Chapter XX.

The journey from our town to the metropolis was a journey of about five

hours. It was a little past midday when the four-horse stage-coach by

which I was a passenger, got into the ravel of traffic frayed out about

the Cross Keys, Wood Street, Cheapside, London.

We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was

treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of everything:

otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I

might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly,

crooked, narrow, and dirty.

Mr. Jaggers had duly sent me his address; it was, Little Britain, and

he had written after it on his card, “just out of Smithfield, and close

by the coach-office.” Nevertheless, a hackney-coachman, who seemed to

have as many capes to his greasy great-coat as he was years old, packed

me up in his coach and hemmed me in with a folding and jingling barrier

of steps, as if he were going to take me fifty miles. His getting on

his box, which I remember to have been decorated with an old

weather-stained pea-green hammercloth moth-eaten into rags, was quite a

work of time. It was a wonderful equipage, with six great coronets

outside, and ragged things behind for I don’t know how many footmen to

hold on by, and a harrow below them, to prevent amateur footmen from

yielding to the temptation.

I had scarcely had time to enjoy the coach and to think how like a

straw-yard it was, and yet how like a rag-shop, and to wonder why the

horses’ nose-bags were kept inside, when I observed the coachman

beginning to get down, as if we were going to stop presently. And stop

we presently did, in a gloomy street, at certain offices with an open

door, whereon was painted MR. JAGGERS.

“How much?” I asked the coachman.

The coachman answered, “A shilling—unless you wish to make it more.”

I naturally said I had no wish to make it more.

“Then it must be a shilling,” observed the coachman. “I don’t want to

get into trouble. _I_ know _him_!” He darkly closed an eye at Mr.

Jaggers’s name, and shook his head.

When he had got his shilling, and had in course of time completed the

ascent to his box, and had got away (which appeared to relieve his

mind), I went into the front office with my little portmanteau in my

hand and asked, Was Mr. Jaggers at home?

“He is not,” returned the clerk. “He is in Court at present. Am I

addressing Mr. Pip?”

I signified that he was addressing Mr. Pip.

“Mr. Jaggers left word, would you wait in his room. He couldn’t say how

long he might be, having a case on. But it stands to reason, his time

being valuable, that he won’t be longer than he can help.”

With those words, the clerk opened a door, and ushered me into an inner

chamber at the back. Here, we found a gentleman with one eye, in a

velveteen suit and knee-breeches, who wiped his nose with his sleeve on

being interrupted in the perusal of the newspaper.

“Go and wait outside, Mike,” said the clerk.

I began to say that I hoped I was not interrupting, when the clerk

shoved this gentleman out with as little ceremony as I ever saw used,

and tossing his fur cap out after him, left me alone.

Mr. Jaggers’s room was lighted by a skylight only, and was a most

dismal place; the skylight, eccentrically pitched like a broken head,

and the distorted adjoining houses looking as if they had twisted

themselves to peep down at me through it. There were not so many papers

about, as I should have expected to see; and there were some odd

objects about, that I should not have expected to see,—such as an old

rusty pistol, a sword in a scabbard, several strange-looking boxes and

packages, and two dreadful casts on a shelf, of faces peculiarly

swollen, and twitchy about the nose. Mr. Jaggers’s own high-backed

chair was of deadly black horsehair, with rows of brass nails round it,

like a coffin; and I fancied I could see how he leaned back in it, and

bit his forefinger at the clients. The room was but small, and the

clients seemed to have had a habit of backing up against the wall; the

wall, especially opposite to Mr. Jaggers’s chair, being greasy with

shoulders. I recalled, too, that the one-eyed gentleman had shuffled

forth against the wall when I was the innocent cause of his being

turned out.

I sat down in the cliental chair placed over against Mr. Jaggers’s

chair, and became fascinated by the dismal atmosphere of the place. I

called to mind that the clerk had the same air of knowing something to

everybody else’s disadvantage, as his master had. I wondered how many

other clerks there were upstairs, and whether they all claimed to have

the same detrimental mastery of their fellow-creatures. I wondered what

was the history of all the odd litter about the room, and how it came

there. I wondered whether the two swollen faces were of Mr. Jaggers’s

family, and, if he were so unfortunate as to have had a pair of such

ill-looking relations, why he stuck them on that dusty perch for the

blacks and flies to settle on, instead of giving them a place at home.

Of course I had no experience of a London summer day, and my spirits

may have been oppressed by the hot exhausted air, and by the dust and

grit that lay thick on everything. But I sat wondering and waiting in

Mr. Jaggers’s close room, until I really could not bear the two casts

on the shelf above Mr. Jaggers’s chair, and got up and went out.

When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the air while I

waited, he advised me to go round the corner and I should come into

Smithfield. So I came into Smithfield; and the shameful place, being

all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to stick to

me. So, I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning into a

street where I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul’s bulging at me

from behind a grim stone building which a bystander said was Newgate

Prison. Following the wall of the jail, I found the roadway covered

with straw to deaden the noise of passing vehicles; and from this, and

from the quantity of people standing about smelling strongly of spirits

and beer, I inferred that the trials were on.

