Kabanata Kabanata 26 · It fell out as Wemmick had told me it would, that I had an early

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

opportunity of comparing my guardian’s establishment with that of his

cashier and clerk. My guardian was in his room, washing his hands with

his scented soap, when I went into the office from Walworth; and he

called me to him, and gave me the invitation for myself and friends

which Wemmick had prepared me to receive. “No ceremony,” he stipulated,

“and no dinner dress, and say to-morrow.” I asked him where we should

come to (for I had no idea where he lived), and I believe it was in his

general objection to make anything like an admission, that he replied,

“Come here, and I’ll take you home with me.” I embrace this opportunity

of remarking that he washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or

a dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose,

which smelt of the scented soap like a perfumer’s shop. It had an

unusually large jack-towel on a roller inside the door, and he would

wash his hands, and wipe them and dry them all over this towel,

whenever he came in from a police court or dismissed a client from his

room. When I and my friends repaired to him at six o’clock next day, he

seemed to have been engaged on a case of a darker complexion than

usual, for we found him with his head butted into this closet, not only

washing his hands, but laving his face and gargling his throat. And

even when he had done all that, and had gone all round the jack-towel,

he took out his penknife and scraped the case out of his nails before

he put his coat on.

There were some people slinking about as usual when we passed out into

the street, who were evidently anxious to speak with him; but there was

something so conclusive in the halo of scented soap which encircled his

presence, that they gave it up for that day. As we walked along

westward, he was recognised 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 recognised anybody, or took notice that anybody

recognised him.

He conducted us to Gerrard Street, Soho, to a house on the south side

of that street. Rather a stately house of its kind, but dolefully in

want of painting, and with dirty windows. He took out his key and

opened the door, and we all went into a stone hall, bare, gloomy, and

little used. So, up a dark brown staircase into a series of three dark

brown rooms on the first floor. There were carved garlands on the

panelled walls, and as he stood among them giving us welcome, I know

what kind of loops I thought they looked like.

Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms; the second was his

dressing-room; the third, his bedroom. He told us that he held the

whole house, but rarely used more of it than we saw. The table was

comfortably laid—no silver in the service, of course—and at the side of

his chair was a capacious dumb-waiter, with a variety of bottles and

decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert. I noticed

throughout, that he kept everything under his own hand, and distributed

everything himself.

There was a bookcase in the room; I saw from the backs of the books,

that they were about evidence, criminal law, criminal biography,

trials, acts of Parliament, and such things. The furniture was all very

solid and good, like his watch-chain. It had an official look, however,

and there was nothing merely ornamental to be seen. In a corner was a

little table of papers with a shaded lamp: so that he seemed to bring

the office home with him in that respect too, and to wheel it out of an

evening and fall to work.

As he had scarcely seen my three companions until now,—for he and I had

walked together,—he stood on the hearth-rug, after ringing the bell,

and took a searching look at them. To my surprise, he seemed at once to

be principally if not solely interested in Drummle.

“Pip,” said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder and moving me to

the window, “I don’t know one from the other. Who’s the Spider?”

“The spider?” said I.

“The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow.”

“That’s Bentley Drummle,” I replied; “the one with the delicate face is

Startop.”

Not making the least account of “the one with the delicate face,” he

returned, “Bentley Drummle is his name, is it? I like the look of that

fellow.”

He immediately began to talk to Drummle: not at all deterred by his

replying in his heavy reticent way, but apparently led on by it to

screw discourse out of him. I was looking at the two, when there came

between me and them the housekeeper, with the first dish for the table.

She was a woman of about forty, I supposed,—but I may have thought her

younger than she was. Rather tall, of a lithe nimble figure, extremely

pale, with large faded eyes, and a quantity of streaming hair. I cannot

say whether any diseased affection of the heart caused her lips to be

parted as if she were panting, and her face to bear a curious

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

Macbeth at the theatre, a night or two before, and that her face looked

to me as if it were all disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had

seen rise out of the Witches’ caldron.

