Chapter 26

It fell out as Wemmick had told me it would, that I had an early
opportunity of comparing my guardian’s establishment with that of his cashier
and clerk. My guardian was in his room, washing his hands with his scented soap,
when I went into the office from Walworth; and he called me to him, and gave me
the invitation for myself and friends which Wemmick had prepared me to receive.
"No ceremony," he stipulated, "and no dinner dress, and say to-morrow." I asked
him where we should come to (for I had no idea where he lived), and I believe it
was in his general objection to make anything like an admission, that he
replied, "Come here, and I’ll take you home with me." I embrace this opportunity
of remarking that he washed his clients off, as if he were a surgeon or a
dentist. He had a closet in his room, fitted up for the purpose, which smelt of
the scented soap like a perfumer’s shop. It had an unusually large jack-towel on
a roller inside the door, and he would wash his hands, and wipe them and dry
them all over this towel, whenever he came in from a police court or dismissed a
client from his room. When I and my friends repaired to him at six o’clock next
day, he seemed to have been engaged on a case of a darker complexion than usual,
for we found him with his head butted into this closet, not only washing his
hands, but laving his face and gargling his throat. And even when he had done
all that, and had gone all round the jack-towel, he took out his penknife and
scraped the case out of his nails before he put his coat on.

There were some people slinking about as usual when we passed out into the
street, who were evidently anxious to speak with him; but there was something so
conclusive in the halo of scented soap which encircled his presence, that they
gave it up for that day. As we walked along westward, he was recognized ever and
again by some face in the crowd of the streets, and whenever that happened he
talked louder to me; but he never otherwise recognized anybody, or took notice
that anybody recognized him.

He conducted us to Gerrard Street, Soho, to a house on the south side of that
street. Rather a stately house of its kind, but dolefully in want of painting,
and with dirty windows. He took out his key and opened the door, and we all went
into a stone hall, bare, gloomy, and little used. So, up a dark brown staircase
into a series of three dark brown rooms on the first floor. There were carved
garlands on the panelled walls, and as he stood among them giving us welcome, I
know what kind of loops I thought they looked like.

Dinner was laid in the best of these rooms; the second was his dressing-room;
the third, his bedroom. He told us that he held the whole house, but rarely used
more of it than we saw. The table was comfortably laid—no silver in the service,
of course—and at the side of his chair was a capacious dumb-waiter, with a
variety of bottles and decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert. I
noticed throughout, that he kept everything under his own hand, and distributed
everything himself.

There was a bookcase in the room; I saw from the backs of the books, that they
were about evidence, criminal law, criminal biography, trials, acts of
Parliament, and such things. The furniture was all very solid and good, like his
watch-chain. It had an official look, however, and there was nothing merely
ornamental to be seen. In a corner was a little table of papers with a shaded
lamp: so that he seemed to bring the office home with him in that respect too,
and to wheel it out of an evening and fall to work.

As he had scarcely seen my three companions until now,—for he and I had walked
together,—he stood on the hearth-rug, after ringing the bell, and took a
searching look at them. To my surprise, he seemed at once to be principally if
not solely interested in Drummle.

"Pip," said he, putting his large hand on my shoulder and moving me to the
window, "I don’t know one from the other. Who’s the Spider?"

"The spider?" said I.

"The blotchy, sprawly, sulky fellow."

"That’s Bentley Drummle," I replied; "the one with the delicate face is
Startop."

Not making the least account of "the one with the delicate face," he returned,
"Bentley Drummle is his name, is it? I like the look of that fellow."

He immediately began to talk to Drummle: not at all deterred by his replying in
his heavy reticent way, but apparently led on by it to screw discourse out of
him. I was looking at the two, when there came between me and them the
housekeeper, with the first dish for the table.

She was a woman of about forty, I supposed,—but I may have thought her younger
than she was. Rather tall, of a lithe nimble figure, extremely pale, with large
faded eyes, and a quantity of streaming hair. I cannot say whether any diseased
affection of the heart caused her lips to be parted as if she were panting, and
her face to bear a curious expression of suddenness and flutter; but I know that
I had been to see Macbeth at the theatre, a night or two before, and that her
face looked to me as if it were all disturbed by fiery air, like the faces I had
seen rise out of the Witches’ caldron.

