GREAT EXPECTATIONS
PART 11
Chapter XX
The journey from our town to the metropolis was a
journey of about five hours. It was a little past midday when the four-horse
stage-coach by which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of traffic frayed
out about the Cross Keys, Wood Street, Cheapside, London.
We Britons had at that time particularly settled
that it was treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of
everything: otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I
might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked,
narrow, and dirty.
Mr.
Jaggers had duly sent me his address; it was, Little Britain, and he had
written after it on his card, "just out of Smithfield, and close by the
coach-office." Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman, who seemed to have as
many capes to his greasy great-coat as he was years old, packed me u
p in his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and
jingling barrier of steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. His
getting on his box, which I remember to have been decorated with an old
weather-stained pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, was quite a work of
time. It was a wonderful equipage, with six great coronets outside, and ragged
things behind for I don't know how many footmen to hold on by, and a harrow below
them, to prevent amateur footmen from yielding to the temptation.
I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to
think how like a straw-yard it was, and yet how like a rag-shop, and to wonder
why the horses' nose-bags were kept inside, when I observed the coachman
beginning to get down, as if we were going to stop presently. And stop we
presently did, in a gloomy street, at certain offices with an open door,
whereon was painted MR. JAGGERS.
"How much?" I asked the coachman.
The coachman answered, "A shilling—unless you
wish to make it more."
I naturally said I had no wish to make it more.
"Then it must be a shilling," observed
the coachman. "I don't want to get into trouble. I know him!" He
darkly closed an eye at Mr. Jaggers's name, and shook his head.
When he had got his shilling, and had in course of
time completed the ascent to his box, and had got away (which appeared to
relieve his mind), I went into the front office with my little portmanteau in
my hand and asked, Was Mr. Jaggers at home?
"He is not," returned the clerk. "He
is in Court at present. Am I addressing Mr. Pip?"
I signified that he was addressing Mr. Pip.
"Mr. Jaggers left word, would you wait in his
room. He couldn't say how long he might be, having a case on. But it stands to
reason, his time being valuable, that he won't be longer than he can
help."
With those words, the clerk opened a door, and
ushered me into an inner chamber at the back. Here, we found a gentleman with
one eye, in a velveteen suit and knee-breeches, who wiped his nose with his
sleeve on being interrupted in the perusal of the newspaper.
"Go and wait outside, Mike," said the
clerk.
I began to say that I hoped I was not interrupting,
when the clerk shoved this gentleman out with as little ceremony as I ever saw
used, and tossing his fur cap out after him, left me alone.
Mr. Jaggers's room was lighted by a skylight only,
and was a most dismal place; the skylight, eccentrically pitched like a broken
head, and the distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had twisted
themselves to peep down at me through it. There were not so many papers about,
as I should have expected to see; and there were some odd objects about, that I
should not have expected to see,—such as an old rusty pistol, a sword in a
scabbard, several strange-looking boxes and packages, and two dreadful casts on
a shelf, of faces peculiarly swollen, and twitchy about the nose. Mr. Jaggers's
own high-backed chair was of deadly black horsehair, with rows of brass nails
round it, like a coffin; and I fancied I could see how he leaned back in it,
and bit his forefinger at the clients. The room was but small, and the clients
seemed to have had a habit of backing up against the wall; the wall, especially
opposite to Mr. Jaggers's chair, being greasy with shoulders. I recalled, too,
that the one-eyed gentleman had shuffled forth against the wall when I was the
innocent cause of his being turned out.
I sat down in the cliental chair placed over
against Mr. Jaggers's chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of
the place. I called to mind that the clerk had the same air of knowing
something to everybody else's disadvantage, as his master had. I wondered how
many other clerks there were up-stairs, and whether they all claimed to have
the same detrimental mastery of their fellow-creatures. I wondered what was the
history of all the odd litter about the room, and how it came there. I wondered
whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers's family, and, if he were so
unfortunate as to have had a pair of such ill-looking relations, why he stuck
them on that dusty perch for the blacks and flies to settle on, instead of
giving them a place at home. Of course I had no experience of a London summer
day, and my spirits may have been oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by
the dust and grit that lay thick on everything. But I sat wondering and waiting
in Mr. Jaggers's close room, until I really could not bear the two casts on the
shelf above Mr. Jaggers's chair, and got up and went out.
