I cannot exaggerate the enhanced disquiet into which this conversation threw me,or the special and peculiar terror I felt at Compeyson’s having been behind me “like a ghost.” For if he had ever been out of my thoughts for a few moments together since the hiding had begun, it was in those very moments when he was closest to me; and to think that I should be so unconscious and off my guard after all my care was as if I had shut an avenue of a hundred doors to keep him out, and then had found him at my elbow. I could not doubt, either, that he was there, because I was there, and that, however slight an appearance of danger there might be about us, danger was always near and active.
I put such questions to Mr. Wopsle as,When did the man come in?He could not tell me that; he saw me,and over my shoulder he saw the man.It was not until he had seen him for some time that he began to identify him;but he had from the first vaguely associated him with me,and known him as somehow belonging to me in the old village time. How was he dressed?Prosperously, but not noticeably otherwise; he thought,in black. Was his face at all disfigured?No, he believed not. I believed not too, for,although in my brooding state I had taken no especial notice of the people behind me, I thought it likely that a face at all disfigured would have attracted my attention.
When Mr. Wopsle had imparted to me all that he could recall or I extract,and when I had treated him to a little appropriate refreshment,after the fatigues of the evening, we parted.It was between twelve and one o’clock when I reached the Temple,and the gates were shut.No one was near me when I went in and went home.
Herbert had come in,and we held a very serious council by the fire.But there was nothing to be done,saving to communicate to Wemmick what I had that night found out,and to remind him that we waited for his hint.As I thought that I might compromise him if I went too often to the Castle,I made this communication by letter.I wrote it before I went to bed,and went out and posted it;and again no one was near me.Herbert and I agreed that we could do nothing else but be very cautious.And we were very cautious indeed,—more cautious than before, if that were possible,—and I for my part never went near Chinks’s Basin,except when I rowed by,and then I only looked at Mill Pond Bank as I looked at anything else.
Chapter XLVIII.
The second of the two meetings referred to in the last chapter occurred about a week after the first. I had again left my boat at the wharf below Bridge; the time was an hour earlier in the afternoon; and, undecided where to dine, I had strolled up into Cheapside, and was strolling along it, surely the most unsettled person in all the busy concourse, when a large hand was laid upon my shoulder by some one overtaking me. It was Mr. Jaggers’s hand, and he passed it through my arm.
“As we are going in the same direction, Pip,we may walk together. Where are you bound for?”
“For the Temple, I think,” said I.
“Don’t you know?” said Mr. Jaggers.
“Well,” I returned, glad for once to get the better of him in cross-examination,“I do _not_ know, for I have not made up my mind.”
“You are going to dine?” said Mr. Jaggers. “You don’t mind admitting that, I suppose?”
“No,” I returned, “I don’t mind admitting that.”
“And are not engaged?”
“I don’t mind admitting also that I am not engaged.”
“Then,” said Mr. Jaggers, “come and dine with me.”
I was going to excuse myself, when he added,“Wemmick’s coming.” So I changed my excuse into an acceptance,—the few words I had uttered,serving for the beginning of either,—and we went along Cheapside and slanted off to Little Britain,while the lights were springing up brilliantly in the shop windows,and the street lamp-lighters,scarcely finding ground enough to plant their ladders on in the midst of the afternoon’s bustle, were skipping up and down and running in and out, opening more red eyes in the gathering fog than my rushlight tower at the Hummums had opened white eyes in the ghostly wall.
At the office in Little Britain there was the usual letter-writing,hand-washing, candle-snuffing, and safe-locking,that closed the business of the day.As I stood idle by Mr. Jaggers’s fire,its rising and falling flame made the two casts on the shelf look as if they were playing a diabolical game at bo-peep with me; while the pair of coarse, fat office candles that dimly lighted Mr. Jaggers as he wrote in a corner were decorated with dirty winding-sheets, as if in remembrance of a host of hanged clients.
We went to Gerrard Street, all three together,in a hackney-coach: And, as soon as we got there,dinner was served. Although I should not have thought of making,in that place, the most distant reference by so much as a look to Wemmick’s Walworth sentiments, yet I should have had no objection to catching his eye now and then in a friendly way. But it was not to be done. He turned his eyes on Mr. Jaggers whenever he raised them from the table, and was as dry and distant to me as if there were twin Wemmicks, and this was the wrong one.
“Did you send that note of Miss Havisham’s to Mr. Pip, Wemmick?” Mr. Jaggers asked, soon after we began dinner.
“No, sir,” returned Wemmick; “it was going by post,when you brought Mr. Pip into the office. Here it is.” He handed it to his principal instead of to me.
“It’s a note of two lines, Pip,” said Mr. Jaggers,handing it on, “sent up to me by Miss Havisham on account of her not being sure of your address. She tells me that she wants to see you on a little matter of business you mentioned to her. You’ll go down?”
“Yes,” said I, casting my eyes over the note,which was exactly in those terms.
“When do you think of going down?”
“I have an impending engagement,” said I,glancing at Wemmick,who was putting fish into the post-office,“that renders me rather uncertain of my time. At once, I think.”
“If Mr. Pip has the intention of going at once,” said Wemmick to Mr. Jaggers,“he needn’t write an answer, you know.”
Receiving this as an intimation that it was best not to delay,I settled that I would go to-morrow, and said so.Wemmick drank a glass of wine,and looked with a grimly satisfied air at Mr. Jaggers, but not at me.
“So, Pip!Our friend the Spider,” said Mr. Jaggers,“has played his cards. He has won the pool.”
It was as much as I could do to assent.
“Hah!He is a promising fellow—in his way—but he may not have it all his own way.The stronger will win in the end,but the stronger has to be found out first.If he should turn to, and beat her—”
“Surely,” I interrupted, with a burning face and heart,“you do not seriously think that he is scoundrel enough for that, Mr. Jaggers?”
“I didn’t say so, Pip. I am putting a case.If he should turn to and beat her,he may possibly get the strength on his side;if it should be a question of intellect,he certainly will not.It would be chance work to give an opinion how a fellow of that sort will turn out in such circumstances, because it’s a toss-up between two results.”
“May I ask what they are?”
“A fellow like our friend the Spider,” answered Mr.Jaggers, “either beats or cringes.He may cringe and growl, or cringe and not growl;but he either beats or cringes.Ask Wemmick _his_ opinion.”
“Either beats or cringes,” said Wemmick,not at all addressing himself to me.
“So here’s to Mrs. Bentley Drummle,” said Mr. Jaggers,taking a decanter of choicer wine from his dumb-waiter,and filling for each of us and for himself,“and may the question of supremacy be settled to the lady’s satisfaction!To the satisfaction of the lady _and_ the gentleman,it never will be. Now, Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly,how slow you are to-day!”