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Charles Dickens 17 page

your bit of game, didn’t you?) No; deuce a bit of a lady in

the case, Mr. Pip, except one - and she wasn’t of this slen-

der ladylike sort, and you wouldn’t have caught her looking

after this urn - unless there was something to drink in it.’

Wemmick’s attention being thus directed to his brooch, he

put down the cast, and polished the brooch with his pocket-

handkerchief.

‘Did that other creature come to the same end?’ I asked.

‘He has the same look.’

‘You’re right,’ said Wemmick; ‘it’s the genuine look.

Much as if one nostril was caught up with a horsehair and

a little fish-hook. Yes, he came to the same end; quite the

natural end here, I assure you. He forged wills, this blade

did, if he didn’t also put the supposed testators to sleep too.

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You were a gentlemanly Cove, though’ (Mr. Wemmick was

again apostrophizing), ‘and you said you could write Greek.

Yah, Bounceable! What a liar you were! I never met such a

liar as you!’ Before putting his late friend on his shelf again,

Wemmick touched the largest of his mourning rings and

said, ‘Sent out to buy it for me, only the day before.’

While he was putting up the other cast and coming

down from the chair, the thought crossed my mind that all

his personal jewellery was derived from like sources. As he

had shown no diffidence on the subject, I ventured on the

liberty of asking him the question, when he stood before

me, dusting his hands.

‘Oh yes,’ he returned, ‘these are all gifts of that kind. One

brings another, you see; that’s the way of it. I always take

‘em. They’re curiosities. And they’re property. They may not

be worth much, but, after all, they’re property and portable.

It don’t signify to you with your brilliant look-out, but as

to myself, my guidingstar always is, ‘Get hold of portable

property”.’

When I had rendered homage to this light, he went on to

say, in a friendly manner:

‘If at any odd time when you have nothing better to do,

you wouldn’t mind coming over to see me at Walworth, I

could offer you a bed, and I should consider it an honour. I

have not much to show you; but such two or three curiosi-

ties as I have got, you might like to look over; and I am fond

of a bit of garden and a summer-house.’

I said I should be delighted to accept his hospitality.

‘Thankee,’ said he; ‘then we’ll consider that it’s to come

 

Great Expectations

off, when convenient to you. Have you dined with Mr. Jag-

gers yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Well,’ said Wemmick, ‘he’ll give you wine, and good

wine. I’ll give you punch, and not bad punch. and now I’ll

tell you something. When you go to dine with Mr. Jaggers,

look at his housekeeper.’

‘Shall I see something very uncommon?’

‘Well,’ said Wemmick, ‘you’ll see a wild beast tamed. Not

so very uncommon, you’ll tell me. I reply, that depends on

the original wildness of the beast, and the amount of tam-

ing. It won’t lower your opinion of Mr. Jaggers’s powers.

Keep your eye on it.’



I told him I would do so, with all the interest and cu-

riosity that his preparation awakened. As I was taking my

departure, he asked me if I would like to devote five min-

utes 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 policecourt, where a blood-relation (in the mur-

derous 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 exami-

nation 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,

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‘I’ll have it out of you!’ and if anybody made an admission,

he said, ‘Now I have got you!’ the magistrates shivered un-

der a single bite of his finger. Thieves and thieftakers 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 con-

duct as the representative of British law and justice in that

chair that day.

 

Great Expectations

Chapter 25

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 spir-

it. 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 him-

self 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 qual-

ities 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 de-

votedly 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 home-

ward 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 al-

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ways 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 pre-

sented him with a half-share in my boat, which was the

occasion of his often coming down to Hammersmith; and

my possession of a halfshare 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 impressibil-

ity 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 mean-

ness. 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 con-

 

Great Expectations

tracted 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

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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 com-

plimented 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’sa nother rum thing in his house,’

proceeded Wemmick, after a moment’s pause, as if the re-

mark 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

 

Great Expectations

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 con-

versation of a more general nature, did Mr. Wemmick and

I beguile the time and the road, until he gave me to under-

stand that we had arrived in the district of Walworth.

It appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and

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little gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull re-

tirement. 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 com-

munication.’

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 Wem-

mick, ‘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 sep-

arate fortress, constructed of lattice-work. It was protected

from the weather by an ingenious little tarpaulin contriv-

ance 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.

Great Expectations

‘ - At the back, there’s a pig, and there are fowls and rab-

bits; 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 cir-

cular 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 own gardener, and my own Jack of

all Trades,’ said Wemmick, in acknowledging my compli-

ments. ‘Well; it’s a good thing, you know. It brushes the

Newgate cobwebs away, and pleases the Aged. You wouldn’t

mind being at once introduced to the Aged, would you? It

wouldn’t put you out?’

I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the cas-

tle. There, we found, sitting by a fire, a very old man in a

flannel coat: clean, cheerful, comfortable, and well cared for,

but intensely deaf.

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‘Well aged parent,’ said Wemmick, shaking hands with

him in a cordial and jocose way, ‘how am you?’

‘All right, John; all right!’ replied the old man.

‘Here’s Mr. Pip, aged parent,’ said Wemmick, ‘and I wish

you could hear his name. Nod away at him, Mr. Pip; that’s

what he likes. Nod away at him, if you please, like wink-

ing!’

