Charles Dickens 20 page ‘You had no idea of your impending good fortune, in
those times?’ said Estella, with a slight wave of her hand,
signifying in the fighting times.
‘Not the least.’
The air of completeness and superiority with which she
walked at my side, and the air of youthfulness and submis-
sion with which I walked at hers, made a contrast that I
Great Expectations
strongly felt. It would have rankled in me more than it did,
if I had not regarded myself as eliciting it by being so set
apart for her and assigned to her.
The garden was too overgrown and rank for walking in
with ease, and after we had made the round of it twice or
thrice, we came out again into the brewery yard. I showed
her to a nicety where I had seen her walking on the casks,
that first old day, and she said, with a cold and careless look
in that direction, ‘Did I?’ I reminded her where she had
come out of the house and given me my meat and drink,
and she said, ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘Not remember that you
made me cry?’ said I. ‘No,’ said she, and shook her head and
looked about her. I verily believe that her not remembering
and not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly
- and that is the sharpest crying of all.
‘You must know,’ said Estella, condescending to me as a
brilliant and beautiful woman might, ‘that I have no heart
- if that has anything to do with my memory.’
I got through some jargon to the effect that I took the lib-
erty of doubting that. That I knew better. That there could
be no such beauty without it.
‘Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have
no doubt,’ said Estella, ‘and, of course, if it ceased to beat
I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no
softness there, no - sympathy - sentiment - nonsense.’
What was it that was borne in upon my mind when she
stood still and looked attentively at me? Anything that I
had seen in Miss Havisham? No. In some of her looks and
gestures there was that tinge of resemblance to Miss Hav-
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isham which may often be noticed to have been acquired
by children, from grown person with whom they have been
much associated and secluded, and which, when childhood
is passed, will produce a remarkable occasional likeness of
expression between faces that are otherwise quite different.
And yet I could not trace this to Miss Havisham. I looked
again, and though she was still looking at me, the sugges-
tion was gone.
What was it?
‘I am serious,’ said Estella, not so much with a frown (for
her brow was smooth) as with a darkening of her face; ‘if we
are to be thrown much together, you had better believe it at
once. No!’ imperiously stopping me as I opened my lips. ‘I
have not bestowed my tenderness anywhere. I have never
had any such thing.’
In another moment we were in the brewery so long dis-
used, and she pointed to the high gallery where I had seen
her going out on that same first day, and told me she remem-
bered to have been up there, and to have seen me standing
scared below. As my eyes followed her white hand, again
the same dim suggestion that I could not possibly grasp,
crossed me. My involuntary start occasioned her to lay her
hand upon my arm. Instantly the ghost passed once more,
and was gone.
What was it?
‘What is the matter?’ asked Estella. ‘Are you scared
again?’
‘I should be, if I believed what you said just now,’ I replied,
to turn it off.
Great Expectations
‘Then you don’t? Very well. It is said, at any rate. Miss
Havisham will soon be expecting you at your old post,
though I think that might be laid aside now, with other old
belongings. Let us make one more round of the garden, and
then go in. Come! You shall not shed tears for my cruelty to-
day; you shall be my Page, and give me your shoulder.’
Her handsome dress had trailed upon the ground. She
held it in one hand now, and with the other lightly touched
my shoulder as we walked. We walked round the ruined
garden twice or thrice more, and it was all in bloom for me.
If the green and yellow growth of weed in the chinks of the
old wall had been the most precious flowers that ever blew,
it could not have been more cherished in my remembrance.
There was no discrepancy of years between us, to remove
her far from me; we were of nearly the same age, though of
course the age told for more in her case than in mine; but
the air of inaccessibility which her beauty and her manner
gave her, tormented me in the midst of my delight, and at
the height of the assurance I felt that our patroness had cho-
sen us for one another. Wretched boy!
At last we went back into the house, and there I heard,
with surprise, that my guardian had come down to see Miss
Havisham on business, and would come back to dinner.
The old wintry branches of chandeliers in the room where
the mouldering table was spread, had been lighted while we
were out, and Miss Havisham was in her chair and waiting
for me.
It was like pushing the chair itself back into the past,
when we began the old slow circuit round about the ashes
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of the bridal feast. But, in the funereal room, with that fig-
ure of the grave fallen back in the chair fixing its eyes upon
her, Estella looked more bright and beautiful than before,
and I was under stronger enchantment.
The time so melted away, that our early dinner-hour
drew close at hand, and Estella left us to prepare herself. We
had stopped near the centre of the long table, and Miss Hav-
isham, with one of her withered arms stretched out of the
chair, rested that clenched hand upon the yellow cloth. As
Estella looked back over her shoulder before going out at
the door, Miss Havisham kissed that hand to her, with a
ravenous intensity that was of its kind quite dreadful.
