Great Expectations

erbert and I went on from bad to worse, in the way of increasing our
debts, looking into our affairs, leaving Margins, and the like
exemplary transactions; and Time went on, whether or no, as he has a
way of doing; and I came of age,—in fulfilment of Herbert’s prediction,
that I should do so before I knew where I was.

Herbert himself had come of age eight months before me. As he had
nothing else than his majority to come into, the event did not make a
profound sensation in Barnard’s Inn. But we had looked forward to my
one-and-twentieth birthday, with a crowd of speculations and
anticipations, for we had both considered that my guardian could hardly
help saying something definite on that occasion.

I had taken care to have it well understood in Little Britain when my
birthday was. On the day before it, I received an official note from
Wemmick, informing me that Mr. Jaggers would be glad if I would call
upon him at five in the afternoon of the auspicious day. This convinced
us that something great was to happen, and threw me into an unusual
flutter when I repaired to my guardian’s office, a model of
punctuality.

In the outer office Wemmick offered me his congratulations, and
incidentally rubbed the side of his nose with a folded piece of
tissue-paper that I liked the look of. But he said nothing respecting
it, and motioned me with a nod into my guardian’s room. It was
November, and my guardian was standing before his fire leaning his back
against the chimney-piece, with his hands under his coattails.

“Well, Pip,” said he, “I must call you Mr. Pip to-day. Congratulations,
Mr. Pip.”

We shook hands,—he was always a remarkably short shaker,—and I thanked
him.

“Take a chair, Mr. Pip,” said my guardian.

As I sat down, and he preserved his attitude and bent his brows at his
boots, I felt at a disadvantage, which reminded me of that old time
when I had been put upon a tombstone. The two ghastly casts on the
shelf were not far from him, and their expression was as if they were
making a stupid apoplectic attempt to attend to the conversation.

“Now my young friend,” my guardian began, as if I were a witness in the
box, “I am going to have a word or two with you.”

“If you please, sir.”

“What do you suppose,” said Mr. Jaggers, bending forward to look at the
ground, and then throwing his head back to look at the ceiling,—“what
do you suppose you are living at the rate of?”

“At the rate of, sir?”

“At,” repeated Mr. Jaggers, still looking at the ceiling,
“the—rate—of?” And then looked all round the room, and paused with his
pocket-handkerchief in his hand, half-way to his nose.

I had looked into my affairs so often, that I had thoroughly destroyed
any slight notion I might ever have had of their bearings. Reluctantly,
I confessed myself quite unable to answer the question. This reply
seemed agreeable to Mr. Jaggers, who said, “I thought so!” and blew his
nose with an air of satisfaction.

“Now, I have asked you a question, my friend,” said Mr. Jaggers.
“Have you anything to ask me?”

“Of course it would be a great relief to me to ask you several
questions, sir; but I remember your prohibition.”

“Ask one,” said Mr. Jaggers.

“Is my benefactor to be made known to me to-day?”

“No. Ask another.”

“Is that confidence to be imparted to me soon?”

“Waive that, a moment,” said Mr. Jaggers, “and ask another.”

I looked about me, but there appeared to be now no possible escape from
the inquiry, “Have-I—anything to receive, sir?” On that, Mr. Jaggers
said, triumphantly, “I thought we should come to it!” and called to
Wemmick to give him that piece of paper. Wemmick appeared, handed it
in, and disappeared.

“Now, Mr. Pip,” said Mr. Jaggers, “attend, if you please. You have been
drawing pretty freely here; your name occurs pretty often in Wemmick’s
cash-book; but you are in debt, of course?”

“I am afraid I must say yes, sir.”

“You know you must say yes; don’t you?” said Mr. Jaggers.

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t ask you what you owe, because you don’t know; and if you did
know, you wouldn’t tell me; you would say less. Yes, yes, my friend,”
cried Mr. Jaggers, waving his forefinger to stop me as I made a show of
protesting: “it’s likely enough that you think you wouldn’t, but you
would. You’ll excuse me, but I know better than you. Now, take this
piece of paper in your hand. You have got it? Very good. Now, unfold it
and tell me what it is.”

“This is a bank-note,” said I, “for five hundred pounds.”

