Chương Chương 32 · One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I received a note

. One day when I was busy with my books and Mr. Pocket, I received a note

by the post, the mere outside of which threw me into a great flutter;

for, though I had never seen the handwriting in which it was addressed,

I divined whose hand it was. It had no set beginning, as Dear Mr. Pip,

or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear Anything, but ran thus:—

“I am to come to London the day after to-morrow by the midday coach. I

believe it was settled you should meet me? At all events Miss Havisham

has that impression, and I write in obedience to it. She sends you her

regard.

“Yours, ESTELLA.”

If there had been time, I should probably have ordered several suits of

clothes for this occasion; but as there was not, I was fain to be

content with those I had. My appetite vanished instantly, and I knew no

peace or rest until the day arrived. Not that its arrival brought me

either; for, then I was worse than ever, and began haunting the

coach-office in Wood Street, Cheapside, before the coach had left the

Blue Boar in our town. For all that I knew this perfectly well, I still

felt as if it were not safe to let the coach-office be out of my sight

longer than five minutes at a time; and in this condition of unreason I

had performed the first half-hour of a watch of four or five hours,

when Wemmick ran against me.

“Halloa, Mr. Pip,” said he; “how do you do? I should hardly have

thought this was _your_ beat.”

I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was coming up by

coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged.

“Both flourishing thankye,” said Wemmick, “and particularly the Aged.

He’s in wonderful feather. He’ll be eighty-two next birthday. I have a

notion of firing eighty-two times, if the neighbourhood shouldn’t

complain, and that cannon of mine should prove equal to the pressure.

However, this is not London talk. Where do you think I am going to?”

“To the office?” said I, for he was tending in that direction.

“Next thing to it,” returned Wemmick, “I am going to Newgate. We are in

a banker’s-parcel case just at present, and I have been down the road

taking a squint at the scene of action, and thereupon must have a word

or two with our client.”

“Did your client commit the robbery?” I asked.

“Bless your soul and body, no,” answered Wemmick, very drily. “But he

is accused of it. So might you or I be. Either of us might be accused

of it, you know.”

“Only neither of us is,” I remarked.

“Yah!” said Wemmick, touching me on the breast with his forefinger;

“you’re a deep one, Mr. Pip! Would you like to have a look at Newgate?

Have you time to spare?”

I had so much time to spare, that the proposal came as a relief,

notwithstanding its irreconcilability with my latent desire to keep my

eye on the coach-office. Muttering that I would make the inquiry

whether I had time to walk with him, I went into the office, and

ascertained from the clerk with the nicest precision and much to the

trying of his temper, the earliest moment at which the coach could be

expected,—which I knew beforehand, quite as well as he. I then rejoined

Mr. Wemmick, and affecting to consult my watch, and to be surprised by

the information I had received, accepted his offer.

We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed through the lodge

where some fetters were hanging up on the bare walls among the prison

rules, into the interior of the jail. At that time jails were much

neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction consequent on all

public wrongdoing—and which is always its heaviest and longest

punishment—was still far off. So, felons were not lodged and fed better

than soldiers (to say nothing of paupers), and seldom set fire to their

prisons with the excusable object of improving the flavour of their

soup. It was visiting time when Wemmick took me in, and a potman was

going his rounds with beer; and the prisoners, behind bars in yards,

were buying beer, and talking to friends; and a frowzy, ugly,

disorderly, depressing scene it was.

It struck me that Wemmick walked among the prisoners much as a gardener

might walk among his plants. This was first put into my head by his

seeing a shoot that had come up in the night, and saying, “What,

Captain Tom? Are _you_ there? Ah, indeed!” and also, “Is that Black

Bill behind the cistern? Why I didn’t look for you these two months;

how do you find yourself?” Equally in his stopping at the bars and

attending to anxious whisperers,—always singly,—Wemmick with his

post-office in an immovable state, looked at them while in conference,

as if he were taking particular notice of the advance they had made,

since last observed, towards coming out in full blow at their trial.

He was highly popular, and I found that he took the familiar department

of Mr. Jaggers’s business; though something of the state of Mr. Jaggers

hung about him too, forbidding approach beyond certain limits. His

personal recognition of each successive client was comprised in a nod,

and in his settling his hat a little easier on his head with both

hands, and then tightening the post-office, and putting his hands in

his pockets. In one or two instances there was a difficulty respecting

the raising of fees, and then Mr. Wemmick, backing as far as possible

from the insufficient money produced, said, “it’s no use, my boy. I’m

only a subordinate. I can’t take it. Don’t go on in that way with a

subordinate. If you are unable to make up your quantum, my boy, you had

better address yourself to a principal; there are plenty of principals

in the profession, you know, and what is not worth the while of one,

may be worth the while of another; that’s my recommendation to you,

speaking as a subordinate. Don’t try on useless measures. Why should

you? Now, who’s next?”

Thus, we walked through Wemmick’s greenhouse, until he turned to me and

said, “Notice the man I shall shake hands with.” I should have done so,

without the preparation, as he had shaken hands with no one yet.

Almost as soon as he had spoken, a portly upright man (whom I can see

now, as I write) in a well-worn olive-coloured frock-coat, with a

peculiar pallor overspreading the red in his complexion, and eyes that

went wandering about when he tried to fix them, came up to a corner of

the bars, and put his hand to his hat—which had a greasy and fatty

surface like cold broth—with a half-serious and half-jocose military

salute.

