Chapter 25

Bentley Drummle, who was so sulky a fellow that he even took up a book as
if its writer had done him an injury, did not take up an acquaintance in a more
agreeable spirit. Heavy in figure, movement, and comprehension,—in the sluggish
complexion of his face, and in the large, awkward tongue that seemed to loll
about in his mouth as he himself lolled about in a room,—he was idle, proud,
niggardly, reserved, and suspicious. He came of rich people down in
Somersetshire, who had nursed this combination of qualities until they made the
discovery that it was just of age and a blockhead. Thus, Bentley Drummle had
come to Mr. Pocket when he was a head taller than that gentleman, and half a
dozen heads thicker than most gentlemen.

Startop had been spoilt by a weak mother and kept at home when he ought to have
been at school, but he was devotedly attached to her, and admired her beyond
measure. He had a woman’s delicacy of feature, and was—"as you may see, though
you never saw her," said Herbert to me—"exactly like his mother." It was but
natural that I should take to him much more kindly than to Drummle, and that,
even in the earliest evenings of our boating, he and I should pull homeward
abreast of one another, conversing from boat to boat, while Bentley Drummle came
up in our wake alone, under the overhanging banks and among the rushes. He would
always creep in-shore like some uncomfortable amphibious creature, even when the
tide would have sent him fast upon his way; and I always think of him as coming
after us in the dark or by the back-water, when our own two boats were breaking
the sunset or the moonlight in mid-stream.

Herbert was my intimate companion and friend. I presented him with a half-share
in my boat, which was the occasion of his often coming down to Hammersmith; and
my possession of a half-share in his chambers often took me up to London. We
used to walk between the two places at all hours. I have an affection for the
road yet (though it is not so pleasant a road as it was then), formed in the
impressibility of untried youth and hope.

When I had been in Mr. Pocket’s family a month or two, Mr. and Mrs. Camilla
turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket’s sister. Georgiana, whom I had seen at Miss
Havisham’s on the same occasion, also turned up. She was a cousin,—an
indigestive single woman, who called her rigidity religion, and her liver love.
These people hated me with the hatred of cupidity and disappointment. As a
matter of course, they fawned upon me in my prosperity with the basest meanness.
Towards Mr. Pocket, as a grown-up infant with no notion of his own interests,
they showed the complacent forbearance I had heard them express. Mrs. Pocket
they held in contempt; but they allowed the poor soul to have been heavily
disappointed in life, because that shed a feeble reflected light upon
themselves.

These were the surroundings among which I settled down, and applied myself to my
education. I soon contracted expensive habits, and began to spend an amount of
money that within a few short months I should have thought almost fabulous; but
through good and evil I stuck to my books. There was no other merit in this,
than my having sense enough to feel my deficiencies. Between Mr. Pocket and
Herbert I got on fast; and, with one or the other always at my elbow to give me
the start I wanted, and clear obstructions out of my road, I must have been as
great a dolt as Drummle if I had done less.

I had not seen Mr. Wemmick for some weeks, when I thought I would write him a
note and propose to go home with him on a certain evening. He replied that it
would give him much pleasure, and that he would expect me at the office at six
o’clock. Thither I went, and there I found him, putting the key of his safe down
his back as the clock struck.

"Did you think of walking down to Walworth?" said he.

"Certainly," said I, "if you approve."

"Very much," was Wemmick’s reply, "for I have had my legs under the desk all
day, and shall be glad to stretch them. Now, I’ll tell you what I have got for
supper, Mr. Pip. I have got a stewed steak,—which is of home preparation,—and a
cold roast fowl,—which is from the cook’s-shop. I think it’s tender, because the
master of the shop was a Juryman in some cases of ours the other day, and we let
him down easy. I reminded him of it when I bought the fowl, and I said, "Pick us
out a good one, old Briton, because if we had chosen to keep you in the box
another day or two, we could easily have done it." He said to that, "Let me make
you a present of the best fowl in the shop." I let him, of course. As far as it
goes, it’s property and portable. You don’t object to an aged parent, I hope?"

I really thought he was still speaking of the fowl, until he added, "Because I
have got an aged parent at my place." I then said what politeness required.

"So, you haven’t dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?" he pursued, as we walked along.

"Not yet."

"He told me so this afternoon when he heard you were coming. I expect you’ll
have an invitation to-morrow. He’s going to ask your pals, too. Three of ’em;
ain’t there?"

Although I was not in the habit of counting Drummle as one of my intimate
associates, I answered, "Yes."

