Chapter 48

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

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 my
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. Jaggers'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 hackney
coach: 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 filling 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 any
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, it 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.