She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm with a

finger to notify that dinner was ready, and vanished. We took our seats

at the round table, and my guardian kept Drummle on one side of him,

while Startop sat on the other. It was a noble dish of fish that the

housekeeper had put on table, and we had a joint of equally choice

mutton afterwards, and then an equally choice bird. Sauces, wines, all

the accessories we wanted, and all of the best, were given out by our

host from his dumb-waiter; and when they had made the circuit of the

table, he always put them back again. Similarly, he dealt us clean

plates and knives and forks, for each course, and dropped those just

disused into two baskets on the ground by his chair. No other attendant

than the housekeeper appeared. She set on every dish; and I always saw

in her face, a face rising out of the caldron. Years afterwards, I made

a dreadful likeness of that woman, by causing a face that had no other

natural resemblance to it than it derived from flowing hair to pass

behind a bowl of flaming spirits in a dark room.

Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by her own

striking appearance and by Wemmick’s preparation, I observed that

whenever she was in the room she kept her eyes attentively on my

guardian, and that she would remove her hands from any dish she put

before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded his calling her back, and

wanted him to speak when she was nigh, if he had anything to say. I

fancied that I could detect in his manner a consciousness of this, and

a purpose of always holding her in suspense.

Dinner went off gayly, and although my guardian seemed to follow rather

than originate subjects, I knew that he wrenched the weakest part of

our dispositions out of us. For myself, I found that I was expressing

my tendency to lavish expenditure, and to patronise Herbert, and to

boast of my great prospects, before I quite knew that I had opened my

lips. It was so with all of us, but with no one more than Drummle: the

development of whose inclination to gird in a grudging and suspicious

way at the rest, was screwed out of him before the fish was taken off.

It was not then, but when we had got to the cheese, that our

conversation turned upon our rowing feats, and that Drummle was rallied

for coming up behind of a night in that slow amphibious way of his.

Drummle upon this, informed our host that he much preferred our room to

our company, and that as to skill he was more than our master, and that

as to strength he could scatter us like chaff. By some invisible

agency, my guardian wound him up to a pitch little short of ferocity

about this trifle; and he fell to baring and spanning his arm to show

how muscular it was, and we all fell to baring and spanning our arms in

a ridiculous manner.

Now the housekeeper was at that time clearing the table; my guardian,

taking no heed of her, but with the side of his face turned from her,

was leaning back in his chair biting the side of his forefinger and

showing an interest in Drummle, that, to me, was quite inexplicable.

Suddenly, he clapped his large hand on the housekeeper’s, like a trap,

as she stretched it across the table. So suddenly and smartly did he do

this, that we all stopped in our foolish contention.

“If you talk of strength,” said Mr. Jaggers, “_I_’ll show you a wrist.

Molly, let them see your wrist.”

Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put her other

hand behind her waist. “Master,” she said, in a low voice, with her

eyes attentively and entreatingly fixed upon him. “Don’t.”

“_I_’ll show you a wrist,” repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an immovable

determination to show it. “Molly, let them see your wrist.”

“Master,” she again murmured. “Please!”

“Molly,” said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately looking

at the opposite side of the room, “let them see _both_ your wrists.

Show them. Come!”

He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up on the table. She

brought her other hand from behind her, and held the two out side by

side. The last wrist was much disfigured,—deeply scarred and scarred

across and across. When she held her hands out she took her eyes from

Mr. Jaggers, and turned them watchfully on every one of the rest of us

in succession.

“There’s power here,” said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the sinews

with his forefinger. “Very few men have the power of wrist that this

woman has. It’s remarkable what mere force of grip there is in these

hands. I have had occasion to notice many hands; but I never saw

stronger in that respect, man’s or woman’s, than these.”

While he said these words in a leisurely, critical style, she continued

to look at every one of us in regular succession as we sat. The moment

he ceased, she looked at him again. “That’ll do, Molly,” said Mr.

Jaggers, giving her a slight nod; “you have been admired, and can go.”

She withdrew her hands and went out of the room, and Mr. Jaggers,

putting the decanters on from his dumb-waiter, filled his glass and

passed round the wine.

“At half-past nine, gentlemen,” said he, “we must break up. Pray make

the best use of your time. I am glad to see you all. Mr. Drummle, I

drink to you.”

