第 五十一 章 · What purpose I had in view when I was hot on tracing out and proving

. 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 to-morrow, 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, favoured 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 must be the most cunning impostor in all London.”

“Not a bit of it,” returned Wemmick, growing bolder and bolder. “I

think you’re another.”

Again they exchanged their former odd looks, each apparently still

distrustful that the other was taking him in.

“_You_ with a pleasant home?” said Mr. Jaggers.

“Since it don’t interfere with business,” returned Wemmick, “let it be

so. Now, I look at you, sir, I shouldn’t wonder if _you_ might be

planning and contriving to have a pleasant home of your own one of

these days, when you’re tired of all this work.”

Mr. Jaggers nodded his head retrospectively two or three times, and

actually drew a sigh. “Pip,” said he, “we won’t talk about ‘poor

dreams;’ you know more about such things than I, having much fresher

experience of that kind. But now about this other matter. I’ll put a

case to you. Mind! I admit nothing.”

He waited for me to declare that I quite understood that he expressly

said that he admitted nothing.

“Now, Pip,” said Mr. Jaggers, “put this case. Put the case that a

woman, under such circumstances as you have mentioned, held her child

concealed, and was obliged to communicate the fact to her legal

adviser, on his representing to her that he must know, with an eye to

the latitude of his defence, how the fact stood about that child. Put

the case that, at the same time he held a trust to find a child for an

eccentric rich lady to adopt and bring up.”

“I follow you, sir.”

“Put the case that he lived in an atmosphere of evil, and that all he

saw of children was their being generated in great numbers for certain

destruction. Put the case that he often saw children solemnly tried at

a criminal bar, where they were held up to be seen; put the case that

he habitually knew of their being imprisoned, whipped, transported,

neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangman, and growing

up to be hanged. Put the case that pretty nigh all the children he saw

in his daily business life he had reason to look upon as so much spawn,

to develop into the fish that were to come to his net,—to be

prosecuted, defended, forsworn, made orphans, bedevilled somehow.”

“I follow you, sir.”

“Put the case, Pip, that here was one pretty little child out of the

heap who could be saved; whom the father believed dead, and dared make

no stir about; as to whom, over the mother, the legal adviser had this

power: “I know what you did, and how you did it. You came so and so,

you did such and such things to divert suspicion. I have tracked you

through it all, and I tell it you all. Part with the child, unless it

should be necessary to produce it to clear you, and then it shall be

produced. Give the child into my hands, and I will do my best to bring

you off. If you are saved, your child is saved too; if you are lost,

your child is still saved.” Put the case that this was done, and that

the woman was cleared.”

“I understand you perfectly.”

“But that I make no admissions?”

“That you make no admissions.” And Wemmick repeated, “No admissions.”

“Put the case, Pip, that passion and the terror of death had a little

shaken the woman’s intellects, and that when she was set at liberty,

she was scared out of the ways of the world, and went to him to be

sheltered. Put the case that he took her in, and that he kept down the

old, wild, violent nature whenever he saw an inkling of its breaking

out, by asserting his power over her in the old way. Do you comprehend

the imaginary case?”

“Quite.”

“Put the case that the child grew up, and was married for money. That

the mother was still living. That the father was still living. That the

mother and father, unknown to one another, were dwelling within so many

miles, furlongs, yards if you like, of one another. That the secret was

still a secret, except that you had got wind of it. Put that last case

to yourself very carefully.”

“I do.”

“I ask Wemmick to put it to _him_self very carefully.”

And Wemmick said, “I do.”

“For whose sake would you reveal the secret? For the father’s? I think

he would not be much the better for the mother. For the mother’s? I

think if she had done such a deed she would be safer where she was. For

the daughter’s? I think it would hardly serve her to establish her

parentage for the information of her husband, and to drag her back to

disgrace, after an escape of twenty years, pretty secure to last for

life. But add the case that you had loved her, Pip, and had made her

the subject of those ‘poor dreams’ which have, at one time or another,

been in the heads of more men than you think likely, then I tell you

that you had better—and would much sooner when you had thought well of

it—chop off that bandaged left hand of yours with your bandaged right

hand, and then pass the chopper on to Wemmick there, to cut _that_ off

too.”

I looked at Wemmick, whose face was very grave. He gravely touched his

lips with his forefinger. I did the same. Mr. Jaggers did the same.

“Now, Wemmick,” said the latter then, resuming his usual manner, “what

item was it you were at when Mr. Pip came in?”

Standing by for a little, while they were at work, I observed that the

odd looks they had cast at one another were repeated several times:

with this difference now, that each of them seemed suspicious, not to

say conscious, of having shown himself in a weak and unprofessional

light to the other. For this reason, I suppose, they were now

inflexible with one another; Mr. Jaggers being highly dictatorial, and

Wemmick obstinately justifying himself whenever there was the smallest

point in abeyance for a moment. I had never seen them on such ill

terms; for generally they got on very well indeed together.

But they were both happily relieved by the opportune appearance of

Mike, the client with the fur cap and the habit of wiping his nose on

his sleeve, whom I had seen on the very first day of my appearance

within those walls. This individual, who, either in his own person or

in that of some member of his family, seemed to be always in trouble

(which in that place meant Newgate), called to announce that his eldest

daughter was taken up on suspicion of shoplifting. As he imparted this

melancholy circumstance to Wemmick, Mr. Jaggers standing magisterially

before the fire and taking no share in the proceedings, Mike’s eye

happened to twinkle with a tear.

“What are you about?” demanded Wemmick, with the utmost indignation.

“What do you come snivelling here for?”

“I didn’t go to do it, Mr. Wemmick.”

“You did,” said Wemmick. “How dare you? You’re not in a fit state to

come here, if you can’t come here without spluttering like a bad pen.

What do you mean by it?”

“A man can’t help his feelings, Mr. Wemmick,” pleaded Mike.

“His what?” demanded Wemmick, quite savagely. “Say that again!”

“Now look here my man,” said Mr. Jaggers, advancing a step, and

pointing to the door. “Get out of this office. I’ll have no feelings

here. Get out.”

“It serves you right,” said Wemmick, “Get out.”

So, the unfortunate Mike very humbly withdrew, and Mr. Jaggers and

Wemmick appeared to have re-established their good understanding, and

went to work again with an air of refreshment upon them as if they had

just had lunch.