第140章

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 Ibelonged 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.'

Any one might have seen in her haggard face that there was no suppression or evasion so far.

`But when I fell into the mistake I have so long remained in, at least you led me on?' said I.

`Yes,' she returned, again nodding, steadily, `I let you go on.'

`Was that kind?'

`Who am I,' cried Miss Havisham, striking her stick upon the floor and flashing into wrath so suddenly that Estella glanced up at her in surprise, `who am I, for God's sake, that I should be kind?'

It was a weak complaint to have made, and I had not meant to make it.

I told her so, as she sat brooding after this outburst.

`Well, well, well!' she said. `What else?'

`I was liberally paid for my old attendance here,' I said, to soothe her, `in being apprenticed, and I have asked these questions only for my own information. What follows has another (and I hope more disinterested)purpose. In humouring my mistake, Miss Havisham, you punished - practised on - perhaps you will supply whatever term expresses your intention, without offence - your self-seeking relations?'

`I did. Why, they would have it so! So would you. What has been my history, that I should be at the pains of entreating either them, or you, not to have it so! You made your own snares. I never made them.'

Waiting until she was quiet again - for this, too, flashed out of her in a wild and sudden way - I went on.

`I have been thrown among one family of your relations, Miss Havisham, and have been constantly among them since I went to London. I know them to have been as honestly under my delusion as I myself. And I should be false and base if I did not tell you, whether it is acceptable to you or no, and whether you are inclined to give credence to it or no, that you deeply wrong both Mr Matthew Pocket and his son Herbert, if you suppose them to be otherwise than generous, upright, open, and incapable of anything designing or mean.'

`They are your friends,' said Miss Havisham.

`They made themselves my friends,' said I, `when they supposed me to have superseded them; and when Sarah Pocket, Miss Georgiana, and Mistress Camilla, were not my friends, I think.'

This contrasting of them with the rest seemed, I was glad to see, to do them good with her. She looked at me keenly for a little while, and then said quietly:

`What do you want for them?'

`Only,' said I, `that you would not confound them with the others. They may be of the same blood, but, believe me, they are not of the same nature.'

Still looking at me keenly, Miss Havisham repeated:

`What do you want for them?'

`I am not so cunning, you see,' I said, in answer, conscious that Ireddened a little, `as that I could hide from you, even if I desired, that I do want something. Miss Havisham, if you would spare the money to do my friend Herbert a lasting service in life, but which from the nature of the case must be done without his knowledge, I could show you how.'

`Why must it be done without his knowledge?' she asked, settling her hands upon her stick, that she might regard me the more attentively.

`Because,' said I, `I began the service myself, more than two years ago, without his knowledge, and I don't want to be betrayed. Why I fail in my ability to finish it, I cannot explain. It is a part of the secret which is another person's and not mine.'

She gradually withdrew her eyes from me, and turned them on the fire.