hand waving to me from a stagecoach window; and how it had come back again and had flashed about me like lightning, when I had passed in a carriage — not alone — through a sudden glare of light in a dark street. I thought how one link of association had helped that identification in the theatre, and how such a link, wanting before, had been riveted for me now, when I had passed by a chance swift from Estella’s name to the fingers with their knitting action, and the attentive eyes. And I felt absolutely certain that this woman was Estella’s mother.
Mr. Jaggers had seen me with Estella, and was not likely to have missed the sentiments I had been at no pains to conceal. He nodded when I said the subject was painful to me, clapped me on the back, put round the wine again, and went on with his dinner.
Only twice more did the housekeeper reappear, and then her stay in the room was very short, and Mr. Jaggers was sharp with her. But her hands were Estella’s hands, and her eyes were Estella’s eyes, and if she had reappeared a hundred times I could have been neither more sure nor less sure that my conviction was the truth.
It was a dull evening, for Wemmick drew his wine, when it came round, quite as a matter of business, — just as he might have drawn his salary when that came round, — and with his eyes on his chief, sat in a state of perpetual readiness for cross-examination. As to the quantity of wine, his post-office was as indifferent and ready as any other post-office for its quantity of letters. From my point of view, he was the wrong twin all the time, and only externally like the Wemmick of Walworth.
We took our leave early, and left together. Even when we were groping among Mr. Jaggers’s stock of boots for our hats, I felt that the right twin was on his way back; and we had not gone half a dozen yards down Gerrard Street in the Walworth direction, before I found that I was walking arm in arm with the right twin, and that the wrong twin had evaporated into the evening air.
“Well!” said Wemmick, “that’s over! He’s a wonderful man, without his living likeness; but I feel that I have to screw myself up when I dine with him, — and I dine more comfortably unscrewed.”
I felt that this was a good statement of the case, and told him so.
“Wouldn’t say it to anybody but yourself,” he answered. “I know that what is said between you and me goes no further.”
I asked him if he had ever seen Miss Havisham’s adopted daughter, Mrs. Bentley Drummle. He said no. To avoid being too abrupt, I then spoke of the Aged and of Miss Skiffins. He looked rather sly when I mentioned Miss Skiffins, and stopped in the street to blow his nose, with a roll of the head, and a flourish not quite free from latent boastfulness.
“Wemmick,” said I, “do you remember telling me, before I first went to Mr. Jaggers’s private house, to notice that housekeeper?”
“Did I?” he replied. “Ah, I dare say I did. Deuce take me,” he added, suddenly, “I know I did. I find I am not quite unscrewed yet.”
“A wild beast tamed, you called her.”
“And what do you call her?”
“The same. How did Mr. Jaggers tame her, Wemmick?”
“That’s his secret. She has been with him many a long year.”
“I wish you would tell me her story. I feel a particular interest in being acquainted with it. You know that what is said between you and me goes no further.”
“Well!” Wemmick replied, “I don’t know her story, — that is, I don’t know all of it. But what I do know I’ll tell you. We are in our private and personal capacities, of course.”
“Of course.”
“A score or so of years ago, that woman was tried at the Old Bailey for murder, and was acquitted. She was a very handsome young woman, and I believe had some gypsy blood in her. Anyhow, it was hot enough when it was up, as you may suppose.”
“But she was acquitted.”
“Mr. Jaggers was for her,” pursued Wemmick, with a look full of meaning, “and worked the case in a way quite astonishing. It was a desperate case, and it was comparatively early days with him then, and he worked it to general admiration; in fact, it may almost be said to have made him. He worked it himself at the police-office, day after day for many days, contending against even a committal; and at the trial where he couldn’t work it himself, sat under counsel, and — every one knew — put in all the salt and pepper. The murdered person was a woman, — a woman a good ten years older, very much larger, and very much stronger. It was a case of jealousy. They both led tramping lives, and this woman in Gerrard Street here had been married very young, over the broomstick (as we say), to a tramping man, and was a perfect fury in point of jealousy. The murdered woman, — more a match for the man, certainly, in point of years — was found dead in a barn near Hounslow Heath. There had been a violent struggle, perhaps a fight. She was bruised and scratched and torn, and had been held by the throat, at last, and choked. Now, there was no reasonable evidence to implicate any person but this woman, and on the improbabilities of her having been able to do it Mr. Jaggers principally rested his case. You may be sure,” said Wemmick, touching me on the sleeve, “that he never dwelt upon the strength of her hands then, though he sometimes does now.”
I had told Wemmick of his showing us her wrists, that day of the dinner party.
“Well, sir!” Wemmick went on; “it happened — happened, don’t you see? — that this woman was so very artfully dressed from the time of her apprehension, that she looked much slighter than she really was; in particular, her sleeves are always remembered to have been so skilfully contrived that her arms had quite a delicate look. She had only a bruise or two about her, — nothing for a tramp, — but the backs of her hands were lacerated, and the question was, Was it with fingernails? Now, Mr. Jaggers showed that she had struggled through a great lot of brambles which were not as high as her face; but which she could not have got through and kept her hands out of; and bits of those brambles were actually found in her skin and put in evidence, as well as the fact that the brambles in question were found on examination to have been broken through, and to have little shreds of her dress and little spots of blood upon them here and there. But the boldest point he made was this: it was attempted to be set up, in proof of her jealousy, that she was under strong suspicion of having, at about the time of the murder, frantically destroyed her child by this man — some three years old — to revenge herself upon him. Mr. Jaggers worked that in this way: “We say these are not marks of fingernails, but marks of brambles, and we show you the brambles. You say they are marks of fingernails, and you set up the hypothesis that she destroyed her child. You must accept all consequences of that hypothesis. For anything we know, she may have destroyed her child, and the child in clinging to her may have scratched her hands. What then? You are not trying her for the murder of her child; why don’t you? As to this case, if you will have scratches, we say that, for anything we know, you may have accounted for them, assuming for the sake of argument that you have not invented them?” To sum up, sir,” said Wemmick, “Mr. Jaggers was altogether too many for the jury, and they gave in.”
“Has she been in his service ever since?”
“Yes; but not only that,” said Wemmick, “she went into his service immediately after her acquittal, tamed as she is now. She has since been taught one thing and another in the way of her duties, but she was tamed from the beginning.”
“Do you remember the sex of the child?”
“Said to have been a girl.”
“You have nothing more to say to me tonight?”
“Nothing. I got your letter and destroyed it. Nothing.”
We exchanged a cordial goodnight, and I went home, with new matter for my thoughts, though with no relief from the old.
Chapter XLIX
Putting