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

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 honored.

“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 honorable 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.

Whether it was possible in a Christian country to get on without

blood, after this, was a question on which the Finches were

divided. The debate upon it grew so lively, indeed, that at least

six more honorable members told six more, during the discussion,

that they believed they knew where they were to be found. However,

it was decided at last (the Grove being a Court of Honor) that if

Mr. Drummle would bring never so slight a certificate from the lady,

importing that he had the honor of her acquaintance, Mr. Pip must

express his regret, as a gentleman and a Finch, for “having been

betrayed into a warmth which.” Next day was appointed for the

production (lest our honor should take cold from delay), and next

day Drummle appeared with a polite little avowal in Estella’s hand,

that she had had the honor of dancing with him several times. This

left me no course but to regret that I had been “betrayed into a

warmth which,” and on the whole to repudiate, as untenable, the

idea that I was to be found anywhere. Drummle and I then sat

snorting at one another for an hour, while the Grove engaged in

indiscriminate contradiction, and finally the promotion of good

feeling was declared to have gone ahead at an amazing rate.

I tell this lightly, but it was no light thing to me. For, I cannot

adequately express what pain it gave me to think that Estella

should show any favor to a contemptible, clumsy, sulky booby, so

very far below the average. To the present moment, I believe it to

have been referable to some pure fire of generosity and

disinterestedness in my love for her, that I could not endure the

thought of her stooping to that hound. No doubt I should have been

miserable whomsoever she had favored; but a worthier object would

have caused me a different kind and degree of distress.

It was easy for me to find out, and I did soon find out, that

Drummle had begun to follow her closely, and that she allowed him

to do it. A little while, and he was always in pursuit of her, and

he and I crossed one another every day. He held on, in a dull

persistent way, and Estella held him on; now with encouragement,

now with discouragement, now almost flattering him, now openly

despising him, now knowing him very well, now scarcely remembering

who he was.

The Spider, as Mr. Jaggers had called him, was used to lying in

wait, however, and had the patience of his tribe. Added to that, he

had a blockhead confidence in his money and in his family

greatness, which sometimes did him good service,—almost taking the

place of concentration and determined purpose. So, the Spider,

doggedly watching Estella, outwatched many brighter insects, and

would often uncoil himself and drop at the right nick of time.

At a certain Assembly Ball at Richmond (there used to be Assembly

Balls at most places then), where Estella had outshone all other

beauties, this blundering Drummle so hung about her, and with so

much toleration on her part, that I resolved to speak to her

concerning him. I took the next opportunity; which was when she was

waiting for Mrs. Blandley to take her home, and was sitting apart

among some flowers, ready to go. I was with her, for I almost

always accompanied them to and from such places.

“Are you tired, Estella?”

“Rather, Pip.”

“You should be.”

“Say rather, I should not be; for I have my letter to Satis House

to write, before I go to sleep.”

“Recounting tonight’s triumph?” said I. “Surely a very poor one,

Estella.”

“What do you mean? I didn’t know there had been any.”

“Estella,” said I, “do look at that fellow in the corner yonder,

who is looking over here at us.”

“Why should I look at him?” returned Estella, with her eyes on me

instead. “What is there in that fellow in the corner yonder,—to

use your words,—that I need look at?”

“Indeed, that is the very question I want to ask you,” said I. “For

he has been hovering about you all night.”

“Moths, and all sorts of ugly creatures,” replied Estella, with a

glance towards him, “hover about a lighted candle. Can the candle

help it?”

“No,” I returned; “but cannot the Estella help it?”

“Well!” said she, laughing, after a moment, “perhaps. Yes. Anything

you like.”

“But, Estella, do hear me speak. It makes me wretched that you

should encourage a man so generally despised as Drummle. You know

he is despised.”

“Well?” said she.

“You know he is as ungainly within as without. A deficient,

ill-tempered, lowering, stupid fellow.”

“Well?” said she.

“You know he has nothing to recommend him but money and a

ridiculous roll of addle-headed predecessors; now, don’t you?”

“Well?” said she again; and each time she said it, she opened her

lovely eyes the wider.

To overcome the difficulty of getting past that monosyllable, I

took it from her, and said, repeating it with emphasis, “Well! Then,

that is why it makes me wretched.”

Now, if I could have believed that she favored Drummle with any

idea of making me-me—wretched, I should have been in better

heart about it; but in that habitual way of hers, she put me so

entirely out of the question, that I could believe nothing of the

kind.

“Pip,” said Estella, casting her glance over the room, “don’t be

foolish about its effect on you. It may have its effect on others,

and may be meant to have. It’s not worth discussing.”

“Yes it is,” said I, “because I cannot bear that people should say,

‘she throws away her graces and attractions on a mere boor, the

lowest in the crowd.’”

“I can bear it,” said Estella.

“Oh! don’t be so proud, Estella, and so inflexible.”

“Calls me proud and inflexible in this breath!” said Estella,

opening her hands. “And in his last breath reproached me for

stooping to a boor!”

“There is no doubt you do,” said I, something hurriedly, “for I

have seen you give him looks and smiles this very night, such as

you never give to—me.”

“Do you want me then,” said Estella, turning suddenly with a fixed

and serious, if not angry, look, “to deceive and entrap you?”

“Do you deceive and entrap him, Estella?”

“Yes, and many others,—all of them but you. Here is Mrs. Brandley.

I’ll say no more.”

And now that I have given the one chapter to the theme that so

filled my heart, and so often made it ache and ache again, I pass

on unhindered, to the event that had impended over me longer yet;

the event that had begun to be prepared for, before I knew that the

world held Estella, and in the days when her baby intelligence was

receiving its first distortions from Miss Havisham’s wasting hands.

In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of

state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the

quarry, the tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly

carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and

fitted in the roof, the rope was rove to it and slowly taken

through the miles of hollow to the great iron ring. All being made

ready with much labor, and the hour come, the sultan was aroused

in the dead of the night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever

the rope from the great iron ring was put into his hand, and he

struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and the

ceiling fell. So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that

tended to the end, had