Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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I saw him through the window, seizing his horse's mane, and
mounting in his blundering brutal manner, and sidling and backing
away. I thought he was gone, when he came back, calling for a light
for the cigar in his mouth, which he had forgotten. A man in a
dustcoloured dress appeared with what was wanted - I could not have
said from where: whether from the inn yard, or the street, or where
not - and as Drummle leaned down from the saddle and lighted his
cigar and laughed, with a jerk of his head towards the coffee-room
windows, the slouching shoulders and ragged hair of this man, whose
back was towards me, reminded me of Orlick.

Too heavily out of sorts to care much at the time whether it were
he or no, or after all to touch the breakfast, I washed the weather
and the journey from my face and hands, and went out to the
memorable old house that it would have been so much the better for
me never to have entered, never to have seen.

Chapter 44

In the room where the dressing-table stood, and where the wax
candles burnt on the wall, I found Miss Havisham and Estella; Miss
Havisham seated on a settee near the fire, and Estella on a cushion
at her feet. Estella was knitting, and Miss Havisham was looking
on. They both raised their eyes as I went in, and both saw an
alteration in me. I derived that, from the look they interchanged.

"And what wind," said Miss Havisham, "blows you here, Pip?"

Though she looked steadily at me, I saw that she was rather
confused. Estella, pausing a moment in her knitting with her eyes
upon me, and then going on, I fancied that I read in the action of
her fingers, as plainly as if she had told me in the dumb alphabet,
that she perceived I had discovered my real benefactor.

"Miss Havisham," said I, "I went to Richmond yesterday, to speak to
Estella; and finding that some wind had blown her here, I
followed."

Miss Havisham motioning to me for the third or fourth time to sit
down, I took the chair by the dressing-table, which I had often
seen her occupy. With all that ruin at my feet and about me, it
seemed a natural place for me, that day.

"What I had to say to Estella, Miss Havisham, I will say before
you, presently - in a few moments. It will not surprise you, it
will not displease you. I am as unhappy as you can ever have meant
me to be."

Miss Havisham continued to look steadily at me. I could see in the
action of Estella's fingers as they worked, that she attended to
what I said: but she did not look up.

"I have found out who my patron is. It is not a fortunate
discovery, and is not likely ever to enrich me in reputation,
station, fortune, anything. There are reasons why I must say no
more of that. It is not my secret, but another's."

As I was silent for a while, looking at Estella and considering how
to go on, Miss Havisham repeated, "It is not your secret, but
another's. Well?"

"When you first caused me to be brought here, Miss Havisham; when I
belonged to the village over yonder, that I wish I had never left;
I suppose I did really come here, as any other chance boy might
have come - as a kind of servant, to gratify a want or a whim, and
to be paid for it?"

"Ay, Pip," replied Miss Havisham, steadily nodding her head; "you
did."

"And that Mr. Jaggers--"

"Mr. Jaggers," said Miss Havisham, taking me up in a firm tone, "had
nothing to do with it, and knew nothing of it. His being my lawyer,
and his being the lawyer of your patron, is a coincidence. He holds
the same relation towards numbers of people, and it might easily
arise. Be that as it may, it did arise, and was not brought about
by any one."

Any one might have seen in her haggard face that there was no
suppression or evasion so far.

"But when I fell into the mistake I have so long remained in, at
least you led me on?" said I.

"Yes," she returned, again nodding, steadily, "I let you go on."

"Was that kind?"

"Who am I," cried Miss Havisham, striking her stick upon the floor
and flashing into wrath so suddenly that Estella glanced up at her
in surprise, "who am I, for God's sake, that I should be kind?"

It was a weak complaint to have made, and I had not meant to make
it. I told her so, as she sat brooding after this outburst.

"Well, well, well!" she said. "What else?"

"I was liberally paid for my old attendance here," I said, to
soothe her, "in being apprenticed, and I have asked these questions
only for my own information. What follows has another (and I hope
more disinterested) purpose. In humouring my mistake, Miss
Havisham, you punished - practised on - perhaps you will supply
whatever term expresses your intention, without offence - your
self-seeking relations?"