‘This is a fine place of my son’s, sir,’ cried the old man,

while I nodded as hard as I possibly could. ‘This is a pretty

pleasure-ground, sir. This spot and these beautiful works

upon it ought to be kept together by the Nation, after my

son’s time, for the people’s enjoyment.’

‘You’re as proud of it as Punch; ain’t you, Aged?’ said

Wemmick, contemplating the old man, with his hard face

really softened; ‘there’s a nod for you;’ giving him a tremen-

dous one; ‘there’s another for you;’ giving him a still more

tremendous one; ‘you like that, don’t you? If you’re not tired,

Mr. Pip - though I know it’s tiring to strangers - will you tip

him one more? You can’t think how it pleases him.’

I tipped him several more, and he was in great spirits.

We left him bestirring himself to feed the fowls, and we sat

down to our punch in the arbour; where Wemmick told me

as he smoked a pipe that it had taken him a good many years

to bring the property up to its present pitch of perfection.

‘Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick?’

‘O yes,’ said Wemmick, ‘I have got hold of it, a bit at a

time. It’s a freehold, by George!’

‘Is it, indeed? I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it?’

‘Never seen it,’ said Wemmick. ‘Never heard of it. Never

 

Great Expectations

seen the Aged. Never heard of him. No; the office is one

thing, and private life is another. When I go into the of-

fice, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the

Castle, I leave the office behind me. If it’s not in any way dis-

agreeable to you, you’ll oblige me by doing the same. I don’t

wish it professionally spoken about.’

Of course I felt my good faith involved in the observance

of his request. The punch being very nice, we sat there

drinking it and talking, until it was almost nine o’clock.

‘Getting near gun-fire,’ said Wemmick then, as he laid down

his pipe; ‘it’s the Aged’s treat.’

Proceeding into the Castle again, we found the Aged

heating the poker, with expectant eyes, as a preliminary to

the performance of this great nightly ceremony. Wemmick

stood with his watch in his hand, until the moment was

come for him to take the red-hot poker from the Aged, and

repair to the battery. He took it, and went out, and presently

the Stinger went off with a Bang that shook the crazy little

box of a cottage as if it must fall to pieces, and made every

glass and teacup in it ring. Upon this, the Aged - who I be-

lieve would have been blown out of his arm-chair but for

holding on by the elbows - cried out exultingly, ‘He’s fired!

I heerd him!’ and I nodded at the old gentleman until it is

no figure of speech to declare that I absolutely could not

see him.

The interval between that time and supper, Wemmick

devoted to showing me his collection of curiosities. They

were mostly of a felonious character; comprising the pen

with which a celebrated forgery had been committed, a

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distinguished razor or two, some locks of hair, and sev-

eral manuscript confessions written under condemnation

- upon which Mr. Wemmick set particular value as being, to

use his own words, ‘every one of ‘em Lies, sir.’ These were

agreeably dispersed among small specimens of china and

glass, various neat trifles made by the proprietor of the mu-

seum, and some tobacco-stoppers carved by the Aged. They

were all displayed in that chamber of the Castle into which

I had been first inducted, and which served, not only as the

general sitting-room but as the kitchen too, if I might judge

from a saucepan on the hob, and a brazen bijou over the

fireplace designed for the suspension of a roasting-jack.

There was a neat little girl in attendance, who looked

after the Aged in the day. When she had laid the supper-

cloth, the bridge was lowered to give her means of egress,

and she withdrew for the night. The supper was excellent;

and though the Castle was rather subject to dry-rot inso-

much that it tasted like a bad nut, and though the pig might

have been farther off, I was heartily pleased with my whole

entertainment. Nor was there any drawback on my little

turret bedroom, beyond there being such a very thin ceil-

ing between me and the flagstaff, that when I lay down on

my back in bed, it seemed as if I had to balance that pole on

my forehead all night.

Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid

I heard him cleaning my boots. After that, he fell to gar-

dening, and I saw him from my gothic window pretending

to employ the Aged, and nodding at him in a most devot-

ed manner. Our breakfast was as good as the supper, and

 

Great Expectations

at half-past eight precisely we started for Little Britain. By

degrees, Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along,

and his mouth tightened into a post-office again. At last,

when we got to his place of business and he pulled out his

key from his coat-collar, he looked as unconscious of his

Walworth property as if the Castle and the drawbridge and

the arbour and the lake and the fountain and the Aged, had

all been blown into space together by the last discharge of

the Stinger.

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Chapter 26

It fell out as Wemmick had told me it would, that I had an

early opportunity of comparing my guardian’s establish-

ment 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 ceremo-

ny,’ he stipulated, ‘and no dinner dress, and say tomorrow.’

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 oppor-

tunity of remarking that he washed his clients off, as if he

were a surgeon or a dentist. He had a closet in his room, fit-

ted 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

 

Great Expectations

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 ser-

vice, 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 distrib-

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uted 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 deli-

cate 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 ap-

parently led on by it to screw discourse out of him. I was

looking at the two, when there came between me and them,

 

Great Expectations

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 expres-

sion of suddenness and flutter; but I know that I had been to

see Macbeth at the theatre, a night or two before, and that


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