Part 17 (1/2)

I accepted the offer. When Mr. Wemmick had put all the biscuit into the post, and had paid me my money from a cash-box in a safe, the key of which safe he keptsomewhere down his back and produced from his coat-collar like an iron-pigtail, we went up stairs. The house was dark and shabby, and the greasy shoulders that had left their mark in Mr. Jaggers's room seemed to have been shuffling up and down the staircase for years. In the front first floor, a clerk who looked something between a publican and a rat-catcher--a large pale, puffed, swollen man--was attentively engaged with three or four people of shabby appearance, whom he treated as unceremoniously as everybody seemed to be treated who contributed to Mr.

Jaggers's coffers. ”Getting evidence together,” said Mr.

Wemmick, Jaggers. ”That's no question as it stands, you know.”

”Will soon come to London,” said I, after casting about for a precise form of words, ”or summon me anywhere else?”

”Now, here,” replied Mr. Jaggers, fixing me for the first time with his dark deep-set eyes, ”we must revert to the evening when we first encountered one another in your village.

What did I tell you then, Pip?”

”You told me, Mr. Jaggers, that it might be years hence when that person appeared.”

”Just so,” said Mr. Jaggers, ”that's my answer.”As we looked full at one another, I felt my breath come quicker in my strong desire to get something out of him.

And as I felt that it came quicker, and as I felt that he saw that it came quicker, I felt that I had less chance than ever of getting anything out of him.

”Do you suppose it will still be years hence, Mr. Jaggers?”

Mr. Jaggers shook his head,--not in negativing the question, but in altogether negativing the notion that he could anyhow be got to answer it,--and the two horrible casts of the twitched faces looked, when my eyes strayed up to them, as if they had come to a crisis in their suspended attention, and were going to sneeze.

”Come!” said Mr. Jaggers, warming the backs of his legs with the backs of his warmed hands, ”I'll be plain with you, my friend Pip. That's a question I must not be asked. You'll understand that better, when I tell you it's a question that might compromise me. Come! I'll go a little further with you; I'll say something more.”

He bent down so low to frown at his boots, that he was able to rub the calves of his legs in the pause he made.

”When that person discloses,” said Mr. Jaggers, straightening himself, ”you and that person will settle your own affairs. When that person discloses, my part in thisbusiness will cease and determine. When that person discloses, it will not be necessary for me to know anything about it. And that's all I have got to say.”

We looked at one another until I withdrew my eyes, and looked thoughtfully at the floor. From this last speech I derived the notion that Miss Havisham, for some reason or no reason, had not taken him into her confidence as to her designing me for Estella; that he resented this, and felt a jealousy about it; or that he really did object to that scheme, and would have nothing to do with it. When I raised my eyes again, I found that he had been shrewdly looking at me all the time, and was doing so still.

”If that is all you have to say, sir,” I remarked, ”there can be nothing left for me to say.”

He nodded a.s.sent, and pulled out his thief-dreaded watch, and asked me where I was going to dine? I replied at my own chambers, with Herbert. As a necessary sequence, I asked him if he would favor us with his company, and he promptly accepted the invitation. But he insisted on walking home with me, in order that I might make no extra preparation for him, and first he had a letter or two to write, and (of course) had his hands to wash. So I said I would go into the outer office and talk to Wemmick.The fact was, that when the five hundred pounds had come into my pocket, a thought had come into my head which had been often there before; and it appeared to me that Wemmick was a good person to advise with concerning such thought.

He had already locked up his safe, and made preparations for going home. He had left his desk, brought out his two greasy office candlesticks and stood them in line with the snuffers on a slab near the door, ready to be extinguished; he had raked his fire low, put his hat and great-coat ready, and was beating himself all over the chest with his safe-key, as an athletic exercise after business.

”Mr. Wemmick,” said I, ”I want to ask your opinion. I am very desirous to serve a friend.”

Wemmick tightened his post-office and shook his head, as if his opinion were dead against any fatal weakness of that sort.

”This friend,” I pursued, ”is trying to get on in commercial life, but has no money, and finds it difficult and disheartening to make a beginning. Now I want somehow to help him to a beginning.”

”With money down?” said Wemmick, in a tone drier than any sawdust.”With some money down,” I replied, for an uneasy remembrance shot across me of that symmetrical bundle of papers at home--”with some money down, and perhaps some antic.i.p.ation of my expectations.”

”Mr. Pip,” said Wemmick, ”I should like just to run over with you on my fingers, if you please, the names of the various bridges up as high as Chelsea Reach. Let's see; there's London, one; Southwark, two; Blackfriars, three; Waterloo, four; Westminster, five; Vauxhall, six.” He had checked off each bridge in its turn, with the handle of his safe-key on the palm of his hand. ”There's as many as six, you see, to choose from.”

