Great Expectations
She was at his elbow when he addressed her, putting a dish upon the
table. As she withdrew her hands from it, she fell back a step or two,
nervously muttering some excuse. And a certain action of her fingers,
as she spoke, arrested my attention.
“What’s the matter?” said Mr. Jaggers.
“Nothing. Only the subject we were speaking of,” said I, “was rather
painful to me.”
The action of her fingers was like the action of knitting. She stood
looking at her master, not understanding whether she was free to go, or
whether he had more to say to her and would call her back if she did
go. Her look was very intent. Surely, I had seen exactly such eyes and
such hands on a memorable occasion very lately!
He dismissed her, and she glided out of the room. But she remained
before me as plainly as if she were still there. I looked at those
hands, I looked at those eyes, I looked at that flowing hair; and I
compared them with other hands, other eyes, other hair, that I knew of,
and with what those might be after twenty years of a brutal husband and
a stormy life. I looked again at those hands and eyes of the
housekeeper, and thought of the inexplicable feeling that had come over
me when I last walked—not alone—in the ruined garden, and through the
deserted brewery. I thought how the same feeling had come back when I
saw a face looking at me, and a hand waving to me from a stage-coach
window; and how it had come back again and had flashed about me like
lightning, when I had passed in a carriage—not alone—through a sudden
glare of light in a dark street. I thought how one link of association
had helped that identification in the theatre, and how such a link,
wanting before, had been riveted for me now, when I had passed by a
chance swift from Estella’s name to the fingers with their knitting
action, and the attentive eyes. And I felt absolutely certain that this
woman was Estella’s mother.
Mr. Jaggers had seen me with Estella, and was not likely to have missed
the sentiments I had been at no pains to conceal. He nodded when I said
the subject was painful to me, clapped me on the back, put round the
wine again, and went on with his dinner.
Only twice more did the housekeeper reappear, and then her stay in the
room was very short, and Mr. Jaggers was sharp with her. But her hands
were Estella’s hands, and her eyes were Estella’s eyes, and if she had
reappeared a hundred times I could have been neither more sure nor less
sure that my conviction was the truth.
It was a dull evening, for Wemmick drew his wine, when it came round,
quite as a matter of business,—just as he might have drawn his salary
when that came round,—and with his eyes on his chief, sat in a state of
perpetual readiness for cross-examination. As to the quantity of wine,
his post-office was as indifferent and ready as any other post-office
for its quantity of letters. From my point of view, he was the wrong
twin all the time, and only externally like the Wemmick of Walworth.
We took our leave early, and left together. Even when we were groping
among Mr. Jaggers’s stock of boots for our hats, I felt that the right
twin was on his way back; and we had not gone half a dozen yards down
Gerrard Street in the Walworth direction, before I found that I was
walking arm in arm with the right twin, and that the wrong twin had
evaporated into the evening air.
“Well!” said Wemmick, “that’s over! He’s a wonderful man, without his
living likeness; but I feel that I have to screw myself up when I dine
with him,—and I dine more comfortably unscrewed.”
I felt that this was a good statement of the case, and told him so.
“Wouldn’t say it to anybody but yourself,” he answered. “I know that
what is said between you and me goes no further.”
I asked him if he had ever seen Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter, Mrs.
Bentley Drummle. He said no. To avoid being too abrupt, I then spoke of
the Aged and of Miss Skiffins. He looked rather sly when I mentioned
Miss Skiffins, and stopped in the street to blow his nose, with a roll
of the head, and a flourish not quite free from latent boastfulness.
“Wemmick,” said I, “do you remember telling me, before I first went to
Mr. Jaggers’s private house, to notice that housekeeper?”
“Did I?” he replied. “Ah, I dare say I did. Deuce take me,” he added,
suddenly, “I know I did. I find I am not quite unscrewed yet.”
“A wild beast tamed, you called her.”
“And what do _you_ call her?”
“The same. How did Mr. Jaggers tame her, Wemmick?”
“That’s his secret. She has been with him many a long year.”
“I wish you would tell me her story. I feel a particular interest in
being acquainted with it. You know that what is said between you and me
goes no further.”
“Well!” Wemmick replied, “I don’t know her story,—that is, I don’t know
all of it. But what I do know I’ll tell you. We are in our private and
personal capacities, of course.”
“Of course.”
“A score or so of years ago, that woman was tried at the Old Bailey for
murder, and was acquitted. She was a very handsome young woman, and I
believe had some gypsy blood in her. Anyhow, it was hot enough when it
was up, as you may suppose.”
“But she was acquitted.”
“Mr. Jaggers was for her,” pursued Wemmick, with a look full of
meaning, “and worked the case in a way quite astonishing. It was a
desperate case, and it was comparatively early days with him then, and
he worked it to general admiration; in fact, it may almost be said to
have made him. He worked it himself at the police-office, day after day
for many days, contending against even a committal; and at the trial
where he couldn’t work it himself, sat under counsel, and—every one
knew—put in all the salt and pepper. The murdered person was a woman,—a
woman a good ten years older, very much larger, and very much stronger.