When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in
the air while I waited, he advised me to go round the corner and I should come
into Smithfield. So I came into Smithfield; and the shameful place, being all
asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to stick to me. So, I
rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning into a street where I saw the
great black dome of Saint Paul's bulging at me from behind a grim stone
building which a bystander said was Newgate Prison. Following the wall of the
jail, I found the roadway covered with straw to deaden the noise of passing
vehicles; and from this, and from the quantity of people standing about
smelling strongly of spirits and beer, I inferred that the trials were on.
While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty
and partially drunk minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and
hear a trial or so: informing me that he could give me a front place for half a
crown, whence I should command a full view of the Lord Chief Justice in his wig
and robes,—mentioning that awful personage like waxwork, and presently offering
him at the reduced price of eighteen-pence. As I declined the proposal on the
plea of an appointment, he was so good as to take me into a yard and show me
where the gallows was kept, and also where people were publicly whipped, and
then he showed me the Debtors' Door, out of which culprits came to be hanged;
heightening the interest of that dreadful portal by giving me to understand
that "four on 'em" would come out at that door the day after
to-morrow at eight in the morning, to be killed in a row. This was horrible,
and gave me a sickening idea of London; the more so as the Lord Chief Justice's
proprietor wore (from his hat down to his boots and up again to his
pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed clothes which had evidently not
belonged to him originally, and which I took it into my head he had bought
cheap of the executioner. Under these circumstances I thought myself well rid
of him for a shilling.
I dropped into the office to ask if Mr. Jaggers had
come in yet, and I found he had not, and I strolled out again. This time, I
made the tour of Little Britain, and turned into Bartholomew Close; and now I
became aware that other people were waiting about for Mr. Jaggers, as well as I.
There were two men of secret appearance lounging in Bartholomew Close, and
thoughtfully fitting their feet into the cracks of the pavement as they talked
together, one of whom said to the other when they first passed me, that
"Jaggers would do it if it was to be done." There was a knot of three
men and two women standing at a corner, and one of the women was crying on her
dirty shawl, and the other comforted her by saying, as she pulled her own shawl
over her shoulders, "Jaggers is for him, 'Melia, and what more could you
have?" There was a red-eyed little Jew who came into the Close while I was
loitering there, in company with a second little Jew whom he sent upon an
errand; and while the messenger was gone, I remarked this Jew, who was of a
highly excitable temperament, performing a jig of anxiety under a lamp-post and
accompanying himself, in a kind of frenzy, with the words, "O Jaggerth,
Jaggerth, Jaggerth! all otherth ith Cag-Maggerth, give me Jaggerth!" These
testimonies to the popularity of my guardian made a deep impression on me, and
I admired and wondered more than ever.
At length, as I was looking out at the iron gate of
Bartholomew Close into Little Britain, I saw Mr. Jaggers coming across the road
towards me. All the others who were waiting saw him at the same time, and there
was quite a rush at him. Mr. Jaggers, putting a hand on my shoulder and walking
me on at his side without saying anything to me, addressed himself to his
followers.
First, he took the two secret men.
"Now, I have nothing to say to you," said
Mr. Jaggers, throwing his finger at them. "I want to know no more than I
know. As to the result, it's a toss-up. I told you from the first it was a
toss-up. Have you paid Wemmick?"
"We made the money up this morning, sir,"
said one of the men, submissively, while the other perused Mr. Jaggers's face.
"I don't ask you when you made it up, or
where, or whether you made it up at all. Has Wemmick got it?"
"Yes, sir," said both the men together.
"Very well; then you may go. Now, I won't have
it!" said Mr Jaggers, waving his hand at them to put them behind him.
"If you say a word to me, I'll throw up the case."
"We thought, Mr. Jaggers—" one of the men
began, pulling off his hat.
"That's what I told you not to do," said
Mr. Jaggers. "You thought! I think for you; that's enough for you. If I
want you, I know where to find you; I don't want you to find me. Now I won't
have it. I won't hear a word."
The two men looked at one another as Mr. Jaggers waved
them behind again, and humbly fell back and were heard no more.
"And now you!" said Mr. Jaggers, suddenly
stopping, and turning on the two women with the shawls, from whom the three men
had meekly separated,—"Oh! Amelia, is it?"
"Yes, Mr. Jaggers."
"And do you remember," retorted Mr.
Jaggers, "that but for me you wouldn't be here and couldn't be here?"
"O yes, sir!" exclaimed both women
together. "Lord bless you, sir, well we knows that!"
"Then why," said Mr. Jaggers, "do
you come here?"
"My Bill, sir!" the crying woman pleaded.
"Now, I tell you what!" said Mr. Jaggers.
