Chapter 21

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he
was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather
short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed
to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There
were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material
had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were
only dints. The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at
embellishment over his nose, but had given them up without an effort
to smooth them off. I judged him to be a bachelor from the frayed
condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many
bereavements; for, he wore at least four mourning rings, besides a
brooch representing a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn
on it. I noticed, too, that several rings and seals hung at his
watch chain, as if he were quite laden with remembrances of departed
friends. He had glittering eyes - small, keen, and black - and thin
wide mottled lips. He had had them, to the best of my belief, from
forty to fifty years.

"So you were never in London before?" said Mr. Wemmick to me.

"No," said I.

"I was new here once," said Mr. Wemmick. "Rum to think of
now!"

"You are well acquainted with it now?"

"Why, yes," said Mr. Wemmick. "I know the moves of it."

"Is it a very wicked place?" I asked, more for the sake of
saying something than for information.

"You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered, in London. But
there are plenty of people anywhere, who'll do that for you."

"If there is bad blood between you and them," said I, to soften
it off a little.

"Oh! I don't know about bad blood," returned Mr. Wemmick;
"there's not much bad blood about. They'll do it, if there's
anything to be got by it."

"That makes it worse."

"You think so?" returned Mr. Wemmick. "Much about the same, I
should say."

He wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked straight
before him: walking in a self-contained way as if there were nothing
in the streets to claim his attention. His mouth was such a
postoffice of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling.
We had got to the top of Holborn Hill before I knew that it was
merely a mechanical appearance, and that he was not smiling at
all.

"Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket lives?" I asked Mr.
Wemmick.

"Yes," said he, nodding in the direction. "At Hammersmith, west
of London."

"Is that far?"

"Well! Say five miles."

"Do you know him?"

"Why, you're a regular cross-examiner!" said Mr. Wemmick,
looking at me with an approving air. "Yes, I know him. I know
him!"

There was an air of toleration or depreciation about his
utterance of these words, that rather depressed me; and I was still
looking sideways at his block of a face in search of any encouraging
note to the text, when he said here we were at Barnard's Inn. My
depression was not alleviated by the announcement, for, I had
supposed that establishment to be an hotel kept by Mr. Barnard, to
which the Blue Boar in our town was a mere public-house. Whereas I
now found Barnard to be a disembodied spirit, or a fiction, and his
inn the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed
together in a rank corner as a club for Tom-cats.

We entered this haven through a wicket-gate, and were disgorged
by an introductory passage into a melancholy little square that
looked to me like a flat burying-ground. I thought it had the most
dismal trees in it, and the most dismal sparrows, and the most dismal
cats, and the most dismal houses (in number half a dozen or so), that
I had ever seen. I thought the windows of the sets of chambers into
which those houses were divided, were in every stage of dilapidated
blind and curtain, crippled flower-pot, cracked glass, dusty decay,
and miserable makeshift; while To Let To Let To Let, glared at me
from empty rooms, as if no new wretches ever came there, and the
vengeance of the soul of Barnard were being slowly appeased by the
gradual suicide of the present occupants and their unholy interment
under the gravel. A frouzy mourning of soot and smoke attired this
forlorn creation of Barnard, and it had strewn ashes on its head, and
was undergoing penance and humiliation as a mere dust-hole. Thus far
my sense of sight; while dry rot and wet rot and all the silent rots
that rot in neglected roof and cellar - rot of rat and mouse and bug
and coaching-stables near at hand besides - addressed themselves
faintly to my sense of smell, and moaned, "Try Barnard's Mixture."

So imperfect was this realization of the first of my great
expectations, that I looked in dismay at Mr. Wemmick. "Ah!" said he,
mistaking me; "the retirement reminds you of the country. So it does
me."

He led me into a corner and conducted me up a flight of stairs -
which appeared to me to be slowly collapsing into sawdust, so that
one of those days the upper lodgers would look out at their doors and
find themselves without the means of coming down - to a set of
chambers on the top floor. Mr. Pocket, Jun., was painted on the
door, and there was a label on the letter-box, "Return shortly."