"Well, he’s going to ask the whole gang,"—I hardly felt complimented by the
word,—"and whatever he gives you, he’ll give you good. Don’t look forward to
variety, but you’ll have excellence. And there’s another rum thing in his
house," proceeded Wemmick, after a moment’s pause, as if the remark followed on
the housekeeper understood; "he never lets a door or window be fastened at
night."

"Is he never robbed?"

"That’s it!" returned Wemmick. "He says, and gives it out publicly, "I want to
see the man who’ll rob me."
Lord bless you, I have heard him, a hundred times, if I have heard him once, say
to regular cracksmen in our front office, "You know where I live; now, no bolt
is ever drawn there; why don’t you do a stroke of business with me? Come; can’t
I tempt you?" Not a man of them, sir, would be bold enough to try it on, for
love or money."

"They dread him so much?" said I.

"Dread him," said Wemmick. "I believe you they dread him. Not but what he’s
artful, even in his defiance of them. No silver, sir. Britannia metal, every
spoon."

"So they wouldn’t have much," I observed, "even if they—"

"Ah! But he would
have much," said Wemmick, cutting me short, "and they know it. He’d have their
lives, and the lives of scores of ’em. He’d have all he could get. And it’s
impossible to say what he couldn’t get, if he gave his mind to it."

I was falling into meditation on my guardian’s greatness, when Wemmick
remarked:—

"As to the absence of plate, that’s only his natural depth, you know. A river’s
its natural depth, and he’s his natural depth. Look at his watch-chain. That’s
real enough."

"It’s very massive," said I.

"Massive?" repeated Wemmick. "I think so. And his watch is a gold repeater, and
worth a hundred pound if it’s worth a penny. Mr. Pip, there are about seven
hundred thieves in this town who know all about that watch; there’s not a man, a
woman, or a child, among them, who wouldn’t identify the smallest link in that
chain, and drop it as if it was red hot, if inveigled into touching it."

At first with such discourse, and afterwards with conversation of a more general
nature, did Mr. Wemmick and I beguile the time and the road, until he gave me to
understand that we had arrived in the district of Walworth.

It appeared to be a collection of back lanes, ditches, and little gardens, and
to present the aspect of a rather dull retirement. Wemmick’s house was a little
wooden cottage in the midst of plots of garden, and the top of it was cut out
and painted like a battery mounted with guns.

"My own doing," said Wemmick. "Looks pretty; don’t it?"

I highly commended it, I think it was the smallest house I ever saw; with the
queerest gothic windows (by far the greater part of them sham), and a gothic
door almost too small to get in at.

"That’s a real flagstaff, you see," said Wemmick, "and on Sundays I run up a
real flag. Then look here. After I have crossed this bridge, I hoist it
up-so—and cut off the communication."

The bridge was a plank, and it crossed a chasm about four feet wide and two
deep. But it was very pleasant to see the pride with which he hoisted it up and
made it fast; smiling as he did so, with a relish and not merely mechanically.

"At nine o’clock every night, Greenwich time," said Wemmick, "the gun fires.
There he is, you see! And when you hear him go, I think you’ll say he’s a
Stinger."

The piece of ordnance referred to, was mounted in a separate fortress,
constructed of lattice-work. It was protected from the weather by an ingenious
little tarpaulin contrivance in the nature of an umbrella.

"Then, at the back," said Wemmick, "out of sight, so as not to impede the idea
of fortifications,—for it’s a principle with me, if you have an idea, carry it
out and keep it up,—I don’t know whether that’s your opinion—"

I said, decidedly.

"—At the back, there’s a pig, and there are fowls and rabbits; then, I knock
together my own little frame, you see, and grow cucumbers; and you’ll judge at
supper what sort of a salad I can raise. So, sir," said Wemmick, smiling again,
but seriously too, as he shook his head, "if you can suppose the little place
besieged, it would hold out a devil of a time in point of provisions."

Then, he conducted me to a bower about a dozen yards off, but which was
approached by such ingenious twists of path that it took quite a long time to
get at; and in this retreat our glasses were already set forth. Our punch was
cooling in an ornamental lake, on whose margin the bower was raised. This piece
of water (with an island in the middle which might have been the salad for
supper) was of a circular form, and he had constructed a fountain in it, which,
when you set a little mill going and took a cork out of a pipe, played to that
powerful extent that it made the back of your hand quite wet.

"I am my own engineer, and my own carpenter, and my own plumber, and my own
gardener, and my own Jack of all Trades," said Wemmick, in acknowledging my
compliments. "Well; it’s a good thing, you know. It brushes the Newgate cobwebs
away, and pleases the Aged. You wouldn’t mind being at once introduced to the
Aged, would you? It wouldn’t put you out?"

I expressed the readiness I felt, and we went into the castle. There we found,
sitting by a fire, a very old man in a flannel coat: clean, cheerful,
comfortable, and well cared for, but intensely deaf.