Then, Estella being gone and we two left alone, she turned
to me, and said in a whisper:
‘Is she beautiful, graceful, well-grown? Do you admire
her?’
‘Everybody must who sees her, Miss Havisham.’
She drew an arm round my neck, and drew my head
close down to hers as she sat in the chair. ‘Love her, love her,
love her! How does she use you?’
Before I could answer (if I could have answered so diffi-
cult a question at all), she repeated, ‘Love her, love her, love
her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her.
If she tears your heart to pieces - and as it gets older and
stronger, it will tear deeper - love her, love her, love her!’
Never had I seen such passionate eagerness as was joined
to her utterance of these words. I could feel the muscles of
the thin arm round my neck, swell with the vehemence that
possessed her.
Great Expectations
‘Hear me, Pip! I adopted her to be loved. I bred her and
educated her, to be loved. I developed her into what she is,
that she might be loved. Love her!’
She said the word often enough, and there could be no
doubt that she meant to say it; but if the often repeated word
had been hate instead of love - despair - revenge - dire death
- it could not have sounded from her lips more like a curse.
‘I’ll tell you,’ said she, in the same hurried passionate
whisper, ‘what real love is. It is blind devotion, unques-
tioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief
against yourself and against the whole world, giving up
your whole heart and soul to the smiter - as I did!’
When she came to that, and to a wild cry that followed
that, I caught her round the waist. For she rose up in the
chair, in her shroud of a dress, and struck at the air as if
she would as soon have struck herself against the wall and
fallen dead.
All this passed in a few seconds. As I drew her down into
her chair, I was conscious of a scent that I knew, and turn-
ing, saw my guardian in the room.
He always carried (I have not yet mentioned it, I think)
a pocket-handkerchief of rich silk and of imposing propor-
tions, which was of great value to him in his profession. I
have seen him so terrify a client or a witness by ceremo-
niously unfolding this pocket-handkerchief as if he were
immediately going to blow his nose, and then pausing, as
if he knew he should not have time to do it before such cli-
ent or witness committed himself, that the self-committal
has followed directly, quite as a matter of course. When I
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saw him in the room, he had this expressive pockethand-
kerchief in both hands, and was looking at us. On meeting
my eye, he said plainly, by a momentary and silent pause in
that attitude, ‘Indeed? Singular!’ and then put the handker-
chief to its right use with wonderful effect.
Miss Havisham had seen him as soon as I, and was (like
everybody else) afraid of him. She made a strong attempt to
compose herself, and stammered that he was as punctual
as ever.
‘As punctual as ever,’ he repeated, coming up to us. ‘(How
do you do, Pip? Shall I give you a ride, Miss Havisham?
Once round?) And so you are here, Pip?’
I told him when I had arrived, and how Miss Havisham
had wished me to come and see Estella. To which he replied,
‘Ah! Very fine young lady!’ Then he pushed Miss Havisham
in her chair before him, with one of his large hands, and
put the other in his trousers-pocket as if the pocket were
full of secrets.
‘Well, Pip! How often have you seen Miss Estella before?’
said he, when he came to a stop.
‘How often?’
‘Ah! How many times? Ten thousand times?’
‘Oh! Certainly not so many.’
‘Twice?’
‘Jaggers,’ interposed Miss Havisham, much to my relief;
‘leave my Pip alone, and go with him to your dinner.’
He complied, and we groped our way down the dark
stairs together. While we were still on our way to those de-
tached apartments across the paved yard at the back, he
Great Expectations
asked me how often I had seen Miss Havisham eat and
drink; offering me a breadth of choice, as usual, between a
hundred times and once.
I considered, and said, ‘Never.’
‘And never will, Pip,’ he retorted, with a frowning smile.
‘She has never allowed herself to be seen doing either, since
she lived this present life of hers. She wanders about in the
night, and then lays hands on such food as she takes.’
‘Pray, sir,’ said I, ‘may I ask you a question?’
‘You may,’ said he, ‘and I may decline to answer it. Put
your question.’
‘Estella’s name. Is it Havisham or - ?’ I had nothing to
add.
‘Or what?’ said he.
‘Is it Havisham?’
‘It is Havisham.’
