Great Expectations
in her face, a face rising out of the caldron. Years afterwards, I made
a dreadful likeness of that woman, by causing a face that had no other
natural resemblance to it than it derived from flowing hair to pass
behind a bowl of flaming spirits in a dark room.
Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by her own
striking appearance and by Wemmick’s preparation, I observed that
whenever she was in the room she kept her eyes attentively on my
guardian, and that she would remove her hands from any dish she put
before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded his calling her back, and
wanted him to speak when she was nigh, if he had anything to say. I
fancied that I could detect in his manner a consciousness of this, and
a purpose of always holding her in suspense.
Dinner went off gayly, and although my guardian seemed to follow rather
than originate subjects, I knew that he wrenched the weakest part of
our dispositions out of us. For myself, I found that I was expressing
my tendency to lavish expenditure, and to patronise Herbert, and to
boast of my great prospects, before I quite knew that I had opened my
lips. It was so with all of us, but with no one more than Drummle: the
development of whose inclination to gird in a grudging and suspicious
way at the rest, was screwed out of him before the fish was taken off.
It was not then, but when we had got to the cheese, that our
conversation turned upon our rowing feats, and that Drummle was rallied
for coming up behind of a night in that slow amphibious way of his.
Drummle upon this, informed our host that he much preferred our room to
our company, and that as to skill he was more than our master, and that
as to strength he could scatter us like chaff. By some invisible
agency, my guardian wound him up to a pitch little short of ferocity
about this trifle; and he fell to baring and spanning his arm to show
how muscular it was, and we all fell to baring and spanning our arms in
a ridiculous manner.
Now the housekeeper was at that time clearing the table; my guardian,
taking no heed of her, but with the side of his face turned from her,
was leaning back in his chair biting the side of his forefinger and
showing an interest in Drummle, that, to me, was quite inexplicable.
Suddenly, he clapped his large hand on the housekeeper’s, like a trap,
as she stretched it across the table. So suddenly and smartly did he do
this, that we all stopped in our foolish contention.
“If you talk of strength,” said Mr. Jaggers, “_I_’ll show you a wrist.
Molly, let them see your wrist.”
Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put her other
hand behind her waist. “Master,” she said, in a low voice, with her
eyes attentively and entreatingly fixed upon him. “Don’t.”
“_I_’ll show you a wrist,” repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an immovable
determination to show it. “Molly, let them see your wrist.”
“Master,” she again murmured. “Please!”
“Molly,” said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately looking
at the opposite side of the room, “let them see _both_ your wrists.
Show them. Come!”
He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up on the table. She
brought her other hand from behind her, and held the two out side by
side. The last wrist was much disfigured,—deeply scarred and scarred
across and across. When she held her hands out she took her eyes from
Mr. Jaggers, and turned them watchfully on every one of the rest of us
in succession.
“There’s power here,” said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the sinews
with his forefinger. “Very few men have the power of wrist that this
woman has. It’s remarkable what mere force of grip there is in these
hands. I have had occasion to notice many hands; but I never saw
stronger in that respect, man’s or woman’s, than these.”
While he said these words in a leisurely, critical style, she continued
to look at every one of us in regular succession as we sat. The moment
he ceased, she looked at him again. “That’ll do, Molly,” said Mr.
Jaggers, giving her a slight nod; “you have been admired, and can go.”
She withdrew her hands and went out of the room, and Mr. Jaggers,
putting the decanters on from his dumb-waiter, filled his glass and
passed round the wine.
“At half-past nine, gentlemen,” said he, “we must break up. Pray make
the best use of your time. I am glad to see you all. Mr. Drummle, I
drink to you.”
If his object in singling out Drummle were to bring him out still more,
it perfectly succeeded. In a sulky triumph, Drummle showed his morose
depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and more offensive degree,
until he became downright intolerable. Through all his stages, Mr.
Jaggers followed him with the same strange interest. He actually seemed
to serve as a zest to Mr. Jaggers’s wine.
In our boyish want of discretion I dare say we took too much to drink,
and I know we talked too much. We became particularly hot upon some
boorish sneer of Drummle’s, to the effect that we were too free with
our money. It led to my remarking, with more zeal than discretion, that
it came with a bad grace from him, to whom Startop had lent money in my
presence but a week or so before.
“Well,” retorted Drummle; “he’ll be paid.”
“I don’t mean to imply that he won’t,” said I, “but it might make you
hold your tongue about us and our money, I should think.”
“_You_ should think!” retorted Drummle. “Oh Lord!”
“I dare say,” I went on, meaning to be very severe, “that you wouldn’t
lend money to any of us if we wanted it.”
“You are right,” said Drummle. “I wouldn’t lend one of you a sixpence.
I wouldn’t lend anybody a sixpence.”
“Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I should say.”
“_You_ should say,” repeated Drummle. “Oh Lord!”
