Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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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 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 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 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 gaily, 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 dumbwaiter,
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 up-stairs 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.

Chapter 27

"MY DEAR MR PIP,

"I write this by request of Mr. Gargery, for to let you know that he
is going to London in company with Mr. Wopsle and would be glad if
agreeable to be allowed to see you. He would call at Barnard's
Hotel Tuesday morning 9 o'clock, when if not agreeable please
leave word. Your poor sister is much the same as when you left. We
talk of you in the kitchen every night, and wonder what you are
saying and doing. If now considered in the light of a liberty,
excuse it for the love of poor old days. No more, dear Mr. Pip, from

"Your ever obliged, and affectionate servant,

"BIDDY."

"P.S. He wishes me most particular to write what larks. He says you
will understand. I hope and do not doubt it will be agreeable to
see him even though a gentleman, for you had ever a good heart, and
he is a worthy worthy man. I have read him all excepting only the
last little sentence, and he wishes me most particular to write
again what larks."

I received this letter by the post on Monday morning, and therefore
its appointment was for next day. Let me confess exactly, with what
feelings I looked forward to Joe's coming.

Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; no;
with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense
of incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I
certainly would have paid money. My greatest reassurance was, that
he was coming to Barnard's Inn, not to Hammersmith, and
consequently would not fall in Bentley Drummle's way. I had little
objection to his being seen by Herbert or his father, for both of
whom I had a respect; but I had the sharpest sensitiveness as to
his being seen by Drummle, whom I held in contempt. So, throughout
life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for
the sake of the people whom we most despise.

I had begun to be always decorating the chambers in some quite
unnecessary and inappropriate way or other, and very expensive
those wrestles with Barnard proved to be. By this time, the rooms
were vastly different from what I had found them, and I enjoyed the
honour of occupying a few prominent pages in the books of a
neighbouring upholsterer. I had got on so fast of late, that I had
even started a boy in boots - top boots - in bondage and slavery to
whom I might have been said to pass my days. For, after I had made
the monster (out of the refuse of my washerwoman's family) and had
clothed him with a blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat,
creamy breeches, and the boots already mentioned, I had to find him
a little to do and a great deal to eat; and with both of those
horrible requirements he haunted my existence.

This avenging phantom was ordered to be on duty at eight on Tuesday
morning in the hall (it was two feet square, as charged for
floorcloth), and Herbert suggested certain things for breakfast
that he thought Joe would like. While I felt sincerely obliged to
him for being so interested and considerate, I had an odd
half-provoked sense of suspicion upon me, that if Joe had been
coming to see him, he wouldn't have been quite so brisk about it.

However, I came into town on the Monday night to be ready for Joe,
and I got up early in the morning, and caused the sittingroom and
breakfast-table to assume their most splendid appearance.
Unfortunately the morning was drizzly, and an angel could not have
concealed the fact that Barnard was shedding sooty tears outside the
window, like some weak giant of a Sweep.

As the time approached I should have liked to run away, but the
Avenger pursuant to orders was in the hall, and presently I heard
Joe on the staircase. I knew it was Joe, by his clumsy manner of
coming up-stairs - his state boots being always too big for him -
and by the time it took him to read the names on the other floors
in the course of his ascent. When at last he stopped outside our
door, I could hear his finger tracing over the painted letters of
my name, and I afterwards distinctly heard him breathing in at the
keyhole. Finally he gave a faint single rap, and Pepper - such was
the compromising name of the avenging boy - announced "Mr. Gargery!"
I thought he never would have done wiping his feet, and that I must
have gone out to lift him off the mat, but at last he came in.

"Joe, how are you, Joe?"

"Pip, how AIR you, Pip?"

With his good honest face all glowing and shining, and his hat put
down on the floor between us, he caught both my hands and worked
them straight up and down, as if I had been the lastpatented Pump.

"I am glad to see you, Joe. Give me your hat."

But Joe, taking it up carefully with both hands, like a bird's-nest
with eggs in it, wouldn't hear of parting with that piece of
property, and persisted in standing talking over it in a most
uncomfortable way.

"Which you have that growed," said Joe, "and that swelled, and that
gentle-folked;" Joe considered a little before he discovered this
word; "as to be sure you are a honour to your king and country."

"And you, Joe, look wonderfully well."

