Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [top 10 best books of all time txt] 📗

Chapter LI

What purpose I had in view when I was hot on tracing out and

proving Estella’s parentage, I cannot say. It will presently be

seen that the question was not before me in a distinct shape until

it was put before me by a wiser head than my own.

But when Herbert and I had held our momentous conversation, I was

seized with a feverish conviction that I ought to hunt the matter

down,—that I ought not to let it rest, but that I ought to see Mr.

Jaggers, and come at the bare truth. I really do not know whether I

felt that I did this for Estella’s sake, or whether I was glad to

transfer to the man in whose preservation I was so much concerned

some rays of the romantic interest that had so long surrounded me.

Perhaps the latter possibility may be the nearer to the truth.

Any way, I could scarcely be withheld from going out to

Gerrard Street that night. Herbert’s representations that, if I did,

I should probably be laid up and stricken useless, when our

fugitive’s safety would depend upon me, alone restrained my

impatience. On the understanding, again and again reiterated, that,

come what would, I was to go to Mr. Jaggers tomorrow, I at length

submitted to keep quiet, and to have my hurts looked after, and to

stay at home. Early next morning we went out together, and at the

corner of Giltspur Street by Smithfield, I left Herbert to go his

way into the City, and took my way to Little Britain.

There were periodical occasions when Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick went

over the office accounts, and checked off the vouchers, and put all

things straight. On these occasions, Wemmick took his books and

papers into Mr. Jaggers’s room, and one of the upstairs clerks came

down into the outer office. Finding such clerk on Wemmick’s post

that morning, I knew what was going on; but I was not sorry to

have Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick together, as Wemmick would then hear

for himself that I said nothing to compromise him.

My appearance, with my arm bandaged and my coat loose over my

shoulders, favored my object. Although I had sent Mr. Jaggers a

brief account of the accident as soon as I had arrived in town, yet

I had to give him all the details now; and the speciality of the

occasion caused our talk to be less dry and hard, and less strictly

regulated by the rules of evidence, than it had been before. While

I described the disaster, Mr. Jaggers stood, according to his wont,

before the fire. Wemmick leaned back in his chair, staring at me,

with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and his pen put

horizontally into the post. The two brutal casts, always

inseparable in my mind from the official proceedings, seemed to be

congestively considering whether they didn’t smell fire at the

present moment.

My narrative finished, and their questions exhausted, I then

produced Miss Havisham’s authority to receive the nine hundred

pounds for Herbert. Mr. Jaggers’s eyes retired a little deeper into

his head when I handed him the tablets, but he presently handed

them over to Wemmick, with instructions to draw the check for his

signature. While that was in course of being done, I looked on at

Wemmick as he wrote, and Mr. Jaggers, poising and swaying himself on

his well-polished boots, looked on at me. “I am sorry, Pip,” said

he, as I put the check in my pocket, when he had signed it, “that

we do nothing for you.”

“Miss Havisham was good enough to ask me,” I returned, “whether she

could do nothing for me, and I told her No.”

“Everybody should know his own business,” said Mr. Jaggers. And I

saw Wemmick’s lips form the words “portable property.”

“I should not have told her No, if I had been you,” said Mr

Jaggers; “but every man ought to know his own business best.”

“Every man’s business,” said Wemmick, rather reproachfully towards

me, “is portable property.”

As I thought the time was now come for pursuing the theme I had at

heart, I said, turning on Mr. Jaggers:—

“I did ask something of Miss Havisham, however, sir. I asked her to

give me some information relative to her adopted daughter, and she

gave me all she possessed.”

“Did she?” said Mr. Jaggers, bending forward to look at his boots

and then straightening himself. “Hah! I don’t think I should have

done so, if I had been Miss Havisham. But she ought to know her own

business best.”

“I know more of the history of Miss Havisham’s adopted child than

Miss Havisham herself does, sir. I know her mother.”

Mr. Jaggers looked at me inquiringly, and repeated “Mother?”

“I have seen her mother within these three days.”

“Yes?” said Mr. Jaggers.

“And so have you, sir. And you have seen her still more recently.”

