Great Expectations
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 spread, and I saw it written, as it
were, in the falls of the 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 at
the fire. Her graceful figure and her beautiful face expressed a
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.”
“I have not,” said Miss Havisham.
“Mother by adoption,” retorted Estella, never departing from the easy
grace of her attitude, never raising her voice as the other did, never
yielding either to anger or tenderness,—“mother by adoption, I have
said that I owe everything to you. All I possess is freely yours. All
that you have given me, is at your command to have again. Beyond that,
I have nothing. And if you ask me to give you, what you never gave me,
my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities.”
“Did I never give her 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, when 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 teaching? When have
you found me unmindful of your lessons? When 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 grey 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.
“I cannot think,” said Estella, raising her eyes after a silence “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 another 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 her,
from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy and 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;—if 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 her
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,
among the faded bridal relics with which it was strewn. I took
advantage of the moment—I had sought one from the first—to leave the
room, after beseeching Estella’s attention to her, with a movement of
my hand. When I left, Estella was yet standing by the great
chimney-piece, just as she had stood throughout. Miss Havisham’s grey
hair was all adrift upon the ground, among the other bridal wrecks, and
was a miserable sight to see.
It was with a depressed heart that I walked in the starlight for an
hour and more, about the courtyard, and about the brewery, and about
the ruined garden. When I at last took courage to return to the room, I
found Estella sitting at Miss Havisham’s knee, taking up some stitches
in one of those old articles of dress that were dropping to pieces, and
of which I have often been reminded since by the faded tatters of old
banners that I have seen hanging up in cathedrals. Afterwards, Estella
and I played at cards, as of yore,—only we were skilful now, and played
French games,—and so the evening wore away, and I went to bed.
I lay in that separate building across the courtyard. It was the first
time I had ever lain down to rest in Satis House, and sleep refused to
come near me. A thousand Miss Havishams haunted me. She was on this
side of my pillow, on that, at the head of the bed, at the foot, behind
the half-opened door of the dressing-room, in the dressing-room, in the
room overhead, in the room beneath,—everywhere. At last, when the night
was slow to creep on towards two o’clock, I felt that I absolutely
could no longer bear the place as a place to lie down in, and that I
must get up. I therefore got up and put on my clothes, and went out
across the yard into the long stone passage, designing to gain the
outer courtyard and walk there for the relief of my mind. But I was no
sooner in the passage than I extinguished my candle; for I saw Miss
Havisham going along it in a ghostly manner, making a low cry. I
followed her at a distance, and saw her go up the staircase. She
carried a bare candle in her hand, which she had probably taken from
one of the sconces in her own room, and was a most unearthly object by
its light. Standing at the bottom of the staircase, I felt the mildewed
air of the feast-chamber, without seeing her open the door, and I heard
her walking there, and so across into her own room, and so across again
into that, never ceasing the low cry. After a time, I tried in the dark
both to get out, and to go back, but I could do neither until some
streaks of day strayed in and showed me where to lay my hands. During
the whole interval, whenever I went to the bottom of the staircase, I
heard her footstep, saw her light pass above, and heard her ceaseless
low cry.
Before we left next day, there was no revival of the difference between
her and Estella, nor was it ever revived on any similar occasion; and
there were four similar occasions, to the best of my remembrance. Nor,
did Miss Havisham’s manner towards Estella in anywise change, except
that I believed it to have something like fear infused among its former
characteristics.
It is impossible to turn this leaf of my life, without putting Bentley
Drummle’s name upon it; or I would, very gladly.
On a certain occasion when the Finches were assembled in force, and
when good feeling was being promoted in the usual manner by nobody’s
agreeing with anybody else, the presiding Finch called the Grove to
order, forasmuch as Mr. Drummle had not yet toasted a lady; which,
according to the solemn constitution of the society, it was the brute’s
turn to do that day. I thought I saw him leer in an ugly way at me
while the decanters were going round, but as there was no love lost
between us, that might easily be. What was my indignant surprise when
he called upon the company to pledge him to “Estella!”
“Estella who?” said I.
“Never you mind,” retorted Drummle.
“Estella of where?” said I. “You are bound to say of where.” Which he
was, as a Finch.
“Of Richmond, gentlemen,” said Drummle, putting me out of the question,
“and a peerless beauty.”
Much he knew about peerless beauties, a mean, miserable idiot! I
whispered Herbert.
“I know that lady,” said Herbert, across the table, when the toast had
been honoured.
“_Do_ you?” said Drummle.
“And so do I,” I added, with a scarlet face.
“_Do_ you?” said Drummle. “_O_, Lord!”
This was the only retort—except glass or crockery—that the heavy
creature was capable of making; but, I became as highly incensed by it
as if it had been barbed with wit, and I immediately rose in my place
and said that I could not but regard it as being like the honourable
Finch’s impudence to come down to that Grove,—we always talked about
coming down to that Grove, as a neat Parliamentary turn of
expression,—down to that Grove, proposing a lady of whom he knew
nothing. Mr. Drummle, upon this, starting up, demanded what I meant by
that? Whereupon I made him the extreme reply that I believed he knew
where I was to be found.