Гордость и предубеждение / Pride and Prejudice. Great Expectations / Большие надежды
Шрифт:
I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle. There we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel coat: clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for, but deaf.
“Well aged parent,” said Wemmick, shaking hands with him in a cordial way, “how are you?”
“All right, John; all right!” replied the old man.
“Here’s Mr. Pip, aged parent,” said Wemmick, “and I wish you could hear his name. Nod away at him, Mr. Pip; that’s what he likes. Nod away at him, if you please.”
“This is a fine place of my son’s, sir,” cried the old man, while I nodded as hard as I possibly could.
“You’re as proud of it; aren’t you, Aged?” said Wemmick, contemplating the old man, with his hard face really softened; “there’s a nod for you;” giving him a tremendous one; “there’s another for you;” giving him a still more tremendous one; “you like that, don’t you? If you’re not tired, Mr. Pip, will you nod away at him again? You can’t think how it pleases him.”
I nodded away at him several more, and he was in great spirits. [129] We left him bestirring himself to feed the fowls, and we sat down. Wemmick told me, as he smoked a pipe, that it had taken him many years to bring the property up to its present condition.
129
he was in great spirits –
“Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick?”
“O yes,” said Wemmick, “I have got hold of it!”
“Is it indeed? I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it?”
“Never seen it,” said Wemmick. “Never heard of it. Never seen the Aged. Never heard of him. No; the office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me. If it’s not in any way disagreeable to you, you’ll oblige me by doing the same. I don’t wish it spoken about.”
Before supper Wemmick showed me his collection of curiosities. They were mostly of a felonious character: the pen with which a celebrated forgery had been committed, a razor or two, some locks of hair, and several manuscript confessions written under condemnation.
There was a neat little girl in attendance, who looked after the Aged in the day. When she had laid the supper-cloth, the bridge was lowered, and she went away for the night. The supper was excellent; and I was heartily pleased with my whole entertainment.
Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid I heard him cleaning my boots. After that, he fell to gardening, and I saw him from my gothic window pretending to employ the Aged, and nodding at him in a most devoted manner. Our breakfast was as good as the supper, and at half-past eight precisely we started for Little Britain. By degrees, [130] Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along. At last, when we got to his place of business and he pulled out his key from his coat-collar, he looked quite different.
130
by degrees – постепенно
Chapter 26
My guardian was in his room, washing his hands with his scented soap, when I went into the office from Walworth; and he called me to him, and gave me the invitation for myself and friends which Wemmick had prepared me to receive. “No ceremony,” he stipulated, “and no dinner dress, and say tomorrow.” I asked him where we should come to (for I had no idea where he lived), and replied, “Come here, and I’ll take you home with me.”
He washed his hands after his clients, as if he were a surgeon or a dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose, which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer’s shop. It had an unusually large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he would wash his hands, and wipe them and dry them all over this towel. When I and my friends repaired to him at six o’clock next day, we found him with his head butted into this closet, not only washing his hands, but laving his face. And even when he had done all that, and had gone all round the jack-towel, he took out his penknife and scraped the case out of his nails before he put his coat on.
He conducted us to Gerrard Street, Soho, [131] to a house on the south side of that street. He took out his key and opened the door, and we all went into a stone hall, bare, gloomy, and little used. So, up a dark brown staircase into a series of three dark brown rooms on the first floor. There were carved garlands on the walls.
131
Gerrard Street, Soho –
Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms; the second was his dressing-room; the third, his bedroom. He told us that he held the whole house, but rarely used more of it than we saw. The table was comfortably laid – no silver in the service, of course – and a variety of bottles and decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert.
There was a bookcase in the room; I saw from the backs of the books, that they were about evidence, criminal law, criminal biography, trials, acts of Parliament, and such things. The furniture was all very solid and good, like his watch-chain. In a corner was a little table of papers with a shaded lamp: so that he seemed to bring the office home with him in that respect too.
My friends were: Bentley Drummle, [132] a coarse young man, I met him at Mr. Pocket’s house, as Drummle was also to be trained in skills; and Startop, [133] who – like Bentley Drummle – was my fellow student, but unlike Drummle, he was kind.
132
Bentley Drummle – Бентли Драмл
133
Startop – Стартоп
Mr. Jaggers had scarcely seen my three companions until now – for he and I had walked together. To my surprise, he seemed to be interested in Drummle.
“Pip,” said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder and moving me to the window, “I don’t know one from the other. Who’s the Spider?”
“The spider?” said I.
“The blotchy, sulky fellow.”
“That’s Bentley Drummle,” I replied; “the one with the delicate face is Startop.”
Mr. Jaggers returned, “Bentley Drummle is his name, is it? I like the look of that fellow.”