第161章

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?'