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Charles Dickens 32 page

one of them had been severely handled and much mauled

about the face, by the other?’

‘I see it all before me.’

‘And that the soldiers lighted torches, and put the two in

the centre, and that we went on to see the last of them, over

the black marshes, with the torchlight shining on their fac-

es - I am particular about that; with the torchlight shining

 

Great Expectations

on their faces, when there was an outer ring of dark night

all about us?’

‘Yes,’ said I. ‘I remember all that.’

‘Then, Mr. Pip, one of those two prisoners sat behind you

tonight. I saw him over your shoulder.’

‘Steady!’ I thought. I asked him then, ‘Which of the two

do you suppose you saw?’

‘The one who had been mauled,’ he answered readily,

‘and I’ll swear I saw him! The more I think of him, the more

certain I am of him.’

‘This is very curious!’ said I, with the best assumption I

could put on, of its being nothing more to me. ‘Very curi-

ous indeed!’

I cannot exaggerate the enhanced disquiet into which this

conversation threw me, or the special and peculiar terror I

felt at Compeyson’s having been behind me ‘like a ghost.’

For, if he had ever been out of my thoughts for a few mo-

ments together since the hiding had begun, it was in those

very moments when he was closest to me; and to think that

I should be so unconscious and off my guard after all my

care, was as if I had shut an avenue of a hundred doors to

keep him out, and then had found him at my elbow. I could

not doubt either that he was there, because I was there, and

that however slight an appearance of danger there might be

about us, danger was always near and active.

I put such questions to Mr. Wopsle as, When did the

man come in? He could not tell me that; he saw me, and

over my shoulder he saw the man. It was not until he had

seen him for some time that he began to identify him; but

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he had from the first vaguely associated him with me, and

known him as somehow belonging to me in the old village

time. How was he dressed? Prosperously, but not noticeably

otherwise; he thought, in black. Was his face at all disfig-

ured? No, he believed not. I believed not, too, for, although

in my brooding state I had taken no especial notice of the

people behind me, I thought it likely that a face at all disfig-

ured would have attracted my attention.

When Mr. Wopsle had imparted to me all that he could

recall or I extract, and when I had treated him to a little

appropriate refreshment after the fatigues of the evening,

we parted. It was between twelve and one o’clock when I

reached the Temple, and the gates were shut. No one was

near me when I went in and went home.

Herbert had come in, and we held a very serious council

by the fire. But there was nothing to be done, saving to com-

municate to Wemmick what I had that night found out, and

to remind him that we waited for his hint. As I thought that

I might compromise him if I went too often to the Castle, I



made this communication by letter. I wrote it before I went

to bed, and went out and posted it; and again no one was

near me. Herbert and I agreed that we could do nothing

else but be very cautious. And we were very cautious in-

deed - more cautious than before, if that were possible - and

I for my part never went near Chinks’s Basin, except when

I rowed by, and then I only looked at Mill Pond Bank as I

looked at anything else.

 

Great Expectations

Chapter 48

The second of the two meetings referred to in the last

chapter, occurred about a week after the first. I had again

left my boat at the wharf below Bridge; the time was an hour

earlier in the afternoon; and, undecided where to dine, I

had strolled up into Cheapside, and was strolling along it,

surely the most unsettled person in all the busy concourse,

when a large hand was laid upon my shoulder, by some one

overtaking me. It was Mr. Jaggers’s hand, and he passed it

through my arm.

‘As we are going in the same direction, Pip, we may walk

together. Where are you bound for?’

‘For the Temple, I think,’ said I.

‘Don’t you know?’ said Mr. Jaggers.

‘Well,’ I returned, glad for once to get the better of him

in cross-examination, ‘I do not know, for I have not made

up my mind.’

‘You are going to dine?’ said Mr. Jaggers. ‘You don’t mind

admitting that, I suppose?’

‘No,’ I returned, ‘I don’t mind admitting that.’

‘And are not engaged?’

‘I don’t mind admitting also, that I am not engaged.’

‘Then,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘come and dine with me.’

I was going to excuse myself, when he added, ‘Wem-

mick’s coming.’ So, I changed my excuse into an acceptance

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- the few words I had uttered, serving for the beginning of ei-

ther - and we went along Cheapside and slanted off to Little

Britain, while the lights were springing up brilliantly in the

shop windows, and the street lamp-lighters, scarcely find-

ing ground enough to plant their ladders on in the midst

of the afternoon’s bustle, were skipping up and down and

running in and out, opening more red eyes in the gathering

fog than my rushlight tower at the Hummums had opened

white eyes in the ghostly wall.

At the office in Little Britain there was the usual letter-

writing, hand-washing, candle-snuffing, and safe-locking,

that closed the business of the day. As I stood idle by Mr.