This was so very aggravating—the more especially as I found myself
making no way against his surly obtuseness—that I said, disregarding
Herbert’s efforts to check me,—
“Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I’ll tell you what
passed between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed that money.”
“_I_ don’t want to know what passed between Herbert there and you,”
growled Drummle. And I think he added in a lower growl, that we might
both go to the devil and shake ourselves.
“I’ll tell you, however,” said I, “whether you want to know or not. We
said that as you put it in your pocket very glad to get it, you seemed
to be immensely amused at his being so weak as to lend it.”
Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing in our faces, with his hands
in his pockets and his round shoulders raised; plainly signifying that
it was quite true, and that he despised us as asses all.
Hereupon Startop took him in hand, though with a much better grace than
I had shown, and exhorted him to be a little more agreeable. Startop,
being a lively, bright young fellow, and Drummle being the exact
opposite, the latter was always disposed to resent him as a direct
personal affront. He now retorted in a coarse, lumpish way, and Startop
tried to turn the discussion aside with some small pleasantry that made
us all laugh. Resenting this little success more than anything,
Drummle, without any threat or warning, pulled his hands out of his
pockets, dropped his round shoulders, swore, took up a large glass, and
would have flung it at his adversary’s head, but for our entertainer’s
dexterously seizing it at the instant when it was raised for that
purpose.
“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting down the glass, and
hauling out his gold repeater by its massive chain, “I am exceedingly
sorry to announce that it’s half past nine.”
On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we got to the street door,
Startop was cheerily calling Drummle “old boy,” as if nothing had
happened. But the old boy was so far from responding, that he would not
even walk to Hammersmith on the same side of the way; so Herbert and I,
who remained in town, saw them going down the street on opposite sides;
Startop leading, and Drummle lagging behind in the shadow of the
houses, much as he was wont to follow in his boat.
As the door was not yet shut, I thought I would leave Herbert there for
a moment, and run upstairs again to say a word to my guardian. I found
him in his dressing-room surrounded by his stock of boots, already hard
at it, washing his hands of us.
I told him I had come up again to say how sorry I was that anything
disagreeable should have occurred, and that I hoped he would not blame
me much.
“Pooh!” said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through the
water-drops; “it’s nothing, Pip. I like that Spider though.”
He had turned towards me now, and was shaking his head, and blowing,
and towelling himself.
“I am glad you like him, sir,” said I—“but I don’t.”
“No, no,” my guardian assented; “don’t have too much to do with him.
Keep as clear of him as you can. But I like the fellow, Pip; he is one
of the true sort. Why, if I was a fortune-teller—”
Looking out of the towel, he caught my eye.
“But I am not a fortune-teller,” he said, letting his head drop into a
festoon of towel, and towelling away at his two ears. “You know what I
am, don’t you? Good night, Pip.”
“Good night, sir.”
In about a month after that, the Spider’s time with Mr. Pocket was up
for good, and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs. Pocket, he
went home to the family hole.
Chapter XXVII.
“MY DEAR MR PIP:—
“I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for to let you know that he is
going to London in company with Mr. Wopsle and would be glad if
agreeable to be allowed to see you. He would call at Barnard’s Hotel
Tuesday morning at nine o’clock, when if not agreeable please leave
word. Your poor sister is much the same as when you left. We talk of
you in the kitchen every night, and wonder what you are saying and
doing. If now considered in the light of a liberty, excuse it for the
love of poor old days. No more, dear Mr. Pip, from
“Your ever obliged, and affectionate servant,
“BIDDY.”
“P.S. He wishes me most particular to write _what larks_. He says you
will understand. I hope and do not doubt it will be agreeable to see
him, even though a gentleman, for you had ever a good heart, and he is
a worthy, worthy man. I have read him all, excepting only the last
little sentence, and he wishes me most particular to write again _what
larks_.”
I received this letter by the post on Monday morning, and therefore its
appointment was for next day. Let me confess exactly with what feelings
I looked forward to Joe’s coming.
Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; no; with
considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense of
incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly
would have paid money. My greatest reassurance was that he was coming
to Barnard’s Inn, not to Hammersmith, and consequently would not fall
in Bentley Drummle’s way. I had little objection to his being seen by
Herbert or his father, for both of whom I had a respect; but I had the
sharpest sensitiveness as to his being seen by Drummle, whom I held in
contempt. So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are
usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.
I had begun to be always decorating the chambers in some quite
unnecessary and inappropriate way or other, and very expensive those
wrestles with Barnard proved to be. By this time, the rooms were vastly
different from what I had found them, and I enjoyed the honour of
occupying a few prominent pages in the books of a neighbouring
upholsterer. I had got on so fast of late, that I had even started a
boy in boots,—top boots,—in bondage and slavery to whom I might have
been said to pass my days. For, after I had made the monster (out of