Charles Dickens 33 page

she only pressed that hand of mine which was nearest to her

grasp, and hung her head over it and wept. I had never seen

her shed a tear before, and, in the hope that the relief might

do her good, I bent over her without speaking. She was not

kneeling now, but was down upon the ground.

‘O!’ she cried, despairingly. ‘What have I done! What

have I done!’

‘If you mean, Miss Havisham, what have you done to in-

jure me, let me answer. Very little. I should have loved her

under any circumstances. - Is she married?’

‘Yes.’

It was a needless question, for a new desolation in the

desolate house had told me so.

‘What have I done! What have I done!’ She wrung her

hands, and crushed her white hair, and returned to this cry

over and over again. ‘What have I done!’

I knew not how to answer, or how to comfort her. That

she had done a grievous thing in taking an impression-

able child to mould into the form that her wild resentment,

spurned affection, and wounded pride, found vengeance

in, I knew full well. But that, in shutting out the light of

day, she had shut out infinitely more; that, in seclusion, she

had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing

Great Expectations

influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown

diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the

appointed order of their Maker; I knew equally well. And

could I look upon her without compassion, seeing her pun-

ishment in the ruin she was, in her profound unfitness for

this earth on which she was placed, in the vanity of sor-

row which had become a master mania, like the vanity of

penitence, the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthi-

ness, and other monstrous vanities that have been curses

in this world?

‘Until you spoke to her the other day, and until I saw in

you a looking-glass that showed me what I once felt myself,

I did not know what I had done. What have I done! What

have I done!’ And so again, twenty, fifty times over, What

had she done!

‘Miss Havisham,’ I said, when her cry had died away, ‘you

may dismiss me from your mind and conscience. But Es-

tella is a different case, and if you can ever undo any scrap

of what you have done amiss in keeping a part of her right

nature away from her, it will be better to do that, than to be-

moan the past through a hundred years.’

‘Yes, yes, I know it. But, Pip - my Dear!’ There was an

earnest womanly compassion for me in her new affection.

‘My Dear! Believe this: when she first came to me, I meant

to save her from misery like my own. At first I meant no

more.’

‘Well, well!’ said I. ‘I hope so.’

‘But as she grew, and promised to be very beautiful, I

gradually did worse, and with my praises, and with my jew-

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els, and with my teachings, and with this figure of myself

always before her a warning to back and point my lessons, I

stole her heart away and put ice in its place.’

‘Better,’ I could not help saying, ‘to have left her a natural

heart, even to be bruised or broken.’

With that, Miss Havisham looked distractedly at me for

a while, and then burst out again, What had she done!

‘If you knew all my story,’ she pleaded, ‘you would have

some compassion for me and a better understanding of

me.’‘Miss Havisham,’ I answered, as delicately as I could, ‘I

believe I may say that I do know your story, and have known

it ever since I first left this neighbourhood. It has inspired

me with great commiseration, and I hope I understand it

and its influences. Does what has passed between us give

me any excuse for asking you a question relative to Estella?

Not as she is, but as she was when she first came here?’

She was seated on the ground, with her arms on the

ragged chair, and her head leaning on them. She looked full

at me when I said this, and replied, ‘Go on.’

‘Whose child was Estella?’

She shook her head.

‘You don’t know?’

She shook her head again.

‘But Mr. Jaggers brought her here, or sent her here?’

‘Brought her here.’

‘Will you tell me how that came about?’

She answered in a low whisper and with caution: ‘I had

been shut up in these rooms a long time (I don’t know how

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long; you know what time the clocks keep here), when I told

him that I wanted a little girl to rear and love, and save from

my fate. I had first seen him when I sent for him to lay this

place waste for me; having read of him in the newspapers,

before I and the world parted. He told me that he would look

about him for such an orphan child. One night he brought

her here asleep, and I called her Estella.’

‘Might I ask her age then?’

‘Two or three. She herself knows nothing, but that she

was left an orphan and I adopted her.’

So convinced I was of that woman’s being her mother,

that I wanted no evidence to establish the fact in my own

mind. But, to any mind, I thought, the connection here was

clear and straight.

What more could I hope to do by prolonging the inter-

view? I had succeeded on behalf of Herbert, Miss Havisham

had told me all she knew of Estella, I had said and done

what I could to ease her mind. No matter with what other

words we parted; we parted.

Twilight was closing in when I went down stairs into the

natural air. I called to the woman who had opened the gate

when I entered, that I would not trouble her just yet, but

would walk round the place before leaving. For, I had a pre-

sentiment that I should never be there again, and I felt that

the dying light was suited to my last view of it.

