Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - Chapter 51

improving Astella'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 mister 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 anyway, I could scarcely be withheld from going out to Gerard Street

that night. Herbert's representations that if I did, I should probably be laid up and stricken useless, when our fugitive 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 mister Jagger's 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 Guiltspur 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 mister 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 mister 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 mister Jaggers and Wemmick together, as Wemmick would then hear for himself that I said nothing to compromise him. My appearance, with my arm bandaged in my coat loose over my shoulders,

favored my object. Although I had sent mister 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 specialty 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. When I described the disaster, mister 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.

Mister 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 mister Jaggers, poising and swaying himself on his well polished boots, looked done 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 mister 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 mister 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 mister 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 mister Jaggers, bending forward to look at his boots and then straightening himself. Ah, 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. Mister Jaggers looked at me inquiringly and repeated, mother, I have seen her mother within these three days, yes, said mister Jaggers. And so have you, sir. And you have seen her still more recently, yes, said mister Jaggers. Perhaps I know more of Estella's history than even you do, said I I know her father too.

A certain stop that mister 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 mister Jagger'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 mister Jaggers's part before, though I was quite sure of

it now. So you know the young lady's father, Pip said, mister Jaggers, Yes, I replied, and his name is Provis from New South Wales. Even mister Jaggers started when I said those words. It was the slightest start they 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 mister Jagger's sharpness should detect that there have been some communication unknown to him between us. And on what evidence? Pip asked mister Jaggers very coolly, as he paused with his handkerchief halfway 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 mister 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 then 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 mister Jaggers's look. When I did at last turned my eyes in Wemmick's direction, I found that he had

unposted his pen and was intent upon the table before him. Ha, said mister Jaggers at last, as he moved towards the papers on the table. What item was it? You were at, Wemmick when mister Pip came in, but I could not submit to be thrown often 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 fall 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 Distella 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 mister 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 mister Jaggers, and to represent to him that all circumstance is considered. He ought to be more

open with me. I have never seen two men look more oddly at one another than mister 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 mister Jaggers relax into something like a smile, and Wemmick became bolder. What's all this, said mister Jaggers, You with an old father, and you

with pleasant and playful ways, well, returned Wemmick. If I don't bring him here, what does it matter, Pip, said mister 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 mister Jaggers, since you

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. Mister Jaggers nodded his head retrospectively two or three times, and actually drew a sigh. Pip said he we won't talk about poor dreams. And you know more about such things then I having much pressure experience of that kind. But now about this other matter,

how 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, mister 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 defense,

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, doubt 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 be

deviled 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 a 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 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 mothers, I think if she had done such a deed, she would be safer where she was. For the daughters, 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 it 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 would thought well of it. Chop off that bandage left hand of yours with your bandaged right hand, and then passed the chopper on to Wennick here 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. Mister Jaggers did the same. Now, Wemmick said the latter, then resuming his usual manner. What item was it you were at? When mister Pipp 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, mister 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 these 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 Whimmick, mister 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 sniveling here? For? I didn't go to do it, mister 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 these feelings, mister Wemmick pleaded Mike. He's what, demanded Wemmick, quite savagely, say that again. Now look here, my man, said mister Jaggers, advancing a step and pointing to the door. Get out of this office. I'll have no feelings here. Get out. It's Sergey right,

said Wemmick. Get out. So the unfortunate Mike very humbly Withdrew and mister 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. End of chapter