“Colonel, to you!” said Wemmick; “how are you, Colonel?”

“All right, Mr. Wemmick.”

“Everything was done that could be done, but the evidence was too

strong for us, Colonel.”

“Yes, it was too strong, sir,—but _I_ don’t care.”

“No, no,” said Wemmick, coolly, “_you_ don’t care.” Then, turning to

me, “Served His Majesty this man. Was a soldier in the line and bought

his discharge.”

I said, “Indeed?” and the man’s eyes looked at me, and then looked over

my head, and then looked all round me, and then he drew his hand across

his lips and laughed.

“I think I shall be out of this on Monday, sir,” he said to Wemmick.

“Perhaps,” returned my friend, “but there’s no knowing.”

“I am glad to have the chance of bidding you good-bye, Mr. Wemmick,”

said the man, stretching out his hand between two bars.

“Thankye,” said Wemmick, shaking hands with him. “Same to you,

Colonel.”

“If what I had upon me when taken had been real, Mr. Wemmick,” said the

man, unwilling to let his hand go, “I should have asked the favour of

your wearing another ring—in acknowledgment of your attentions.”

“I’ll accept the will for the deed,” said Wemmick. “By the by; you were

quite a pigeon-fancier.” The man looked up at the sky. “I am told you

had a remarkable breed of tumblers. _Could_ you commission any friend

of yours to bring me a pair, if you’ve no further use for ’em?”

“It shall be done, sir.”

“All right,” said Wemmick, “they shall be taken care of.

Good-afternoon, Colonel. Good-bye!” They shook hands again, and as we

walked away Wemmick said to me, “A Coiner, a very good workman. The

Recorder’s report is made to-day, and he is sure to be executed on

Monday. Still you see, as far as it goes, a pair of pigeons are

portable property all the same.” With that, he looked back, and nodded

at this dead plant, and then cast his eyes about him in walking out of

the yard, as if he were considering what other pot would go best in its

place.

As we came out of the prison through the lodge, I found that the great

importance of my guardian was appreciated by the turnkeys, no less than

by those whom they held in charge. “Well, Mr. Wemmick,” said the

turnkey, who kept us between the two studded and spiked lodge gates,

and who carefully locked one before he unlocked the other, “what’s Mr.

Jaggers going to do with that water-side murder? Is he going to make it

manslaughter, or what’s he going to make of it?”

“Why don’t you ask him?” returned Wemmick.

“O yes, I dare say!” said the turnkey.

“Now, that’s the way with them here, Mr. Pip,” remarked Wemmick,

turning to me with his post-office elongated. “They don’t mind what

they ask of me, the subordinate; but you’ll never catch ’em asking any

questions of my principal.”

“Is this young gentleman one of the ’prentices or articled ones of your

office?” asked the turnkey, with a grin at Mr. Wemmick’s humour.

“There he goes again, you see!” cried Wemmick, “I told you so! Asks

another question of the subordinate before his first is dry! Well,

supposing Mr. Pip is one of them?”

“Why then,” said the turnkey, grinning again, “he knows what Mr.

Jaggers is.”

“Yah!” cried Wemmick, suddenly hitting out at the turnkey in a

facetious way, “you’re dumb as one of your own keys when you have to do

with my principal, you know you are. Let us out, you old fox, or I’ll

get him to bring an action against you for false imprisonment.”

The turnkey laughed, and gave us good day, and stood laughing at us

over the spikes of the wicket when we descended the steps into the

street.

“Mind you, Mr. Pip,” said Wemmick, gravely in my ear, as he took my arm

to be more confidential; “I don’t know that Mr. Jaggers does a better

thing than the way in which he keeps himself so high. He’s always so

high. His constant height is of a piece with his immense abilities.

That Colonel durst no more take leave of _him_, than that turnkey durst

ask him his intentions respecting a case. Then, between his height and

them, he slips in his subordinate,—don’t you see?—and so he has ’em,

soul and body.”

I was very much impressed, and not for the first time, by my guardian’s

subtlety. To confess the truth, I very heartily wished, and not for the

first time, that I had had some other guardian of minor abilities.

Mr. Wemmick and I parted at the office in Little Britain, where

suppliants for Mr. Jaggers’s notice were lingering about as usual, and

I returned to my watch in the street of the coach-office, with some

three hours on hand. I consumed the whole time in thinking how strange

it was that I should be encompassed by all this taint of prison and

crime; that, in my childhood out on our lonely marshes on a winter

evening, I should have first encountered it; that, it should have

reappeared on two occasions, starting out like a stain that was faded

but not gone; that, it should in this new way pervade my fortune and

advancement. While my mind was thus engaged, I thought of the beautiful

young Estella, proud and refined, coming towards me, and I thought with

absolute abhorrence of the contrast between the jail and her. I wished

that Wemmick had not met me, or that I had not yielded to him and gone

with him, so that, of all days in the year on this day, I might not

have had Newgate in my breath and on my clothes. I beat the prison dust

off my feet as I sauntered to and fro, and I shook it out of my dress,

and I exhaled its air from my lungs. So contaminated did I feel,

remembering who was coming, that the coach came quickly after all, and

I was not yet free from the soiling consciousness of Mr. Wemmick’s

conservatory, when I saw her face at the coach window and her hand

waving to me.

What _was_ the nameless shadow which again in that one instant had

passed?