Too heavily out of sorts to care much at the time
whether it were he or no, or after all to touch the
breakfast, I washed the weather and the journey from
my face and hands, and went out to the memorable old
house that it would have been so much the better for
me never to have entered, never to have seen.
In the room where the dressing-table stood, and where
the wax candles burnt on the wall, I found Miss Havisham
and Estella; Miss Havisham seated on a settee near
the fire, and Estella on a cushion at her feet.
Estella was knitting, and Miss Havisham was looking
on. They both raised their eyes as I went in,
and both saw an alteration in me. I derived
that, from the look they interchanged.
“And what wind,” said Miss Havisham, “blows
you here, Pip?”
Though she looked steadily at me, I saw that she was
rather confused. Estella, pausing a moment in
her knitting with her eyes upon me, and then going
on, I fancied that I read in the action of her fingers,
as plainly as if she had told me in the dumb alphabet,
that she perceived I had discovered my real benefactor.
“Miss Havisham,” said I, “I went
to Richmond yesterday, to speak to Estella; and finding
that some wind had blown her here, I followed.”
Miss Havisham motioning to me for the third or fourth
time to sit down, I took the chair by the dressing-table,
which I had often seen her occupy. With all
that ruin at my feet and about me, it seemed a natural
place for me, that day.
“What I had to say to Estella, Miss Havisham,
I will say before you, presently — in a few
moments. It will not surprise you, it will not
displease you. I am as unhappy as you can ever
have meant me to be.”
Miss Havisham continued to look steadily at me.
I could see in the action of Estella’s fingers
as they worked, that she attended to what I said:
but she did not look up.
“I have found out who my patron is. It
is not a fortunate discovery, and is not likely ever
to enrich me in reputation, station, fortune, anything.
There are reasons why I must say no more of that.
It is not my secret, but another’s.”
As I was silent for a while, looking at Estella and
considering how to go on, Miss Havisham repeated,
“It is not your secret, but another’s.
Well?”
“When you first caused me to be brought here,
Miss Havisham; when I belonged to the village over
yonder, that I wish I had never left; I suppose I
did really come here, as any other chance boy might
have come — as a kind of servant, to gratify
a want or a whim, and to be paid for it?”
“Ay, Pip,” replied Miss Havisham, steadily
nodding her head; “you did.”
“And that Mr. Jaggers—”
“Mr. Jaggers,” said Miss Havisham, taking
me up in a firm tone, “had nothing to do with
it, and knew nothing of it. His being my lawyer,
and his being the lawyer of your patron, is a coincidence.
He holds the same relation towards numbers of people,
and it might easily arise. Be that as it may,
it did arise, and was not brought about by any one.”