This brought us to the dinner-table, where she and Sarah
Pocket awaited us. Mr. Jaggers presided, Estella sat opposite
to him, I faced my green and yellow friend. We dined very
well, and were waited on by a maid-servant whom I had
never seen in all my comings and goings, but who, for any-
thing I know, had been in that mysterious house the whole
time. After dinner, a bottle of choice old port was placed
before my guardian (he was evidently well acquainted with
the vintage), and the two ladies left us.
Anything to equal the determined reticence of Mr. Jag-
gers under that roof, I never saw elsewhere, even in him. He
kept his very looks to himself, and scarcely directed his eyes
to Estella’s face once during dinner. When she spoke to him,
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he listened, and in due course answered, but never looked at
her, that I could see. On the other hand, she often looked at
him, with interest and curiosity, if not distrust, but his face
never, showed the least consciousness. Throughout dinner
he took a dry delight in making Sarah Pocket greener and
yellower, by often referring in conversation with me to my
expectations; but here, again, he showed no consciousness,
and even made it appear that he extorted - and even did ex-
tort, though I don’t know how - those references out of my
innocent self.
And when he and I were left alone together, he sat with
an air upon him of general lying by in consequence of in-
formation he possessed, that really was too much for me.
He cross-examined his very wine when he had nothing else
in hand. He held it between himself and the candle, tasted
the port, rolled it in his mouth, swallowed it, looked at his
glass again, smelt the port, tried it, drank it, filled again,
and cross-examined the glass again, until I was as nervous
as if I had known the wine to be telling him something
to my disadvantage. Three or four times I feebly thought
I would start conversation; but whenever he saw me going
to ask him anything, he looked at me with his glass in his
hand, and rolling his wine about in his mouth, as if request-
ing me to take notice that it was of no use, for he couldn’t
answer.
I think Miss Pocket was conscious that the sight of me
involved her in the danger of being goaded to madness, and
perhaps tearing off her cap - which was a very hideous one,
in the nature of a muslin mop - and strewing the ground
Great Expectations
with her hair - which assuredly had never grown on her
head. She did not appear when we afterwards went up to
Miss Havisham’s room, and we four played at whist. In the
interval, Miss Havisham, in a fantastic way, had put some of
the most beautiful jewels from her dressing-table into Estel-
la’s hair, and about her bosom and arms; and I saw even my
guardian look at her from under his thick eyebrows, and
raise them a little, when her loveliness was before him, with
those rich flushes of glitter and colour in it.
Of the manner and extent to which he took our trumps
into custody, and came out with mean little cards at the ends
of hands, before which the glory of our Kings and Queens
was utterly abased, I say nothing; nor, of the feeling that I
had, respecting his looking upon us personally in the light
of three very obvious and poor riddles that he had found
out long ago. What I suffered from, was the incompatibility
between his cold presence and my feelings towards Estella.
It was not that I knew I could never bear to speak to him
about her, that I knew I could never bear to hear him creak
his boots at her, that I knew I could never bear to see him
wash his hands of her; it was, that my admiration should be
within a foot or two of him - it was, that my feelings should
be in the same place with him - that, was the agonizing cir-
cumstance.
We played until nine o’clock, and then it was arranged
that when Estella came to London I should be forewarned
of her coming and should meet her at the coach; and then I
took leave of her, and touched her and left her.
My guardian lay at the Boar in the next room to mine.
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Far into the night, Miss Havisham’s words, ‘Love her, love
her, love her!’ sounded in my ears. I adapted them for my
own repetition, and said to my pillow, ‘I love her, I love her,
I love her!’ hundreds of times. Then, a burst of gratitude
came upon me, that she should be destined for me, once the
blacksmith’s boy. Then, I thought if she were, as I feared, by
no means rapturously grateful for that destiny yet, when
would she begin to be interested in me? When should I
awaken the heart within her, that was mute and sleeping
now?
Ah me! I thought those were high and great emotions.
But I never thought there was anything low and small in
my keeping away from Joe, because I knew she would be
contemptuous of him. It was but a day gone, and Joe had
brought the tears into my eyes; they had soon dried, God
forgive me! soon dried.
Great Expectations
Chapter 30
After well considering the matter while I was dressing
at the Blue Boar in the morning, I resolved to tell my
guardian that I doubted Orlick’s being the right sort of man
to fill a post of trust at Miss Havisham’s. ‘Why, of course he
is not the right sort of man, Pip,’ said my guardian, comfort-
ably satisfied beforehand on the general head, ‘because the
man who fills the post of trust never is the right sort of man.’
