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 mn 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, `Wemmick's coming.' So, I
changed my excuse into an acceptance - the few words I had uttered, serving for
the beginning of either - 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 finding 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 Jagger'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 hackneycoach: 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, 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 exactly 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 Wemmick 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--'
`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 addressing himself to me.
`So, here's to Mrs Bentley Drummle,' said Mr Jaggers, taking a decanter of
choicer wine from his dumb-waiter, and filing for each of us and for himself,
`and may the question 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, `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 Lightning, 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 attentive eyes. And I felt absolutely certain
that this woman was Estella's mother.
Mr Jaggers had seen me with Estella, and was not likely to have missed the
sentiments I had been at no pains to conceal. 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 readiness
for cross-examination. As to the quantity of wine, his post-office was as
indifferent and ready as and 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 comfortably 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 further.'
I asked him if he had ever seen Miss Havisham's adopted daughter, Mrs Bentley
Drummle? He said no. To avoid being too abrupt, I then spoke of the Aged, and of
Miss Skiffins. 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 unscrewed 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 interest 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.'
`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, i 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 astonishing. It was a desperate case, and it was
comparatively early days with him then, and he worked it to general admiration;
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 murdered 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 perfect 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 violent 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 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
finger-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, frantically 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
hypothesis 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, assuming for the sake of argument that you have not invented them?" To
sum up, sir,' said Wemmick, `Mr Jaggers was altogether 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.
|