“Yes?” said Mr. Jaggers.

“Perhaps I know more of Estella’s history than even you do,” said

I. “I know her father too.”

A certain stop that Mr. Jaggers came to in his manner—he was too

self-possessed to change his manner, but he could not help its

being brought to an indefinably attentive stop—assured me that he

did not know who her father was. This I had strongly suspected from

Provis’s account (as Herbert had repeated it) of his having kept

himself dark; which I pieced on to the fact that he himself was not

Mr. Jaggers’s client until some four years later, and when he could

have no reason for claiming his identity. But, I could not be sure

of this unconsciousness on Mr. Jaggers’s part before, though I was

quite sure of it now.

“So! You know the young lady’s father, Pip?” said Mr. Jaggers.

“Yes,” I replied, “and his name is Provis—from New South Wales.”

Even Mr. Jaggers started when I said those words. It was the

slightest start that could escape a man, the most carefully

repressed and the sooner checked, but he did start, though he made

it a part of the action of taking out his pocket-handkerchief. How

Wemmick received the announcement I am unable to say; for I was

afraid to look at him just then, lest Mr. Jaggers’s sharpness should

detect that there had been some communication unknown to him

between us.

“And on what evidence, Pip,” asked Mr. Jaggers, very coolly, as he

paused with his handkerchief half way to his nose, “does Provis

make this claim?”

“He does not make it,” said I, “and has never made it, and has no

knowledge or belief that his daughter is in existence.”

For once, the powerful pocket-handkerchief failed. My reply was so

Unexpected, that Mr. Jaggers put the handkerchief back into his

pocket without completing the usual performance, folded his arms,

and looked with stern attention at me, though with an immovable

face.

Then I told him all I knew, and how I knew it; with the one

reservation that I left him to infer that I knew from Miss Havisham

what I in fact knew from Wemmick. I was very careful indeed as to

that. Nor did I look towards Wemmick until I had finished all I

had to tell, and had been for some time silently meeting Mr.

Jaggers’s look. When I did at last turn my eyes in Wemmick’s

direction, I found that he had unposted his pen, and was intent

upon the table before him.

“Hah!” said Mr. Jaggers at last, as he moved towards the papers on

the table. “What item was it you were at, Wemmick, when Mr. Pip

came in?”

But I could not submit to be thrown off in that way, and I made a

passionate, almost an indignant appeal, to him to be more frank and

manly with me. I reminded him of the false hopes into which I had

lapsed, the length of time they had lasted, and the discovery I had

made: and I hinted at the danger that weighed upon my spirits. I

represented myself as being surely worthy of some little confidence

from him, in return for the confidence I had just now imparted. I

said that I did not blame him, or suspect him, or mistrust him, but

I wanted assurance of the truth from him. And if he asked me why I

wanted it, and why I thought I had any right to it, I would tell

him, little as he cared for such poor dreams, that I had loved

Estella dearly and long, and that although I had lost her, and must

live a bereaved life, whatever concerned her was still nearer and

dearer to me than anything else in the world. And seeing that Mr.

Jaggers stood quite still and silent, and apparently quite

obdurate, under this appeal, I turned to Wemmick, and said,

“Wemmick, I know you to be a man with a gentle heart. I have seen

your pleasant home, and your old father, and all the innocent,

cheerful playful ways with which you refresh your business life.

And I entreat you to say a word for me to Mr. Jaggers, and to

represent to him that, all circumstances considered, he ought to be

more open with me!”

I have never seen two men look more oddly at one another than Mr.

Jaggers and Wemmick did after this apostrophe. At first, a

misgiving crossed me that Wemmick would be instantly dismissed from

his employment; but it melted as I saw Mr. Jaggers relax into

something like a smile, and Wemmick become bolder.

“What’s all this?” said Mr. Jaggers. “You with an old father, and

you with pleasant and playful ways?”

“Well!” returned Wemmick. “If I don’t bring ‘em here, what does it

matter?”

“Pip,” said Mr. Jaggers, laying his hand upon my arm, and smiling

openly, “this man