She set the dish on, touched my guardian quietly on the arm with a finger to
notify that dinner was ready, and vanished. We took our seats at the round
table, and my guardian kept Drummle on one side of him, while Startop sat on the
other. It was a noble dish of fish that the housekeeper had put on table, and we
had a joint of equally choice mutton afterwards, and then an equally choice
bird. Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all of the best, were
given out by our host from his dumb-waiter; and when they had made the circuit
of the table, he always put them back again. Similarly, he dealt us clean plates
and knives and forks, for each course, and dropped those just disused into two
baskets on the ground by his chair. No other attendant than the housekeeper
appeared. She set on every dish; and I always saw in her face, a face rising out
of the caldron. Years afterwards, I made a dreadful likeness of that woman, by
causing a face that had no other natural resemblance to it than it derived from
flowing hair to pass behind a bowl of flaming spirits in a dark room.

Induced to take particular notice of the housekeeper, both by her own striking
appearance and by Wemmick’s preparation, I observed that whenever she was in the
room she kept her eyes attentively on my guardian, and that she would remove her
hands from any dish she put before him, hesitatingly, as if she dreaded his
calling her back, and wanted him to speak when she was nigh, if he had anything
to say. I fancied that I could detect in his manner a consciousness of this, and
a purpose of always holding her in suspense.

Dinner went off gayly, and although my guardian seemed to follow rather than
originate subjects, I knew that he wrenched the weakest part of our dispositions
out of us. For myself, I found that I was expressing my tendency to lavish
expenditure, and to patronize Herbert, and to boast of my great prospects,
before I quite knew that I had opened my lips. It was so with all of us, but
with no one more than Drummle: the development of whose inclination to gird in a
grudging and suspicious way at the rest, was screwed out of him before the fish
was taken off.

It was not then, but when we had got to the cheese, that our conversation turned
upon our rowing feats, and that Drummle was rallied for coming up behind of a
night in that slow amphibious way of his. Drummle upon this, informed our host
that he much preferred our room to our company, and that as to skill he was more
than our master, and that as to strength he could scatter us like chaff. By some
invisible agency, my guardian wound him up to a pitch little short of ferocity
about this trifle; and he fell to baring and spanning his arm to show how
muscular it was, and we all fell to baring and spanning our arms in a ridiculous
manner.

Now the housekeeper was at that time clearing the table; my guardian, taking no
heed of her, but with the side of his face turned from her, was leaning back in
his chair biting the side of his forefinger and showing an interest in Drummle,
that, to me, was quite inexplicable. Suddenly, he clapped his large hand on the
housekeeper’s, like a trap, as she stretched it across the table. So suddenly
and smartly did he do this, that we all stopped in our foolish contention.

"If you talk of strength," said Mr. Jaggers, "I’ll show you a wrist.
Molly, let them see your wrist."

Her entrapped hand was on the table, but she had already put her other hand
behind her waist. "Master," she said, in a low voice, with her eyes attentively
and entreatingly fixed upon him. "Don’t."

"I’ll show you a wrist," repeated Mr. Jaggers, with an immovable
determination to show it. "Molly, let them see your wrist."

"Master," she again murmured. "Please!"

"Molly," said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but obstinately looking at the
opposite side of the room, "let them see both your
wrists. Show them. Come!"

He took his hand from hers, and turned that wrist up on the table. She brought
her other hand from behind her, and held the two out side by side. The last
wrist was much disfigured,—deeply scarred and scarred across and across. When
she held her hands out she took her eyes from Mr. Jaggers, and turned them
watchfully on every one of the rest of us in succession.

"There’s power here," said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the sinews with his
forefinger. "Very few men have the power of wrist that this woman has. It’s
remarkable what mere force of grip there is in these hands. I have had occasion
to notice many hands; but I never saw stronger in that respect, man’s or
woman’s, than these."

While he said these words in a leisurely, critical style, she continued to look
at every one of us in regular succession as we sat. The moment he ceased, she
looked at him again. "That’ll do, Molly," said Mr. Jaggers, giving her a slight
nod; "you have been admired, and can go." She withdrew her hands and went out of
the room, and Mr. Jaggers, putting the decanters on from his dumb-waiter, filled
his glass and passed round the wine.

