“I cannot think,” said Estella, raising her eyes after a silence “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 another 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 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 destroyer,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 disappointed 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 Estella’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 starlight for an hour and more,about the courtyard, 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 tatters of old banners that I have seen hanging up in cathedrals.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 courtyard.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 Havishams 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 therefore got up and put on my clothes,and went out across the yard into the long stone passage,designing to gain the outer courtyard and walk there for the relief of my mind.But I was no sooner in the passage than I extinguished my candle;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 day strayed in and showed me where to lay my hands.During 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 difference 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 putting 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.
“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. “_O_, 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 impudence 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, indeed,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.Drummle would bring never so slight a certificate from the lady,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 whomsoever 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 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 money 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 Estella, 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. Blandley to take her home,and was sitting apart among some flowers, ready to go. I was with her,for I almost always accompanied them to and from such places.
“Are you tired, Estella?”
“Rather, Pip.”
“You should be.”
“Say rather, I should not be; for I have my letter to Satis House to write, before I go to sleep.”
“Recounting to-night’s triumph?” said I. “Surely a very poor one, Estella.”
“What do you mean?I didn’t know there had been any.”
“Estella,” said I, “do look at that fellow in the corner yonder, who is looking over here at us.”
“Why should I look at him?” returned Estella, with her eyes on me instead. “What is there in that fellow in the corner yonder,—to use your words,—that I need look at?”
“Indeed, that is the very question I want to ask you,” said I.“For he has been hovering about you all night.”
“Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures,” replied Estella, with a glance towards him,“hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle help it?”
“No,” I returned; “but cannot the Estella help it?”
“Well!” said she, laughing, after a moment, “perhaps. Yes. Anything you like.”
“But, Estella, do hear me speak. It makes me wretched that you should encourage a man so generally despised as Drummle. You know he is despised.”
“Well?” said she.
“You know he is as ungainly within as without. A deficient, ill-tempered, lowering, stupid fellow.”
“Well?” said she.
“You know he has nothing to recommend him but money and a ridiculous roll of addle-headed predecessors; now, don’t you?”
“Well?” said she again; and each time she said it, she opened her lovely eyes the wider.
To overcome the difficulty of getting past that monosyllable, I took it from her, and said, repeating it with emphasis, “Well!Then, that is why it makes me wretched.”
Now, if I could have believed that she favoured Drummle with any idea of making me—me—wretched,I should have been in better heart about it; but in that habitual way of hers,she put me so entirely out of the question, that I could believe nothing of the kind.
“Pip,” said Estella, casting her glance over the room, “don’t be foolish about its effect on you.It may have its effect on others, and may be meant to have. It’s not worth discussing.”
“Yes it is,” said I, “because I cannot bear that people should say,‘she throws away her graces and attractions on a mere boor, the lowest in the crowd.’”
“I can bear it,” said Estella.
“Oh!don’t be so proud, Estella, and so inflexible.”
“Calls me proud and inflexible in this breath!” said Estella, opening her hands. “And in his last breath reproached me for stooping to a boor!”
“There is no doubt you do,” said I, something hurriedly,“for I have seen you give him looks and smiles this very night, such as you never give to—me.”
“Do you want me then,” said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed and serious, if not angry, look, “to deceive and entrap you?”
“Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?”
“Yes, and many others,—all of them but you. Here is Mrs. Brandley. I’ll say no more.”
And now that I have given the one chapter to the theme that so filled my heart,and so often made it ache and ache again, I pass on unhindered,to the event that had impended over me longer yet; the event that had begun to be prepared for,before I knew that the world held Estella,and in the days when her baby intelligence was receiving its first distortions from Miss Havisham’s wasting hands.
In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the quarry,the tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried through the leagues of rock,the slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof,the rope was rove to it and slowly taken through the miles of hollow to the great iron ring.All being made ready with much labour, and the hour come,the sultan was aroused in the dead of the night,and the sharpened axe that was to sever the rope from the great iron ring was put into his hand,and he struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and the ceiling fell. So, in my case;all the work, near and afar, that tended to the end, had been accomplished;and in an instant the blow was struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me.