By the wilderness of casks that I had walked on long

ago, and on which the rain of years had fallen since, rot-

ting them in many places, and leaving miniature swamps

and pools of water upon those that stood on end, I made my

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way to the ruined garden. I went all round it; round by the

corner where Herbert and I had fought our battle; round by

the paths where Estella and I had walked. So cold, so lonely,

so dreary all!

Taking the brewery on my way back, I raised the rusty

latch of a little door at the garden end of it, and walked

through. I was going out at the opposite door - not easy to

open now, for the damp wood had started and swelled, and

the hinges were yielding, and the threshold was encum-

bered with a growth of fungus - when I turned my head to

look back. A childish association revived with wonderful

force in the moment of the slight action, and I fancied that I

saw Miss Havisham hanging to the beam. So strong was the

impression, that I stood under the beam shuddering from

head to foot before I knew it was a fancy - though to be sure

I was there in an instant.

The mournfulness of the place and time, and the great

terror of this illusion, though it was but momentary, caused

me to feel an indescribable awe as I came out between the

open wooden gates where I had once wrung my hair after

Estella had wrung my heart. Passing on into the front court-

yard, I hesitated whether to call the woman to let me out

at the locked gate of which she had the key, or first to go

up-stairs and assure myself that Miss Havisham was as safe

and well as I had left her. I took the latter course and went

up.I looked into the room where I had left her, and I saw

her seated in the ragged chair upon the hearth close to the

fire, with her back towards me. In the moment when I was

Great Expectations

withdrawing my head to go quietly away, I saw a great flam-

ing light spring up. In the same moment, I saw her running

at me, shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about her,

and soaring at least as many feet above her head as she was

high.

I had a double-caped great-coat on, and over my arm

another thick coat. That I got them off, closed with her,

threw her down, and got them over her; that I dragged the

great cloth from the table for the same purpose, and with

it dragged down the heap of rottenness in the midst, and

all the ugly things that sheltered there; that we were on the

ground struggling like desperate enemies, and that the

closer I covered her, the more wildly she shrieked and tried

to free herself; that this occurred I knew through the result,

but not through anything I felt, or thought, or knew I did. I

knew nothing until I knew that we were on the floor by the

great table, and that patches of tinder yet alight were float-

ing in the smoky air, which, a moment ago, had been her

faded bridal dress.

Then, I looked round and saw the disturbed beetles

and spiders running away over the floor, and the servants

coming in with breathless cries at the door. I still held her

forcibly down with all my strength, like a prisoner who

might escape; and I doubt if I even knew who she was, or

why we had struggled, or that she had been in flames, or

that the flames were out, until I saw the patches of tinder

that had been her garments, no longer alight but falling in a

black shower around us.

She was insensible, and I was afraid to have her moved,

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or even touched. Assistance was sent for and I held her until

it came, as if I unreasonably fancied (I think I did) that if I

let her go, the fire would break out again and consume her.

When I got up, on the surgeon’s coming to her with other

aid, I was astonished to see that both my hands were burnt;

for, I had no knowledge of it through the sense of feeling.

On examination it was pronounced that she had re-

ceived serious hurts, but that they of themselves were far

from hopeless; the danger lay mainly in the nervous shock.

By the surgeon’s directions, her bed was carried into that

room and laid upon the great table: which happened to be

well suited to the dressing of her injuries. When I saw her

again, an hour afterwards, she lay indeed where I had seen

her strike her stick, and had heard her say that she would

lie one day.

Though every vestige of her dress was burnt, as they told

me, she still had something of her old ghastly bridal ap-

pearance; for, they had covered her to the throat with white

cotton-wool, and as she lay with a white sheet loosely over-

lying that, the phantom air of something that had been and

was changed, was still upon her.

I found, on questioning the servants, that Estella was in

Paris, and I got a promise from the surgeon that he would

write to her by the next post. Miss Havisham’s family I took

upon myself; intending to communicate with Mr. Matthew

Pocket only, and leave him to do as he liked about inform-

ing the rest. This I did next day, through Herbert, as soon as

I returned to town.

There was a stage, that evening, when she spoke collect-

Great Expectations

edly of what had happened, though with a certain terrible

vivacity. Towards midnight she began to wander in her

speech, and after that it gradually set in that she said in-

numerable times in a low solemn voice, ‘What have I done!’

