Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

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"But dear Biddy, how smart you are!"

"Yes, dear Pip."

"And Joe, how smart you are!"

"Yes, dear old Pip, old chap."

I looked at both of them, from one to the other, and then--

"It's my wedding-day," cried Biddy, in a burst of happiness, "and I
am married to Joe!"

They had taken me into the kitchen, and I had laid my head down on
the old deal table. Biddy held one of my hands to her lips, and
Joe's restoring touch was on my shoulder. "Which he warn't strong
enough, my dear, fur to be surprised," said Joe. And Biddy said, "I
ought to have thought of it, dear Joe, but I was too happy." They
were both so overjoyed to see me, so proud to see me, so touched by
my coming to them, so delighted that I should have come by accident
to make their day complete!

My first thought was one of great thankfulness that I had never
breathed this last baffled hope to Joe. How often, while he was
with me in my illness, had it risen to my lips. How irrevocable
would have been his knowledge of it, if he had remained with me but
another hour!

"Dear Biddy," said I, "you have the best husband in the whole
world, and if you could have seen him by my bed you would have -
But no, you couldn't love him better than you do."

"No, I couldn't indeed," said Biddy.

"And, dear Joe, you have the best wife in the whole world, and she
will make you as happy as even you deserve to be, you dear, good,
noble Joe!"

Joe looked at me with a quivering lip, and fairly put his sleeve
before his eyes.

"And Joe and Biddy both, as you have been to church to-day, and are
in charity and love with all mankind, receive my humble thanks for
all you have done for me and all I have so ill repaid! And when I
say that I am going away within the hour, for I am soon going
abroad, and that I shall never rest until I have worked for the
money with which you have kept me out of prison, and have sent it
to you, don't think, dear Joe and Biddy, that if I could repay it a
thousand times over, I suppose I could cancel a farthing of the
debt I owe you, or that I would do so if I could!"

They were both melted by these words, and both entreated me to say
no more.

"But I must say more. Dear Joe, I hope you will have children to
love, and that some little fellow will sit in this chimney corner
of a winter night, who may remind you of another little fellow gone
out of it for ever. Don't tell him, Joe, that I was thankless;
don't tell him, Biddy, that I was ungenerous and unjust; only tell
him that I honoured you both, because you were both so good and
true, and that, as your child, I said it would be natural to him to
grow up a much better man than I did."

"I ain't a-going," said Joe, from behind his sleeve, "to tell him
nothink o' that natur, Pip. Nor Biddy ain't. Nor yet no one ain't."

"And now, though I know you have already done it in your own kind
hearts, pray tell me, both, that you forgive me! Pray let me hear
you say the words, that I may carry the sound of them away with me,
and then I shall be able to believe that you can trust me, and
think better of me, in the time to come!"

"O dear old Pip, old chap," said Joe. "God knows as I forgive you,
if I have anythink to forgive!"

"Amen! And God knows I do!" echoed Biddy.

"Now let me go up and look at my old little room, and rest there a
few minutes by myself, and then when I have eaten and drunk with you,
go with me as far as the finger-post, dear Joe and Biddy, before we
say good-bye!"

I sold all I had, and put aside as much as I could, for a
composition with my creditors - who gave me ample time to pay them
in full - and I went out and joined Herbert. Within a month, I had
quitted England, and within two months I was clerk to Clarriker and
Co., and within four months I assumed my first undivided
responsibility. For, the beam across the parlour ceiling at Mill
Pond Bank, had then ceased to tremble under old Bill Barley's
growls and was at peace, and Herbert had gone away to marry Clara,
and I was left in sole charge of the Eastern Branch until he
brought her back.

Many a year went round, before I was a partner in the House; but,
I lived happily with Herbert and his wife, and lived frugally, and
paid my debts, and maintained a constant correspondence with Biddy
and Joe. It was not until I became third in the Firm, that
Clarriker betrayed me to Herbert; but, he then declared that the
secret of Herbert's partnership had been long enough upon his
conscience, and he must tell it. So, he told it, and Herbert was as
much moved as amazed, and the dear fellow and I were not the worse
friends for the long concealment. I must not leave it to be
supposed that we were ever a great house, or that we made mints of
money. We were not in a grand way of business, but we had a good
name, and worked for our profits, and did very well. We owed so
much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I
often wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude,
until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the
inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me.

Chapter 59

For eleven years, I had not seen Joe nor Biddy with my bodily
eyes-though they had both been often before my fancy in the
East-when, upon an evening in December, an hour or two after dark,
I laid my hand softly on the latch of the old kitchen door. I
touched it so softly that I was not heard, and looked in unseen.
There, smoking his pipe in the old place by the kitchen firelight,
as hale and as strong as ever though a little grey, sat Joe; and
there, fenced into the corner with Joe's leg, and sitting on my own
little stool looking at the fire, was - I again!

"We giv' him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old chap," said
Joe, delighted when I took another stool by the child's side (but I
did not rumple his hair), "and we hoped he might grow a little bit
like you, and we think he do."

I thought so too, and I took him out for a walk next morning, and
we talked immensely, understanding one another to perfection. And I
took him down to the churchyard, and set him on a certain tombstone
there, and he showed me from that elevation which stone was sacred
to the memory of Philip Pirrip, late of this Parish, and Also
Georgiana, Wife of the Above.

