Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter XXXVIII Page 1
If that staid old house near the Green at Richmond should ever come
to be haunted when I am dead, it will be haunted, surely, by my
spirit within me haunted that house when Estella lived there! Let
wandering, wandering, about that house.
The lady with whom Estella was placed, Mrs. Brandley by name, was a
widow, with one daughter several years older than Estella. The
mother looked young, and the daughter looked old; the mother's
complexion was pink, and the daughter's was yellow; the mother set
up for frivolity, and the daughter for theology. They were in what
is called a good position, and visited, and were visited by,
between them and Estella, but the understanding was established
they were necessary to her, and that she was necessary to
them. Mrs. Brandley had been a friend of Miss Havisham's before the
time of her seclusion.
In Mrs. Brandley's house and out of Mrs. Brandley's house, I suffered
nature of my relations with her, which placed me on terms of
familiarity without placing me on terms of favor, conduced to my
distraction. She made use of me to tease other admirers, and she
turned the very familiarity between herself and me to the account
of putting a constant slight on my devotion to her. If I had been
her secretary, steward, half-brother, poor relation,--if I had been
a younger brother of her appointed husband,--I could not have
seemed to myself further from my hopes when I was nearest to her.
mine became, under the circumstances an aggravation of my trials;
and while I think it likely that it almost maddened her other
lovers, I know too certainly that it almost maddened me.
She had admirers without end. No doubt my jealousy made an admirer
of every one who went near her; but there were more than enough of
them without that.
I saw her often at Richmond, I heard of her often in town, and I
used often to take her and the Brandleys on the water; were
pleasures, through which I pursued her,--and they were all miseries
to me. I never had one hour's happiness in her society, and yet my
mind all round the four-and-twenty hours was harping on the
happiness of having me unto death.
Throughout this part of our intercourse,--and it lasted, as will
presently be seen, for what I then thought a long time,--she
habitually reverted to that tone which expressed that our
association was forced upon us. There were other times when she
would come to a sudden check in this tone and in all her many
tones, and would seem to pity me.
"Pip, Pip," she said one evening, coming to such a check, when we
sat apart at a darkening window of the house in Richmond; "will you
never take warning?"
"Of what?"
"Of me."
"Warning not to be attracted by you, do you mean, Estella?"
"Do I mean! you don't know what I mean, you are blind."
I should have replied Love was commonly reputed blind, but for
the reason that I always was restrained--and this was not the
least of my miseries--by a feeling it was ungenerous to press
subject of a rebellious struggle in her bosom.
"At any rate," said I, "I have no warning given me just now, for
you wrote to me to come to you, this time."
"That's true," said Estella, with a cold careless smile that always
chilled me.
After looking at the twilight without, for a little while, she went
on to say:--
"The time has come round when Miss Havisham wishes to have me for a
day at Satis. You are to take me there, and bring me back, if you
will. She would rather I did not travel alone, and objects to
receiving my maid, for she has a sensitive horror of being talked
of by such people. Can you take me?"
"Can I take you, Estella!"
"You can then? The day after to-morrow, if you please. You are to
pay all charges out of my purse, You hear the condition of your
going?"
This was all the preparation I received for that visit, or for
others like it; Miss Havisham never wrote to me, nor had I ever so
is needless to add that there was no change in Satis House.
She was even more dreadfully fond of Estella than she had been when
I last saw them together; I repeat the word advisedly, for there
was something positively dreadful in the energy of her looks and
embraces. She hung upon Estella's beauty, hung upon her words, hung
upon her gestures, and sat mumbling her own trembling fingers while
she looked at her, as though she were devouring the beautiful
creature she had reared.
From Estella she looked at me, with a searching glance that seemed
to pry into my heart and probe its wounds. "How does she use you,
Pip; how does she use you?" she asked me again, with her witch-like
eagerness, even in Estella's hearing. But, when we sat by her
flickering fire at night, she was most weird; for then, keeping
she extorted from her, by dint of referring back to what Estella
had told her in her regular letters, the names and conditions of
the men whom she had fascinated; and as Miss Havisham dwelt upon
this roll, the intensity of a mind mortally hurt and diseased,
she sat with her other hand on her crutch stick, and her chin on
that, and her wan bright eyes glaring at me, a very spectre.