And then, ‘When she first came, I meant to save her from

misery like mine.’ And then, ‘Take the pencil and write un-

der my name, ‘I forgive her!’’ She never changed the order

of these three sentences, but she sometimes left out a word

in one or other of them; never putting in another word, but

always leaving a blank and going on to the next word.

As I could do no service there, and as I had, nearer home,

that pressing reason for anxiety and fear which even her

wanderings could not drive out of my mind, I decided in the

course of the night that I would return by the early morning

coach: walking on a mile or so, and being taken up clear of

the town. At about six o’clock of the morning, therefore, I

leaned over her and touched her lips with mine, just as they

said, not stopping for being touched, ‘Take the pencil and

write under my name, ‘I forgive her.’

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Chapter 50

My hands had been dressed twice or thrice in the night,

and again in the morning. My left arm was a good

deal burned to the elbow, and, less severely, as high as the

shoulder; it was very painful, but the flames had set in that

direction, and I felt thankful it was no worse. My right hand

was not so badly burnt but that I could move the fingers. It

was bandaged, of course, but much less inconveniently than

my left hand and arm; those I carried in a sling; and I could

only wear my coat like a cloak, loose over my shoulders and

fastened at the neck. My hair had been caught by the fire,

but not my head or face.

When Herbert had been down to Hammersmith and

seen his father, he came back to me at our chambers, and

devoted the day to attending on me. He was the kindest

of nurses, and at stated times took off the bandages, and

steeped them in the cooling liquid that was kept ready, and

put them on again, with a patient tenderness that I was

deeply grateful for.

At first, as I lay quiet on the sofa, I found it painfully dif-

ficult, I might say impossible, to get rid of the impression of

the glare of the flames, their hurry and noise, and the fierce

burning smell. If I dozed for a minute, I was awakened by

Miss Havisham’s cries, and by her running at me with all

that height of fire above her head. This pain of the mind

Great Expectations

was much harder to strive against than any bodily pain I

suffered; and Herbert, seeing that, did his utmost to hold

my attention engaged.

Neither of us spoke of the boat, but we both thought of

it. That was made apparent by our avoidance of the subject,

and by our agreeing - without agreement - to make my re-

covery of the use of my hands, a question of so many hours,

not of so many weeks.

My first question when I saw Herbert had been of course,

whether all was well down the river? As he replied in the af-

firmative, with perfect confidence and cheerfulness, we did

not resume the subject until the day was wearing away. But

then, as Herbert changed the bandages, more by the light

of the fire than by the outer light, he went back to it spon-

taneously.

‘I sat with Provis last night, Handel, two good hours.’

‘Where was Clara?’

‘Dear little thing!’ said Herbert. ‘She was up and down

with Gruffandgrim all the evening. He was perpetually

pegging at the floor, the moment she left his sight. I doubt

if he can hold out long though. What with rum and pepper

- and pepper and rum - I should think his pegging must be

nearly over.’

‘And then you will be married, Herbert?’

‘How can I take care of the dear child otherwise? - Lay

your arm out upon the back of the sofa, my dear boy, and

I’ll sit down here, and get the bandage off so gradually that

you shall not know when it comes. I was speaking of Provis.

Do you know, Handel, he improves?’

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‘I said to you I thought he was softened when I last saw

him.’

‘So you did. And so he is. He was very communicative

last night, and told me more of his life. You remember his

breaking off here about some woman that he had had great

trouble with. - Did I hurt you?’

I had started, but not under his touch. His words had

given me a start.

‘I had forgotten that, Herbert, but I remember it now you

speak of it.’

‘Well! He went into that part of his life, and a dark wild

part it is. Shall I tell you? Or would it worry you just now?’

‘Tell me by all means. Every word.’

Herbert bent forward to look at me more nearly, as if my

reply had been rather more hurried or more eager than he

could quite account for. ‘Your head is cool?’ he said, touch-

ing it.

‘Quite,’ said I. ‘Tell me what Provis said, my dear Her-

bert.’

‘It seems,’ said Herbert, ‘ - there’s a bandage off most

charmingly, and now comes the cool one - makes you shrink

at first, my poor dear fellow, don’t it? but it will be com-

fortable presently - it seems that the woman was a young

woman, and a jealous woman, and a revengeful woman; re-

vengeful, Handel, to the last degree.’

‘To what last degree?’

‘Murder. - Does it strike too cold on that sensitive place?’

‘I don’t feel it. How did she murder? Whom did she mur-

der?’ ‘Why, the deed may not have merited quite so terrible

Great Expectations

a name,’ said Herbert, ‘but, she was tried for it, and Mr.

