Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter XLIV
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 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.
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
"Ay, Pip," replied Miss Havisham, steadily nodding her head; "you
did."
"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 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. 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 humoring 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, 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 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 Sarah Pocket, Miss Georgiana, and
This contrasting of them with the rest seemed, I was glad to see,
"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,
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
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,--
"Estella," said I, turning to her now, and trying to command my
trembling voice, "you know I love you. You know 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 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
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
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
"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."
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
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 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
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!"
have been touched with compassion, 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 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.
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
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
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, 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 color than
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
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
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."