Great Expectations
opinion of Mr. Jaggers’s powers. Keep your eye on it.”
I told him I would do so, with all the interest and curiosity that his
preparation awakened. As I was taking my departure, he asked me if I
would like to devote five minutes to seeing Mr. Jaggers “at it?”
For several reasons, and not least because I didn’t clearly know what
Mr. Jaggers would be found to be “at,” I replied in the affirmative. We
dived into the City, and came up in a crowded police-court, where a
blood-relation (in the murderous sense) of the deceased, with the
fanciful taste in brooches, was standing at the bar, uncomfortably
chewing something; while my guardian had a woman under examination or
cross-examination,—I don’t know which,—and was striking her, and the
bench, and everybody present, with awe. If anybody, of whatsoever
degree, said a word that he didn’t approve of, he instantly required to
have it “taken down.” If anybody wouldn’t make an admission, he said,
“I’ll have it out of you!” and if anybody made an admission, he said,
“Now I have got you!” The magistrates shivered under a single bite of
his finger. Thieves and thief-takers hung in dread rapture on his
words, and shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned in their
direction. Which side he was on I couldn’t make out, for he seemed to
me to be grinding the whole place in a mill; I only know that when I
stole out on tiptoe, he was not on the side of the bench; for, he was
making the legs of the old gentleman who presided, quite convulsive
under the table, by his denunciations of his conduct as the
representative of British law and justice in that chair that day.
Chapter XXV.
Bentley Drummle, who was so sulky a fellow that he even took up a book
as if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up an
acquaintance in a more agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement, and
comprehension,—in the sluggish complexion of his face, and in the
large, awkward tongue that seemed to loll about in his mouth as he
himself lolled about in a room,—he was idle, proud, niggardly,
reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in Somersetshire,
who had nursed this combination of qualities until they made the
discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead. Thus, Bentley
Drummle had come to Mr. Pocket when he was a head taller than that
gentleman, and half a dozen heads thicker than most gentlemen.
Startop had been spoilt by a weak mother and kept at home when he ought
to have been at school, but he was devotedly attached to her, and
admired her beyond measure. He had a woman’s delicacy of feature, and
was—“as you may see, though you never saw her,” said Herbert to
me—“exactly like his mother.” It was but natural that I should take to
him much more kindly than to Drummle, and that, even in the earliest
evenings of our boating, he and I should pull homeward abreast of one
another, conversing from boat to boat, while Bentley Drummle came up in
our wake alone, under the overhanging banks and among the rushes. He
would always creep in-shore like some uncomfortable amphibious
creature, even when the tide would have sent him fast upon his way; and
I always think of him as coming after us in the dark or by the
back-water, when our own two boats were breaking the sunset or the
moonlight in mid-stream.
Herbert was my intimate companion and friend. I presented him with a
half-share in my boat, which was the occasion of his often coming down
to Hammersmith; and my possession of a half-share in his chambers often
took me up to London. We used to walk between the two places at all
hours. I have an affection for the road yet (though it is not so
pleasant a road as it was then), formed in the impressibility of
untried youth and hope.
When I had been in Mr. Pocket’s family a month or two, Mr. and Mrs.
Camilla 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, who called her rigidity
religion, and her liver love. These people hated me with the hatred of
cupidity and disappointment. As a matter of course, they fawned upon me
in my prosperity with the basest meanness. Towards Mr. Pocket, as a
grown-up infant with no notion of his own interests, they showed the
complacent forbearance I had heard them express. Mrs. Pocket they held
in contempt; but they allowed the poor soul to have been heavily
disappointed in life, because that shed a feeble reflected light upon
themselves.
These were the surroundings among which I settled down, and applied
myself to my education. I soon contracted expensive habits, and began
to spend an amount of money that within a few short months I should
have thought almost fabulous; but through good and evil I stuck to my
books. There was no other merit in this, than my having sense enough to
feel my deficiencies. Between Mr. Pocket and Herbert I got on fast;
and, with one or the other always at my elbow to give me the start I
wanted, and clear obstructions out of my road, I must have been as
great a dolt as Drummle if I had done less.
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.”
“Very much,” was Wemmick’s reply, “for I have had my legs under the
desk all day, and shall be glad to stretch them. Now, I’ll tell you
what I have got for supper, Mr. Pip. I have got a stewed steak,—which
is of home preparation,—and a cold roast fowl,—which is from the
cook’s-shop. I think it’s tender, because the master of the shop was a
Juryman in some cases of ours the other day, and we let him down easy.
