great amalgamation and monopoly of the corn and seed trade on those premises, if enlarged, such as had never occurred before in that, or any other neighbourhood. What alone was wanting to the realisation of a vast fortune, he considered to be More Capital. Those were the two little words, more capital. Now it appeared to him (Pumblechook) that if that capital were got into the business, through a sleeping partner, sir—which sleeping partner would have nothing to do but walk in, by self or deputy, whenever he pleased, and examine the books—and walk in twice a year and take his profits away in his pocket, to the tune of fifty per cent—it appeared to him that that might be an opening for a young gentleman of spirit combined with property, which would be worthy of his attention. But what did I think? He had great confidence in my opinion, and what did I think? I gave it as my opinion. “Wait a bit!” The united vastness and distinctness of this view so struck him, that he no longer asked if he might shake hands with me, but said he really must—and did.

We drank all the wine, and Mr. Pumblechook pledged himself over and over again to keep Joseph up to the mark (I don’t know what mark), and to render me efficient and constant service (I don’t know what service). He also made known to me for the first time in my life, and certainly after having kept his secret wonderfully well, that he had always said of me, “That boy is no common boy, and mark me, his fortun’ will be no common fortun’.” He said with a tearful smile that it was a singular thing to think of now, and I said so too. Finally, I went out into the air, with a dim perception that there was something unwonted in the conduct of the sunshine, and found that I had slumberously got to the turnpike without having taken any account of the road.