If his object in singling out Drummle were to bring him out still more,

it perfectly succeeded. In a sulky triumph, Drummle showed his morose

depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and more offensive degree,

until he became downright intolerable. Through all his stages, Mr.

Jaggers followed him with the same strange interest. He actually seemed

to serve as a zest to Mr. Jaggers’s wine.

In our boyish want of discretion I dare say we took too much to drink,

and I know we talked too much. We became particularly hot upon some

boorish sneer of Drummle’s, to the effect that we were too free with

our money. It led to my remarking, with more zeal than discretion, that

it came with a bad grace from him, to whom Startop had lent money in my

presence but a week or so before.

“Well,” retorted Drummle; “he’ll be paid.”

“I don’t mean to imply that he won’t,” said I, “but it might make you

hold your tongue about us and our money, I should think.”

“_You_ should think!” retorted Drummle. “Oh Lord!”

“I dare say,” I went on, meaning to be very severe, “that you wouldn’t

lend money to any of us if we wanted it.”

“You are right,” said Drummle. “I wouldn’t lend one of you a sixpence.

I wouldn’t lend anybody a sixpence.”

“Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I should say.”

“_You_ should say,” repeated Drummle. “Oh Lord!”

This was so very aggravating—the more especially as I found myself

making no way against his surly obtuseness—that I said, disregarding

Herbert’s efforts to check me,—

“Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I’ll tell you what

passed between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed that money.”

“_I_ don’t want to know what passed between Herbert there and you,”

growled Drummle. And I think he added in a lower growl, that we might

both go to the devil and shake ourselves.

“I’ll tell you, however,” said I, “whether you want to know or not. We

said that as you put it in your pocket very glad to get it, you seemed

to be immensely amused at his being so weak as to lend it.”

Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing in our faces, with his hands

in his pockets and his round shoulders raised; plainly signifying that

it was quite true, and that he despised us as asses all.

Hereupon Startop took him in hand, though with a much better grace than

I had shown, and exhorted him to be a little more agreeable. Startop,

being a lively, bright young fellow, and Drummle being the exact

opposite, the latter was always disposed to resent him as a direct

personal affront. He now retorted in a coarse, lumpish way, and Startop

tried to turn the discussion aside with some small pleasantry that made

us all laugh. Resenting this little success more than anything,

Drummle, without any threat or warning, pulled his hands out of his

pockets, dropped his round shoulders, swore, took up a large glass, and

would have flung it at his adversary’s head, but for our entertainer’s

dexterously seizing it at the instant when it was raised for that

purpose.

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting down the glass, and

hauling out his gold repeater by its massive chain, “I am exceedingly

sorry to announce that it’s half past nine.”

On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we got to the street door,

Startop was cheerily calling Drummle “old boy,” as if nothing had

happened. But the old boy was so far from responding, that he would not

even walk to Hammersmith on the same side of the way; so Herbert and I,

who remained in town, saw them going down the street on opposite sides;

Startop leading, and Drummle lagging behind in the shadow of the

houses, much as he was wont to follow in his boat.

As the door was not yet shut, I thought I would leave Herbert there for

a moment, and run upstairs again to say a word to my guardian. I found

him in his dressing-room surrounded by his stock of boots, already hard

at it, washing his hands of us.

I told him I had come up again to say how sorry I was that anything

disagreeable should have occurred, and that I hoped he would not blame

me much.

“Pooh!” said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through the

water-drops; “it’s nothing, Pip. I like that Spider though.”

He had turned towards me now, and was shaking his head, and blowing,

and towelling himself.

“I am glad you like him, sir,” said I—“but I don’t.”

“No, no,” my guardian assented; “don’t have too much to do with him.

Keep as clear of him as you can. But I like the fellow, Pip; he is one

of the true sort. Why, if I was a fortune-teller—”

Looking out of the towel, he caught my eye.

“But I am not a fortune-teller,” he said, letting his head drop into a

festoon of towel, and towelling away at his two ears. “You know what I

am, don’t you? Good night, Pip.”

“Good night, sir.”

In about a month after that, the Spider’s time with Mr. Pocket was up

for good, and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs. Pocket, he

went home to the family hole.