"Once for all. If you don't know that your Bill's in good hands, I know
it. And if you come here bothering about your Bill, I'll make an example of
both your Bill and you, and let him slip through my fingers. Have you paid
Wemmick?"
"O yes, sir! Every farden."
"Very well. Then you have done all you have
got to do. Say another word—one single word—and Wemmick shall give you your
money back."
This terrible threat caused the two women to fall
off immediately. No one remained now but the excitable Jew, who had already
raised the skirts of Mr. Jaggers's coat to his lips several times.
"I don't know this man!" said Mr.
Jaggers, in the same devastating strain: "What does this fellow want?"
"Ma thear Mithter Jaggerth. Hown brother to
Habraham Latharuth?"
"Who's he?" said Mr. Jaggers. "Let
go of my coat."
The suitor, kissing the hem of the garment again
before relinquishing it, replied, "Habraham Latharuth, on thuthpithion of
plate."
"You're too late," said Mr. Jaggers.
"I am over the way."
"Holy father, Mithter Jaggerth!" cried my
excitable acquaintance, turning white, "don't thay you're again Habraham
Latharuth!"
"I am," said Mr. Jaggers, "and
there's an end of it. Get out of the way."
"Mithter Jaggerth! Half a moment! My hown
cuthen'th gone to Mithter Wemmick at thith prethent minute, to hoffer him hany
termth. Mithter Jaggerth! Half a quarter of a moment! If you'd have the
condethenthun to be bought off from the t'other thide—at hany thuperior
prithe!—money no object!—Mithter Jaggerth—Mithter—!"
My guardian threw his supplicant off with supreme
indifference, and left him dancing on the pavement as if it were red hot.
Without further interruption, we reached the front office, where we found the
clerk and the man in velveteen with the fur cap.
"Here's Mike," said the clerk, getting
down from his stool, and approaching Mr. Jaggers confidentially.
"Oh!" said Mr. Jaggers, turning to the
man, who was pulling a lock of hair in the middle of his forehead, like the
Bull in Cock Robin pulling at the bell-rope; "your man comes on this
afternoon. Well?"
"Well, Mas'r Jaggers," returned Mike, in
the voice of a sufferer from a constitutional cold; "arter a deal o'
trouble, I've found one, sir, as might do."
"What is he prepared to swear?"
"Well, Mas'r Jaggers," said Mike, wiping
his nose on his fur cap this time; "in a general way, anythink."
Mr. Jaggers suddenly became most irate. "Now,
I warned you before," said he, throwing his forefinger at the terrified
client, "that if you ever presumed to talk in that way here, I'd make an
example of you. You infernal scoundrel, how dare you tell ME that?"
The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if
he were unconscious what he had done.
"Spooney!" said the clerk, in a low
voice, giving him a stir with his elbow. "Soft Head! Need you say it face
to face?"
"Now, I ask you, you blundering booby,"
said my guardian, very sternly, "once more and for the last time, what the
man you have brought here is prepared to swear?"
Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were
trying to learn a lesson from his face, and slowly replied, "Ayther to
character, or to having been in his company and never left him all the night in
question."
"Now, be careful. In what station of life is
this man?"
Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor,
and looked at the ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even looked at me,
before beginning to reply in a nervous manner, "We've dressed him up
like—" when my guardian blustered out,—
"What? You WILL, will you?"
("Spooney!" added the clerk again, with
another stir.)
After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened
and began again:—
"He is dressed like a 'spectable pieman. A
sort of a pastry-cook."
"Is he here?" asked my guardian.
"I left him," said Mike, "a setting
on some doorsteps round the corner."
"Take him past that window, and let me see
him."
The window indicated was the office window. We all
three went to it, behind the wire blind, and presently saw the client go by in
an accidental manner, with a murderous-looking tall individual, in a short suit
of white linen and a paper cap. This guileless confectioner was not by any
means sober, and had a black eye in the green stage of recovery, which was
painted over.
"Tell him to take his witness away
directly," said my guardian to the clerk, in extreme disgust, "and
ask him what he means by bringing such a fellow as that."
My guardian then took me into his own room, and
while he lunched, standing, from a sandwich-box and a pocket-flask of sherry
(he seemed to bully his very sandwich as he ate it), informed me what
arrangements he had made for me. I was to go to "Barnard's Inn," to
young Mr. Pocket's rooms, where a bed had been sent in for my accommodation; I
was to remain with young Mr. Pocket until Monday; on Monday I was to go with
him to his father's house on a visit, that I might try how I liked it. Also, I
was told what my allowance was to be,—it was a very liberal one,—and had handed
to me from one of my guardian's drawers, the cards of certain tradesmen with
whom I was to deal for all kinds of clothes, and such other things as I could
in reason want. "You will find your credit good, Mr. Pip," said my
guardian, whose flask of sherry smelt like a whole caskful, as he hastily
refreshed himself, "but I shall by this means be able to check your bills,
and to pull you up if I find you outrunning the constable. Of course you'll go wrong
somehow, but that's no fault of mine."