Jaggers’s fire, its rising and falling flame made the two casts

on the shelf look as if they were playing a diabolical game at

bo-peep with me; while the pair of coarse fat office candles

that dimly lighted Mr. Jaggers as he wrote in a corner, were

decorated with dirty winding-sheets, as if in remembrance

of a host of hanged clients.

We went to Gerrard-street, all three together, in a hack-

ney coach: and as soon as we got there, dinner was served.

Although I should not have thought of making, in that

place, the most distant reference by so much as a look to

Wemmick’s Walworth sentiments, yet I should have had no

objection to catching his eye now and then in a friendly way.

But it was not to be done. He turned his eyes on Mr. Jaggers

whenever he raised them from the table, and was as dry and

distant to me as if there were twin Wemmicks and this was

the wrong one.

‘Did you send that note of Miss Havisham’s to Mr. Pip,

 

Great Expectations

Wemmick?’ Mr. Jaggers asked, soon after we began dinner.

‘No, sir,’ returned Wemmick; ‘it was going by post, when

you brought Mr. Pip into the office. Here it is.’ He handed it

to his principal, instead of to me.

‘It’s a note of two lines, Pip,’ said Mr. Jaggers, handing it

on, ‘sent up to me by Miss Havisham, on account of her not

being sure of your address. She tells me that she wants to

see you on a little matter of business you mentioned to her.

You’ll go down?’

‘Yes,’ said I, casting my eyes over the note, which was ex-

actly in those terms.

‘When do you think of going down?’

‘I have an impending engagement,’ said I, glancing at

Wemmick, who was putting fish into the post-office, ‘that

renders me rather uncertain of my time. At once, I think.’

‘If Mr. Pip has the intention of going at once,’ said Wem-

mick to Mr. Jaggers, ‘he needn’t write an answer, you

know.’

Receiving this as an intimation that it was best not to

delay, I settled that I would go to-morrow, and said so.

Wemmick drank a glass of wine and looked with a grimly

satisfied air at Mr. Jaggers, but not at me.

‘So, Pip! Our friend the Spider,’ said Mr. Jaggers, ‘has

played his cards. He has won the pool.’

It was as much as I could do to assent.

‘Hah! He is a promising fellow - in his way - but he may

not have it all his own way. The stronger will win in the end,

but the stronger has to be found out first. If he should turn

to, and beat her—‘

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‘Surely,’ I interrupted, with a burning face and heart, ‘you

do not seriously think that he is scoundrel enough for that,

Mr. Jaggers?’

‘I didn’t say so, Pip. I am putting a case. If he should turn

to and beat her, he may possibly get the strength on his side;

if it should be a question of intellect, he certainly will not.

It would be chance work to give an opinion how a fellow of

that sort will turn out in such circumstances, because it’s a

toss-up between two results.’

‘May I ask what they are?’

‘A fellow like our friend the Spider,’ answered Mr. Jaggers,

‘either beats, or cringes. He may cringe and growl, or cringe

and not growl; but he either beats or cringes. Ask Wemmick

his opinion.’

‘Either beats or cringes,’ said Wemmick, not at all ad-

dressing himself to me.

‘So, here’s to Mrs. Bentley Drummle,’ said Mr. Jaggers,

taking a decanter of choicer wine from his dumb-waiter,

and filling for each of us and for himself, ‘and may the ques-

tion of supremacy be settled to the lady’s satisfaction! To the

satisfaction of the lady and the gentleman, it never will be.

Now, Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly, how slow you are to-day!’

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,

Great Expectations

‘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 Light-

ning, 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 at-

tentive eyes. And I felt absolutely certain that this woman

was Estella’s mother.

Mr. Jaggers had seen me with Estella, and was not likely

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to have missed the sentiments I had been at no pains to con-

ceal. 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 readi-

ness 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 comfort-

 

Great Expectations

ably 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 fur-

ther.’

I asked him if he had ever seen Miss Havisham’s adopt-

ed daughter, Mrs. Bentley Drummle? He said no. To avoid

being too abrupt, I then spoke of the Aged, and of Miss Skif-

fins. 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 un-

screwed 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 in-

terest 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.’

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‘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 gipsy

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 as-

tonishing. It was a desperate case, and it was comparatively

early days with him then, and he worked it to general admi-

ration; 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 mur-

dered 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 per-

fect 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 vio-

lent 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

 

Great Expectations

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 fin-

ger-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, fran-

tically 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 hy-

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pothesis 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, as-

suming for the sake of argument that you have not invented

them!’ To sum up, sir,’ said Wemmick, ‘Mr. Jaggers was al-

together 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.