I saw in this, wretched though it made me, and bitter the sense of
dependence and even of degradation that it awakened,--I saw in
and she was not to be given to me until she had gratified it
for a term. I saw in this, a reason for her being beforehand
assigned to me. Sending her out to attract and torment and do
mischief, Miss Havisham sent her with the malicious assurance that
she was beyond the reach of all admirers, and that all who staked
was tormented by a perversion of ingenuity, even while the prize
was reserved for me. I saw in this the reason for my being staved
off so long and the reason for my late guardian's declining to
commit himself to the formal knowledge of such a scheme. In a word,
eyes, and always had had her before my eyes; and I saw in this, the
life was hidden from the sun.
on the wall. They were high from the ground, and they burnt with
the steady dulness of artificial light in air that is seldom
renewed. As I looked round at them, and at the pale gloom they
made, and at the stopped clock, and at the withered articles of
figure with its ghostly reflection thrown large by the fire upon
the ceiling and the wall, I saw in everything the construction that
my mind had come to, repeated and thrown back to me. My thoughts
passed into the great room across the landing where the table was
cobwebs from the centre-piece, in the crawlings of the spiders on
the cloth, in the tracks of the mice as they betook their little
quickened hearts behind the panels, and in the gropings and
pausings of the beetles on the floor.
It happened on the occasion of this visit that some sharp words
arose between Estella and Miss Havisham. It was the first time I
had ever seen them opposed.
We were seated by the fire, as just now described, and Miss
Havisham still had Estella's arm drawn through her own, and still
clutched Estella's hand in hers, when Estella gradually began to
detach herself. She had shown a proud impatience more than once
before, and had rather endured that fierce affection than accepted
or returned it.
"What!" said Miss Havisham, flashing her eyes upon her, "are you
tired of me?"
"Only a little tired of myself," replied Estella, disengaging her
arm, and moving to the great chimney-piece, where she stood looking
down at the fire.
"Speak the truth, you ingrate!" cried Miss Havisham, passionately
striking her stick upon the floor; "you are tired of me."
Estella looked at her with perfect composure, and again looked down
self-possessed indifference to the wild heat of the other, that was
almost cruel.
"You stock and stone!" exclaimed Miss Havisham. "You cold, cold
heart!"
"What?" said Estella, preserving her attitude of indifference as
she leaned against the great chimney-piece and only moving her
eyes; "do you reproach me for being cold? You?"
"Are you not?" was the fierce retort.
"You should know," said Estella. "I am what you have made me. Take
all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all
the failure; in short, take me."
"O, look at her, look at her!" cried Miss Havisham, bitterly; "Look
at her so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared!
Where I took her into this wretched breast when it was first
bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished years of
tenderness upon her!"
"At least I was no party to the compact," said Estella, "for if I
could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much as I could
do. But what would you have? You have been very good to me, and I
owe everything to you. What would you have?"
"Love," replied the other.
"You have it."
"Mother by adoption," retorted Estella, never departing from the
easy grace of her attitude, never raising her voice as the ot
did, never yielding either to anger or tenderness,--"mother by
adoption, I have said that I owe everything to you. All I possess
have again. Beyond that, I have nothing. And you ask me to give
you, what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do
impossibilities."
"Did I never give love!" cried Miss Havisham, turning wildly to
me. "Did I never give her a burning love, inseparable from jealousy
at all times, and from sharp pain, while she speaks thus to me! Let
her call me mad, let her call me mad!"
"Why should I call you mad," returned Estella, "I, of all people?
Does any one live, who knows what set purposes you have, half as
well as I do? Does any one live, who knows what a steady memory you
have, half as well as I do? I who have sat on this same hearth on
the little stool that is even now beside you there, learning your
lessons and looking up into your face, your face was strange
and frightened me!"
"Soon forgotten!" moaned Miss Havisham. "Times soon forgotten!"
"No, not forgotten," retorted Estella,--"not forgotten, but
treasured up in my memory. When have you found me false to your
have you found me giving admission here," she touched her bosom
with her hand, "to anything that you excluded? Be just to me."
"So proud, so proud!" moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her gray
hair with both her hands.
"Who taught me to be proud?" returned Estella. "Who praised me when
I learnt my lesson?"
"So hard, so hard!" moaned Miss Havisham, with her former action.
"Who taught me to be hard?" returned Estella. "Who praised me when
I learnt my lesson?"
"But to be proud and hard to me!" Miss Havisham quite shrieked, as
she stretched out her arms. "Estella, Estella, Estella, to be proud
and hard to me!"
Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm wonder, but
was not otherwise disturbed; when the moment was past, she looked
down at the fire again.
"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 anot
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
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;--
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
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,