Jaggers defended her, and the reputation of that defence

first made his name known to Provis. It was another and a

stronger woman who was the victim, and there had been a

struggle - in a barn. Who began it, or how fair it was, or how

unfair, may be doubtful; but how it ended, is certainly not

doubtful, for the victim was found throttled.’

‘Was the woman brought in guilty?’

‘No; she was acquitted. - My poor Handel, I hurt you!’

‘It is impossible to be gentler, Herbert. Yes? What else?’

‘This acquitted young woman and Provis had a little

child: a little child of whom Provis was exceedingly fond.

On the evening of the very night when the object of her jeal-

ousy was strangled as I tell you, the young woman presented

herself before Provis for one moment, and swore that she

would destroy the child (which was in her possession), and

he should never see it again; then, she vanished. - There’s

the worst arm comfortably in the sling once more, and now

there remains but the right hand, which is a far easier job. I

can do it better by this light than by a stronger, for my hand

is steadiest when I don’t see the poor blistered patches too

distinctly. - You don’t think your breathing is affected, my

dear boy? You seem to breathe quickly.’

‘Perhaps I do, Herbert. Did the woman keep her oath?’

‘There comes the darkest part of Provis’s life. She did.’

‘That is, he says she did.’

‘Why, of course, my dear boy,’ returned Herbert, in a

tone of surprise, and again bending forward to get a nearer

look at me. ‘He says it all. I have no other information.’

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‘No, to be sure.’

‘Now, whether,’ pursued Herbert, ‘he had used the child’s

mother ill, or whether he had used the child’s mother well,

Provis doesn’t say; but, she had shared some four or five

years of the wretched life he described to us at this fireside,

and he seems to have felt pity for her, and forbearance to-

wards her. Therefore, fearing he should be called upon to

depose about this destroyed child, and so be the cause of

her death, he hid himself (much as he grieved for the child),

kept himself dark, as he says, out of the way and out of the

trial, and was only vaguely talked of as a certain man called

Abel, out of whom the jealousy arose. After the acquittal

she disappeared, and thus he lost the child and the child’s

mother.’

‘I want to ask—‘

‘A moment, my dear boy, and I have done. That evil ge-

nius, Compeyson, the worst of scoundrels among many

scoundrels, knowing of his keeping out of the way at that

time, and of his reasons for doing so, of course afterwards

held the knowledge over his head as a means of keeping him

poorer, and working him harder. It was clear last night that

this barbed the point of Provis’s animosity.’

‘I want to know,’ said I, ‘and particularly, Herbert, wheth-

er he told you when this happened?’

‘Particularly? Let me remember, then, what he said as

to that. His expression was, ‘a round score o’ year ago, and

a’most directly after I took up wi’ Compeyson.’ How old

were you when you came upon him in the little church-

yard?’

Great Expectations

‘I think in my seventh year.’

‘Ay. It had happened some three or four years then, he

said, and you brought into his mind the little girl so tragi-

cally lost, who would have been about your age.’

‘Herbert,’ said I, after a short silence, in a hurried way,

‘can you see me best by the light of the window, or the light

of the fire?’

‘By the firelight,’ answered Herbert, coming close again.

‘Look at me.’

‘I do look at you, my dear boy.’

‘Touch me.’

‘I do touch you, my dear boy.’

‘You are not afraid that I am in any fever, or that my head

is much disordered by the accident of last night?’

‘N-no, my dear boy,’ said Herbert, after taking time to

examine me. ‘You are rather excited, but you are quite your-

self.’

‘I know I am quite myself. And the man we have in hid-

ing down the river, is Estella’s Father.’

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Chapter 51

What purpose I had in view when I was hot on tracing

out and proving Estella’s parentage, I cannot say. It

will presently be seen that the question was not before me in

a distinct shape, until it was put before me by a wiser head

than my own.

But, when Herbert and I had held our momentous con-

versation, I was seized with a feverish conviction that I ought

to hunt the matter down - that I ought not to let it rest, but

that I ought to see Mr. Jaggers, and come at the bare truth. I

really do not know whether I felt that I did this for Estella’s

sake, or whether I was glad to transfer to the man in whose

preservation I was so much concerned, some rays of the ro-

mantic interest that had so long surrounded her. Perhaps

the latter possibility may be the nearer to the truth.

Any way, I could scarcely be withheld from going out to

Gerrard-street that night. Herbert’s representations that

if I did, I should probably be laid up and stricken useless,

when our fugitive’s safety would depend upon me, alone re-

strained my impatience. On the understanding, again and

again reiterated, that come what would, I was to go to Mr.

