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 personal 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 communication with him on the subject in or near Little Britain. The upshot was, that we found a worthy young merchant or shipping-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 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 Herbert 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 opening 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 entered 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 expectations 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.
Chapter XXXVIII.
If that staid old house near the Green at Richmond should ever come to be haunted when I am dead, it will be haunted, 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, wandering, 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 daughter 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 established 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 Estella 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 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 water;there were picnics, fête 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,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, Estella?”
“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 subject 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 sensitive horror of being talked of by such people. Can you take me?”
“Can I take you, Estella!”
“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 Estella’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.