Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Chapter 32
One day when I was busy with my books and
Mr. Pocket, I received a note by the post,
the mere outside of which threw me into a
great flutter; for, though I had never seen
the handwriting in which it was addressed,
I divined whose hand it was.
It had no set beginning, as Dear Mr. Pip,
or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear Anything,
but ran thus:—
“I am to come to London the day after to-morrow
by the midday coach.
I believe it was settled you should meet me?
At all events Miss Havisham has that impression,
and I write in obedience to it.
She sends you her regard.
“Yours, ESTELLA.”
If there had been time, I should probably
have ordered several suits of clothes for
this occasion; but as there was not, I was
fain to be content with those I had.
My appetite vanished instantly, and I knew
no peace or rest until the day arrived.
Not that its arrival brought me either; for,
then I was worse than ever, and began haunting
the coach-office in Wood Street, Cheapside,
before the coach had left the Blue Boar in
our town.
For all that I knew this perfectly well, I
still felt as if it were not safe to let the
coach-office be out of my sight longer than
five minutes at a time; and in this condition
of unreason I had performed the first half-hour
of a watch of four or five hours, when Wemmick
ran against me.
“Halloa, Mr. Pip,” said he; “how do
you do?
I should hardly have thought this was your
beat.”
I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody
who was coming up by coach, and I inquired
after the Castle and the Aged.
“Both flourishing thankye,” said Wemmick,
“and particularly the Aged.
He's in wonderful feather.
He'll be eighty-two next birthday.
I have a notion of firing eighty-two times,
if the neighborhood shouldn't complain, and
that cannon of mine should prove equal to
the pressure.
However, this is not London talk.
Where do you think I am going to?”
“To the office?” said I, for he was tending
in that direction.
“Next thing to it,” returned Wemmick,
“I am going to Newgate.
We are in a banker's-parcel case just at present,
and I have been down the road taking a squint
at the scene of action, and thereupon must
have a word or two with our client.”
“Did your client commit the robbery?”
I asked.
“Bless your soul and body, no,” answered
Wemmick, very drily.
“But he is accused of it.
So might you or I be.
Either of us might be accused of it, you know.”
“Only neither of us is,” I remarked.
“Yah!” said Wemmick, touching me on the
breast with his forefinger; “you're a deep
one, Mr. Pip!
Would you like to have a look at Newgate?
Have you time to spare?”
I had so much time to spare, that the proposal
came as a relief, notwithstanding its irreconcilability
with my latent desire to keep my eye on the
coach-office.
Muttering that I would make the inquiry whether
I had time to walk with him, I went into the
office, and ascertained from the clerk with
the nicest precision and much to the trying
of his temper, the earliest moment at which
the coach could be expected,—which I knew
beforehand, quite as well as he.
I then rejoined Mr. Wemmick, and affecting
to consult my watch, and to be surprised by
the information I had received, accepted his
offer.
We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we
passed through the lodge where some fetters
were hanging up on the bare walls among the
prison rules, into the interior of the jail.
At that time jails were much neglected, and
the period of exaggerated reaction consequent
on all public wrongdoing—and which is always
its heaviest and longest punishment—was
still far off.
So, felons were not lodged and fed better
than soldiers (to say nothing of paupers),
and seldom set fire to their prisons with
the excusable object of improving the flavor
of their soup.
It was visiting time when Wemmick took me
in, and a potman was going his rounds with
beer; and the prisoners, behind bars in yards,
were buying beer, and talking to friends;
and a frowzy, ugly, disorderly, depressing
scene it was.
It struck me that Wemmick walked among the
prisoners much as a gardener might walk among
his plants.
This was first put into my head by his seeing
a shoot that had come up in the night, and
saying, “What, Captain Tom?
Are you there?
Ah, indeed!” and also, “Is that Black
Bill behind the cistern?
Why I didn't look for you these two months;
how do you find yourself?”
Equally in his stopping at the bars and attending
to anxious whisperers,—always singly,—Wemmick
with his post-office in an immovable state,
looked at them while in conference, as if
he were taking particular notice of the advance
they had made, since last observed, towards
coming out in full blow at their trial.
He was highly popular, and I found that he
took the familiar department of Mr. Jaggers's
business; though something of the state of
Mr. Jaggers hung about him too, forbidding
approach beyond certain limits.
His personal recognition of each successive
client was comprised in a nod, and in his
settling his hat a little easier on his head
with both hands, and then tightening the post-office,
and putting his hands in his pockets.
In one or two instances there was a difficulty
respecting the raising of fees, and then Mr.
Wemmick, backing as far as possible from the
insufficient money produced, said, “it's
no use, my boy.
I'm only a subordinate.
I can't take it.
Don't go on in that way with a subordinate.
If you are unable to make up your quantum,
my boy, you had better address yourself to
a principal; there are plenty of principals
in the profession, you know, and what is not
worth the while of one, may be worth the while
of another; that's my recommendation to you,
speaking as a subordinate.
Don't try on useless measures.
Why should you?
Now, who's next?”
Thus, we walked through Wemmick's greenhouse,
until he turned to me and said, “Notice
the man I shall shake hands with.”
I should have done so, without the preparation,
as he had shaken hands with no one yet.
Almost as soon as he had spoken, a portly
upright man (whom I can see now, as I write)
in a well-worn olive-colored frock-coat, with
a peculiar pallor overspreading the red in
his complexion, and eyes that went wandering
about when he tried to fix them, came up to
a corner of the bars, and put his hand to
his hat—which had a greasy and fatty surface
like cold broth—with a half-serious and
half-jocose military salute.