"Biddy," said I, when I talked with her after dinner, as her little
girl lay sleeping in her lap, "you must give Pip to me, one of
these days; or lend him, at all events."

"No, no," said Biddy, gently. "You must marry."

"So Herbert and Clara say, but I don't think I shall, Biddy. I have
so settled down in their home, that it's not at all likely. I am
already quite an old bachelor."

Biddy looked down at her child, and put its little hand to her
lips, and then put the good matronly hand with which she had
touched it, into mine. There was something in the action and in the
light pressure of Biddy's wedding-ring, that had a very pretty
eloquence in it.

"Dear Pip," said Biddy, "you are sure you don't fret for her?"

"O no - I think not, Biddy."

"Tell me as an old, old friend. Have you quite forgotten her?

"My dear Biddy, I have forgotten nothing in my life that ever had a
foremost place there, and little that ever had any place there. But
that poor dream, as I once used to call it, has all gone by, Biddy,
all gone by!"

Nevertheless, I knew while I said those words, that I secretly
intended to revisit the site of the old house that evening, alone,
for her sake. Yes even so. For Estella's sake.

I had heard of her as leading a most unhappy life, and as being
separated from her husband, who had used her with great cruelty,
and who had become quite renowned as a compound of pride, avarice,
brutality, and meanness. And I had heard of the death of her
husband, from an accident consequent on his ill-treatment of a
horse. This release had befallen her some two years before; for
anything I knew, she was married again.

The early dinner-hour at Joe's, left me abundance of time, without
hurrying my talk with Biddy, to walk over to the old spot before
dark. But, what with loitering on the way, to look at old objects
and to think of old times, the day had quite declined when I came
to the place.

There was no house now, no brewery, no building whatever left, but
the wall of the old garden. The cleared space had been enclosed
with a rough fence, and, looking over it, I saw that some of the
old ivy had struck root anew, and was growing green on low quiet
mounds of ruin. A gate in the fence standing ajar, I pushed it
open, and went in.

A cold silvery mist had veiled the afternoon, and the moon was not
yet up to scatter it. But, the stars were shining beyond the mist,
and the moon was coming, and the evening was not dark. I could
trace out where every part of the old house had been, and where the
brewery had been, and where the gate, and where the casks. I had
done so, and was looking along the desolate gardenwalk, when I
beheld a solitary figure in it.

The figure showed itself aware of me, as I advanced. It had been
moving towards me, but it stood still. As I drew nearer, I saw it
to be the figure of a woman. As I drew nearer yet, it was about to
turn away, when it stopped, and let me come up with it. Then, it
faltered as if much surprised, and uttered my name, and I cried
out:

"Estella!"

"I am greatly changed. I wonder you know me."

The freshness of her beauty was indeed gone, but its indescribable
majesty and its indescribable charm remained. Those attractions in
it, I had seen before; what I had never seen before, was the
saddened softened light of the once proud eyes; what I had never
felt before, was the friendly touch of the once insensible hand.

We sat down on a bench that was near, and I said, "After so many
years, it is strange that we should thus meet again, Estella, here
where our first meeting was! Do you often come back?"

"I have never been here since."

"Nor I."

The moon began to rise, and I thought of the placid look at the
white ceiling, which had passed away. The moon began to rise, and I
thought of the pressure on my hand when I had spoken the last words
he had heard on earth.

Estella was the next to break the silence that ensued between us.

"I have very often hoped and intended to come back, but have been
prevented by many circumstances. Poor, poor old place!"

The silvery mist was touched with the first rays of the moonlight,
and the same rays touched the tears that dropped from her eyes. Not
knowing that I saw them, and setting herself to get the better of
them, she said quietly:

"Were you wondering, as you walked along, how it came to be left in
this condition?"

"Yes, Estella."

"The ground belongs to me. It is the only possession I have not
relinquished. Everything else has gone from me, little by little,
but I have kept this. It was the subject of the only determined
resistance I made in all the wretched years."

"Is it to be built on?"

"At last it is. I came here to take leave of it before its change.
And you," she said, in a voice of touching interest to a wanderer,
"you live abroad still?"

"Still."

"And do well, I am sure?"

"I work pretty hard for a sufficient living, and therefore - Yes, I
do well."

"I have often thought of you," said Estella.

"Have you?"

"Of late, very often. There was a long hard time when I kept far
from me, the remembrance, of what I had thrown away when I was
quite ignorant of its worth. But, since my duty has not been
incompatible with the admission of that remembrance, I have given
it a place in my heart."

"You have always held your place in my heart," I answered.

And we were silent again, until she spoke.

"I little thought," said Estella, "that I should take leave of you
in taking leave of this spot. I am very glad to do so."

"Glad to part again, Estella? To me, parting is a painful thing. To
me, the remembrance of our last parting has been ever mournful and
painful."

"But you said to me," returned Estella, very earnestly, "'God bless
you, God forgive you!' And if you could say that to me then, you
will not hesitate to say that to me now - now, when suffering has
been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to
understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken,
but - I hope - into a better shape. Be as considerate and good to
me as you were, and tell me we are friends."

"We are friends," said I, rising and bending over her, as she rose
from the bench.

"And will continue friends apart," said Estella.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and,
as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the
forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad
expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of
another parting from her.

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