It seemed quite to put him into spirits, to find that this par-
ticular post was not exceptionally held by the right sort of
man, and he listened in a satisfied manner while I told him
what knowledge I had of Orlick. ‘Very good, Pip,’ he ob-
served, when I had concluded, ‘I’ll go round presently, and
pay our friend off.’ Rather alarmed by this summary action,
I was for a little delay, and even hinted that our friend him-
self might be difficult to deal with. ‘Oh no he won’t,’ said
my guardian, making his pocket-handkerchief-point, with
perfect confidence; ‘I should like to see him argue the ques-
tion with me.’
As we were going back together to London by the mid-
day coach, and as I breakfasted under such terrors of
Pumblechook that I could scarcely hold my cup, this gave
me an opportunity of saying that I wanted a walk, and that
I would go on along the London-road while Mr. Jaggers was
occupied, if he would let the coachman know that I would
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get into my place when overtaken. I was thus enabled to
fly from the Blue Boar immediately after breakfast. By then
making a loop of about a couple of miles into the open
country at the back of Pumblechook’s premises, I got round
into the High-street again, a little beyond that pitfall, and
felt myself in comparative security.
It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once more,
and it was not disagreeable to be here and there suddenly
recognized and stared after. One or two of the tradespeople
even darted out of their shops and went a little way down
the street before me, that they might turn, as if they had
forgotten something, and pass me face to face - on which
occasions I don’t know whether they or I made the worse
pretence; they of not doing it, or I of not seeing it. Still
my position was a distinguished one, and I was not at all
dissatisfied with it, until Fate threw me in the way of that
unlimited miscreant, Trabb’s boy.
Casting my eyes along the street at a certain point of my
progress, I beheld Trabb’s boy approaching, lashing himself
with an empty blue bag. Deeming that a serene and uncon-
scious contemplation of him would best beseem me, and
would be most likely to quell his evil mind, I advanced with
that expression of countenance, and was rather congratu-
lating myself on my success, when suddenly the knees of
Trabb’s boy smote together, his hair uprose, his cap fell off,
he trembled violently in every limb, staggered out into the
road, and crying to the populace, ‘Hold me! I’m so fright-
ened!’ feigned to be in a paroxysm of terror and contrition,
occasioned by the dignity of my appearance. As I passed
Great Expectations
him, his teeth loudly chattered in his head, and with every
mark of extreme humiliation, he prostrated himself in the
dust.
This was a hard thing to bear, but this was nothing. I
had not advanced another two hundred yards, when, to my
inexpressible terror, amazement, and indignation, I again
beheld Trabb’s boy approaching. He was coming round a
narrow corner. His blue bag was slung over his shoulder,
honest industry beamed in his eyes, a determination to pro-
ceed to Trabb’s with cheerful briskness was indicated in his
gait. With a shock he became aware of me, and was severe-
ly visited as before; but this time his motion was rotatory,
and he staggered round and round me with knees more af-
flicted, and with uplifted hands as if beseeching for mercy.
His sufferings were hailed with the greatest joy by a knot of
spectators, and I felt utterly confounded.
I had not got as much further down the street as the post-
office, when I again beheld Trabb’s boy shooting round by a
back way. This time, he was entirely changed. He wore the
blue bag in the manner of my great-coat, and was strutting
along the pavement towards me on the opposite side of the
street, attended by a company of delighted young friends to
whom he from time to time exclaimed, with a wave of his
hand, ‘Don’t know yah!’ Words cannot state the amount of
aggravation and injury wreaked upon me by Trabb’s boy,
when, passing abreast of me, he pulled up his shirt-collar,
twined his side-hair, stuck an arm akimbo, and smirked ex-
travagantly by, wriggling his elbows and body, and drawling
to his attendants, ‘Don’t know yah, don’t know yah, pon my
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soul don’t know yah!’ The disgrace attendant on his im-
mediately afterwards taking to crowing and pursuing me
across the bridge with crows, as from an exceedingly de-
jected fowl who had known me when I was a blacksmith,
culminated the disgrace with which I left the town, and was,
so to speak, ejected by it into the open country.
But unless I had taken the life of Trabb’s boy on that oc-
casion, I really do not even now see what I could have done
save endure. To have struggled with him in the street, or
to have exacted any lower recompense from him than his
heart’s best blood, would have been futile and degrading.
Moreover, he was a boy whom no man could hurt; an in-
vulnerable and dodging serpent who, when chased into a
corner, flew out again between his captor’s legs, scornfully
yelping. I wrote, however, to Mr. Trabb by next day’s post,
to say that Mr. Pip must decline to deal further with one
who could so far forget what he owed to the best interests
of society, as to employ a boy who excited Loathing in every
respectable mind.
