“I want to know,” said I, “and particularly,
Herbert, whether he told you when this happened?”
“Particularly? Let me remember, then,
what he said as to that. His expression was,
‘a round score o’ year ago, and a’most
directly after I took up wi’ Compeyson.’
How old were you when you came upon him in the little
churchyard?”
“I think in my seventh year.”
“Ay. It had happened some three or four
years then, he said, and you brought into his mind
the little girl so tragically lost, who would have
been about your age.”
“Herbert,” said I, after a short silence,
in a hurried way, “can you see me best by the
light of the window, or the light of the fire?”
“By the firelight,” answered Herbert,
coming close again.
“Look at me.”
“I do look at you, my dear boy.”
“Touch me.”
“I do touch you, my dear boy.”
“You are not afraid that I am in any fever,
or that my head is much disordered by the accident
of last night?”
“N-no, my dear boy,” said Herbert, after
taking time to examine me. “You are rather
excited, but you are quite yourself.”
“I know I am quite myself. And the man
we have in hiding down the river, is Estella’s
Father.”
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.