“Colonel, to you!” said Wemmick; “how
are you, Colonel?”
“All right, Mr. Wemmick.”
“Everything was done that could be done,
but the evidence was too strong for us, Colonel.”
“Yes, it was too strong, sir,—but I don't
care.”
“No, no,” said Wemmick, coolly, “you
don't care.”
Then, turning to me, “Served His Majesty
this man.
Was a soldier in the line and bought his discharge.”
I said, “Indeed?” and the man's eyes looked
at me, and then looked over my head, and then
looked all round me, and then he drew his
hand across his lips and laughed.
“I think I shall be out of this on Monday,
sir,” he said to Wemmick.
“Perhaps,” returned my friend, “but
there's no knowing.”
“I am glad to have the chance of bidding
you good-bye, Mr. Wemmick,” said the man,
stretching out his hand between two bars.
“Thankye,” said Wemmick, shaking hands
with him.
“Same to you, Colonel.”
“If what I had upon me when taken had been
real, Mr. Wemmick,” said the man, unwilling
to let his hand go, “I should have asked
the favor of your wearing another ring—in
acknowledgment of your attentions.”
“I'll accept the will for the deed,” said
Wemmick.
“By the by; you were quite a pigeon-fancier.”
The man looked up at the sky.
“I am told you had a remarkable breed of
tumblers.
Could you commission any friend of yours to
bring me a pair, if you've no further use
for 'em?”
“It shall be done, sir.”
“All right,” said Wemmick, “they shall
be taken care of.
Good afternoon, Colonel.
Good-bye!”
They shook hands again, and as we walked away
Wemmick said to me, “A Coiner, a very good
workman.
The Recorder's report is made to-day, and
he is sure to be executed on Monday.
Still you see, as far as it goes, a pair of
pigeons are portable property all the same.”
With that, he looked back, and nodded at this
dead plant, and then cast his eyes about him
in walking out of the yard, as if he were
considering what other pot would go best in
its place.
As we came out of the prison through the lodge,
I found that the great importance of my guardian
was appreciated by the turnkeys, no less than
by those whom they held in charge.
“Well, Mr. Wemmick,” said the turnkey,
who kept us between the two studded and spiked
lodge gates, and who carefully locked one
before he unlocked the other, “what's Mr.
Jaggers going to do with that water-side murder?
Is he going to make it manslaughter, or what's
he going to make of it?”
“Why don't you ask him?”
returned Wemmick.
“O yes, I dare say!” said the turnkey.
“Now, that's the way with them here, Mr.
Pip,” remarked Wemmick, turning to me with
his post-office elongated.
“They don't mind what they ask of me, the
subordinate; but you'll never catch 'em asking
any questions of my principal.”
“Is this young gentleman one of the 'prentices
or articled ones of your office?” asked
the turnkey, with a grin at Mr. Wemmick's
humor.
“There he goes again, you see!” cried
Wemmick, “I told you so!
Asks another question of the subordinate before
his first is dry!
Well, supposing Mr. Pip is one of them?”
“Why then,” said the turnkey, grinning
again, “he knows what Mr. Jaggers is.”
“Yah!” cried Wemmick, suddenly hitting
out at the turnkey in a facetious way, “you're
dumb as one of your own keys when you have
to do with my principal, you know you are.
Let us out, you old fox, or I'll get him to
bring an action against you for false imprisonment.”
The turnkey laughed, and gave us good day,
and stood laughing at us over the spikes of
the wicket when we descended the steps into
the street.
“Mind you, Mr. Pip,” said Wemmick, gravely
in my ear, as he took my arm to be more confidential;
“I don't know that Mr. Jaggers does a better
thing than the way in which he keeps himself
so high.
He's always so high.
His constant height is of a piece with his
immense abilities.
That Colonel durst no more take leave of him,
than that turnkey durst ask him his intentions
respecting a case.
Then, between his height and them, he slips
in his subordinate,—don't you see?—and
so he has 'em, soul and body.”
I was very much impressed, and not for the
first time, by my guardian's subtlety.
To confess the truth, I very heartily wished,
and not for the first time, that I had had
some other guardian of minor abilities.
Mr. Wemmick and I parted at the office in
Little Britain, where suppliants for Mr. Jaggers's
notice were lingering about as usual, and
I returned to my watch in the street of the
coach-office, with some three hours on hand.
I consumed the whole time in thinking how
strange it was that I should be encompassed
by all this taint of prison and crime; that,
in my childhood out on our lonely marshes
on a winter evening, I should have first encountered
it; that, it should have reappeared on two
occasions, starting out like a stain that
was faded but not gone; that, it should in
this new way pervade my fortune and advancement.
While my mind was thus engaged, I thought
of the beautiful young Estella, proud and
refined, coming towards me, and I thought
with absolute abhorrence of the contrast between
the jail and her.
I wished that Wemmick had not met me, or that
I had not yielded to him and gone with him,
so that, of all days in the year on this day,
I might not have had Newgate in my breath
and on my clothes.
I beat the prison dust off my feet as I sauntered
to and fro, and I shook it out of my dress,
and I exhaled its air from my lungs.
So contaminated did I feel, remembering who
was coming, that the coach came quickly after
all, and I was not yet free from the soiling
consciousness of Mr. Wemmick's conservatory,
when I saw her face at the coach window and
her hand waving to me.
What was the nameless shadow which again in
that one instant had passed?
End of chapter 32
