Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Chapter 26
It fell out as Wemmick had told me it would,
that I had an early opportunity of comparing
my guardian's establishment with that of his
cashier and clerk.
My guardian was in his room, washing his hands
with his scented soap, when I went into the
office from Walworth; and he called me to
him, and gave me the invitation for myself
and friends which Wemmick had prepared me
to receive.
“No ceremony,” he stipulated, “and no
dinner dress, and say to-morrow.”
I asked him where we should come to (for I
had no idea where he lived), and I believe
it was in his general objection to make anything
like an admission, that he replied, “Come
here, and I'll take you home with me.”
I embrace this opportunity of remarking that
he washed his clients off, as if he were a
surgeon or a dentist.
He had a closet in his room, fitted up for
the purpose, which smelt of the scented soap
like a perfumer's shop.
It had an unusually large jack-towel on a
roller inside the door, and he would wash
his hands, and wipe them and dry them all
over this towel, whenever he came in from
a police court or dismissed a client from
his room.
When I and my friends repaired to him at six
o'clock next day, he seemed to have been engaged
on a case of a darker complexion than usual,
for we found him with his head butted into
this closet, not only washing his hands, but
laving his face and gargling his throat.
And even when he had done all that, and had
gone all round the jack-towel, he took out
his penknife and scraped the case out of his
nails before he put his coat on.
There were some people slinking about as usual
when we passed out into the street, who were
evidently anxious to speak with him; but there
was something so conclusive in the halo of
scented soap which encircled his presence,
that they gave it up for that day.
As we walked along westward, he was recognized
ever and again by some face in the crowd of
the streets, and whenever that happened he
talked louder to me; but he never otherwise
recognized anybody, or took notice that anybody
recognized him.
He conducted us to Gerrard Street, Soho, to
a house on the south side of that street.
Rather a stately house of its kind, but dolefully
in want of painting, and with dirty windows.
He took out his key and opened the door, and
we all went into a stone hall, bare, gloomy,
and little used.
So, up a dark brown staircase into a series
of three dark brown rooms on the first floor.
There were carved garlands on the panelled
walls, and as he stood among them giving us
welcome, I know what kind of loops I thought
they looked like.
Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms;
the second was his dressing-room; the third,
his bedroom.
He told us that he held the whole house, but
rarely used more of it than we saw.
The table was comfortably laid—no silver
in the service, of course—and at the side
of his chair was a capacious dumb-waiter,
with a variety of bottles and decanters on
it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert.
I noticed throughout, that he kept everything
under his own hand, and distributed everything
himself.
There was a bookcase in the room; I saw from
the backs of the books, that they were about
evidence, criminal law, criminal biography,
trials, acts of Parliament, and such things.
The furniture was all very solid and good,
like his watch-chain.
It had an official look, however, and there
was nothing merely ornamental to be seen.
In a corner was a little table of papers with
a shaded lamp: so that he seemed to bring
the office home with him in that respect too,
and to wheel it out of an evening and fall
to work.
As he had scarcely seen my three companions
until now,—for he and I had walked together,—he
stood on the hearth-rug, after ringing the
bell, and took a searching look at them.
To my surprise, he seemed at once to be principally
if not solely interested in Drummle.
“Pip,” said he, putting his large hand
on my shoulder and moving me to the window,
“I don't know one from the other.
Who's the Spider?”
“The spider?” said I.
“The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow.”
“That's Bentley Drummle,” I replied; “the
one with the delicate face is Startop.”
Not making the least account of “the one
with the delicate face,” he returned, “Bentley
Drummle is his name, is it?
I like the look of that fellow.”
He immediately began to talk to Drummle: not
at all deterred by his replying in his heavy
reticent way, but apparently led on by it
to screw discourse out of him.
I was looking at the two, when there came
between me and them the housekeeper, with
the first dish for the table.
She was a woman of about forty, I supposed,—but
I may have thought her younger than she was.
Rather tall, of a lithe nimble figure, extremely
pale, with large faded eyes, and a quantity
of streaming hair.
I cannot say whether any diseased affection
of the heart caused her lips to be parted
as if she were panting, and her face to bear
a curious expression of suddenness and flutter;
but I know that I had been to see Macbeth
at the theatre, a night or two before, and
that her face looked to me as if it were all
disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had
seen rise out of the Witches' caldron.
She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly
on the arm with a finger to notify that dinner
was ready, and vanished.
We took our seats at the round table, and
my guardian kept Drummle on one side of him,
while Startop sat on the other.
It was a noble dish of fish that the housekeeper
had put on table, and we had a joint of equally
choice mutton afterwards, and then an equally
choice bird.
Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted,
and all of the best, were given out by our
host from his dumb-waiter; and when they had
made the circuit of the table, he always put
them back again.
Similarly, he dealt us clean plates and knives
and forks, for each course, and dropped those
just disused into two baskets on the ground
by his chair.
No other attendant than the housekeeper appeared.
She set on every dish; and I always saw 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
patronize 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.
End of chapter 26
