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long out of date, which had

nothing half so legible in its local news, as the foreign matter of

coffee, pickles, fish sauces, gravy, melted butter, and wine with

which it was sprinkled all over, as if it had taken the measles in

a highly irregular form, I sat at my table while he stood before

the fire. By degrees it became an enormous injury to me that he

stood before the fire. And I got up, determined to have my share of

it. I had to put my hand behind his legs for the poker when I went

up to the fireplace to stir the fire, but still pretended not to

know him.

“Is this a cut?” said Mr. Drummle.

“Oh!” said I, poker in hand; “it’s you, is it? How do you do? I was

wondering who it was, who kept the fire off.”

With that, I poked tremendously, and having done so, planted myself

side by side with Mr. Drummle, my shoulders squared and my back to

the fire.

“You have just come down?” said Mr. Drummle, edging me a little away

with his shoulder.

“Yes,” said I, edging him a little away with my shoulder.

“Beastly place,” said Drummle. “Your part of the country, I

think?”

“Yes,” I assented. “I am told it’s very like your Shropshire.”

“Not in the least like it,” said Drummle.

Here Mr. Drummle looked at his boots and I looked at mine, and then

Mr. Drummle looked at my boots, and I looked at his.

“Have you been here long?” I asked, determined not to yield an inch

of the fire.

“Long enough to be tired of it,” returned Drummle, pretending to

yawn, but equally determined.

“Do you stay here long?”

“Can’t say,” answered Mr. Drummle. “Do you?”

“Can’t say,” said I.

I felt here, through a tingling in my blood, that if Mr. Drummle’s

shoulder had claimed another hair’s breadth of room, I should have

jerked him into the window; equally, that if my own shoulder had

urged a similar claim, Mr. Drummle would have jerked me into the

nearest box. He whistled a little. So did I.

“Large tract of marshes about here, I believe?” said Drummle.

“Yes. What of that?” said I.

Mr. Drummle looked at me, and then at my boots, and then said, “Oh!”

and laughed.

“Are you amused, Mr. Drummle?”

“No,” said he, “not particularly. I am going out for a ride in the

saddle. I mean to explore those marshes for amusement.

Out-of-the-way villages there, they tell me. Curious little

public-houses—and smithies—and that. Waiter!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that horse of mine ready?”

“Brought round to the door, sir.”

“I say. Look here, you sir. The lady won’t ride to-day; the weather

won’t do.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And I don’t dine, because I’m going to dine at the lady’s.”

“Very good, sir.”

Then, Drummle glanced at me, with an insolent triumph on his

great-jowled face that cut me to the heart, dull as he was, and so

exasperated me, that I felt inclined to take him in my arms (as the

robber in the story-book is said to have taken the old lady) and

seat him on the fire.

One thing was manifest to both of us, and that was, that until

relief came, neither of us could relinquish the fire. There we

stood, well squared up before it, shoulder to shoulder and foot to

foot, with our hands behind us, not budging an inch. The horse was

visible outside in the drizzle at the door, my breakfast was put on

the table, Drummle’s was cleared away, the waiter invited me to

begin, I nodded, we both stood our ground.

“Have you been to the Grove since?” said Drummle.

“No,” said I, “I had quite enough of the Finches the last time I

was there.”

“Was that when we had a difference of opinion?”

“Yes,” I replied, very shortly.

“Come, come! They let you off easily enough,” sneered Drummle. “You

shouldn’t have lost your temper.”

“Mr. Drummle,” said I, “you are not competent to give advice on that

subject. When I lose my temper (not that I admit having done so on

that occasion), I don’t throw glasses.”

“I do,” said Drummle.

After glancing at him once or twice, in an increased state of

smouldering ferocity, I said,—

“Mr. Drummle, I did not seek this conversation, and I don’t think it

an agreeable one.”

“I am sure it’s not,” said he, superciliously over his shoulder; “I

don’t think anything about it.”

“And therefore,” I went on, “with your leave, I will suggest that

we hold no kind of communication in future.”

“Quite my opinion,” said Drummle, “and what I should have suggested

myself, or done—more likely—without suggesting. But don’t lose

your temper. Haven’t you lost enough without that?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Waiter!,” said Drummle, by way of answering me.

The waiter reappeared.

“Look here, you sir. You quite understand that the young lady don’t

ride to-day, and that I dine at the young lady’s?”

“Quite so, sir!”

When the waiter had felt my fast-cooling teapot with the palm of

his hand, and had looked imploringly at me, and had gone out,

Drummle, careful not to move the shoulder next me, took a cigar

from his pocket and bit the end off, but showed no sign of

stirring. Choking and boiling as I was, I felt that we could not go

a word further, without introducing Estella’s name, which I could

not endure to hear him utter; and therefore I looked stonily at the

opposite wall, as if there were no one present, and forced myself

to silence. How long we might have remained in this ridiculous

position it is impossible to say, but for the incursion of three

thriving farmers—laid on by the waiter, I think—who came into

the coffee-room unbuttoning their great-coats and rubbing their

hands, and before whom, as they charged at the fire, we were

obliged to give way.

I saw him through the window, seizing his horse’s mane, and

mounting in his blundering brutal manner, and sidling and backing

away. I thought he was gone, when he came back, calling for a light

for the cigar in his mouth, which he had forgotten. A man in a

dust-colored dress appeared with what was wanted,—I could not have

said from where: whether from the inn yard, or the street, or where

not,—and as Drummle leaned down from the saddle and lighted his

cigar and laughed, with a jerk of his head towards the coffee-room

windows, the slouching shoulders and ragged hair of this man whose

back was towards me reminded me of Orlick.

Too heavily out of sorts to care much at the time whether it were

he or no, or after all to touch the breakfast, I washed the weather

and the journey from my face and hands, and went out to the

memorable old house that it would have been so much the better for

me never to have entered, never to have seen.

Chapter XLIV

In the room where the dressing-table stood, and where the wax-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 that 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.

“What I had to say to Estella, Miss Havisham, I will say before

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

to be paid for it?”

“Ay, Pip,” replied Miss Havisham, steadily nodding her head; “you

did.”

“And that Mr. Jaggers—”

“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 that 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 was a weak complaint to have made, and I had not meant to make

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, that 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 if 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

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