Jaggers to-morrow, I at length submitted to keep quiet, and

to have my hurts looked after, and to stay at home. Early

next morning we went out together, and at the corner of

Giltspur-street by Smithfield, I left Herbert to go his way

Great Expectations

into the City, and took my way to Little Britain.

There were periodical occasions when Mr. Jaggers and

Wemmick went over the office accounts, and checked off

the vouchers, and put all things straight. On these occa-

sions Wemmick took his books and papers into Mr. Jaggers’s

room, and one of the up-stairs clerks came down into the

outer office. Finding such clerk on Wemmick’s post that

morning, I knew what was going on; but, I was not sorry

to have Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick together, as Wemmick

would then hear for himself that I said nothing to compro-

mise him.

My appearance with my arm bandaged and my coat

loose over my shoulders, favoured my object. Although I

had sent Mr. Jaggers a brief account of the accident as soon

as I had arrived in town, yet I had to give him all the de-

tails now; and the speciality of the occasion caused our talk

to be less dry and hard, and less strictly regulated by the

rules of evidence, than it had been before. While I described

the disaster, Mr. Jaggers stood, according to his wont, be-

fore the fire. Wemmick leaned back in his chair, staring at

me, with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and his

pen put horizontally into the post. The two brutal casts, al-

ways inseparable in my mind from the official proceedings,

seemed to be congestively considering whether they didn’t

smell fire at the present moment.

My narrative finished, and their questions exhausted, I

then produced Miss Havisham’s authority to receive the

nine hundred pounds for Herbert. Mr. Jaggers’s eyes retired

a little deeper into his head when I handed him the tablets,

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but he presently handed them over to Wemmick, with in-

structions to draw the cheque for his signature. While that

was in course of being done, I looked on at Wemmick as he

wrote, and Mr. Jaggers, poising and swaying himself on his

well-polished boots, looked on at me. ‘I am sorry, Pip,’ said

he, as I put the cheque in my pocket, when he had signed it,

‘that we do nothing for you.’

‘Miss Havisham was good enough to ask me,’ I returned,

‘whether she could do nothing for me, and I told her No.’

‘Everybody should know his own business,’ said Mr. Jag-

gers. And I saw Wemmick’s lips form the words ‘portable

property.’

‘I should not have told her No, if I had been you,’ said

Mr Jaggers; ‘but every man ought to know his own busi-

ness best.’

‘Every man’s business,’ said Wemmick, rather reproach-

fully towards me, ‘is portable property.’

As I thought the time was now come for pursuing the

theme I had at heart, I said, turning on Mr. Jaggers:

‘I did ask something of Miss Havisham, however, sir. I

asked her to give me some information relative to her ad-

opted daughter, and she gave me all she possessed.’

‘Did she?’ said Mr. Jaggers, bending forward to look at his

boots and then straightening himself. ‘Hah! I don’t think I

should have done so, if I had been Miss Havisham. But she

ought to know her own business best.’

‘I know more of the history of Miss Havisham’s adopt-

ed child, than Miss Havisham herself does, sir. I know her

mother.’

Great Expectations

Mr. Jaggers looked at me inquiringly, and repeated

‘Mother?’

‘I have seen her mother within these three days.’

‘Yes?’ said Mr. Jaggers.

‘And so have you, sir. And you have seen her still more

recently.’

‘Yes?’ said Mr. Jaggers.

‘Perhaps I know more of Estella’s history than even you

do,’ said I. ‘I know her father too.’

A certain stop that Mr. Jaggers came to in his manner

- he was too self-possessed to change his manner, but he

could not help its being brought to an indefinably attentive

stop - assured me that he did not know who her father was.

This I had strongly suspected from Provis’s account (as Her-

bert had repeated it) of his having kept himself dark; which

I pieced on to the fact that he himself was not Mr. Jaggers’s

client until some four years later, and when he could have

no reason for claiming his identity. But, I could not be sure

of this unconsciousness on Mr. Jaggers’s part before, though

I was quite sure of it now.

‘So! You know the young lady’s father, Pip?’ said Mr. Jag-

gers.

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘and his name is Provis - from New South

Wales.’

Even Mr. Jaggers started when I said those words. It

was the slightest start that could escape a man, the most

carefully repressed and the soonest checked, but he did

start, though he made it a part of the action of taking out

his pocket-handkerchief. How Wemmick received the an-

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nouncement I am unable to say, for I was afraid to look at

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 441