Charles Dickens 25 page

neatness of a placid boxer, took off that girdle or cestus as

before, and laid it on the table. Taking the table to repre-

Great Expectations

sent the path of virtue, I am justified in stating that during

the whole time of the Aged’s reading, Wemmick’s arm was

straying from the path of virtue and being recalled to it by

Miss Skiffins.

At last, the Aged read himself into a light slumber. This

was the time for Wemmick to produce a little kettle, a tray

of glasses, and a black bottle with a porcelain-topped cork,

representing some clerical dignitary of a rubicund and

social aspect. With the aid of these appliances we all had

something warm to drink: including the Aged, who was

soon awake again. Miss Skiffins mixed, and I observed that

she and Wemmick drank out of one glass. Of course I knew

better than to offer to see Miss Skiffins home, and under the

circumstances I thought I had best go first: which I did, tak-

ing a cordial leave of the Aged, and having passed a pleasant

evening.

Before a week was out, I received a note from Wemmick,

dated Walworth, stating that he hoped he had made some

advance in that matter appertaining to our private and per-

sonal capacities, and that he would be glad if I could come

and see him again upon it. So, I went out to Walworth again,

and yet again, and yet again, and I saw him by appointment

in the City several times, but never held any communica-

tion with him on the subject in or near Little Britain. The

upshot was, that we found a worthy young merchant or ship-

ping-broker, not long established in business, who wanted

intelligent help, and who wanted capital, and who in due

course of time and receipt would want a partner. Between

him and me, secret articles were signed of which Herbert

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was the subject, and I paid him half of my five hundred

pounds down, and engaged for sundry other payments:

some, to fall due at certain dates out of my income: some,

contingent on my coming into my property. Miss Skiffins’s

brother conducted the negotiation. Wemmick pervaded it

throughout, but never appeared in it.

The whole business was so cleverly managed, that Her-

bert had not the least suspicion of my hand being in it. I

never shall forget the radiant face with which he came home

one afternoon, and told me, as a mighty piece of news, of his

having fallen in with one Clarriker (the young merchant’s

name), and of Clarriker’s having shown an extraordinary

inclination towards him, and of his belief that the open-

ing had come at last. Day by day as his hopes grew stronger

and his face brighter, he must have thought me a more and

more affectionate friend, for I had the greatest difficulty in

restraining my tears of triumph when I saw him so happy.

At length, the thing being done, and he having that day en-

tered Clarriker’s House, and he having talked to me for a

whole evening in a flush of pleasure and success, I did really

cry in good earnest when I went to bed, to think that my ex-

pectations had done some good to somebody.

A great event in my life, the turning point of my life, now

opens on my view. But, before I proceed to narrate it, and

before I pass on to all the changes it involved, I must give

one chapter to Estella. It is not much to give to the theme

that so long filled my heart.

Great Expectations

Chapter 38

If that staid old house near the Green at Richmond should

ever come to be haunted when I am dead, it will be haunt-

ed, surely, by my ghost. O the many, many nights and days

through which the unquiet spirit within me haunted that

house when Estella lived there! Let my body be where it

would, my spirit was always wandering, wandering, wan-

dering, about that house.

The lady with whom Estella was placed, Mrs. Brandley by

name, was a widow, with one daughter several years older

than Estella. The mother looked young, and the daugh-

ter looked old; the mother’s complexion was pink, and the

daughter’s was yellow; the mother set up for frivolity, and

the daughter for theology. They were in what is called a

good position, and visited, and were visited by, numbers

of people. Little, if any, community of feeling subsisted

between them and Estella, but the understanding was es-

tablished that they were necessary to her, and that she was

necessary to them. Mrs. Brandley had been a friend of Miss

Havisham’s before the time of her seclusion.

In Mrs. Brandley’s house and out of Mrs. Brandley’s

house, I suffered every kind and degree of torture that Es-

tella could cause me. The nature of my relations with her,

which placed me on terms of familiarity without placing

me on terms of favour, conduced to my distraction. She

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made use of me to tease other admirers, and she turned the

very familiarity between herself and me, to the account of

putting a constant slight on my devotion to her. If I had

been her secretary, steward, half-brother, poor relation - if

I had been a younger brother of her appointed husband - I

could not have seemed to myself, further from my hopes

when I was nearest to her. The privilege of calling her by

her name and hearing her call me by mine, became under

the circumstances an aggravation of my trials; and while I

think it likely that it almost maddened her other lovers, I

know too certainly that it almost maddened me.