I reminded him of it when I bought the fowl, and I said, “Pick us out a
good one, old Briton, because if we had chosen to keep you in the box
another day or two, we could easily have done it.” He said to that,
“Let me make you a present of the best fowl in the shop.” I let him, of
course. As far as it goes, it’s property and portable. You don’t object
to an aged parent, I hope?”
I really thought he was still speaking of the fowl, until he added,
“Because I have got an aged parent at my place.” I then said what
politeness required.
“So, you haven’t dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?” he pursued, as we walked
along.
“Not yet.”
“He told me so this afternoon when he heard you were coming. I expect
you’ll have an invitation to-morrow. He’s going to ask your pals, too.
Three of ’em; ain’t there?”
Although I was not in the habit of counting Drummle as one of my
intimate associates, I answered, “Yes.”
“Well, he’s going to ask the whole gang,”—I hardly felt complimented by
the word,—“and whatever he gives you, he’ll give you good. Don’t look
forward to variety, but you’ll have excellence. And there’s another rum
thing in his house,” proceeded Wemmick, after a moment’s pause, as if
the remark followed on the housekeeper understood; “he never lets a
door or window be fastened at night.”
“Is he never robbed?”
“That’s it!” returned Wemmick. “He says, and gives it out publicly, “I
want to see the man who’ll rob _me_.” Lord bless you, I have heard him,
a hundred times, if I have heard him once, say to regular cracksmen in
our front office, “You know where I live; now, no bolt is ever drawn
there; why don’t you do a stroke of business with me? Come; can’t I
tempt you?” Not a man of them, sir, would be bold enough to try it on,
for love or money.”
“They dread him so much?” said I.
“Dread him,” said Wemmick. “I believe you they dread him. Not but what
he’s artful, even in his defiance of them. No silver, sir. Britannia
metal, every spoon.”
“So they wouldn’t have much,” I observed, “even if they—”
“Ah! But _he_ would have much,” said Wemmick, cutting me short, “and
they know it. He’d have their lives, and the lives of scores of ’em.
He’d have all he could get. And it’s impossible to say what he couldn’t
get, if he gave his mind to it.”
I was falling into meditation on my guardian’s greatness, when Wemmick
remarked:—
“As to the absence of plate, that’s only his natural depth, you know. A
river’s its natural depth, and he’s his natural depth. Look at his
watch-chain. That’s real enough.”
“It’s very massive,” said I.
“Massive?” repeated Wemmick. “I think so. And his watch is a gold
repeater, and worth a hundred pound if it’s worth a penny. Mr. Pip,
there are about seven hundred thieves in this town who know all about
that watch; there’s not a man, a woman, or a child, among them, who
wouldn’t identify the smallest link in that chain, and drop it as if it
was red hot, if inveigled into touching it.”
At first with such discourse, and afterwards with conversation of a
more general nature, did Mr. Wemmick and I beguile the time and the
road, until he gave me to understand that we had arrived in the
district of Walworth.
It appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and little
gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement.
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 like a battery
mounted with guns.
“My own doing,” said Wemmick. “Looks pretty; don’t it?”
I highly commended it, I think it was the smallest house I ever saw;
with the queerest gothic windows (by far the greater part of them
sham), and a gothic door almost too small to get in at.
“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 up—so—and cut off the communication.”
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 and made it fast; smiling as he did so, with a relish and
not merely mechanically.
“At nine o’clock every night, Greenwich time,” said Wemmick, “the gun
fires. There he is, you see! And when you hear him go, I think you’ll
say he’s a Stinger.”
The piece of ordnance referred to, was mounted in a separate fortress,
constructed of lattice-work. It was protected from the weather by an
ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature of an umbrella.
“Then, at the back,” said Wemmick, “out of sight, so as not to impede
the idea of fortifications,—for it’s a principle with me, if you have
an idea, carry it out and keep it up,—I don’t know whether that’s your
opinion—”
I said, decidedly.
“—At the back, there’s a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits; then, I
knock together my own little frame, you see, and grow cucumbers; and
you’ll judge at supper what sort of a salad I can raise. So, sir,” said
Wemmick, smiling again, but seriously too, as he shook his head, “if
you can suppose the little place besieged, it would hold out a devil of
a time in point of provisions.”
Then, he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but which was
approached by such ingenious twists of path that it took quite a long
time to get at; 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. This piece of water (with an island in the middle which
might have been the salad for supper) was of a circular form, and he
had constructed a fountain in it, which, when you set a little mill
going and took a cork out of a pipe, played to that powerful extent
that it made the back of your hand quite wet.
“I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my