While I looked about me here, an exceedingly dirty and partially drunk

minister of justice asked me if I would like to step in and hear a

trial or so: informing me that he could give me a front place for half

a crown, whence I should command a full view of the Lord Chief Justice

in his wig and robes,—mentioning that awful personage like waxwork, and

presently offering him at the reduced price of eighteen-pence. As I

declined the proposal on the plea of an appointment, he was so good as

to take me into a yard and show me where the gallows was kept, and also

where people were publicly whipped, and then he showed me the Debtors’

Door, out of which culprits came to be hanged; heightening the interest

of that dreadful portal by giving me to understand that “four on ’em”

would come out at that door the day after to-morrow at eight in the

morning, to be killed in a row. This was horrible, and gave me a

sickening idea of London; the more so as the Lord Chief Justice’s

proprietor wore (from his hat down to his boots and up again to his

pocket-handkerchief inclusive) mildewed clothes which had evidently not

belonged to him originally, and which I took it into my head he had

bought cheap of the executioner. Under these circumstances I thought

myself well rid of him for a shilling.

I dropped into the office to ask if Mr. Jaggers had come in yet, and I

found he had not, and I strolled out again. This time, I made the tour

of Little Britain, and turned into Bartholomew Close; and now I became

aware that other people were waiting about for Mr. Jaggers, as well as

I. There were two men of secret appearance lounging in Bartholomew

Close, and thoughtfully fitting their feet into the cracks of the

pavement as they talked together, one of whom said to the other when

they first passed me, that “Jaggers would do it if it was to be done.”

There was a knot of three men and two women standing at a corner, and

one of the women was crying on her dirty shawl, and the other comforted

her by saying, as she pulled her own shawl over her shoulders, “Jaggers

is for him, ’Melia, and what more _could_ you have?” There was a

red-eyed little Jew who came into the Close while I was loitering

there, in company with a second little Jew whom he sent upon an errand;

and while the messenger was gone, I remarked this Jew, who was of a

highly excitable temperament, performing a jig of anxiety under a

lamp-post and accompanying himself, in a kind of frenzy, with the

words, “O Jaggerth, Jaggerth, Jaggerth! all otherth ith Cag-Maggerth,

give me Jaggerth!” These testimonies to the popularity of my guardian

made a deep impression on me, and I admired and wondered more than

ever.

At length, as I was looking out at the iron gate of Bartholomew Close

into Little Britain, I saw Mr. Jaggers coming across the road towards

me. All the others who were waiting saw him at the same time, and there

was quite a rush at him. Mr. Jaggers, putting a hand on my shoulder and

walking me on at his side without saying anything to me, addressed

himself to his followers.

First, he took the two secret men.

“Now, I have nothing to say to _you_,” said Mr. Jaggers, throwing his

finger at them. “I want to know no more than I know. As to the result,

it’s a toss-up. I told you from the first it was a toss-up. Have you

paid Wemmick?”

“We made the money up this morning, sir,” said one of the men,

submissively, while the other perused Mr. Jaggers’s face.

“I don’t ask you when you made it up, or where, or whether you made it

up at all. Has Wemmick got it?”

“Yes, sir,” said both the men together.

“Very well; then you may go. Now, I won’t have it!” said Mr Jaggers,

waving his hand at them to put them behind him. “If you say a word to

me, I’ll throw up the case.”

“We thought, Mr. Jaggers—” one of the men began, pulling off his hat.

“That’s what I told you not to do,” said Mr. Jaggers. “_You_ thought! I

think for you; that’s enough for you. If I want you, I know where to

find you; I don’t want you to find me. Now I won’t have it. I won’t

hear a word.”

The two men looked at one another as Mr. Jaggers waved them behind

again, and humbly fell back and were heard no more.

“And now _you_!” said Mr. Jaggers, suddenly stopping, and turning on

the two women with the shawls, from whom the three men had meekly

separated,—“Oh! Amelia, is it?”

“Yes, Mr. Jaggers.”

“And do you remember,” retorted Mr. Jaggers, “that but for me you

wouldn’t be here and couldn’t be here?”

“O yes, sir!” exclaimed both women together. “Lord bless you, sir, well

we knows that!”

“Then why,” said Mr. Jaggers, “do you come here?”

“My Bill, sir!” the crying woman pleaded.

“Now, I tell you what!” said Mr. Jaggers. “Once for all. If you don’t

know that your Bill’s in good hands, I know it. And if you come here

bothering about your Bill, I’ll make an example of both your Bill and

you, and let him slip through my fingers. Have you paid Wemmick?”

“O yes, sir! Every farden.”

“Very well. Then you have done all you have got to do. Say another

word—one single word—and Wemmick shall give you your money back.”

This terrible threat caused the two women to fall off immediately. No

one remained now but the excitable Jew, who had already raised the

skirts of Mr. Jaggers’s coat to his lips several times.

“I don’t know this man!” said Mr. Jaggers, in the same devastating

strain: “What does this fellow want?”

“Ma thear Mithter Jaggerth. Hown brother to Habraham Latharuth?”