After I had pondered a little over this encouraging
sentiment, I asked Mr. Jaggers if I could send for a coach? He said it was not
worth while, I was so near my destination; Wemmick should walk round with me, if
I pleased.
I then found that Wemmick was the clerk in the next
room. Another clerk was rung down from up stairs to take his place while he was
out, and I accompanied him into the street, after shaking hands with my
guardian. We found a new set of people lingering outside, but Wemmick made a
way among them by saying coolly yet decisively, "I tell you it's no use;
he won't have a word to say to one of you;" and we soon got clear of them,
and went on side by side.
Chapter XXI
Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to
see what he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather
short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have
been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks in
it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and the
instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made
three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given
them up without an effort to smooth them off. I judged him to be a bachelor
from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a
good many bereavements; for he wore at least four mourning rings, besides a
brooch representing a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I
noticed, too, that several rings and seals hung at his watch-chain, as if he
were quite laden with remembrances of departed friends. He had glittering
eyes,—small, keen, and black,—and thin wide mottled lips. He had had them, to the
best of my belief, from forty to fifty years.
"So you were never in London before?"
said Mr. Wemmick to me.
"No," said I.
"I was new here once," said Mr. Wemmick.
"Rum to think of now!"
"You are well acquainted with it now?"
"Why, yes," said Mr. Wemmick. "I
know the moves of it."
"Is it a very wicked place?" I asked,
more for the sake of saying something than for information.
"You may get cheated, robbed, and murdered in
London. But there are plenty of people anywhere, who'll do that for you."
"If there is bad blood between you and
them," said I, to soften it off a little.
"O! I don't know about bad blood,"
returned Mr. Wemmick; "there's not much bad blood about. They'll do it, if
there's anything to be got by it."
"That makes it worse."
"You think so?" returned Mr. Wemmick.
"Much about the same, I should say."
He wore his hat on the back of his head, and looked
straight before him: walking in a self-contained way as if there were nothing
in the streets to claim his attention. His mouth was such a post-office of a
mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling. We had got to the top of
Holborn Hill before I knew that it was merely a mechanical appearance, and that
he was not smiling at all.
"Do you know where Mr. Matthew Pocket
lives?" I asked Mr. Wemmick.
"Yes," said he, nodding in the direction.
"At Hammersmith, west of London."
"Is that far?"
"Well! Say five miles."
"Do you know him?"
"Why, you're a regular cross-examiner!"
said Mr. Wemmick, looking at me with an approving air. "Yes, I know him. I
know him!"
There was an air of toleration or depreciation
about his utterance of these words that rather depressed me; and I was still
looking sideways at his block of a face in search of any encouraging note to
the text, when he said here we were at Barnard's Inn. My depression was not
alleviated by the announcement, for, I had supposed that establishment to be an
hotel kept by Mr. Barnard, to which the Blue Boar in our town was a mere
public-house. Whereas I now found Barnard to be a disembodied spirit, or a
fiction, and his inn the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed
together in a rank corner as a club for Tom-cats.
We entered this haven through a wicket-gate, and
were disgorged by an introductory passage into a melancholy little square that
looked to me like a flat burying-ground. I thought it had the most dismal trees
in it, and the most dismal sparrows, and the most dismal cats, and the most
dismal houses (in number half a dozen or so), that I had ever seen. I thought the
windows of the sets of chambers into which those houses were divided were in
every stage of dilapidated blind and curtain, crippled flower-pot, cracked
glass, dusty decay, and miserable makeshift; while To Let, To Let, To Let,
glared at me from empty rooms, as if no new wretches ever came there, and the
vengeance of the soul of Barnard were being slowly appeased by the gradual
suicide of the present occupants and their unholy interment under the gravel. A
frowzy mourning of soot and smoke attired this forlorn creation of Barnard, and
it had strewn ashes on its head, and was undergoing penance and humiliation as
a mere dust-hole. Thus far my sense of sight; while dry rot and wet rot and all
the silent rots that rot in neglected roof and cellar,—rot of rat and mouse and
bug and coaching-stables near at hand besides—addressed themselves faintly to
my sense of smell, and moaned, "Try Barnard's Mixture."