Chapter XXXIX.
I was three-and-twenty years of age. Not another word had I heard to enlighten me on the subject of my expectations,and my twenty-third birthday was a week gone. We had left Barnard’s Inn more than a year,and lived in the Temple. Our chambers were in Garden-court, down by the river.
Mr. Pocket and I had for some time parted company as to our original relations,though we continued on the best terms. Notwithstanding my inability to settle to anything,—which I hope arose out of the restless and incomplete tenure on which I held my means,—I had a taste for reading, and read regularly so many hours a day.That matter of Herbert’s was still progressing,and everything with me was as I have brought it down to the close of the last preceding chapter.
Business had taken Herbert on a journey to Marseilles. I was alone,and had a dull sense of being alone. Dispirited and anxious,long hoping that to-morrow or next week would clear my way, and long disappointed,I sadly missed the cheerful face and ready response of my friend.
It was wretched weather; stormy and wet, stormy and wet; and mud, mud, mud, deep in all the streets.Day after day, a vast heavy veil had been driving over London from the East, and it drove still,as if in the East there were an eternity of cloud and wind. So furious had been the gusts,that high buildings in town had had the lead stripped off their roofs; and in the country,trees had been torn up, and sails of windmills carried away;and gloomy accounts had come in from the coast, of shipwreck and death.Violent blasts of rain had accompanied these rages of wind,and the day just closed as I sat down to read had been the worst of all.
Alterations have been made in that part of the Temple since that time,and it has not now so lonely a character as it had then, nor is it so exposed to the river.We lived at the top of the last house, and the wind rushing up the river shook the house that night,like discharges of cannon, or breakings of a sea.When the rain came with it and dashed against the windows, I thought,raising my eyes to them as they rocked,that I might have fancied myself in a storm-beaten lighthouse. Occasionally,the smoke came rolling down the chimney as though it could not bear to go out into such a night;and when I set the doors open and looked down the staircase, the staircase lamps were blown out;and when I shaded my face with my hands and looked through the black windows (opening them ever so little was out of the question in the teeth of such wind and rain), I saw that the lamps in the court were blown out, and that the lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuddering, and that the coal-fires in barges on the river were being carried away before the wind like red-hot splashes in the rain.
I read with my watch upon the table, purposing to close my book at eleven o’clock. As I shut it,Saint Paul’s, and all the many church-clocks in the City—some leading, some accompanying,some following—struck that hour. The sound was curiously flawed by the wind; and I was listening,and thinking how the wind assailed and tore it, when I heard a footstep on the stair.
What nervous folly made me start, and awfully connect it with the footstep of my dead sister,matters not. It was past in a moment, and I listened again,and heard the footstep stumble in coming on. Remembering then,that the staircase-lights were blown out, I took up my reading-lamp and went out to the stair-head.Whoever was below had stopped on seeing my lamp, for all was quiet.
“There is some one down there, is there not?” I called out, looking down.
“Yes,” said a voice from the darkness beneath.
“What floor do you want?”
“The top. Mr. Pip.”
“That is my name.—There is nothing the matter?”
“Nothing the matter,” returned the voice. And the man came on.
I stood with my lamp held out over the stair-rail, and he came slowly within its light.It was a shaded lamp, to shine upon a book, and its circle of light was very contracted;so that he was in it for a mere instant, and then out of it. In the instant,I had seen a face that was strange to me,looking up with an incomprehensible air of being touched and pleased by the sight of me.
Moving the lamp as the man moved, I made out that he was substantially dressed, but roughly,like a voyager by sea. That he had long iron-grey hair. That his age was about sixty.That he was a muscular man, strong on his legs,and that he was browned and hardened by exposure to weather. As he ascended the last stair or two,and the light of my lamp included us both, I saw, with a stupid kind of amazement,that he was holding out both his hands to me.
“Pray what is your business?” I asked him.
“My business?” he repeated, pausing. “Ah!Yes. I will explain my business, by your leave.”
“Do you wish to come in?”
“Yes,” he replied; “I wish to come in, master.”