The coach, with Mr. Jaggers inside, came up in due time,
and I took my box-seat again, and arrived in London safe
- but not sound, for my heart was gone. As soon as I arrived,
I sent a penitential codfish and barrel of oysters to Joe (as
reparation for not having gone myself), and then went on
to Barnard’s Inn.
I found Herbert dining on cold meat, and delighted to
welcome me back. Having despatched The Avenger to the
coffee-house for an addition to the dinner, I felt that I must
open my breast that very evening to my friend and chum.
Great Expectations
As confidence was out of the question with The Avenger
in the hall, which could merely be regarded in the light of
an ante-chamber to the keyhole, I sent him to the Play. A
better proof of the severity of my bondage to that taskmas-
ter could scarcely be afforded, than the degrading shifts to
which I was constantly driven to find him employment. So
mean is extremity, that I sometimes sent him to Hyde Park
Corner to see what o’clock it was.
Dinner done and we sitting with our feet upon the fend-
er, I said to Herbert, ‘My dear Herbert, I have something
very particular to tell you.’
‘My dear Handel,’ he returned, ‘I shall esteem and re-
spect your confidence.’
‘It concerns myself, Herbert,’ said I, ‘and one other per-
son.’
Herbert crossed his feet, looked at the fire with his head
on one side, and having looked at it in vain for some time,
looked at me because I didn’t go on.
‘Herbert,’ said I, laying my hand upon his knee, ‘I love - I
adore - Estella.’
Instead of being transfixed, Herbert replied in an easy
matter-ofcourse way, ‘Exactly. Well?’
‘Well, Herbert? Is that all you say? Well?’
‘What next, I mean?’ said Herbert. ‘Of course I know
that.’
‘How do you know it?’ said I.
‘How do I know it, Handel? Why, from you.’
‘I never told you.’
‘Told me! You have never told me when you have got your
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hair cut, but I have had senses to perceive it. You have al-
ways adored her, ever since I have known you. You brought
your adoration and your portmanteau here, together. Told
me! Why, you have always told me all day long. When you
told me your own story, you told me plainly that you began
adoring her the first time you saw her, when you were very
young indeed.’
‘Very well, then,’ said I, to whom this was a new and not
unwelcome light, ‘I have never left off adoring her. And she
has come back, a most beautiful and most elegant creature.
And I saw her yesterday. And if I adored her before, I now
doubly adore her.’
‘Lucky for you then, Handel,’ said Herbert, ‘that you are
picked out for her and allotted to her. Without encroaching
on forbidden ground, we may venture to say that there can
be no doubt between ourselves of that fact. Have you any
idea yet, of Estella’s views on the adoration question?’
I shook my head gloomily. ‘Oh! She is thousands of miles
away, from me,’ said I.
‘Patience, my dear Handel: time enough, time enough.
But you have something more to say?’
‘I am ashamed to say it,’ I returned, ‘and yet it’s no worse
to say it than to think it. You call me a lucky fellow. Of
course, I am. I was a blacksmith’s boy but yesterday; I am
- what shall I say I am - to-day?’
‘Say, a good fellow, if you want a phrase,’ returned Her-
bert, smiling, and clapping his hand on the back of mine, ‘a
good fellow, with impetuosity and hesitation, boldness and
diffidence, action and dreaming, curiously mixed in him.’
Great Expectations
I stopped for a moment to consider whether there really
was this mixture in my character. On the whole, I by no
means recognized the analysis, but thought it not worth
disputing.
‘When I ask what I am to call myself to-day, Herbert,’ I
went on, ‘I suggest what I have in my thoughts. You say I
am lucky. I know I have done nothing to raise myself in
life, and that Fortune alone has raised me; that is being very
lucky. And yet, when I think of Estella—‘
(“And when don’t you, you know?’ Herbert threw in,
with his eyes on the fire; which I thought kind and sympa-
thetic of him.)
‘ - Then, my dear Herbert, I cannot tell you how depen-
dent and uncertain I feel, and how exposed to hundreds of
chances. Avoiding forbidden ground, as you did just now,
I may still say that on the constancy of one person (nam-
ing no person) all my expectations depend. And at the best,
how indefinite and unsatisfactory, only to know so vaguely
what they are!’ In saying this, I relieved my mind of what
had always been there, more or less, though no doubt most
since yesterday.
‘Now, Handel,’ Herbert replied, in his gay hopeful way, ‘it
seems to me that in the despondency of the tender passion,
we are looking into our gift-horse’s mouth with a magnify-
ing-glass. Likewise, it seems to me that, concentrating our
attention on the examination, we altogether overlook one
of the best points of the animal. Didn’t you tell me that your
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