"Thank God," said Joe, "I'm ekerval to most. And your sister, she's
no worse than she were. And Biddy, she's ever right and ready. And
all friends is no backerder, if not no forarder. 'Ceptin Wopsle;
he's had a drop."

All this time (still with both hands taking great care of the
bird's-nest), Joe was rolling his eyes round and round the room,
and round and round the flowered pattern of my dressing-gown.

"Had a drop, Joe?"

"Why yes," said Joe, lowering his voice, "he's left the Church, and
went into the playacting. Which the playacting have likeways
brought him to London along with me. And his wish were," said Joe,
getting the bird's-nest under his left arm for the moment and
groping in it for an egg with his right; "if no offence, as I would
'and you that."

I took what Joe gave me, and found it to be the crumpled playbill
of a small metropolitan theatre, announcing the first appearance,
in that very week, of "the celebrated Provincial Amateur of Roscian
renown, whose unique performance in the highest tragic walk of our
National Bard has lately occasioned so great a sensation in local
dramatic circles."

"Were you at his performance, Joe?" I inquired.

"I were," said Joe, with emphasis and solemnity.

"Was there a great sensation?"

"Why," said Joe, "yes, there certainly were a peck of orange-peel.
Partickler, when he see the ghost. Though I put it to yourself,
sir, whether it were calc'lated to keep a man up to his work with a
good hart, to be continiwally cutting in betwixt him and the Ghost
with "Amen!" A man may have had a misfortun' and been in the
Church," said Joe, lowering his voice to an argumentative and
feeling tone, "but that is no reason why you should put him out at
such a time. Which I meantersay, if the ghost of a man's own father
cannot be allowed to claim his attention, what can, Sir? Still
more, when his mourning 'at is unfortunately made so small as that
the weight of the black feathers brings it off, try to keep it on
how you may."

A ghost-seeing effect in Joe's own countenance informed me that
Herbert had entered the room. So, I presented Joe to Herbert, who
held out his hand; but Joe backed from it, and held on by the
bird's-nest.

"Your servant, Sir," said Joe, "which I hope as you and Pip" - here
his eye fell on the Avenger, who was putting some toast on table,
and so plainly denoted an intention to make that young gentleman
one of the family, that I frowned it down and confused him more -
"I meantersay, you two gentlemen - which I hope as you get your
elths in this close spot? For the present may be a werry good inn,
according to London opinions," said Joe, confidentially, "and I
believe its character do stand i; but I wouldn't keep a pig in it
myself - not in the case that I wished him to fatten wholesome and
to eat with a meller flavour on him."

Having borne this flattering testimony to the merits of our
dwelling-place, and having incidentally shown this tendency to call
me "sir," Joe, being invited to sit down to table, looked all round
the room for a suitable spot on which to deposit his hat - as if it
were only on some very few rare substances in nature that it could
find a resting place - and ultimately stood it on an extreme corner
of the chimney-piece, from which it ever afterwards fell off at
intervals.

"Do you take tea, or coffee, Mr. Gargery?" asked Herbert, who always
presided of a morning.

"Thankee, Sir," said Joe, stiff from head to foot, "I'll take
whichever is most agreeable to yourself."

"What do you say to coffee?"

"Thankee, Sir," returned Joe, evidently dispirited by the proposal,
"since you are so kind as make chice of coffee, I will not run
contrairy to your own opinions. But don't you never find it a
little 'eating?"

"Say tea then," said Herbert, pouring it out.

Here Joe's hat tumbled off the mantel-piece, and he started out of
his chair and picked it up, and fitted it to the same exact spot.
As if it were an absolute point of good breeding that it should
tumble off again soon.

"When did you come to town, Mr. Gargery?"

"Were it yesterday afternoon?" said Joe, after coughing behind his
hand, as if he had had time to catch the whooping-cough since he
came. "No it were not. Yes it were. Yes. It were yesterday
afternoon" (with an appearance of mingled wisdom, relief, and
strict impartiality).

"Have you seen anything of London, yet?"

"Why, yes, Sir," said Joe, "me and Wopsle went off straight to look
at the Blacking Ware'us. But we didn't find that it come up to its
likeness in the red bills at the shop doors; which I meantersay,"
added Joe, in an explanatory manner, "as it is there drawd too
architectooralooral."

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