She had admirers without end. No doubt my jealousy

made an admirer of every one who went near her; but there

were more than enough of them without that.

I saw her often at Richmond, I heard of her often in town,

and I used often to take her and the Brandleys on the wa-

ter; there were picnics, fete days, plays, operas, concerts,

parties, all sorts of pleasures, through which I pursued her

- and they were all miseries to me. I never had one hour’s

happiness in her society, and yet my mind all round the

four-and-twenty hours was harping on the happiness of

having her with me unto death.

Throughout this part of our intercourse - and it lasted, as

will presently be seen, for what I then thought a long time

- she habitually reverted to that tone which expressed that

our association was forced upon us. There were other times

when she would come to a sudden check in this tone and in

all her many tones, and would seem to pity me.

‘Pip, Pip,’ she said one evening, coming to such a check,

Great Expectations

when we sat apart at a darkening window of the house in

Richmond; ‘will you never take warning?’

‘Of what?’

‘Of me.’

‘Warning not to be attracted by you, do you mean, Es-

tella?’

‘Do I mean! If you don’t know what I mean, you are

blind.’

I should have replied that Love was commonly reputed

blind, but for the reason that I always was restrained - and

this was not the least of my miseries - by a feeling that it was

ungenerous to press myself upon her, when she knew that

she could not choose but obey Miss Havisham. My dread

always was, that this knowledge on her part laid me under

a heavy disadvantage with her pride, and made me the sub-

ject of a rebellious struggle in her bosom.

‘At any rate,’ said I, ‘I have no warning given me just now,

for you wrote to me to come to you, this time.’

‘That’s true,’ said Estella, with a cold careless smile that

always chilled me.

After looking at the twilight without, for a little while,

she went on to say:

‘The time has come round when Miss Havisham wishes

to have me for a day at Satis. You are to take me there, and

bring me back, if you will. She would rather I did not travel

alone, and objects to receiving my maid, for she has a sensi-

tive horror of being talked of by such people. Can you take

me?’

‘Can I take you, Estella!’

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‘You can then? The day after to-morrow, if you please.

You are to pay all charges out of my purse, You hear the

condition of your going?’

‘And must obey,’ said I.

This was all the preparation I received for that visit, or for

others like it: Miss Havisham never wrote to me, nor had I

ever so much as seen her handwriting. We went down on

the next day but one, and we found her in the room where I

had first beheld her, and it is needless to add that there was

no change in Satis House.

She was even more dreadfully fond of Estella than she

had been when I last saw them together; I repeat the word

advisedly, for there was something positively dreadful in

the energy of her looks and embraces. She hung upon Estel-

la’s beauty, hung upon her words, hung upon her gestures,

and sat mumbling her own trembling fingers while she

looked at her, as though she were devouring the beautiful

creature she had reared.

From Estella she looked at me, with a searching glance

that seemed to pry into my heart and probe its wounds.

‘How does she use you, Pip; how does she use you?’ she asked

me again, with her witch-like eagerness, even in Estella’s

hearing. But, when we sat by her flickering fire at night,

she was most weird; for then, keeping Estella’s hand drawn

through her arm and clutched in her own hand, she extort-

ed from her, by dint of referring back to what Estella had

told her in her regular letters, the names and conditions of

the men whom she had fascinated; and as Miss Havisham

dwelt upon this roll, with the intensity of a mind mortally

Great Expectations

hurt and diseased, she sat with her other hand on her crutch

stick, and her chin on that, and her wan bright eyes glaring

at me, a very spectre.

I saw in this, wretched though it made me, and bitter

the sense of dependence and even of degradation that it

awakened - I saw in this, that Estella was set to wreak Miss

Havisham’s revenge on men, and that she was not to be giv-

en to me until she had gratified it for a term. I saw in this,

a reason for her being beforehand assigned to me. Sending

her out to attract and torment and do mischief, Miss Hav-

isham sent her with the malicious assurance that she was

beyond the reach of all admirers, and that all who staked

upon that cast were secured to lose. I saw in this, that I, too,

was tormented by a perversion of ingenuity, even while the

prize was reserved for me. I saw in this, the reason for my

being staved off so long, and the reason for my late guard-

ian’s declining to commit himself to the formal knowledge

of such a scheme. In a word, I saw in this, Miss Havisham as

I had her then and there before my eyes, and always had had

her before my eyes; and I saw in this, the distinct shadow

of the darkened and unhealthy house in which her life was

hidden from the sun.