 

Great Expectations

Chapter 49

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 break-

fasted 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 court-yard, opened the gate. The lighted candle stood

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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 sit-

ting 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 or utter loneliness upon

her, that would have moved me to pity though she had wil-

fully 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.

‘I want,’ she said, ‘to pursue that subject you mentioned

to me when you were last here, and to show you that I am

not all stone. But perhaps you can never believe, now, that

there is anything human in my heart?’

When I said some reassuring words, she stretched out

her tremulous right hand, as though she was going to touch

me; but she recalled it again before I understood the action,

or knew how to receive it.

 

Great Expectations

‘You said, speaking for your friend, that you could tell

me how to do something useful and good. Something that

you would like done, is it not?’

‘Something that I would like done very much.’

‘What is it?’

I began explaining to her that secret history of the part-

nership. I had not got far into it, when I judged from her

looks that she was thinking in a discursive way of me, rath-

er than of what I said. It seemed to be so, for, when I stopped

speaking, many moments passed before she showed that

she was conscious of the fact.

‘Do you break off,’ she asked then, with her former air of

being afraid of me, ‘because you hate me too much to bear

to speak to me?’

‘No, no,’ I answered, ‘how can you think so, Miss Hav-

isham! I stopped because I thought you were not following

what I said.’

‘Perhaps I was not,’ she answered, putting a hand to her

head. ‘Begin again, and let me look at something else. Stay!

Now tell me.’

She set her hand upon her stick, in the resolute way that

sometimes was habitual to her, and looked at the fire with

a strong expression of forcing herself to attend. I went on

with my explanation, and told her how I had hoped to com-

plete the transaction out of my means, but how in this I was

disappointed. That part of the subject (I reminded her) in-

volved matters which could form no part of my explanation,

for they were the weighty secrets of another.

‘So!’ said she, assenting with her head, but not looking

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at me. ‘And how much money is wanting to complete the

purchase?’

I was rather afraid of stating it, for it sounded a large

sum. ‘Nine hundred pounds.’

‘If I give you the money for this purpose, will you keep

my secret as you have kept your own?’

‘Quite as faithfully.’

‘And your mind will be more at rest?’

‘Much more at rest.’

‘Are you very unhappy now?’

She asked this question, still without looking at me, but

in an unwonted tone of sympathy. I could not reply at the

moment, for my voice failed me. She put her left arm across

the head of her stick, and softly laid her forehead on it.

‘I am far from happy, Miss Havisham; but I have other

causes of disquiet than any you know of. They are the se-

crets I have mentioned.’

After a little while, she raised her head and looked at the

fire again.

‘It is noble in you to tell me that you have other causes of

unhappiness, Is it true?’

‘Too true.’

‘Can I only serve you, Pip, by serving your friend? Re-

garding that as done, is there nothing I can do for you

yourself?’

‘Nothing. I thank you for the question. I thank you even

more for the tone of the question. But, there is nothing.’

She presently rose from her seat, and looked about the

blighted room for the means of writing. There were non

Great Expectations

there, and she took from her pocket a yellow set of ivory

tablets, mounted in tarnished gold, and wrote upon them

with a pencil in a case of tarnished gold that hung from her

neck.

‘You are still on friendly terms with Mr. Jaggers?’

‘Quite. I dined with him yesterday.’

‘This is an authority to him to pay you that money, to lay

out at your irresponsible discretion for your friend. I keep

no money here; but if you would rather Mr. Jaggers knew

nothing of the matter, I will send it to you.’

‘Thank you, Miss Havisham; I have not the least objec-

tion to receiving it from him.’

She read me what she had written, and it was direct and

clear, and evidently intended to absolve me from any sus-

picion of profiting by the receipt of the money. I took the

tablets from her hand, and it trembled again, and it trem-

bled more as she took off the chain to which the pencil was

attached, and put it in mine. All this she did, without look-

ing at me.

‘My name is on the first leaf. If you can ever write under

my name, ‘I forgive her,’ though ever so long after my bro-

ken heart is dust - pray do it!’

‘O Miss Havisham,’ said I, ‘I can do it now. There have

been sore mistakes; and my life has been a blind and thank-

less one; and I want forgiveness and direction far too much,

to be bitter with you.’

She turned her face to me for the first time since she had

averted it, and, to my amazement, I may even add to my ter-

ror, dropped on her knees at my feet; with her folded hands

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raised to me in the manner in which, when her poor heart

was young and fresh and whole, they must often have been

raised to heaven from her mother’s side.

To see her with her white hair and her worn face kneeling

at my feet, gave me a shock through all my frame. I entreat-

ed her to rise, and got my arms about her to help her up; but


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