Гордость и предубеждение / Pride and Prejudice. Great Expectations / Большие надежды
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“Twenty pounds, of course,” said I, smiling.
“Wemmick!” said Mr. Jaggers, opening his office door. “Take Mr. Pip’s written order, and pay him twenty pounds.”
Mr. Jaggers never laughed. As he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick was brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick that I hardly knew what to make of Mr. Jaggers’s manner.
“Tell him that, and he’ll take it as a compliment,” answered Wemmick. “It’s not personal; it’s professional: only professional.”
Wemmick was at his desk, lunching – and crunching – on a dry hard biscuit; pieces of which he threw from time to time into his mouth, as if he were posting them.
“Always seems to me,” said Wemmick, “as if he had set a man-trap and was watching it. Suddenly – click – you’re caught!”
I said I supposed he was very skilful?
“Deep,” said Wemmick, “as Australia. If there was anything deeper,” added Wemmick, bringing his pen to paper, “he’d be it.”
Then I asked if there were many clerks? to which he replied —
“We don’t run much into clerks, [120] because there’s only one Jaggers. There are only four of us. Would you like to see them? You are one of us, as I may say.”
120
We don’t run much into clerks. –
I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had paid me my money from a cash-box in a safe, the key of which safe he kept somewhere down his back, we went up stairs. The house was dark and shabby. In the front first floor, a clerk who looked something between a publican and a rat-catcher [121] – a large pale, puffed, swollen man – was attentively engaged with three or four people of shabby appearance. In the room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with dangling hair was similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes. In a back room, a high-shouldered man, [122] who was dressed in old black clothes, was stooping over his work of making fair copies of the notes of the other two gentlemen, for Mr. Jaggers’s own use.
121
something between a publican and a rat-catcher – некая помесь трактирщика с крысоловом
122
a high-shouldered man – сутулый человек
This was all the establishment. When we went down stairs again, Wemmick led me into my guardian’s room, and said, “This you’ve seen already.”
Then he went on to say, in a friendly manner:
“If at any odd time when you have nothing better to do, you wouldn’t mind coming over to see me at Walworth, [123] I could offer you a bed, and I should consider it an honor. I have not much to show you; but such two or three curiosities as I have got you might like to look over; and I am fond of [124] a bit of garden and a summer-house.”
123
Walworth – Уолворт
124
I am fond of – я очень люблю
I said I should be delighted to accept his invitation.
“Thank you,” said he. “Have you dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Well,” said Wemmick, “he’ll give you wine, and good wine. I’ll give you punch, and not bad punch. And now I’ll tell you something. When you go to dine with Mr. Jaggers, look at his housekeeper.”
“Shall I see something very uncommon?”
“Well,” said Wemmick, “you’ll see a wild beast tamed.”
I told him I would do so, with all the interest and curiosity that his preparation awakened.
Chapter 25
When I had been in Mr. Pocket’s family a month or two, Mr. and Mrs. Camilla [125] turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket’s sister. Georgiana, whom I had seen at Miss Havisham’s on the same occasion, also turned up. She was a cousin – an indigestive single woman. These people hated me with the hatred of disappointment. Towards Mr. Pocket they showed the complacent forbearance.
125
Camilla –
These were the surroundings among which I settled down, and applied myself to my education. I soon began to spend an amount of money that within a few short months I should have thought almost fabulous; but I stuck to my books. There was no other merit in this, than my having sense enough to feel my deficiencies.
I had not seen Mr. Wemmick for some weeks, when I thought I would write him a note and propose to go home with him on a certain evening. He replied that it would give him much pleasure, and that he would expect me at the office at six o’clock. Thither I went, and there I found him, putting the key of his safe down his back as the clock struck.
“Did you think of walking down to Walworth?” said he.
“Certainly,” said I, “if you approve.”
Wemmick’s house was a little wooden cottage in the midst of plots of garden, and the top of it was cut out and painted.
“My own doing,” said Wemmick. “Looks pretty; doesn’t it?”
I highly commended it, I think it was the smallest house I ever saw; with the queerest gothic windows, [126] and a gothic door almost too small to get in at.
126
gothic windows – готические окна
“That’s a real flagstaff, you see,” said Wemmick, “and on Sundays I run up a real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed this bridge, I hoist it.”
The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide and two deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which he hoisted it up; smiling as he did so, and not merely mechanically.
“At nine o’clock every night, Greenwich time, [127] ” said Wemmick, “the gun fires. There it is, you see! Then, at the back, out of sight, there’s a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits.”
127
Greenwich time – по гринвичскому времени
Then, he conducted me to a bower; and in this retreat our glasses were already set forth. Our punch was cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose margin the bower was raised.
“I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my own gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades, [128] ” said Wemmick, in acknowledging my compliments. “Well; it’s a good thing, you know. It pleases the Aged. You wouldn’t mind being at once introduced to the Aged, would you?”
128
Jack of all Trades – мастер на все руки