"Well aged parent," said Wemmick, shaking hands with him in a cordial and jocose
way, "how am you?"

"All right, John; all right!" replied the old man.

"Here’s Mr. Pip, aged parent," said Wemmick, "and I wish you could hear his
name. Nod away at him, Mr. Pip; that’s what he likes. Nod away at him, if you
please, like winking!"

"This is a fine place of my son’s, sir," cried the old man, while I nodded as
hard as I possibly could. "This is a pretty pleasure-ground, sir. This spot and
these beautiful works upon it ought to be kept together by the Nation, after my
son’s time, for the people’s enjoyment."

"You’re as proud of it as Punch; ain’t you, Aged?" said Wemmick, contemplating
the old man, with his hard face really softened; "there’s a
nod for you;" giving him a tremendous one; "there’s another
for you;" giving him a still more tremendous one; "you like that, don’t you? If
you’re not tired, Mr. Pip—though I know it’s tiring to strangers—will you tip
him one more? You can’t think how it pleases him."

I tipped him several more, and he was in great spirits. We left him bestirring
himself to feed the fowls, and we sat down to our punch in the arbor; where
Wemmick told me, as he smoked a pipe, that it had taken him a good many years to
bring the property up to its present pitch of perfection.

"Is it your own, Mr. Wemmick?"

"O yes," said Wemmick, "I have got hold of it, a bit at a time. It’s a freehold,
by George!"

"Is it indeed? I hope Mr. Jaggers admires it?"

"Never seen it," said Wemmick. "Never heard of it. Never seen the Aged. Never
heard of him. No; the office is one thing, and private life is another. When I
go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the
Castle, I leave the office behind me. If it’s not in any way disagreeable to
you, you’ll oblige me by doing the same. I don’t wish it professionally spoken
about."

Of course I felt my good faith involved in the observance of his request. The
punch being very nice, we sat there drinking it and talking, until it was almost
nine o’clock. "Getting near gun-fire," said Wemmick then, as he laid down his
pipe; "it’s the Aged’s treat."

Proceeding into the Castle again, we found the Aged heating the poker, with
expectant eyes, as a preliminary to the performance of this great nightly
ceremony. Wemmick stood with his watch in his hand until the moment was come for
him to take the red-hot poker from the Aged, and repair to the battery. He took
it, and went out, and presently the Stinger went off with a Bang that shook the
crazy little box of a cottage as if it must fall to pieces, and made every glass
and teacup in it ring. Upon this, the Aged—who I believe would have been blown
out of his arm-chair but for holding on by the elbows—cried out exultingly,
"He’s fired! I heerd him!" and I nodded at the old gentleman until it is no
figure of speech to declare that I absolutely could not see him.

The interval between that time and supper Wemmick devoted to showing me his
collection of curiosities. They were mostly of a felonious character; comprising
the pen with which a celebrated forgery had been committed, a distinguished
razor or two, some locks of hair, and several manuscript confessions written
under condemnation,—upon which Mr. Wemmick set particular value as being, to use
his own words, "every one of ’em Lies, sir." These were agreeably dispersed
among small specimens of china and glass, various neat trifles made by the
proprietor of the museum, and some tobacco-stoppers carved by the Aged. They
were all displayed in that chamber of the Castle into which I had been first
inducted, and which served, not only as the general sitting-room but as the
kitchen too, if I might judge from a saucepan on the hob, and a brazen bijou
over the fireplace designed for the suspension of a roasting-jack.

There was a neat little girl in attendance, who looked after the Aged in the
day. When she had laid the supper-cloth, the bridge was lowered to give her
means of egress, and she withdrew for the night. The supper was excellent; and
though the Castle was rather subject to dry-rot insomuch that it tasted like a
bad nut, and though the pig might have been farther off, I was heartily pleased
with my whole entertainment. Nor was there any drawback on my little turret
bedroom, beyond there being such a very thin ceiling between me and the
flagstaff, that when I lay down on my back in bed, it seemed as if I had to
balance that pole on my forehead all night.

Wemmick was up early in the morning, and I am afraid I heard him cleaning my
boots. After that, he fell to gardening, and I saw him from my gothic window
pretending to employ the Aged, and nodding at him in a most devoted manner. Our
breakfast was as good as the supper, and at half-past eight precisely we started
for Little Britain. By degrees, Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along,
and his mouth tightened into a post-office again. At last, when we got to his
place of business and he pulled out his key from his coat-collar, he looked as
unconscious of his Walworth property as if the Castle and the drawbridge and the
arbor and the lake and the fountain and the Aged, had all been blown into space
together by the last discharge of the Stinger.