The candles that lighted that room of hers were placed in

sconces on the wall. They were high from the ground, and

they burnt with the steady dulness of artificial light in air

that is seldom renewed. As I looked round at them, and at

the pale gloom they made, and at the stopped clock, and at

the withered articles of bridal dress upon the table and the

ground, and at her own awful figure with its ghostly reflec-

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tion thrown large by the fire upon the ceiling and the wall, I

saw in everything the construction that my mind had come

to, repeated and thrown back to me. My thoughts passed

into the great room across the landing where the table was

spread, and I saw it written, as it were, in the falls of the cob-

webs from the centre-piece, in the crawlings of the spiders

on the cloth, in the tracks of the mice as they betook their

little quickened hearts behind the panels, and in the grop-

ings and pausings of the beetles on the floor.

It happened on the occasion of this visit that some sharp

words arose between Estella and Miss Havisham. It was the

first time I had ever seen them opposed.

We were seated by the fire, as just now described, and

Miss Havisham still had Estella’s arm drawn through her

own, and still clutched Estella’s hand in hers, when Estella

gradually began to detach herself. She had shown a proud

impatience more than once before, and had rather endured

that fierce affection than accepted or returned it.

‘What!’ said Miss Havisham, flashing her eyes upon her,

‘are you tired of me?’

‘Only a little tired of myself,’ replied Estella, disengaging

her arm, and moving to the great chimney-piece, where she

stood looking down at the fire.

‘Speak the truth, you ingrate!’ cried Miss Havisham, pas-

sionately striking her stick upon the floor; ‘you are tired of

me.’Estella looked at her with perfect composure, and again

looked down at the fire. Her graceful figure and her beauti-

ful face expressed a self-possessed indifference to the wild

Great Expectations

heat of the other, that was almost cruel.

‘You stock and stone!’ exclaimed Miss Havisham. ‘You

cold, cold heart!’

‘What?’ said Estella, preserving her attitude of indiffer-

ence as she leaned against the great chimney-piece and only

moving her eyes; ‘do you reproach me for being cold? You?’

‘Are you not?’ was the fierce retort.

‘You should know,’ said Estella. ‘I am what you have

made me. Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the

success, take all the failure; in short, take me.’

‘O, look at her, look at her!’ cried Miss Havisham, bitter-

ly; ‘Look at her, so hard and thankless, on the hearth where

she was reared! Where I took her into this wretched breast

when it was first bleeding from its stabs, and where I have

lavished years of tenderness upon her!’

‘At least I was no party to the compact,’ said Estella, ‘for

if I could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much

as I could do. But what would you have? You have been very

good to me, and I owe everything to you. What would you

have?’

‘Love,’ replied the other.

‘You have it.’

‘I have not,’ said Miss Havisham.

‘Mother by adoption,’ retorted Estella, never departing

from the easy grace of her attitude, never raising her voice

as the other did, never yielding either to anger or tender-

ness, ‘Mother by adoption, I have said that I owe everything

to you. All I possess is freely yours. All that you have given

me, is at your command to have again. Beyond that, I have

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nothing. And if you ask me to give you what you never gave

me, my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities.’

‘Did I never give her love!’ cried Miss Havisham, turning

wildly to me. ‘Did I never give her a burning love, insepa-

rable from jealousy at all times, and from sharp pain, while

she speaks thus to me! Let her call me mad, let her call me

mad!’

‘Why should I call you mad,’ returned Estella, ‘I, of all

people? Does any one live, who knows what set purposes

you have, half as well as I do? Does any one live, who knows

what a steady memory you have, half as well as I do? I who

have sat on this same hearth on the little stool that is even

now beside you there, learning your lessons and looking up

into your face, when your face was strange and frightened

me!’

‘Soon forgotten!’ moaned Miss Havisham. ‘Times soon

forgotten!’

‘No, not forgotten,’ retorted Estella. ‘Not forgotten, but

treasured up in my memory. When have you found me false

to your teaching? When have you found me unmindful of

your lessons? When have you found me giving admission

here,’ she touched her bosom with her hand, ‘to anything

that you excluded? Be just to me.’

‘So proud, so proud!’ moaned Miss Havisham, pushing

away her grey hair with both her hands.

‘Who taught me to be proud?’ returned Estella. ‘Who

praised me when I learnt my lesson?’

‘So hard, so hard!’ moaned Miss Havisham, with her for-

mer action.

Great Expectations

‘Who taught me to be hard?’ returned Estella. ‘Who

praised me when I learnt my lesson?’

