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.