Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter XXIX Page 1
Betimes in the morning I was up and out. It was too early yet to go
to Miss Havisham's, so I loitered into the country on Miss
Havisham's side of town,--which was not Joe's side; I could go
there to-morrow,--thinking about my patroness, and painting
brilliant pictures of her plans for me.
She had adopted Estella, she had as good as adopted me, and it
could not fail to be her intention to bring us together. She
reserved it for me to restore the desolate house, admit the
sunshine into the dark rooms, set the clocks a-going and the cold
hearths a-blazing, tear down the cobwebs, destroy the vermin,--in
short, do all the shining deeds of the young Knight of romance, and
marry the Princess. I had stopped to look at the house as I passed;
and its seared red brick walls, blocked windows, and strong green
ivy clasping even the stacks of chimneys with its twigs and
tendons, as if with sinewy old arms, had made up a rich attractive
mystery, of which I was the hero. Estella was the inspiration of
it, and the heart of it, of course. But, though she had taken such
strong possession of me, though my fancy and my hope were so set
upon her, though her influence on my boyish life and character had
been all-powerful, I did not, even that romantic morning, invest
her with any attributes save those she possessed. I mention this in
this place, of a fixed purpose, because it is the clew by which I
am to be followed into my poor labyrinth. According to my
experience, the conventional notion of a lover cannot be always
true. The unqualified truth is, that when I loved Estella with the
love of a man, I loved her simply because I found her irresistible.
Once for all; I knew to my sorrow, often and often, if not always,
that I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace,
against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that
could be. Once for all; I loved her none the less because I knew
it, and it had no more influence in restraining me than if I had
devoutly believed her to be human perfection.
I so shaped out my walk as to arrive at the gate at my old time.
I had rung at the bell with an unsteady hand, I turned my back
of my heart moderately quiet. I heard the side-door open, and steps
come across the courtyard; but I pretended not to hear, even when
the gate swung on its rusty hinges.
Being at last touched on the shoulder, I started and turned. I
started much more naturally then, to find myself confronted by a
man in a sober gray dress. The last man I should have expected to
see in that place of porter at Miss Havisham's door.
"Orlick!"
"Ah, young master, there's more changes than yours. But come in,
come in. It's opposed to my orders to hold the gate open."
I entered and he swung it, and locked it, and took the key out.
"Yes!" said he, facing round, after doggedly preceding me a few
steps towards the house. "Here I am!"
"I come her," he retorted, "on my legs. I had my box brought
alongside me in a barrow."
"Are you here for good?"
"I ain't here for harm, young master, I suppose?"
I was not so sure of that. I had leisure to entertain the retort in
my mind, while he slowly lifted his heavy glance from the pavement,
up my legs and arms, to my face.
round him with an air of injury. "Now, do it look like it?"
I asked him how long he had left Gargery's forge?
"One day is so like another here," he replied, "that I don't know
without casting it up. However, I come here some time since you
left."
"I could have told you that, Orlick."
"Ah!" said he, dryly. "But then you've got to be a scholar."
By this time we had come to the house, where I found his room to be
one just within the side-door, with a little window in it looking
on the courtyard. In its small proportions, it was not unlike the
kind of place usually assigned to a gate-porter in Paris. Certain
and his patchwork-covered bed was in a little inner division or
recess. The whole had a slovenly, confined, and sleepy look, like a
shadow of a corner by the window, looked like the human dormouse
for whom it was fitted up,--as indeed he was.
"I never saw this room before," I remarked; "but used to be
no Porter here."
"No," said he; "not till it got about that there was no protection
on the premises, and it come to be considered dangerous, with
convicts and Tag and Rag and Bobtail going up and down. And then I
was recommended to the place as a man who could give another man as
good as he brought, and I took it. It's easier than bellowsing and
hammering.--That's loaded, that is."
My eye had been caught by a gun with a brass-bound stock over the
chimney-piece, and his eye had followed mine.
"Well," said I, not desirous of more conversation, "shall I go up
to Miss Havisham?"
"Burn me, if I know!" he retorted, first stretching himself and
then shaking himself; "my orders ends here, young master. I give
this here bell a rap this here hammer, and you go on along the
passage till you meet somebody."
"I am expected, I believe?"
"Burn me twice over, if I can say!" said he.
Upon that, I turned down the long passage which I had first trodden
in my thick boots, and he made his bell sound. At the end of the
passage, while the bell was still reverberating, I found Sarah
Pocket, who appeared to have now become constitutionally green and
yellow by reason of me.
"Oh!" said she. "You, is it, Mr. Pip?"
"It is, Miss Pocket. I am glad to tell you that Mr. Pocket and
family are all well."
"Are they any wiser?" said Sarah, a dismal shake of the head;
"they had better be wiser, than well. Ah, Matthew, Matthew! You know
your way, sir?"
Tolerably, for I had up the staircase in the dark, many a
time. I ascended it now, in lighter boots than of yore, and tapped
in my old way at the door of Miss Havisham's room. "Pip's rap," I
heard her say, immediately; "come in, Pip."
She was in her chair near the old table, in the old dress, with her
two hands crossed on her stick, her chin resting on them, and her
eyes on the fire. Sitting near her, with the white shoe, that had
never been worn, in her hand, and her head bent as she looked at
it, was an elegant lady whom I had never seen.
"Come in, Pip," Miss Havisham continued to mutter, without looking
round or up; "come in, Pip, how do you do, Pip? so you kiss my hand
as if I were a queen, eh?--Well?"