"I did. Why, they would have it so! So would you. What has been my
history, that I should be at the pains of entreating either them,
or you, not to have it so! You made your own snares. I never made
them."

Waiting until she was quiet again - for this, too, flashed out of
her in a wild and sudden way - I went on.

"I have been thrown among one family of your relations, Miss
Havisham, and have been constantly among them since I went to
London. I know them to have been as honestly under my delusion as I
myself. And I should be false and base if I did not tell you,
whether it is acceptable to you or no, and whether you are inclined
to give credence to it or no, that you deeply wrong both Mr. Matthew
Pocket and his son Herbert, if you suppose them to be otherwise
than generous, upright, open, and incapable of anything designing
or mean."

"They are your friends," said Miss Havisham.

"They made themselves my friends," said I, "when they supposed me
to have superseded them; and when Sarah Pocket, Miss Georgiana, and
Mistress Camilla, were not my friends, I think."

This contrasting of them with the rest seemed, I was glad to see,
to do them good with her. She looked at me keenly for a little
while, and then said quietly:

"What do you want for them?"

"Only," said I, "that you would not confound them with the others.
They may be of the same blood, but, believe me, they are not of the
same nature."

Still looking at me keenly, Miss Havisham repeated:

"What do you want for them?"

"I am not so cunning, you see," I said, in answer, conscious that I
reddened a little, "as that I could hide from you, even if I
desired, that I do want something. Miss Havisham, if you would
spare the money to do my friend Herbert a lasting service in life,
but which from the nature of the case must be done without his
knowledge, I could show you how."

"Why must it be done without his knowledge?" she asked, settling
her hands upon her stick, that she might regard me the more
attentively.

"Because," said I, "I began the service myself, more than two years
ago, without his knowledge, and I don't want to be betrayed. Why I
fail in my ability to finish it, I cannot explain. It is a part of
the secret which is another person's and not mine."

She gradually withdrew her eyes from me, and turned them on the
fire. After watching it for what appeared in the silence and by the
light of the slowly wasting candles to be a long time, she was
roused by the collapse of some of the red coals, and looked towards
me again - at first, vacantly - then, with a gradually
concentrating attention. All this time, Estella knitted on. When
Miss Havisham had fixed her attention on me, she said, speaking as
if there had been no lapse in our dialogue:

"What else?"

"Estella," said I, turning to her now, and trying to command my
trembling voice, "you know I love you. You know that I have loved
you long and dearly."

She raised her eyes to my face, on being thus addressed, and her
fingers plied their work, and she looked at me with an unmoved
countenance. I saw that Miss Havisham glanced from me to her, and
from her to me.

"I should have said this sooner, but for my long mistake. It
induced me to hope that Miss Havisham meant us for one another.
While I thought you could not help yourself, as it were, I
refrained from saying it. But I must say it now."

Preserving her unmoved countenance, and with her fingers still
going, Estella shook her head.

"I know," said I, in answer to that action; "I know. I have no hope
that I shall ever call you mine, Estella. I am ignorant what may
become of me very soon, how poor I may be, or where I may go.
Still, I love you. I have loved you ever since I first saw you in
this house."

Looking at me perfectly unmoved and with her fingers busy, she
shook her head again.

"It would have been cruel in Miss Havisham, horribly cruel, to
practise on the susceptibility of a poor boy, and to torture me
through all these years with a vain hope and an idle pursuit, if
she had reflected on the gravity of what she did. But I think she
did not. I think that in the endurance of her own trial, she forgot
mine, Estella."

I saw Miss Havisham put her hand to her heart and hold it there, as
she sat looking by turns at Estella and at me.

"It seems," said Estella, very calmly, "that there are sentiments,
fancies - I don't know how to call them - which I am not able to
comprehend. When you say you love me, I know what you mean, as a
form of words; but nothing more. You address nothing in my breast,
you touch nothing there. I don't care for what you say at all. I
have tried to warn you of this; now, have I not?"

I said in a miserable manner, "Yes."

"Yes. But you would not be warned, for you thought I did not mean
it. Now, did you not think so?"

"I thought and hoped you could not mean it. You, so young, untried,
and beautiful, Estella! Surely it is not in Nature."

