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 fountainhead 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