“Who’s he?” said Mr. Jaggers. “Let go of my coat.”

The suitor, kissing the hem of the garment again before relinquishing

it, replied, “Habraham Latharuth, on thuthpithion of plate.”

“You’re too late,” said Mr. Jaggers. “I am over the way.”

“Holy father, Mithter Jaggerth!” cried my excitable acquaintance,

turning white, “don’t thay you’re again Habraham Latharuth!”

“I am,” said Mr. Jaggers, “and there’s an end of it. Get out of the

way.”

“Mithter Jaggerth! Half a moment! My hown cuthen’th gone to Mithter

Wemmick at thith prethent minute, to hoffer him hany termth. Mithter

Jaggerth! Half a quarter of a moment! If you’d have the condethenthun

to be bought off from the t’other thide—at hany thuperior prithe!—money

no object!—Mithter Jaggerth—Mithter—!”

My guardian threw his supplicant off with supreme indifference, and

left him dancing on the pavement as if it were red hot. Without further

interruption, we reached the front office, where we found the clerk and

the man in velveteen with the fur cap.

“Here’s Mike,” said the clerk, getting down from his stool, and

approaching Mr. Jaggers confidentially.

“Oh!” said Mr. Jaggers, turning to the man, who was pulling a lock of

hair in the middle of his forehead, like the Bull in Cock Robin pulling

at the bell-rope; “your man comes on this afternoon. Well?”

“Well, Mas’r Jaggers,” returned Mike, in the voice of a sufferer from a

constitutional cold; “arter a deal o’ trouble, I’ve found one, sir, as

might do.”

“What is he prepared to swear?”

“Well, Mas’r Jaggers,” said Mike, wiping his nose on his fur cap this

time; “in a general way, anythink.”

Mr. Jaggers suddenly became most irate. “Now, I warned you before,”

said he, throwing his forefinger at the terrified client, “that if you

ever presumed to talk in that way here, I’d make an example of you. You

infernal scoundrel, how dare you tell ME that?”

The client looked scared, but bewildered too, as if he were unconscious

what he had done.

“Spooney!” said the clerk, in a low voice, giving him a stir with his

elbow. “Soft Head! Need you say it face to face?”

“Now, I ask you, you blundering booby,” said my guardian, very sternly,

“once more and for the last time, what the man you have brought here is

prepared to swear?”

Mike looked hard at my guardian, as if he were trying to learn a lesson

from his face, and slowly replied, “Ayther to character, or to having

been in his company and never left him all the night in question.”

“Now, be careful. In what station of life is this man?”

Mike looked at his cap, and looked at the floor, and looked at the

ceiling, and looked at the clerk, and even looked at me, before

beginning to reply in a nervous manner, “We’ve dressed him up like—”

when my guardian blustered out,—

“What? You WILL, will you?”

(“Spooney!” added the clerk again, with another stir.)

After some helpless casting about, Mike brightened and began again:—

“He is dressed like a ’spectable pieman. A sort of a pastry-cook.”

“Is he here?” asked my guardian.

“I left him,” said Mike, “a setting on some doorsteps round the

corner.”

“Take him past that window, and let me see him.”

The window indicated was the office window. We all three went to it,

behind the wire blind, and presently saw the client go by in an

accidental manner, with a murderous-looking tall individual, in a short

suit of white linen and a paper cap. This guileless confectioner was

not by any means sober, and had a black eye in the green stage of

recovery, which was painted over.

“Tell him to take his witness away directly,” said my guardian to the

clerk, in extreme disgust, “and ask him what he means by bringing such

a fellow as that.”

My guardian then took me into his own room, and while he lunched,

standing, from a sandwich-box and a pocket-flask of sherry (he seemed

to bully his very sandwich as he ate it), informed me what arrangements

he had made for me. I was to go to “Barnard’s Inn,” to young Mr.

Pocket’s rooms, where a bed had been sent in for my accommodation; I

was to remain with young Mr. Pocket until Monday; on Monday I was to go

with him to his father’s house on a visit, that I might try how I liked

it. Also, I was told what my allowance was to be,—it was a very liberal

one,—and had handed to me from one of my guardian’s drawers, the cards

of certain tradesmen with whom I was to deal for all kinds of clothes,

and such other things as I could in reason want. “You will find your

credit good, Mr. Pip,” said my guardian, whose flask of sherry smelt

like a whole caskful, as he hastily refreshed himself, “but I shall by

this means be able to check your bills, and to pull you up if I find

you outrunning the constable. Of course you’ll go wrong somehow, but

that’s no fault of mine.”

After I had pondered a little over this encouraging sentiment, I asked

Mr. Jaggers if I could send for a coach? He said it was not worth

while, I was so near my destination; Wemmick should walk round with me,

if I pleased.

I then found that Wemmick was the clerk in the next room. Another clerk

was rung down from upstairs to take his place while he was out, and I

accompanied him into the street, after shaking hands with my guardian.

We found a new set of people lingering outside, but Wemmick made a way

among them by saying coolly yet decisively, “I tell you it’s no use; he

won’t have a word to say to one of you;” and we soon got clear of them,

and went on side by side.