"It is in my nature," she returned. And then she added, with a
stress upon the words, "It is in the nature formed within me. I
make a great difference between you and all other people when I say
so much. I can do no more."

"Is it not true," said I, "that Bentley Drummle is in town here,
and pursuing you?"

"It is quite true," she replied, referring to him with the
indifference of utter contempt.

"That you encourage him, and ride out with him, and that he dines
with you this very day?"

She seemed a little surprised that I should know it, but again
replied, "Quite true."

"You cannot love him, Estella!"

Her fingers stopped for the first time, as she retorted rather
angrily, "What have I told you? Do you still think, in spite of it,
that I do not mean what I say?"

"You would never marry him, Estella?"

She looked towards Miss Havisham, and considered for a moment with
her work in her hands. Then she said, "Why not tell you the truth?
I am going to be married to him."

I dropped my face into my hands, but was able to control myself
better than I could have expected, considering what agony it gave
me to hear her say those words. When I raised my face again, there
was such a ghastly look upon Miss Havisham's, that it impressed me,
even in my passionate hurry and grief.

"Estella, dearest dearest Estella, do not let Miss Havisham lead
you into this fatal step. Put me aside for ever - you have done so,
I well know - but bestow yourself on some worthier person than
Drummle. Miss Havisham gives you to him, as the greatest slight and
injury that could be done to the many far better men who admire
you, and to the few who truly love you. Among those few, there may
be one who loves you even as dearly, though he has not loved you as
long, as I. Take him, and I can bear it better, for your sake!"

My earnestness awoke a wonder in her that seemed as if it would
have been touched with compassion, if she could have rendered me at
all intelligible to her own mind.

"I am going," she said again, in a gentler voice, "to be married to
him. The preparations for my marriage are making, and I shall be
married soon. Why do you injuriously introduce the name of my
mother by adoption? It is my own act."

"Your own act, Estella, to fling yourself away upon a brute?"

"On whom should I fling myself away?" she retorted, with a smile.
"Should I fling myself away upon the man who would the soonest feel
(if people do feel such things) that I took nothing to him? There!
It is done. I shall do well enough, and so will my husband. As to
leading me into what you call this fatal step, Miss Havisham would
have had me wait, and not marry yet; but I am tired of the life I
have led, which has very few charms for me, and I am willing enough
to change it. Say no more. We shall never understand each other."

"Such a mean brute, such a stupid brute!" I urged in despair.

"Don't be afraid of my being a blessing to him," said Estella; "I
shall not be that. Come! Here is my hand. Do we part on this, you
visionary boy - or man?"

"O Estella!" I answered, as my bitter tears fell fast on her hand,
do what I would to restrain them; "even if I remained in England
and could hold my head up with the rest, how could I see you
Drummle's wife?"

"Nonsense," she returned, "nonsense. This will pass in no time."

"Never, Estella!"

"You will get me out of your thoughts in a week."

"Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself.
You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came
here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then.
You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since - on the
river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in
the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea,
in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful
fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of
which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real,
or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your
presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and
will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose
but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me,
part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with
the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you
must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what
sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!"

In what ecstasy of unhappiness I got these broken words out of
myself, I don't know. The rhapsody welled up within me, like blood
from an inward wound, and gushed out. I held her hand to my lips
some lingering moments, and so I left her. But ever afterwards, I
remembered - and soon afterwards with stronger reason - that while
Estella looked at me merely with incredulous wonder, the spectral
figure of Miss Havisham, her hand still covering her heart, seemed
all resolved into a ghastly stare of pity and remorse.

All done, all gone! So much was done and gone, that when I went out
at the gate, the light of the day seemed of a darker colour than
when I went in. For a while, I hid myself among some lanes and
by-paths, and then struck off to walk all the way to London. For, I
had by that time come to myself so far, as to consider that I could
not go back to the inn and see Drummle there; that I could not bear
to sit upon the coach and be spoken to; that I could do nothing
half so good for myself as tire myself out.

