Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my progress,I beheld Trabb’s boy approaching,lashing himself with an empty blue bag.Deeming that a serene and unconscious contemplation of him would best beseem me, and would be most likely to quell his evil mind, I advanced with that expression of countenance, and was rather congratulating myself on my success, when suddenly the knees of Trabb’s boy smote together, his hair uprose, his cap fell off, he trembled violently in every limb, staggered out into the road, and crying to the populace, “Hold me!I’m so frightened!” feigned to be in a paroxysm of terror and contrition,occasioned by the dignity of my appearance.As I passed him, his teeth loudly chattered in his head,and with every mark of extreme humiliation,he prostrated himself in the dust.
This was a hard thing to bear, but this was nothing.I had not advanced another two hundred yards when,to my inexpressible terror, amazement, and indignation,I again beheld Trabb’s boy approaching.He was coming round a narrow corner.His blue bag was slung over his shoulder,honest industry beamed in his eyes,a determination to proceed to Trabb’s with cheerful briskness was indicated in his gait. With a shock he became aware of me, and was severely visited as before; but this time his motion was rotatory, and he staggered round and round me with knees more afflicted, and with uplifted hands as if beseeching for mercy. His sufferings were hailed with the greatest joy by a knot of spectators, and I felt utterly confounded.
I had not got as much further down the street as the post-office,when I again beheld Trabb’s boy shooting round by a back way.This time, he was entirely changed.He wore the blue bag in the manner of my great-coat,and was strutting along the pavement towards me on the opposite side of the street, attended by a company of delighted young friends to whom he from time to time exclaimed, with a wave of his hand, “Don’t know yah!” Words cannot state the amount of aggravation and injury wreaked upon me by Trabb’s boy, when passing abreast of me, he pulled up his shirt-collar, twined his side-hair, stuck an arm akimbo, and smirked extravagantly by, wriggling his elbows and body, and drawling to his attendants, “Don’t know yah, don’t know yah, ’pon my soul don’t know yah!” The disgrace attendant on his immediately afterwards taking to crowing and pursuing me across the bridge with crows, as from an exceedingly dejected fowl who had known me when I was a blacksmith, culminated the disgrace with which I left the town, and was, so to speak, ejected by it into the open country.
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But unless I had taken the life of Trabb’s boy on that occasion,I really do not even now see what I could have done save endure.To have struggled with him in the street,or to have exacted any lower recompense from him than his heart’s best blood,would have been futile and degrading. Moreover,he was a boy whom no man could hurt;an invulnerable and dodging serpent who,when chased into a corner,flew out again between his captor’s legs,scornfully yelping. I wrote, however, to Mr.Trabb by next day’s post, to say that Mr.Pip must decline to deal further with one who could so far forget what he owed to the best interests of society, as to employ a boy who excited Loathing in every respectable mind.
The coach, with Mr. Jaggers inside, came up in due time,and I took my box-seat again,and arrived in London safe,—but not sound,for my heart was gone. As soon as I arrived,I sent a penitential codfish and barrel of oysters to Joe (as reparation for not having gone myself), and then went on to Barnard’s Inn.
I found Herbert dining on cold meat,and delighted to welcome me back.Having despatched The Avenger to the coffee-house for an addition to the dinner, I felt that I must open my breast that very evening to my friend and chum. As confidence was out of the question with The Avenger in the hall, which could merely be regarded in the light of an antechamber to the keyhole, I sent him to the Play. A better proof of the severity of my bondage to that taskmaster could scarcely be afforded, than the degrading shifts to which I was constantly driven to find him employment. So mean is extremity, that I sometimes sent him to Hyde Park corner to see what o’clock it was.
Dinner done and we sitting with our feet upon the fender,I said to Herbert, “My dear Herbert,I have something very particular to tell you.”
“My dear Handel,” he returned,“I shall esteem and respect your confidence.”
“It concerns myself, Herbert,” said I,“and one other person.”
Herbert crossed his feet,looked at the fire with his head on one side,and having looked at it in vain for some time,looked at me because I didn’t go on.
“Herbert,” said I, laying my hand upon his knee,“I love—I adore—Estella.”
Instead of being transfixed,Herbert replied in an easy matter-of-course way, “Exactly. Well?”
“Well, Herbert?Is that all you say?Well?”
“What next, I mean?” said Herbert. “Of course I know _that_.”
“How do you know it?” said I.
“How do I know it, Handel?Why, from you.”
“I never told you.”
“Told me!You have never told me when you have got your hair cut,but I have had senses to perceive it.You have always adored her,ever since I have known you.You brought your adoration and your portmanteau here together. Told me!Why, you have always told me all day long.When you told me your own story,you told me plainly that you began adoring her the first time you saw her,when you were very young indeed.”
“Very well, then,” said I,to whom this was a new and not unwelcome light,“I have never left off adoring her.And she has come back,a most beautiful and most elegant creature.And I saw her yesterday. And if I adored her before,I now doubly adore her.”
“Lucky for you then, Handel,” said Herbert,“that you are picked out for her and allotted to her.Without encroaching on forbidden ground,we may venture to say that there can be no doubt between ourselves of that fact. Have you any idea yet, of Estella’s views on the adoration question?”
I shook my head gloomily. “Oh!She is thousands of miles away, from me,” said I.
“Patience, my dear Handel: time enough, time enough.But you have something more to say?”