Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (speed reading book TXT) 📕

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.