Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [top 10 best books of all time txt] 📗

had I ever so

much as seen her handwriting. We went down on the next day but one,

and we found her in the room where I had first beheld her, and it

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

Estella’s hand drawn through her arm and clutched in her own hand,

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, with 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

this that Estella was set to wreak Miss Havisham’s revenge on men,

and that 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

upon that cast were secured to lose. I saw in this that I, too,

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,

I saw in this Miss Havisham as I had her then and there before my

eyes, and always had had her before my eyes; and I saw in this, the

distinct shadow of the darkened and unhealthy house in which her

life was hidden from the sun.

The candles that lighted that room of hers were placed in sconces

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

bridal dress upon the table and the ground, and at her own awful

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

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 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.

“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 gray 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,