‘But to be proud and hard to me!’ Miss Havisham quite

shrieked, as she stretched out her arms. ‘Estella, Estella, Es-

tella, to be proud and hard to me!’

Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm

wonder, but was not otherwise disturbed; when the mo-

ment was past, she looked down at the fire again.

‘I cannot think,’ said Estella, raising her eyes after a si-

lence ‘why you should be so unreasonable when I come

to see you after a separation. I have never forgotten your

wrongs and their causes. I have never been unfaithful to

you or your schooling. I have never shown any weakness

that I can charge myself with.’

‘Would it be weakness to return my love?’ exclaimed

Miss Havisham. ‘But yes, yes, she would call it so!’

‘I begin to think,’ said Estella, in a musing way, after an-

other moment of calm wonder, ‘that I almost understand

how this comes about. If you had brought up your adopted

daughter wholly in the dark confinement of these rooms,

and had never let her know that there was such a thing as

the daylight by which she had never once seen your face - if

you had done that, and then, for a purpose had wanted her

to understand the daylight and know all about it, you would

have been disappointed and angry?’

Miss Havisham, with her head in her hands, sat making

a low moaning, and swaying herself on her chair, but gave

no answer.

‘Or,’ said Estella, ‘ - which is a nearer case - if you had

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taught her, from the dawn of her intelligence, with your

utmost energy and might, that there was such a thing as

daylight, but that it was made to be her enemy and destroy-

er, and she must always turn against it, for it had blighted

you and would else blight her; - if you had done this, and

then, for a purpose, had wanted her to take naturally to the

daylight and she could not do it, you would have been dis-

appointed and angry?’

Miss Havisham sat listening (or it seemed so, for I could

not see her face), but still made no answer.

‘So,’ said Estella, ‘I must be taken as I have been made.

The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two

together make me.’

Miss Havisham had settled down, I hardly knew how,

upon the floor, among the faded bridal relics with which it

was strewn. I took advantage of the moment - I had sought

one from the first - to leave the room, after beseeching Es-

tella’s attention to her, with a movement of my hand. When

I left, Estella was yet standing by the great chimney-piece,

just as she had stood throughout. Miss Havisham’s grey

hair was all adrift upon the ground, among the other bridal

wrecks, and was a miserable sight to see.

It was with a depressed heart that I walked in the star-

light for an hour and more, about the court-yard, and about

the brewery, and about the ruined garden. When I at last

took courage to return to the room, I found Estella sitting

at Miss Havisham’s knee, taking up some stitches in one

of those old articles of dress that were dropping to pieces,

and of which I have often been reminded since by the faded

Great Expectations

tatters of old banners that I have seen hanging up in cathe-

drals. Afterwards, Estella and I played at cards, as of yore

- only we were skilful now, and played French games - and

so the evening wore away, and I went to bed.

I lay in that separate building across the court-yard. It

was the first time I had ever lain down to rest in Satis House,

and sleep refused to come near me. A thousand Miss Hav-

ishams haunted me. She was on this side of my pillow, on

that, at the head of the bed, at the foot, behind the half-

opened door of the dressing-room, in the dressing-room,

in the room overhead, in the room beneath - everywhere.

At last, when the night was slow to creep on towards two

o’clock, I felt that I absolutely could no longer bear the place

as a place to lie down in, and that I must get up. I there-

fore got up and put on my clothes, and went out across the

yard into the long stone passage, designing to gain the outer

court-yard and walk there for the relief of my mind. But, I

was no sooner in the passage than I extinguished my can-

dle; for, I saw Miss Havisham going along it in a ghostly

manner, making a low cry. I followed her at a distance, and

saw her go up the staircase. She carried a bare candle in

her hand, which she had probably taken from one of the

sconces in her own room, and was a most unearthly object

by its light. Standing at the bottom of the staircase, I felt the

mildewed air of the feast-chamber, without seeing her open

the door, and I heard her walking there, and so across into

her own room, and so across again into that, never ceasing

the low cry. After a time, I tried in the dark both to get out,

and to go back, but I could do neither until some streaks of

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day strayed in and showed me where to lay my hands. Dur-

ing the whole interval, whenever I went to the bottom of the

staircase, I heard her footstep, saw her light pass above, and

heard her ceaseless low cry.

Before we left next day, there was no revival of the dif-

ference between her and Estella, nor was it ever revived on

any similar occasion; and there were four similar occasions,

to the best of my remembrance. Nor, did Miss Havisham’s

manner towards Estella in anywise change, except that I

believed it to have something like fear infused among its

former characteristics.