It was past midnight when I crossed London Bridge. Pursuing the
narrow intricacies of the streets which at that time tended
westward near the Middlesex shore of the river, my readiest access
to the Temple was close by the river-side, through Whitefriars. I
was not expected till to-morrow, but I had my keys, and, if Herbert
were gone to bed, could get to bed myself without disturbing him.

As it seldom happened that I came in at that Whitefriars gate after
the Temple was closed, and as I was very muddy and weary, I did not
take it ill that the night-porter examined me with much attention
as he held the gate a little way open for me to pass in. To help
his memory I mentioned my name.

"I was not quite sure, sir, but I thought so. Here's a note, sir.
The messenger that brought it, said would you be so good as read it
by my lantern?"

Much surprised by the request, I took the note. It was directed to
Philip Pip, Esquire, and on the top of the superscription were the
words, "PLEASE READ THIS, HERE." I opened it, the watchman holding
up his light, and read inside, in Wemmick's writing:

"DON'T GO HOME."

Chapter 45

Turning from the Temple gate as soon as I had read the warning, I
made the best of my way to Fleet-street, and there got a late
hackney chariot and drove to the Hummums in Covent Garden. In those
times a bed was always to be got there at any hour of the night,
and the chamberlain, letting me in at his ready wicket, lighted the
candle next in order on his shelf, and showed me straight into the
bedroom next in order on his list. It was a sort of vault on the
ground floor at the back, with a despotic monster of a four-post
bedstead in it, straddling over the whole place, putting one of his
arbitrary legs into the fire-place and another into the doorway,
and squeezing the wretched little washing-stand in quite a Divinely
Righteous manner.

As I had asked for a night-light, the chamberlain had brought me
in, before he left me, the good old constitutional rush-light of
those virtuous days - an object like the ghost of a walking-cane,
which instantly broke its back if it were touched, which nothing
could ever be lighted at, and which was placed in solitary
confinement at the bottom of a high tin tower, perforated with
round holes that made a staringly wide-awake pattern on the walls.
When I had got into bed, and lay there footsore, weary, and
wretched, I found that I could no more close my own eyes than I
could close the eyes of this foolish Argus. And thus, in the gloom
and death of the night, we stared at one another.

What a doleful night! How anxious, how dismal, how long! There was
an inhospitable smell in the room, of cold soot and hot dust; and,
as I looked up into the corners of the tester over my head, I
thought what a number of blue-bottle flies from the butchers', and
earwigs from the market, and grubs from the country, must be
holding on up there, lying by for next summer. This led me to
speculate whether any of them ever tumbled down, and then I fancied
that I felt light falls on my face - a disagreeable turn of thought,
suggesting other and more objectionable approaches up my back. When
I had lain awake a little while, those extraordinary voices with
which silence teems, began to make themselves audible. The closet
whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little washing-stand ticked,
and one guitar-string played occasionally in the chest of drawers.
At about the same time, the eyes on the wall acquired a new
expression, and in every one of those staring rounds I saw
written, DON'T GO HOME.

Whatever night-fancies and night-noises crowded on me, they never
warded off this DON'T GO HOME. It plaited itself into whatever I
thought of, as a bodily pain would have done. Not long before, I
had read in the newspapers, how a gentleman unknown had come to the
Hummums in the night, and had gone to bed, and had destroyed
himself, and had been found in the morning weltering in blood. It
came into my head that he must have occupied this very vault of
mine, and I got out of bed to assure myself that there were no red
marks about; then opened the door to look out into the passages,
and cheer myself with the companionship of a distant light, near
which I knew the chamberlain to be dozing. But all this time, why I
was not to go home, and what had happened at home, and when I
should go home, and whether Provis was safe at home, were questions
occupying my mind so busily, that one might have supposed there
could be no more room in it for any other theme. Even when I
thought of Estella, and how we had parted that day for ever, and
when I recalled all the circumstances of our parting, and all her
looks and tones, and the action of her fingers while she knitted -
even then I was pursuing, here and there and everywhere, the
caution Don't go home. When at last I dozed, in sheer exhaustion of
mind and body, it became a vast shadowy verb which I had to
conjugate. Imperative mood, present tense: Do not thou go home, let
him not go home, let us not go home, do not ye or you go home, let
not them go home. Then, potentially: I may not and I cannot go
home; and I might not, could not, would not, and should not go
home; until I felt that I was going distracted, and rolled over on
the pillow, and looked at the staring rounds upon the wall again.