It was a case of jealousy. They both led tramping lives, and this woman
in Gerrard Street here had been married very young, over the broomstick
(as we say), to a tramping man, and was a perfect fury in point of
jealousy. The murdered woman,—more a match for the man, certainly, in
point of years—was found dead in a barn near Hounslow Heath. There had
been a violent struggle, perhaps a fight. She was bruised and scratched
and torn, and had been held by the throat, at last, and choked. Now,
there was no reasonable evidence to implicate any person but this
woman, and on the improbabilities of her having been able to do it Mr.
Jaggers principally rested his case. You may be sure,” said Wemmick,
touching me on the sleeve, “that he never dwelt upon the strength of
her hands then, though he sometimes does now.”
I had told Wemmick of his showing us her wrists, that day of the dinner
party.
“Well, sir!” Wemmick went on; “it happened—happened, don’t you
see?—that this woman was so very artfully dressed from the time of her
apprehension, that she looked much slighter than she really was; in
particular, her sleeves are always remembered to have been so skilfully
contrived that her arms had quite a delicate look. She had only a
bruise or two about her,—nothing for a tramp,—but the backs of her
hands were lacerated, and the question was, Was it with finger-nails?
Now, Mr. Jaggers showed that she had struggled through a great lot of
brambles which were not as high as her face; but which she could not
have got through and kept her hands out of; and bits of those brambles
were actually found in her skin and put in evidence, as well as the
fact that the brambles in question were found on examination to have
been broken through, and to have little shreds of her dress and little
spots of blood upon them here and there. But the boldest point he made
was this: it was attempted to be set up, in proof of her jealousy, that
she was under strong suspicion of having, at about the time of the
murder, frantically destroyed her child by this man—some three years
old—to revenge herself upon him. Mr. Jaggers worked that in this way:
“We say these are not marks of finger-nails, but marks of brambles, and
we show you the brambles. You say they are marks of finger-nails, and
you set up the hypothesis that she destroyed her child. You must accept
all consequences of that hypothesis. For anything we know, she may have
destroyed her child, and the child in clinging to her may have
scratched her hands. What then? You are not trying her for the murder
of her child; why don’t you? As to this case, if you _will_ have
scratches, we say that, for anything we know, you may have accounted
for them, assuming for the sake of argument that you have not invented
them?” “To sum up, sir,” said Wemmick, “Mr. Jaggers was altogether too
many for the jury, and they gave in.”
“Has she been in his service ever since?”
“Yes; but not only that,” said Wemmick, “she went into his service
immediately after her acquittal, tamed as she is now. She has since
been taught one thing and another in the way of her duties, but she was
tamed from the beginning.”
“Do you remember the sex of the child?”
“Said to have been a girl.”
“You have nothing more to say to me to-night?”
“Nothing. I got your letter and destroyed it. Nothing.”
We exchanged a cordial good-night, and I went home, with new matter for
my thoughts, though with no relief from the old.
Chapter XLIX.
Putting Miss Havisham’s note in my pocket, that it might serve as my
credentials for so soon reappearing at Satis House, in case her
waywardness should lead her to express any surprise at seeing me, I
went down again by the coach next day. But I alighted at the Halfway
House, and breakfasted there, and walked the rest of the distance; for
I sought to get into the town quietly by the unfrequented ways, and to
leave it in the same manner.
The best light of the day was gone when I passed along the quiet
echoing courts behind the High Street. The nooks of ruin where the old
monks had once had their refectories and gardens, and where the strong
walls were now pressed into the service of humble sheds and stables,
were almost as silent as the old monks in their graves. The cathedral
chimes had at once a sadder and a more remote sound to me, as I hurried
on avoiding observation, than they had ever had before; so, the swell
of the old organ was borne to my ears like funeral music; and the
rooks, as they hovered about the grey tower and swung in the bare high
trees of the priory garden, seemed to call to me that the place was
changed, and that Estella was gone out of it for ever.
An elderly woman, whom I had seen before as one of the servants who
lived in the supplementary house across the back courtyard, opened the
gate. The lighted candle stood in the dark passage within, as of old,
and I took it up and ascended the staircase alone. Miss Havisham was
not in her own room, but was in the larger room across the landing.
Looking in at the door, after knocking in vain, I saw her sitting on
the hearth in a ragged chair, close before, and lost in the
contemplation of, the ashy fire.
Doing as I had often done, I went in, and stood touching the old
chimney-piece, where she could see me when she raised her eyes. There
was an air of utter loneliness upon her, that would have moved me to
pity though she had wilfully done me a deeper injury than I could
charge her with. As I stood compassionating her, and thinking how, in
the progress of time, I too had come to be a part of the wrecked
fortunes of that house, her eyes rested on me. She stared, and said in
a low voice, “Is it real?”
“It is I, Pip. Mr. Jaggers gave me your note yesterday, and I have lost
no time.”
“Thank you. Thank you.”
As I brought another of the ragged chairs to the hearth and sat down, I
remarked a new expression on her face, as if she were afraid of me.