Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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This strongly marked way of doing business made a strongly marked
impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr. Jaggers
never laughed; but he wore great bright creaking boots, and, in
poising himself on these boots, with his large head bent down and
his eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, he sometimes
caused the boots to creak, as if they laughed in a dry and
suspicious way. As he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick was
brisk and talkative, I said to Wemmick that I hardly knew what to
make of Mr. Jaggers's manner.

"Tell him that, and he'll take it as a compliment," answered
Wemmick; "he don't mean that you should know what to make of it. -
Oh!" for I looked surprised, "it's not personal; it's professional:
only professional."

Wemmick was at his desk, lunching - and crunching - on a dry hard
biscuit; pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit
of a mouth, as if he were posting them.

"Always seems to me," said Wemmick, "as if he had set a mantrap and
was watching it. Suddenly - click - you're caught!"

Without remarking that mantraps were not among the amenities of
life, I said I supposed he was very skilful?

"Deep," said Wemmick, "as Australia." Pointing with his pen at the
office floor, to express that Australia was understood, for the
purposes of the figure, to be symmetrically on the opposite spot of
the globe. "If there was anything deeper," added Wemmick, bringing
his pen to paper, "he'd be it."

Then, I said I supposed he had a fine business, and Wemmick said,
"Ca-pi-tal!" Then I asked if there were many clerks? to which he
replied:

"We don't run much into clerks, because there's only one Jaggers,
and people won't have him at second-hand. There are only four of
us. Would you like to see 'em? You are one of us, as I may say."

I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had put all the biscuit into
the post, and had paid me my money from a cash-box in a safe, the
key of which safe he kept somewhere down his back and produced from
his coat-collar like an iron pigtail, we went up-stairs. The house
was dark and shabby, and the greasy shoulders that had left their
mark in Mr. Jaggers's room, seemed to have been shuffling up and
down the staircase for years. In the front first floor, a clerk who
looked something between a publican and a rat-catcher - a large
pale puffed swollen man - was attentively engaged with three or
four people of shabby appearance, whom he treated as
unceremoniously as everybody seemed to be treated who contributed
to Mr. Jaggers's coffers. "Getting evidence together," said Mr.
Wemmick, as we came out, "for the Bailey."

In the room over that, a little flabby terrier of a clerk with
dangling hair (his cropping seemed to have been forgotten when he
was a puppy) was similarly engaged with a man with weak eyes, whom
Mr. Wemmick presented to me as a smelter who kept his pot always
boiling, and who would melt me anything I pleased - and who was in
an excessive white-perspiration, as if he had been trying his art on
himself. In a back room, a high-shouldered man with a face-ache tied
up in dirty flannel, who was dressed in old black clothes that bore
the appearance of having been waxed, was stooping over his work of
making fair copies of the notes of the other two gentlemen, for Mr.
Jaggers's own use.

This was all the establishment. When we went down-stairs again,
Wemmick led me into my guardian's room, and said, "This you've seen
already."

"Pray," said I, as the two odious casts with the twitchy leer upon
them caught my sight again, "whose likenesses are those?"

"These?" said Wemmick, getting upon a chair, and blowing the dust
off the horrible heads before bringing them down. "These are two
celebrated ones. Famous clients of ours that got us a world of
credit. This chap (why you must have come down in the night and
been peeping into the inkstand, to get this blot upon your eyebrow,
you old rascal!) murdered his master, and, considering that he
wasn't brought up to evidence, didn't plan it badly."

"Is it like him?" I asked, recoiling from the brute, as Wemmick
spat upon his eyebrow and gave it a rub with his sleeve.

"Like him? It's himself, you know. The cast was made in Newgate,
directly after he was taken down. You had a particular fancy for
me, hadn't you, Old Artful?" said Wemmick. He then explained this
affectionate apostrophe, by touching his brooch representing the
lady and the weeping willow at the tomb with the urn upon it, and
saying, "Had it made for me, express!"

"Is the lady anybody?" said I.

"No," returned Wemmick. "Only his game. (You liked 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 slender 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. 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 curiosities 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 off,
when convenient to you. Have you dined with Mr. Jaggers 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 taming. 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 curiosity that
his preparation awakened. As I was taking my departure, he asked me
if I would like to devote five minutes 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 murderous 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 examination 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, "I'll have it out of
you!" and if anybody made an admission, he said, "Now I have got
you!" the magistrates shivered under 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 conduct as the
representative of British law and justice in that chair that day.

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 spirit. 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 himself 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 qualities 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 devotedly 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
homeward 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 always 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 presented 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
impressibility 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 meanness.
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 contracted 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 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
complimented 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 remark 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 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 conversation of a
more general nature, did Mr. Wemmick and I beguile the time and the
road, until he gave me to understand that we had arrived in the
district of Walworth.

It appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and little
gardens, and to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement.
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 communication."

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 Wemmick, "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 separate
fortress, constructed of lattice-work. It was protected from the
weather by an ingenious little tarpaulin contrivance 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.

" - At the back, there's a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits;
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
circular 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 compliments. "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 castle.
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.

"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 winking!"

"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 tremendous 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 seen the
Aged. Never heard of him. No; the office is one thing, and private
life is another. When I go into the office, 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 disagreeable 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
believe 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 distinguished razor or two, some
locks of hair, and several 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 museum, 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 insomuch 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 ceiling
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 gardening, and I saw him
from my gothic window pretending to employ the Aged, and nodding at
him in a most devoted manner. Our breakfast was as good as the
supper, and 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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