"At half-past nine, gentlemen," said he, "we must break up. Pray make the best
use of your time. I am glad to see you all. Mr. Drummle, I drink to you."

If his object in singling out Drummle were to bring him out still more, it
perfectly succeeded. In a sulky triumph, Drummle showed his morose depreciation
of the rest of us, in a more and more offensive degree, until he became
downright intolerable. Through all his stages, Mr. Jaggers followed him with the
same strange interest. He actually seemed to serve as a zest to Mr. Jaggers’s
wine.

In our boyish want of discretion I dare say we took too much to drink, and I
know we talked too much. We became particularly hot upon some boorish sneer of
Drummle’s, to the effect that we were too free with our money. It led to my
remarking, with more zeal than discretion, that it came with a bad grace from
him, to whom Startop had lent money in my presence but a week or so before.

"Well," retorted Drummle; "he’ll be paid."

"I don’t mean to imply that he won’t," said I, "but it might make you hold your
tongue about us and our money, I should think."

"You should think!" retorted
Drummle. "Oh Lord!"

"I dare say," I went on, meaning to be very severe, "that you wouldn’t lend
money to any of us if we wanted it."

"You are right," said Drummle. "I wouldn’t lend one of you a sixpence. I
wouldn’t lend anybody a sixpence."

"Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I should say."

"You should say," repeated
Drummle. "Oh Lord!"

This was so very aggravating—the more especially as I found myself making no way
against his surly obtuseness—that I said, disregarding Herbert’s efforts to
check me,—

"Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I’ll tell you what passed
between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed that money."

"I don’t want to know what
passed between Herbert there and you," growled Drummle. And I think he added in
a lower growl, that we might both go to the devil and shake ourselves.

"I’ll tell you, however," said I, "whether you want to know or not. We said that
as you put it in your pocket very glad to get it, you seemed to be immensely
amused at his being so weak as to lend it."

Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing in our faces, with his hands in his
pockets and his round shoulders raised; plainly signifying that it was quite
true, and that he despised us as asses all.

Hereupon Startop took him in hand, though with a much better grace than I had
shown, and exhorted him to be a little more agreeable. Startop, being a lively,
bright young fellow, and Drummle being the exact opposite, the latter was always
disposed to resent him as a direct personal affront. He now retorted in a
coarse, lumpish way, and Startop tried to turn the discussion aside with some
small pleasantry that made us all laugh. Resenting this little success more than
anything, Drummle, without any threat or warning, pulled his hands out of his
pockets, dropped his round shoulders, swore, took up a large glass, and would
have flung it at his adversary’s head, but for our entertainer’s dexterously
seizing it at the instant when it was raised for that purpose.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting down the glass, and hauling
out his gold repeater by its massive chain, "I am exceedingly sorry to announce
that it’s half past nine."

On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we got to the street door, Startop
was cheerily calling Drummle "old boy," as if nothing had happened. But the old
boy was so far from responding, that he would not even walk to Hammersmith on
the same side of the way; so Herbert and I, who remained in town, saw them going
down the street on opposite sides; Startop leading, and Drummle lagging behind
in the shadow of the houses, much as he was wont to follow in his boat.

As the door was not yet shut, I thought I would leave Herbert there for a
moment, and run up stairs again to say a word to my guardian. I found him in his
dressing-room surrounded by his stock of boots, already hard at it, washing his
hands of us.

I told him I had come up again to say how sorry I was that anything disagreeable
should have occurred, and that I hoped he would not blame me much.

"Pooh!" said he, sluicing his face, and speaking through the water-drops; "it’s
nothing, Pip. I like that Spider though."

He had turned towards me now, and was shaking his head, and blowing, and
towelling himself.

"I am glad you like him, sir," said I—"but I don’t."

"No, no," my guardian assented; "don’t have too much to do with him. Keep as
clear of him as you can. But I like the fellow, Pip; he is one of the true sort.
Why, if I was a fortune-teller—"

Looking out of the towel, he caught my eye.

"But I am not a fortune-teller," he said, letting his head drop into a festoon
of towel, and towelling away at his two ears. "You know what I am, don’t you?
Good night, Pip."

"Good night, sir."

In about a month after that, the Spider’s time with Mr. Pocket was up for good,
and, to the great relief of all the house but Mrs. Pocket, he went home to the
family hole.