“That is a bank-note,” repeated Mr. Jaggers, “for five hundred pounds.
And a very handsome sum of money too, I think. You consider it so?”

“How could I do otherwise!”

“Ah! But answer the question,” said Mr. Jaggers.

“Undoubtedly.”

“You consider it, undoubtedly, a handsome sum of money. Now, that
handsome sum of money, Pip, is your own. It is a present to you on this
day, in earnest of your expectations. And at the rate of that handsome
sum of money per annum, and at no higher rate, you are to live until
the donor of the whole appears. That is to say, you will now take your
money affairs entirely into your own hands, and you will draw from
Wemmick one hundred and twenty-five pounds per quarter, until you are
in communication with the fountain-head, and no longer with the mere
agent. As I have told you before, I am the mere agent. I execute my
instructions, and I am paid for doing so. I think them injudicious, but
I am not paid for giving any opinion on their merits.”

I was beginning to express my gratitude to my benefactor for the great
liberality with which I was treated, when Mr. Jaggers stopped me. “I am
not paid, Pip,” said he, coolly, “to carry your words to any one;” and
then gathered up his coat-tails, as he had gathered up the subject, and
stood frowning at his boots as if he suspected them of designs against
him.

After a pause, I hinted,—

“There was a question just now, Mr. Jaggers, which you desired me to
waive for a moment. I hope I am doing nothing wrong in asking it
again?”

“What is it?” said he.

I might have known that he would never help me out; but it took me
aback to have to shape the question afresh, as if it were quite new.
“Is it likely,” I said, after hesitating, “that my patron, the
fountain-head you have spoken of, Mr. Jaggers, will soon—” there I
delicately stopped.

“Will soon what?” asked Mr. Jaggers. “That’s no question as it stands,
you know.”

“Will soon come to London,” said I, after casting about for a precise
form of words, “or summon me anywhere else?”

“Now, here,” replied Mr. Jaggers, fixing me for the first time with his
dark deep-set eyes, “we must revert to the evening when we first
encountered one another in your village. What did I tell you then,
Pip?”

“You told me, Mr. Jaggers, that it might be years hence when that
person appeared.”

“Just so,” said Mr. Jaggers, “that’s my answer.”

As we looked full at one another, I felt my breath come quicker in my
strong desire to get something out of him. And as I felt that it came
quicker, and as I felt that he saw that it came quicker, I felt that I
had less chance than ever of getting anything out of him.

“Do you suppose it will still be years hence, Mr. Jaggers?”

Mr. Jaggers shook his head,—not in negativing the question, but in
altogether negativing the notion that he could anyhow be got to answer
it,—and the two horrible casts of the twitched faces looked, when my
eyes strayed up to them, as if they had come to a crisis in their
suspended attention, and were going to sneeze.

“Come!” said Mr. Jaggers, warming the backs of his legs with the backs
of his warmed hands, “I’ll be plain with you, my friend Pip. That’s a
question I must not be asked. You’ll understand that better, when I
tell you it’s a question that might compromise me. Come! I’ll go a
little further with you; I’ll say something more.”

He bent down so low to frown at his boots, that he was able to rub the
calves of his legs in the pause he made.

“When that person discloses,” said Mr. Jaggers, straightening himself,
“you and that person will settle your own affairs. When that person
discloses, my part in this business will cease and determine. When that
person discloses, it will not be necessary for me to know anything
about it. And that’s all I have got to say.”

We looked at one another until I withdrew my eyes, and looked
thoughtfully at the floor. From this last speech I derived the notion
that Miss Havisham, for some reason or no reason, had not taken him
into her confidence as to her designing me for Estella; that he
resented this, and felt a jealousy about it; or that he really did
object to that scheme, and would have nothing to do with it. When I
raised my eyes again, I found that he had been shrewdly looking at me
all the time, and was doing so still.

“If that is all you have to say, sir,” I remarked, “there can be
nothing left for me to say.”

He nodded assent, and pulled out his thief-dreaded watch, and asked me
where I was going to dine? I replied at my own chambers, with Herbert.
As a necessary sequence, I asked him if he would favour us with his
company, and he promptly accepted the invitation. But he insisted on
walking home with me, in order that I might make no extra preparation
for him, and first he had a letter or two to write, and (of course) had
his hands to wash. So I said I would go into the outer office and talk
to Wemmick.