I had asked him the question inhospitably enough,for I resented the sort of bright and gratified recognition that still shone in his face.I resented it, because it seemed to imply that he expected me to respond to it.But I took him into the room I had just left, and, having set the lamp on the table,asked him as civilly as I could to explain himself.
He looked about him with the strangest air,—an air of wondering pleasure,as if he had some part in the things he admired,—and he pulled off a rough outer coat, and his hat.Then, I saw that his head was furrowed and bald,and that the long iron-grey hair grew only on its sides. But,I saw nothing that in the least explained him. On the contrary, I saw him next moment,once more holding out both his hands to me.
“What do you mean?” said I, half suspecting him to be mad.
He stopped in his looking at me, and slowly rubbed his right hand over his head.“It’s disapinting to a man,” he said, in a coarse broken voice,“arter having looked for’ard so distant, and come so fur; but you’re not to blame for that,—neither on us is to blame for that. I’ll speak in half a minute. Give me half a minute, please.”
He sat down on a chair that stood before the fire,and covered his forehead with his large brown veinous hands. I looked at him attentively then,and recoiled a little from him; but I did not know him.
“There’s no one nigh,” said he, looking over his shoulder; “is there?”
“Why do you, a stranger coming into my rooms at this time of the night, ask that question?” said I.
“You’re a game one,” he returned, shaking his head at me with a deliberate affection,at once most unintelligible and most exasperating; “I’m glad you’ve grow’d up, a game one!But don’t catch hold of me. You’d be sorry arterwards to have done it.”
I relinquished the intention he had detected, for I knew him!Even yet I could not recall a single feature, but I knew him!If the wind and the rain had driven away the intervening years,had scattered all the intervening objects,had swept us to the churchyard where we first stood face to face on such different levels,I could not have known my convict more distinctly than I knew him now as he sat in the chair before the fire.No need to take a file from his pocket and show it to me;no need to take the handkerchief from his neck and twist it round his head;no need to hug himself with both his arms, and take a shivering turn across the room,looking back at me for recognition. I knew him before he gave me one of those aids, though,a moment before, I had not been conscious of remotely suspecting his identity.
He came back to where I stood, and again held out both his hands. Not knowing what to do,—for,in my astonishment I had lost my self-possession,—I reluctantly gave him my hands.He grasped them heartily, raised them to his lips, kissed them, and still held them.
“You acted noble, my boy,” said he. “Noble, Pip!And I have never forgot it!”
At a change in his manner as if he were even going to embrace me,I laid a hand upon his breast and put him away.
“Stay!” said I. “Keep off!If you are grateful to me for what I did when I was a little child,I hope you have shown your gratitude by mending your way of life.If you have come here to thank me, it was not necessary. Still, however you have found me out,there must be something good in the feeling that has brought you here, and I will not repulse you; but surely you must understand that—I—”
My attention was so attracted by the singularity of his fixed look at me, that the words died away on my tongue.
“You was a-saying,” he observed, when we had confronted one another in silence,“that surely I must understand. What, surely must I understand?”
“That I cannot wish to renew that chance intercourse with you of long ago,under these different circumstances. I am glad to believe you have repented and recovered yourself.I am glad to tell you so. I am glad that, thinking I deserve to be thanked,you have come to thank me. But our ways are different ways, none the less. You are wet,and you look weary. Will you drink something before you go?”
He had replaced his neckerchief loosely, and had stood, keenly observant of me,biting a long end of it. “I think,” he answered,still with the end at his mouth and still observant of me,“that I _will_ drink (I thank you) afore I go.”
There was a tray ready on a side-table. I brought it to the table near the fire, and asked him what he would have?He touched one of the bottles without looking at it or speaking,and I made him some hot rum and water. I tried to keep my hand steady while I did so,but his look at me as he leaned back in his chair with the long draggled end of his neckerchief between his teeth—evidently forgotten—made my hand very difficult to master. When at last I put the glass to him, I saw with amazement that his eyes were full of tears.