It is impossible to turn this leaf of my life, without put-

ting Bentley Drummle’s name upon it; or I would, very

gladly.

On a certain occasion when the Finches were assembled

in force, and when good feeling was being promoted in the

usual manner by nobody’s agreeing with anybody else, the

presiding Finch called the Grove to order, forasmuch as

Mr. Drummle had not yet toasted a lady; which, according

to the solemn constitution of the society, it was the brute’s

turn to do that day. I thought I saw him leer in an ugly way

at me while the decanters were going round, but as there

was no love lost between us, that might easily be. What was

my indignant surprise when he called upon the company to

pledge him to ‘Estella!’

‘Estella who?’ said I.

‘Never you mind,’ retorted Drummle.

‘Estella of where?’ said I. ‘You are bound to say of where.’

Which he was, as a Finch.

Great Expectations

‘Of Richmond, gentlemen,’ said Drummle, putting me

out of the question, ‘and a peerless beauty.’

Much he knew about peerless beauties, a mean miserable

idiot! I whispered Herbert.

‘I know that lady,’ said Herbert, across the table, when

the toast had been honoured.

‘Do you?’ said Drummle.

‘And so do I,’ I added, with a scarlet face.

‘Do you?’ said Drummle. ‘Oh, Lord!’

This was the only retort - except glass or crockery - that

the heavy creature was capable of making; but, I became

as highly incensed by it as if it had been barbed with wit,

and I immediately rose in my place and said that I could

not but regard it as being like the honourable Finch’s im-

pudence to come down to that Grove - we always talked

about coming down to that Grove, as a neat Parliamentary

turn of expression - down to that Grove, proposing a lady of

whom he knew nothing. Mr. Drummle upon this, starting

up, demanded what I meant by that? Whereupon, I made

him the extreme reply that I believed he knew where I was

to be found.

Whether it was possible in a Christian country to get

on without blood, after this, was a question on which the

Finches were divided. The debate upon it grew so lively, in-

deed, that at least six more honourable members told six

more, during the discussion, that they believed they knew

where they were to be found. However, it was decided at

last (the Grove being a Court of Honour) that if Mr. Drum-

mle would bring never so slight a certificate from the lady,

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importing that he had the honour of her acquaintance, Mr.

Pip must express his regret, as a gentleman and a Finch, for

‘having been betrayed into a warmth which.’ Next day was

appointed for the production (lest our honour should take

cold from delay), and next day Drummle appeared with a

polite little avowal in Estella’s hand, that she had had the

honour of dancing with him several times. This left me no

course but to regret that I had been ‘betrayed into a warmth

which,’ and on the whole to repudiate, as untenable, the

idea that I was to be found anywhere. Drummle and I then

sat snorting at one another for an hour, while the Grove

engaged in indiscriminate contradiction, and finally the

promotion of good feeling was declared to have gone ahead

at an amazing rate.

I tell this lightly, but it was no light thing to me. For, I

cannot adequately express what pain it gave me to think

that Estella should show any favour to a contemptible,

clumsy, sulky booby, so very far below the average. To the

present moment, I believe it to have been referable to some

pure fire of generosity and disinterestedness in my love for

her, that I could not endure the thought of her stooping to

that hound. No doubt I should have been miserable whom-

soever she had favoured; but a worthier object would have

caused me a different kind and degree of distress.

It was easy for me to find out, and I did soon find out,

that Drummle had begun to follow her closely, and that she

allowed him to do it. A little while, and he was always in

pursuit of her, and he and I crossed one another every day.

He held on, in a dull persistent way, and Estella held him

Great Expectations

on; now with encouragement, now with discouragement,

now almost flattering him, now openly despising him, now

knowing him very well, now scarcely remembering who he

was.The Spider, as Mr. Jaggers had called him, was used to

lying in wait, however, and had the patience of his tribe.

Added to that, he had a blockhead confidence in his mon-

ey and in his family greatness, which sometimes did him

good service - almost taking the place of concentration and

determined purpose. So, the Spider, doggedly watching Es-

tella, outwatched many brighter insects, and would often

uncoil himself and drop at the right nick of time.

At a certain Assembly Ball at Richmond (there used to

be Assembly Balls at most places then), where Estella had

outshone all other beauties, this blundering Drummle so

hung about her, and with so much toleration on her part,

that I resolved to speak to her concerning him. I took the

next opportunity: which was when she was waiting for Mrs.

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