"He hardly thought you'd come so soon," Mr. Wemmick explained.
"You don't want me any more?"

"No, thank you," said I.

"As I keep the cash," Mr. Wemmick observed, "we shall most
likely meet pretty often. Good day."

"Good day."

I put out my hand, and Mr. Wemmick at first looked at it as if
he thought I wanted something. Then he looked at me, and said,
correcting himself,

"To be sure! Yes. You're in the habit of shaking hands?"

I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of the London
fashion, but said yes.

"I have got so out of it!" said Mr. Wemmick - "except at last.
Very glad, I'm sure, to make your acquaintance. Good day!"

When we had shaken hands and he was gone, I opened the staircase
window and had nearly beheaded myself, for, the lines had rotted
away, and it came down like the guillotine. Happily it was so quick
that I had not put my head out. After this escape, I was content to
take a foggy view of the Inn through the window's encrusting dirt,
and to stand dolefully looking out, saying to myself that London was
decidedly overrated.

Mr. Pocket, Junior's, idea of Shortly was not mine, for I had
nearly maddened myself with looking out for half an hour, and had
written my name with my finger several times in the dirt of every
pane in the window, before I heard footsteps on the stairs.
Gradually there arose before me the hat, head, neckcloth, waistcoat,
trousers, boots, of a member of society of about my own standing. He
had a paper-bag under each arm and a pottle of strawberries in one
hand, and was out of breath.

"Mr. Pip?" said he.

"Mr. Pocket?" said I.

"Dear me!" he exclaimed. "I am extremely sorry; but I knew
there was a coach from your part of the country at midday, and I
thought you would come by that one. The fact is, I have been out on
your account - not that that is any excuse - for I thought, coming
from the country, you might like a little fruit after dinner, and I
went to Covent Garden Market to get it good."

For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would start out of
my head. I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and began to
think this was a dream.

"Dear me!" said Mr. Pocket, Junior. "This door sticks so!"

As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling with the
door while the paper-bags were under his arms, I begged him to allow
me to hold them. He relinquished them with an agreeable smile, and
combated with the door as if it were a wild beast. It yielded so
suddenly at last, that he staggered back upon me, and I staggered
back upon the opposite door, and we both laughed. But still I felt
as if my eyes must start out of my head, and as if this must be a
dream.

"Pray come in," said Mr. Pocket, Junior. "Allow me to lead the
way. I am rather bare here, but I hope you'll be able to make out
tolerably well till Monday. My father thought you would get on more
agreeably through to-morrow with me than with him, and might like to
take a walk about London. I am sure I shall be very happy to show
London to you. As to our table, you won't find that bad, I hope, for
it will be supplied from our coffee-house here, and (it is only right
I should add) at your expense, such being Mr. Jaggers's directions.
As to our lodging, it's not by any means splendid, because I have my
own bread to earn, and my father hasn't anything to give me, and I
shouldn't be willing to take it, if he had. This is our sitting-room
- just such chairs and tables and carpet and so forth, you see, as
they could spare from home. You mustn't give me credit for the
tablecloth and spoons and castors, because they come for you from the
coffee-house. This is my little bedroom; rather musty, but Barnard's
is musty. This is your bed-room; the furniture's hired for the
occasion, but I trust it will answer the purpose; if you should want
anything, I'll go and fetch it. The chambers are retired, and we
shall be alone together, but we shan't fight, I dare say. But, dear
me, I beg your pardon, you're holding the fruit all this time. Pray
let me take these bags from you. I am quite ashamed."

As I stood opposite to Mr. Pocket, Junior, delivering him the
bags, One, Two, I saw the starting appearance come into his own eyes
that I knew to be in mine, and he said, falling back:

"Lord bless me, you're the prowling boy!"

"And you," said I, "are the pale young gentleman!"