The fact was, that when the five hundred pounds had come into my
pocket, a thought had come into my head which had been often there
before; and it appeared to me that Wemmick was a good person to advise
with concerning such thought.

He had already locked up his safe, and made preparations for going
home. He had left his desk, brought out his two greasy office
candlesticks and stood them in line with the snuffers on a slab near
the door, ready to be extinguished; he had raked his fire low, put his
hat and great-coat ready, and was beating himself all over the chest
with his safe-key, as an athletic exercise after business.

“Mr. Wemmick,” said I, “I want to ask your opinion. I am very desirous
to serve a friend.”

Wemmick tightened his post-office and shook his head, as if his opinion
were dead against any fatal weakness of that sort.

“This friend,” I pursued, “is trying to get on in commercial life, but
has no money, and finds it difficult and disheartening to make a
beginning. Now I want somehow to help him to a beginning.”

“With money down?” said Wemmick, in a tone drier than any sawdust.

“With some money down,” I replied, for an uneasy remembrance shot
across me of that symmetrical bundle of papers at home—“with some
money down, and perhaps some anticipation of my expectations.”

“Mr. Pip,” said Wemmick, “I should like just to run over with you on my
fingers, if you please, the names of the various bridges up as high as
Chelsea Reach. Let’s see; there’s London, one; Southwark, two;
Blackfriars, three; Waterloo, four; Westminster, five; Vauxhall, six.”
He had checked off each bridge in its turn, with the handle of his
safe-key on the palm of his hand. “There’s as many as six, you see, to
choose from.”

“I don’t understand you,” said I.

“Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip,” returned Wemmick, “and take a walk upon
your bridge, and pitch your money into the Thames over the centre arch
of your bridge, and you know the end of it. Serve a friend with it, and
you may know the end of it too,—but it’s a less pleasant and profitable
end.”

I could have posted a newspaper in his mouth, he made it so wide after
saying this.

“This is very discouraging,” said I.

“Meant to be so,” said Wemmick.

“Then is it your opinion,” I inquired, with some little indignation,
“that a man should never—”

“—Invest portable property in a friend?” said Wemmick. “Certainly he
should not. Unless he wants to get rid of the friend,—and then it
becomes a question how much portable property it may be worth to get
rid of him.”

“And that,” said I, “is your deliberate opinion, Mr. Wemmick?”

“That,” he returned, “is my deliberate opinion in this office.”

“Ah!” said I, pressing him, for I thought I saw him near a loophole
here; “but would that be your opinion at Walworth?”

“Mr. Pip,” he replied, with gravity, “Walworth is one place, and this
office is another. Much as the Aged is one person, and Mr. Jaggers is
another. They must not be confounded together. My Walworth sentiments
must be taken at Walworth; none but my official sentiments can be taken
in this office.”

“Very well,” said I, much relieved, “then I shall look you up at
Walworth, you may depend upon it.”

“Mr. Pip,” he returned, “you will be welcome there, in a private and
personal capacity.”

We had held this conversation in a low voice, well knowing my
guardian’s ears to be the sharpest of the sharp. As he now appeared in
his doorway, towelling his hands, Wemmick got on his great-coat and
stood by to snuff out the candles. We all three went into the street
together, and from the door-step Wemmick turned his way, and Mr.
Jaggers and I turned ours.

I could not help wishing more than once that evening, that Mr. Jaggers
had had an Aged in Gerrard Street, or a Stinger, or a Something, or a
Somebody, to unbend his brows a little. It was an uncomfortable
consideration on a twenty-first birthday, that coming of age at all
seemed hardly worth while in such a guarded and suspicious world as he
made of it. He was a thousand times better informed and cleverer than
Wemmick, and yet I would a thousand times rather have had Wemmick to
dinner. And Mr. Jaggers made not me alone intensely melancholy,
because, after he was gone, Herbert said of himself, with his eyes
fixed on the fire, that he thought he must have committed a felony and
forgotten the details of it, he felt so dejected and guilty.