A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Penguin) - Charles Dickens [419]
I thanked her heartily, and I thanked him heartily, but said I could not yet make sure of joining him as he so kindly offered. Firstly, my mind was too preoccupied to be able to take in the subject clearly. Secondly—Yes! Secondly, there was a vague something lingering in my thoughts that will come out very near the end of this slight narrative.
“But if you thought, Herbert, that you could, without doing any injury in your business, leave the question open for a little while—”
“For any while,” cried Herbert. “Six months, a year!”
“Not so long as that,” said I. “Two or three months at most.”
Herbert was highly delighted when we shook hands on this arrangement, and said he could now take courage to tell me that he believed he must go away at the end of the week.
“And Clara?” said I.
“The dear little thing,” returned Herbert, “holds dutifully to her father as long as he lasts; but he won’t last long. Mrs. Whimple confides to me that he is certainly going.”
“Not to say an unfeeling thing,” said I, “he cannot do better than go.”
“I am afraid that must be admitted,” said Herbert: “and then I shall come back for the dear little thing, and the dear little thing and I will walk quietly into the nearest church. Remember! The blessed darling comes of no family, my dear Handel, and never looked into the red book, and hasn’t a notion about her grand-papa. What a fortune for the son of my mother!”
On the Saturday in that same week, I took my leave of Herbert—full of bright hope, but sad and sorry to leave me—as he sat on one of the seaport mail coaches. I went into a coffee-house to write a little note to Clara, telling her he had gone off, sending his love to her over and over again, and then went to my lonely home—if it deserved the name, for it was now no home to me, and I had no home anywhere.
On the stairs I encountered Wemmick, who was coming down, after an unsuccessful application of his knuckles to my door. I had not seen him alone, since the disastrous issue of the attempted flight; and he had come, in his private and personal capacity, to say a few words of explanation in reference to that failure.
“The late Compeyson,” said Wemmick, “had by little and little got at the bottom of half of the regular business now transacted, and it was from the talk of some of his people in trouble (some of his people always being in trouble) that I heard what I did. I kept my ears open, seeming to have them shut, until I heard that he was absent, and I thought that would be the best time for making the attempt. I can only suppose now, that it was a part of his policy, as a very clever man, habitually to deceive his own instruments. You don’t blame me, I hope, Mr. Pip? I am sure I tried to serve you, with all my heart.”
“I am as sure of that, Wemmick, as you can be, and I thank you most earnestly for all your interest and friendship.”
“Thank you, thank you very much. It’s a bad job,” said Wemmick, scratching his head, “and I assure you I haven’t been so cut up for a long time. What I look at, is the sacrifice of so much portable property. Dear me!”
“What I think of, Wemmick, is the poor owner of the property.”
“Yes, to be sure,” said Wemmick. “Of course there can be no objection to your being sorry for him, and I’d put down a five-pound note myself to get him out of it. But what I look at, is this. The late Compeyson having been beforehand with him in intelligence of his return, and being so determined to bring him to book, I do not think he could have been saved. Whereas, the portable property certainly could have been saved. That’s the difference between the property and the owner, don’t you see?”
I invited Wemmick to come up-stairs, and refresh himself with a glass of grog before walking to Walworth. He accepted the invitation.