The journey to London took five hours. When I arrived at Mr. Jaggers' office, he told me that I was not to go directly to the home of Matthew Pocket, my tutor. Instead I was to spend a few days in London with Pocket's son, Herbert.
Mr. Jaggers' clerk walked me to young Pocket's rooms in Barnard's Inn, a collection of shabby buildings squeezed together along the street. We climbed the stairs to Pocket's door only to find a sign: "Return Shortly." The clerk left me, and I waited for half an hour before I heard Pocket's footsteps on the stairs. He had a paper bag under each arm and a box of strawberries in one hand, and he was out of breath.
"Mr. Pip?" said he.
"Mr. Pocket?" said I.
It was not until we entered his rooms and got a good look at each other that we realized we'd met before.
"You're the boy who was prowling about Miss Havisham's house!" said Herbert Pocket, putting down his bags of food.
"And you are the pale young gentleman who encouraged me to fight!"
"Well," said Herbert as he reached for my hand, "that's all over now. I hope you'll forgive me for knocking you around."
I didn't correct his memory as to who had knocked around whom, and we shook hands warmly.
"You hadn't come into your good fortune when we met at Miss Havisham's?" asked Herbert.
"No."
"I myself was on the lookout for good fortune at that time. Miss Havisham had asked me to come for a trial visit. I suppose if she had liked me, I would have been provided for. Perhaps I might have even become engaged to Estella."
"Weren't you disappointed?" I asked.
"No. I didn't care much for her."
"Miss Havisham?"
"Well, I didn't care much for her either, but I meant Estella. That girl's cold and haughty, and Miss Havisham has brought her up to wreak revenge on all men."
"How is Estella related to Miss Havisham? Why should she wreak revenge on all men? What revenge?"
"Dear me, Pip! You have a lot of questions. Miss Havisham adopted Estella. The rest of the story will have to wait until dinnertime."
Herbert showed me around his rooms—a sitting room plus two bedrooms. In the meantime he asked me about myself, and I told him the story of my good fortune, stressing that I was never to ask the name of my benefactor. Herbert knew that Mr. Jaggers was my guardian and that Jaggers was the one who'd recommended Matthew Pocket for my tutor. He told me that Mr. Jaggers was Miss Havisham's lawyer and adviser.
I liked Herbert at once. He was still a pale young gentleman, but there was something about him that was very charming. He seemed incapable of ever doing anything secretive or mean. There was something wonderfully hopeful about him, and yet at the same time I knew he would never be very successful or rich.
When we sat down to dinner, I reminded Herbert of his promise to tell me about Miss Havisham.
"She was a spoiled child. Her mother died when she was a baby, and her father denied her nothing. He was a country gentleman down in your part of the world, and he was a brewer. He was very rich and haughty, and his daughter was too."
I guessed that she must have been an only child. But Herbert said that she had a younger half-brother. As the boy grew into a young man, he turned out to be so disrespectful and so wasteful that his father disinherited him. But when the father lay dying, he reconciled with his son and changed his will. So after the father died, the son was wealthy, though not as wealthy as Miss Havisham.
"Miss Havisham was now an heiress," said Herbert. "Her half-brother had plenty of money again but wasted it with debts and bad judgment. He and Miss Havisham did not get along, and many people suspected that he held a grudge against her, blaming her for the time when his father was angry with him."
Herbert continued his story. "There appeared on the scene a certain man who began to court Miss Havisham. He pursued her and claimed to be devoted to her. She loved him passionately and idolized him. He got huge sums of money from her and persuaded her to buy out her brother's share of the brewery at a great price. The idea was that when he was her husband, he would take care of it all and manage it for her."
I could see that this story was going to end unhappily. "Why didn't Mr. Jaggers warn her against this man?"
"He was not yet her lawyer. My father is her cousin, and he was the only person who warned her that she was doing too much for this man. Miss Havisham angrily ordered my father out of her house, and he has never seen her since."
"So what happened?" I asked.
"The wedding day was set; the wedding dress was bought; the wedding trip was planned out; the wedding guests were invited. The day came, but not the bridegroom. He wrote a letter—"
"Which she received while she was dressing for her wedding!" I guessed. "At twenty minutes to nine!"
"At that exact hour and minute," said Herbert, nodding. "Afterward she stopped all the clocks at that time. I do not know what was in the letter other than the fact that he broke off the marriage. Miss Havisham then took ill. When she recovered, she let the whole place fall into ruin, as you have seen, and she has never since looked upon the light of day."
I sat, thinking about what he had told me. "Is that the whole story?"
"All that I know of it. But I have forgotten one thing. It has long been suspected that her fiancé was acting with her half-brother, that it was a conspiracy between them and that they shared the profits."
"What became of the two men?"
"They fell into deeper shame—if there can be deeper—and ruin."
"Are they alive now?" I asked.
"I don't know, Pip."
I had one more question for him. "You said that Estella was not related to Miss Havisham, but adopted. When was she adopted?"
He shrugged. "It seems to me that Estella has always been there. And you now know everything that I know about Miss Havisham."
"And you know everything that I know," I retorted.
"I believe that," said Herbert. "As to the condition on which you hold your advancement in life—namely that you are not to discuss or inquire about your benefactor—you may be sure that I will never mention it."
He said this with so much sincerity that I believed we would never speak of it again, no matter how many years I lived under his father's roof. From the way he spoke, I also believed that we understood the same thing: Miss Havisham was my benefactor.