第101章

ONE day when I was busy with my books and Mr Pocket, I received a note by the post, the mere outside of which threw me into a great flutter; for, though I had never seen the handwriting in which it was addressed, I divined whose hand it was. It had no set beginning, as Dear Mr Pip, or Dear Pip, or Dear Sir, or Dear Anything, but ran thus: `I am to come to London the day after to-morrow by the mid-day coach. I believe it was settled you should meet me? At all events Miss Havisham has that impression, and I write in obedience to it. She sends you her regard.

Yours, ESTELLA.' If there had been time, I should probably have ordered several suits of clothes for this occasion; but as there was not, I was fain to be content with those I had. My appetite vanished instantly, and I knew no peace or rest until the day arrived. Not that is arrival brought me either; for, then I was worse than ever, and began haunting the coach-office in wood-street, Cheapside, before the coach had left the Blue Boar in our town. For all that I knew this perfectly well, I still felt as if it were not safe to let the coach-office be out of my sight longer than five minutes at a time;and in this condition of unreason I had performed the first half-hour of a watch of four or five hours, when Wemmick ran against me.

`Halloa, Mr Pip,' said he; `how do you do? I should hardly have thought this was your beat.'

I explained that I was waiting to meet somebody who was coming up by coach, and I inquired after the Castle and the Aged.

`Both flourishing thankye,' said Wemmick, `and particularly the Aged.

He's in wonderful feather. He'll be eighty-two next birthday. I have a notion of firing eighty-two times, if the neighbourhood shouldn't complain, and that cannon of mine should prove equal to the pressure. However, this is not London talk. where do you think I am going to?'

`To the office?' said I, for he was tending in that direction.

`Next thing to it,' returned Wemmick, `I am going to Newgate. We are in a banker's-parcel case just at present, and I have been down the road taking as squint at the scene of action, and thereupon must have a word or two with our client.'

`Did your client commit the robbery?' I asked `Bless your soul and body, no,' answered Wemmick, very drily. `But he is accused of it. So might you or I be. Either of us might be accused of it, you know.'

`Only neither of us is,' I remarked.

`Yah!' said Wemmick, touching me on the breast with his forefinger;`you're a deep one, Mr Pip! Would you like to have a look at Newgate? Have you time to spare?'

I had so much time to spare, that the proposal came as a relief, notwithstanding its irreconcilability with my latent desire to keep my eye on the coach-office.

Muttering that I would make the inquiry whether I had time to walk with him, I went into the office, and ascertained from the clerk with the nicest precision and much to the trying of his temper, the earliest moment at which the coach could be expected - which I knew beforehand, quite as well as he. I then rejoined Mr Wemmick, and affecting to consult my watch and to be surprised by the information I had received, accepted his offer.

We were at Newgate in a few minutes, and we passed through the lodge where some fetters were hanging up on the bare walls among the prison rules, into the interior of the jail. At that time, jails were much neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction consequent on all public wrong-doing - and which is always its heaviest and longest punishment - was still far off. So, felons were not lodged and fed better than soldiers (to say nothing of paupers), and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable object of improving the flavour of their soup. It was visiting time when Wemmick took me in; and a potman was going his rounds with beer; and the prisoners, behind bars in yards, were buying beer, and talking to friends; and a frouzy, ugly, disorderly, depressing scene it was.

It struck me that Wemmick walked among the prisoners, much as a gardener might walk among his plants. This was first put into my head by his seeing a shoot that had come up in the night, and saying, `What, Captain Tom?

Are you there? Ah, indeed!' and also, `Is that Black Bill behind the cistern? Why I didn't look for you these two months; how do you find yourself?' Equally in his stopping at the bars and attending to anxious whisperers - always singly - Wemmick with his post-office in an immovable state, looked at them while in conference, as if he were taking particular notice of the advance they had made, since last observed, towards coming out in full blow at their trial.

He was highly popular, and I found that he took the familiar department of Mr Jaggers's business: though something of the state of Mr. Jaggers hung about him too, forbidding approach beyond certain limits. His personal recognition of each successive client was comprised in a nod, and in his settling his hat a little easier on his head with both hands, and then tightening the postoffice, and putting his hands in his pockets. In one or two instances, there was difficulty respecting the raising of fees, and then Mr Wemmick, backing as far as possible from the insufficient money produced, said, `it's no use, my boy. I'm only a subordinate. I can't take it. Don't go on in that way with a subordinate. If you are unable to make up your quantum, my boy, you had better address yourself to a principal;there are plenty of principals in the profession, you know, and what is not worth the while of one, may be worth the while of another; that's my recommendation to you, speaking as a subordinate. Don't try on useless measures. Why should you? Now, who's next?'

Thus, we walked through Wemmick's greenhouse, until he turned to me and said, `Notice the man I shall shake hands with.' I should have done so, without the preparation, as he had shaken hands with no one yet.