”I don't understand you,” said I.

”Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip,” returned Wemmick, ”and take a walk upon your bridge, and pitch your money into the Thames over the centre arch of your bridge, and you know the end of it. Serve a friend with it, and you may know the end of it too,--but it's a less pleasant and profitable end.”

I could have posted a newspaper in his mouth, he made it so wide after saying this.

”This is very discouraging,” said I.”Meant to be so,” said Wemmick.

”Then is it your opinion,” I inquired, with some little indignation, ”that a man should never--”

”--Invest portable property in a friend?” said Wemmick.

”Certainly he should not. Unless he wants to get rid of the friend,--and then it becomes a question how much portable property it may be worth to get rid of him.”

”And that,” said I, ”is your deliberate opinion, Mr.

Wemmick?”

”That,” he returned, ”is my deliberate opinion in this office.”

”Ah!” said I, pressing him, for I thought I saw him near a loophole here; ”but would that be your opinion at Walworth?”

”Mr. Pip,” he replied, with gravity, ”Walworth is one place, and this office is another. Much as the Aged is one person, and Mr. Jaggers is another. They must not be confounded together. My Walworth sentiments must be taken at Walworth; none but my official sentiments can be taken in this office.”

”Very well,” said I, much relieved, ”then I shall look you up at Walworth, you may depend upon it.””Mr. Pip,” he returned, ”you will be welcome there, in a private and personal capacity.”

We had held this conversation in a low voice, well knowing my guardian's ears to be the sharpest of the sharp. As he now appeared in his doorway, towelling his hands, Wemmick got on his great-coat and stood by to snuff out the candles. We all three went into the street together, and from the door-step Wemmick turned his way, and Mr.

Jaggers and I turned ours.

I could not help wis.h.i.+ng more than once that evening, that Mr. Jaggers had had an Aged in Gerrard Street, or a Stinger, or a Something, or a Somebody, to unbend his brows a little. It was an uncomfortable consideration on a twenty-first birthday, that coming of age at all seemed hardly worth while in such a guarded and suspicious world as he made of it. He was a thousand times better informed and cleverer than Wemmick, and yet I would a thousand times rather have had Wemmick to dinner. And Mr.

Jaggers made not me alone intensely melancholy, because, after he was gone, Herbert said of himself, with his eyes fixed on the fire, that he thought he must have committed a felony and forgotten the details of it, he felt so dejected and guilty.

Chapter x.x.xVII.

Deeming Sunday the best day for taking Mr. Wemmick's Walworth sentiments, I devoted the next ensuing Sunday afternoon to a pilgrimage to the Castle. On arriving before the battlements, I found the Union Jack flying and the drawbridge up; but undeterred by this show of defiance and resistance, I rang at the gate, and was admitted in a most pacific manner by the Aged.

”My son, sir,” said the old man, after securing the drawbridge, ”rather had it in his mind that you might happen to drop in, and he left word that he would soon be home from his afternoon's walk. He is very regular in his walks, is my son. Very regular in everything, is my son.”

I nodded at the old gentleman as Wemmick himself might have nodded, and we went in and sat down by the fireside.

”You made acquaintance with my son, sir,” said the old man, in his chirping way, while he warmed his hands at the blaze, ”at his office, I expect?” I nodded. ”Hah! I have heerd that my son is a wonderful hand at his business, sir?” I nodded hard. ”Yes; so they tell me. His business is the Law?” I nodded harder. ”Which makes it more surprising in my son,” said the old man, ”for he was not brought up to the Law, but to the Wine-Coopering.”Curious to know how the old gentleman stood informed concerning the reputation of Mr. Jaggers, I roared that name at him. He threw me into the greatest confusion by laughing heartily and replying in a very sprightly manner, ”No, to be sure; you're right.” And to this hour I have not the faintest notion what he meant, or what joke he thought I had made.

As I could not sit there nodding at him perpetually, without making some other attempt to interest him, I shouted at inquiry whether his own calling in life had been ”the Wine-Coopering.” By dint of straining that term out of myself several times and tapping the old gentleman on the chest to a.s.sociate it with him, I at last succeeded in making my meaning understood.

”No,” said the old gentleman; ”the warehousing, the warehousing. First, over yonder;” he appeared to mean up the chimney, but I believe he intended to refer me to Liverpool; ”and then in the City of London here. However, having an infirmity--for I am hard of hearing, sir--”

I expressed in pantomime the greatest astonishment.

”--Yes, hard of hearing; having that infirmity coming upon me, my son he went into the Law, and he took charge of me, and he by little and little made out this elegant and beautiful property. But returning to what you said, youknow,” pursued the old man, again laughing heartily, ”what I say is, No to be sure; you're right.”