AFTER two or three days, when I had established myself in my room and had gone backwards and forwards to London several times, and had ordered all I wanted of my tradesmen, Mr Pocket and I had a long talk together. He knew more of my intended career than I knew myself, for the referred to his having been told by Mr Jaggers that I was not designed for any profession, and that I should be well enough educated for my destiny if I could `hold my own’ with the average of young men in prosperous circumstances. I acquiesced, of course, knowing nothing to the contrary.
He advised my attending certain places in London, for the acquisition of such mere rudiments as I wanted, and my investing him with the functions of explainer and director of all my studies. He hoped that with intelligent assistance I should meet with little to discourage me, and should soon be able to dispense with any aid but his. Through his way of saying this, and much more to similar purpose, he placed himself on confidential terms with me in an admirable manner; and I may state at once that he was always so zealous and honourable in fulfilling his compact with me, that he made me zealous and honourable in fulfilling mine with him. If he had shown indifference as a master, I have no doubt I should have returned the compliment as a pupil; he gave me no such excuse, and each of us did the other justice. Nor, did I ever regard him as having anything ludicrous about him - or anything but what was serious, honest, and good - in his tutor communication with me.
When these points were settled, and so far carried out as that I had begun to work in earnest, it occurred to me that if I could retain my bedroom in Barnard’s Inn, my life would be agreeably varied, while my manners would be none the worse for Herbert’s society. Mr Pocket did not object to this arrangement, but urged that before any step could possibly be taken in it, it must be submitted to my guardian. I felt that this delicacy arose out of the consideration that the plan would save Herbert some expense, so I went off to Little Britain and imparted my wish to Mr Jaggers.
`More than that, eh!’ retorted Mr Jaggers, lying in wait for me, with his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, and his eyes on the wall behind me; `how much more?’
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“很难确准一个数字。”我感到踌躇地说道。
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`It is so difficult to fix a sum,’ said I, hesitating.
This strongly marked way of doing business made a strongly marked impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr Jaggers never laughed; but he wore great bright creaking boots, and, in poising himself on these boots, with his large head bent down and his eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, he sometimes caused the boots to creak, as if they laughed in a dry and suspicious way. 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; `he don’t mean that you should know what to make of it. - Oh!’ for I looked surprised, `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 slit of a mouth, as if he were posting them.
`Deep,’ said Wemmick, `as Australia.’ Pointing with his pen at the office floor, to express that Australia was understood, for the purposes of the figure, to be symmetrically on the opposite spot of the globe. `If there was anything deeper,’ added Wemmick, bringing his pen to paper, `he’d be it.’
`We don’t run much into clerks, because there’s only one Jaggers, and people won’t have him at second-hand. There are only four of us. Would you like to see ’em? You are one of us, as I may say.’
I accepted the offer. When Mr Wemmick had put all the biscuit into the post, and had paid me my money from a cash-box in a safe, the key of which safe he kept somewhere down his back and produced from his coat-collar like an iron pigtail, we went up-stairs. The house was dark and shabby, and the greasy shoulders that had left their mark in Mr Jaggers’s room, seemed to have been shuffling up and down the staircase for years. In the front first floor, a clerk who looked something between a publican and a rat-catcher - a large pale puffed swollen man - was attentively engaged with three or four people of shabby appearance, whom he treated as unceremoniously as everybody seemed to be treated who contributed to Mr Jaggers’s coffers. `Getting evidence together,’ said Mr Wemmick, as we came out, `for the Bailey.’ In the room over that, a little flabbyterrier of a clerk with dangling hair (his cropping seemed to have been forgotten when he was a puppy) was similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes, whom Mr Wemmick presented to me as a smelter who kept his pot always boiling, and who would melt me anything I pleased - and who was in an excessive white-perspiration, as if he had been trying his art on himself. In a back room, a high-shouldered man with a faceache tied up in dirty flannel, who was dressed in old black clothes that bore the appearance of having been waxed, was stooping over his work of making fair copies of the notes of the other two gentlemen, for Mr Jaggers’s own use.
`These?’ said Wemmick, getting upon a chair, and blowing the dust off the horrible heads before bringing them down. `These are two celebrated ones. Famous clients of ours that got us a world of credit. This chap (why you must have come down in the night and been peeping into the inkstand, to get this blot upon your eyebrow, you old rascal!) murdered his master, and, considering that he wasn’t brought up to evidence, didn’t plan it badly.’
`Like him? It’s himself, you know. The cast was made in Newgate, directly after he was taken down. You had a particular fancy for me, hadn’t you, Old Artful?’ said Wemmick. He then explained this affectionateapostrophe, by touching his brooch representing the lady and the weeping willow at the tomb with the urn upon it, and saying, `Had it made for me, express!’
`No,’ returned Wemmick. `Only his game. (You liked your bit of game, didn’t you?) No; deuce a bit of a lady in the case, Mr Pip, except one - and she wasn’t of this slender ladylike sort, and you wouldn’t have caught her looking after this urn - unless there was something to drink in it.’ Wemmick’s attention being thus directed to his brooch, he put down the cast, and polished the brooch with his pocket-handkerchief.
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“另一个人的结果也是这样的下场么?”我问道,“他也有相同的神情呢。”
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`Did that other creature come to the same end?’ I asked. `He has the same look.’
`You’re right,’ said Wemmick; `it’s the genuine look. Much as if one nostril was caught up with a horsehair and a little fish-hook. Yes, he came to the same end; quite the natural end here, I assure you. He forged wills, this blade did, if he didn’t also put the supposed testators to sleep too. You were a gentlemanly Cove, though’ (Mr Wemmick was again apostrophizing), `and you said you could write Greek. Yah, Bounceable! What a liar you were!I never met such a liar as you!’ Before putting his late friend on his shelf again, Wemmick touched the largest of his mourning rings and said, `Sent out to buy it for me, only the day before.’
While he was putting up the other cast and coming down from the chair, the thought crossed my mind that all his personal jewellery was derived from like sources. As he had shown no diffidence on the subject, I ventured on the liberty of asking him the question, when he stood before me, dusting his hands.