Up to this time I had remained standing, not to disguise that I wished him gone.But I was softened by the softened aspect of the man, and felt a touch of reproach. “I hope,” said I, hurriedly putting something into a glass for myself, and drawing a chair to the table,“that you will not think I spoke harshly to you just now. I had no intention of doing it,and I am sorry for it if I did. I wish you well and happy!”
As I put my glass to my lips, he glanced with surprise at the end of his neckerchief,dropping from his mouth when he opened it, and stretched out his hand. I gave him mine,and then he drank, and drew his sleeve across his eyes and forehead.
“How are you living?” I asked him.
“I’ve been a sheep-farmer, stock-breeder, other trades besides, away in the new world,” said he;“many a thousand mile of stormy water off from this.”
“I hope you have done well?”
“I’ve done wonderfully well. There’s others went out alonger me as has done well too,but no man has done nigh as well as me. I’m famous for it.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“I hope to hear you say so, my dear boy.”
Without stopping to try to understand those words or the tone in which they were spoken,I turned off to a point that had just come into my mind.
“Have you ever seen a messenger you once sent to me,” I inquired, “since he undertook that trust?”
“Never set eyes upon him. I warn’t likely to it.”
“He came faithfully, and he brought me the two one-pound notes. I was a poor boy then, as you know,and to a poor boy they were a little fortune. But, like you, I have done well since,and you must let me pay them back. You can put them to some other poor boy’s use. ” I took out my purse.
He watched me as I laid my purse upon the table and opened it,and he watched me as I separated two one-pound notes from its contents. They were clean and new,and I spread them out and handed them over to him. Still watching me,he laid them one upon the other, folded them long-wise, gave them a twist,set fire to them at the lamp, and dropped the ashes into the tray.
“May I make so bold,” he said then, with a smile that was like a frown,and with a frown that was like a smile, “as ask you _how_ you have done well,since you and me was out on them lone shivering marshes?”
“How?”
“Ah!”
He emptied his glass, got up, and stood at the side of the fire,with his heavy brown hand on the mantel-shelf. He put a foot up to the bars, to dry and warm it,and the wet boot began to steam; but, he neither looked at it, nor at the fire,but steadily looked at me. It was only now that I began to tremble.
When my lips had parted, and had shaped some words that were without sound,I forced myself to tell him (though I could not do it distinctly),that I had been chosen to succeed to some property.
“Might a mere warmint ask what property?” said he.
I faltered, “I don’t know.”
“Might a mere warmint ask whose property?” said he.
I faltered again, “I don’t know.”
“Could I make a guess, I wonder,” said the Convict, “at your income since you come of age!As to the first figure now. Five?”
With my heart beating like a heavy hammer of disordered action, I rose out of my chair,and stood with my hand upon the back of it, looking wildly at him.
“Concerning a guardian,” he went on. “There ought to have been some guardian, or such-like,whiles you was a minor. Some lawyer, maybe. As to the first letter of that lawyer’s name now. Would it be J?”
All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its disappointments, dangers, disgraces,consequences of all kinds, rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to struggle for every breath I drew.
“Put it,” he resumed, “as the employer of that lawyer whose name begun with a J,and might be Jaggers,—put it as he had come over sea to Portsmouth, and had landed there,and had wanted to come on to you. ‘However, you have found me out,’ you says just now. Well!However, did I find you out?Why, I wrote from Portsmouth to a person in London, for particulars of your address. That person’s name?Why, Wemmick.”
I could not have spoken one word, though it had been to save my life. I stood,with a hand on the chair-back and a hand on my breast, where I seemed to be suffocating,—I stood so, looking wildly at him, until I grasped at the chair,when the room began to surge and turn. He caught me, drew me to the sofa,put me up against the cushions, and bent on one knee before me,bringing the face that I now well remembered, and that I shuddered at, very near to mine.
“Yes, Pip, dear boy, I’ve made a gentleman on you!It’s me wot has done it!I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards,sure as ever I spec’lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough,that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work. What odds, dear boy?Do I tell it, fur you to feel a obligation?Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to know as that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in,got his head so high that he could make a gentleman,—and, Pip, you’re him!”
The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him,the repugnance with which I shrank from him,could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast.