Great Expectations

Chapter 51

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 her.

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 up-stairs 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 cheque 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 cheque 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 soonest 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, this was your manner of attack and this the

manner of resistance, you went 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 intellect, 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 himself 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

shop-lifting. 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.