Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

D >> Dickens >> Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40

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 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
court-yard 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. "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 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. Brandley 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,
illtempered, 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 39

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 mantelshelf. 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."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40