LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

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. When I and my friends repaired to him at six o’clock next day, we found him with his head butted into this closet, not only washing his hands, but laving his face. 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.

      He conducted us to Gerrard Street, Soho,[131] to a house on the south side of that street. 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 walls.

      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 a variety of bottles and decanters on it, and four dishes of fruit for dessert.

      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. 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.

      My friends were: Bentley Drummle,[132] a coarse young man, I met him at Mr. Pocket’s house, as Drummle was also to be trained in skills; and Startop,[133] who – like Bentley Drummle – was my fellow student, but unlike Drummle, he was kind.

      Mr. Jaggers had scarcely seen my three companions until now – for he and I had walked together. To my surprise, he seemed to be 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, sulky fellow.”

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

      Mr. Jaggers returned, “Bentley Drummle is his name, is it? I like the look of that fellow.”

      He immediately began to talk to Drummle. 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 nimble figure, extremely pale, with large faded eyes, and a quantity of streaming hair. I had seen Macbeth[134] 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.[135]

      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 mutton afterwards, and then bird. Sauces, wines, all the accessories we wanted, and all of the best, were given out by our host. 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.

      Dinner went off very well. 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.

      When we had got to the cheese, that our conversation turned upon our rowing feats, and that Drummle was not very good in rowing. Drummle 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. Drummle was 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.

      My guardian 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 fixed upon him. “Don’t.”

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

      “Master,” she again murmured. “Please!”

      “Molly,” said Mr. Jaggers, not looking at her, but 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[136] – 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,[137]” said Mr. Jaggers, coolly tracing out the sinews with his forefinger. “Very few men have the power of wrist that this woman has. 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,[138]” 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 filled his glass and passed round the wine.

      “At half-past nine, gentlemen,” said he, “we must break up.[139] Pray make the best use of your time.[140] I am glad to see you all. Mr. Drummle, I drink to you.”

      Drummle showed his morose depreciation of the rest of us, in a more and more offensive degree, until he became downright intolerable. But 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

Скачать книгу