She looked up at me suddenly, only moving her eyes, and repeated in
a grimly playful manner,--
"Well?"
"I heard, Miss Havisham," said I, rather at a loss, "that you were
so kind as to wish me to come and see you, and I came directly."
"Well?"
The lady whom I had never seen before, lifted up her eyes and
looked archly at me, and then I saw that the eyes were Estella's
eyes. But she was so much changed, was so much more beautiful, so
much more womanly, in all things winning admiration, had made such
wonderful advance, that I seemed to have made none. I fancied, as I
looked at her, that I slipped hopelessly back into the coarse and
upon me, and the inaccessibility that came about her!
She gave me her hand. I stammered something about the pleasure I
felt in seeing her again, and about my having looked forward to it,
for a long, long time.
"Do you find her much changed, Pip?" asked Miss Havisham, with her
greedy look, and striking her stick upon a chair stood between
them, as a sign to me to sit down there.
"When I came in, Miss Havisham, I thought there was nothing of
Estella in the face or figure; but now it all settles down so
curiously into the old--"
"What? You are not going to say into the old Estella?" Miss
Havisham interrupted. "She was proud and insulting, and you wanted
to go away from her. Don't you remember?"
I said confusedly that that was long ago, and that I knew no better
then, and the like. Estella smiled with perfect composure, and said
she had no doubt of my having been quite right, and of her having
been very disagreeable.
"Is he changed?" Miss Havisham asked her.
"Very much," said Estella, looking at me.
"Less coarse and common?" said Miss Havisham, playing with
Estella's hair.
Estella laughed, and looked at the shoe in her hand, and laughed
again, and looked at me, and put the shoe down. She treated me as a
boy still, but she lured me on.
We sat in the dreamy room among the old strange influences which
had so wrought upon me, and I learnt that she had but just come
wilful as of old, she had brought those qualities into such
subjection to her beauty that it was impossible and out of nature--
or I thought so--to separate them from her beauty. Truly it was
impossible to dissociate her presence from all those wretched
hankerings after money and gentility that had disturbed my boyhood,
--from all those ill-regulated aspirations that had first made me
ashamed of home and Joe,--from all those visions that had raised
her face in the glowing fire, struck it out of the iron on the
impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present,
from the innermost life of my life.
It was settled that I should stay there all the rest of the day,
and return to the hotel at night, and to London to-morrow. When we
had conversed for a while, Miss Havisham sent us two out to walk in
the neglected garden: on our coming in by and by, she said, I
should wheel her about a little, as in times of yore.
now Herbert; I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the very hem of
her dress; she, quite composed and most decidedly not worshipping
the hem of mine. As we drew near to the place of encounter, she
stopped and said,--
"I must have been a singular little creature to hide and see
fight that day; but I did, and I enjoyed it very much."
"You rewarded me very much."
"Did I?" she replied, in an incidental and forgetful way. "I
remember I entertained a great objection to your adversary, because
company."
"He and I are great friends now."
"Are you? I think I recollect though, that you read with his
father?"
I made the admission reluctance, for it seemed to have a
boyish look, and she already treated me more than enough like a
boy.
companions," said Estella.
"Naturally," said I.
"And necessarily," she added, in a haughty tone; "what was fit
company for you once, would be quite unfit company for you now."
In my conscience, I doubt very much whether I had any lingering
intention left of going to see Joe; but if I had, this observation
put it to flight.
"You had no idea of your impending good fortune, in those times?"
fighting times.
"Not the least."
The air of completeness and superiority with which she walked at my
side, and the air of youthfulness and submission with which I
walked at hers, made a contrast that I strongly felt. It would have
eliciting it by being so set apart for her and assigned to her.
The garden was too overgrown and rank for walking in with ease, and
after we had made the round of it twice or thrice, we came out
again into the brewery yard. I showed her to a nicety where I had
seen her walking on the casks, that first old day, and she said,
with a cold and careless look in that direction, "Did I?" I
reminded her where she had come out of the house and given me my
meat and drink, and she said, "I don't remember." "Not remember
that you made me cry?" said I. "No," said she, and shook her head
and looked about her. I verily believe that her not remembering and
not minding in the least, made me cry again, inwardly,--and that is
the sharpest crying of all.
"You must know," said Estella, condescending to me as a brilliant
and beautiful woman might, "that I have no heart,--if that has
anything to do with my memory."
I got through some jargon to the effect that I took the liberty of
doubting that. That I knew better. That there could be no such
beauty without it.
"Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt,"
said Estella, "and of course if it ceased to beat I should cease
to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no--
What was it that was borne in upon my mind when she stood still and
looked attentively at me? Anything that I had seen in Miss
tinge of resemblance to Miss Havisham which may often be noticed to
have been acquired by children, from grown person with whom they
have been much associated and secluded, and which, when childhood
is passed, will produce a remarkable occasional likeness of
expression between faces that are otherwise quite different. And
yet I could not trace this to Miss Havisham. I looked again, and
What was it?
"I am serious," said Estella, not so much with a frown (for her
brow was smooth) as a darkening of her face; "if we are to be
thrown much together, you had better believe it at once. No!"
imperiously stopping me as I opened my lips. "I have not bestowed
my tenderness anywhere. I have never had any such thing."
In another moment we were in the brewery, so long disused, and she
pointed to the high gallery where I had seen her going out on that