So imperfect was this realization of the first of
my great expectations, that I looked in dismay at Mr. Wemmick. "Ah!"
said he, mistaking me; "the retirement reminds you of the country. So it
does me."
He led me into a corner and conducted me up a
flight of stairs,—which appeared to me to be slowly collapsing into sawdust, so
that one of those days the upper lodgers would look out at their doors and find
themselves without the means of coming down,—to a set of chambers on the top
floor. MR. POCKET, JUN., was painted on the door, and there was a label on the
letter-box, "Return shortly."
"He hardly thought you'd come so soon,"
Mr. Wemmick explained. "You don't want me any more?"
"No, thank you," said I.
"As I keep the cash," Mr. Wemmick
observed, "we shall most likely meet pretty often. Good day."
"Good day."
I put out my hand, and Mr. Wemmick at first looked
at it as if he thought I wanted something. Then he looked at me, and said,
correcting himself,—
"To be sure! Yes. You're in the habit of
shaking hands?"
I was rather confused, thinking it must be out of
the London fashion, but said yes.
"I have got so out of it!" said Mr.
Wemmick,—"except at last. Very glad, I'm sure, to make your acquaintance. Good
day!"
When we had shaken hands and he was gone, I opened
the staircase window and had nearly beheaded myself, for, the lines had rotted
away, and it came down like the guillotine. Happily it was so quick that I had
not put my head out. After this escape, I was content to take a foggy view of
the Inn through the window's encrusting dirt, and to stand dolefully looking
out, saying to myself that London was decidedly overrated.
Mr. Pocket, Junior's, idea of Shortly was not mine,
for I had nearly maddened myself with looking out for half an hour, and had
written my name with my finger several times in the dirt of every pane in the
window, before I heard footsteps on the stairs. Gradually there arose before me
the hat, head, neckcloth, waistcoat, trousers, boots, of a member of society of
about my own standing. He had a paper-bag under each arm and a pottle of
strawberries in one hand, and was out of breath.
"Mr. Pip?" said he.
"Mr. Pocket?" said I.
"Dear me!" he exclaimed. "I am
extremely sorry; but I knew there was a coach from your part of the country at
midday, and I thought you would come by that one. The fact is, I have been out
on your account,—not that that is any excuse,—for I thought, coming from the
country, you might like a little fruit after dinner, and I went to Covent
Garden Market to get it good."
For a reason that I had, I felt as if my eyes would
start out of my head. I acknowledged his attention incoherently, and began to
think this was a dream.
"Dear me!" said Mr. Pocket, Junior.
"This door sticks so!"
As he was fast making jam of his fruit by wrestling
with the door while the paper-bags were under his arms, I begged him to allow
me to hold them. He relinquished them with an agreeable smile, and combated
with the door as if it were a wild beast. It yielded so suddenly at last, that
he staggered back upon me, and I staggered back upon the opposite door, and we
both laughed. But still I felt as if my eyes must start out of my head, and as
if this must be a dream.
"Pray come in," said Mr. Pocket, Junior.
"Allow me to lead the way. I am rather bare here, but I hope you'll be
able to make out tolerably well till Monday. My father thought you would get on
more agreeably through to-morrow with me than with him, and might like to take
a walk about London. I am sure I shall be very happy to show London to you. As
to our table, you won't find that bad, I hope, for it will be supplied from our
coffee-house here, and (it is only right I should add) at your expense, such
being Mr. Jaggers's directions. As to our lodging, it's not by any means
splendid, because I have my own bread to earn, and my father hasn't anything to
give me, and I shouldn't be willing to take it, if he had. This is our
sitting-room,—just such chairs and tables and carpet and so forth, you see, as
they could spare from home. You mustn't give me credit for the tablecloth and
spoons and castors, because they come for you from the coffee-house. This is my
little bedroom; rather musty, but Barnard's is musty. This is your bedroom; the
furniture's hired for the occasion, but I trust it will answer the purpose; if
you should want anything, I'll go and fetch it. The chambers are retired, and
we shall be alone together, but we shan't fight, I dare say. But dear me, I beg
your pardon, you're holding the fruit all this time. Pray let me take these
bags from you. I am quite ashamed."
As I stood opposite to Mr. Pocket, Junior,
delivering him the bags, One, Two, I saw the starting appearance come into his own
eyes that I knew to be in mine, and he said, falling back,—
"Lord bless me, you're the prowling boy!"
"And you," said I, "are the pale
young gentleman!"