I had left directions that I was to be called at seven; for it was
plain that I must see Wemmick before seeing any one else, and
equally plain that this was a case in which his Walworth
sentiments, only, could be taken. It was a relief to get out of the
room where the night had been so miserable, and I needed no second
knocking at the door to startle me from my uneasy bed.

The Castle battlements arose upon my view at eight o'clock. The
little servant happening to be entering the fortress with two hot
rolls, I passed through the postern and crossed the drawbridge, in
her company, and so came without announcement into the presence of
Wemmick as he was making tea for himself and the Aged. An open door
afforded a perspective view of the Aged in bed.

"Halloa, Mr. Pip!" said Wemmick. "You did come home, then?"

"Yes," I returned; "but I didn't go home."

"That's all right," said he, rubbing his hands. "I left a note for
you at each of the Temple gates, on the chance. Which gate did you
come to?"

I told him.

"I'll go round to the others in the course of the day and destroy
the notes," said Wemmick; "it's a good rule never to leave
documentary evidence if you can help it, because you don't know
when it may be put in. I'm going to take a liberty with you. -
Would you mind toasting this sausage for the Aged P.?"

I said I should be delighted to do it.

"Then you can go about your work, Mary Anne," said Wemmick to the
little servant; "which leaves us to ourselves, don't you see, Mr.
Pip?" he added, winking, as she disappeared.

I thanked him for his friendship and caution, and our discourse
proceeded in a low tone, while I toasted the Aged's sausage and he
buttered the crumb of the Aged's roll.

"Now, Mr. Pip, you know," said Wemmick, "you and I understand one
another. We are in our private and personal capacities, and we have
been engaged in a confidential transaction before today. Official
sentiments are one thing. We are extra official."

I cordially assented. I was so very nervous, that I had already
lighted the Aged's sausage like a torch, and been obliged to blow
it out.

"I accidentally heard, yesterday morning," said Wemmick, "being in
a certain place where I once took you - even between you and me,
it's as well not to mention names when avoidable--"

"Much better not," said I. "I understand you."

"I heard there by chance, yesterday morning," said Wemmick, "that a
certain person not altogether of uncolonial pursuits, and not
unpossessed of portable property - I don't know who it may really
be - we won't name this person--"

"Not necessary," said I.

" - had made some little stir in a certain part of the world where
a good many people go, not always in gratification of their own
inclinations, and not quite irrespective of the government
expense--"

In watching his face, I made quite a firework of the Aged's
sausage, and greatly discomposed both my own attention and
Wemmick's; for which I apologized.

" - by disappearing from such place, and being no more heard of
thereabouts. From which," said Wemmick, "conjectures had been
raised and theories formed. I also heard that you at your chambers
in Garden Court, Temple, had been watched, and might be watched
again."

"By whom?" said I.

"I wouldn't go into that," said Wemmick, evasively, "it might clash
with official responsibilities. I heard it, as I have in my time
heard other curious things in the same place. I don't tell it you
on information received. I heard it."

He took the toasting-fork and sausage from me as he spoke, and set
forth the Aged's breakfast neatly on a little tray. Previous to
placing it before him, he went into the Aged's room with a clean
white cloth, and tied the same under the old gentleman's chin, and
propped him up, and put his nightcap on one side, and gave him
quite a rakish air. Then, he placed his breakfast before him with
great care, and said, "All right, ain't you, Aged P.?" To which the
cheerful Aged replied, "All right, John, my boy, all right!" As
there seemed to be a tacit understanding that the Aged was not in a
presentable state, and was therefore to be considered invisible, I
made a pretence of being in complete ignorance of these
proceedings.

"This watching of me at my chambers (which I have once had reason
to suspect)," I said to Wemmick when he came back, "is inseparable
from the person to whom you have adverted; is it?"

Wemmick looked very serious. "I couldn't undertake to say that, of
my own knowledge. I mean, I couldn't undertake to say it was at
first. But it either is, or it will be, or it's in great danger of
being."

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